Author: jbenton

Too Close For Comfort Dept.: That British Airways flight that keeps getting cancelled because of “specific intelligence” about a terrorist attack — I was on that exact flight (BA 223, Heathrow to Dulles) five weeks ago.
It was almost empty, but there was one seriously crazy-looking dude across the aisle from me. He got very drunk (although he acted more coked-out than drunk — the flight attendant said he had six of those little bottles of wine). He took my bread roll off my plate, then took my plastic knife. He kept talking to himself and running around the cabin. He was…freaky, and he got a lot of utterly justified yelling from the crew, particularly when he would refuse to sit down and try to go into first class looking for more wine.
I honestly thought: That man looks like shoe bomber material.

There’s a Yahoo group I’ve belonged to for about four years now. I’m subscribed because its subject is something I occasionally write about — a subject that gets roughly zero coverage elsewhere on the Internet or in the media, and as a result the posts are essential reading if I want to stay on top of the subject.
There’s one problem: I hate every last person in this Yahoo group.
Okay, I’m sure some of them are perfectly nice people in real life. But there’s something about this group that reduces everyone to mewling five-year-olds. It’s just a horrible virtual place. Every post is an accusation breaded with nastiness. The subject in question is something about which all these people are extremely passionate, and it’s painful to wade through their misplaced rage, their stupid vitriol, their silly spite.
Unfortunately, I feel obliged to. I’m one of maybe 10 journalists in the world who follow this subject, and I have to keep up. But heavens, is it painful!
Doubly unfortunately, these people have become extremely prolific in their imbecility of late, which is why I’ve got 2 megs (that’s just raw text) of posts sitting in my inbox from just the last few days. So I sit, alcoholic beverage in hand, and sift through the garbage.
I think I need another drink.

Bummer for us developers of miniscule web sites: Corbis is shutting down its photo-licensing service for us small fries. You’ll still be able to use their business site, but the costs are at least three times higher.
Corbis had the best assortment of photos of any of the services I used — many of the photos in my SXSW movie last year were from there. I guess it’s off to stock.xchng now.

Today is my old friend Fiona’s birthday. Poor Fi was raised in difficult circumstances: a household in which classical was the only music allowed. (How Child Protective Services never got involved is beyond me.) So when we were both in college, I tried, to the limits of my abilities, to edumacate her in the ways of popular music. One way this was accomplished: mix tapes.
Flash forward to this time of year three years ago. I’d just arrived in Dallas, and for her birthday, I mailed the then-Boston-based Fiona a special birthday mix entitled “JB Music 2000.” (She called all music I liked, from Public Enemy to American Music Club, JB Music.)
When I drove to Louisiana for Christmas last week, I rummaged around my apartment for cassette tapes. (Longtime crabwalk.com readers may remember someone stole my car’s CD player a few months back.) I stumbled on JB Music 2000.
This was, I believe, the last mix tape I ever made. (I got a CD burner in March 2001, I think.) So, in the interests of archivists everywhere, I present the track listing on that 90-minute tape:
Side A:
Beth Orton, “Stolen Car” (from Central Reservation)
Morphine, “The Night” (The Night)
Ben Folds Five, “Alice Childress” (Ben Folds Five)
Macy Gray, “I’ve Committed Murder” (On How Life Is)
Buffalo Tom, “Summer” (Asides from Buffalo Tom)
Sloan, “Delivering Maybes” (Between the Bridges)
The Rentals, “Getting By” (Seven More Minutes)
The Faces, “Ooh La La” (Rushmore soundtrack)
Wilco, “She’s A Jar” (Summerteeth)
Morrissey, “Nobody Loves Us” (My Early Burglary Years)
M. Ward, “Fearless” (Come On Beautiful)
Side B:
Tahiti 80, “Made First” (Puzzle)
The Elevator Drops, “Public Transport Authority” (People Mover)
Slobberbone, “Pinball Song” (Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today)
Mojave 3, “Anyday Will Be Fine” (Excuses For Travelers)
Primal Scream, “Blood Money” (Exterminator)
The Dismemberment Plan, “The City” (Emergency & I)
Robbie Fulks, “She Must Think I Like Poetry” (Let’s Kill Saturday Night)
Richard Buckner, “Goner W/Souvenir” (Since)
The Flashing Lights, “Where the Change Is” (Where the Change Is)
Gomez, “We Haven’t Turned Around” (Liquid Skin)
The Promise Ring, “Skips A Beat (Over You)” (Very Emergency)
The Jayhawks, “Baby, Baby, Baby” (Smile)
A few thoughts:
– Between the Bridges is really the last great Sloan album, I’m afraid to say. A great disc in the underrated Sloan tradition. The two since then have crapped out on me.
– “Blood Money” rocks to its very core. Perhaps the best freeway driving song ever recorded. This one made it onto the August 2002 CDMOM.
– I can still wholeheartedly recommend the Mojave 3, Dismemberment Plan, Flashing Lights, Gomez, and Richard Buckner albums, plus the Rushmore soundtrack. Classics all, from start to finish. With all the others, small doubts have crept in since 2000. The Morphine album was a weak swan song for Mark Sandman, the Orton gets boring on repeated listens (although “Stolen Car” is a great song), and the Wilco seems strangely flat.
– Where did Gomez go wrong? Liquid Skin was absolute genius, an amalgam of gutbucket southern rock and British steely reserve. Too bad their work since has been so mediocre.
In any event, happy 28th, Fi!

If you’re stuck at work today, keep focused by pulling on those headphones and listening to KEXP Seattle right now. They’re running down the best of 2003, and it’s a very solid selection so far. (As I type, they’re around No. 60; the last few songs have included faves Clem Snide, the Rapture, Mojave 3, and Beulah.)
If I don’t see you before then, have a glorious new year, peoples.

Hope you all had a delicious holiday. A few links dredged up in the last week or so (some in the last 72 hours of oft-bedridden intestinal distress — praise be for wireless networking and a new Powerbook):
– Don’t worry: Your cell phone won’t blow up any gas stations.
– The political impact of Plan B going OTC.
– Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe, an ongoing critique of Howard Dean by the frightened Jon Chait.
– Um, $3.5 million for DailyCandy.com?!? Now, I have a special place in my heart for DailyCandy, since they gave me a nice writeup last year for the CD Mix of the Month Club. But I repeat: um, $3.5 million?!? (That said, that web site has some serious power. The day I got mentioned in their email newsletter, I got over 18,000 hits. When this site was mentioned in the lead story of the New York Times’ Circuits section, I got barely 2,000.)
– Not sure how I missed this one during the California recall, but Nao Bustamante, sister to Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, is a San Fran performance artist whose most controversial work (“Indigurrito”) featured her fastening a “burrito to her loins and call[ing] for white men to come up on stage, take a bite out of the burrito and absolve themselves of 500 years of the white man’s guilt.”
– A panel discussion on the year in books, featuring valued crabwalk.com readers Maud Newton and Jessa Crispin.
– Great Forbes piece on how the Wright brothers managed to screw up inventing a little ol’ thing we like to call flight.
– If you’ve ever thought about having your own web site, 1and1 is offering three free years of hosting if you sign up before Jan. 21. Yes, three free years — no catches that I can see. While it’s not the absolute most full-featured account possible (only one MySQL database allowed, fr’instance), it’s certainly good enough for the vast majority of people. Plus, with their cut rate on domain registry, you can have www.yournamehere.com for a total annual cost of $6. It’s hard to beat that. I’ve grabbed an account and moved a couple of my domains to 1and1’s servers — no complaints yet.

Great story by the WaPo reporter who’s been chasing the story about Strom Thurmond’s black daughter for 23 years. Quite a tale of devotion. Please shoot me if I’m still chasing the same stories in 2026 I am today.
Want some fine MP3s of recent indie rock shows? How about:
– Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, March 28 in Rotterdam
– Calexico, October 19 in Denver
– The Dismemberment Plan, June 12 in Seattle
– My Morning Jacket, October 3 in Denver
Sound quality’s quite good on all of them — grab them quick before they’re gone. If there’s even a small corner of your brain that considers 1971-era Allman Brothers a triumph of rock history, be sure to get the My Morning Jacket. I’ve been grooving quite regularly to their last album, which is pretty tremendous southern space rock. The D-Plan’s also worth grabbing, if only for the trad set closer (“OK Joke’s Over”), which in this performance turns into a 15-minute medley of Seattle rock’s greatest hits (Nirvana and Pearl Jam, sure, but also Postal Service, Elliott Smith, Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains, Soundgarten, and Temple of the damned Dog), with disorienting guest yelling from white-boy rappers Gold Chains and Cex.
By the way, if you haven’t seen it, Gold Chains’ public-transit-themed video for “I Come From San Francisco” is strangely…compelling.

In case you needed proof that I am in fact back at work, here’s my story from Saturday’s front page, about four dead kids. I hate stories about dead kids, but at least this was the best kind of dead-kids story — the kind where my co-bylines (Matt and Jason) do all the reporting and I do all the writing. No need to talk to grieving relatives that way.
Had some busy evenings of late. Had dinner with Erica Wednesday, then went to the DFWblogs holiday party. Thursday hung out with some coworkers. Friday went to the Polyphonic Spree holiday spectacular at the Lakewood with Leia, Gary, and Tina. Finally, went to see Shattered Glass and have sushi with a coworker Saturday. Whew.
About Friday: The Spree was (were?) tremendous, even better than the last time I saw them. Truly, an experience not to be missed when they come to your town. Of particular note was the 6- or 7-months pregnant young lady in the chorus, who shook her moneymaker like she was mixing paint. (Leia: “That poor kid’s going to have shaken baby syndrome before it’s even born.”)
Unfortunately, the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players were off their game. Papa Jason seemed to lose his grasp of reality at one point (throwing down his guitar in a rage that seemed more Travis Bickle than Pete Townshend), and the slideshows were kinda sketchy. I think that they’re teetering close to Behind the Music territory.
In other news, it’s 70 degrees in Dallas. Take that, northerners.
Great story in today’s NYT about the 91-year-old who writes the alumni notes column for Princeton’s class of 1933.

For those who miss the CD Mix of the Month Club:
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