Author: jbenton

All hell’s breaking loose in Rayne. They’re still a few minutes from the eye passing over, which means they’re getting the really nasty winds in the inner wall right now. The big tree across the street from my house was just uprooted and smashed into a car. The tin roof on the house next door is close to coming off. Local TV’s reporting four tornadoes within five miles of the house. Mazie’s scared, which isn’t easy to do. My mom’s car’s evidently had some stray tin sheets slam into it. Damn, I wish we had home insurance.
As of 12 p.m., Rayne’s directly at the center of the storm.

My dull story from today’s front page.

10 a.m. update: The electricity cut out about an hour ago at my grandmother‘s house. This is most troubling because that means her oxygen machine can’t run, and she’s only got about a day’s worth of gas in her portable unit. Hopefully this’ll all be over by then.
Lili’s headed straight for Rayne. The eye’s expected to go over my childhood home in about another hour. Thankfully, the storm’s been downgraded to a Category 2, which isn’t quite so bad-ass. And Rayne’s far enough inland that flooding shouldn’t be too bad. Still, she reports there are already tree limbs breaking off all around her, and she’s heard about five electrical transformers explode so far this morning. Damn you, Lili, damn you!

Please send good vibes to my hometown of Rayne, Louisiana and to my grandmother there. Both are about to get a serious ass-whoopin’ courtesy of Hurricane Lili.
If you’re wondering, this is where Rayne is relative to the aforementioned ass-whoopin’, all 140 mph of it.

Very short story of mine in today’s paper. This is my first step to becoming the paper’s full-time oozeball reporter.

What astounding new knowledge will science give us next? Selling organs a bad idea, research says.

I just realized I completely overlooked the one-year anniversary of crabwalk.com.

Something called The Wood has posted a group interview with the members of Sea Ray, NYC’s next hot band du jour. As I’ve mentioned before, I went to college with Greg and I-Huei from the band, and this interview is classic Greg.
He’s completely silent on band-related matters, until this question is posed to the group:
Who would win in a fight, Batman or The Green Lantern?
I-Huei: Peter Katis, who is helping us record some songs, could beat them both, at the same time, with his mind.
Jordan: You

Obligatory weekend wrapup: Hung out with old Toledo pal Iggy, who was in town for a couple days. Watched a couple movies: The Wild Bunch (lots of blood, that) and Easy Rider. The ending seemed a touch heavy-handed, but then again, Dennis Hopper seems hard-wired to be heavy-handed, bless him.
If you want to follow Captain America’s path in the movie, others have made it easy for you. May I suggest a stop in Morganza, Louisiana, site of the film’s first moment of brutality? I’m sure its real-life residents aren’t nearly as nasty as its cinematic ones.
Easy Rider trivia: Did you know the great Seymour Cassel was a camera tech on the film’s New Orleans scenes? Or that he did time for conspiracy to sell coke? (Wesandersonphiles know Cassel as Bert Fischer, Max’s dad in Rushmore.)
And, on Saturday, saw Luna at the Ridglea in Fort Worth. Seeing a Luna show is always risky, if only because bassist Britta Phillips could at any moment explode in a display of raw sexual energy. Geezumpete, she’s a looker. The ostensibly heterosexual woman standing next to me was just about ready to switch teams.
That said, what a tiny band! I’d be surprised if any of Britta, Dean, and the new keyboard player broke a buck-ten. Wee little people.
By the way, Lunaphiles, new EP coming out Oct. 8. So-so advance MP3 here.

I had a pretty good story on today’s front page, profiling Hambrick Middle School in Houston, perhaps the best middle school in the state.