Author: jbenton

paper boy

Went to the bank this morning to cash an expense check I’ve had sitting around for a while. I walked up to the teller to gave her my deposit slip, and she asked me for ID.
I reached for my wallet, but she saw I had my work badge on. “That badge would be enough,” she said.
So I showed it to her. “The Dallas Morning News” is on the top, with my (five-year-old) photo and my name underneath.
“Oh, do you deliver the newspaper?” she asked.

free everclear

Deal of the century: You can now legally and ethically download all of American Music Club’s classic 1991 album Everclear.
Just go here and download all the MP3s from “Why Won’t You Stay” to “Jesus’ Hands.” (The other MP3 there, “Another Morning,” is from their last album.)
It’s an important album to me for a number of reasons:
1. It was the first “cool,” “indie” album I ever bought. It was 1993, and I’d heard AMC play a radio in-studio on World Cafe that summer, while setting schedules for students at my old high school. I’d liked their music enough for it to penetrate my Jethro-Tull-loving skull, so when I got to New Haven that fall, I bought three CDs: this one, their then-new release Mercury, and — in a strange change of tone — Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Extra Width.
Not sure why, exactly. I think I’d found a copy of Gerard Cosloy’s zine Conflict that had an AMC article; Cosloy was the head of Matador, which was JSBX’s label at the time. (I remember mailing off for Matador’s Xeroxed mail-order catalog to get more CDs. Ah, those innocent pre-web days.) Also, I think I thought the album cover was kinda cool.
2. I listened to Everclear endlessly in college. Which was probably not a mentally healthy thing to do. (Nor was it appreciated by my then-girlfriend, who thought me a bit mopey.) But it just seemed so beautifully sad, and that seemed like a suitably adult emotion to be having in college.
3. This site is, of course, named for track 5 on the album, “Crabwalk.” Now, you can have a soundtrack to accompany your crabwalk.com reading!
Now, almost 13 years after first hearing it, the album seems a bit weaker than I’d remembered. That everpresent wash of reverb suffocates a few songs. But the best tracks — “Ex-Girlfriend,” “Sick of Food,” “What the Pillar of Salt Held Up,” for starters — are still champs.

the times-picayune and passion

Great piece in the LAT on the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s heroic post-Katrina coverage. The reporter asks: “The newspaper’s success in the face of disaster raises a question: Are objectivity and dispassion in journalism overrated?”
Which is, of course, the wrong question to ask. Objectivity is not overrated. But dispassion is another thing entirely. Newspapers get in trouble when they confuse the two. Being an objective source of information does not mean being a cold fish. We should be passionate. We should inspire our readers to be passionate. We should make them gleeful and angry and sad — hopefully all three every day. Newspapers need a personality, and the T-P — by becoming a clear, angry voice on behalf of its city — has accomplished that.
Here’s the terrific Chris Rose column the LAT piece refers to. It’s amazing, and you should read it first. People, it may be about to be 2006, but I beg of you: Please don’t make New Orleans yesterday’s news. The city needs our love.

overcoming dyslexia…for dummies?

As an education reporter, I get education-related books in the mail all the time. Publishers want us to review them, even though that never happens. (I’ve reviewed one book in five-plus years here.)
Anyway, today I got this book in the mail. It’s one of the famed “Dummies” series of books, several of which I’ve found useful in the past.
But this book, released just yesterday, is called “Overcoming Dyslexia for Dummies.”
Wrong message, perhaps?

the long dynasty

A great article from 1966 on the Long political dynasty of Louisiana, by a then-young Stephen Hess. While it was 31 years after Huey’s death and six after Earl’s, the piece is optimistic about the Longs’ continuing power and influence in Louisiana, saying that Huey’s son Russell was a rising national figure and cousins Gillis and Speedy were comers.
It didn’t work out that way. Speedy and Gillis swapped the 8th District seat in Congress between them for a while, but to no great effect. Russell became a drunk. (Or, more accurately, was exposed as a drunk. That’s what the “tempestuous, moody, unpredictable charmer” quote from Russell Baker was about.) And no one else seemed to pick up the Long mantle after that. I guess Jimmy Long was in the state House for a while, but that’s about it.
I’ve always been surprised some enterprising Long hasn’t jumped back into the ring. The name still means something in Louisiana — if not as much as it used to, since anyone who once voted for Huey is dead and the last to vote for Earl are now in their late 60s.
A polished 30-something Long could play the same divide Russell did: being a Long gives you populist credibility among the poor, but being a city-slicker can get you the business interests. And there’d be no shortage of media attention. The closest analog I can think of would be Richard M. Daley following his dad, the old boss, Richard J., as mayor of Chicago. (Richard J. and Huey would have gotten along just fine.)
(I’ve been on something of an Earl Long kick lately. Here’s a great subjective take on him by Jason Berry, one of the state’s best journos. He’s the guy who broke a lot of the first priest abuse stories in the 1980s. And here’s a Rick Bragg piece on the remaining Longs [that, frustratingly, doesn’t get at my above question]. Key quote: “People feared Huey, and loved Earl.”)