Author: jbenton

Once again, I’m a little behind: Behind the Music that Sucks.

Yahoo! Mail edits your email. (Although I tried to repeat the bug/feature detailed and couldn’t get it to happen.)
For example, if your HTML newsletter contains the sentence “A common expression in the English language,” and you send this newsletter to a Yahoo Mail account, the sentence will actually be changed to read: “A common statement in the English language.”

Anyone in the DFW area interested in being a PE teacher and girls’ volleyball coach at an area private school? No certification needed, but some sort of previous coaching experience necessary. A friend’s looking for some help. Lemme know if you’re interested.

Seeing The Road to Perdition last night with Erica, we saw the trailer for Punch-Drunk Love. That’s the new Adam Sandler movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, young wunderkind of Boogie Nights and Magnolia fame. While I started boycotting Adam Sandler movies a long time ago (first for Cajun Man, then for The Waterboy, two major affronts to my people), I’ll make an exception for what looks like an interesting film.
Paul Thomas Anderson trivia: In the 1960s, his father Ernie Anderson used to host the late movie on Channel 13 in Toledo, dressed up in a fright wig and calling himself Ghoulardi. P.T. calls his production company Ghoulardi Films in his honor. (Ernie Anderson was later the announcer on America’s Funniest Home Videos.)
And to keep the Toledo connection going, P.T. keeps hiring Philip Baker Hall, Toledo’s finest actor, in all his movies. He was the star of Anderson’s first movie, Hard Eight, had a small part in Boogie Nights (memorable quote: “I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth. That’s just me. That’s just something that I enjoy”), and was the game show host in Magnolia. He’s the classic “Hey! It’s that guy!” actor. (Of course, most people know him only as Lt. Bookman on Seinfeld.)
Apologies to Jamie Farr for naming Philip Baker Hall as Toledo’s finest actor. The truth hurts sometimes, Jamie.

John Schneider’s terrible secret: I was a teenage fatty!

I have no idea who Tricia Harris is, but I have a feeling she’s going to be getting lots of flirty emails from men soon. (If, unlike me, you’re into gaming, check out punchbutton.)

Least tempting promotional tease ever: Tonight: You may know him as Bo Duke of “The Dukes of Hazzard” or as a top Christian music singer, but John Schneider has a secret he’s never revealed — until now. Tune in for this Larry King Live exclusive.
What could it be? Uncle Jesse’s “bad touch”? The General Lee was actually a hopped-up Datsun? Tom Wopat really can’t sing? Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrain were lovers? I wait with completely unbaited breath.

The form on my CD Mix of the Month Club signup page evidently got screwed in my host switch. I’ll fix it when I get a chance, but until then, email me if you want to sign up for the July trade.
Also, there’s a new entrant in the burgeoning mix-trading field: interchange. It certainly has a few edges on CDMOM; for one, you sign up by genre, so if you’re a big a capella fan or deep into J-pop, it’ll work better for you than the indie-rock-with-occasional-asides CDMOM. Plus, it looks like it’d be much, much easier to run, since the guy in charge won’t actually be burning, matching, and mailing CDs. (That hassle will someday be the death of CDMOM.) A lot cheaper, too.
On the other hand, you’re forced to trust other Internet people a lot more the interchange way. Some months, a full 30-40 percent of the people who sign up for CDMOM flake out and don’t mail any CDs — but there’s really no harm done, since I don’t mail CDs to anyone until I get theirs in the mail. In the interchange model (which is essentially a more detailed version of the Burn, Baby, Burn! model), some people will certainly mail out CDs and get nothing in return. (When I did the BBB swap, I sent CDs to five people and got discs back from only two of them.)

Every trivia competition has one of these guys. I hope it’s not me.

I keep meaning to update the calendar in the right-hand column, but I just don’t have much exciting coming up in the next month or so. (At least nothing definite yet.) So I’ll keep living on past glories.