Author: jbenton

I would link to my story on page 4B of today’s paper, but I can’t find it anywhere on the web site. That’s okay — it’s not worth reading, anyway.
Also, many thanks to Maria Sharapova for (a) reaching the Wimbledon final and (b) being hot. That magical combination has sent Google searches for “sharapova naked” through the roof. And since this site comes up as No. 6 in such a search, my hit count’s been soaring the last week.
Particularly in Belgium. Lots of horny Belgian men.
So if you start to spot disgruntled “where’s the porn?” comments from men with names like Maxime Vandenpeerebom, or Stijn Beernaert, or Florian Coninx, you’ll know why.

The 20,000th song ripped to MP3 on my computer: Gypped by the underrated Ass Ponys, off their sooperfun Electric Rock Music (1994).

Paul Boutin points out perhaps the most amusing technological euphemism of recent geek history.
You may have heard that Apple, in its upcoming version of the web browser Safari, is promoting a feature called Private Browsing. It allows you to go to web sites without leaving any evidence on your computer that you’ve been there — the sites don’t show up in the browser history, the pages aren’t cached, etc. Here’s how Apple promotes it:
Go ahead and…shop for birthday presents on the family Mac…no information about where you visit on the Web, personal information you enter or pages you visit are saved or cached.
Oh, yeah — that’s what people are going to use Private Browsing for. Birthday presents. Sure.
Then again, I guess Apple can’t come out and say: “Go ahead and download all the raw Czech monkey porn your credit card can handle — the wife’ll never find out!”

Happy July! To June 2004, perhaps the worst month in modern recorded history, I say: Good riddance!
The Crabwalk.com Northern Tier Listening Tour 2004 is almost 100% a go. Plans are for me to be in our nation’s northeast from July 15 to 25. (Roughly. Management reserves the right, etc., etc.) Possible/likely stops: New York, New Haven, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Toledo. If you would like to grab a beer/coffee/meal and are in one of those cities, get in touch. Also, if you have a couch that’s just itching for blogger use, I’d be much appreciative.

Ah, the good old days — when people who hijacked planes were romantic heroes fighting the evils of colonialism! John Grimonprez’ “DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y” is a documentary of the revolutionary impulse and how television covered it in the ’60s and ’70s. Check out the trailer — the last segment is priceless.
From the same company: I’ve been meaning for years to track down a copy of The Rainbow Man/John 3:16, the doc about Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to wear a rainbow wig and hold up those “John 3:16” signs at football games in the ’80s. He didn’t turn out well. Trailer here.
Actually, if you’ve got the bandwidth, check out all the DVDs from Other Cinema. They’re great — I love this one.

Remember that Orange County gang rape trial I’ve been writing about? (Here, here, and here.) The one where the defense attorney seemed to be relying on the most gruesome tactics imaginable, claiming an unconscious (possibly drugged) 16-year-old girl was such a big slut that she basically deserved to be raped by three asshole boys?
Well, the sickening defense efforts appear to have worked. The jury has deadlocked and the judge has declared a mistrial. According a juror, the panel was leaning towards not guilty. All this despite the boys’ videotaping themselves in the act. Amazing.
If you want to know what sort of Boy Scouts we’re talking about here, check out this video of the rapists. (Oops, make that “alleged” rapists. Old journalism habits die hard.) I guess that’s the way they do it in the O.C.

How to sell milk to the good people of Iceland.

I haven’t the slightest idea who Thad Povey is, but he’s a cool dad. He:
(a) turned his six-year-old daughter Isabel on to the Decemberists;
(b) took her to their show in San Francisco last night; and
(c) made a music video, starring Isabel, for the carnival-themed Part IV of The Tain, their recent Celtic epic.
Someday, I’m going to turn my kids into little indie rockers, too.
Update: Actually, a quick Googling lets you know that Thad Povey is an experimental filmmaker. Among his techniques: Finding random snippets of film and handpainting or otherwise doctoring each frame individually. Here’s an example. Here’s an interview.

Have you been keeping yourself up nights wondering: “I wish I knew what music Josh has been listening to recently”? Caught yourself thinking: “Man, I love that crabwalk.com, but I just wish Josh could make it a bit more self-involved”? Is a window into my recent musical forays the only thing standing between you and true self-actualization?
I present to you this page, which reports the last 20 songs I’ve listened to on iTunes. Since I typically keep iTunes on random, it should be a pretty good sampling of my collection. The page is courtesy of iTunes Watcher, an app by Michael Simmons. If all goes well, I may soon be able to flow all that song info onto this page.
Speaking of my MP3 collection, it’s approaching the 19,000-song mark. I’ve been ripping old CDs like mad these last few days, and I should hit 20,000 shortly. I’ve finally reached the “M”s in my collection, working backward — halfway home!
Speaking of shortly, a redesign — the first in this site’s nearly-three-year history — should be popping up on your screens in the very near future.

Kelly points out this interview at Gothamist with “Liz Penn,” a.k.a. Dana Stevens.
Liz/Dana is the proprietor of The High Sign, this site’s preferred independent movie-crit site. She was also the subject of a massive two-part investigation (here and here) by yours truly into her real name. She finally explains the name switcheroo in the Gothamist piece, even advancing an argument that makes a degree of sense. (She confirms this site’s findings that she’s a Dana in “Liz” clothing, not the other way around.)
Anyway, that winning Liz personality shines through in the interview. She reveals herself as a shy, cheap, geeky homebody — in other words, my perfect match! Plus, we get more visual confirmation that she’s cute cute cute. Dana, call me!