livingston awards finalist again

In all-about-me news, I’m a finalist again for the Livingston Awards, in the international-reporting category. The Livingstons are “the nation’s largest all-media, general reporting prizes” and go to the best work by a reporter under 35.
This is my third time as a finalist, and so far I’m batting a bit fat .000 when it comes to winning. This time I’m up for my Nigeria stories from last spring.
Congrats to all the other finalists, in particular my DMN colleague Paula Lavigne.

crabwalk redesign

Observant crabwalk.com readers will notice a redesign debuting today, the first in crabwalk.com’s nearly five-year (!) history. It’s not perfect yet — the comments section on entry pages is laid out kinda screwy, there are some sticky CSS problems in IE/Win, and the new look isn’t yet applied to all the subpages — but I figured I’d put it out there. Please let me know if anything looks screwy on your computer, or if you have general thoughts.
Some highlights of the new look:

  • The “Recently Played Tracks” section in the sidebar, which tells you the last 10 songs played on my home Mac’s iTunes. (I almost always have it on shuffle, so you’re generally seeing a random subset of my songs.)
  • The pulldown archives menu, which brings crabwalk.com’s technological sophistication all the way to 2002.
  • The “Most Recent Stories” in the sidebar, which automagically pulls my three most recent stories for The Dallas Morning News.
  • A wider column width, which makes it much easier to include photos and video in posts. And, with that, larger type for us older types.
  • A much-disputed increase in white space, which means it looks better on big monitors, although potentially worse on small ones.

Comments, criticisms, and plaudits all equally welcome.

MP3 Monday: May 1, 2006

Welcome to a new feature here on crabwalk.com: MP3 Monday. Every Monday, if all goes according to plan, I’ll post three MP3s, with a little background on each. They’ll be available for download for a week, or until the next MP3 Monday goes up.
As it happens, I’ve been listening to a lot of early-’70s soul/jazz/funk the last few months, so be prepared — there likely won’t be as many whiny white English majors as there were on my last music-sharing endeavor, the CD Mix of the Month Club. Not that there’s anything wrong with whiny white English majors!
1. “Misdemeanor” by Foster Sylvers. Single from 1973.
The R&B family act The Sylvers was meant to be a Southern copy of the Jackson 5, with Foster playing the role of Michael (here, at age 11). He even kind of looked like MJ.
This track has all the bounce of early ’70s Michael, but none of the pedophilia of ’90s and ’00s Michael. I found Foster on the excellent Saint Etienne mix CD The Trip, which pretty well defines “groovy.”
Foster now spends his days drawing. Ahem.
2. “Car Trouble” by All Girl Summer Fun Band. From All Girl Summer Fun Band (2002).
Truly, could there be a worse situation for a twentysomething woman than to have her heart broken by both her boyfriend and her car? Maybe it’s not cool to still love lofi DIY twee — it does smell of 1994 — but these 99 seconds are good for headbopping. Here’s a video for the song.
Trivia: AGSFB’s Kim Baxter starred in the original video for the Shins’ “New Slang.” Of course, longtime readers already know that. (Yes, I know I had the band name wrong back in 2003. Sue me.) Ms. Baxter also wishes she could get a good mortgage.
3. “Sun Song” by jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. From the album Shukuru (1983).
Sanders was a sax understudy to John Coltrane, and his career was mostly in the vein of Coltrane’s later period — spacier and more spiritual.
He did much fine work — here’s “You’ve Got To Have Freedom” from 1980’s Journey to the One to prove it — but “Sun Song” isn’t anything special musically. The greatness comes in the guest vocal by Leon Thomas, who alternates baritone verses with a bizarre and wonderful warble/yodel. It’s downright otherworldly.
(For the record, I came across this via Journey to the Dawn, a compilation of tracks from California jazz label Theresa Records.)
And, although I plan to have three songs in each edition of MP3 Monday, here’s a bonus track in honor of the first go-round: Stevie Wonder‘s cover of the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out,” from Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Stevie shifts a relationship song to a optimistic take on race relations. I have heard rumors that there are still people in the world, perhaps in Mongolia, who do not yet realize the scope of Stevie Wonder’s genius. I hope to remedy that.
One of my favorite parts of the old CD Mix club was hearing people’s thoughts on the songs, so please speak up in the comments.

dallas fashion, circa 1971

Baggies!Ripped from the Dallas Morning News archives: Evidence that we were just as fashion-conscious in 1971 as we are today.
“In case you missed them, baggies are the latest look for men. They’re red-hot right now because they’re coming along when there is definitely a need for a change in this category of men’s wear. Baggies are fresh, and present a new appearance. They’re versatile enough to be worn as sportswear or you could add a sports coat — providing it’s the right look (wide lapels, shape and one- or two-button front, etc.).”
Also recommends a “wide belt and a pair of high-heel two-tone oxfords” and “a light-weight vest and jacket to present the layered look, which will be an important concept all over the fashion world.” And if you read to the end, you’ll find proof that baggies can snag you “a couple of shapely blondes”!

don knotts is the love god?

The trailer for the 1969 Don Knotts vehicle The Love God? (The question mark is part of the title.)
Don plays Abner Audubon Peacock, who — if you only looked at the trailer — appears to be a rather plain man who is for some reason found astoundingly sexy by women. But the actual plot involves Abner becoming the king of a soft-core porn empire, a Hugh Hefner clone. Wonder why that couldn’t get into the trailer?
The band in the trailer is called Orange Colored Sky and they take outsized pride in their appearance.
I may have to go track the movie down, since I loved Don Knotts movies when I was a kid. For some reason they were always on TV on Saturday afternoons, after the cartoons. How to Frame a Figg! The Shakiest Gun in the West! The Reluctant Astronaut! The Ghost and Mr. Chicken! And my absolute childhood favorite, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, in which Don becomes a fish and helps hunt German submarines. Man, I loved that Mr. Limpet around age 7.