Month: May 2002

For the three of you interested, the Josh Update since Thursday: Spent Thursday night with Laura out at the DMA, getting a sneak peak at the new Thomas Struth retrospective and listening to those wacky boys in the Observer-approved Chomsky. (That would be the Dallas Observer, not the New York Observer.)
Then Friday morning, it was off to Cecil, Wisconsin, for the mumble-mumble birthday of Kelly. (On the legendary Cheese Factory Road no less!) It was good to see some of the old Toledo crew and to revel in the smell of cow manure on Kelly’s family’s dairy farm. Plus, beer’s cheaper there than in Dallas. The only real drawback was the thick blanket of cigarette smoke in every Wisconsin home and bar, which left me unable to breathe for big chunks of the weekend. But hey, breathing’s optional, right?
Larry King-style dot-dot-dots: Oliver North was in line behind me at DFW, followed by a crowd of middle-aged Rush-listening middle managers who apparently believe selling arms to Iranian militants to fund the overthrow of a legitimate government is downright patriotic!… I was accused of being an industrial spy in a cheese-novelty shop… Kelly’s family owns a cow named Satan…

My college officemate Gabriel Snyder is moving, from the New York Observer to Us Weekly. So I guess I’ve read the last of his writing for a while. It’s disappointing, since he interviewed me for an Observer media column a couple weeks ago, and I suppose it’ll never see print now.

Kevyn Aucoin, the world’s most famous makeup artist and a Cajun to boot, died last week. I don’t pretend to follow the makeup world, but I do follow my fellow Cajuns, and everything I’d read about him in the last few years indicated he was an honestly great guy, generous, talented, and kind.

Guerrilla freeway signage. Great story from the LAT. (Check out the video, too.)

I must admit I was pleased to see Larry King lose his USA Today column last year. It was, after all, consistently the worst piece of high-profile “journalism” in America, a nonsensical string of celebrity suckups, meaningless observations, and unsupportable claims, all assembled with the coherence of an ADD eight-year-old playing with Legos. (It was even made subject of a half-ass crabwalk.com parody back in October.)
But it’s somehow strangely satisfying to see his column reappear at CNN’s site as “King’s Things.” It gives hope to those of us who struggle with our inner mediocrity. To save you 10 clicks, here is King’s column this week, in its entirety:
Do you see any hotels use keys anymore? I hate the cards and the flashing green or red lights… Whatever happened to Newt Gingrich? I never see him anymore… Art Howe is baseball’s most underrated manager. He consistently gets the most out of the Oakland A’s… You look up “funny” in the dictionary, you get a picture of Lewis Black. The man is flat-out hilarious… My friend Rich Cohen has written a mini-masterpiece. “Lake Effect,” a memoir of growing up in suburban Chicago, will hold you every page… I’m so old I can remember when they actually called “walks” in the NBA. Every game I see at least 10 traveling violations without any whistle… Have you seen anyone smoking a pipe lately? Whatever happened to those little wooden things?… To me the jockey is the best athlete, all things considered. Therefore, Laffit Pincay should have a statue erected of him… New York-New York in Las Vegas is a fun hotel. However, the roller coaster is not my cup of tea … Has Robert B. Parker ever written a bad book? The man is one terrific writer.

I spent last night at Bent Tree Country Club for the annual dinner of Yale Club of Dallas. This is the third time I’ve gone to a club event since I’ve been in Dallas, and each time I arrive with the faint hope that there’ll be someone close to my age there. And each time, I’m disappointed — it’s gray hair as far as the eye can see.
After I showed up, a guy walked up to me and started chatting. “Doesn’t look like there are too many of us younger people here,” he said. His name tag said: Class of ’73. 1973! He’s probably 50! He graduated before I was born! But at that moment, he and I truly made up the young crowd. (Thankfully, my friend Natacha showed up a bit later, which was welcome, both because I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months and because she can breathe without the aid of an oxygen tank and has no liver spots.)
On the way in, a youngish guy wearing a golf shirt in an SUV asked me what was going on at the club tonight that brought all these cars into the parking lot. I told him. “Ah, rich people,” he said dismissively. He said dismissively, while driving his Lexus LX 470 away from his tee time at his country club. It’s always interesting seeing Old Money and New Money collide, each thinking the other unworthy of their riches. (I, of course, represent that all-important third category, No Money.)
Anyway, dinner was nice, if only because of the dessert: a noble cannoli, prompting fond memories of Libby’s Italian, the true highlight of four years in New Haven.

Stupid dad, freaky looking kid.

Back before I became a history major and a writer, I was mostly known academically as a math geek. In seventh and eighth grade, I was good enough to be in Mathcounts, a national math competition. (Actually, I was never good enough to make it to nationals; this kid from Paul Breaux Middle always beat me in the finals.)
Anyway, despite the fact I last competed in 1988, I somehow have remained on the Mathcounts mailing list for the last 14 years. In the latest edition of “Mathcounts News,” there are five sample questions from recent competitions. Since you folks seemed to like it the last time we played Math Quiz here on crabwalk.com, here are a few more. (I can only post the first three here now because the other two include graphs or charts. Leave your answers in the comments. And don’t look there before you do the problems yourself!)
1. What is the sum of the reciprocals of the natural-number factors of 6?
2. A middle school has 12 doors to enter or leave the building. In how many ways is it possible to enter the building by one door and leave by a different door?
3. At the Word Store, each vowel sells for a different price, but all consonants are free. The word “triangle” sells for $6, “square” sells for $9, “pentagon” sells for $7, “cube” sells for $7, and “tetrahedron” sells for $8. What is dollar cost of the word “octahedron”?

There is a mariachi band in the newsroom. They’re playing La Bamba. Loudly. With a Casio keyboard accompaniment. Gotta love journalism.

A nice profile of Jane Scott, the world’s oldest rock critic, who just retired at 83. (Aside: Geez, the Washington Post’s Style section just does the best damned features. Always with the right combination of snarkiness and generosity. They’re so good.) A friend of mine was once an arts reporting intern at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the newspaper Scott worked at, and he thought she was cool as hell.
“She accompanied Jimi Hendrix when he bought a blue Corvette, and she dueted with Brian Wilson on ‘California Girls’ after he beelined to a piano during an interview in a hotel lobby. She watched Keith Moon handcuff himself to a young lady he didn’t know, and she got a snarky backstage brushoff from Janis Joplin. By any measure, it’s been a memorable run.”
She also makes a confession: “I was never good at the difference between metal and punk-metal.”