News bites

1. Crosley-inspired headline over at Slate?

2. A very short EP story will be in the debut issue of Gigantic.

3. Guy Trebay:

This society can be very unforgiving, so I stopped drinking a long time ago,” said Kenny Kenny, his slender hourglass shape accentuated by black tights and a custom-made Mr. Pearl corset. For a touch of extravagance, he had added a fur headpiece that made him look as if he had collided with a stoat.

(From Dzyd Jane)

Name change 2

LOS ANGELES — The excavation for a parking garage near the La Brea tar pits here has yielded the site’s first intact mammoth skeleton as well as a trove of other bones that could double the size of the site’s already large collection of fossils from the last ice age....

The mammoth, which excavators have named Zed, is an adult male that died in its late 40s. It was found in a separate part of the garage site from the other tar-encased fossils and is complete except for a rear leg.—NYT

The wurst intentions

Dieter Roth makes sausage out of books and periodicals he doesn't like. He gave his first "literaturwurst" to Daniel Spoerri.

(From Dzyd Shelley)

Also: Birds with backpacks!

(From Dzyd Jane)

Herbal essence

The first wave arrived in October 2005, drawing thousands of New Yorkers onto the streets for a lively debate. Was it maple syrup? Caramel? A freshly baked pie? But as quickly as it arrived, it had vanished. Then, last month, the smell returned.

Both times, the city’s police and 311 information lines were flooded with calls. Many feared bioterrorism cloaked in an pleasant aroma.

On Thursday, the city announced that the mystery had been solved. The source of the odor was a plant in North Bergen, N.J., which processes seeds of the herb fenugreek to produce fragrances.

—NYT

Snarge at large

The National Museum of Natural History in Washington may not leap to mind when both engines on a high-tech plane quit at 3,200 feet. But around the corner from the stuffed African elephant that greets the visiting hordes of schoolchildren, down a back hall from the employee bike rack, a staff of four in the Feather Identification Lab took in samples from 4,600 bird-plane collisions, or bird strikes, last year. Arriving mostly in sealed plastic bags, these included birds’ feet, whole feathers or tiny bits of down, and pulverized bird guts, known as snarge. —NYT

Gridiron grumblings

I. Chain reaction:

Since 1906, football teams have needed to gain 10 yards for a first down. From the sideline, far from the action, two sticks connected by a chain have measured the required distance, their placement estimated by eyesight.

For a game of inches, it has never seemed an exact science. For a game long advanced by technological innovation, from helmets to video replays, the chains are antiques. Dozens of inventions have been patented to improve or abolish them.

Yet the chains stand the test of time, if not distance. —NYT

II. And from ESPN:

Sunday was the Single Most Interesting Day in NFL History, both for the numerous high points and for the Single Worst Game Ever Played, supplied by the Dallas Cowboys. Before we get to the particulars, let me make sure you know about the player of the day. I speak, of course, of Ramzee Robinson. In the second half at Green Bay, Robinson, a Lions defensive back, was penalized for taunting. The Lions at that point were 0-15 and within sight of attaining the designation they now hold, that of worst NFL team ever. After a Green Bay incompletion, Robinson danced around, pointing at himself and taunting Packers receiver James Jones. A player for the worst-ever NFL team was called for taunting in the game in which that team reached 0-16.

(Both via Dzyd Jane)

Annals of running

But for a truly one-of-a-kind gift, nothing could beat what Michael Chambers received for his 40th birthday on Thursday: a world-class runner from Kenya for a day...Kiplagat was paid $400 to run with Chambers and have lunch with his family. ...

They ran eight miles, at a sturdy 7-minute-per-mile pace. It was quick for Chambers, but Kiplagat usually trains by running 10 or more miles at a 5:45-per-mile pace.

“We’re back,” Chambers said as the two entered the apartment again. “I won.”

Chambers was drenched in rain and sweat. Kiplagat looked as if he had done little more than climb a flight of stairs.

“I was pushing him a little bit,” Kiplagat said. “I wanted to see how fast he was. I was listening to his breathing. He was not breathing as hard as I thought. He looked very strong.”

Chambers noted just how quietly Kiplagat moves. His breath and his footsteps never got heavy, he said.

“It’s literally like running next to a cheetah,” Chambers said. —NYT

(From Dzyd Jane)

Pryor arrests

This is not an Ouroboros, but should be:

PRYOR, Okla. – A dog waiting in a car while at a car wash slipped the vehicle into gear and drove in a loop before the car came to a stop. Pryor police officer Brent Crittenden said the dog's owner was washing the vehicle when the 70-pound pit bull jumped on the dash and somehow shifted the car into reverse.

(Via Jane)

Wildcat strikes

“I’m just like any other coach, I’ve always tried to steal ideas,” said Malzahn, now the offensive coordinator at Tulsa, which entered Saturday with the highest-scoring offense among major college teams. “We were looking for ways to get the best players on the field.” —NYT

(This piece also features someone named "Houston Nutt.")

(Via Jane)

South Pacific: The Football Game

A pipeline from the Pacific Island kingdom of Tonga has delivered a Polynesian influence to this Texas town’s churches, markets and championship football team, which won state titles in 2005 and 2007 among Texas’ largest schools.... The proximity of Euless to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which is located partly within the city limits, has brought a remarkable diversity to this town of 54,000.
Thirteen of the 24 Trinity players who have made all-state since the 1980s, and 16 members of the current roster, are of Tongan descent.
“When you think of Texas high school football, you think of country kids, farm kids; you don’t expect to see players from the South Pacific,” said Sioeli Pauni, who has two sons on the Trinity team.
The parents of many players work at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport as baggage handlers and food-service employees, facilitating affordable travel on special family occasions. Others are self-employed as landscapers, carpenters and masons. Meanwhile, their sons are resolute linemen and linebackers, who weigh from 200 to 333 pounds and find in football a brisk physical exertion similar to the Tongan national sport of rugby.
Each time he knocks a defensive lineman on his back, Uatakini Cocker, a 6-foot-2, 297-pound offensive tackle, screams: “Mate ma’a Tonga,” meaning, “I will die for Tonga.” Later, the playful Cocker said, he often has to explain his heritage to opposing players and fans in this typical postgame conversation:
“Are you Mexican?”
“Polynesian.”
“Samoan?”
“Tongan.”
“O.K., because you would be a very big Mexican.” —NYT

(Via Dzyd Jane)

Math rock

I. Via Three Percent: Books as art? Artists' books? Wait till I put my eyeballs back in my head.



II. OK people, this is what blogging's all about—part II! All journalists worth their salt—salts?!—know how to slap together a hot lead...or as I spell it, lede!...but what about a great closing line? The Light Reader and I went back and forth on this last week...Today's Times magazine has a great one by Virginia Heffernan! She uses exclamation points a lot!

III. Ask and ye shall receive! The Dizzies Music Supplement wondered what bands have written songs with their names as titles...and Dizzyheads chimed in. Douglas and Scott each had a triple play of sorts, the former with Talk Talk's "Talk Talk" on their platter Talk Talk (sing it with me: "All you do is talk talk...talk talk, talk talk...all you do is talk talk!"), and the latter with three variants of "Body Count" on Body Count's Body Count.

IV. Ask and ye shall receive, part II: I mentioned how a Sarah Johns song reminded me of New-York Ghost theme-composer John's early work...and he has kindly re-recorded one of the songs I was reminded of, "Every One of My Tears." (Check it out on Team Knucklehead's MySpace page.) It's fierce! And the bridge is as loopy and grand as I remembered:

Take all the tears I cried
Add them up and then divide
By all the times you lied
And you'd still have less than one...

Is this what the kids call "math rock"?

V. Via Jane:

They were two of the distinctive American voices, born 97 miles apart as the catbird flies. Red Barber and Mel Allen spoke the language of baseball in Southern cadences to Northern ears. ... “Well, I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” Barber blurted when Cookie Lavagetto broke up Bill Bevens’s no-hitter and won a 1947 World Series game with two outs in the ninth. —NYT