HumidCity

Happy Mardi Gras

2012-02-20T15:37:36Z

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

from all of us at Humid City.

In Carnival’s Time of Dying

2012-02-16T21:22:13Z

When I first came down here for a visit, it was the final spring break of my college years, and it overlapped with the beginnings of Carnival parade season. I had no clue of the changes that had been wrought on Carnival as New Orleans had known it – I just knew that I was having a grand time catching any variety of things from the passing Knights of Sparta, even some inebriated rider’s giant mixed drink in a koozie. All that the rest of the country knows about Mardi Gras here is that it’s a good time on wheels – what they don’t know is how much the history – and the future – of this place is tied up in all the celebration.

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

Random Flotsam 4: Gimping Into Mardi Gras

2012-02-11T18:19:43Z

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

The Comic Con Interviews: Paul McGillion and Kurt Amacker

2012-02-02T05:13:02Z

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.

Our Building On Fire: Fear City 2012

2012-01-31T22:20:02Z

“…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.

The Comic Con Interviews: Marrus and Erin Grey

2012-01-31T06:26:33Z

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!

Words via NOLA Femmes. The Rest Is Up To Us.

2012-01-26T01:05:08Z

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

Micheal Biehn, Lou Ferrigno, and Free Tix to Comic Con!

2012-01-26T00:12:21Z

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!

A Fighting Update: Ku’s House

2012-01-20T19:49:50Z

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

A Wrong Approach…With A Chance To Make It Right

2012-01-16T15:59:43Z

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

Good Old Days? Curious…

2012-01-13T13:36:39Z

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

Don't Fix What Ain't Broke!

2012-01-26T04:36:42Z

The most important thing to remember this post-season is that the rules have changed. Specifically, the overtime rules. Starting today, if a team scores a field goal in overtime, the other team must get a chance to tie the game up again, or win by a touchdown. You know, because overtime isn’t fair. Because in 60 minutes of regulation play, neither team was able to assert dominance over the opposition. Because today, crying gets you attention.

Sudden Death overtime was adopted by the NFL in 1941 for divisional championships and expanded to include league championship games in 1946. It would not be until 1958 that it would actually come into play in a championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants. With the score tied at 17, a coin was flipped, the Giants got the ball and failed to make a first down resulting in a punt. The Colts then marched 80 yards down field resulting in a one-yard touchdown by Alan Ameche. It is still remembered by the Old School as the Greatest Game Ever Played.

In 1974, the NFL expanded the rule to include pre-season and regulation games, but for one overtime period only. Playoffs and championships would still be played until a winner was decided. Things were fine for another thirty-six years until the upstart New Orleans Saints spoiled Brett Favre’s ‘All About Me’ comeback season by kicking an overtime field goal to win the NFC Championship and a trip to the Superbowl.

Of course, the crybabies had been ramping up for a few years at that point. Untold numbers of uneducated fans have spent countless hours babbling to anyone within earshot how everyone knows that the team that wins the coin toss wins 75% of the overtime games by kicking a stupid field goal… it’s a fact, buddy… look it up! Well, I have. And that fact is about as accurate and trustworthy as FOX “News” on any given Sunday.

Admittedly, they’re close on part of the percentage, but that’s about as far as it goes. Since that Colts/Giants game back in 1958, there have been 504 overtimes played in the NFL. (Nice number, eh New Orleans?) Of those games 71.31% have been decided by a field goal, 25.30% by a touchdown and 3.39% remained tied. So, yes, about two-thirds of OT games are won by a field goal. Good work so far kids…

But, the winner of the coin toss only wins about 56% of OT games. Not only that, but what the crybabies fail to mention is that of those 504 OT games, the coin toss winner only won 140 times on their first possession. That’s right kids… while there is an advantage to winning the coin toss, only 28% of OT games are won by coin toss winner on their first possession! In 364 OT contests BOTH teams touched the ball at least once, meaning that 72% of the time, the coin toss winner fails to score on their opening OT drive!! Overall, the coin toss winner wins 28% on their first possession and 28% on a subsequent possession. The loser of the coin toss wins 42% of the time, regardless of possession.

56%-42%… Sure there’s a slight advantage to the coin toss winner, but shouldn’t there be? I mean, they get the ball first, right? You’d think it would be higher, but it ain’t and that’s a huge factor that the NFL overlooked when tweaking the overtime rules. Of course, this wouldn’t have anything to do with advertising revenue, would it…

So what does all this mean? It means that the NFL –in the interests of perceived fairness– has fixed a rule that wasn’t really all that broken to begin with. And with all the NFL’s chest-pounding about safety in the league, this is a decision that makes absolutely no sense. Make two teams already exhausted from sixty minutes of play stay on the field until someone scores a touchdown or dies, right? I can’t wait to see how fast they backpedal when Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers suffers a broken leg or arm while trying to score that game-winning overtime touchdown…

Idiots.

-M Styborski

A Contrived Food War: Parasol’s vs. Tracey’s Roast Beef

2012-01-05T23:47:53Z

There is no secret among those who know me that I know every haunt and hovel in this great city of ours. I’ve eaten at underground restaurants from the Garden District (long since closed) to the Bywater, had bar food at places that had more roaches than patrons at four in the morning and enjoyed fine dining at all the hoity-toity coat-demanding places around. Through eating in such diverse places, I reckon like any natural born New Orleanian I’m just as qualified to judge our food as anyone else with a typewriter*. After all, it’s how we do.

When I opened the Living Section of the Times-Picayune on the morning of the 4th, I saw an article comparing two supposed roast beef rivals in my newly adopted neighborhood. Being a Lower Garden man myself, I haven’t spent too much time at either Parasol’s or Tracey’s until as of late. When I did, it was rare that I’d be eating. Throughout the years, I’ve had many friends who worked for and patronized the neighborhood bars and the same is currently true of both Tracey’s and Parasol’s. So, in my New Orleans skepticism of seeing a name I scarcely recognize on the newspaper article, I decided to do the democratic thing and head out for a night of roast beef po-boys.

What began as online blabbering turned into me ordering two roast beef po-boys within minutes of each other…one from Tracey’s and the other from Parasol’s. I called Parasol’s first at 9:11 p.m., only to be told their kitchen had closed. Admittedly, I hadn’t checked the kitchen hours of either establishment trusting that late-night leniency we have with time. Despite the hour, they agreed to make a sandwich for me, which may have single-handedly save the taste test. I phone ahead to Tracey’s to avoid another possible mishap. “Oh, don’t worry,” the voice on the phone said, “we’ll be around until 10-ish.” If nothing else, my faith in New Orleanians sense of time has been maintained.

Getting to Tracey’s, I run into my old friend Pooky, a chef at Slice Uptown, that I enlist to the cause for a slightly more professionally opinion. Before digging in, I decided to sample the roast beef itself from each in order to taste sans French bread. My first impression was that both were good, though Parasol’s tasted bland in comparison. The Tracey’s roast beef was chopped and cooked down with a bit of zest to the flavor. Parasol’s beef was thickly sliced, which at first seemed nice until we got into sandwich eating. One small difference between the two was that Parasol’s sandwich had shredded lettuce and Tracey’s had pulled lettuce, leading me to wonder if both were provided by a food distributor.

Tracey’s roast beef po-boy probably could have used a bit more gravy, though it never left the mouth dry. Half way through the Parasol’s po-boy, I found that the thickly sliced meat had me reaching for a drink. Pooky stated it best with “it’s like they tried to cook down the beef, then stopped and decided to pour gravy on top.” The Tracey’s roast beef didn’t have the same effect on us and was compared to all the roast beef shake goodness that’s found in gravy from here to Arabi.

Parasol’s does have garlic butter brushed on the bread before serving; however it’s not sufficient to salvage the overall flavor of the sandwich. Tracey’s uses the same quality bread, but the sandwich as a whole entity had a far better flavor; no one condiment or flavor dominated the way that mayonnaise and beef did in the Parasol’s food. As Pooky laid it down, Tracey’s roast beef is the “complete package.” In case I hadn’t already convinced myself, Pooky ended his Parasol’s po-boy by not finishing the portion and saying, “the best piece of that sandwich I had is what fell off on the paper.”

As a simple roast beef, Parasol’s is adequate if served plain with a side of mashed potatoes in a diner. When I go for a meal, I look for a complete package and that night, Tracey’s delivered. The price difference between the two places is minimal, so price isn’t a factor, and they were both roughly the same size. My wait time for both sandwiches was about ten minutes, so that wasn’t a factor either, but given the time of day, there wasn’t a line at either place. I’ve left out the neighborhood chatter between the two factions that are loyalists to one or the other, understanding that bar folks can be loyal to traditions, owners and their staff for years. In total comparison of sandwiches alone, today Rex salutes Tracey’s.

If you want to help Parasol’s redeem itself, Pooky recommends the veal cutlet po-boy with brown gravy, grilled onions and extra provolone alongside an Irish Sundae (potato salad with roast beef debris topping). An off-duty cook from Tracey’s who sat down at the table countered with his restaurant’s special of the day: Smoked sausage po-boy with spicy aioli sauce and sauerkraut alongside boudin balls.

Everything in this town depends on personal taste, and I’d recommend you conducting your own taste test before relying on the Times-Picayune to tell you who’s the best, but as far as roast beef po-boys in the Irish Channel went last night, there’s Tracey’s and then there’s everywhere else.

Rex Dingler

For further reading:

What spurned this article: http://www.nola.com/dining-guide/index.ssf/2012/01/parasols_and_traceys_battle_fo.html

Tracey’s: http://traceysnola.com/

Parasol’s: http://www.parasolsbarandrestaurant.com/

*With exception to Ian McNulty whose food opinion is usually spot on

I spy…

2012-01-04T01:40:54Z

…with my little eye…

…a protest on the beach that BP inadvertently caught in one of its latest adverts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOfIR4Vk1o

Don’t you just love it when an oil company decides to become the chamber of commerce for an entire region in lieu of cleaning up after itself?

If they’d included even more of a close-up, they’d have caught some of this.

If they really cared, though, they’d be paying much more attention to the fact that the oil and the nasty chemicals use to try to disperse it are still there in the Gulf.

Liprap

Update, 7:37 PM: The Institute for Southern Studies asks “what if…”

But what if BP took a different tack this coming year? What if the oil giant — which scooped up profits worth nearly $5 billion last quarter and is planning to drill anew in the deepwater Gulf — decided to give a voice to those enduring the worst fishing season in memory? What if BP decided to tell the stories of families suffering from debilitating health problems they blame on the crude and chemical dispersants, oil that still mysteriously bubbles up near BP’s Macondo well 40 miles offshore?

If such a miracle were to take place, I have a great list of characters and stories for BP to choose from. They are all hard working people who care about their health and environment; many are salt-of-the earth folks who before the BP disaster rarely complained about the oil industry. But the oil spill changed that. And their stories have largely been ignored by the media and those in the halls of Congress, not to mention oil industry bosses in country club lounges. (Check out NRDC’s film Stories from the Gulf that aired on the Discovery Channel earlier this year).

Their stories are crucial; after all, who will protect the common working man and the critters in the sea, as one fisherman asked me? Who will stand up for their special interests? The problem is no politician wants to touch this Gulf tar baby. The oil, seafood and tourism interests all want to keep it quiet. The politicians just follow suit; after all, we know where their bread is buttered. The feds drew a line in the sand shortly after the well was capped last year. The oil is gone and the seafood is safe. End of story.

Except it isn’t. As NRDC’s Miriam Rotkin-Ellman and Gina Solomon reported last fall in their landmark peer-reviewed seafood safety study, the government simply doesn’t set adequate safety levels or test for many oil contaminants that can be harmful to seafood consumers, especially to children and pregnant mothers.

And every storm in the Gulf brings a fresh wave of tar balls and oily gunk onto the beaches and bayous. Where do you think that’s coming from? Experts say plenty of oil is still sunk on the bottom, some of it in thick tar mats lying just offshore. It’s not clear what will happen to it.

Read the rest here.

New Year, New Records…

2012-01-01T18:02:18Z

OK kids, it’s the last regular season rodeo and the only thing that makes it bearable is that the New Orleans Saints have work to do after today that does not involve packing up the equipment for the off-season. This will be the Saints’ third consecutive post-season which ties our run from 1990-1992. For those of you thinking the match-up against the Carolina Panthers is going to be a cakewalk, think again…

Despite coaching the Saints to a 60-34 record in six years, including four post seasons and a Superbowl Championship, Sean Payton has never won the final game of the season. And three of his five season-enders have come against Carolina. As footnotes go, losing the last game every season would be bearable if the Saints continue their post-season success, but I say just let’s end the drought now. Especially since this might just be the first time the Saints finish a season undefeated at home!

After a nightmare 2-14 season in 2010, the Panthers have improved to 6-9 under rookie QB Cam Newton but all of their wins have come against sup-par teams: Jacksonville, Washington, Indy, Tampa Bay twice and an injury-laden Houston. Still, the Panthers are on the rise and will most likely replace the Falcons as our most serious divisional threat for the next few years and Newton is the key to their success.

Newton already has a slew of records in the books including most passing yards by a QB in a debut game (422), most passing yards by a QB in first two games (854), most passing yards by a rookie in a single game (432), most passing yards by a rookie in a season (3893), first rookie QB to pass for 400+ yards in debut game, first rookie to pass for 400+ yards in consecutive games, fastest player to hit 1000 passing yards (3 games), first payer in NFL to rush for 5+ TDs and pass for 5+ TDs in five games and first player in NFL history to rush for 10 and pass for 10 TDs in a season, most rushing TDs by a QB in a single season (14 – four shy of Eric Dickerson’s 1983 rushing TD record of 18). Oh, and if with 20 passing TDs, he’s tied for third for most in a season by a rookie. One more will break that tie and drop Dan Marino to fourth place. It’s a bad year for Marino… (Note: Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton also stands at 20 with Marino and Newton.)

But enough about the competition, Saints fans have a few things to look forward to in this game as well!

The Saints are just 9 points away (502) from breaking the team record of 510 points in a season, accrued during our 2009-10 Championship run. Additionally, we’re 16 first-downs away (383) from breaking the Kansas City Chiefs 2004 NFL record of 398! The 2000 St Louis Rams currently hold the NFL record for most yards gained in a season at 7075, but the Saints are only 218 yards behind them at 6857. That toasts the previous team record of 6571 from 2008.

Darren Sproles is 162 all-purpose yards away from breaking Derrick Mason’s 2000 NFL record of 2690. (AP yds include rushing, receiving and returns.) Sproley Moley is also 119 yards shy of Michael ‘Beer Man’ Lewis’ team record of 2647 AP yards, which is also the NFL’s second place mark behind Mason.

Pierre Thomas is 83 yards away (2471) from Mario Bates’ 8th place team rushing yard total of 2554.

Jimmy Graham has had a phenomenal sophomore year and is close to some records of his own. At 1213 yards, Graham is 87 yards away from Kellen Winslow’s 1980 NFL record of 1290 receiving yards by a tight-end. He’s also close (91) to Tony Gonzalez’ 1994 NFL record of 102 receptions in a season by a TE, But New England’s Rob Gronkowski is also in the hunt with 82 catches for 1219 yards. It’s going to be close!!

Marques Colston is two TDs away form tying Eric Martin’s 7th place team scoring mark of 288 points and his 4th place team TD mark of 48.

Will Smith takes sole possession of 21st place from Fred McAfee (122) on the team’s career games played list with his 123rd game.

Thomas Morstead broke the single season touchback record this year with 62, however if ever there was a stat to look at through “reality goggles” it might be this one. The previous record was somewhere around 40, but that was broken in week 8 this season due to the NFLs ridiculous choice to move kickoffs from the 30- to the 35-yard line. But hey, a record is a record! However, Morstead is punting like a demon with a net yardage of 43.1 which, if it holds, would break Shane Lechler’s 2009 NFL record of 43.85!

And then there’s Drew Brees. Hot off breaking Dan Marino’s (5084) 1984 NFL record for passing yards, Drew should become the first quarterback to pass for 5100+ yards in the history of the NFL, and –if his season average holds– possibly the first to throw for 5400+ yards! He is just 11 completions away (440) from breaking Peyton Manning’s 2010 season completion record of 450 which would also break his own second and third place spots from 2010 (448) and 2007 (440).

–M Styborski

Happy New Year from HumidCity and Loren the Black

2012-01-01T05:35:07Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lN45wEudDM

Beyond Our Control

2012-01-01T09:33:49Z

…The radical freedom my daughter embraced created a form of imprisonment for me. Even though Marissa assured me I had nothing to do with her choice, for that year and a half she was away, I was locked in the feeling that I had failed her. The sense of safety I had provided at home clearly hadn’t been enough.

Or maybe my vision of her future was what she ran from. I had said, stay in school, get a job, buy a house, and you’ll retire securely, even though that hadn’t worked out for me. When she said she wanted to break free, at first I gripped tight, imposed new rules and higher expectations. I insisted that she turn away from wildness, even in this wild time. Eventually… I loosened the reins and trusted to fate. Neither approach brought her back. Marissa said she was going toward something I wouldn’t, couldn’t, understand. After a year of trying, I see that she is right. This life she and her friends led was not worse than I imagined, but it was more dangerous than I had wanted to believe. I can
describe it, but understanding still eludes me.

I read Danelle Morton’s article on the eight killed in the December 28, 2010 warehouse fire and am still struggling with my reactions and the responses of others to the sympathy she exhibits for the dead and her attempts to understand why they made the choices that lead to their deaths in a fiery inferno that likely resulted from their attempts to keep warm on an icy cold night. The knee-jerk impulse for us all – myself included – is to roundly condemn these kids for being there in the first place. Raised in good homes by the families’ accounts (though there may be some things they aren’t sharing), who in their right minds would think that family conflicts during the teenage years could get so bad that hopping trains and engaging in Darwinian-like struggles for day-to-day survival could be a viable option?

It rid the world of some extra weight. What would kids like that ever contribute to society anyhow? Cruel, yet comforting (on some level) thoughts, designed to insulate oneself from the idea that it could ever happen to one’s family. The scarier thing to contemplate, after all, is that it could and does happen indiscriminately. You could still do everything you’re supposed to do as a family in rearing your kids and they could still choose that kind of life…and, short of having them committed to some sort of institution against their will, you’d be stuck in the same kind of limbo Morton describes, forced to trust fate will somehow keep smiling upon your kids as they embrace body and soul this idea of freedom that is so far outside what most of us think of when we contemplate the same thing – familiar, but far out.

I guess there are times when I could’ve gone the same way myself, most notably when I ran right out of grade school around 4th or 5th grade in frustration with the near-constant bullying I got from my peers and got as far as the railroad tracks down the block before realizing I’d make a terrible runaway. Any frustrations I had with my family as a teenager – and believe me, there were many – were mostly neutralized by a strong sense I had of simply tolerating it all because I’d be out of the house before I knew it. It was, in the end, the values I had and a sense of guilt over hurting my parents’ feelings too much that held me out of the life of a traveler. I didn’t want to do anything drastic that would kill my family emotionally. Not until I was out of their house, anyway.

I look at my son who is now halfway to eighteen and I wonder about the choices he will make, and the kind of world we currently have a hand in creating that might give him the impression that being a traveler is a good idea. Would it be in rebellion at how much we are spending our lives plugged into technology? In recoil at how much we pay and pay and pay in health care, education, and overall homage to consumerism? Or would it be as simple as we’d be cramping his style and, in the face of a serious lack of coming-of-age rituals and/or starter employment for young adults, he’d rather hop a train and squat in an abandoned home? Yes, my fears are colored by this past year’s events worldwide, which constantly drive home that this world needs a lot of work. But is the best way to help it all along found in completely dropping out of it all in this way? I don’t know, I can’t bring myself to willingly find out, and I don’t know what I’d do if my not-so-little guy decided to take that path. What I do know is that if things don’t change in another nine years priority-wise for our entire country, more of our kids will head down that no-holds-barred road with only our love – if these kids even have it (horrible to contemplate, but some households are like that) – to prepare them for any uncertainties.

No one is completely blameless in any of the business that led to eight people dying in an abandoned warehouse over a year ago. At those tragic times, it is simply driven home how little control we have over the decisions of others, no matter how much we care for the decision-makers themselves. We can only lay some foundations, set some good examples, and stay alert for the possibility that these wild souls will return in one way or another – and, if they do, our doors and hearts will be open to what they bring.

Liprap

The Education Of Everyone Else

2011-12-29T11:08:18Z

Just when I think class is out and the day is done, the bell rings and reminds me that for some, school never ends! While working on yesterday’s lesson for Mike Freeman nearly half the sports world was feverishly toiling to fill their little corners of the interwebz with the most important story of the day: How the classless Saints –led by the greedy Drew Brees– ran the score up on the poor old Atlanta Falcons just so Drew could break Dan Marino’s single-season passing yardage record on Monday Night Football.

I’m not even going to use examples here –because there are far too many and I refuse to advertise their stupidity– but I will touch on the key myths that most of them attempt to use as justification for their inane babble.

Myth 1: The Saints Intentionally Ran Up The Score.
Football is a contest between two teams played in order to see which team can score the most points! Intentionally scoring points is the fundamental basis of the game! It is the job of the defense to stop the opposing offense from scoring those points and if they can’t do that, then it’s the job of their offense to come right back and score enough points to keep the game close! If you can’t grasp this one simple concept, you need to stop writing about sports for a living.

Myth 2: Drew Brees Is Greedy
Huh? Clearly you know nothing about Drew Brees. Seriously, I don’t get this accusation at all. Drew threw for 307 yards monday night. Just two yards past the record but 45 yards under his season average! At 352.5 yards/game, it was his fourth-lowest total all year. Are you suggesting that after getting the Saints to within 9 yards of the goal line and 7 yards of the record he should have gone against his life-long training and just said “Aww, shucks, I’ll do it tomorrow.”? For the factual record, Drew wasn’t even paying attention to the yards he needed for the NFL record. He was simply playing football the way it’s supposed to be played. To win.

Myth 3: He Didn’t Need To Score To Get The Record
No, he didn’t. And if you watch the play you’ll see that Drew threw the ball seven yards which was just enough for the record. The score was simply icing on the cake. Blame Darren Sproles for doing his job. You know, the job he has been taught to do since he first put pads on as a wee tot. Or blame the overpaid, under-coached Falcons for failing to stop the Saints. Something they’re becoming very adept at in recent years. In fact, failing to stop the Saints has become something of a hobby for the rest of the NFL. Get used to it.

Myth 4: He Shouldn’t Have Done It On National TV
Oh, I see, it would have been fine to do it next week when only the New Orleans and Carolina markets could see NFL history being made. Doing it in front of the entire world on Monday Night Football is the problem, right? Say, didn’t Dan Marino break Fouts’ record on Monday Night Football? Oh, and guess what? Dan’s record throw was a touchdown, too! I noticed that a lot of Brees-haters hail from the Miami area. Could it be sour grapes that the greatest Miami quarterback to never win his single championship appearance in 17 years just got bumped from his last major NFL record? Or is it simply misplaced petulance since the brain-trust running the Dolphins condescendingly pushed Brees out of their offices with a pat on the fanny and a “Yeah buddy, good luck with that shoulder…”? By the way, how’s Daunte Culpepper working out for you guys?

Myth 5: The Unwritten Gentleman’s Agreement
Show me where it’s written that teams are supposed to take it easy on their opponents. This is an archaic collegiate bullshit concept designed to pad the stats of crappy players so that they would have a decent chance of landing a professional $10/week football job after graduation and help keep mediocre college coaches working during the Great Depression! It was easy to do back in the stone-age because bloggers and media-hype were fairly non-existent. Let me guess, the frustrated mommies crying foul over Drew Brees are the same gals who think Tim Tebow is a good quarterback. Mm-hm… thought so.

Let me ask you this… How many points are too many? In the NFL, the correct answer is that you can never have too many points! Just two weeks earlier the Falcons were down 23-7 versus the Carolina Panthers with 3:00 remaining in the third quarter. Matt Ryan led four second-half drives resulting in a field goal and three touchdowns, two of which came in the last 4:30 of the fourth quarter. The Falcons won that game 31-23. And you’re suggesting the Saints should have backed off and coasted? Why, did you bet the under? Did you take the Falcons and twelve points and lose your wife’s car payment for the month? Grow up.

Folks, the average point difference through 240 games this year is 12.14 points. (The Saints average split, win or lose, stands at exactly 12 points.) This season 148 games (62%) have been decided by 12 points or less. That means there are another 92 games out there where teams are doing better than average. 44 games (18%) were decided by 13-20 points, 38 games (16%) by 21-30 points, 7 games (3%) by 31-40 points and 3 games (1%) by 41 points or more. Added together, the games decided above the average point difference add up to just a little more than 37.5%

You want to know what else equals 37.5%? The 12 teams in the NFL that are going to the playoffs comprise 37.5% of the leagues 32 teams. And of course, those 12 teams account for 37.5% of the games played this season. And guess what? They pretty much account for that 37.5% of games which have scoring differences above the average! Cream rising to the top isn’t rocket science kids.

The Saints beat the Falcons by 29 points which gives them a three-way tie for thirteenth place on this year’s Damn-We-Thumped-Your-Ass List. Want to see the top of the list? Okey-dokey!

w07 55 pts, NO over IND
w02 45 pts, DET over KC
w05 45 pts, SF over TB
w10 38 pts, GB over MIN
w10 37 pts, DAL over BUF
w08 35 pts, DET over DEN
w07 34 pts, HOU over TEN
w01 34 pts, BUF over KC
w16 32 pts, CAR over TB
w11 31 pts, NE over KC
w14 30 pts, GB over OAK
w03 30 pts, BAL over SL
w02 29 pts, NYJ over JAC
w06 29 pts, CHI over MIN
w16 29 pts, NO over ATL

That makes 12 games that were decided by more points than the Saints/Falcons game. Where was the outcry for those games? Oh, right… there was none. There are an additional 20 games decided by 28, 27 and 26 points for a grand total of 35 thumpings greater than 25 points this year and the Saints/Falcons game falls right in the middle of the pack. And take a good look at those winning teams. Of the 12 victors on that list, seven have guaranteed post-seasons and the Jets and Dallas each have a separate shot at the playoffs. On the other side only Atlanta has a guaranteed playoff berth while Oakland, Denver and Tennessee are fighting against two other teams for the last two AFC spots.

Could it be that a large margin of victory is only acceptable when playing a crappy team, like Indy or Minnesota? Last week the Saints beat Minnesota by 22 points and there was nary a peep from the bloggerati. In the week 12 contest between the Saints and Giants, our 25 point, 49-25 win didn’t cause a stir and that was a Monday-nighter too! And our 55 point week 7 Sunday night romp over the hapless Colts was described by many as being lenient!! Hell, the day before the Saints/Falcons game Carolina steamrolled the Bucs by 32 points and nobody even blinked!

You people seriously need to get a grip. Or a life. At least get out of the house once in a while and rent a woman for a few hours to take the edge off! Let me explain this to you once and for all: Running up the score in the NFL is a childish whine! You want a close game every time? Go watch hockey. I’m a football fan and sometimes I want to see scorched-earth devastation, especially against division rivals! Go back to boycotting high school dodgeball ya ninnies!

And let me clarify that while the bitching about the Saints set me off, my views on scoring stand for every NFL team. Would I like it if someone beat the Saints or the Steelers by 29 points? No, but that’s something I’d have to live with if it happened, and it has happened. Many, many times, my friends! And it was due to them playing downright crappy football, just like the Falcons did Monday night. Pick yourself up with what little dignity you have left and change the outcome next week, just like half of the league does every week.

I suppose when Drew Brees eventually breaks Johnny Unitas’ record of consecutive games with a touchdown you’ll all cry that he should have waited until the following week to do so…

Idiots.

–M Styborski

The Education Of Mike Freeman

2011-12-31T13:04:20Z

On December 21, cbssports.com’s Mike Freeman wrote an… interesting column positing that Drew Brees’ (inevitable, at the time) breaking of Dan Marino’s single season yardage record should be accompanied by an asterisk. You can read it here, but it’s not well written nor is it well researched. In fact, it’s a thinly veiled attack on the NFL rules that assassinates Drew Brees in the crossfire. As HumidCity’s resident stat geek and an nigh-unflappable Saints fan, I should like to take Mr Freeman to school for an education. Would you care to join me? Fine!

Freeman states that in 1984, Marino’s “throws were unbelievably accurate…” The only thing unbelievable here is that Mr Freeman is simply making shit up. Marino threw 362 completions out of 554 attempts for an accuracy of 64.2%. Through just 15 games, Brees has pitched 440 completions out of 622 attempts for a completion percentage of 70.7%. More passes, better accuracy. In fact, Marino’s 1984 accuracy ranks in a four-way tie for 98th place all-time and is the highest of his three spots in the top 250. All six of Drew Brees’ seasons with New Orleans rank higher than Marino’s, as do his final two years in San Diego:

2004 SD: 65.5% (61st – three-way tie)
2005 SD: 64.6% (84th – two-way tie)
2006 NO: 64.3% (95th – three-way tie)
2007 NO: 67.5% (26th)
2008 NO: 65.0% (74th – three-way tie)
2009 NO: 70.6% (2nd)
2010 NO: 68.1% (17th)
2011 NO: 70.7% (1st – through 15 games)

Freeman continues: ”Players like Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White and Ronnie Lott … were allowed great latitude to do massive damage to wide receivers and quarterbacks. Receivers weren’t protected and quarterbacks were brutalized.”

Wrong again. In 1978 the NFL sought to stop one player from beating the living hell out of every receiver he faced. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mel Blount. After eight years of Blount terrorizing opposing wideouts, the NFL enacted pass interference rules which made it illegal for defenders to so much as look at receivers funny five yards beyond the line of scrimmage. In the league, this commonly became known as the Mel Blount Rule. Oh, and this was seven years before Marino’s record. Further, in 1979 the NFL implemented the “In The Grasp” rule to protect the highly paid but incredibly delicate passers that were tip-toeing their way into the league. Again, well before Marino ever played an NFL game! Oh, and Reggie White’s first NFL game was in 1985. One year after Freeman imagines he was brutalizing poor Dan Marino.

To further clarify things, Joe Namath set the bar at 4007 yards in 1967, seven years after the league expanded from 12 games to 14. That record would stand for 12 years until Dan Fouts, running Don “Air” Coryell’s pass-heavy offense, would break it in three consecutive years: ’79, ’80 and ’81 posting records of 4082, 4715 and 4802 yards, immediately after those two rules went into effect! The added games (the league raised the season from 14 to 16 games in 1978) and rules benefitted both Fouts and Marino, but I don’t hear calls for asterisks by their names. I don’t recall anyone claiming their stats are “watered down”. The fact is Fouts, Marino and Brees are all on a pretty level paying field.

But wait… there’s more! ”Though Marino’s quick release helped to protect him from many major hits (though far from all of them) his receivers were hammered.”

I don’t have stats on the hammerings –real or imagined– that the Dolphin’s receivers were taking, but Marino ate the turf 13 times for 120 yards in 1984. Through fifteen games this season, Drew Brees has been sacked 24 times for 158 yards. Freeman completely misses –or simply ignores– one aspect of sacks that won’t jibe with his theories: sacks can actually improve passing yards! Get sacked for 12 yards on 2nd and 5 and you’re probably not going to try a 17-yard run for a first down, ya know?

Freeman then brings this into play: “Roughing the passer, blows to the head and the increasing calls for hits on defenseless receivers has given quarterbacks like Brees wide open passing lanes and wide-open receivers.”

Yes, the quarterbacks have more protection now than ever, but Freeman conveniently disregards more facts here which don’t support his rambling thesis. Despite defender fears of drawing penalties for roughing and pass interference, those calls are still made in just about every game, and every time an offense gains 15 yards for roughing the QB or 40 yards for defensive pass interference, those are yards that the QB will not be able to add to his stats! There have been at least three instances in Saints games this year where pass interference calls on the opposing defense near the goal line have erased 60 to 80-odd yards of possible passing for Drew Brees! To simplify things, If it weren’t for roughing and interference penalties, Drew Brees would have popped Marino’s bubble three years ago and again this year in week thirteen!

Freeman’s lack of knowledge regarding NFL rules and history are not his only weak points. He also has a poor view of the big picture. Clearly, he despises some –if not all– of the rules implemented by the NFL over the last thirty years to “improve” league safety. (On this I find myself mostly in agreement!) But there are more aspects to the game than Freeman is willing to admit, which only proves that his blog post is a cheap tirade against certain rules he dislikes and a petty attack against a certain quarterback he doesn’t seem to care for. And he’s willing to compromise his integrity in order to do so!

For example, in 1984, 28 teams played a 16 game schedule. Today there are 32 teams with the same schedule, but there are a few differences. In Marino’s day, there wasn’t a bye-week in the middle of the season. The humble, little bye week is an incredible gift to today’s quarterbacks and can sometimes mean the difference between missing a game due to minor injury and starting healthy. This one little fact could have bolstered Freeman’s theory yet he chose to ignore it.

Further, the 1984 NFL season was composed of 224 games. Then, as now, each team played 8 home games with six of those teams playing under a roof for a total of 48 domed contests. Today, 32 teams compete in 256 games and nine teams have weatherproof home digs for a total of 78 domed contests. That’s 30 less games played in the heat, wind, rain, mud, snow and sleet today than there were in Marino’s day and that’s going to change a team’s game plan and pad the passing stats for both teams! Marino played all but two games outdoors whereas Brees will have played 12 of his 16 games in the air-conditioned (relative) comfort of a domed stadium. Again, something that could have lent credence to Freeman’s hypothesis but somehow is not even considered.

Additionally, most outdoor stadiums today no longer have a grass-over-dirt field, opting instead for some form of artificial turf. This alone gives QB’s and their receivers an immense footing advantage! Of course the passing stats are going to go up, but not because of some perceived rules advantage that, as pointed out above, is basically identical for both Brees and Marino!

Freeman then goes on to complain that of the current top-ten “rated” passers of all-time, most have played in the last decade and all ten boast better passer ratings than Marino. Well, duh! And partially for the three reasons I just pointed out: bye-week, domes and artificial turf! One-third of Freeman’s examples –Schaub, Culpepper, Ryan, Hill and Bulger– spent the majority of their careers and over half their seasons under domes. But there’s more to this list than meets the eye!

Of his examples only Schaub, Ryan and Flacco still have starting jobs which is another aspect of the game that has changed since Marino’s day but fails to support Freeman’s theory and is ignored: Quarterbacks don’t hang around as long as they used to. While Shaun Hill had the requisite numbers to make the list early in his career, (and by that I mean the required number of snaps and passes,) his overall performance resulted in losses and with the wealth of talent entering the league today, no team is going to keep a QB under center if he doesn’t put notches in the “win” column.

What this means is that Hill will probably never have that end-of-career decline included in his stats that many star QB’s experience as they strap the pads on for one last season or three. Compared to Marino’s seventeen-year, 242 game career, the last four years of which age and health helped to decrease his overall passer rating, Shaun Hill’s five-year, 32-game career is already a fucking footnote. This is not a rules problem, but a failure in the computation and application of the passer rating statistic. (And please don’t get me started on the slap-dash mathematics that make up that ridiculously biased stat!)

Marino’s record was a damn beautiful thing to watch and he didn’t have an easy time of it, but I think I’ve shown that Brees’ accomplishment was every bit as difficult along the way and no less beautiful! And consider that Marino was a healthy 23-year old kid in his second year when he hit his high mark and Brees is –by NFL standards– an old man of 32 with an once-injured throwing shoulder! And Drew Brees is most certainly undeserving of Mike Freeman’s petty, flawed rant. Cripes, I do this for free, people! You’d think someone who gets paid to write about sports –for no less an entity as CBS– could do a little research and put the tiniest amount of thought into their work before making fools of themselves and their employers. I guess that’s just one of the differences between Freeman and me. Another is that I have never forged a college degree on my resume to get a job. Asterisk indeed…

–M Styborski

(Note: I would like to thank Jason Calbos and his fine post here for bringing this matter to my attention!)

The Dixie Showdown 2011b!

2011-12-27T05:37:51Z

In the days before multi-million dollar contracts and overpriced tickets, two small market cities landed coveted NFL franchises: Atlanta in 1966 and New Orleans the following year. Aside from the first few years, the Falcons have been our closest and longest rivalry, spanning the last forty-two years!

Atlanta’s inaugural season was spent in the NFL Eastern division along with the Cowboys, Browns, Eagles, St Louis Cardinals, Redskins, Steelers and Giants. The next three seasons they clashed with the LA Rams, Baltimore Colts and SF 49ers in the West’s Coastal division.

New Orleans spent it’s first and third years in the NFL East Conference’s Capitol division with the Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins. Their second year was spent, bewilderingly, in the East’s Century division fighting the Browns, St Louis Cardinals and Steelers.

In 1970 the AFL and NFL finalized the Great Merger, renamed the West’s Coastal division as the NFC West and kicked Baltimore out to move the Saints in with the Rams, Niners and Falcons and that was basically the lineup for the next twenty-four years. Seattle spent 1976 in the division before moving to the AFC West and Carolina joined the division from 1995 to 2001. In 2002, the NFL reorganized again moving the Saints, Falcons, Panthers and Buccaneers to the NFC South.

The first Saints/Falcons matchup was held in our inaugural season and was referred to as the “Dixie Championship”. On Nov 20, 1967, the Saints went marching in with a 27-24 victory but just two years later the Falcons would trounce the Saints in the second Dixie Championship 45-17 on Dec 7th, 1969. (Make your own Pearl Harbor/FDR reference here!)

When the two teams joined the same division in 1970 it meant two contests each year and the idea of a Dixie championship fell by the wayside in favor of the less definitive “Southern Showdown”. Not only is that incredibly boring, but it’s even less accurate seeing as there are more teams than ever in the South these days.

Therefore, I submit before the Board, a merging of the two titles to create the Dixie Showdown, parts a and b with the title Dixie Champion going to the team that sweeps the other in the regular season. Tiebreakers to be decided by final standings.

The Falcons lead the NFL series 45-39 and hold 23 Dixie Championships to the Saints 20. For the record, here are the Dixie Champions of the last forty-five years along with the outcomes for the matchups:

1967 NO One meeting, Saints win 27-24
1968 — No meeting
1969 ATL One Meeting, Falcons win 45-17
1970 ATL Sweep
1971 ATL Sweep
1972 ATL Sweep
1973 NO Sweep
1974 NO Split
1975 ATL Split
1976 ATL Split
1977 ATL Split
1978 ATL Sweep
1979 NO Split
1980 ATL Sweep
1981 ATL Sweep
1982 ATL Sweep
1983 NO Sweep
1984 NO Split
1985 ATL Sweep
1986 ATL Split
1987 NO Sweep
1988 NO Sweep
1989 NO Sweep
1990 NO Split
1991 NO Split (Falcons beat Saints in Wild Card round)
1992 NO Sweep
1993 NO Split
1994 NO Sweep
1995 ATL Sweep
1996 ATL Sweep
1997 ATL Sweep
1998 ATL Sweep
1999 ATL Sweep
2000 NO Sweep
2001 NO Split
2002 ATL Sweep
2003 NO Sweep
2004 ATL Split
2005 ATL Sweep
2006 NO Sweep
2007 NO Sweep
2008 ATL Split
2009 NO Sweep
2010 ATL Split
2011 Saints won Dixie Showdown 2011a

Notable things to look for in tonight’s game:

Drew Brees is just 305 yards away from breaking Dan Marino’s 27-year old passing yardage record of 5084. He’s also just 290 yards away from his own 2nd-place NFL mark of 5069. (I think I might have prognosticated this somewhere around week four. Just saying…) Brees is also just 34 completions away from Peyton Manings 2010 record of 450. If he breaks that, he also breaks his own 2nd- and 3rd-place marks of 448 (2010) and 440 (2007). Drew is also just Eight TD passes away from 200, something no Saint has ever done! (Archie stopped at 115, Aaron crapped out at 120.)

Drew is hacking away at other history as well. his 37 TDs this season place him at 10th place on the NFL all-time list. One TD will tie Brett Favre’s 9th[place 1995 record. Two will tie Favre (’96) and Daunte Culpepper’s (’04) 7th/8th-place tie. Just one TD will also continue his streak of TD’s/game to 42 games, just 5 shy of Johnny Unitas’ 1960 record!

Marques Colston is three TDs away from tieing Eric Martin’s 7th-place spot on the Saints career Scoring list. Those same three TDs would tie him for 3rd with Joe Horn on the Saints Career TD list.

Pierre Thomas is 44 yards away from passing Wade Wilson as the Saints 9th leading rusher. (One more thing Reggie wasn’t able to do…)

Will Smith will tie Fred McAfee’s 21st-place spot on the Saints career games list with his 122 game.

-M Styborski

Happy Humid Holidays

2011-12-27T18:27:46Z

Here’s to a better (and hopefully sweeter) coming year.

Be well, Humid readers.

Liprap

Keep The Ordinary From Becoming Deadly

2011-12-24T20:44:02Z

Shortly before we moved back to New Orleans in early 2006, the murder of young Nixzmary Brown came to light. Starved, beaten and tortured by her stepfather for such “major offenses” as taking a Jello pudding from the fridge when she wasn’t supposed to, I was horrified when I saw news clips of police carrying out of the apartment that had become a crime scene a solitary, child-size chair normally found in grade schools across the country, a chair that she had been tied to as part of her many, largely unwarranted, punishments. There have since been calls for a law in Brown’s name that will ensure that anyone convicted of the murder, abuse, and/or sexual assault of a child be sentenced to life in prison.

That chair being carried out of her place stays burned in my brain even now, an ordinary object that, in the wrong hands, became an instrument of terror, used as such not only by her stepfather, but by her mother. I mention this because one question has been going through my head since the drive-by shooting that took the life of Keira Holmes: when does a basically livable city become a hell on earth?

No nearby second line can have this tragedy erroneously pinned on it, because this was a case of someone (or someones) deciding to settle a beef at gunpoint out in the open, sending a message to those in the know (and even those who weren’t) that street justice isn’t settled in the courts. This sadly leaves the officials left to clean up the mess pointing fingers at one another. Though they are all part of this problem, their re-formation is only part of the solution.

What should not enter the picture is the National Guard, whose return to New Orleans was instantly suggested not only by some friends of mine, but also by Austin Badon. Here we have an abusive situation as it is, and now a “Nixzmary Brown Law” of sorts is being called down on us all. Martial law no matter who you are or what you’ve done. Isn’t it bad enough that there’s indefinite detention hanging over all our heads as a nation? I guess not.

The National Guard can’t do all of this:

The National Guard won’t be able to end the entrenched, endemic racism in New Orleans.

The National Guard won’t be able to end the poverty that comes as a result of the racism.

The National Guard won’t be able to fix our shattered school system, which fail so many children, and disproportionately fails the poor and children of color.

The National Guard won’t be able to clean up our corrupt criminal justice system, which jails more people than anywhere else in the world yet cannot seem to improve public safety.

The National Guard won’t repair broken families.

The National Guard won’t create jobs.

The National Guard won’t feed the kids that only get one meal a day, and that from school.

The National Guard won’t end homelessness.

The National Guard can’t address any, not one single reason, why people turn to crime. That’s your job, Mr. Badon. Get the fuck on it.

Get the state to stop fucking around and actually work for the peopleinstead of for themselves. This could be your moment, man. You could start a revolution. You could stand up and shame your fellow lawmakers for their apathy and their ignorance and their greed. You could call out our mayor for being an affable, ineffectual media monkey instead of a leader. You could call out our sheriff for being more interested in clinging to the power of his petty fiefdom than in public safety. You could stand against the prevailing belief that tourism dollars are more important than human lives and dignity. You could.

The National Guard can’t do that. You could.

So could we all, right here at home. We can keep ordinary objects from becoming weapons. We can keep the outdoors from becoming killing fields. In the coming year, we must simply believe it and go about making it happen.

Liprap

Occupation Chess

2011-12-13T09:10:52Z

Straight from folksinger and New Orleans resident Ani DiFranco:

Did you visit Occupy NOLA?

Yeah, I did go down there, two or three weeks ago. I hung out for two or three hours. It was pretty low-key—a lot of people camping down there by City Hall, a lot of boards specifying a lot of meetings about how to get through the daily food and dishes and trying to figure out the daily biz of urban camping.

What did you take away after visiting Occupy NOLA?

I think that it’s great that there are people in the streets calling attention to the disparity of wealth in this city, and to the exploits of the top one percent. I agree with all the commentators commenting that the movement needs to articulate more specifically the solutions, to grow beyond pointing out huge problems and begin to point out some of the solutions.

I wish I lived back in New York right now and could participate directly in one of the epicenters of the movement. I heard on the news last night a very cool film director, Robert Greenwald, who makes progressive documentaries. He was saying, “Now we need to identify the One Percent. Who are these people?” And I was thinking, “No, I don’t think we should go on personal vendettas even though we would love to shame these people who are ruining our country and our lives. I don’t think that’s the best way to go.” Naming the laws that were enacted and de-acted nd all of the systematic devices these people use to exploit the system—that’s what we need to focus on.

In only two paragraphs, Ani’s got it mostly right.

For one thing, the Occupations across the country – and the world – are in danger of drowning in their own petty minutiae as well as that of others: the emphases on locations rather than the issues (even the fake locations), the cities’ officials’ responses that range from brutality via police actions to treating protesters as biohazards, the marginalization of the media (a marginalization partially accepted by the major media outlets) that tips over into outright mockery. Some aspects of the movements are already toppling into political theater that wouldn’t be out of place on Punk’d (or in, say, Krewe du Vieux, for that matter…hmmmm…), while those wanting to keep the issues alive are moving on to occupy foreclosed, still-vacant houses in order to raise awareness of what the subprime mortgage fiascoes have done to us all (of course, many people all over this country are doing that already as a sad matter of course right now). It’s all insanely impressive ado. Its bombast has quite the siren song, perfect for attracting performers like DiFranco…but how much this ado is changing things right now is anybody’s guess.

In New Orleans, the Occupation has been largely a token one, a solidarity move…and its life throbs from the things that make this city great and suffers from the things that will ultimately cause its demise.

People here have never had problems standing up for the things they care about – the problems have come in the follow-through to effect lasting, healing change. We’ve been so full to overflowing of the mess that has been the follow-through since 8/29/2005 that Occupy NOLA just seems, on one level, like so far behind we’re ahead. Another major battle over the soul of the rest of the country feels, at times like these, like a diversion of energy that could still be used towards keeping the Isle d’Orleans from melting into the sea after another likely levee collapse. Thing is, though, three years ago, the point was repeatedly being made to the rest of the United States by activist New Orleanians that “our fate is your fate,” so it seems a tad crazy to be turning our backs on the rest of a country in distress that we are still a part of. Hence, an Occupation in Duncan Plaza.

The tokenism of this latest airing of grievances belittles the many ongoing, quite serious local issues that have been folded into the countrywide ones of income inequality and a political process that continues to fail the majority of U.S. citizens – the big local issues concerning housing for the poor and the homeless, the (mis)handling of crime and the justice system in need of an overhaul, and the size of the new jail are stirred up in the goings-on across from City Hall, giving it all the sheen of a static satirical Carnival parade, so the impact of it is minimal. It also ignores the people who have been working very hard – and who continue to work hard – on these issues locally who may not necessarily be a part of the Occupy movement. If you are one of those people, I invite you to leave your comments and the information on what you’re doing below this post. In all fairness to some of what the occupiers are talking about, maybe some of that isn’t getting out to them, or they have not had specific problems effectively addressed. Of course, the flip side to that is the very realness of the ordeals of many that is still being collected and chronicled at sites like We Are The 99%. There are more Catch-22s than ever before just to simply live.

The funniest part about our local Occupation, though, is how Mitch Landrieu has been dealing with it. Perhaps, he, too, has memories of the first “occupation” of Duncan Plaza. More likely, the image of upcoming sporting events such as the BCS Championship being sullied by attention to some too-near encampment (God forbid a houndstooth-hatted Bama fan bring a bad opinion of New Orleans back to Tuscaloosa) was the greater motivator in his recent efforts to evict the occupiers. At any rate, after being much more sympathetic to the occupiers than most other mayors have been with theirs (even, especially ironically, Jean Quan), Mitch trotted out the biohazard excuse – minus the use of hazmat suits – as well as the one pertaining to occupiers’ “safety,” and the late-night eviction was overturned, giving a victory to OccupyNOLA (and at least one loophole for the NOPD to exploit if they so choose – “no weapons of any kind” is ripe for broad interpretation if a police force in crisis deigns to do so) and, in the process, moving the theater of it out of the streets and into the courts. With Bill Quigley fighting valiantly for the Occupation, things could get even more interesting in court. What will Mitch claim if some occupiers are still in the Plaza come January 9th? “You college ball fans wanna see a real tussle? Head over to the courthouse while you’re in town.” His (probably unavoidable)direct involvement threatens to make this a professional vendetta along the lines of what Ani DiFranco fears – and threatens to further take protesters’ eyes off the reasons why they were in the Plaza in the first place.

The moves in all of this are hardly Bobby Fischer-worthy, but no less fascinating for their complexity…however, it all leaves me a little cold. Slogans can only go so far. What can we all do to make this more than a game?

Liprap

Too Much To Do: Dirty Notes, COG, and Wild Bill

2011-12-10T00:51:01Z

How I’ve missed this! The weekend is here and I am freshly returned from my three year vigil in the arctic northlands, and what awaits me? Too many options.

That is one thing I miss the most when circumstance forces me to leave for extended periods of time, the incredible density of things to do. It’s rarely ever a matter of wondering if something cool is happening, rather figuring out which of the multiple can’t miss options you should hit. Such it is this Friday evening, with at least three brilliant events at the same time. Take my advice and hit at least one of these.

First, and at the top of the list, is the Ten Year Anniversary show for Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes. Tipitina’s at 9pm, and Flow Tribe is opening. This is going to be amazing, the Dirty Notes came roaring onto the scene ten years ago and turned the dial up to eleven on local funk rock. Since then they have consistently delivered one of the best shake your ass shows the city has seen. If you have still not seen them yet you owe it to yourself to stop by.

Then there is the Xmas on Tattooine fundraiser at the Big Top, including manic shenanigans by the Krewe of Chewbacchus and the Consortium of Genius. The city’s first all geek carnival krewe and our own resident mad scientists together with The Green Demons and more! Plus you can get that warm fuzzy (wookie-like?) feeling of supporting one of the cooler venues in town. Obey the orbital mind control lasers and put in an appearance.

For those who wish something verbal, but not neccessarily musical New Orleans own Wild Bill Dykes is back briefly, performing with Brian Posehn and Andi Coll over at The Howlin Wolf. Wild Bill is a handful, I know as we used to work together back in the 90s when he was a bartender. My sides allways hurt by the time we were done cashing out for the evening. Sharp wits and a sharp tongue and only home for the one show. Give it a shot.

As for me, I don’t know how successful I’ll be but I’m going to try to make at least a little of each of them!

Damn it’s good to be back!