HumidCity

First off, I really hope that only Loki is heretofore required to begin his posts with the disclaimer:

Regular readers are well aware that I, like each of the other writers on HumidCity, am the sole person responsible for my own words. In no way do they reflect the opinions of any of my employers or clients.

However, if I must use the disclaimer, I can thankfully state that my opinions DO reflect those of my employer, as I employe myself. If you’ve never tried it, have a go some day…

So here’s my moment of levity. (At least according to my personal sense of humor) its too good not to share. I’ve been ordering our gallery promotion cards from the same company for the last 3 months. I’ve been more than satisfied with their quality, prices and turnaround time - a holy trinity in the world of last minute designer/gallery owners. However, I’ve noticed that they’ve changed their online status update terminology each of the three times I’ve ordered from them.

For instance, looking at my account now, the two completed orders listed say under the ’status’ menu, respectively:

“Off Press”
“Completed/Archived”

Both were printed and delivered.

Sunday I ordered an extra batch of cards for this month’s shows and checked in on the status today, expecting to read some variation of “printed” or “in press”. I did not expect to see this:

“Status: Job Bag Printed (Imposition Department)”

While I’m still stumped by “job bag”, I have now learned, thanks to Google, that one definition of imposition is actually a printing term. OK.

But for some irrational reason, the term “Imposition Department” brings to mind the image of my poor design stretched out on a rack in a dungeon during the Inquisition. Or stuck for hours in a closet with the TSA.

Perhaps I’m just a bit paranoid?

Moment of Levity Imposed.

Peace Out -

NOGoddess (aka Andrea)�

 While this classic Abbott & Costello routine is a hilarious example of confusion and inability to communicate, the Criminal Investigations of the NOPD are not as funny.

 Besides the burglarized 5th District Station, we also have a report from earlier this week, in which an NOPD Crime Scene Investigator leaves obvious bullets unrecovered, because he forgot his screw driver, and “just got back from vacation.”

The assailant, who fired five shots at the heads of a father & son, sitting in their car, has been charged with aggravated battery, rather than attempted murder. Watch the video of this here. 

Video courtesy of WDSU.com

Lord David
Pirate & Artist
Skull Club
New Orleans

?

That is what John McCain called Senator Obama’s campaign staffers pointing out that he has not once, but twice voted against and 8/29 Commission. Now both Senators are politicians, which means I don’t trust either one of them. This is why I love the Annenberg Political Fact Check. A non partisan group that documents the realities behind the political posturing.

Today they addressed this one. Here is the summary, once you’re done click the link at the bottom for full documentation with sources.:

McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had “voted for every investigation.”

McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information.

The McCain campaign accused the Obama campaign of “tired negative attacks” for pointing out and documenting McCain’s gaffe.

Read all the details at Katrina Kerffufle.

A good friend shared this. I pass it on to you;

“Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation … It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
RFK, 1968

R.I.P - RFK, June 5, 1968

�

i.

a man in lakeview was shot and killed by nopd after he first threatened fema workers who were “evicting” him from his fema trailer and then brandished a gun at police officers. the police claim he was a mentally ill man who was “off his meds,” but I wonder if that’s any reason to play judge, jury and executioner. mentally ill? who isn’t nowadays? shouldn’t law enforcement be handling (and shooting) the real crooks, you know, the ones in the suits who put the city in formaldehyde–infested fema trailers to begin with?

ii.

meanwhile my trailer eviction notice from the city of new orleans sits unanswered and ignored on my countertop as do my prescriptions. hmmm… go ahead punk…do you feel lucky?

iii.

my pothole is now the home for ducks PIC HERE… well, at least it was for a few hours. does that mean it’s no longer a pothole, but rather a topographical body of water to be registered with rand and mcnally? unfortunately or fortunately, the baby ducks were rescued ala’ evicted by a concerned neighbor who thought a) they might get hit by a car, b) they might be eaten by pigeons, c) they might get shot by the nopd. unfortunately, the mother was thrown into a quacking seizure for the next three hours (situationally induced mental illness) … and the ducklings probably won’t survive the night in unneeded and unrequested human care.

I wonder what we can learn from these random accidents of unkindness?

sic itur ad astra?

BLOG THIS!

phfred@notthat.com

There’s a cinder-block wall on Burgundy Street, just the other side of the Press Street Tracks that divide the Marigny from the Bywater. It’s privately owned, and on private property. During the early part of May, this year, the owner gave permission ( in writing, I’m told) to a couple of local artists to paint that wall, on the side that faces away from traffic, that is seen from the Marigny, especially the XO Gallery at Dauphine & Press Streets.

 It was beautiful. Magnificent work. Sort of stylized graphics, painted with the methodology of grafitti artists, but so cool looking that people would pull over on the shoulder and take pictures, stand on the grassy knoll and stare, a really amazing vision along a stretch of dismal railroad track.

 Now Fred Radtke has painted the entire wall a bland messy grey. Not even all the same grey. It looks like somebody shit on the wall in black & white. It’s horrible and depressing. It’s also private property, commisioned art, on privately owned land.

 How long is this asshole going to be allowed to deface other peoples’ property in the name of the City of New Orleans?  This was a crime; legally, morally and artistically. Somebody please, throw this moronic bastard in jail for while, and let him paint over the scribbling in the day room at Central Lock-up. Those motherlovers will beat his frickin ass like he deserves.

Lord David
Pirate & Artist
Skull Club
New Orleans  

?

Hurricane season is now upon us yet again, that first day when everyone walks around with a little extra tension in their stance. We all get a bit of a twinge at the 1st of June these days. There is a shadow behind people’s eyes.

Canned goods, and axe in the attic, and jugs of water still get stashed around the place as every year. The weather report trumps other news even though we know Nash Roberts was the only one who could really predict those swirling storm patterns. We act tough and say it doesn’t frighten us, even as our blood momentarily chills. Wind and rain are known quantities, but now so is rising water and the hint of that last is what gives you that little adrenalin kick.

The Dirty South Bureau brings us some quick notes on May 30, a snippet of life in NOLA prior to our third Hurricane Season sans effective flood control. To really get a guage of how we feel rolling into this new storm season you have to read this brilliant deconstruction of of our halfwit Mayor’s state of the city speech, that appeared in the Huffington Post. Water is not the only thing we are in danger of drowning in, especially when Nagin eludes his keepers and finds a microphone.

I truly wonder if the self proclaimed righteous might actually have something. You know the ones like Rev. Hagee, McCain’s albatros, who said that the levee failure was god’s judgement on all of the sinners (read as gays, dope fiends, and freaks) in New Orleans. What if Katrina and all the others following her are really god’s way of trying to tell C. Ray to shut up? Ray delivers aspeech, Tropical Storm Arthur forms (a full day before the season’s start). Makes sense to me.

Nah, on second thought that can’t be it. We would have been pulverized by nonstop winds and storm surges if it were a heavenly response to the towering imbecility of Mr. Verbal Diarrhea! Oh well, most arguments tend to fall to pieces once the divine angle is tapped. Sure fire way to rob a conversation of good sense and critical thinking.

Tis is the third one. The third season since the flooding. Where do things in the city stand now? I think Bayou St John David sums it up pretty well in part of his recent post about checkgate:

It doesn’t matter whether the mayor himself is completely honest or thoroughly corrupt, you simply can’t have a complete lack of transparency combined with a spendthrift attitude combined with ambitious plans to make everything bigger and better without having more corruption than the city can possibly afford. I’m not so naive as to think that we could possibly have a corruption-free rebuilding process in modern America or in any imaginable free world, but we can only afford so many cost overruns without the city looking like the Spanish Plaza before the World’s Fair or like the main library looked within twenty years of its opening.

So if the city is not doing so hot at least there should be improved flood protection and rebuilt levees, right Mr. Man? Right near all of those rebuilt homes, right? Sadly, no.

“The Parisian May was an explosion of revolutionary lyricism. The Prague Spring was the explosion of post-revolutionary skepticism.”

Roger Cohen’s op-ed piece in today’s (05-29-08) New York Times uses that quote above from Milan Kundera as its central argument about the momentous events of 1968. While Cohen’s piece has more than a whiff of that toxic intoxicator better known as “nostalgia”, he prevents the pervasive creep of the maudlin by admitting his predisposition to romanticize the time, and, on the positive side, the column gives a sense of what is wrong right now. Momentous events are occurring in the form of global economic disruption and planetary warming, but no one from my generation believes they have the power to affect change. If it happens, Beijing and New Delhi will take care of that for better, worse or smog. We’ll crawl up in our tattered American Flags and watch from the sidelines while Gavin Newsom marries the cute gay couple that have given us so many laughs. I think it comes down to this fact… my generation has been taught to believe that they can’t do anything except watch from the bench. There is a hopeless despair embedded in my age group. My generation which has been taught to play small ball, “think globally but act locally”, wait its turn, hang on for dear life, and not make waves. We waited for our promotions, our economic breakthroughs, and our big chance. But they never came. Just wait a little bit longer, and it will all work out. Just wait a little bit longer, and your time will come. “You X-ers? Just wait a little bit longer, and then we, Baby Boomers all, can hand over the entire world to our precious children for whom you will be downsized to make room.”

Say what? Excuse me while I abdicate for the Silicon Valley. Oh, wait, it’s gone? Okay, I’ll split for Hollywood. It’s gone South, you say?

It’s merely a case of Michael Stipe’s insurgency beginning, and we missed it. We were taught to miss it. I blame two figures. One of whom I have always loathed, and the other used to be someone I admired. “Government is the problem” and “there is no difference between the two major parties” are the two great lies that these two men made popular, and after twenty-eight years of the two of them, my generation lives in the stench of those two statements. Ronald Reagan and Ralph Nader gave us the political world we live in today. A deep despairing cynicism about the power to affect change and spread any other gospel than the one that says mass action and political engagement only work for the powerful or as an opt-out narcotic to spread chaos and self-fulfilling prophecy into a system (Nader Raider’s anyone?).

And then some tall rangy black man walks into the arena. What the fuck? I don’t know if he’s saying anything specific, but, damn, he says it beautifully. He sounds like the song on the radio you never heard before, immediately google, and then download. Gotta listen to it again. The rest of the album cannot be this good, can it? Well, I am willing to take the chance. So, I am supporting Obama. Not because I dig his policies, after all, they are a little too conservative for my tastes, but because I think his election will set off an electric shock wave across the country that will inspire people to reengage in community service on a large scale and create bottom pressure for Obama to deliver on the promises of his presence rather than what he is offering policy wise. However, the biggest reason is that I want to see the followers of Reagan with their ears blowing steam and Nader’s kids sputtering when they feel they can’t speak out against sanity out of fear being called a racist. I have lived in the weight of Reagan’s oppressive “Morning in America” smile and Nader’s “It’s Not Funny… Nothing is Funny” scowl for too long. I lived in too many clean, well-lighted places where GPA and second majors to make sure the parents are happy are the rule not the exception. Let’s drown Grover Norquist in his bathtub; let’s extend Karl Rove’s losing streak; let’s storm into Portland and parachute drop Seattle and eat steaks at PETA headquarters while holding up pictures of LBJ.

I don’t think I am alone. I look at facebooks, livejournals, and myspaces with their constant wails of hopeful despair. People exclaim in their subject heading and entry titles phrases like “feel something big is coming,” “looking for a change,” or “need something big to happen.”

Or maybe I am just in the thrall of that other toxic intoxicator: the one where you think your own private rumblings are shared by a million strong.

In about six months, we’ll find out what revolutionary lyricism mixed with post-revolutionary skepticism looks like.

Or we won’t.

-Jim Fitzmorris, reprinted with the author’s permission.

It’s easy to love New Orleans in the spring and fall. It’s even doable to love New Orleans in the winter, as damp and bitter as it can be. But man oh man, New Orleans in the summer is one unlovable greasy whorebag. And she’s pressed right up next to us, on an overcrowded RTA bus hurtling to Hades, with of course the obligatory broken air conditioner.

Now I know there are those among you who glory in the rising temperatures, but overall, seems like we treat summer the way the rest of the country treats winter: hole up, hibernate, and hope for the best. We venture out of our air-conditioned caves only as the demands of work, food, and the most basic levels of sociability demand. Car engines run hot; tempers hotter. The ugly truth is that we all tend to treat each other a little shittier in the summer, even if it’s just letting loose with more road rage or expressing impatience with that person who maybe irritates you year-round, but not quite so badly when the weather isn’t so hateful.

While northerners escape to sunny climes in winter, we are desperate to go somewhere cooler in June, July, or most preferably- well, you know. Everyone who can possibly manage it gets out of town in The Month That Must Not Be Named. When luck doesn’t favor us with vacation, we console ourselves by pouring daiquiris and snoballs and snoballs-cum-daiquiris down our gullets.

And the sweating, gah, the sweating. Forget delicacy, it’s all been washed away in a torrent of salty effluvia, running into the crevices of your elbows, knees, thighs, frickin’ eyelids, down the middle of your back, and admit it, right down the crack of your booty and associated regions. Summer is the epitome of that “not so fresh” feeling.

Feeling squirmy and pissed-off yet? Okay, now think about it this way: summer is our communal sweat lodge, our big hallucinatory ordeal that allows us to appreciate the rest of the year. We come out feeling somehow purified, taking big grateful gulps of clearer, cooler air, shedding our stinky, sweaty skins and renewing our activities. Summer can be isolating, and sometimes in this one-degree-of-separation town, that’s not a wholly bad thing. It’s always great to hit that first big show of fall, say hi to people you haven’t seen in months, and just enjoy the fact that we all made it through another one (and I’m not even talking about that aspect of summer that has the wind, the rain and the potential for Horrible Things). The distant dream of Autumn definitely shores me up on those summer days when I’m thinking maybe I’ve been sentenced to an endless tour of the hotter circles of Dante’s Inferno.

So, it’s time to gird our collective loins for the yearly ordeal. I hope y’all stored up those delightful days of spring in your hearts, babies, the bitch is back.

-Kami

It pays to pay attention, something our political class desperately needs to learn. In this case I refer to paying attention to local blogs. Some die off, new ones pop up, and strange things happen out in Internet Land ™. Every once in a while something will make you smile. Bitter smiles are common in New Orleans these days.

This evening I stumbled across a NOLA blog I was heretofore unaware of: Southern Atlantis. Fortunately the blogger who pens it, Droudy, uses Creative Commons to license her work. That means that I can show you an example of why I like her blog already. (Tip for the newbies: if you use CC licensed work leave a comment with a link on the original so the creator kows you’re using it. Its just good netiquette.) So anyway, here is a lovely little post called simply:

What If…?

1. they would just do it f*#king right from the beginning?

2. now that we’ve found them, we’d let them be, and let their homes, environment be also, for a change?

3. after this they find that aliens are among us?!?

4. this IS the better mouse?!? EEEK!

5. Carol sings, “I’m so glad we had this time together,” as a eulogy?

6. a new industry is created - virtual travel agencies?

7. this is the first sign of how corporations will duck out of their pension responsibilities - “the market ate it”?

…and…

8. in a few years, we hear about Gene’s wild night with Condoleeza?

View the original post and leave her a comment here.

-Loki, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer, HumidCity

THIS IS A SERIOUS BLOG. I WILL BREAK FROM MY AFOREMENTIONED ACERBIC E.E. CUMMINGS LEANINGS AND ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW SOME SEMBLANCE OF GRAMMATICAL POSTURING.

I just got a rejection letter from Tulane University’s Upward Bound Program. 

It reads:

> Good Morning,
> We have had an opportunity to review all applicant
> materials,credentials, education, and levels of professional
> expertise in secondary education over the past four days.
> We are very impressed with the high level of academic and
> professional experience you have to offer our students. As a
> results oriented program, we at this time however we have identified
> the candidates who’s experiences and expertise in high school college
> preparatory instruction best meet the needs of the students in our program.
> Thank you again for your interest and we wish you the best in your
> search to make a difference this summer.

My response:

Thanks for your time and consideration. By the
way, one of the main problems on the ACT is pronoun
use. “Who’s experiences” should be “whose
experiences.” Touche?

p.h. fred

“getting best results on test prep for over a decade”

====================================

AN AFTERTHOUGHT:
Perhaps I should have mentioned the run-on sentences, the lack of both commas and semicolons, and the misplaced modifiers (my expertise in the past four days?). Then again, perhaps I didn’t get the job because I was (and still am) an overqualified ***** **** applying for a job in a federally funded program. Call me paranoid? Welcome to McNawlins… can I take your order please?

NOW BLOG THIS!

p.h. fred (phfred@notthat.com)

I posted on the 3rd about making Thursdays at Jazz Fest for locals with local acts and local ticket prices, since the increase in prices seems to be blamed/linked/related to the “big name” national acts brought in the past few years. If we cut the Acura stage and localize everything else, without stopping people from playing on other Fest days, we could have:

Jazz Tent

Blues Tent

Gospel

Native American powwow area

Fais Do Do stage—zydeco?

local crafts—must include Muses and Zulu, huh?

Jazz and Heritage stage—all Mardi Gras Indians, all the time

Lagniappe—local rock and harder-to-categorize acts that might not fit elsewhere

Economy Hall—New Orleans brass bands, anyone from Dr. Michael White to the Soul Rebels and Pinettes

Gentilly stage = The Musical Dynasty Stage: Nevilles, Jordans, Andrews, Barbarains, Poulins, ???

Grandstand—all education and exhibits, Living History, lectures, hands-on stuff for the busloads of schoolkids coming on that day

How do we fill it up? For example/starters:

Jazz—Donald Harrison, Terence Blanchard, even Harry Connick, Jr, ???

Brainstorm, people—most of the time live music is playing in town, I’m incoherent but not necessarily asleep. Got your Memorial Day drink on? Then let’s dream.

G Bitch
NOLA

pic: dsbnola

Found this posted to Pat Jolly’s email list and thought it should be reposted here as I know a number of my fellow artists poke around this site:

Hi Pat,

my name  is Ted I am the program coordinator at the Teen Center for Non-Violence.

An associate of mine told me you run a networking site for artists?

If so, we are trying to get our summer program together and are interested in finding artists to come in and do workshops for the kids. We have pretty generous stipends.

Anyone interested can contact the teen center at 366 9025, or they can call me at 860 306 5081.

Thank You,

Ted Stevenson
Programs Coordinator
Teen Center for Non-Violence
Theodore Stevenson <stevenson.theodore@gmail.com>

I’m game… anyone else?!

– NOGoddess (aka Andrea)

WHAT: Alan Czarzasty Benefit
WHEN: Saturday, May 17, 7 p.m.
WHERE: Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge
1500 N. Claiborne Avenune
(504) 947-1078

http://www.k-doe.com/lounge.shtml

Music by Margie Perez and Skin Verb. Celebrity auctioneer

As many of you know, Alan (pic attached) is a self-taught artist who specializes in making paintings, papier-mache masks and Mardi Gras costumes. He lived in the Bayou St. John neighborhood of New Orleans, and many of you have probably met him at Whole Foods, where he worked.

In 2004, Alan was diagnosed with Stage IV Melanoma. He was treated with an immunotherapy regimen, but by 2007 the cancer had spread. Alan had applied to but was rejected from several clinical trials due to a weak heart. He then decided to do what he does best — live life. He planned a road trip to the Northeast where his ultimate goal would be to attend Clown School in New York.

In August of 2007, while in Philadelphia, Alan suffered a massive stroke. He spent nearly seven weeks in a hospital and endured two life-saving brain surgeries. The melanoma had travelled to his brain, causing the stroke. He is now paralyzed on the left side of his body and is fighting the cancer at his parents home in Riverside, New Jersey.

The goal of this benefit is to provide some financial relief to Alan’s parents, Lucy and Walt, both of whom are living on a fixed income and who care for Alan around the clock.

Please join us on May 17, and please spread the word. To donate for the auction, please contact any of us (info below).

Thank You, Janine Hayes

letitsuck@gmail.com, (504) 352-5437

Tatyana Mescheryakova

tatyanamesch@yahoo.com, (504) 388-1491

Cree McCree

houseofboo@cox.net

Jeremy Yuslum

specktacle@gmail.com, (267) 265-0827

I posted a blog a few days ago, regarding my accident at the stop-light at Franklin & St. Claude Avenues. I began calling & emailing the City of New Orleans on Monday, the 12th.

From what I understand, I was not alone.

By a long shot.

As of yesterday, Wednesday, the 14th, after nearly six months, the light has been repaired and is fully functional.

Thanks to one & all HumidCity responders for taking a few minutes to make a difference. One that may actually save lives.

Thanks, again.
Keep up the good work…
Lord David

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

The Lump (our 11-1/2-year-old spawn) reads during Jazz Fest. I have found this humiliating and/or embarrassing over the years, and make pains to point out her bobbing or tapping foot. This year, though, people were quite charmed. One man talked to me at length about her liking to read, about that keeping her “mind off all that mess” and away from too much TV. He was also charmed at how I “took care of her”–adjusting the umbrella and her circle of shade, spraying cold water on her legs to cool her off, checking in with her every song or break or so. She’s my child. That’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s just not that common to see. One day, she will be grown and gone. And I want her to miss the loving care she got from us.

Every child, especially the toddlers, reminded me of my Lump back in the day, the days of “Jazz Fest braids,” red shorts, no shirt, one quick diaper change, lots of mango freeze, jama jama, snowballs, lemonade and herbal tea and a 3-wheeled stroller that parted the crowds.

But I have gotten old. It took 3 days to get my Jazz Fest legs. And now, I am done for a week even though Monday is tomorrow and the race begins.

Happy Fucking Jazz Fest, y’all. See you next year.

G Bitch (still down!)

NOLA

First off, no, I do not understand the finer points of funding and producing Jazz Fest. But I do know that $50 tickets price out a fair amount of locals and takes an iconic season away from many of us who grew up on that change in the air. And the extra work/cash on hand.

Part of the justification for the doubling of ticket prices in the past 5 years seems to be the addition of big, headlining, head-turning acts–Bruce Springsteen, Widespread Panic (I had no idea who they were until Friday), etc. (I rarely see them)–acts that are great but have little to do with jazz or heritage. And that seem to justify pricing out locals. Solution–Local Thursday. I don’t care which Thursday, 1st, 2nd, just a damn Thursday. All local acts, all tents and stages, one Thursday, reduced prices. Don’t even open the Acura stage that day. Open the grandstand so you can get your grandmama out of the sun for a little while. Focus on the tents, crafts, food and smaller stages and paying musicians. I don’t need Elvis Costello. And I can go on a $50 day to see Al Green if I really want to.

I’m happy musicians are getting paid more, happy with the increase in quality of the French Quarter, Freret and Satchmo Fests and the work of the Foundation year-round but does all that have to come at the price of Jazz Fest to locals?

G Bitch (site still down)

NOLA

all pics by dsbnola

I got a long Jazz Fest tradition, one of those who went as a child and carts her spawn there each year. Every year of my daughter’s life, we’ve gone to Jazz Fest. She never complains or begs off–going to Jazz Fest is what we do. Some people have dinner together at 6 every night, we go to Jazz Fest every year.

We used to spend most of our time in Economy Hall but the brass band groove has moved to the Jazz & Heritage Stage and we even see some of our Economy Hall family, people who watched our daughter grow up on the dance floor, over there now, people I know by hats, shoes, bandannas, umbrellas, and usual outfits. Names, no.

I love Jazz Fest Thursdays. It’s mellower and less crowded in general, though I can’t say for the big stages because we rarely go to the headlining, packed-in-with-the-masses acts. Or maybe we just think it is because we have no kid, also known as The Lump, in tow. I especially love seeing school kids there, packs of 5, 10, 20 in their matching shirts–my favorite today was Langston Hughes’ “Dream it. Be it. Do it.”–and uniform pants and shorts, eating snowballs and getting close to the Indians on the Jazz and Heritage Stage, being watched and directed by their teachers in matching t-shirts. They were all just so damn cute.

The best band today was the New Orleans Nightcrawlers–tight, full brass sound and traditional boogie. Panorama Jazz Band earlier was good, too, but for this granddaughter of a sax player in a traditional NO brass band, the Panorama is light on brass and kind of quiet.

I was glad to see some variety in the free-Harrah’s-drink and Hustler-Club airplane banners: Rouse’s–Buy Local.

My site is down again. Look for me here until further hysteria.

G Bitch

NOLA

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

- Bigezbear