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A final burst of bad-boy journalist news (final for a while, at least):
The final word on Jack Kelley. It looks pretty bad.
In contrast, this 6,000-word (!) hit job on Frank DeFord is absurd. I’m not much of a DeFord fan — I think he’s too emotionally manipulative — but geez, this article (which seeks to tar him with the Jayson Blair brush) is waaaaay too much of a stretch. Among the things the reporter considers crimes against journalism:
– Calling Larry Bird “the greatest basketball player ever” in 1988. (The reporter presumably thinks Wilt or Jordan would be better picks.)
– Saying “except for the 1960s, the United States has produced a great [tennis] champion in every decade of the 20th century.” (The reporter thinks Arthur Ashe should qualify.)
– Writing that “Curious as it may be for this nation of immigrants, we Americans have never cottoned to foreign athletes.” (The reporter thinks that Wayne Gretzky proves this statement wrong.)
Are any of these demonstrably false? They’re opinions. DeFord is a columnist, and he’s allowed to have opinions. This reporter needs to get off his high horse and stop trying to make a name for himself by tearing down someone bigger than him.

The next step in the JB self-improvement program: Scotiabank Vancouver Half-Marathon. If you’re planning to be in B.C. this June, come run with me.

Mistah Kurtz has a followup on Jack Kelley. Turns out he was fudging, at least in the course of the investigation into his alleged misdeeds. (Still no absolute confirmation he fudged in stories, but this revelation — that he asked one interpreter to impersonate another in order to cover his ass — makes him look quite suspect.) More here and here; pick up tomorrow’s USA Today for what will allegedly be a lengthy explanation of the hubbub.

In Memory Lane news, ten years ago today I wrote my first newspaper story.
(Of course, if you count my high school newspaper, my “career” goes back a bit further. But the Eclectic [as it was and still is known] was really just a photocopied dork zine, not a real newspaper.)
It was a story for The Yale Herald, my college weekly, about the closing of Conran’s, a furniture store in downtown New Haven’s Chapel Square Mall. It was the first time I’d ever had to actually interview someone.
I wrote about 500 words, managing to squeeze in quotes from six differnet sources. My editor Abbe was shocked — I don’t think she’d ever seen so many sources crammed into a story. (I was nervous and wanted to get everything right. So I kept calling people. Thank heavens that habit went away over time!)
My two talented editors on that piece are now covering Washington state politics for the Associated Press (Rebecca) and clerking for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Abbe).
Here ends this self-indulgent post.

As Margaret mentioned in the comments a couple posts ago, Mark Kozelek is playing solo at the Gypsy Tea Room January 25. While I’d rather see him in a band context than solo (since there’s a greater tendency for abject weepiness when it’s just him and a guitar), I think I’ll go. Lemme know if you’d like to join me.

Holy Toledo, Mister Pants — proprietor of one of the Internet’s most wonderful sites — is back from a year-long hiatus. It’s like The Return of the King. Or something.
Another crabwalk.com music recommendation: Natacha Atlas’ album Ayeshteni. Warning: This is a substantially different recommendation than the sort I usually give here. Atlas is a Belgian-Egyptian belly dancer who plays Eurodance-meets-Arabia booty shakers. Have you ever been in an Indian restaurant and thought: “You know, this awful music they’re playing could be good, if it had substantially better beats and a fat slice of hipness?” That’s sort of what Atlas sounds like. Worth checking out — of particular interest is the cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.”
Maybe Elliott Smith didn’t kill himself after all. Most surprising item in that autopsy report: Smith had been smack-free for a year.
A question for the runners out there: I’ve been having a heck of a time sleeping lately. Last night at 2:30 a.m. I finally put two and two together — I can’t sleep on the days I run. (Five miles yesterday, thank you very much.) I could understand if I was running at 9 p.m., but yesterday I ran around noon and still couldn’t sleep. Should I be doing something differently? (Particularly since I prefer to run in the evenings.)
Finally, it was a pleasure throwing back a few beverages last night with Mrs. KittySays, an old CDMOM trader pal, and Mr. KittySays, freshly returned from Iraq. The missus just made partner at her law firm — always good to see a sorta fellow Louisianian (even if she is a transplant) goin’ good.

From the History Repeating Dept. (NFC South Division): Growing up in early 1980s Louisiana, New Orleans Saints coach Bum Phillips was our state’s biggest sports hero. “Hero” probably isn’t the right word, since the Saints never had a winning season under ol’ Bum. But they came awfully close (8-8 in 1983 — by Saints standards a miracle), and he gave us fans some degree of hope. Bum was a legend in the making.
I mean, look at the guy. The East Texas jowls, the 743-gallon cowboy hat — he looked like an ornery high school football coach. He was funny, he was country, and he performed pretty well on game day. That’s all you needed to be big time in Louisiana. (He even contributed to the canon of classic football coach one-liners, when he said in admiration of Don Shula: “He can take his’n and beat your’n, then he can take your’n and beat his’n.”)
Still, he eventually got the boot and was replaced in 1986 by Jim Mora, the coach who led the Saints through their golden years, including their first four playoff appearances and their first division title. Mora was a crazy man — he always seemed to be on a cocktail of meth and depressants. He also added a few classics to the quotable-coach canon, including his famous “We couldn’t do diddly poo” tirade and his “Playoffs?!? Playoffs?!?” break-with-reality moment after a tough loss. But he, too, was beloved by Louisianans.
I go through all this to mention the strange coincidence that has just taken place at Atlanta Falcons headquarters. The Falcons — the Saints’ traditional rivals — have just named Jim Mora Jr. as their new head coach. Jim Jr. is, of course, the son of you-know-who. The man he replaces? Interim head coach Wade Phillips, son of Bum Phillips. Eighteen years later, it’s Phillips-to-Mora all over again.

If you’re wondering why posting has been sporadic these last few days, it’s because I’ve discovered if I want to get a lot of writing done, the best thing to do is take my laptop, go to a distant cubicle, and live without Internet access for the work day.
Yes, you heard me — live without Internet access.
Okay, maybe not completely without — I do come back to my desk every 90 minutes or so to check my email. But it’s amazing how much more work I can get done without porn to download er, I mean, important educational research to read online.
In the meantime, if you need to reach me ASAP, try my cell phone.

Wow: Jack Kelley resigns from USA Today over allegations that he’s made up stories.
In some ways, this is a bigger deal to me than the Jayson Blair stuff. Blair just wasn’t very good, whether he was reporting things straight or blowing smoke. But Kelley consistently put out “holy shit” stories that were, without a doubt, the best thing about USA Today. (Yes, even better than the sports section.) He was one of those reporters whose stuff you’d read and think: “Wow, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that.” (And when you’re an arrogant asshole like me, that’s saying something.) If he’s been making them up, well, that would explain quite a bit.
From Howie Kurtz’s article, it’s unclear to me if Kelley really has been stretching the truth. (Kelley’s got some defenders over at Romenesko.) I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

Another music recommendation: Ghosts of the Great Highway by Sun Kil Moon.
Sun Kil Moon is the new project of Mark Kozelek, best known as leader of the Red House Painters. I’ve always been a fan of Mark’s, particularly in his early days when he seemed to be moving on a career track parallel to crabwalk.com favorite Mark Eitzel. (Both started out with noisy punk bands in Ohio, then moved to San Francisco and made slow, depressing, but gorgeous music — Mark E. with American Music Club, Mark K. with RHP.) The second Painters album — known as the rollercoaster album because of the cover image and because it’s, confusingly, one of two albums named simply Red House Painters — is an absolute sadcore classic.
Like Eitzel, Kozelek wandered a bit through the late ’90s, releasing work of sporadic brilliance and sporadic crud. RHP has released only one album in the last eight years (2001’s so-so Old Ramon, which was actually recorded back in ’97). He released a couple solo records, notable mostly for their fixation on AC/DC. (One album, What’s Next to the Moon, was composed entirely of AC/DC songs reworked, irony-free, into Leadbelly-style acoustic blues. It’s actually surprisingly good.) He seemed restless and unfocused.
Sun Kil Moon is his new band, and their record is my favorite Kozelek work since the rollercoaster album. It’s not a new sound — it’s very much in the dreamy, languorous RHP tradition — but it is tighter and brighter. Kozelek once relied on slowness to express melancholy, which made even his best work boring and mopey in spots. Here, he uses melody more prominently for the same purpose. Even the (by now obligatory on a Kozelek release) 14-minute track “Duk Koo Kim” never drags. The layers of acoustic guitars evoke half-forgotten memories; it sounds like the soundtrack of a childhood summer, remembered 20 years on.
It’s hard to describe (at least for me), but it’s really very good. Not everyone will love it, since Kozelek is still an acquired taste, but it’s worth a listen.
(Lyrical bonus: No fewer than three four of the songs are about boxing, which may be replacing AC/DC as Kozelek’s current Wimpy Singer-Songwriter Masculinity Overcompensation target. And one track, the opener “Glenn Tipton,” is named for a Judas Priest guitarist and namechecks Jim Nabors.)
(Interband reference bonus: “Krazy Koz,” a song from Mojave 3’s excellent album Excuses for Travellers, is about Kozelek.)
(Film bonus: You may remember Mark from his acting debut, playing the bassist in the band in Almost Famous.)