Month: June 2004

random links post mazie

Just because I have to get back to regular posting someday:
– Announcing Mumkin, the newest addition to the clipfile.org family of weblogs. It’s run by the lovely and talented Abby Wood — Harvard Law student, crabwalk.com reader, ex-Dallasite, and one-time-long-ago blind date of mine. Abby is working at USAID in Egypt this summer. Remember that sunscreen, Ab!
– JustConcerts.com, the CBC‘s online catalog of recent Canadian concerts. Mostly indie rock, including crabwalk.com faves like Calexico, the Decemberists, and the Weakerthans. (By the way, the Weakerthans‘ Left and Leaving is absolutely wonderful. Couldn’t stop listening to it last week. Track 11, in particular.)
Anyway, combine the RealAudio streams from JustConcerts.com and something like Audio Hijack and you’ve got lots of new good material for your iPod. (Audio Hijack rocks. Great for recording This American Life or other NPR shows for a long drive, too.)
– Sorority Girls From Hell, a fast-talking blast from the 1980s and the 1950s — at the same time!
– Pitchformula.com, in which a data network engineer tries to algorithmically determine what Pitchforkmedia.com wants in an album.
– My column from last Monday, since I didn’t get a chance to link to it then.
– Beulah is breaking up. Glad I caught them a couple weeks ago.

back in dallas

I’m back in Dallas. Thanks again to all of you who have called or emailed. I really appreciate it. Something approaching regular crabwalk.com life will return soon.

howard swindle dies

A thousand thank yous to those of you who’ve called, emailed, sent flowers, or in some way let me know you were thinking of Mazie and me. I’m doing about as well as I could be, I imagine. Funeral’s tomorrow. Tomorrow night will hopefully bring a long night’s sleep.
Hopefully I’ll be up to writing more about Mazie sometime soon. But in the meantime, I want to point out that Howard Swindle died a few hours after Mazie. From 2000 until he entered hospice care a couple months ago, Howard sat across the aisle from me at the Morning News. Let me tell you, that man was a hell of a journalist. Overhearing his phone calls was a journalistic education — he could get anybody to tell him anything. And he was an honest man with an underdog’s spirit. These three grafs in the DMN obit tell the story:
“One of his secrets to getting information was that he was so likeable,” said Eric Miller, a former colleague. Mr. Miller, now an investigator in Washington, said he learned from Mr. Swindle that the soft-sell works. “He never talked down to people, and treated everyone with respect, whether they lived in trailer parks or mansions. I marveled at how he could get anyone to talk.”
[Managing editor Stu] Wilk said he, too, was struck by Mr. Swindle

mazie dying

I’m in Rayne. Mazie is dying. She’s lying unresponsive in her recliner. The last 72 hours have been a sleepless hell. Feel free to send whatever positive vibes/prayers/what have you her way.
FYI, if you need to reach me, my cell phone has picked an excellent time to decide Rayne is out of its usable range. So if you need to reach me, the home number here is 337-334-5475. But since it’s the only phone in the house — and since, in her true neo-Luddite style, Mazie never got call waiting installed — there’s a good chance you’ll get a busy signal.

travis covers ludacris

Pitchfork takes a big crap on Travis Morrison’s newest online-only track — a cover of Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy.”
But hell, I dig it. Unlike most of the white-boy-with-acoustic-guitar-covering-rap-songs microgenre, this one’s clearly coming from a place of love.
For Travis’ previous movement in this direction, check out his version of LL Cool J’s “Around the Way Girl,” taken from this KEXP in-studio. (That one made it onto the January 2003 CD Mix of the Month.)
In other news, the new Tahiti 80 mini-album is aces. Aces, brother. Overpriced (at $14.99 for eight songs, although it does come with a bonus DVD), so you may want to grab it at eMusic.

taks fifth grade story

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on the increasing perils of being a Texas fifth-grader.
(In the print edition, this story accompanies a full-page chart with the TAKS test results for 54 of our area districts. This chart has been the bane of my existence for some time. It is complete. Hosanna, hosanna!)

chip kidd

Last month, when I was in San Francisco for work, I borrowed friend Lisa’s car for a day and drove up to Santa Rosa, home of the Charles M. Schulz Museum. (I am not ashamed to admit I kept tearing up as I walked the halls. I mean, seriously, dude died hours before his last strip ran! I’m such a softie.)
Anyway, in the gift shop, I picked up a copy of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Chip Kidd’s gorgeous collection of strips. It made for great reading on the flight back to Dallas — it’s one of those books you want to treat as a work of art in itself.
I didn’t know at the time who Chip Kidd was, but he’s probably the top book-cover designer in the world, along with being perhaps the world’s top patron of the graphic novel. (He edited Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Daniel Clowes’ David Boring.)
Here’s an interview with Kidd in this week’s Onion AV Club.
Here’s a book about Kidd, by Veronique Vienne.
Here’s a blog devoted to the art of book-cover design.