Author: jbenton

Longtime readers know A Confederacy of Dunces is one of my very favorite books. (By the way, an update on that last entry: The hard drive ended up named Dorian.)
Anyway, here’s another update on the on-again, off-again status of an ACoD movie. Looks like (from reading between the lines in the last paragraph) that Will Ferrell is no longer attached to play Ignatius, but the mighty Mos Def is still Jones.

What it’s like to be in the middle of St. Peter’s.
Also, if you meet a really cool person in the next 15 days or so, and you want to tell that person how cool he/she is, consider this all-purpose compliment: I think you should be the next pope.

To flesh out Friday’s entry: Turns out that I’m going to Nigeria on Friday. I’ll be gone for 10 days, writing a variety of Pope-related stories.
Since this all has come together pretty quickly, I’ve got a lot of learning to do on Nigeria (and the African Catholic church). On Friday night, I went to Borders to pick up a copy of Lonely Planet guide to Nigeria. Turns out there is no Lonely Planet Nigeria. Strange, I thought. Nigeria is the largest country in Africa and certainly one of the most important.
Actually, I looked around and there were no guidebooks for Nigeria. I picked up the Lonely Planet West Africa guide, which had a short chapter on Nigeria. I can sum up its advice to travelers wishing to visit Nigeria in one word: “Don’t.”
It paints a horrific picture of armed robberies, murders, assaults, random urban violence, and perhaps the worst city in the world, Lagos. (Although, by this ratings system, it’s only the fourth-worst out of 130 cities studied.) Quoth the Rough Guide to West Africa: “While it would definitely be misleading to downplay its problems, Lagos is no more of a hell hole than any other gigantic, seething, impoverished city with a military administration and an oppressive climate.”
Nigeria is annually rated the most corrupt country on earth. (Although, again to be fair, this year it’s only third, edged out by Bangladesh and Haiti.) The main airport in Lagos was, until quite recently, considered so unsafe that the FAA banned flights to it. (“Travelers arriving in Lagos were harassed both inside and outside of the airport terminal by criminals. Airport staff contributed to its reputation. Immigration officers required bribes before stamping passports, while customs agents demanded payment for nonexistent fees. In addition, several jet airplanes were attacked by criminals who stopped planes taxiing to and from the terminal and robbed their cargo holds.” Luckily, security apparently improved when “police instituted a shoot on sight policy for anyone found in the secure areas around runways and taxiways.”)
Gotta love this woman’s experience at Murtala Muhammed: “Nothing compares in filth, insecurity, and lack of facilities to the Muhammed Murtala airport in Lagos, Nigeria which is one of the worst places I’ve ever spent a night and/or day…During our stay, we barely avoided a fistfight, witnessed two robberies at knifepoint (perpetrated by rather small boys against foreign tourists), were threatened several times (Thank God my husband is a big guy who grew up in Africa or we, also, would have been robbed), got violently ill (details omitted) on the ‘bottled’ water, and took turns dozing fitfully for fear we would be attacked by the starving rats we saw fighting for scraps of trash. The place has NO security whatsoever (the guys with machine guns outside apparently couldn’t care less what’s going on inside and it’s the only airport I know of where they don’t scan carry-ons or make you walk through a metal detector), no chairs of any kind in the lobby (we were not allowed to go to the gate until the plane was ‘fixed’), a filthy, sticky floor and no bathrooms (well, actually, there was a room but it was locked because there was no water and according to the staff there, they had to lock it because the toilets were overflowing with human waste and people were just doing it on the floor). There was a ‘restaurant’ but it was out of food and the bar sold us contaminated water. (There were also some wandering vendors selling probably-contaminated food.)”
Or listen to what the country’s leading writers have to say. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka: “Only a masochist with an exuberant taste for self-violence will pick Nigeria for a holiday.” Or Chinua Achebe: “Nigeria is not a great country. It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest, and vulgar. In short it is among the most unpleasant places on earth.”
In other words: Fun!
I expect this will be quite different from my previous Africa experience, in friendly open Zambia.
Re: communications, I should be in at least intermittant email contact, hopefully. And I’ve finally gotten on board the Skype bandwagon, meaning you can call me (at Skype ID crabwalkjb or at the regular ol’ phone number 214-556-2616) and we can chat from deepest Africa. Wish me luck!

Here’s my column from today’s paper, on why it always seems to be the high school history teacher who pulls double duty as football coach. You might like it.
Here’s my story from Saturday’s front page, on the latest turn in the Wilmer-Hutchins saga.

Dudes and dudettes, I just got confirmation: I’m going to Nigeria next week.
Now that I think about it, I really do like my life.

Trailer for A Good Band is Easy to Kill, a documentary of the final tour of Beulah. Beulah was awesome, and they put on a great, horn-enhanced live show. (Plus there’s a small chance I’ll be in there, based on my vigorous hopping in the third row of a show last year. Although it’s more likely my friend Nicole will be in there, since she somehow ended up on stage, playing tambourine.)

The Sea Nymph Eats Paul Giamatti Alive, a series of possible twist endings to the next M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Not-tremendously-interesting story from today’s paper. Another not-tremendously-interesting story coming in tomorrow’s.
Just as I previously said all right-thinking Dallasites should have been at the Clem Snide show a couple weeks ago, all right-thinking Texans should be at the Decemberists show tomorrow night. You shan’t regret it — they’re terrific live and the new album is aces.
Why the Washington Post is losing circulation. This is the most depressing part of the decline of my line of work: The Post is an amazing newspaper, led by very smart people, and in the perfect newspaper market, but it’s still dropping readers. Awful stuff.
The most annoying part of the article is the scene from the non-reader focus group: “Former subscribers complained unread papers piled up at their homes, making them feel guilty because they hadn’t read them. The responses were not ‘No, I don’t like the Post.’ They were ‘No, I don’t want that hulking thing in my house.'”
I’ve sat in on those focus groups, and I can verify that’s an incredibly common complaint. That idea — that it’s not the content that’s keeping people from reading, it’s the sheer physical artifact — is soooo maddening, since it means there’s not much we on the content side can do to make things better. Harrumph.

Cameron Diaz tries to hip up environmentalism. Line most likely to be quoted from this article: “Ms. Diaz said she and the actress Jessica Alba shared a bed night after night.”

Two more stories today:
– From the front page: “The number of ‘academically unacceptable’ schools in Texas could grow by a factor of 10 under a tougher set of standards approved by a Texas Education Agency committee.
“There are now 92 Texas schools labeled unacceptable, the state’s lowest rating. But if the proposed new rules had been in place last year, more than 1,100 schools would have earned the label and faced possible state intervention.
“‘We’re going to have to go after more schools,’ said Sandy Kress, the former Dallas school board president and Bush adviser who is among the new standards’ supporters. ‘We’re going to have to go to a place we have not gone yet if we really want youngsters to succeed in these ineffective schools.'”
– From the Metro section front: “Former Wilmer-Hutchins Superintendent Charles Matthews was indicted Tuesday for allegedly ordering employees to falsify attendance data.
“The indictment, by a Dallas County grand jury, is the second in the last five months for Dr. Matthews, a former state superintendent of the year. His leadership of the troubled district is the target of numerous federal and state criminal investigations and has led the Texas Education Agency to take over district operations.”
I’m off to New York in a few minutes. Drop me a line if you want to get together while I’m in town.