Category: Uncategorized

Today’s magic word: misanthrope. It’s that sort of day.

Music alert: the new Interpol record is well worth your money, if you’re into that Joy Division-y, Smiths-y sound.

I’m looking for an easy way to create a bookmarklet that, when clicked, would open multiple, pre-defined web pages. Anybody got a good idea?

Soul Train goes nuts.

Chanda Rubin, my old high school classmate and the Official Tennis Player of crabwalk.com, is seeded 14th at the U.S. Open. (See the May-July archives for previous Chanda coverage.)
I haven’t been keeping all you Chandafans as up to date as I should since her terrific runs at Wimbledon and the French. Ten days ago, she won the JP Morgan Chase Open in Los Angeles. And it’s not like there wasn’t any competition. She beat Serena Williams (!) 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 in the quarters, ending her 21-match win streak. In the semis, she destroyed world No. 4 Jelena Dokic 6-0, 6-2, then beat Lindsay Davenport 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the finals. I tell you: Chanda’s on fire!

I’ve been on a Spoon kick lately. James, himself quite the Spooner, gave me a copy of a two-disc rarities comp when I was in Toronto. While zipping across the backroads of upstate New York last week, windows down and sunroof open on my little rental Sonata, I put A Series of Sneaks into repeat overdrive. I’m eagerly anticipating their 9/10-11 show at Rubber Gloves. And yesterday, their new album Kill the Moonlight came out.
I was looking online for the lyrics to (perhaps) my favorite Spoon track, “Quincy Punk Episode.” Great, rocking song that never fails to get my air drum attack launched. But I had no idea the song title is based on an actual, bizarrely moralistic episode of Quincy, the Jack Klugman vehicle from the early 1980s. (Synopsis of the episode here; audio and video clips here.) Much fun.

Here’s my story from today’s front page, on how the feds say Texas’ dropout problem is actually several times larger than state officials claim it is. For reasons utterly invisible to you, Gentle Reader, I’m quite happy with it. Not that it still won’t be a boring read.
Went to the Tipperary Inn last night for a trivia contest. We finished one question away from victory, alas, out of 19 teams. My highlight: being the only one in the bar who could answer the question: “Why is Pierre Omidyar famous?” Of course, considering the readership of this site, lots of you probably know.
Also had the unique experience of being recognized in the bar by three crabwalk.com readers (Dave, whom I’d met at SXSW when I noticed his Good Records t-shirt, and two CDMOM traders, Mike and Tony). Since I’m not in the habit of posting photos of myself here, I’m still not sure what it was that gave me away — perhaps the way I would speak every couple hours, pause to mention the exact time in the Central time zone, then plaintively say, “no comments?”
One hopes they will all attend the DFWblogs.com happy hour this evening.

Media whoring alert: I’ll be on TXCN through the evening. Haven’t taped it yet, but I’m curious how it’ll turn out. I’ll be talking about a wonky, stats-laden topic — differing dropout data methodologies! — but it’s also one of the few topics I actually know something about.

One audio artifact of my Northern Tour was a CD-R from Katherine of her CBC radio piece on blogging. (Yes, observant long-time readers, that would be the piece I blogged about a couple months ago.)
So, for your audial edification, I present Katherine Parrish on blogging (warning: 11.5 meg download). If you can stand the wait (and the host’s odd elocution of the word “blogging”), you’ll hear yours truly right before the end.

Harry Potter fans: check out a book just issued by a friend of mine from college, Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody. It’s a laff riot — guaranteed!