Author: jbenton

In Canadian media news (there’s a phrase that’ll drive the readers wild!): Saturday Night, Canada’s oldest magazine, relaunches Saturday after a several-month hiatus. A few years back, I’d heard great things about the magazine and the writers and editors it had produced (most notably for me Paul Tough, late of Open Letters and still of This (North?) American Life and the New York Times Magazine, which is the closest American analog to Saturday Night at its best).
I enjoyed reading it online, and when I spent some time in Nova Scotia in 2000, I loved it in print. Great, crisp writing, but the editing was just astounding, from story selection to the front matter to layout. Its owner, CanWest, shamefully shuttered it last year to cut costs.
I must say I greet the relaunch with some trepidation, since it’s been sold off to a company I know nothing about, Multi-Vision Publishing. Multi-Vision recently bought up Shift, another former favorite that seems to have lost a step. (Although the economy’s probably more to blame for that than anything Multi-Vision’s done.)
And most sadly, Saturday Night’s going from being a weekly included in the National Post to coming out only six times a year. And it looks like it won’t be available online — they’ve cut staff from 40 to eight, and I doubt any of those eight is web-dedicated. Plus, it’s evidently still going to be distributed solely in the Post, which means I probably won’t even be able to subscribe.
(I’d check the web site to see if subscriptions are available, but the old domain name just returns the cryptic tautology: “The domain saturdaynight.ca does not currently have a web site. As a result there is nothing to see at www.saturdaynight.ca.” Same for Multi-Vision’s site.)
But despite the dark signals on the horizon, here’s to a grand old magazine struggling yet again for breath. May it be as great in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.

You know what I hate? I hate it when, as a reporter, you know there’s a 95 percent chance someone is lying to you and cheating the public — but you know you’ll never be able to prove it. It just gets you into a funk. I got into this business to tell the truth, not to be a conduit for frauds.

Just got back from a local high school. In two places, the smell of pot was overpowering. It was like the dorm room across from mine freshman year. Not exactly conducive to education, I imagine.
I was there to meet with my Little Brother, who continues to not do so well. A suspension, referrals to the principal’s office, falling in sleep in class, not doing his work — I don’t have the highest of hopes that he’ll be a sophomore at this time next year.
In less depressing news, I figured my prize money for the Headliners should be spent on something less than critical, so as soon as UPS works its magic, I should be the proud owner of a Canon PowerShot A40. Who knows, this may be just what I need to expand my interest in angry weasel photos.

Hey Toledoans, it’s opening day at the brand new Mud Hens stadium. Watch it on MudHensCam!

I had a middling story in today’s paper, on the University of Texas’ efforts to attract minority students.
My boss is off this week, and we’ll see whether that will translate into my usual slackerly behavior. I hope not; I’ve got way too much work to do for that to happen. So, since I’ll be busy, a few stories far more interesting than mine to keep you entertained:
An interesting (okay, to me) repudiation of the broken-windows school of policing theory.
A slam on alternative medicine.
Lefties aren’t nearly as cool as they think they are.
Taki on what if the Germans won WWI.
An Australian on the lessons of American history.

Why it’s never a good idea to register domain names while drunk: About a year ago, my coworker Colleen dragged me kicking and screaming into the world of Survivor 2. At first, I was strong and resisted. But Colleen sat next to me, and her constant discussion of Outback goings-on was eventually too much to take. I had to watch. (To my credit, she was never able to drag me into Temptation Island, The Mole, or the myriad other “reality” shows she was and is addicted to. Also, Elisabeth was really all the motivation I needed to keep tuning in every week.)
Anyway, when the final episode came around, our local Dallasite Colby lost to an undeserving Tina. At a party a few days after the final episode, Colleen’s husband Eric and I were discussing the injustice of it all, when Eric had a brilliant idea for taking advantage of the media hype surrounding Survivor.
We should start a web site, he said. A site that claims that Colby deserved the million-dollar-prize he was unjustly denied — that indeed, Colby had already won in the eyes of Texas and the eyes of the world. The site would accept donations from like-minded folks who believed that Colby had made the show the success it was, not mousy Tina. The money would be donated to Colby (with, perhaps, a cut for us) to make up for his loss. We figured it’d be easy enough to get the Survivor-mad media to write about our little site. It was a sure-fire path to Internet stardom.
Colleen immediately pointed out a problem with our plan — if Eric and I were the front men for this little endeavor, we’d clearly appear to be obsessed with Colby in more than a television-fandom sort of way, if you get my drift. So she volunteered to be our female spokeswoman for media calls. So about four beers into the evening, I found myself giving my credit card information online and registering a domain.
Needless to say, this went nowhere. The shell of a dummy page was put up, but the idea was quickly forgotten. The media lust for all things Survivor faded.
And now, all that’s left is an email in my inbox telling me that colbywon.com will expire in another month. If you want to snag it after May 20, feel free.
Why it’s probably a good thing I cancelled my cable on Friday: See above.

Today should be another excellent day — opening day at The Ballpark, then an evening with the ponies and Willie Nelson at Lone Star Park.
In case anyone’s wondering why I was so happy yesterday, I found out I won a 2002 Headliners Award, which is the biggest honor in Texas journalism every year. (No link to a list of winners yet, so you’ll just have to trust me.) My coauthor Roy Appleton and I won in the Best Explanatory Journalism category, for the five-day dropout series we wrote last May.

Back from Austin. I am so damned happy at the moment. Borderline deliriously happy. Joy joy joy! Oh, what a beautiful evening! O happy day!

To all Cajuns and/or wannabe Cajuns in the DFW area: Need some crawfish? Some live, creepy-crawly, delicious melt-in-your-mouth crawfish? Fruge Aquafarms, just outside Rayne, has a warehouse in Grand Prairie where they keep live crawfish just shipped from Louisiana on their way to shipment across the country, and you can evidently go pick up your crawfish there cheap — maybe a buck or two a pound.
That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than what you pay if you buy your crawfish pre-peeled or get it shipped direct from the bayou. (I know all this scoop because my cousin Pam works at Fruge’s and I had some of my uncle’s 70 pounds in Rayne on Easter Sunday.)
Now I just need a big pot, a lot of butane, some old newspapers, and some Zatarain’s to make a weekend complete.

Forgot to link to my story in today’s paper, on fingerprinting teachers to check their criminal backgrounds.