Category: Uncategorized

Here’s my column from yesterday’s paper, on the way Texas universities admit their freshmen each year.

I simply refuse to believe this photo is real. “Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State, performs a version of the Village People’s hit disco song ‘YMCA’ at the conclusion of Asia’s largest security meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Friday, July 2, 2004. Powell took to the stage, dressed as a construction worker Friday, with other unidentified US diplomats to deliver their rendition of the 1970’s hit song to an audience of Asia Security meeting delegates.”

In honor of the late Marlon Brando, check out this old episode of This American Life, in which Brando debuts a line of acting instructional tapes, entitled “Lying For a Living.” The piece starts at the 44-minute mark.
(The show’s first piece, on the recovered memory movement, is also good. Although a bit of a downer.)

I would link to my story on page 4B of today’s paper, but I can’t find it anywhere on the web site. That’s okay — it’s not worth reading, anyway.
Also, many thanks to Maria Sharapova for (a) reaching the Wimbledon final and (b) being hot. That magical combination has sent Google searches for “sharapova naked” through the roof. And since this site comes up as No. 6 in such a search, my hit count’s been soaring the last week.
Particularly in Belgium. Lots of horny Belgian men.
So if you start to spot disgruntled “where’s the porn?” comments from men with names like Maxime Vandenpeerebom, or Stijn Beernaert, or Florian Coninx, you’ll know why.

The 20,000th song ripped to MP3 on my computer: Gypped by the underrated Ass Ponys, off their sooperfun Electric Rock Music (1994).

Paul Boutin points out perhaps the most amusing technological euphemism of recent geek history.
You may have heard that Apple, in its upcoming version of the web browser Safari, is promoting a feature called Private Browsing. It allows you to go to web sites without leaving any evidence on your computer that you’ve been there — the sites don’t show up in the browser history, the pages aren’t cached, etc. Here’s how Apple promotes it:
Go ahead and…shop for birthday presents on the family Mac…no information about where you visit on the Web, personal information you enter or pages you visit are saved or cached.
Oh, yeah — that’s what people are going to use Private Browsing for. Birthday presents. Sure.
Then again, I guess Apple can’t come out and say: “Go ahead and download all the raw Czech monkey porn your credit card can handle — the wife’ll never find out!”

Happy July! To June 2004, perhaps the worst month in modern recorded history, I say: Good riddance!
The Crabwalk.com Northern Tier Listening Tour 2004 is almost 100% a go. Plans are for me to be in our nation’s northeast from July 15 to 25. (Roughly. Management reserves the right, etc., etc.) Possible/likely stops: New York, New Haven, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Toledo. If you would like to grab a beer/coffee/meal and are in one of those cities, get in touch. Also, if you have a couch that’s just itching for blogger use, I’d be much appreciative.

Ah, the good old days — when people who hijacked planes were romantic heroes fighting the evils of colonialism! John Grimonprez’ “DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y” is a documentary of the revolutionary impulse and how television covered it in the ’60s and ’70s. Check out the trailer — the last segment is priceless.
From the same company: I’ve been meaning for years to track down a copy of The Rainbow Man/John 3:16, the doc about Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to wear a rainbow wig and hold up those “John 3:16” signs at football games in the ’80s. He didn’t turn out well. Trailer here.
Actually, if you’ve got the bandwidth, check out all the DVDs from Other Cinema. They’re great — I love this one.

Remember that Orange County gang rape trial I’ve been writing about? (Here, here, and here.) The one where the defense attorney seemed to be relying on the most gruesome tactics imaginable, claiming an unconscious (possibly drugged) 16-year-old girl was such a big slut that she basically deserved to be raped by three asshole boys?
Well, the sickening defense efforts appear to have worked. The jury has deadlocked and the judge has declared a mistrial. According a juror, the panel was leaning towards not guilty. All this despite the boys’ videotaping themselves in the act. Amazing.
If you want to know what sort of Boy Scouts we’re talking about here, check out this video of the rapists. (Oops, make that “alleged” rapists. Old journalism habits die hard.) I guess that’s the way they do it in the O.C.

How to sell milk to the good people of Iceland.