Dear Steve Blow:

Sorry about that...I was well, trying to use my camera phone to do um, you know.... this.

Commenters ...

Commenters over on TDMN's Metro blog are kind of eating Steve Blow's known-to-be-extensive, two-hour lunch.

Words May Fail Me...

Dear Steve Blow: In the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, asphinctersayswhat? Love, Me P.S. Some people liked it, but are legally not allowed to put a ring on it. Some people like it, but should definitely not put a ring on it.

Here's a New Phrase for You, Mr. Blow:

Dear Lord Baby Jesus. I sat down Saturday to read your column, because I didn't have a bag of hammers to hit myself with, and the upper left hand corner of the Metro section seemed like an acceptable substitute. I guess I should be glad that you've gone back to your raison d'etre, the "golly gee" column, but this giant pile of Jenny poo just about made me spew my Cheerios, old-school Rodrigue style. I can only imagine you sitting at your desk, after coming back from a long lunch somewhere downtown, where you clutched Steve Harris' hand tightly all the way there and all the way back, so you wouldn't get lost. "Holy smokes!" you thought. "I've got to write a column, and it's almost 1:30. How will I ever make it back to Sunnyvale by 3:30 at this rate?" So then you scrambled for that special pad you keep in your right desk drawer, the Lisa Frank one with the unicorn on it and "Steve's Column Ideas: Don't Touch!" written in purple sparkle pen on the front. You thumb through it... "Screw Angela Hunt over with an elephant column...No, did that already. Write about the doo-dads on the traffic lights....no, shoot, did that, too. Oh, oh..OH - here it is - the DOOZY - words my grandpa uses, and how I miss them." "How'd I miss that?" you wondered aloud. Indeed, how did you? I mean, it was written in bold letters in red Sharpie across two pages, with "Best Idea EVER" next to it. And then you sat down at your computer, bemoaning the fact that it's not an IBM Selectric, I'm sure, and proceeded to pen an homage to the words "whatchamacallit," "doodad," "dealybob," "doojigger" and "doohickey." And then came this graph:

We should resurrect "right smart," too. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It's a useful measure of quantity – more than "picayunish" but not quite "boocoos."

Boocoos? Seriously? Boocoos. Boocoos. Boocoos. I'm gonna let you all ponder that for a second. Steve, the word is French. Yes, it maybe bastardized in the South as the way you spelled it, but it's still a French word. It's beaucoup, or beaucoups. It means an abundance, or wealth of. You can still hear it said - in France. Maybe, possibly in Louisiana, too. And Quebec, eh? Or in any high school French class. In other words, there are beaucoup places to learn that beacoup is a French word that is still used around the world, wherever the French language is spoken. Alan Peppard, I would've saved some of this for you, but Uncle Barky already got to you. But to the GuideLive editors: Really? Nearly 3/4 of the front page, and all of the back - for that? Really?

New, Relevant Columnists Needed

As a writer, I know we can be awfully hard on each other sometimes. But we're also the first ones to actually express appreciation for a truly well-written piece, I think, and the first ones to realize just how difficult it may have been to put all the pieces together because, well, we've made the sausage before ourselves. Which is why I can say this: Steve Blow, you just may be a giant ignoramus who violated basic Journalism 101 with your column this week. If what Dallas Councilwoman Angela Hunt says is true, this column is the height of skewed unfairness and smug buffoonery. Not only did you not contact her prior to print, after she took the time to contact you and explain herself, you chose to leave the column as is - both in the print edition and the Web edition, at least, as of 8:45 p.m. You even have the opportunity to make it right in a blog post, but lemme see ... nope. But this is just a drop in the bucket of my discontent with TDMN columnists and opinion writers. My friends and I - all educated, late 20s to mid-30s - frequently talk about the things we like, and the things we detest about the Dallas Morning News. More often than not, the increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant columnists and opinion writers irk the group. Perhaps there is an audience for people enthralled with the doodads on traffic lights, people frightened by everyone in Dallas (Hi, Rod!) and people who like hard-to-follow babble about DART Man. I don't know. But I do know there's a giant chunk of people out here who are rather disenfranchised by the Metro column offerings of the Dallas Morning News - and these are people who are dedicated readers of the dead-tree version, the kind the TDMN needs. A column or opinion piece that inspires debate is one thing - a column or op-ed piece that inspires disgust or complete disinterest is another.