Month: January 2002

After seven years in the Rayne, La., public schools — not the most nurturing environment — I got lucky and got a full scholarship to this great private school (whose site has been down for most of the last few months). It’s a great school out in the middle of nowhere on the grounds of an abandoned sugar cane plantation, and credit for whatever I’ve been able to do since 1987 largely goes to it.
But there was one, shall we say, issue: most of the kids who went to ESA were quite rich, or at least pleasantly upper middle class. I was poor. This created a variety of complications in my life over the years and helped create the slightly silly class-warrior mentality I had for a long time (and still have every once in a while). But one of the biggest benefits is that I got to tag along on the rich-kid senior trip to the U.K. and France. There were only 43 of us in the senior class, so the trip wasn’t too crowded.
It was a wonderful trip, and one of the highlights was going to Easter services at Canterbury Cathedral. Since ESA was an Episcopal school, visiting the center of all things Anglican was a big deal (even though I, like most of south Louisiana, was raised Catholic). The ceremony was beautiful, and afterward we all gathered with the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey for a picture.
By chance, I ended up standing next to the Archbish himself for the photo. (My friend Anthony had taken to saying “Bish better have my money” whenever we saw the local Episcopal bishop back home, in homage to and parody of this 1992 rap quasi-classic. So the Archbishop naturally became the Archbish.) After the group shots were taken, one of my classmates asked for the Archbish’s autograph. He was happy to oblige, but there was one problem: one of his hands was full. He was holding the big six-foot-tall bejeweled scepter that all Archbishi get to hold on to, the symbol of his authority within the church. So, logically, he turned to me and asked:
“Could you hold this for me for a minute?”
Um, sure I could. I took the scepter from his hands and briefly considered using my power to issue edicts, or fiats, or bulls, or whatever Anglican top-down orders were called. After all, who could question me — I had the scepter! But instead, I turned to everyone holding a camera near me and asked: “Could someone please take a picture of me with this thing?”
Earlier this week, George Carey announced his retirement as Archbish. I quickly remembered my brush with religious power. But in a moment, the thought shifted to: None of those losers ever sent me a copy of those photos.

As always, a pleasure seeing everyone last night, as always, even if we were derailed at first by a TV crew trying to document the near-death experience of the Inwood Lounge. And any evening that starts with people handing me many CDs and ends with a medio white chocolate/creme caramel gelato can’t be all bad.
If you’re interested, the CD Mix of the Month club is still taking entries for January; get in touch with me asap if you still want in. And for those of you who got a copy of my mix last night, I’d really like to hear your thoughts — what you liked, what you didn’t. (Use the comments link.)

Irony of ironies: Remember my rant a couple of days ago about the obnoxious new denizen of the Dallas radio dial, 93.3 The Bone? Well, thanks to Google wisely deciding that this site deserves more regular checks than the station’s breast-and-babe-based site, anyone searching for “93.3 the bone” gets this site, not The Bone’s. Since it’s a new station, lots of people are searching for it: I’ve gotten almost 100 Bone-based search requests in the last couple of days.
As one of their cretinous DJs might say: no bones about it!

Quote of the day, from the (non-dallas) morning news: “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.” — James Baldwin.

Let’s say you’re organizing a Martin Luther King Day celebration. What kind of Freudian slip would it take to accidentally make a plaque that says, “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive“?

Dallasites, it’s survey time. A couple of us here at my employer were talking yesterday about how few young people actually read the newspaper. It’s a longstanding demographic trend — actually, it’s less of a problem at the DMN than at most other papers across the country, but it’s still a concern to those of us in the business. I also have to give a little talk to a bunch of reporters and editors here next month on appealing to younger readers (say, adults under 35).
So here’s my question: If you read the paper regularly, what do you like about it? If you don’t, why not? And what could be changed to make you want to read it?
(I know many people have traded in subscriptions for regular trips to the paper’s web site, which is understandable. But I’m primarily looking for things that would make you want to actually plop down your 50 cents or pay for a subscription.)

Dave Barry takes North Dakota (and the local press eagerly awaits).
Best thing about the visit: a city-wide potluck dinner. “People living north of DeMers Avenue should bring jello salad; those living south of DeMers should bring hotdish. Those living east of the Red River should bring bars.”

Keep an eye on this story. I have a feeling it’s going to blow up big in the next few weeks.
Today’s poll: Which Dairy Queen dish most reminds you of Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban? (An explanation.)

The revenge of Pete Maravich: it looks like my home state may be getting an NBA team again. Louisiana’s had a bit of a self-esteem problem since 1979, when the New Orleans Jazz up and moved to…Utah? The Utah Jazz, the most ludicrous moniker in all of sports?
Unfortunately, if the Hornets do move to Nawlins, we’d get stuck with George Shinn, who shows up in anybody’s top five of worst team owners (worst both in sports terms and as a human being). But at least we’d also get my favorite basketball player of all time, (the currently injured) George Lynch.

An engaging story in Sunday’s Washington Post about 12-year-old prodigy-turned-peace-activist Greg Smith. (He’s about to start work on a PhD.) A much more nuanced look at the trials and tumult of young genius than you often see, with Q&As with the writer and the kid himself.
The author remarks, with a bit of shame, that whenever she talked with Greg, she found herself searching for some flaw in his intellect, “for reasons I can only assume to be some primal survival instinct.” I know what she means; when I read his Q&A, I felt a shameful little burst of glee when I saw he misspelled “oppurtunity.”