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The White Shadow! Wackson Jackson! The Thrilla With Hands Like a Caterpilla! And other potential new nicknames for Michael Jackson.
An album I can strongly recommend: Apollo Sunshine’s Katonah. It’s highly grinworthy — a little Flaming Lips, yes, but a lot of Beach Boys and some Neutral Milk Hotel, too. And the band sounds like they just got the best birthday present ever.
It’s no fun to spend a whole weekend designing a new web site on a Mac, then go to work and find out it looks kinda krappy on Windows IE. Screw Windows IE.

I had another story on today’s front page — this time a profile of Wilmer-Hutchins superintendent Charles Matthews. Turns out this isn’t the first time he’s presided over a district’s financial collapse.

I had another Wilmer-Hutchins story in Saturday’s paper — about how the district now says it won’t be able to pay its teachers for two more weeks.
Check Monday’s front page for what should be another fun Wilmer-Hutchins tale. Collect them all!
Also, some of you East Coasters may be interested to note The Gray Lady herself, The New York Times, decided to poach my stories of the last two weeks for a Sunday article of its own. It’s always fun to see one’s work, er, repurposed by another outlet of fine journalism (even if at least one error was introduced in the carbon-copying process). Since the NYT seems to operate on the assumption that all evil in the education world originates in Texas, I’m sure the story was a pretty easy pitch to editors.

Will this streak ever die? Wilmer-Hutchins, Day 5, in which the district fails to meet payroll, leaving teachers wondering how they’ll pay their bills, and the district appears to take out an illegal loan to pay short-term bills.
If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly — always a risky bet — the streak should go to six tomorrow. But it might end there.

Want to have fun? Tune into the Fox local news tonight (in Dallas). You’ll get to see video of a disheveled me knocking on the car window of Wilmer-Hutchins superintendent, as he speeds away in his Cadillac moments after his district went into financial default.

Steve Blow, the DMN’s metro columnist, has been doing a great series of columns lately. In 1979, he and a photographer decided, just for the hell of it, to drive the length of State Highway 16, the longest highway in Texas, and tell the stories of whomever they met along the way. Now they’re doing it again, 25 years later.
Steve’s done a great job with it — and if you get a chance, pick up the paper and look at photog Randy Eli Grothe’s then and now photos. Here’s the Sunday column that started the series; here’s today’s part two. Two more parts to come; they’ll be linked here. Finally, here’s a video Randy made along the way.

The streak lives! For the fourth consecutive day, I’ve got the lead story on today’s front page, this time coauthored with the multitalented Robert Tharp. The story: State officials have decided to launch an investigative audit into Wilmer-Hutchins’ finances. (And not to brag, but a couple state types told me this audit is a direct result of my stories.)
If all goes according to plan, there should be a fifth front-pager tomorrow, but no promises after that. Joe DiMaggio has nothing to worry about.
Since I never got around to posting it before, Chanda ended up losing to Mauresmo in Olympic singles, sadly.

Just to prove I don’t write only about Wilmer-Hutchins: here’s my story from tomorrow’s paper. (New crabwalk.com motto: Tomorrow’s news today!) It’s a highly subjective ranking of the 10 best local school rivalries. It’ll be on the cover of the Texas Living section tomorrow, with some lovely graphics drawn by the very talented Michael Hogue.

Here’s the latest chapter in the Wilmer-Hutchins saga, from today’s front page. (That would be three straight days writing the paper’s lead story — a new personal record.)
Today’s story reveals (a) a grand jury investigation into corruption at the district, (b) the finance director’s surprise acknowledgement the district is, in his words, “broke,” and (c) that state officials are meeting today to discuss intervention into the district’s affairs.
This journalism stuff is fun.
Maybe some day I’ll blog something not about Wilmer-Hutchins. Maybe.

Here’s the second story in my ongoing series on the Wilmer-Hutchins school district. It’s about a consultant’s report that found that all but one of the district’s schools had been maintained so poorly that they should all be abandoned and razed.
Update: Habla espa