Author: jbenton

Well, I’m in Rochester, and within four hours of arriving: snow on the ground. Hot damn!

Is there anything worse than showing up late to your own birthday party? I had to deal with some late-breaking news at work — which is in today’s paper — so I couldn’t make it to my friend Abby’s birthday dinner and I was late for my own last night. (Careful readers of this site may remember that my birthday was actually Nov. 6. They are advised to stop reading so carefully. Delays and machinations have turned a planned birthday bash a month ago into a smaller joint coworker dinner for three reporters.) Anyway, we went to the Samba Room, which was nice, then to Casbah, which has been closed down, which wasn’t nice, then to the Old Monk.
Got in around 2:30, napped for an hour and a half, and now I’m back up to pack and leave for Rochester. See you on the flip side.

It’s the same old story we’ve all heard a million times: Japanese woman sees Fargo, thinks it’s real, flies to North Dakota, goes on hunt for the movie’s buried treasure, dies mysterious death. (via brandhast)

Another reason to love Henry Kissinger (besides his dashing good lucks, his reserve around women, and his immense charm): “President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger gave Indonesian President Suharto the go-ahead for Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor that left at least 200,000 dead, newly declassified documents show.”

For about a year in college, I appended the following signature to all my emails. In today’s crabwalk.com quiz, see if you can identify the two things these people have in common:
Thomas Edison! Grover Cleveland! John Fenwick! Joyce Kilmer! Clara Barton! Vince Lombardi! Walt Whitman.
(Of course, Google makes finding one of these answers a lot easier than it used to be.)

On the road again tomorrow, to Rochester to visit my friend Kim. She tells me that the buildings in the postcard above still stand, so I might try to do a modern day recreation. (Or not.) I’m tremendously excited, in part because it’s supposed to get down to 26 degrees there this weekend — woo hoo! And we even get to go watch the Buffalo Bills play the Carolina Panthers on the frozen Astroturf tundra of Ralph Wilson Stadium, one of the few NFL parks where frostbite is a more serious public health concern than drunkenness. (And considering the Bills and Panthers are probably the worst two teams in the league — combined record 2-21 — I’m sure watching someone’s nose slowly blacken and fall off will be the most entertaining thing about the day.)
In other news, Doug Bedell, author of the blog story linked below, was happy to be informed about dfwblogs, so perhaps there might be much exposure coming sometime in the future via a DMN story. (As long as he doesn’t mention me!)

When I get my college’s alumni magazine each month, the first thing I turn to is the class notes in the back. First I read the news from my classmates from ’97, then check out the ’96s and ’98s to see who I might recognize. But then I flip back to the front and read the news from the oldest classes, from the early days of the century. This is this month’s entry from the “corresponding secretary” of the class of 1926 (which would put him at about age 97):
“Oranges and lemons / Say the bells of St. Clements. / You owe me five farthings, / Say the bells of St. Martins. When will you pay me? / Say the bells of old Bailey. / Which I get rich, / Say the bells of Shoreditch.”
Thus the morning bells of jolly old London ring out each day to ye somnolent Brits that’s time to arise, dress, breakfast, seize derby hats, and hie away for another workaday. But hey! From all ye Christendom world ring gladdest tydings to all of Yuletide joys and festivities.
Belatedly we announce your Scribe’s successful venture into ye decorative gourd derby and his deepest pleasure with’s first returns: a fat man of solid green; an extra large donut sans central hole; a slim Jim, half-yellow and half-green; and to crown all, two beauteous sisters, Chastity and Serenity, each sporting gracious yellow halves above solid green bottoms below, with a fine green ring surrounding Serenity’s graceful neck.
And so your Scribe joins in wishing good cheer and long life to all ye stout members of our good Club 90, all of whom we cherish and covet like a miser-turned-gambler his dwindling cache of gold as it slowly passes away.
I have no idea how to react to that — the third graf reads like a senior citizen’s LSD trip. But that imagery! Gorgeous stuff.

I’m sure that all of you, as regular readers of the Dallas Morning News, have already seen the big story on blogs and blogging software in today’s paper. (Doug Bedell, the writer, has a stillborn blog of his own.)

Great newspaper names, past and present, via email: the Anniston (Ala.) Star and Hot Blast (now just the Star); the Playground Daily News (Fort Walton Beach, Fla.); the Herald-Telephone (Bloomington, Ind.); the South Fork (Colo.) Tines (not a typo); the Waterford (Mich.) Spinal Column; the Clinton (Wis.) Topper; the Mount Vernon (Texas) Herald-Optic; The East Greenwich (R.I.) Pendulum; the (Lexington, Ky.) Cat’s Pause; the (Larned, Kan.) Tiller and Toiler; the Lawrence (Neb.) Locomotive; the Santa Fe (N.M.) Gringo and Greaser; the Murdo (S.D.) Coyote; the Alpine (Texas) Avalanche; the Basin (Wyo.) Republican-Rustler.

Who the hell gets killed by pirates any more? Were they flying the Jolly Roger?