PicoBlog

We love our Austin musicians, but can they hold their own against national acts? That was a no-brainer when you considered W.C. Clark, who brought Memphis soul to stinging Texas blues guitar, and lent authenticity to young blues turks on the Austin scene of the early ‘70s. Although he was known as “the Godfather of Austin Blues” for the guidance he gave so willingly to blues obsessives looking for the source, he was often overlooked in the pantheon, and was woefully underrated.

Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Saturday-morning Southern culture offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. If you’re new around here, why not subscribe? It’s free and all. Today: let’s talk about Waffle House, the glorious, maddening source of so much drama and so much bliss. Pass the syrup, please. [Note: your email service may clip this one early because of all the pics below. Make sure you click through to read the whole thing.

I read Michael Lewis’s new book, Going Infinite, last week. I wasn’t necessarily planning to, as I’m not hugely invested in the Sam Bankman-Fried saga, and even though I admire Lewis I don’t read every one of his books. But I wanted to read this one because it was universally panned by the critical media. I dove into the book rubbing my hands together, eager to see what brought down this giant of journalism in the eyes of the critical public.

I can understand why employees at The Daily Mail would feel a kinship with The Muppets. Like being a Muppet, working for the Mail titles must often feel a lot like having someone else’s hand up your arse and being made to parrot lines. The big difference is that Miss Piggy, Kermit, Gonzo and the gang have far more humanity and integrity that Jan Moir, Sarah Vine, Julian Glover and the ghoul parade in the Mail’s comment pages could ever achieve.

The hardest part about getting to Darkhan is getting to the Ulaanbaatar bus station. Which shouldn’t be that hard — it’s only five miles from downtown on the western edge of the city — but getting anywhere in Ulaanbaatar is hard since everyone drives everywhere, and since there’s only real one east-west road, Peace Avenue, taking a bus, or cab, isn’t much faster than walking. After that, it’s pretty simple, because the Mongolian long-distance bus system is remarkably extensive and organized, a relic from the more bureaucratic past that clashes, at least visually, with it’s current street-level chaos.

The contrarian in me wanted to like Phoenix, and for the first twenty minutes I did like Phoenix: The airplane view of a Dr. Seuss-ian landscape of jagged red rock mountains plopped randomly amongst an endless street grid, the clean spacious airport with the cheery cashier who swapped a twenty for singles to use on public transit, the free Sky Train that glided me to the light rail station, the cool afternoon air on the platform wrung empty of any oppressive east coast humidity.

If you stick to Ulaanbaatar’s center, as most visitors do, it wouldn’t strike you as that much different than any other post-Soviet city. It’s got the monumental plazas juxtaposed against newer glass towers. It’s got the Brezhnev-era apartment complexes, with their colossal tile motif-ed rectangular buildings. It’s got the wide boulevards, walled in by four-story apartment complexes, dotted with kiosks, and jammed with cars, trolleybuses, and pedestrians dressed against the cold.

Last month Walmart touted a plan to provide 740,000 employees with free smart phones meant to be used at work, though workers are liable for phone plan costs and replacing it if the phone is lost, stolen, or damaged. Walmart PR flacks pushed back on privacy concerns brought up in response to Walmart having access to phones thousands of workers will likely use for personal use. I obtained internal Walmart documents provided to employees as part of Walmart’s Digital Tools Agreement every employee must sign before receiving the company issued phone or using a personal device for the Walmart apps used by employees.

In lieu of this week’s funny story: The families of Nir Yitzhak Nir Yitzhak is a kibbutz in the northwestern Negev desert of Israel, established in 1949. Last year, it had a population of 633. On October 7, Nir Yitzhak, like so many communities in the south, was attacked by Palestinian militants from Gaza. Hamas brutally massacred seven Nir Yitzhak residents (some of whom were originally thought to have been kidnapped); injured two, and kidnapped five more (all from the same family).