Month: February 2003

The abomination that is the Applebee’s Cajun menu.

Skinema: the long-awaited intersection of movie stars and dermatology.
“As a dermatologist and a film buff, I’ve found a series of skin conditions featured in movies. All of the films listed are readily available on home video. Peruse at your leisure and let me know what you think. You may look at movies in a new way. Disclaimer: None of the individuals featured on the site are patients. The images are publicity photos (not clinical photos taken in a medical office). Actors seen with skin conditions include some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. To most quickly find individual celebrities, try a search!”

Coming next month to a bookstore near you: Crabwalk, a novel by Nobel laureate Gunter Grass. And the lead character is a journalist, no less!
Grass has been wrestling with Germany’s past for decades now, but no book since The Tin Drum has generated as much excitement as this engrossing account of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. A German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, it was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some 9,000 people went down in the Baltic Sea, making it the deadliest maritime disaster of all time. Born to an unwed mother on a lifeboat the night of the attack, Paul Pokriefke is a middle-aged journalist trying to piece together the tragic events. While his mother sees her whole existence in terms of that calamitous moment, Paul wishes their life could have been less touched by the past. For his teenage son, who dabbles in the dark, far-right corners of the Internet, the Gustloff embodies the denial of Germany’s wartime suffering. “Scuttling backward to move forward,” Crabwalk is at once a captivating tale of a tragedy at sea and a fearless examination of the ways different generations of Germans now view their past.
I’ve always viewed this web site as a tragedy at sea.

So you go through all the bother of driving to work while hell freezes over all around you, arriving to an almost empty newsroom — and you’re the one who gets stuck writing the goofy weather story for tomorrow’s paper. It’s just not fair.

Now don’t take this the wrong way — I’m sure the CD you sent me this month is great.
But Jesus Christ, people sent me some crappy music this month.

Enjoy south Louisiana while you can!

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on the debut of Texas’ new standardized test. Complete with interactive quiz!

I hadn’t realized Clifford “Black Rhino” Etienne is one of my people. (Well, he may not be ethnically Cajun, but he’s culturally Cajun — that’s just as good.) My high school was about five miles from his house. I’ll look past that armed robbery conviction on his C.V. and root him on to victory Saturday against crazy man Mike Tyson. (Etienne’s gone from a 7-1 underdog to a 4-1 underdog in the last week.)

Media alert: I’ll be on TXCN at 4:25 this afternoon, with the spot repeating through the evening. I’ll be talking about a story that’ll be on Monday’s front page. (Assuming this refinery fire on Staten Island isn’t al-Qaeda — in which case we’ll probably have bigger fish to fry.)

Since everyone’s mix should be in the mail by now, I hereby announce the February CD Mix of the Month. A little more guitar-oriented and less experimental than most, but it’s gotten good reviews from those who’ve heard it.