HumidCity

I’m tired and still have work to do tonight, but I just came across this and thought I should share it:

David Bonds, the 19-year-old acquitted last month of the 2006 killing of a popular New Orleans musician, is wanted for a shooting early Sunday morning, a police spokeswoman said Monday. Bonds got into an argument with another man at around 5:00 a.m., and as the fight escalated Bonds shot the man in the torso, according to police. The shooting victim is in critical but stable condition at a local hospital, said Officer Jonette Williams, spokeswoman for the New Orleans Police Department.

Two eyewitnesses saw the shooting, which occurred in the 700 block of Canal Street, at the corner of Canal and St. Charles Avenue, according to a police news release. Detectives have obtained an attempted murder arrest warrant for Bonds.

After an emotional trial, Bonds was acquitted in April of shooting Hot 8 Brass Band drummer Dinerral Shavers. Bonds was accused of shooting into Shavers’ car as he drove away from a heated confrontation between the musician’s stepson and a friend and other teenagers on Dumaine Street.

It just doesn’t seem to end. Comments?
- Bigezbear

“DC Madam” Kills Herself, Police Say … Vitty Cent can rest in peace tonight.

- Bigezbear

High school kids have it hard enough without having to answer to a principal like this one in Memphis.

A public high school principal who posted the names of two boys on a list of students believed to be couples, revealing their relationship to their parents as well as other students and teachers, violated the students’ constitutional right to freedom of association, the American Civil Liberties Union charged Tuesday. …

In September of 2007, the principal at Hollis F. Price Middle College High told teachers she wanted the names of all student couples, “hetero and homo,” because she wanted to monitor them personally to prevent students from engaging in public displays of affection.

The two students now represented by the ACLU, Andrew and Nicholas (who have asked that their last names not be revealed), were two A students who had been seeing each other for a short time and were attempting to keep their relationship quiet and private.

The principal heard about them through another student, then wrote their names on a list she posted next to her desk, in full view of anyone who entered her office. …

Although the boys had never been observed by any school staff engaging in any sort of display of affection, the principal called Nicholas’s mother Nichole.

According to Nichole, the principal said things like “Did you know your son is gay?” repeatedly and went on to say that she didn’t like gay people and wouldn’t tolerate homosexuality at her school.

Both students say they’ve had to deal with verbal harassment from both teachers and students since word got out around the school about their principal’s actions.

Now if this weren’t bad enough, there’s more - and it concerns us:

According to Nicholas, he also suffered another consequence of the principal’s discrimination. He had submitted extensive paperwork and several recommendations from teachers for a school trip to New Orleans to assist in rebuilding efforts.

Having a long history of community service, he was considered a shoo-in to be selected to go before the incident, but then a teacher told Nicholas some faculty were afraid he might “embarrass the school” or engage in “inappropriate behavior.”

A few days later, another student who hadn’t even applied to go on the trip was selected in his place.

What the hell do they think this high school kid was going to do in this evil city? I can imagine. And I have to wonder about the kind of people who think up this stuff. Besides, aren’t these kids chaperoned on their treks down south to help us rebuild? Pathetic.

- Bigezbear

So I’m doing a little publicity for Someone Bought the House on the Island, and I send three photographs to the local Fourth Estate. I break them down into three emails because the pictures are large. My first email reads:

Dear [Name Withheld], Timm Holt has asked me to submit some photos to you from the Saints and Sinners Festival production of Someone Bought the House on the Island. Because of their size, I will send them individually. There are three for the time being.

This first shot features So-and-So and So-and-So.

Thanks for all your help.

My second email reads:

This second photo again features So-and-So and So-and-So.

I get a response to this second note that says:

Who are these people?

And I think to myself, Well, I don’t really know. I can’t say that I have any personal knowledge of them, or insight about them, beyond their names (which I found on Stageclick.com - and you can, too).

I don’t know if they are good people or if they are bad people or if, like most of us, they are somewhere in between. Perhaps they are fathers with children they love and adore or maybe they are fugitives on the run from some local, state, or Federal governmental agency. I just don’t know. Existentially, perhaps I can never, may never, ever know.

It might be that the older man experienced certain difficulties in his youth, some heartache perhaps, a lost love. It may be that the younger man is headed for some disaster, his bloated, bullet-ridden body to be found someday floating in the river. But I can’t be sure. I’m sorry. I feel so inadequate. Forgive me.

I soon get a response from my third email in which I had written:

This final photo includes, clockwise from the left:

• This One
• That One
• The Other One
• Another One, and
• The Final One

Now I’m done. Thanks again.

The response asks me:

I assume the names are list, (sic) left to right.

Well, no, they weren’t (aren’t?), but I wrote back, changing the order to meet her needs.

This person I am corresponding with is a person who works as an editor on a daily newspaper in a kind of major city (well, it once was), and she expects me to take her into my arms, feed, and burp her.

Come to think of it, this pretty much explains the state of the American media today, doesn’t it? Just spoon feed them what you want them to eat, and they’ll spit it up or poop it right back out while you sit over them, cooing about what good boys and girls they are.

- Bigezbear

A certain professor is riding high these days by skimming along on the jet stream left in the wake of a particular local entertainer.

It seems he is missing the point of New Orleans’ love affairs with ladies who could never exist in real life. Women like Chris Owens, Becky Allen, and Varla Jean Merman are not real. They are constructs built from various New Orleans elements we love about ourselves. So we respond. We’re helpless not to.

Chris Owens’ real gift is for entertaining people in a way that empowers them to entertain themselves. Some years back, when I was younger and knew so much more than I do today, I looked down on her as a joke. Then this one time, my older brother and his wife came to town to visit and spontaneously dragged me into her joint on Bourbon Street. Oh, how I tried to maintain my dignity, but I didn’t stand a chance. I didn’t have what it takes to resist her. By the time she pulled my brother onstage with her to sing a duet, I was laughing, clapping, and jiggin’ in my chair.

I realized then all you have to do is just sit back, relax, and let her do her job. She’ll soon have you feeling all good about yourself (like this little guy).

I ask you, what’s wrong with that?

- Bigezbear

You go on plodding along from day to day when - bam! - another award thingy comes along, and you find yourself back in the last car of another roller coaster ride all over again. The Storer Boone Awards.

This one is special, though. The people who nominate and then select the winners are all part of the New Orleans theatre community.

And, man, did our little troop of downtown strolling players rack up. To Do Productions garnered a total of 12 nominations, and Valhalla is all over the place with five of our six actors getting nods and our beloved Donnie Jay being recognized for producing and designing the quick-change costumes. Nice.

Even the dick sow - I mean “show” - got a handful of nominations. To Do done good.

There was also a cherry on top of all this whipped cream: Louie Crowder copped a nomination for Cobalt Blue as Best Original Play for 2007.

- Bigezbear

Sometime today, I sent out a little “press release” about a photography exhibit opening this Friday. I sent this thing out to an email list I keep of people who have somehow (perhaps inadvertently) rubbed shoulders with me at some point in their lives. I send these things out on occasion whether these people want to hear from me or not. It’s no big deal.

I got this one response, though, that’s been sitting on my shoulder ever since I got it. My friend, Irene, wrote:

“I guess you haven’t had any trouble figuring out what to do since retirement!! I would love to come. I just had chemo again today, so I don’t know how I will be Friday. Please keep me posted, though. I only have one more chemo.”

The thing is, I know Irene is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. I’ve known since she found out about it. But I keep forgetting about it.

I keep forgetting about it because, well, because Irene let’s me forget about it.

I’ve known Irene for more than thirty years. She was a fixture at the agency I went to work for in my callow youth. She was a veteran, a pro. She was one of the people there who took me under their wings and taught me what was what, and who protected me from the kind of crap that could wear me down and turn me into one of those bureaucrats you’re used to running up against in the world of so-called “governmental service”. And I never became one of those.

Irene laughed all the time. She still does. Being Jewish, she always saw herself as the butt of God’s great cosmic practical joke. There was always a cartoon cloud hovering over her shimmery sun-blond hair. No matter. Her glasses had windshield wipers fastened atop their Groucho Marx nose and mustache.

I still lose control every time I remember the time she stood up at her desk in the middle of the common work area to announce, “Um, I think I have to get out of here. My water just broke.” There she stood in a puddle as our office manager rushed over, shouting, “Somebody get her out of here before we get a complaint.”

Her daughter was born later that afternoon. She was back in a few weeks.

I always expect her to be back in a few weeks even though she retired several years before I did, and I seldom see her face to face. In all that time, she’s insisted on keeping me in her life with an occasional email updating me on this or that custard pie being lobbed at her face.

She’ll be alright. She still has those glasses, and she still laughs all the time.

But sometimes … I don’t know … with all this crap we’re all dealing with every day … all the crime, the incompetence and criminality of our leadership [sic], the arrogance of power …

In the midst of all this Post-K crap, there’s my ‘Rene coping with plain old cancer.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to stop, sit down a minute, think about it all, and appreciate that Old Bastard’s punchline.

We’ll none of us manage to dodge that final pie in the face.

- Bigezbear

According to WDSU:

Newspaper reports from Baton Rouge claim newly elected Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal–who ran on a platform touting ethics reform and tougher ethics laws in state government–is being investigated for a possible ethical breach.

State investigators are trying to determine if Jindal failed to disclose more than $100,000 in campaign contributions, according to The Advocate in Baton Rouge.

According to the report, The State Board of Ethics ordered a public hearing to explore the charges.

In an update from the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Gov. Bobby Jindal faces state ethics charges for failing to timely disclose more than $100,000 in campaign aid he received from the state Republican Party.

The Louisiana Board of Ethics ordered a public hearing to explore charges that Jindal and his governor’s campaign committee violated the state’s Campaign Finance Disclosure Act.

Timmy Teepell, Jindal’s chief of staff, said Thursday night that Jindal would pay the fine.

Jindal failed to “accurately disclose in-kind contributions” from the state GOP, according to a Tuesday letter notifying Jindal of the reporting problem.

The Advocate on Thursday obtained a copy of the letter.

Jindal was flying to Washington, D.C., according to his press secretary, Melissa Sellers, who said he could not immediately be reached for comment.

Jindal campaign accountant William Potter of Baton Rouge said a mistake was made.

“We are not trying to deny anything,” said Potter. “It’s an error.”

The ethics board set a July 10 public hearing.

If a violation is found, the board may impose civil penalties of $100 per day, up to a maximum of $2,500, for each day the report was not timely filed.

Jindal would be exposed to the full $2,500 fine because of the lapse in time of reporting.

Potter said he is recommending that Jindal settle the issue prior to hearing.

Potter said Teepell, who was Jindal’s campaign chief, failed to notify those preparing the campaign finance report of the party expenditures for Jindal.

The state GOP spent $118,264 between June 4 and June 28 in mail expenses on behalf of the Jindal campaign.

Teepell said the Republican Party did not submit invoices to the campaign showing the expenditures on Jindal’s behalf. So, he said, there was no way of knowing for reporting purposes.

“After the omission came to light, the money was promptly reported and the party started filing in-kind expenditure reports with the campaign,” Teepell said.

“We are all about transparency,” said Teepell.

Transparency … ?

When caught - maybe.

- Bigezbear

That’s the number of vacancies in the LSU Hospital System, the entity in charge of Louisiana’s charity hospitals.

Unfortunately, those vacancies cannot be filled at this time because Piyush Jindal has imposed a hiring freeze on all state agencies, regardless of need. I suppose it’s a matter of ethics, don’t you know.

I imagine since he couldn’t finish dismantling our healthcare system during the time he was Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals under Mike Foster, he’s going to do what he can to lower the census now. The man has the empathy and soul of a rock.

No, that’s unfair to the rock.

- Bigezbear