Month: August 2002

I’m in Boston. And here’s my story from today’s front page, on the failure of a new school choice law.

Blogging may be sporadic next week, since I leave in a few hours for vacation. Still should have email access should you need to reach me.
To be clear: when I say my blogging will be sporadic, I mean in quantity. It’s pretty much always sporadic in quality.

Note to self: Continue to avoid writing here about the issues I cover there; continue keeping any opinions on education topics to myself; try to avoid becoming this guy.

Tuesday’s Salt Lake Tribune: The 2002 U.S. Army Soldier Show is coming to Dugway Proving Ground on Aug. 16, with top entertainers performing for soldiers and their families. Artists who are to perform include Destiny’s Child, Brooks and Dunn, Whitney Houston, Faith Hill, Mary J. Blige, ‘N Sync, Alanis Morrisette, Pink, Alicia Keys and Jennifer Lopez.
Correction in Wednesday’s Salt Lake Tribune: Soldiers will be impersonating top entertainers at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground on Aug. 16. A brief in The Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday misstated the identities of the performers.

A quote I need to remember to use more often in conversation: H.L. Mencken on the writing of Pres. Warren Harding: “It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.” Seems like a quote with many uses.
Actually, Mencken’s entire passage merits quoting, as so much of his work does:
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

In case anyone’s wondering, my grandmother is under strict orders to stay inside. One of the recent West Nile deaths was about 20 miles from her house, and there was a confirmed infection about eight miles down the road.
Not that it takes much convincing to get her to stay inside. It’s August in south Louisiana — she’s not stupid.

I promise this site will soon stop be about my media whoring and be more about traditional crabwalk.com subjects, like M&M color controversies and how to impress a woman on less than $30 a night. But I’ll be on WBAP AM 820 at 10:06 a.m. tomorrow, after my appearance on KLIF this afternoon. (Dedicated crabwalk.com fans outside the Metroplex will note that both stations stream their audio live online. And I’ll be on TXCN at 4:10 instead of 4:20 this afternoon, repeating through the early evening. Really, this will all be over soon — it’s very unseemly, I know.)

I generally try to avoid potty humor on crabwalk.com, but I’m inclined to move to Michigan and vote for this guy just for giggles.

For those wondering what else has been keeping me so damned busy the last couple weeks, here’s another answer: the DMN’s back to school section. As U.S. News and World Report would say, “It’s news you can use!”
I had four stories in the section: one on the federal rights guaranteed to special ed students, one on how to be a geek and research your school on that newfangled Internet, one on the state’s early reading test, and one on education acronyms.
On top of that, here’s my story from today’s front page, on the new, tougher state standardized test, the TAKS.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks.

Also: I’ll be on Greg Knapp‘s talk show on KLIF AM 570 tomorrow afternoon at 6:43 p.m. (Oh, the precision of the electronic media!) Mom always said I had a face made for radio.