Category: Uncategorized

Speaking of stories that should be turned into great literature: Reies Tijerina. Quite a life this man has led. Whatever you think of him (and others in the Chicano movement), it’s strange that they’ve been so forgotten — particularly in places like Texas.

A review of Tom Stoppard’s new play in The New Yorker by John Lahr. (Previously mentioned here.) He admires it in places, but is largely unimpressed, echoing the most common complaint about lesser Stoppard: “[W]e understand the plot points of their lives and their psychologies, but these function more like factors in an intellectual equation than as emotional experience.”

A Cajun vision of heaven: Fresh boudin, made by a fat man named Tiny, without leaving your car. That’s always been the troubling part, having to leave your car.
My next trip home — which is to say, my next Tour de Boudin — demands the gathering of evidence.
Update: My friend Mary (the author of the linked piece) elaborates: “The boudin is pretty good at House of Meat. But the showstopper’s the red-beans-and-rice balls. Comparable to boudin balls. Tiny rolls up his congealed lunch special from yesterday, rolls it into golf-ball-sized bundles, rolls it in flour and drops it into the deep fryer. Sure to become a new Cajun classic.” Mmmmmmmmmmm.

The true story of Count Chocula.

Great collection of Canadian war posters, from both World Wars. My favorite shows how, even at mid-century, Canada still considered itself the little beaver brother to the big British lion:

Unsupportable Theory of the Day: At some point in the next fifty years, a great novel will be written, featuring as its protagonist a specimen of phoberomys pattersoni.
For those who haven’t kept pace with advances in rodent science, Big Phob was a giant rodent that roamed the northern stretches of South America millions of years ago. Picture a guinea pig with a squirrel’s gait — but 1,500 pounds. And 10 feet long. Not counting the additional four feet of tail.
Dude rocked.
See, South America was once silly with these bizarre oversized rodents and other furry creatures straight out of the the minds of six-year-olds. Weird shit like zenarthrans and toxodons and litopternas (a.k.a. the psuedohorse). They had few natural predators, so they evolved into big fat slobs, eating grass and sunning themselves in the Andes. A good life.
Then came the Great American Interchange. That’s when North and South America — after eons apart — were finally joined together at the Panama isthmus.
The north’s big bad carnivores poured across the bridge and found all these tasty fatties ripe for the munching. And while I’d hope a 1,500-pound guinea pig could put up a fight, remember that it hadn’t had to do much but eat grass for many millennia. I can imagine why it didn’t fare well.
But seriously: There’s great drama to be mined out of this, no? It’s essentially the plot of The War of the Worlds — except it really happened and involves fewer New Jerseyans. And I’ve already got the perfect wisecracking sidekick lined up for Big Phob: his surviving cousin dinomys branickii, also known as “Count Branicki’s terrible mouse.”

If David Lynch had been born in 1875.
“This is David Lynch’s 55-second short filmed with an original Lumière camera. Forty international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinématographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds; (2) no synchronized sound was permitted; and (3) no more than three takes…Remember while watching that all the effects are in-camera and there is no cutting for scenes.”

Thank heavens Kevin Smith is keeping newspapers in business.
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of his movies — I honestly tried three times to watch Clerks and failed each time — but I have a lot of respect for Smith. His iPod director’s commentary idea is pure genius. And in the below 19-minute video, in which he discusses his abbreviated attachment to the new Superman movie, he shows what a smart, funny, and seemingly sensible guy he is:

Here’s my column from today’s paper.

When Dan Hamermesh heard that Northwest ISD was paying rookie teachers $44,159, he was thrilled. “That’s phenomenal! In Texas? I’m happy to hear it.”

But within 30 seconds, he’d switched gears: “That’s just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. It’s exactly wrong.”

What was he talking about? Who is Dan Hamermesh? And why does he think that well-meaning North Texas school districts are making choices that will drive promising teachers out of the profession?

Here’s my story from Sunday’s front page — it’s more about cheating:

When he saw that six Richardson schools were on the state’s list of potential TAKS cheaters, Superintendent Jim Nelson wanted to investigate. But to do so, he needed to know how Caveon – the company that built the list – did its work.

He e-mailed state Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, whose agency paid Caveon to do the analysis: “Commissioner, how do I get detailed information as to how Caveon reached their conclusions? All we got were the conclusions.”

He added, according to documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News : “Anger and frustration aimed at the agency is palpable. I want to help, but we must have access to their analysis.” Without those details, the Texas Education Agency is doing “nothing more than a hit and run,” he said.

Mr. Nelson and other Texas educators have tried to get the information they think they need to clear their schools’ names. But the TEA hasn’t been able to give it to them. That’s because agency officials never got the data themselves.

As a result, few, if any, thorough cheating investigations have begun – nearly two months after Caveon determined that 609 schools had suspicious test scores.