Author: jbenton

And to think, all this time I thought it was an angry rodent.

The polls close in 15 minutes: check out dallasnews.com for all the latest election news, courtesy yours truly.

Media junkies, prepare for an onslaught of “I told you sos”: Talk Magazine folds. Oh no! Where will I get my updates on Tina Brown‘s day-to-day life, not to mention the Hilton sisters or Lara Flynn Boyle? Thank heavens Vanity Fair is still propping up the corpse of Dominick Dunne long enough for him to bang out another edition of his “Diary” from the Great Party Beyond.

Also, a brief Mazie Project update.

Argh. Sickness has descended upon me — and not the full-blown sickness that would get me out of work: the sinus-dripping, woozy-headed, headachy, general crappiness kind of sick. (I also sound like I’m doing a Tom Waits impression anytime I open my mouth.) I went to bed last night at 8 p.m. and got up at 9:30 this morning. A variety of other things, including word of a couple friends’ suddenly failed relationships, have put me in a fairly sour mood.
Anyway, tomorrow’s election day here in Dallas, and if you stay tuned to dallasnews.com, I’ll be writing the main stories on the mayor’s race and the bond election all night. Assuming I haven’t coughed both lungs up on my keyboard by then.
Four bonus MP3s from up-and-coming NYC band the French Kicks (who sound at times like carbon copies of Jonathan Fire*Eater, a lamented NYC band that self-destructed after one CD not long ago — lots of VU/Stones influence): Young Lawyer (great track, that), The 88, White, So Many Cakes.
Finally, if you like that newfangled rock music and plan to attend the Dismemberment Plan/Death Cab For Cutie global happening at the Ridglea in Fort Worth March 5, tickets are on sale online now at $11.50 a pop. Worth every penny, I assure you. I know several blog-types are going; it might even qualify as a microevent.

What does it say about Dell Computer that #3 on their Amazon Purchase Circles best seller list is a book called Cheap Psychological Tricks: What to Do When Hard Work, Honesty, and Perseverance Fail?

After seven years in the Rayne, La., public schools — not the most nurturing environment — I got lucky and got a full scholarship to this great private school (whose site has been down for most of the last few months). It’s a great school out in the middle of nowhere on the grounds of an abandoned sugar cane plantation, and credit for whatever I’ve been able to do since 1987 largely goes to it.
But there was one, shall we say, issue: most of the kids who went to ESA were quite rich, or at least pleasantly upper middle class. I was poor. This created a variety of complications in my life over the years and helped create the slightly silly class-warrior mentality I had for a long time (and still have every once in a while). But one of the biggest benefits is that I got to tag along on the rich-kid senior trip to the U.K. and France. There were only 43 of us in the senior class, so the trip wasn’t too crowded.
It was a wonderful trip, and one of the highlights was going to Easter services at Canterbury Cathedral. Since ESA was an Episcopal school, visiting the center of all things Anglican was a big deal (even though I, like most of south Louisiana, was raised Catholic). The ceremony was beautiful, and afterward we all gathered with the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey for a picture.
By chance, I ended up standing next to the Archbish himself for the photo. (My friend Anthony had taken to saying “Bish better have my money” whenever we saw the local Episcopal bishop back home, in homage to and parody of this 1992 rap quasi-classic. So the Archbishop naturally became the Archbish.) After the group shots were taken, one of my classmates asked for the Archbish’s autograph. He was happy to oblige, but there was one problem: one of his hands was full. He was holding the big six-foot-tall bejeweled scepter that all Archbishi get to hold on to, the symbol of his authority within the church. So, logically, he turned to me and asked:
“Could you hold this for me for a minute?”
Um, sure I could. I took the scepter from his hands and briefly considered using my power to issue edicts, or fiats, or bulls, or whatever Anglican top-down orders were called. After all, who could question me — I had the scepter! But instead, I turned to everyone holding a camera near me and asked: “Could someone please take a picture of me with this thing?”
Earlier this week, George Carey announced his retirement as Archbish. I quickly remembered my brush with religious power. But in a moment, the thought shifted to: None of those losers ever sent me a copy of those photos.

As always, a pleasure seeing everyone last night, as always, even if we were derailed at first by a TV crew trying to document the near-death experience of the Inwood Lounge. And any evening that starts with people handing me many CDs and ends with a medio white chocolate/creme caramel gelato can’t be all bad.
If you’re interested, the CD Mix of the Month club is still taking entries for January; get in touch with me asap if you still want in. And for those of you who got a copy of my mix last night, I’d really like to hear your thoughts — what you liked, what you didn’t. (Use the comments link.)

Irony of ironies: Remember my rant a couple of days ago about the obnoxious new denizen of the Dallas radio dial, 93.3 The Bone? Well, thanks to Google wisely deciding that this site deserves more regular checks than the station’s breast-and-babe-based site, anyone searching for “93.3 the bone” gets this site, not The Bone’s. Since it’s a new station, lots of people are searching for it: I’ve gotten almost 100 Bone-based search requests in the last couple of days.
As one of their cretinous DJs might say: no bones about it!

Quote of the day, from the (non-dallas) morning news: “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.” — James Baldwin.