Month: July 2002

i hate larry clark

Ever since his abomination Kids, I’ve hated hated hated Larry Clark. (His artistic crimes against humanity extend far beyond infecting us with Harmony Korine.) So, even though the article’s not strictly speaking about him, I was somewhat glad to read of his seduction of a woman 37 years his junior — it fits so well into the skeezeball old-man image I have of him.
As an aside, if I ever wanted to absolutely take someone down in an article — I mean humiliate them, make them look like befuddled fools through the power of their own idiocy — George Gurley would be the guy I’d want writing it. That man has a serious talent for making people look silly; he does more damage with people’s quotes than any other reporter working today. Perfect example: this profile of 21-year-old socialite Elisabeth Kieselstein-Cord. (Sample: “She said she is currently reading the new Steve Martin novel, Shopgirl. ‘I think he

serge gainsbourg and movable type

Listening to a CDMOM disc from one of my reliably good traders, I noticed a Serge Gainsbourg track called “Melody.” A nice, sexy song, in Serge’s inimitable swingin’ Parisian style. Then, a few minutes in, a female voice intones: “Melody Nelson.”
“Hey!” I think. “I know from Melody Nelson!” Any Movable Type user knows that when you first install the system, the login/password combo you have to use is melody/nelson. “Hey, maybe I’m the first person to figure this out, and the supercool Trotts, Ben and Mena, will think I’m cool for crossing between the worlds of ’60s French pop and content management systems with such ease!”
Then I saw someone beat me to the punch a couple months ago. Oh, well.
Strange coincidence: a different Serge Gainsbourg track appears on my July mix. That’s two Serge sitings! (And Serge citings!) One more and it’s officially a trend!
(Of course, it won’t be official until the hipsters at Time or some other respectable media organ report it with a back-pages piece, headlined: “A Surge in Serge: It’s Encore Time for French Pop Star.”)

scientologists in clearwater, deadly coconuts

A couple quick posts (busy day!):
– Scientologists invade west Florida. Before I got my current gig here in Dallas, I considered taking the job of the reporter who wrote this story — Scientology writer for the St. Petersburg Times, a very fine newspaper. But then I realized I’d rather not live my life under the threat of lawsuits from crazy people. And I’d probably never get to meet John Travolta, anyway.
– On a bulletin board in a neighboring newsroom department, there’s a note tacked up that states: “More people are killed every year by falling coconuts than by sharks.” It’s a well meaning reminder not to blow isolated incidents out of proportion, as much of the press did last summer when a supposed rash of shark attacks made big, scary news — despite the fact they were still extremely rare.
Unfortunately, that little coconut “fact” is just wrong. Cecil Adams, among others, says so. I printed out that Adams column and posted it (in cognito) on the bulletin board last week as a factual counterpoint.
I came into work a couple days ago and found my posting had been taken down. The original anti-coconut posting remained. Some people just can’t handle the truth.

hour difference

My computer got upgraded (?) to Win2000 last week. It was uneventful, except for the system clock, which was strangely pushed forward an hour. When it was noon, my clock told me it was 1:00. If I tried to change it, the fascist control mechanisms of our IT department told me I didn’t have “the proper privilege level” to adjust the clock. How uppity of me.
The time zone change played well into fantasies I was New York bureau chief for some global news megalith. It also led me to mistakenly (really!) leave an hour early one day last week.
The techs fixed it last night. Damn.