Author: jbenton

katc does french weather

Elise, crabwalk.com’s official ambassador to the wild and woolly world of TV news, points out this tale of Cajun revitalization:
LAFAYETTE, La. — It’s not unusual to hear Cajun French spoken in restaurants and shops, or at local gatherings. But now, residents can hear the language on their nightly news, too.
KATC-TV has begun airing a summary of its weather forecast in Cajun French at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. each weeknight…
“People still aren’t using it as much as they should be, but if we want our children to speak French, this is what we have to do,” [Lucille Briscoe, who reads the French weather] said. “We have to keep speaking it and practicing.”
It’s a nice blow for the language, but it’s also a response to market forces — there are still a lot of old folks around who don’t speak English. (My great-grandmother died in 1988 and didn’t speak a word of it.)
One thing the article doesn’t mention: KATC isn’t the first local station to pursue French-speaking viewers. For over 40 years, most early-bird Cajuns have started the day with Passe Partout, the morning show on KLFY. While I doubt there’s as much French content as there used to be, they do still broadcast a Catholic rosary in French at 5 a.m. and do the news in French at 5:30.
When I was younger, Passe Partout used to feature a lot of live Cajun music — no idea if they still do. Jim Olivier became a minor local legend for his long stint on Passe Partout; Bob Moore, who also runs Acadian Village, handles the Francophone duties now.
Bonus KATC knowledge: The station is generally credited with inventing the term “Acadiana” to describe Cajun country.

txcn preview

FYI, I’ll be on TXCN all evening talking about testing. Should be on the front page tomorrow morning, too. (Actually, all day. We haven’t put out an afternoon edition in a looong, long time.)

woodward book

David Folkenflik (who’s a very solid media writer, not to mention owner of a kick-ass last name) has a good piece up on Bob Woodward’s latest and his sourcing issues. I was surprised Sy Hersh and Geneva Overholser were willing to go as far as they did in criticizing ol’ Bob.

zaguan, cuatro leches

Three reasons all Dallasites reading this should, sometime in the next few days, eat at Zaguan, the Latin American bakery on Oak Lawn:
– The chicken cachapas, a kind of Venezuelan corn pancake stuffed with chicken and a cheese of undetermined origin, are supertasty. With a side of plantain chips, it’s the best comfort food this side of crawfish etouffee.
– It’s one of my favorite places in town, but it’s almost never busy. Your presence may someday be needed as a cushion against business failure.
– NEW REASON! On a trip there yesterday, I discovered their cuatro leches dessert. Oh. My. Goodness.
You probably know from tres leches cake, the delicious Latin specialty with the mouth-watering, impossibly moist texture. If you’ve been to La Duni (my absolute favorite restaurant in Dallas, a more upscale, Argentine-steak focused Latin place), you may have had their cuatro leches cake, which counts a dulce de leche sauce as the mysterious fourth leche. (That last link is a PDF of their recipe.)
I loooooove La Duni’s cuatro leches cake. But sometimes you don’t want the full La Duni experience. (Actually, I can’t remember ever not wanting the full La Duni experience. But I digress.) Sometimes you just want something quick. That’s where Zaguan’s cuatro leches comes in. It’s barely a cake, really — it’s a cake reduced to its bare essentials, almost devoid of structure. (Zaguan serves it in a bowl — it would have no chance of vertical survival without one. The thing’s almost liquid at times.) It really nails that mixture of cake texture on the micro level and sweet cream mouthfeel on the macro level. It’s almost like a condensed milk pudding.
(Yes, I did just use the word “mouthfeel” unironically.)
The best part of Zaguan’s cuatro leches: $2.95! Available to go! Seriously, people.

doc and the community

So I’m at my doc’s this morning. (Basic checkup, nothing major, don’t worry — no need to start prepping a crabwalk.com succession plan.) Anyway, my doc tells me he wants to check me out for a certain kind of drug-resistant staph infection. He says he’s been checking out all of his patients for it because “it seems like everybody’s got it in the community these days.”
Now, I live on the outskirts of Oak Lawn, Dallas’ predominantly gay neighborhood. My doctor’s office is smack in the middle of Oak Lawn. While no one likes to truck in stereotypes, I’d be awfully surprised if my doctor isn’t gay — not that there’s anything wrong with that! I mean, the man has a pet poodle who roams the examination rooms. Big hoop earring in one lobe, a lisp — the man fits the image. And considering all the “specialists in HIV therapy” signs around the office, I’d have to assume that he serves a largely gay clientele.
So I had to think: When he says “the community,” does he mean “Dallas inside Loop 12”? (Unlikely.) Does he mean “the Cajun blogging community”? (Doubtful.) Or does he mean the gay community?
There’s no good way to bring this up. Should I off-handedly mention some past heterosexual adventure? Should I pick up the SI swimsuit issue (!) he had sitting in the examination room and start saying things like, “Boy, look at the ass on that one! I’d like to hit me some of that“? Should I fake a musical appreciation of, I don’t know, Travis Tritt?
I just blurted out: “Just for the record, I’m straight.”
Doc looked a little puzzled. He paused and said, “Oh.” Then he told me we wouldn’t need to go ahead with the test.