Monthly Archives: January 2004

Tend to your own garden

Posted on January 24, 2004 by

cauliflourMy dad has run a mean victory garden for a number of years … he grows just about everything — corn, tomatoes, onions, beans, bellpeppers, carrots, radishes, sunflowers, rubbarb, etc.

He just sent me a picture of this cauliflour head he picked today … the small orange item is an orange from his orange tree, present just to provide scale. Continue reading →

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Got no sugar, baby

Posted on January 24, 2004 by

I would love to blog a bunch this weekend, but I need to realign the anti-matter reactors and do a complete systems overhaul.

In the meantime, check out Jimmy Trageser’s hot ezine, Turbula. Continue reading →

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Something for your blog roll

Posted on January 23, 2004 by

All of you California news junkies will appreciate Timm Herdt’s new blog. Continue reading →

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Fought Down — a keeper

Posted on January 23, 2004 by

No shit. “Fought Down” is a fucking great CD.

If you like good music — even if your tastes doesn’t always run to country or rock — you will thank yourself from now until the freezing over of the Gulf of Mexico if you buy “Fought Down.”

Ken Layne and the Corvids have managed to cobble together 10 songs that are stellar, not just because the lyrics are witty and the melodies intelligent, but because the playing is as tight and spot on as any band can get, and the production shimmers like a Caribbean seashore.

Songs like “I Should Be That Guy,” “The Sun Don’t Shine,” “Mama, Take Another Stand,” “Here’s to You,” and the title track will bore deep into your cranium and refuse to leave.

Of course great songs make you want to sing along, but the best of these make you want to crawl inside of them and live there for a while.

I want to tell you that “Fought Down” reminds me in parts of Gram Parsons, and the Rolling Stones, and Steve Earle, and Uncle Tupelo, but I’m afraid if you don’t like any of those guys, it will prejudice against the CD. “Fought Down” reminds me of all of that, but it’s so much more than a summation of Ken Layne’s influences, and it’s so much more than just another country album — even as I think of songs like “Here’s to You” as a modern honky tonk classic — or a rock album, and it’s certainly more than just another piece of Americana schlock. It is music that will move you even if you generally shy away from the whole country vibe, but still speak to your hillbilly soul if that’s what you want.

Trust me on this — I’ve listened to tens of thousands of songs over the years, songs from every conceivable genre. What you hear on “Fought Down” is more than just music met to fit in a particular niche, to appeal to a certain demographic or snuggle up to a narrowly defined market. It is music created with a single goal: to please people who love music. Forget whatever labels you think might apply to “Fought Down.” Enjoy it because it is simply too good not to enjoy.

This is a CD that will be in my music collection forever. It will be part of a regular rotation of CDs I never grow tired of. It is simply that good. Continue reading →

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California may regulate video games

Posted on January 20, 2004 by

The most interesting thing about this article to me is that gamers, at least those quoted, seem to support state regulations to keep violent games out of the hands of children. Continue reading →

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Topix is topical

Posted on January 15, 2004 by

J.D. Lasica has turned me on to a great new news and media search engine — Topix.

Do I want the latest news from my old home town of El Cajon, Calif. Well, I just type in one of my old zip codes, and I have my own El Cajon news page — something SignOn San Diego doesn’t provide for me.

And it even provides other useful links, such as links to the San Diego Chargers and San Diego Padres, and the local weather, too boot.

What if my interest is not geographical, but topical. Let’s say I want to keep up on the latest news related to Britney Spears? Well, here’s my link. Honestly, I’m more interested in Dwight Yoakam or Elvis Costello, and while the news may not be as deep, it’s still there.

Nothing on Howard Owens, Ken Layne or Matt Welch, but type in Glenn Reynolds, and you get “blog news.”

You can also do cool topics like Aerospace-Defense, or Water Utilities, or Autos, but not UFOs, sadly. But you can do Journalism.

And the way URLs are constructed — this is the cool part — you can create a whole series of custom bookmarks for yourself. I don’t see where Topix is offering personalization yet, but if you know a little HTML, you can throw together your own bookmark page to check your favorite topics every day. I know I will.

Topix has Google beat hands down for home-page relevance of the latest stories, and it’s focus on topic-drive searches takes a level higher on usability.

The site’s focus on providing local news should give a little fright to online news publishers. Continue reading →

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Bookmark this site

Posted on January 12, 2004 by

The Annenberg Public Policy Center takes “fact check your ass” to a whole new level. (Via J.D. Lasica) Continue reading →

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Fought Down

Posted on January 12, 2004 by

Second listen, same as the first, only better.

Speaking of music … have you heard this yet? Continue reading →

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Buy this CD

Posted on January 11, 2004 by

First listen, first reaction … I’m glad I bought it, and you will be, too. Ken Layne & the Corvids have produced a masterful thing of sonic beauty. Great tunes, great musicianship, great mix — a masterpiece through and through. It will reward repeated listenings. Continue reading →

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Frank Deford’s errors

Posted on January 11, 2004 by

Glenn F. Bunting is a damn fine reporter — at least as I remember his work with the old San Diego edition of the LA Times, so when Bunting accuses Frank Deford of playing fast and loose with facts, I pay attention.

Especially when some of Deford’s mistakes are whoopers:

“Deford did it again!” he exclaims on the morning of Nov. 6, 2002. Ed says Deford reported that no woman had ever before played in a men’s professional golf tournament. He tells me that Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias competed in the men’s Los Angeles Open in 1938 and 1945.

Bunting has done his homework, and he has a long list gaffes by Deford.

But then, so what? Sports reporting has long been disparaged as the “toy department” of journalism. And his transgressions certainly pale compared to the journalistic crimes committed by Jayson Blair at the New York Times and Stephen Glass at the New Republic, two writers who passed off outright fiction as truth. Also, given the hundreds of articles and commentaries Deford has composed throughout his career, couldn’t he be viewed as a slick-fielding shortstop who occasionally lets a grounder through his legs?

On the other hand, not all of Deford’s troublesome passages were mere exaggerations. Many were flat out wrong and had not been corrected in print. So, with the assistance of Los Angeles Times researcher John Beckham and my golf instructor, I set out to compile a list of inaccurate statements that have appeared under Deford’s byline in the past several years.

We document about four dozen excerpts that contain factual errors or embellishment. Most come from Deford’s weekly commentaries and columns. That strikes me as a high number, particularly for a writer of Deford’s stature. I know how hard my colleagues labor to avoid mistakes—and how journalists who play loose with the facts do nothing to enhance the public’s trust in our profession.

I’ll leave it to you to read Bunting’s account of confronting Deford with his errors and misstatements. Continue reading →

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