Author: jbenton

Never let it be said I’m hard to shop for. And, just so you all know, Miss Manners says that lots of people chipping in for a gift is perfectly appropriate for, say, an upcoming 26th birthday.

Well, tomorrow is shaping up to be Josh Media Day. Barring any big news — say, coordinated attacks on symbols of our nation’s financial and military might — I’ll have a story on the front page. And, more threateningly, I’ll be interviewed on Channel 8 at precisely 9:24 a.m.
This is scary stuff, for several reasons. First, 9:24 a.m. is smack dab in the middle of the “look like crap” phase of my day. (Some would argue any time is, but that’s for another day’s blog.) Second, I’ve done a few TV appearances before on TXCN, our sister cable network, and they’ve gone fine, but that’s always by remote camera here in the newsroom. This’ll be sitting next to the anchor at WFAA, swapping tales for three and a half minutes. (By the way, isn’t that an eternity in TV time? Won’t I be aging before the audience’s eyes?) Plus, I sweat under the hot lights, and I know I’ll end up looking like Nixon in the 1960 presidential debates. I am so screwed.
So if I completely tank, no one will admit to having watched it, right? After all, the DFWblogger happy hour is tomorrow night, and I’ll no doubt be prime ribbing material. Please be gentle, amateur media critics.

Saturday was, unbeknownst to me, Sweetest Day, among the most annoying, Hallmark-created holidays known to man. But in a way, you’ve got to love a holiday that, according to the link above, is much more popular in Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo than anywhere else. You figure the good people of the Rust Belt have to be onto something. (Although as a three-year resident of Toledo, Ohio — motto: “Easy access to Detroit, Cleveland, and Fort Wayne!” — I don’t remember this faux V-Day getting much attention.)

Depressing quote of the day, from the WashPost, via Mickey Kaus:
“This is a different kind of conflict,” Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon yesterday. “The closest analogy would be the drug war.”
Well, that’s optimistic, isn’t it? ‘Cause we’ve done such a bang-up job of completely eliminating drugs from America, right? I’m having visions of Nancy Reagan on the set of Friends, telling Joey Tribbiani to “just say no to Wahhabist Islamic fundamentalism!” (For is not Friends the Diff’rent Strokes [see episode #120] of our day, and Joey our Arnold?)
I hate it when I have Nancy Reagan visions.

Went to see The Strokes last night at the Gypsy Tea Room with Karen — fun show. The lead singer, the magnificently named Julian Casablancas, had all the charisma of a doorstop, and they didn’t play very long. But then again, that’s to be expected when they’ve got only one 35-minute-long album out.
They played just about everything off Is This It?, along with “NYC Cops,” the song that appears on the vinyl issue but got pulled off the CD after 9/11. (I suppose the timing wasn’t right for a song whose chorus goes “New York City cops / they ain’t too smart.”) The whole band is 22 or younger (damn I feel old), and their songs have a sort of youthful exuberance that works well with their world-weary, Lou Reed posing. And every song has a point of ignition, a moment when the guitars reach back and unleash a little hell. Much fun was had by all.
Talk about a charisma contrast: the Moldy Peaches opened, and I can say with confidence that, of all bands I’ve seen whose female lead singer wears cat makeup, they’re the best. With lyrics like “postmodernist throwing darts / hit a bullseye cut a fart,” how can you go wrong? (Not to mention Carrottop sitting in on lead guitar and a bassist in Spiderman Underoos.) It’s Ween-meets-Sonic Youth, and lots of fun, at least in small doses.

I just checked on the availability of sad-eyed-orphans.com (don’t ask — and don’t go out and grab it now, either!). My registrar of choice then recommended a few other domain names I might want:
sad-one-eyed-orphans.com (I’d be sad, too!)
sad-blue-eyed-orphans.com
saddest-eyed-orphans.com (mine are sadder than yours)
sad-eyed-orphanage.com
4sadeyedorphans.com
mysadeyedorphans.com (kind of a contradiction, no?)
sadeyedorphans4kids.com
sadeyedorphansonline.com
allsadeyedorphans.com
freesadeyedorphans.com (what a deal!)
funsadeyedorphans.com
sad-eyed-orphans-direct.com (eliminate the middleman)
sadeyedorphansworld.com
unhappinesseyedorphans.com

Predictable Social Dynamic Of The Day: Anthrax envy. “How come I didn’t get anthraxed?” one prominent [New York reporter] asked….”We were actually relieved when [Dan] Rather finally got his envelope [laced with anthrax] because we were feeling left out,” sniffed one misguided staffer at CBS. “It was like, ‘What, did bin Laden read the Nielsen ratings and just decide that we weren’t important enough to bother with?’ We felt we were running third – this time in the anthrax ratings.”
Journalists are pretty good at backbiting, but this might take the cake. Here’s a NYT reporter on the hoax anthrax letter received by fellow staffer Judith Miller, co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War”: “The speculation is that the letter had been sent by either the book publicist or by one of her co-authors, Steve Engleberg or Bill Broad. I mean, it makes sense, right? One anthrax envelope and she was on ‘Today’ and ‘Larry King Live.'”

Today’s A.Word.A.Day was no doubt inspired by this very site:
crabwise (KRAB-wyz), adjective. 1. Sideways. 2. In a cautious or roundabout manner. [From the sideways movement of crabs.] “John Smith is still moving crabwise towards modernity.” John Major’s Last Year?, The Economist (London), May 15, 1993.
I must say it was not my intention when naming this site to promote caution or roundaboutedness (?). (If you don’t know where the name comes from, you obviously haven’t fully explored the site.) My vision of crabwalking was more connected to the elementary school P.E. version of the term. But as the site mentions, “If we were to look up the term `humanwise’ in a crab’s dictionary, chances are it would mean ‘sideways.'” (Thanks, Karen!)

This site was down for a while last night during a system upgrade; all should be well now, but if you run into any odd problems, please email me.

Remember that Berkeley city council anti-war resolution? Well, some folks have begun an economic boycott of the city as a result.
(Link ripped from Glenn Reynolds at the very useful InstaPundit. He’s also links to Drudge reporting that U.S. officials are planning to remove women from the front lines of combat, not long after some Clinton policies put them there. He points out, probably wisely, that it’s a bad idea, and not only for gender-bias reasons: can you imagine how the Taliban would react if they realized they were getting beaten by a bunch of girls? It might be the kind of humiliation Islamic fundamentalism could never recover from. “I think we should be saturating the Mideast with television footage of female soldiers and pilots,” Glenn writes.)