It’s been something like six months since Joe Tone left the Dallas Observer to go work on a book about competitive archery. Finally, the paper named his replacement, and it’s a familiar name, at least to me. I worked with Joe Pappalardo — aka Joey Pops, aka Pop-a-Shot, aka Joe Bananas, aka Billy Ocean — when he was a staff writer there, I want to say in 2000. Here’s what I remember: he was a newspaper dork, he was a fair amount taller than I am, he had a beard, he occasionally wore a fedora (or maybe it was a trilby — a dumb hat, is what I’m getting at), he was a good reporter, and after he left, I think he wrote a book about sunflowers. Congratulations to Patrick Williams.
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