Author: jbenton

Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf. And I don’t mean that metaphorically — he’s actually lost his ability to comprehend the voices of others. The man’s brought a lot of hate into the world, and I’ve never been able to stand his preening faux-underdogism, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate.

“Mooruddin Aki’s arms were chopped off by the Taliban after authorities caught him smoking opium in an Afghan school. At 18, he begs on the streets and people who take pity on him place bills in his mouth.”
— from today’s New York Times, via Talking Points.

A disappointing sports Saturday (just one touchdown down at Glencoe Park — although it was an impressive 40-yard over-the-shoulder grab, if I do say so myself) has given way to a terrific sports Sunday. Barry Bonds hit No. 73 this afternoon, and still has a chance for more. As a longtime Giants fan (and that rarest of birds, a longtime Bonds fan), I hope this isn’t his last game in a San Francisco uniform. Meanwhile, the Saints staved off a dangerous Vikings squad that has had our number for several years now.
On most fall Sunday afternoons, you can find me in Plano at the Austin Avenue Grill & Sports Bar, where local Saints fans congregate to either (most years) commiserate about our team’s sorry state or (for the last two seasons) grin the silly grins of children given an unexpected lollipop. It’s such great fun when fans of the other team are there, particularly if they start the day in a taunting mood. Today, there were about a dozen Vikings fans there, all decked out in purple Randy Moss jerseys and yelling out “Go Vikings!” and “Saints suck!” in their Marge Gunderson accents. They were pretty quiet by the end of the day.
In local sports news, the Rangers fired GM Doug Melvin, whose idea of a quality pitching staff involved ERAs higher than a valedictorian’s GPA.
This has been the crabwalk.com Sunday sports report — thanks for listening. We now return you to your regularly scheduled war.

”I really like the idea that if you’re an artist, then you should double up the amount of work that you would normally have, because you’re being handed a dream. I’ve worked on houses and built new plumbing and had really bad jobs. If I’m going to be a musician, that’s a pretty big responsibility. That means that I get excluded from the working class — I better have something to show for it.”
— Ryan Adams, impossibly prolific rock wunderkind (whose new album, Gold, shows every sign of justifying the astounding hype that’s surrounded it, by the way), in The Boston Globe. Ryan just released his third album of the last 12 months, and he’s got two more in the can.

Just to be clear: I certainly wasn’t dissing Honchie and the Gobos by walking past Club Dada last night. I hadn’t planned on going, but ended up having dinner with a friend at Deep Sushi. Walking past the club, I heard the band, realized who it was, and peered inside to see if I recognized anyone. I didn’t, but even if I did, I’d have kept moving on — I’m not quite ready to explain the whole blogging concept to a coworker yet. (Ah, blogshame.)
Anyway, I’m off to hang out with a bunch of septuagenarians singing Boola Boola. In other words, a typical Friday night for me.

Almost every night, before I go to bed, I set my alarm for 6 a.m. or so and tell myself I’ll get up early. I’ve got a lot of work to do now, between my job and some freelance stuff, and I need all the spare hours I can get.
And almost every morning, at 6 a.m., I reset the alarm for 7 a.m. Then 8 a.m. Then 9 a.m. Then a snooze (9:09), another (9:18), then usually another (9:27). Sometimes, there’s one or two more. I drag my sorry self out of bed, head for work, and thank heavens that my job starts at 10 a.m., a sane, humane hour.
But today was an exception: I got up at 6, went to work — and promptly wasted three hours surfing the web, reading blogs, and writing silly email. That was so much more productive.

As Pink perceptively points out, it’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A good friend of mine is organizing the first DFW edition of the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day. It’s a three-day, 60-mile walk from Fort Worth to Dallas, April 26-28, 2002. Walks like this around the country raised $43 million in 2000. Consider signing up.

Well, hot damn! Just found out today I’m going to Japan later this month. I’ve been accepted into a journalism fellowship sponsored by the Foreign Press Center of Japan. Twelve days of roaming around the country, asking questions and writing stories. I can think of worse ways to spend my birthday. (And the best part: they’re flying me over business class. I’ve lived a completely coach life. What have I done to deserve this luxury?)

Attention Death Cab For Cutie fans: You can order their new album, The Photo Album, online instead of waiting a couple of weeks for it to hit stores. Plus, if you order online, you get a limited edition three-song EP (including a Bjork cover). Mine’s on its way.
Two tracks from the new album are available online too, A Movie Script Ending and I Was a Kaleidoscope. Both a bit more rockin’ than their excellent last album, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. (My two favorite tracks from that album, For What Reason and Company Calls are also online.)
And hell, while we’re linking Death Cab stuff, the 4/14/00 concert available for download here is quite good. And Ben Gibbard’s side project, All-Time Quarterback, has five tracks online here.
If you’re unfamiliar with Death Cab, suffice it to say they’re the finest band in the Pacific Northwest today. (Ha! Take that, Built to Spill — that’s what you get for starting a show at 12:45 a.m. on a school night!) And they’ll be playing at the Gypsy Tea Room here on Nov. 11 — at eight bucks, it’ll be the bang-for-your-concert-buck deal of the year.

More shameless self-promotion: that was me on the front page yesterday, writing about the decreasing attention Texas schools are paying to the earth sciences.