Author: jbenton

Great track listing for the new Locust album (third item):
01 Recyclable Body Fluids In Human Shape
05 Earwax Halo Manufactured For The Champion In All Of Us
09 Teenage Mustache
11 Anything Jesus Does, I Can Do Better
12 Late For A Double-Date With A Pile Of Atoms In The Watercloset
13 File Under “Softcore Seizures”
16 The Half-Eaten Sausage Would Like To See You In His Office
17 Pulling The Christmas Pig By The Wrong Pair Of Ears
18 Can We Please Get Another Nail In The Coffin Of Culture Theft
19 Your Mantel Disguised As A Psychic Sasquatch
22 Priest With The Sexually Transmitted Disease, Get Out Of My Bed
23 Pick-Up Truck Full Of Forty-Minutes
I am confident that the songs themselves will not be as good as their titles.

Here’s my story from Saturday’s paper on Felipe Alanis’ surprise resignation. (Surprising to me, at least. I suppose I’ve overrated my pluggedinness.)

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on what I promise will be my last test-score story for a while. I hope.
Austinites, clear your calendars for next Thursday and Friday, when the Red Stick Ramblers — the official Cajun gypsy swing band of crabwalk.com — will be playing the Cactus Cafe and the Continental Club.
Me, I’m going to Austin tonight to get away from Big D for a while. Back on Monday.

Watch this space in the coming months.

Here’s my story from today’s front page, the eighth and final installment in my Schools That Work series. It’s on an alternative high school in Houston that does great things with kids at risk of dropping out. You can find all eight stories in the series at that link.
I’ll also be on tomorrow’s front page and on TXCN sometime this afternoon, repeating through the evening.

If you were to try — really try — to draw up a more cretinous regulation of Internet content than what the EU’s proposing, I’m not sure you could.
Combined with the silly libel laws over the pond, Europe is hell on media law.

If you’re a Dallasite (blogger or no), show up for the DFWBlogs happy hour tonight at one of my favorite Dallas haunts, the Meridian Room. (That is, it’s one of my favorite Dallas haunts on those rare occasions when I leave my apartment.)

If there has to be a photo of me floating around, it might as well be a good one. (That was shot by Rannie during SXSW.)

Dude, I didn’t know until just now that my photo was in the Austin Chronicle back in March. (I’m the one with a full head of hair. Not my best photo.)

A boring, yet strangely mesmerizing video for the Shins’ “New Slang.” Just a girl on a porch, staring into the camera and lip-syncing the song. The way she breaks up laughing at the end just makes you fall in love. (Trivia: That’s Kim Baxter of the All-Star Summer Fun Band.) I like it much better than the other (official?) video for the song.
And it’s about damned time the Shins record another album. Their last one was gorgeous.