Month: October 2001

I’m still young enough that I’ve spent the majority of my years enrolled in school: the usual K-12 and four years of college (lots of napping, interspersed with a few classes). But I haven’t been a student for four years, and I realized last night that’s enough time for sitting in a classroom to seem weird. (Well, not sitting in a classroom per se; I write about education for a living, so sitting in a classroom is something I still do from time to time. I mean as a student.)
I started taking Spanish at SMU last night with my friend Juliet, and we got to sit at those little desks with the little teardrop-shaped desktop and watch a teacher write things on a chalkboard while we furiously took notes. It was like a time warp — I felt like passing notes and doodling “Pink Floyd!” on my notebook. (A big junior high activity of mine.) I now know that “h” is silent in Spanish if it’s not part of “ch,” “v” and “b” sound too close for comfort, and that “romantico” sounds really cool. I’m sure I’ll be fluent in a week or two.
Bonus link: a highly perceptive Onion headline: Downtown McDonald’s Perpetually A Hairsbreadth From Complete Anarchy.

Well, that was relatively painless. My four minutes (four! they thought three and a half wasn’t enough torture!) of local TV fame went by pretty quickly. My only moment of horror came when I was told I’d be sitting in a big (comfy) chair on the set — I had thought I would be behind a desk — and two terrifying issues came to mind. First, posture started to matter — not my strong suit. Second, I wore crappy, scuffed-up shoes because I thought they’d be hidden to the world, but now they would be exposed to the 19 million people watching Channel 8 at 9:24 a.m.
But it went okay, I thought, except for a single throat-clearing cough about two minutes in. (What kind of superhero medicine do these on-air types take to avoid coughing for hours at a time?) I rambled a bit too much, as I usually do in real life, and I probably looked goofy, but I didn’t make any major gaffes, like saying Eastern Europe is not under Soviet domination or anything. But then again, I didn’t see what TV viewers saw, so maybe there was a big booger hanging out of my nose or something. (Feel free to forward your honest reviews. The only feedback I’ve gotten so far was my boss telling me I looked “poised,” which I think is code for “At least you didn’t break down and sob uncontrollably.”)
Anyway, got to hang out in the green room (which, oddly enough, was off-white) with Mark Cuban, who was on just before me. Think about it: between the two of us, that green room held a net worth of more than $1,400,000,020. (The $20 is mine.) He seems like a nice guy; we even chatted for a bit about the subject of my story today, school fundraising. I’ve always heard lots of second-hand Cuban stories — one of my best friends writes about the Mavs a lot for sports, and the guy who cuts my hair also cuts Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki — but it’s always nice to schmooze with the local basketball power structure. (Part of my grand dallasstories.com plan is to get Cuban to write for me.)

Never let it be said I’m hard to shop for. And, just so you all know, Miss Manners says that lots of people chipping in for a gift is perfectly appropriate for, say, an upcoming 26th birthday.

Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be Josh Media Day. Barring any big news — say, coordinated attacks on symbols of our nation’s financial and military might — I’ll have a story on the front page. And, more threateningly, I’ll be interviewed on Channel 8 at precisely 9:24 a.m.
This is scary stuff, for several reasons. First, 9:24 a.m. is smack dab in the middle of the “look like crap” phase of my day. (Some would argue any time is, but that’s for another day’s blog.) Second, I’ve done a few TV appearances before on TXCN, our sister cable network, and they’ve gone fine, but that’s always by remote camera here in the newsroom. This’ll be sitting next to the anchor at WFAA, swapping tales for three and a half minutes. (By the way, isn’t that an eternity in TV time? Won’t I be aging before the audience’s eyes?) Plus, I sweat under the hot lights, and I know I’ll end up looking like Nixon in the 1960 presidential debates. I am so screwed.
So if I completely tank, no one will admit to having watched it, right? After all, the DFWblogger happy hour is tomorrow night, and I’ll no doubt be prime ribbing material. Please be gentle, amateur media critics.

Saturday was, unbeknownst to me, Sweetest Day, among the most annoying, Hallmark-created holidays known to man. But in a way, you’ve got to love a holiday that, according to the link above, is much more popular in Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo than anywhere else. You figure the good people of the Rust Belt have to be onto something. (Although as a three-year resident of Toledo, Ohio — motto: “Easy access to Detroit, Cleveland, and Fort Wayne!” — I don’t remember this faux V-Day getting much attention.)

Depressing quote of the day, from the WashPost, via Mickey Kaus:
“This is a different kind of conflict,” Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon yesterday. “The closest analogy would be the drug war.”
Well, that’s optimistic, isn’t it? ‘Cause we’ve done such a bang-up job of completely eliminating drugs from America, right? I’m having visions of Nancy Reagan on the set of Friends, telling Joey Tribbiani to “just say no to Wahhabist Islamic fundamentalism!” (For is not Friends the Diff’rent Strokes [see episode #120] of our day, and Joey our Arnold?)
I hate it when I have Nancy Reagan visions.

Went to see The Strokes last night at the Gypsy Tea Room with Karen — fun show. The lead singer, the magnificently named Julian Casablancas, had all the charisma of a doorstop, and they didn’t play very long. But then again, that’s to be expected when they’ve got only one 35-minute-long album out.
They played just about everything off Is This It?, along with “NYC Cops,” the song that appears on the vinyl issue but got pulled off the CD after 9/11. (I suppose the timing wasn’t right for a song whose chorus goes “New York City cops / they ain’t too smart.”) The whole band is 22 or younger (damn I feel old), and their songs have a sort of youthful exuberance that works well with their world-weary, Lou Reed posing. And every song has a point of ignition, a moment when the guitars reach back and unleash a little hell. Much fun was had by all.
Talk about a charisma contrast: the Moldy Peaches opened, and I can say with confidence that, of all bands I’ve seen whose female lead singer wears cat makeup, they’re the best. With lyrics like “postmodernist throwing darts / hit a bullseye cut a fart,” how can you go wrong? (Not to mention Carrottop sitting in on lead guitar and a bassist in Spiderman Underoos.) It’s Ween-meets-Sonic Youth, and lots of fun, at least in small doses.

I just checked on the availability of sad-eyed-orphans.com (don’t ask — and don’t go out and grab it now, either!). My registrar of choice then recommended a few other domain names I might want:
sad-one-eyed-orphans.com (I’d be sad, too!)
sad-blue-eyed-orphans.com
saddest-eyed-orphans.com (mine are sadder than yours)
sad-eyed-orphanage.com
4sadeyedorphans.com
mysadeyedorphans.com (kind of a contradiction, no?)
sadeyedorphans4kids.com
sadeyedorphansonline.com
allsadeyedorphans.com
freesadeyedorphans.com (what a deal!)
funsadeyedorphans.com
sad-eyed-orphans-direct.com (eliminate the middleman)
sadeyedorphansworld.com
unhappinesseyedorphans.com

Predictable Social Dynamic Of The Day: Anthrax envy. “How come I didn’t get anthraxed?” one prominent [New York reporter] asked….”We were actually relieved when [Dan] Rather finally got his envelope [laced with anthrax] because we were feeling left out,” sniffed one misguided staffer at CBS. “It was like, ‘What, did bin Laden read the Nielsen ratings and just decide that we weren’t important enough to bother with?’ We felt we were running third – this time in the anthrax ratings.”
Journalists are pretty good at backbiting, but this might take the cake. Here’s a NYT reporter on the hoax anthrax letter received by fellow staffer Judith Miller, co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War”: “The speculation is that the letter had been sent by either the book publicist or by one of her co-authors, Steve Engleberg or Bill Broad. I mean, it makes sense, right? One anthrax envelope and she was on ‘Today’ and ‘Larry King Live.'”

Today’s A.Word.A.Day was no doubt inspired by this very site:
crabwise (KRAB-wyz), adjective. 1. Sideways. 2. In a cautious or roundabout manner. [From the sideways movement of crabs.] “John Smith is still moving crabwise towards modernity.” John Major’s Last Year?, The Economist (London), May 15, 1993.
I must say it was not my intention when naming this site to promote caution or roundaboutedness (?). (If you don’t know where the name comes from, you obviously haven’t fully explored the site.) My vision of crabwalking was more connected to the elementary school P.E. version of the term. But as the site mentions, “If we were to look up the term `humanwise’ in a crab’s dictionary, chances are it would mean ‘sideways.'” (Thanks, Karen!)