Another major issue before the City Council is the nomination of Erroll George to be Stacy Head’s interim District B replacement. I know Hedgehog-Morrell and Johnson dislike Stacy BUT I call taxation without representation. I do not have a Councilmember because of their antics. Nice work, y’all.

The worst thing about all this dilly-dallying (shilly-shallying?) is that if the vacancy isn’t filled by the end of the month, the Mayor will appoint my Councilmember. One of the reasons I voted for Stacy Head is that she’s independent and unbossed, which is how I prefer my representative. I’m not crazy about our control freak Mayor selecting my Councilmember even on an interim basis. Interestingly enough, Ms. Head has indicated she may well support the quorum quibblers on this issue but they remain on paid vacation. It’s good to be a member of the Council of Clowns…

Anyone with a pulse in NOLA has surely heard about the so-called Hospitality Zone that’s been proposed for the Quarter, Marigny and Treme. The tourism industry doesn’t want to be bothered with annoyances such as residents and democracy. They have important shit to do and want to have an appointed board to get it done. It’s a terrible idea: the last thing that part of the city is another roving group of unelected busy bodies running around telling people what they can and cannot do.

I guess the powers that be know that democracy has long been an alien concept for the affected neighborhoods. Their council members are always from Algiers. They’ve had some beauts: two empty suits in Troy and James Carter who aren’t related but were equally inattentive to their constituents. The current Algerine, Kristin Palmer, isn’t one of my favorites but at least has a pulse.

The problem with the Quarter circa 2012 is that its Disneyfication is nearly complete. Fewer and fewer people live there full time every decade, which means it’s increasingly for drunk tourists, rich people with condos and businesspeeps like Earl Barnhardt: the man behind the dread hand grenade cocktail. I’m not much of a hurricane fan but if offered a choice at gun point between one of those and a <gag> hand grenade, I’ll take the former any day.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Senator Ed Murray postponed hearings on his bill, which means that people from NOLA didn’t have to slum in Red Stick. Ignatius  J Reilly would be relieved to hear that.

For more coherent coverage of this issue check out that NOLA Femme fatale, LunaNola and Jason at American Zombie. Word.

Leave it to Loki to do some introductory ball busting with that cheerleader picture. There’s one of him out there somewhere and his is *much* uglier.

Having said that I’m glad to be doing some NOLA blogging again. I was a city business tenant for 5 years, and while the Landrieu krewe are only marginally more competent than his even balder predecessor’s minions, they’ve actually heard of the internets. In short, ragging on the new Mayor was out. After a long wrangle, which I may or may not go into in the future, I have moved my business to Magazine Street. 3640 to be specific. Come and see me sometime. End of implicit commercial plug that sounded vaguely like Marlene Dietrich flirting with Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again.

I’ve written a few NOLA centric posts at First Draft but it involves a lot exposition to explain who, for example, Cynthia Windy-Lewis is. Y’all know her as a verbose candidate who can’t win a citywide election, which means I can get right to the snark instead of being an expositionist…

Anyhoo, there are more puns to come; especially on the subject of the Ho-Zone. Hmm, I wonder if Bitter Vitter is in favor;  sounds like it should be right up his alley.

This was a long circuitous way of saying that I’m back on the NOLA blog beat such as it is.

Those of you who read HumidCity for a dose or intelligent (?) snark have cause to rejoice!

An old member of our rotating rogues gallery of bloggers is returning to the fold. It would seem that  First Draft is no longer  enough for adrastos. He is working on his first post for HumidCity in about four years.

Prepare your outrageous slings and arrows, let loose the rampant wildebeest, and prepare to get an old school schooling on local politics and pop culture.  Remember,  his handle is a Greek name that means “he who does not flee.”

Finally, the homonculoid troll known as Roger Goodell has crawled from beneath his rickety bridge to launch one last fireball at the New Orleans Saints. Earlier today Goodell announced the suspensions of 27 NFL players involved in the alleged Saints Bounty Scandal and provided the media with hard evidence that Saints defensive players willfully and with malice aforethought did indeed attempt to injure opposing players.

Oh, wait… he didn’t.

What he did do was announce the suspensions of Jonathan Vilma – entire 2012 season, Will Smith – 4 games, Anthony Hargrove – 8 games and Scott Fujita – 3 games. Goodell verbally asserted the evidence: “multiple independent confirmations” that Vilma offered $10,000 to anyone who took Kurt Warner out of the 2009 divisional playoff game and made a similar offer regarding Brett Favre in for the NFC Championship game; that Hargrove participated in and lied to “investigators” about the alleged bounty program; that Smith initially helped former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams design and implement the alleged bounty system and that Fujita contributed to the bounty pools.

Now look at that again. Goodell alleges that Will Smith helped create a program for which one head coach is serving a season-long suspension and one assistant coach is serving an indefinite suspension and he’s only out for four games. Meanwhile, the “evidence” against Vilma is that he offered payouts on two NFL quarterbacks (granted, very large payouts,) and yet his suspension is four times that of Smith. More if the Saints make the playoffs. Does this make any sense? Of course not.

Months ago the NFL shocked the world by announcing they had collected 50,000 pages of evidence implicating as many as 27 players in the alleged bounty scandal. And now Goodell hands out four punishments? I stand by my earlier statement that when Tom Benson opened the Saints e-mail files to Goodell’s “investigators” they counted every single e-mail as “evidence” to inflate the gravitas of the press conference. What they ended up with was 50,000 pages of banal crap that had perhaps a half-dozen e-mails which may or may not have been incriminating. Seriously, you have 50,000 pages of evidence against 27 players and you punish four?

Considering the player punishments, I think there was probably even less hard evidence, otherwise Goodell would have offered it to the media to take the heat off of himself and prove this isn’t simply a witch hunt. Now without hard evidence, like a smoking gun e-mail, Goodell is left with only testimony to implicate players and unless that testimony comes from an actual Saints defensive player or coach it’s simply hearsay. “Well, Will Smith told me they had a bounty system.” Really? And this has nothing to do with the fact that you face him twice a year during the regular season?

That Goodell has refused to furnish the media or the NFLPA with any evidence whatsoever is most suspect. Fans continue to promulgate the ridiculous theory that he doesn’t want a home team hosting a Superbowl, but I still believe that this is a personal vendetta against the Saints mainly for the coverup in the initial investigation, but also for the chummy relationship they shared with twice convicted fraudster Mike Ornstein who once siphoned over $350,000 from the NFL’s coffers.

And think about this: Anthony Hargrove wrote a letter to the NFL admitting his participation in the scheme, but received a longer suspension than Fujita and Smith because he initially lied to “investigators”. Here’s a guy that’s coming clean, but because he admitted to the initial cover-up, he gets a harsher punishment? Clearly there was a bounty scheme and clearly everybody lied about it, but the one guy that admits it gets a longer suspension than the others? Now there’s a good lesson for the kids: Tell the truth and get a bigger spanking!

Of course, Goodell could have made his pitiful announcement prior to the draft, allowing the Saints to use picks to bolster positions lost to suspension, but no, he chose to withhold his ham-fisted justice until after the draft in order to fluster the coaching staff and ultimately the fans.

How all this affects the Saints 2012 season is yet to be realized, but I doubt anyone will really notice. Only Vilma and Smith are currently on our roster with Hargrove in Green Bay and Fujita in Cleveland. The Saints, as well as the rest of the world, could see the Vilma suspension coming a mile away months ago and stole Curtis Lofton from the Falcons. Lofton is essentially Vilma with four extra years of youth. The only difference besides age is that Lofton has been playing without a decent team around him.

Smith’s suspension will hit the team a little harder, but only for the first four games; Redskins, Panthers, Chiefs and Packers. Of those, the Panthers will be the toughest challenge considering their offense has a full year under Cam Newton. The Redskins are in the midst of a major rebuild that starts here on our turf and the Chiefs have a high powered offense when it clicks but it rarely does on the road so by the time we get to Lambeau our defense will have had three games to gel and the team should be 2-1 at the worst.

Of course, that’s assuming that Saints General Mismanager Mickey Loomis can ever sign Drew Brees. And now that we have Vilma’s $6-million 2012 salary to play with, that should be done tomorrow, right Mickey…?

-M Styborski

After almost three years away from the Crescent City I had a very definite hit list of music I wanted to see at this year’s French Quarter Fest. Bingo,Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes, The Help, The Tin Men, and at the top of the list The Wild Magnolias.

The Jazz Fest before we moved up to Ohio was a scary one for Mardi Gras Indians and their fans. You see, Bo Dollis Sr. had  heart attack the night before the Wild Magnolias were supposed to play. Despite having spent most of the night in the hospital he arrived on stage that day looking physically frail, but ready to belt out some tunes. It was the first time that I saw him sing sitting down, and it drove home to me how transitory our time with him truly is. This man who took the stage at the very first Jazz fest in 1970, who was named Chief in 1964, who has one of the most recognizable voices in NOLA music, is limited to the brief span of years allotted all men. It was a realization that our legends are mortal.

Then came almost three years in the frozen north. While my lovely wife was in grad school we were unable to make it down to NOLA more than once or twice, and once I came down with viral pneumonia and almost died. The whole time I wondered, as you tend to do when you’re from NOLA, whitch of my friends and favorite artists would still be alive upon our return. After that Jazz Fest I truly feared I might not ever see Bo Sr. perform again.

Flash forward to this last Sunday. Running late for their set we arrived at the tail end of it. Luckily we got there just in time for Bo to hit the stage. Supported and steadied by Indians he made his way up to the mic and leaned up against a bar stool, while the crowd roared it’s approval. While he was obviously frail and shaky the rightness in his eyes and smile lit up the stage.

One song. That’s what I got to see. One song where the entire crowd was pointing their fingers in the air shouting, “one more time!” One song that generated the largest outpouring of love from crowd to performer that I saw over the entire fest. One song that made me cry.

Seeing him on stage, sheer force of will trumping physical frailty so as not to let down his fans, cemented the feeling in my heart that I am finally home again. It also showed me in a painful fashion, much like the recent death of Coco Robicheaux, that we cannot put off seeing our legends perform. Their time is limited and we are privileged to be here, right now, to see them. At one point in mid song I saw Bo clutch his chest and a look almost of pain crossed his face. At that moment I feared that I would see him pass right in front of my eyes just like Big Chief Tootie Montana did in the city council chambers mere months before Katrina. Within moments it became clear that this was not a heart attack, but a man overcome with emotion due to the outpouring of love being aimed in his direction. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and screamed even louder.

Like so much of life in New Orleans this show was both uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

As his wife and son helped him off the stage you could see him leaning on them for support. It was obvious that he could not walk on his own, yet even so as they helped to hold him up during his exit I was able to see his feet. Even unable to stand unaided Bo Dollis was dancing with his feet as he left, those same steps that I’ve seen him make when covered in beads and feathers on Super Sunday. I can only hope I have a fraction of that life in me when I reach his age.

We are now in the era of Bo Dollis Jr.’s reign as Big Chief, something that will take some getting used to for me. I am confident that he will lead the Wild Magnolias to amazing things, but I wonder how it must feel to take on the mantle of his legendary father.

It was a long day of beautiful weather, mouth-watering food and free music everywhere. You simply could not ask for a more beautiful afternoon to go out and hit French Quarter Fest.

Full on reports will be forthcoming soon, in the meantime here are a few quick slices of yesterdays shindig on the river.

First off here a quick clip from the Esplanade Stage yesterday when Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes roared onto the stage. This electric cello will kick your ass, guaranteed!

Now that we’ve got your attention here is an array of pics from yesterday as a slide show for you. Lots more Johnny Sketch, some Kermit Ruffins, and the Consortium of Genius bringing the mad science to the riverfront! (I’ll warn you, I have not had time to sift out the dross yet. Some are good, some not so much.)

I’m off to the Fest for the next round!

Living here has its slings and arrows as well, and I’m not just talking about the murder rate.

I speak of the role nearly every New Orleanian who has friends and relatives living outside of New Orleans has had to play when those friends and relatives come to visit. Of course everyone has to play tour guide here, if only to inform visitors that their notions of north, south, east, and west have no real bearings in this city. Just be wary of the emotional roller coaster that the events of 8/29/2005 may yank you into. Case in point…

I hadn’t played tour guide in a while and thought it’d be a nice diversion for a morning. And it was – breakfast in the Lower Garden District, driving around the Garden District a little, making an unscheduled stop at Lafayette Cemetery, explaining the aboveground tombs a tad and why their upkeep has been important.

Somehow, the friends of my husband’s family made a comment about the many houses that were looted in the aftermath of the storm. “Um, no, that didn’t happen. You had stores that were looted, sure, because people were hungry and thirsty and needed those things, and you had the opportunists who were taking the TVs and such. But houses? Not really,” I said. “And the paranoia of the people who couldn’t come here was responsible for the presence of some of the hired armies that were patrolling uptown. It was like the hyperbole of the NOPD chief talking about babies being raped in the Superdome. Didn’t happen.” Wow, I was really gathering steam. It was time to simmer down.

“But why didn’t the grocery stores just open their doors then and let people take stuff out?”

Simmering would have to wait. Medium low heat was more the temperature. “Insurance companies. They’d be less likely to pay up if a grocery store owner decided to open his doors rather than keep them locked and turn everyone into thieves. ‘Oh, you unlocked those doors yourself? There goes your payment.’ ” The lady who asked me the question looked as deflated as I felt over the answer I gave.

But, hey, back in the car. Back to the gorgeous streets of uptown after the torrential rains of the night before. Off to the Jewish cemetery on Arabella Street, to show the visitors how the Jewish people bury their dead in the low water table. Off to the Fly, where one can actually see the river. Talk of the flooding of 1927, where the riverine levee system was cemented in place, causing the sediment of the river to head straight for the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico rather than into creating more wetlands and strengthening barrier islands that would likely have helped keep the canal levees intact nearly eight years ago if they hadn’t been built so shoddily in the first place…ohhh, no, here we go again…

Somehow, I made it to the Lower Ninth Ward for the first time in ages to show these folks the houses Brad Pitt’s Make It Right built there. Somehow, I managed to hold it together enough to communicate how difficult it was for people to rebuild in these areas that the city, the state, the country was willing to write off before I dropped my charges off at the edge of the French Quarter. I’ve been racking my brains ever since for the reasons why this particular tour felt different from many others I’ve given since we moved back to New Orleans in 2006.

Not too long ago, I complained that New Orleans since the levee breaches had become a cause, not a city. I think now that I was wrong.

This isn’t to say that nothing has changed. It is simply to say that time and circumstance have rendered our problems not as important in the national scheme of things. We were so far behind we were ahead in having to juggle this current economic depression in which we sit, but the rest of the country has caught up (or fallen down to our level) and found that New Orleans doesn’t have a hell of a lot to teach except hunker down and hustle every day for your right to live. In fact, we’ll bet you twenty dollars you can do it and probably bilk you out of that easy money….because not everyone can hunker down and hustle. We are now a society that follows the jobs and opportunities above all else.

People exclaim over all these young entrepreneurs trying to start things up here. Those same sort of people were here 15 years ago. Their transience is still guaranteed because salaries here are still not as competitive and the schools have not gotten any better despite what reformers would have the rest of the country believe. A city cannot truly survive without families to anchor it. The crime rate only makes things worse. Too many people find that true, lasting change here is a mirage.

In the midst of a simple morning drive and some extensive commentary, I found that those of us who are still here are occasionally busily selling a different mirage – that our history matters. Deep down, I believe that it does – but when I come across those who have no real clue, I wonder how many words will really change their minds.

I guess these are the words of someone who is getting comfortable in her own small abode – but not too comfortable. Walking away from a certain level of keeping up with current doings in city and state government as well as the runnings of the public schools is very hard, yet necessary for my overall health. Doesn’t mean I don’t keep track at all, but I cannot let the anger and the hurt take over. It’s a strange sort of limbo, a localized purgatory, born of too much shouting over the internets. Too much of my thoughts have gone into this city as a cause as well. And New Orleans is much, much more than that.

The trick is in regaining that city-ness of this place once again. For me. And whether that follows for anyone else….that’s a happy extra.

Liprap

Let me first say that this is nowhere as eloquent as I would have liked it to be. Nor is it as in-depth as that would take years. I’ll link the relevant pages and you can Google the keywords for everything else, but in a nutshell, here are my thoughts.

Gregg Williams:
Gregg Williams is the guy that turned the innocuous player performance pools into a mind-blowingly complex Ponzi scheme which –through peer pressure– forced players to re-invest their tiny thousand dollar payouts back into the pool creating huge paydays by years’ end. That’s why you hear about a $50,000 pool. It wasn’t just make the play, get the envelope, but make the play, re-invest the envelope and get a bigger envelope next time. That’s a far cry from the simple, “Here’s $500 for that interception,” that the rest of the league does. This borders on racketeering. Oh, and Williams added the parts about injuring the other team. Swell guy.

Williams is now temporarily out of the NFL until his other systems have been investigated, at which time he’ll probably be done for good. Fine by me. The NFL informed the Saints that the bounty jig was up just days before our playoff game with the Lions and Williams was likely given his walking papers the following week before the San Fran game. What else could explain our anemic defense versus the Forty-Niners? Gregg Williams went out crying like a bitch and torpedoed our D out of spite. Don’t think so? Watch that game again and explain why we were playing five yards off the receivers. Explain why obvious passing plays were defended by running schemes and vice-versa. Shit on him.

Sean Payton:
Now that the Saints Nation has enriched the lives of a few t-shirt vendors by wearing their hearts on their chests, can we look at this like we still have brains? Sean Payton is getting pretty much what he deserves, but not just for the bounty scandal which I refuse to believe he had no clue about. He’s not that stupid.

As head coach, it’s Payton’s job to ensure shit like this doesn’t happen. I don’t give a flying crap what you do in your private life as long as it doesn’t affect me. You want to throw Vicodin parties and bang the girl next door? Fine by me, but come Monday morning there better be another notch in the win column or at least a very good reason for a loss. Unfortunately Sean Payton has shown a serial lack of respect for the Saints organization, the City of New Orleans and Saints fans across the globe. While I still think he’s one of the best offensive minds in football, I no longer trust him, his judgement or his leadership.

First there was the Vicodin scandal which is still in the courts, then three extra-marital rumours which culminated in a quick move back to Dallas for his family, (you didn’t seriously think it was because of the Chinese drywall, did you?), then his association with once convicted, (and soon to be convicted again,) felon Mike Ornstein, (also the same douchebag that caused Reggie Bush to lose his Heisman Trophy,) and now the bounty scandal. It’s just too much. Either Payton is the most gullible dumbass in history and had no clue what was going on in his organization or he’s the biggest prick in the room, laughing at the rest of the world while flaunting the rules. Whomever he is, he has lost my respect and trust, and he should lose his job. A year just isn’t enough for what he’s done to our team, our city and our fanbase. Shit on him too.

Mickey Loomis:
Probably more culpable than Sean Payton in this whole sordid mess is Mickey Loomis who is on record as being instructed by the NFL to end the bounty program in 2010 and then completely ignoring the situation. Loomis repeatedly lied to the NFL, owner Tom Benson and through the media, to Saints fans. And it’s not the first time. According to the lawsuit filed by former Saints Security Director and respected former FBI agent Geoff Santini, Loomis was the mastermind behind the Vicodin coverup.

Loomis gets far too much credit for being a draft genius. Remember that Loomis came to us in 2002 during the Haslett era and brought us such great names as Donte Stallworth, Rodney Leisle, Melvin Williams and lately, Olin Kreutz. It wasn’t until Payton came to town that the Saints began finding mid- to late-round gems like Marques Colston, Thomas Morstead and Carl Nicks, to name a few. In fact, under Haslett and Loomis’ direction the Saints went from 10-6 to 3-13 with four 50/50 years in between, more often than not attributed to the directionless, party-all-the-time atmosphere allowed by the two and punctuated by a number of love trinagles which resulted in anything but teamwork.

Loomis is also one of the reasons that Drew Brees is still unsigned. When the franchise tag deadline was looming, Loomis was fully aware that the hammer was about to fall hard on the Saints and he should have simply paid Drew’s asking price. The offer was even made, but the sticking point was that most of the money would come at the end of five years and Drew wanted it to come near the beginning. Bite the bullet Mick, and pay the man. Had this been done, it would have saved Saints Nation a lot of frustration and grief, but no, Mickey fucked everything up. Again. Shit on him. Again. Hand him his hat and coat and wish him well in his next coverup.

Joe Vitt:
Who? Oh, yeah, the guy who filled in for Sean Payton in the second half of the Tampa Bay game after the broken leg incident. Yeah, we lost that game and Pete Carmichael Jr got the reins. Suddenly Roger Goodell has new information that Joe Vitt knew what was going on and was in on the coverup. In fact, according to the NFL, Sean Payton instructed Vitt to spy on Williams and make sure that the bounty program was ended. Huh? But Payton said he had no knowledge of the program…

Oh, I get it. It’s the Vicodin thing again. Joe Vitt was the sneak-thief caught on camera breaking into the medicine cabinet to kype all those munchy, crunchy happy pills for him and Sean to chomp on in between games. Despite the 2010 Championship, liars, thieves and addicts have been steadily running this team into the ground with no regard to the consequences and the Saints Nation is crying rivers for them. Ridiculous. Shit on Vitt, too.

Tom Benson:
Relatively untouched by Goodell’s heavy hand, team owner Tom Benson is even being rewarded with the money he saves by not having to pay the bloated salaries of Payton, Loomis and Vitt. (In fact, there are more than a few notions out there that Benson should donate at least some of this money to sports injury foundations and it’s not a bad idea, but odds are he won’t even think of parting with his windfall.) There are two things saving Benson’s butt in this mess, the first being that he’s a “hands-off” owner who sits in his office writing checks whenever Mickey Loomis tells him to and not much else. Benson is not a day-to-day kind of guy. Second is his immediate acquiescence to Goodell’s request for access to team e-mails.

Remember the 18,000 documents and 50,000 pages of evidence? Well, kids, when the man comes in and seizes your files they take everything regardless of whether it has any bearing on the case. Every e-mail is read, stamped and entered into evidence, then only the relevant files are used in the trial. And have you ever printed out an e-mail? One paragraph usually prints on 2-3 pages including all the header and footer garbage. Essentially, the NFL has a handful of relevant information, but 50,000 pages sounds a lot more impressive as a headline, doesn’t it?

I can’t fault Benson too much for the bounty scandal, even though he knew what was going on, to a point. Benson put his trust in Loomis, who then took that trust and crapped all over it. Can you blame Benson for being gullible? For being lied to? Not really, though I’m surprised that people haven’t called for his head. I mean, after all, if you can’t control your employees, you need to be fired, right? That’s why they’re going to fire Obama for the actions of the Robert Bales, right? That’s why Tracie Washington wants Jim Letten’s resignation, right? But I digress…

Benson is the team ATM and nothing more. Perhaps if he paid more attention to his team we wouldn’t be in this position, but here we are. I mean, the NFL called the Packers to the carpet for bounties in 2007, and while not as huge a program as Williams ran, the Packers killed it dead in it’s tracks and suffered no consequences. That could have been our outcome had these weasels nutted up like men in 2010. And it all would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten along with the confetti from Superbowl XLIII.

The Players Involved:
Well, we don’t know who they are or whether they’re still with the team so anything here is mere speculation. So far Jonathan Vilma is the only player name linked to the bounty scandal and he’ll probably miss more than a few games. Enough games that the team signed MLB Curtis Lofton, whose style is similar in nature to Vilmas. All accounts point to some ridiculous, staggered suspension so as not to inflict undue hardship on the Saints or other teams that involved players may be currently with. Yeah, right. While it gives Saints fans hopes that we’ll have a defense this year, it also shows that in spite of all the posturing about player safety, the NFL really won’t take a hard line on rules infractions other than fines which most players barely notice missing from their salaries. We’ll see what happens.

By the way, how involved were Tracy Porter and Carl Nicks? Could there be eight game suspensions in their future? Might explain why they were allowed to shop around. Of course, we’ll be called all sorts of names if this turns out to be the case, but caveat emptor, my friends… ya pays ya money and takes ya chances! As for any player who bought into the bounty program, yeah, you guessed it… shit on them, too. They knew better and they’re just as guilty as the coaches in all this. A million dollars a year and you play a little harder for an extra pocketful of Benjamins? Take your beds to another brothel, ladies.

The Fines:
$500,000 for Benson is the league limit on fines. It’s in the NFL rules. He might have to downgrade to a cheaper Mercedes, but this is just a token fine. The coaches are losing huge salaries and Joe Vitt is getting an additional $100,000 hit, but none of this matters, though, as the only thing that will teach the rest of the league a lesson is game suspensions. If Goodell was actually concerned with safety instead of being concerned with looking concerned, he’d have instituted suspensions for on-field behavior when he started yanking games away from players for off-field behavior.

The Draft Picks:
We lose our first picks in 2013 and 2014, both second rounders. While we’ve been doing well in the draft since Sean Payton joined the team, these lost picks are not the end of life as we know it. While they diminish our overall strength short-term, we still have the option of trading up, plus we’ll have former back-ups waiting to step into starting roles, more on which later. Also, this will eventually free up some cap cash in the coming years that won’t be paid to high round picks meaning that in the next decade we could be sitting on top of a gold mine, unless we decide to fritter it away on extra Vicodin or something…

Roger Goodell:
Well, it’s not his fault, right? He didn’t know what was going on, right? Oh, wait, he did! And rather than follow up on what he knew to be a bad situation, he let it fester for two more years. Goodell is an over-rated, overpaid PR flack who is just as culpable as Loomis and Payton in the bounty scandal, but he gets to keep his job because he’s the King of Fake Safety in the NFL. It’s not about what you do, but about how you look doing it, right Roger? Yeah, shit on him, too. Good luck with your own defense, Roger!

The Snitch:
To those of you who are claiming that “snitch” is an appalling term to lay on the whistleblower because the truth needed to come out, you’re wrong. A whistleblower stands up and shouts when he sees wrongs which need righting, and sometimes he does this from the safety of anonymity. A snitch plays along, profiting, until he’s cut out of the loop, then reports the wrongs out of spite, most of the time under the cover of anonymity. According to the most prevalent rumours, the snitch is a former player who felt he was unjustly cut from the team. Maybe, maybe not.

I seriously doubt that Jeremy Shockey is the snitch. Seriously. Shockey is the kind of guy who walks up to you and punches you right in the face when he’s pissed. He’s not the behind-the-scenes kind of snake that stabs you in the back out of spite. I still have doubts about how loudly Darren Sharper was screaming for snitch blood when the story broke, and he also fits the rumoured profile, but what about Olin Kreutz? Yeah, he was on offense, but a clean-cut, corn-fed boy like that could easily “lose his passion for the game” and suddenly quit if he stumbled onto the details of the bounty program. And he didn’t have much invested in the team when he quit to keep silent. If it was Kreutz, though, we would in fact need to start using the term whistleblower instead of snitch.

Bill Parcells:
Sean Payton has approached his former mentor regarding a one year head coaching deal. Hoo-boy… this is gonna get stranger… I’ll get the bread, you bring the Tuna!

The 2012 Season:
If you think you’ve seen the Saints play hard before, brother, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There are about thirty back-ups on every team just waiting for a chance to shine and there has never been a bigger chance like this. Of course, that means that next year when all our suspended chickens come home to roost, the Saints will have twice the number of shining stars as other teams. Deciding who stays and who goes will be difficult, but I guarantee the trades will make up for our lost draft picks and the team will have the upper hand in contract negotiations, and hopefully Loomis won’t be around to fuck them up!

In an ideal world, Tom Benson would be smart enough to cut bait with the entire top tier of his organization. Yeah, we’d have some rocky ground to travel, but a clean break would truly distance Benson and the New Orleans Saints from all the muck that’s collected on our cleats during the Sean Payton era and if we happened to find success in the next few seasons there would be absolutely no doubt of its honesty. Unfortunately, Tom Benson has a perverse sense of loyalty to those who have shown a clear disregard for his interests. At least he has a year to think about it.

But mark my words: The Saints will survive this scandal and stand stronger as a team by the end of the season. I may be out on a very thin limb here, but I’m going to guarantee at least a playoff berth for the Saints this year and all it takes to get to the Superbowl is one playoff spot. I still want the Saints at Home in the Dome for the Big Dance –as I’m sure we all do– but I think a playoff spot in a clean, well scrutinized season is our best shot at regaining our respect from the NFL, the media and the fans.

Now, who’s with me?

-M Styborski

Today I’m writing about the good stuff because it is so often obscured by the bad. No one writes about the good stuff it seems. So, today I’m going to write about two of the biggest reasons I’m overjoyed to be home, and both of them are doctors.

Shortly after moving back down to NOLA we suffered a one-two punch of medical expenses, starting with some severe dental issues on my part. (Yes, gentle readers, that is why it has been so quiet despite my return.) Thankfully Dr. Frank Martello is still going strong in his little practice on Amelia St. right across from August Moon restaurant.

Dr. Martello is the best dentist this city has seen since the passing of the legendary Russell Bond, and I do not say that lightly. His easy and friendly demeanor is counterpoised by his amazing expertise with his tools. Not only up to date on the best of the current technology he also defies the dentist stereotype by having pain prevention as one of his highest goals when working on your teeth.

I don’t know about you, but I have an incredible fear of both needles and dental work. Either one sends my pulse rocketing through the roof. At least I did. I discovered the Doc when I lived on Perrier St five years ago, and since then I refuse to let another dentist work on my mouth. It’s easy to forget the fear of dentists I had when laid back in his chair staring at the blue sky and clouds painted on the roof of his office.

Then came the second punch – a very sick cat – which brings us to  ”Dr. B,” Rachele Biondolillo over at the Prytania Street Vet.

Shortly after returning Jane’s health seemed to be failing, common for a 16-year-old cat, especially one who has suffered through Katrina Evacuation, getting hit by a car, and numerous other trials. Dr. B, however, has once again brought her back from the brink with insightful diagnosis and effective treatment. A truly wonderful woman who dearly loves cats, she brings a level of professional expertise to the table that assures your pet will get the best treatment possible.

Even after being gone for two and half years she remembered Jane and was thrilled to see her. We, on the other had were set at ease knowing that our constant companion could not be in better hands.

In a city known for inadequate medical service it amazes me that the best dentist and the best vet I’ve ever run across both live and work here in NOLA. Counterintuitive as it may be that is the case. And, no, this is not a paid endorsement or anything like that (if it were it would be prominently labelled as such). It is simply an outpouring of affection for two doctors who have kept my little family healthy.

We can all write about the bad stuff. I would go so far as to say we need to, after all sunlight is the bet disinfectant. What gets lost in the shuffle is any sense of the positives. With that in mind I am going to attempt to make sure I blog about them both on a hopefully even basis.

Thanks to both doctors, you have both improved our circumstances immeasurably over the years. Thank you!

What I like even less is what is happening as a result of the Macondo blowout of April 2010:

Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine and oyster biologist, and Tom Soniat, a University of New Orleans oyster biologist, invited Al Jazeera to accompany them, Robin, and Robin’s son to check for recovering oyster populations.

The marsh area outside of Yscloskey, Louisiana was severely affected by massive fresh-water diversions from the Mississippi River. The choice to divert river water was made to flush the marsh in order to prevent oil from washing in, but the fresh water has killed all the oysters, and Cake believes dispersed oil came in anyway.

Further complicating things, Cake has pinpointed at least two invasive species that do not bode well for a recovery of Louisiana’s oysters.

“We are finding sponges growing on our oysters,” Cake told Al Jazeera. “They encrust the oyster shell and that prevents new spat [baby oysters] from attaching to grow new oysters. We don’t know why this is happening, but we think it came in response to the fresh water and oil. This is the first time we’ve seen it.”

The sponge is chalinula loosanoffi, and is native to Ireland, the Netherlands, and the upper East Coast of the US.

Cake has also found a worm, poydora aggregata, native to Maine, which attaches itself to oysters and fouls their shells.

“I’m worried these sponges and worms could wreak havoc on the industry,” Cake said.

Louisiana’s oyster harvest in 2010 was cut in half, to a 44-year low, due to BP’s oil disaster. Scott Gordon, Mississippi’s director of the Shellfish Bureau of the Office of Marine Fisheries, said in the summer of 2010, “I fully expect to have 100 per cent mortalities of the oysters in the western Mississippi Sound”.

His predictions have come true.

Professor Soniat explained that the oyster industry is afflicted with “multiple impacts”.

“First the oil spill took away their fishing season,” he said of the fishing ban put in place after the BP disaster. “Second, the fresh-water diversion took away the oysters; and third, the programme of having oystermen harvest shells from their leases to try to re-seed other areas killed the oyster reefs.”

Cake recently told Al Jazeera that many of the Gulf fisheries “have already collapsed” and the only question is “if or when they’ll come back”.

“If it takes too long for them to come back, the fishing industry won’t survive,” he added.

Given that after the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska in 1989, herring have still not come back enough to be a viable fishing resource, this does not bode well for the Gulf seafood industry, whose fisheries are – according to scientists like Cake and Soniat – still in the initial phase of collapse.

P&J’s own website hasn’t had its news updated since June of 2010. The 130-plus-year-old company is a shell of its former self. And we’re supposed to believe that a settlement from BP will provide closure.

Liprap

I saw some people at a local playground who noticed my son’s t-shirt emblazoned with his school’s name and symbol on the front and asked me where his school’s temporary campus was located. I told them it was at a lakefront location, and they looked relieved. Turns out this couple had pulled their young daughter out of the school shortly after her acceptance into a pre-K program because the school was less than communicative to its newest students’ families about the school’s new location, repeatedly telling the families to “check the school website.” These particular parents I spoke to are currently paying for their child’s education someplace else much nearer their home. Not that they don’t regret the decision – they’d heard a lot of good things about the school – but they didn’t like being brushed off like that concerning pertinent information about where their child was going to go.

A discussion of the problem of sending one’s children to quality schools in New Orleans that won’t break parents’ finances ensued. “Only thing that even makes people’s kids’ chances of getting into the better public schools here is the high turnover, since there aren’t many good, high-paying jobs keeping a lot of people here long term,” I said.

“Funny you should say that…” the mother said. The family is moving. Very soon. Pursuing a much better job offer. Sigh.

No one thought anything could overshadow Drew Brees’ ongoing contract negotiations…until the bounties on opposite teams’ players’ heads came along. Sure, other teams do it, but this will come down hard on the Saints since one of the seasons in which there was a price on players resulted in the 2010 Lombardi Gras. At least Gregg Williams is out of our hair. Makes me wonder, though…Perhaps, if New Orleans citizens put similar bounties out on crooked politicians and business leaders who aren’t doing much for the community, it would help improve education, bring better jobs here, and reduce the murder rate?

Although it’s receding from my memory as I get older, I thought back to when I was eighteen and away at college. No, I wasn’t drinking like a fish – I was working my tail off at school, it was illegal for me to be drinking, anyhow, and besides, I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was twenty (that’s a whole ‘nother story right there that I’ll get back to). Plenty of other kids were imbibing, though, judging from the recycle bins in the trash rooms of the dorms, and I was hanging out at local bars myself despite – not in the hopes of passing for twenty-one and getting a cocktail under a bartender’s radar, but because there was still good music and good times to be had without the alcohol. Hell, the resident assistant of our floor took us to one of the bars during orientation because her father was a regular performer there – which became the biggest in-joke for those of us who became Thursday night regulars at the place. If only our parents knew we were hanging at a bar every week! We weren’t at the place to get blitzed, but to have fun and take in some Irish music laced with some Tom Lehrer or other ironic folk classics – and the bartenders knew that.

What I described above occurred in a northeastern city. What I see the New Orleans city council proposing to vote on at the end of the month would take one of the things that makes New Orleans even better than folk music in a northeastern Irish bar – its plethora of great music venues, most of them open to 18 and over – and drive potential music lovers, musicians and patrons out. Bartenders and bouncers would be doubly pressured if the measure passes to make an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old’s presence “on or around” a bar or a liquor store grounds for revoking a place’s liquor license – what kind of boundaries are we speaking of for “around?” Within how many inches, feet, or yards? And has it really been proven that this kind of a measure can lower any crime rate? If the concerns are for underage drinkers being out on the roads, I’ve had at least two people say to lower the drinking age back to 18 and raise the driving age to 21. Don’t know how legally feasible that is, but I do know that for the first time in a long while, the numbers of young people with driver’s licenses are actually decreasing. It could be the internet, the higher cost of gasoline and overall car maintenance, or just young people making the decision to take more public transportation and live in places where they can get around on foot or by bike to get to where they need to go…but the rush for young kids to drive is not as big a deal as it used to be.

Local musicians and music lovers are speaking out. Bantam Foxes has links to how you can write to City Council at the bottom of this important post. Matt Rosenthal of BarryFest has an important plea to City Council here.

Finally, BP and the lawyers of individuals affected by the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo blowout have settled. If the piddly amounts to plaintiffs hold, the victims of the oil disaster just got royally screwed. At least we still have a chance of getting damages from the Army Corps of Engineers from breached levees during the events of 8/29/2005. Perhaps we can funnel some of that money to affected Gulf Coast residents…

Liprap

One of our local bloggers is the mother of an autistic child, a little girl for whom the magic of Mardi Gras was her greatest joy. Until this year.

You see, this year some class-less nimrod and his buddies managed to destroy that. Drunken college kids who should be evicted from our city and their University almost set her hair on fire, laughed in her mother’s face when she asked them to move, and then called this tiny child a retard to her face. A child whose great love was the time “when everyone is a little weird like me.”

The reaction? Something that should never happen to a child during Mardi Gras:

“Mama. please, can we go home? He told everyone I’m a retard. I’m not a retard, am I, Mama?” she asked. The grin was gone, replaced by a quivering lip. The sparkle in her eyes had dispersed, and they were now filled with a flow of tears falling down her full, pink cheeks.

“Are you sure, honey? We could walk somewhere else and watch the parade. We could move.”

“No, Mama. I don’t think that would be a good idea. People there will probably think I’m a retard, too. People don’t want people like me at parades. They won’t let us in to watch the parade. I just know it.”

I tried to comfort her with my words, encourage her, but the more I pushed, the more this man’s words hurt.

We packed up the bag holding the the goods that had entertained us for the  two hours  we sat on the sidewalk, waiting for our special night. The bag that held my daughter’s snacks, sketch pad, books, and blanket. I took her hand, and led her to the car to go home.

She cried in the car on the way home, having seen exactly two floats from Muses and having exactly zero throws to show for the verbal attack that she endured just trying to watch her favorite parade.

“Honey, I am really sorry about what happened. Maybe we can try tomorrow night. Maybe we can go to a different spot, ” I said, trying to encourage her and save the rest of our Mardi Gras.

“No, Mama. I don’t think I want to do Mardi Gras anymore. Not ever again.”

A year ago, I asked my daughter what she most loved about Mardi Gras, expecting her to say the throws, the beads, and the pretty costumes. Her answer surprised me: “I don’t feel like I am different than everyone else during Mardi Gras, Mama. During Mardi Gras, everyone is a little weird like me.”

That night, she didn’t want to share her daily gratitudes, shrugging her shoulders and telling me she didn’t really feel grateful for much. She didn’t write in her journal, only wanting to forget the night had even happened. Her countdown calendar peppered the floor in tear-soaked pieces. A night that he had probably already forgotten by the next morning; a night that her broken heart will never let her forget.

The comment stream on the original post is massive and growing. Add to it. Krewes are mobilizing as are members of the community to bring the magic back for her. All of us who march or ride, all of us who take joy from the annual bacchanal, all of use who have ever gained any pleasure or happiness from Carnival have an obligation to make up for the action of these two thoughtless asshats.

I call upon all of you, from ‘tit Rex to Rex, from my own Krewe of Chartreuse to the Pussyfooters, to bring back the magic. If we cannot do that for this child then none of us deserve to march or ride.

Amplify the signal. Spread this. Let’s make it Mardi Gras all year for her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcqeMAO5ZEY

from all of us at Humid City.

The introduction of Carnival’s anti-discrimination ordinance in 1991 certainly freaked out a lot of people who were well aware of what could happen if it was fully implemented, or even partially implemented. It was put forth as an eternal tale of tug-of-war between tradition and change writ large on a bejeweled, beaded, and glittered stage that, if one looked closely, was becoming a little worse for wear with each passing year…even if it wasn’t initially intended that way:

Mr. GILL: I think you cannot deny that (Dorothy Mae Taylor) is remembered among white people here as the vixen who tried to destroy Mardi Gras, and who to some extent succeeded.

(KAREN) BATES: He covered Taylor’s city council hearings in 1991 until a weakened version of the anti-discrimination ordinance was passed in ’92. Gill says that many of the old-line krewes believed Taylor ruined what had been a wonderful party that they had sponsored and financed as their gift to the city.

Mr. GILL: No one is trying to defend segregation, but I think you cannot undermine an American’s right to choose his own friends. It’s not quite as simple a matter of principle as it might at first seem.

BATES: But many black citizens saw it differently. Jay Banks was a senior aide to Dorothy May Taylor. He says integrating the old-line krewes for Mardi Gras was never the main focus of his boss’s efforts.

Mr. JAY BANKS (Senior aide to Dorothy Mae Taylor): Many business deals are being cut in those private clubs that everybody didn’t have access to; business deals that related to tax dollars. Those businessmen were benefiting, but if you or I were in the same business, we didn’t have the opportunity to sit at their table and have that discussion. That is how the whole thing started.

BATES: Banks says the opponents of Taylor’s ordinance framed it as a challenge to the beloved tradition of Mardi Gras instead of a challenge to segregation.

Mr. BANKS: It got twisted into a Mardi Gras ordinance because the folks that were opposing it, that’s not sexy. Mardi Gras never was sexy.

Reading James Gill’s recent column on the impact of Dorothy Mae Taylor’s ordinance 20 years later reveals that the meat of big-time Carnival is still in the money – but not in the money that was passed around through deals in the Boston or Pickwick Clubs. Anyone who can pay, no matter where they’re from, what they do, or what they look like, gets to be harnessed into a float. Problem is, in a city that has fewer economic opportunities than ever outside of tourism, selling those spots is now a big industry in itself . What it does emphasize, for locals, is the aspect of Carnival that has always endured despite – finding one’s own fun among friends and family, whether it is in a raggedy-ass hipster dance troupe, in sitting by the parade route waiting for the spectacles to pass by, or in simply being open to any and all surprises. In hard times, we all need a release like that.

There are some questions that occur to me, especially when I go back and reread one of my favorite books on Carnival: What if Taylor had been able to counter the spin and rework things to pry open the doors of the private clubs without having to go through Carnival organizations? Would that even have been possible in a city that was already in decline well before 1991? Have we really solved the problems of discrimination, or simply allowed them to transmogrify? Each question is a mask – and, to paraphrase Mark Twain, in this age when the religious element of New Orleans Carnival has been pretty much knocked out of the revelry, what remains are universal ideas of transformation and change that simultaneously invite us to peek behind the masks while dancing away from us as we attempt to do so. The whole process of trying to chart this city’s future is a dance with these queries of import: a few steps forward, one back, maybe another to the side…

As we all move beyond the fever pitch of Fat Tuesday, my greatest Carnival wish is that we never forget why we dance. It is for our very lives, each and every one of us. It shouldn’t require loads of money to know the steps.

All it needs is all of you.

Liprap

This Carnival season, I will be taking in the parades sitting down. Mostly. My bum ankle is still achy from the crack it took when I fell on my ass at the skating rink near the beginning of this past October – we humans as a species, much as we want to go rushing on at the paces modern life demands of us, are slow to heal when it comes to the big breaks.

Since I live only a block and a half from the parade route, it’s pretty simple for me to take a folding chair to the sidewalk side when I want to take in the rolling spectacles, and then take the chair with me when it’s time to head out…but I have noticed in recent years – pretty much ever since we moved back from NYC in 2006 – that the tendency to camp out (even on the sidewalks) has increased, the territorial roping, taping, and blocking off of public space has gotten out of control, and parade ladder placement is getting dangerous and just plain wrong. Part of this could be blamed on the days when Endymion and Bacchus were on the same route for a few years, but the insanity has continued since Endymion has gone back to its Mid-City perambulations. I’d bring out scissors regularly and start slicing the ropes and caution tape, but I’ve seen too many arguments that nearly came to blows over that kind of thing, and I don’t want to end up in the hospital again.

Jeffrey’s been harping on this for years, and I agree that sloughing the responsibility for enforcing the parade paraphernalia rules onto Parks and Parkways isn’t entirely the answer. When one considers the staffing problems the NOPD is having, though, it may behoove the city crews who do try to enforce the law to bring along some pepper spray. I think the Zamboni company should also create a special machine that will simultaneously clear away the detritus on both sides of the parade route while paving over St. Charles Avenue – the patch job currently being done on it is ridiculous, plus it eliminates the dotted line denoting the two lanes on either side of the neutral ground once you go downtown of Louisiana Avenue, which makes driving it especially dangerous at night. Also…no one has satisfactorily explained what happens when the floats run the red lights at Louisiana & Washington Avenues and get camera tickets. Do the krewes have that line item inserted into their budgets?

I did manage to partially march in Krewe du Vieux last weekend on a nice, uncharacteristically warm night and had a lovely time. Judging from marching in the parade until Frenchmen Street, then waiting for it to come around again so that I could rejoin it, the pace was not as frenzied and 5-K run-like this year as it has been in past years, but I was still not going to test my ankle like that. One of my personal favorite floats was the Krewe du Mishigas’ Jewpocalypse float, the construction of which can be seen here. Sure, the names of the tires were priceless (Firestein, Putzirelli, Mishigaselin, and Good Yontiff), but seeing them turn a Mercedes into a badass Road Warrior-esque death machine recalled how great satire can be. One rallying cry for survivors of the Shoah in this country that has been often (and sometimes unfairly) lampooned in the Jewish community is that the consumer dollar never go to supporters of the killing of six million Jews in Europe – and the most visible products boycotted were the vehicles produced by Mercedes-Benz. “I’m NEVER buying a German car!” sympathizers and survivors would cry, prompting even Alan Dershowitz to tell his parents that his first brand new foreign car was actually made by British Motor Works. It was something to see an evocation of that history coming down from the Marigny. The way world markets are intertwined these days makes some boycotting effective in some unintended ways, hitting the people further down the corporate totems first and leaving the parent companies still fairly strong. It’s worth it to consider how we are all entwined in these systems…and how we can create effective change.

Some change takes a long, long time. A federal probe is finally being aimed at the former Hizzoner the Walking Id C. Ray Nagin and the favors that were bestowed upon him in exchange for he and his family favoring certain city vendors. Yes, a certain zombie was onto this five years ago. Yes, it seems every half-decade or so, this city will be subject to attempts to crack that monolith on Perdido Street. Yes, if anything actually comes of any of it during my lifetime, I will be fairly pleasantly surprised.

It’s too bad this has happened too late for my krewe to have come up with a Stone Age-themed float – we’d likely have been passing out tiles to everybody and telling them to send their checks to City Hall. Talk about crimes against nature…this city’s citizens’ better natures, that is. All most everyone wants to do here is live. Stealing from New Orleans during a period when it could have really rebounded much better than it has from one of the largest man-made tragedies in the history of this country is still hurting us…and it is probably still going on regardless of who is in the mayor’s office. It’s why we’ve got to pay attention to who and what we vote for.

This weekend, however, I vote for doing whatcha wanna, but being mindful of others who also want to participate in Carnival. Maybe I will head out with some scissors, after all, or in a getup that recalls the UC Davis pepper-spraying cop. Anyone who doesn’t like it can kiss my tuchus…

Be safe this weekend, everybody.

Liprap

So here we go with the next round of interviews from Comic Con!

First a sit down chat with Paul McGillion, most well known for his portrayal of Dr. Carson Beckett on Stargate: Atlantis. A good Paisley boy who split his time between Scotland and Canada while growing up he actually got his start as an educator before his path took him into acting.

Among other things we get a bit of a sneak preview of his new, upcoming science fiction comedy series in which he portrays The Captain!

Then we talked with local comic creator Kurt Amacker about the upcoming graphic novel version of Dead Souls, plans for the future and working with Cradle of Filth.

“…as part of their fight against the City Hall cuts, the fire and police unions enlisted a PR firm and produced a leaflet for distribution at…airports and bus terminals. On the cover was a shrouded skull beneath the words ‘Welcome to Fear City.’ It counseled visitors to stay off the streets after 6:00 p.m., to avoid public transportation…and to be aware of fire hazards… It was like life during wartime.”

The above was written by Will Hermes about New York City, circa 1975.

I wonder when New Orleans’ finest and bravest will do something similar, but the former seems content with simply releasing the criminal records of the victims who have died violently in the past month of this new year, implying that, on a moral level, no matter how a victim may have been living shortly before his/her demise, looking back at the things many victims did that had the local authorities taking notice probably explains why they were fated to die at gunpoint – hey, it at least highlights “what we need to look at to fix the problem,” right?

Yes, this policy of releasing a victim’s arrest record has been going on for years – and it only got brought into question recently when the public considered the deaths of too-young Keira Holmes and Harry “Mike” Ainsworth in concert with an increase in petty crimes not seen in these parts since the 1990′s, the uproar over the French Quarter curfew, instances of rape and sexual assault that are on the rise, a shortage of patrolling officers despite NOPD chief Serpas’ assurances to the contrary, and a federally-mandated consent decree that may or may not be having an effect on how the NOPD is policing itself….and, if it is having an effect, it may be one of tying the police’s hands. (Incidentally, if anyone other than The Gambit and possibly the Independent Police Monitor have been looking closely at the creation and effects of these consent decrees, please let me know.) The difference in how the crime-fighters are dealing with it is in the “blame the victim” strategy, which has become a very popular one nationwide, especially with regards to education. The public is never entirely blameless, of course – there must be better ways for the disadvantaged in our community to quit trying to solve their problems with bullets, starting with better economic opportunities and a better education system, and we can certainly work much, much harder on those – but trying to beat victims’ dead bodies by revealing their pasts just to prove a moralizing point is no way to get a community behind the doings of the criminal justice system.

Perhaps, if the community revolts further, the next move will be the one that, in reality, the NYPD and NYFD never did completely follow through on: the tossing of a most unusual Carnival throw, a pamphlet with a jester-hatted skull on it welcoming fun-seeking tourists to New Fear City, warning them of sluggish police response times in the event of any criminal act; of the possibility that they, too, might want to observe the Quarter curfew intended for the young; of the reality that to die in New Orleans by gunfire means that your record will be on display, which, for most people here, is probably a great argument for immortality. Then tourism, the city’s main livelihood, will be under siege, held hostage by the NOPD in a bid to get somebody, anybody in power to pay attention to their problems.

The wrench in these works? The NOPD is already on a short leash. Biting the hands that are barely feeding them won’t help.

Building a real relationship with the community it must deal with every day will.

Liprap

Update, 3:52 PM: Fed up with the NOPD’s policy of releasing the victims’ criminal records? Sign this petition.

Being a Southern Gentleman I’d like to kick off our on-site interviews from Comic Con by saying “Ladies first!”

And oh what ladies we have for you today. For the art and comics fans we have Marrus who has worked on everything from ElfQuest to doing storyboards for Johnathan Frakes. Not only that, but she is one of ours, a New Orleans resident since right before Hurricane Katrina and the Levee Failure. As a friend and occasional contributor to HumidCity we had to start with her.

Then for those with more video oriented leanings we have a terrific chat with Erin Grey, most often remembered for her work as Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. A truly gracious and vivacious lady indeed.

While I was waiting for a gap in the line of fans to conduct our interview I got to be a fly on the wall as she bent over backwards to fix a snafu that would have sent one of her fans home without the photo op they had already paid for. Since the payment was done through Wizards there was nothing she could do to get them a refund, so she had them brought over for a more intimate picture before they had to leave. This is the sign of a true pro, and one who values her fans as well.

Stay tuned, we will be releasing several more audiocasts over the next few days including interviews with Zombie King Arthur Suydam and legendary DND Artist Larry Elmore!

For me, as I reflect today; If I wasn’t from New Orleans; this day right now I wouldn’t want to visit. I would be disgusted at all the things I hear going on and terrified and scared probably for those who live here. We as New Orleans citizens don’t understand that though, because we been here so long, dealt with this so long that it’s not affecting us anymore, but it’s time for this mentality to stop. We can’t progress, move forward and be Effective New Orleans citizens, if we don’t start feeling affected by the crime in this city. Take for a moment and imagine all the hurting mothers all around this city right now crying because their baby is gone or the mothers who are worried to let their children out their sight because they don’t know if they will ever get the chance to see them again. Imagine them and their hurt and how it affects their lives. Imagine it was you and get angry about it and use that anger to be a part of the change. Look at all the kids around you and imagine their future. You want to see them have one, well this can only come to happen when we all get a little less comfortable and start doing something. Getting involved in our community, becoming informed, informing others, getting our thoughts her, volunteering in the community to change the lives of youth and just letting them know you there. We can’t just depend on police department; we also have to do our part in this too. Every little piece of action helps make big change. Do you know how powerful this city could be, how we could regain our own city if everyone got uncomfortable and do their part. Step out your world and just start opening your eyes and understand that this has to stop now. Our hearts are being broken daily and with each murder a piece of the soul our city has goes away, a chip of us goes away. We need to preserve our culture for all the wonderful things it is. This is a city of passion and love. We saying we love this city can’t be enough because love is an action word and we must do our part.

Doing our part begins, once again, with giving to a family that has already sacrificed a father, a brother, a husband: send donations to a fund set up for Harry “Mike” Ainsworth at Whitney Bank – Algiers Branch, 501 Verret St., New Orleans, LA 70114.

Liprap

Comic Con is coming this weekend and once again HumidCity is getting the geek scoop! Today we had the pleasure of getting on the phone with two of the guests -Lou Ferrigno and Micheal Biehn.

Mr. Ferrigno is, of course, the Incredible Hulk from the classic 1970s/80s TV series. Mr. Biehn played Kyle Reese in Terminator and Corporal Hicks in Aliens among other roles.

First I spoke with Mr Ferrigno, a brief interview unfortunately but that was due to some tech difficulties on my end. Enjoy!

Then came the call with Mr. Biehn,a wonderful in-depth interview covering his new film, the required Terminator stories and how he got his SAG card. It’s long but we covered a lot of fun ground!

Now for the part many of you are waiting for – free tickets!

We have two pairs of free tickets to give away, and they will be awarded to whoever posts the most entertaining story about geekdom in New Orleans. It can be a convention story, DND related, an absurd Krewe of Chewbacchus anecdote, whatever.  It just needs to be NOLA and it needs to be geeky.

Leave your entry as a comment on this post, they will be judged Thurs evening. The first person to post a video of themselves trying to speak wookie gets a pair automatically!

There is a hearing going on today concerning the house referenced in this previous post. The place where updates will most likely be posted is on the Facebook page that has recently appeared to chronicle the re-making of Kweku Nyaawie’s home.

When I was finally able to get to Ku’s house this past Monday, I saw that a paint job was in the works. When it’s completely done, the place at 616 Port is gonna stand out like a gorgeous sunrise:

The paint job isn’t the only thing the house needs, however. Notice the brickwork near the bottom of the house? Ku’s on that…

…but there’s only so much a man recovering from a spinal cord injury can do.

Give the page for 616 Port some attention and stay in touch for more updates as they come.

Liprap

New Orleans Slate tells us a story about a man in need:

Kweku Nyaawie grew up in Central Texas based mostly out of Austin. A carpenter and cabinet maker, he came to New Orleans with his brother to help out with reconstruction of homes damaged by the Federal Flood in late 2005. He saw the destruction first hand and continued to work and save his money. At some point he decided to stay. He wanted to contribute to the community, buy a house, make it a home not a speculation project and found the shotgun at 616 Port Street. It needed work, but he knew he was the guy who could do it. He looked for period architectural pieces, was painstaking in his research, checked the history of the house, delighted in knowing that he’d be the one to restore this little bit of New Orleans history with the added bonus of living in it.

He got involved with the Community Garden Project in Treme and put his money and time into fixing the house. Long after the Poor Clares, the house had been purchased by a Mr. Frisbe, who lived there with his partner from 1977 until he passed away. His partner continued to live there until the storm. Kweku, or Ku as we all call him, bought it already needing repair in 2008. He loved working on the house and loved that it was exactly 100 years older than he was. When we moved here we knew him to say hello but never saw him because he was always at the Garden or working on that house.

Then came the summer of 2010. As Ku was riding his bicycle on Dumaine Street in the Sixth Ward, a black sedan hit him. Hard. Knocked completely off the bike, he watched as the car sped away without even checking to see if Ku was alright. He headed to his girlfriend’s house battered, bruised and scratched badly. He didn’t go to the ER as he thought he was just healing from some bad road rash and deep bruises. Knowing him now, my guess is that he also figured he’d just tough it out and he’d be fine. Weeks went by. His back still hurt. Months went by. His back still hurt. Then in December 2010 he realized that his legs wouldn’t quite support his 6’3” frame. He headed off to the doctor but realized that he couldn’t get the help he’d need here in New Orleans, he couldn’t work so money was also an issue (given that the bastard who hit him took off, there was no insurance money coming in to help with medical bills), so he made the decision to move back to Austin and his family. Those of us who knew him were worried as we didn’t hear from him.

He was busy. He spent nearly 14 months in therapy and is still on crutches with his legs still unable to support him. Although he’s the most positive attitude guy in the world, he’s also a proud man and a man who loves his house. He is unfortunately learning the lesson many of us learned after the storm: sometimes you gotta ask for help.

A few weeks ago he got a letter from the City. A hearing. Blight. Neighbors complaining. (We’re neighbors, we couldn’t figure out who would complain knowing how hard he’d worked and knowing what had happened to him.) At the hearing it was discovered that one complaint had come from a doctor (a DOCTOR? Wouldn’t he know how devastatingly long spinal cord injuries can take to heal?) because some vines had overgrown the fence and were interfering with his backyard garden. (This doctor is also the owner of a lot of property on our block.) Evidently Ku’s next door neighbor, an absentee homeowner and an attorney who lives in the house intermittently, wanted Ku’s house demolished. Ku was given a list of things that had to be fixed or a $500 a day fine would be levied.(Although he wouldn’t probably bring it up, he’s one of only 2 black property owners on the four sides of this block, and some of us, though not Ku, can’t help but wonder if that’s a part of these complaints.)

Ku sat in an office chair for a week sanding the front of the house in order to get it ready for painting. Stand across from it and you can see how far the outer limit of his reach is, which frankly from a desk chair is impressive. Today he’s working on the bricks that front the house from the sidewalk to the base of the house. Siding needs to be replaced for sure. His brother had been able to help for a while, but we heard he recently got a job so he’s on his own for the moment and his next hearing is a week from today.

I am asking anyone out there who can help, who can climb a ladder, sand, paint, write a letter, anything that can toss a road block into the $500 buck a day fine that he can’t afford, to get in touch.

Read more here. The go-to email for NOLA Slate is river.dharma@gmail.com.

Liprap

I was alerted via Twitter about this new book by mathematician Dr. Beverly J. Anderson concerning her schooling in the Seventh Ward in the 1950′s  and was intrigued:

Creole culture in the Seventh Ward was rooted in close family ties, hard work, creativity, high expectations, independence, the Golden Rule, Catholicism, shared language/manner of speaking, and a shared sense of belonging to a unique community. Teachers, parents, and principals—all African Americans—valued education and set high standards for student achievement. According to interviews with twelve of the author’s classmates, these beliefs, along with the unwavering support of parents and teachers, helped to produce competitive individuals in all walks of life. The Creole culture was also rooted in racial, ethnic, and religious segregation that affected individuals in surprising ways.

Anderson also examines the history of public and Catholic education for children of color in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans and addresses the impact of the school on the community and vice versa.

This has been a particularly tough week in New Orleans all around for education and for the community at large, what with a bloody Wednesday that also included a school lockdown and the election of RSD superintendent John White (unrelated to his namesake bar) to head the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, further tipping the entire state’s schools toward charterization and decentralization, further absolving the Board of any responsibility when things go bad at the schools while simultaneously removing the input of the community into who runs their schools.

I was asked by Dr. Anderson how I see the community impacting education and vice versa these days, and, though I haven’t read her book yet, I see that the community is being shoved aside more and more in the charterizing process and the rush to use test scores as the ultimate measure for how our kids are doing. It is also shoving the teachers themselves aside, catching them between a rock and a hard place in terms of their kids’ needs and the very life of the schools in which they teach. The violence outside the school doors doesn’t help much, either. These are my knee-jerk reactions to her query…and I’m one of the fairly fortunate parents seeing all of this.

I look forward to reading Dr. Anderson’s memoir. I just wish for an idyll for all here these days.

Liprap