link

more testing

 While it may seem to be in bad taste to offer a link here to my own blog, the opposite is actually a better reason. It’s gearing up to be a long, hot Summer, and I thought that offering  some cooling mind gel might be just the ticket. Of course, I am frequently and disasterously mistaken about What Folks Like, so I leave it over there where you can go have some, without bringing here where you might not want any on you. Or something.

So here’s a blurb and a link, to: 

The Truth & Other Lies

The Truth is, and I can say this with all honesty and conviction, because I’ve seen it, that everything we know is a lie. Everything….”

 It’s the 2nd Saturday of the month this weekend, kids. That means it’s Open Gallery Time in the St Claude Art District. Check it out at www.scadnola.com, or just come down and get started at the St Roch Tavern or the Yellow Moon. They’ll tell ya where it’s at.

 Joining the festivities this month are the newly showing Bywater Art Lofts, who just delivered a smashing opening, featuring the work of many residents and other contributers. Their compound is at the intersection of Burgundy & Pauline Streets. From 6 to 9pm.

 After you’ve made your complete tour of the 6 to 9 gallery spaces, stop by the Skull Club, at Spain & Rampart, in the Marigny. Doors open at 9pm, for an after show Art Show. Cheap cash bar and DJ included. Some great stuff by local artists. Well, just read the flyer below, and it will all become clear.
As clear as an unmuddied lake.
As an azure sky of deepest summer…
You Are Invited!

Lord David

MSNBC reports that Mr & Mrs Ray Nagin are being held under Swine Flu Quarantine by the Chinese government. Apparently a passenger seated near them on their flight exhibited Swine Flu-like symptoms and the Nagins and one of his staff members will be quarantined for at least seven days. Currently, they show no signs of illness, but doctors will test their temperatures twice daily.

If anything was going to sober us up after an early evening of tasting beer, I guess it’d be this sign:

Located diagonally across Harrison Ave from the cleared site of Edward Hynes Elementary and directly across Argonne Street from the NOPL’s Lakeview branch trailer.

Kind of one out of two ain’t bad, I guess.

Since China has our mayor, I hope they can somehow work on detaining our now-former Setback Czar so that we can clear some recovery points up.

Update, 8:28 PM: via Jeffrey:

Re: Lakeview library plans

The the City of New Orleans will host oral presentations for its five library Design-Build contract, beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 9, 2009, at the New Orleans Public Library Main Library in its Auditorium on the Third Floor (219 Loyola Ave.).

Link

Oh, and apropos of absolutely no damn thing, except it looked like it was a lot of fun with motor oil involved, go see Clay’s posts on the now-passed 24 Hours of LeMons.

Mazel tov as well to Friends of Lafitte Corridor, which had a great turnout for their hike this past Saturday.

Liprap

WHAT: Triple Threat Birthday Bash
WHEN: Thursday, June 18, 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
WHERE: Twisted Hair Salon, 4824 Prytania, NOLA 70115, (504) 504-309-7791
WHO: Antigravity Magazine, New Orleans Craft Mafia, Twisted Hair Salon

Antigravity Magazine, the New Orleans Craft Mafia, and Twisted Hair Salon are joining forces to make their respective birthdays ultra-special this year, throwing a Triple Threat Birthday Bash on Thursday, June 18, from 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm. June 2009 marks an anniversary deserving of celebration for all three businesses: five years for Antigravity, four years for the New Orleans Craft Mafia, and seven for Twisted Hair Salon!

The event will have a party atmosphere with free snacks including wraps donated by Louisiana Pizza Kitchen (Uptown), homemade birthday cake, free beer, and a signature alcoholic drink created specifically for the event by PopKitty, aka Twisted stylist Nicole Schmitt. Leo McGovern, the founder and editor-in-chief of Antigravity Magazine, will be spinning tunes under his DJ moniker, dj facialhair.

There will be models mingling with guests throughout the event for a laidback, informal fashion show. They will be showing off hairstyles created by Twisted’s talented stylists Schmitt, Chris Bergeaux, and Jeremy Nicholas, plus salon owner Shannah Green. The models will also be displaying handmade clothing, accessories, and jewelry created by the New Orleans Craft Mafia.

Members of the New Orleans Craft Mafia – including art by mags!, Bayou Salvage, Flambeaux Design Company, greenKangaroo, Kristina Renee Jewelry, and Unique Products – will be displaying their funky handmade wares for sale throughout Twisted Hair Salon’s spacious studio. In addition to wearable items like those featured on the models, there will also be home décor, household goods, and art for sale at the event. Miss Malaprop, fashion columnist at Antigravity Magazine and a founding member of the New Orleans Craft Mafia, will be selling handmade and eco-friendly items on consignment from artists across the country.

There will be door prizes given away throughout the evening, comprised of donations from all three businesses.

For more information about the event, contact Margaret Coble.

For more information about the participants, links are provided below.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:

ANTIGRAVITY MAGAZINE
Antigravity is celebrating its fifth year of covering the alternative and underground culture of New Orleans. Since its beginnings in 2004, AG has hosted a number of indie media conventions called The Alternative Media Expo, expanded its circulation from 5,000 to 10,000 and missed only two months of publishing—September and October 2005. ANTIGRAVITY is opening an office in Uptown New Orleans during the summer of 2009, further proving that it’s possible to cover New Orleans’ non-mainstream culture without major financial backing or outside ownership—only intestinal fortitude and commitment necessary.

Web: http://antigravitymagazine.com
Email: leo@antigravitymagazine.com

NEW ORLEANS CRAFT MAFIA
The New Orleans Craft Mafia formed in June 2005 and consists of several independent artists in a variety of media: jewelry, clothing, accessories, home decor, and more. The New Orleans Craft Mafia models itself after the original Craft Mafia in Austin, Texas, where a small group of talented ladies joined together to support each other in their crafty business endeavors. Interest grew and Craft Mafias have been popping up all over the world.

Web: http://neworleanscraftmafia.com
Email: mags@neworleanscraftmafia.com

TWISTED HAIR SALON
Twisted Hair Salon has been providing excellent and diverse hair services to men, women and children since 2002. Their mission is to have a salon that unlocks the beauty in every client always making them feel welcome and appreciated. They strive to enhance the unique attributes of each client to make New Orleans a more beautiful place one head at a time.

Web: http://twistedsalon.com/
Email: twistedhairsalon@yahoo.com

The following is cross-posted from the very cool music and literary blog, LargeheartedBoy.com. It was an honor for me to be invited to contribute there. Since Humid City is an all-things-New Orleans kind of joint, I thought it might be of interest here. I hope that’s right. Either way, here it is….
*
Filling the Holes of History with the Poetry of Music

I’ve noticed that my mind tends not to interpret straightforward things in an always-straightforward manner. This is sometimes bothersome, but sometimes it is more internally enlightening than you would expect. Case in point: while participating in a panel at the recent Tennessee Williams Festival, I was asked the following straightforward question:

“What is your favorite New Orleans fiction?”

A dozen or so great novels and short stories flashed through my mind, but what came out of my mouth was:

“My favorite New Orleans fiction is its nonfiction.”

The answer was skewed but true. Folks familiar with the written history of the city are just as familiar with its unreliability. It is our great inside joke. The history of New Orleans, as it is written, is perforated with fabrications, half-truths and wild guesses; much of which can never be fully proved, disproved, accepted or denied. And so our written history, like so many other aspects of life in this great city, places a leap of faith at its very foundation. It is a source of both great frustration and smug pride; our tendency towards mystery feeding fuel to the relentless self-love and unflagging survival instinct that sustains us, while our bald-faced lies provide fodder for the bitter defiance we offer those who dare question our continued existence in such a death-defyingly hostile, yet culturally rich, home territory. We feel no obligation to explain our motives or apparent contradictions to those who assume themselves better or smarter than us on the basis of half-baked geographical notions; nor will we allow ourselves to be defined, understood or deciphered by their bothersome facts and figures. Truth springs from the soul of a woman or a man. You might learn more facts in a college, but you will certainly learn more truths in a prison yard. We may run low on verifiable items of identifiable logic, but we have an abundance of raw truths that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the world. The more questionable the written history of the city, the more entertaining and beloved we declare it in our hearts. The bigger the lie, the wider the grin.

New Orleans is a place where history is organic and in a constant state of flux, where a hundred years hence is every bit as relevant as a hundred years forth, and the veracity of the present tense is always in doubt. The great fabrications of New Orleans history are told with such passion, bravado, style, joy, winking-certainty, pure love and musical flare that you cannot help but prefer them over the starkly tedious veneer of mere facts.

Truth with a capital T will never truly be available in the convenient form of soulless documentation. In New Orleans we discovered that particular “truth” before most. Those deeper truths must be revealed through the soul itself, at its basest manifestation, the gift of absolute and undiluted honesty only accessible through the art and music that the soul directs us to make; undisciplined and wild as it may be – and so often must be.

Most written histories tend towards calculated distortion anyway. The world’s archives are filled with accounts of the grand triumphs and stunning failures of the wealthy and powerful, written by and for that tiny minority fortunate enough to have thrived at the top of the heap – their stories disingenuously disseminated to the masses as if what is born of privilege could possibly belong to us, too. Meanwhile, the lives of the vast majority of human beings are recounted only as a matter of trivia, in the sterile language of statistics. In reality, it is the passed-over story of the common man and woman that has had the greater influence over the human condition, that has prevailed over the truer course of human history, that has given us everything that is good about the world today – in spite of, and not because of, that tiny percentage that grabs all the glory for itself by virtue of flashy deeds, corrupt power and hard cash.

In New Orleans, our written histories are at least entertaining – and the telling has always been fair. Nothing of interest is left out – the antics of the rich and poor alike being exaggerated with equal flourish and flare. Our written accounts have been designed to light the way for a continuous exercise in raw imagination. In New Orleans, imagination and creativity have always forged the surest route to the heart of our collective consciousness, frivolous and suspicious as it may sometimes seem – and so-called “facts” be damned as required.

It is the job of the New Orleans fiction writer to fill the gaping holes of history with poetry, and therefore reveal and preserve its deeper truths.

But the job is not complete until he places his soul in the hands of the city’s music. Again, there is that lack of logic and leap of faith at the foundation of “all things New Orleanian.” In music, we succeed in filling a few of those holes with sound; and in doing so we pay tribute to the common man and woman whose importance is too often forgotten or diminished by the rushed and jumbled scribbles of proper historians.

The Sound of Building Coffins is a novel whose voice and method are so informed by music that when discussing its origins it is considerably easier to site musical influences than literary ones. Without further ado, let’s see if we can’t patch a few of those pesky holes.

 
The Murder Ballad, Parts 1-7 by Jelly Roll Morton
It always surprises me when someone decries my use of profanity in The Sound of Building Coffins as somehow inauthentic to the era. This perception only shows how effective past societal stewards have been in sanitizing their own histories through the simple (and dangerous) use of blanket censorship. The faux sterility of word and thought evident in early literature, nonfiction and recorded music have led many to believe that people didn’t begin to drop the f-bomb with any regularity till the late 1960s – when widespread censorship of the arts, not coincidentally, began to finally let up.

 
Fortunately, that great collector of indigenous American culture, Alan Lomax, sat down with (and liquored up!) jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton in 1938, successfully nudging him into playing and singing a little of what he once played and sang in the Storyville red-light district cathouses of New Olreans at the turn of the century. At this prompting, Mr. Morton swaggered drunkenly into a nearly 30 minute blues epic simply entitled “The Murder Ballad.” Recorded directly onto aluminum discs that allowed only 4 minutes of recording at a time, “The Murder Ballad” was broken into 7 parts by necessity – but the result was a stunning, profanity-laced musical harangue of jealousy, rage, murder, prison, rape, regret, contrition, hope and death – all told from the point of view of a female prostitute turned murderer.

For those who still cling to the belief that the dropping of the f-bomb was not common till the advent of the Summer of Love, here’s a few verses from “part one” of Morton’s shockingly visceral “Murder Ballad”:

If you don’t leave my f**king man alone
If you don’t leave my f**king man alone
You won’t know what way that you will go home

I’ll cut your throat and drink your f**king blood like wine
Bitch, I’ll cut your f**king throat and drink your blood like wine
Because I want you to know he’s a man of mine

I told you once, I’m not gonna tell you anymo’
I told you once, I’m not gonna tell you anymo’
Right into the barren ground your big black ass will go

Since I could not find a full transcript of the lyrics for Morton’s “Murder Ballad” anywhere on the net, I transcribed every word of it myself and posted it to my own blog in its entirety, uncensored. It is there, if you’re interested – but be warned that the language is at times very strong, even for this modern age. The music itself can be downloaded from iTunes.

 
Another interesting reference in “The Murder Ballad” comes with a very regionally specific reason to fear a prison death:

I won’t be buried like all of my family was
I won’t be buried like my family was
I won’t be buried like my family was

They will put me in a box in the prison yard
They will put me in a box in the prison yard
Not even a tombstone, or not even a card

There won’t be no body followin’ behind my self
There won’t be no body followin’, it will be me by myself
They’ll lower me in the ground, I won’t be on the shelf

When Morton speaks of “no body followin’ behind” and “I won’t be on the shelf,” he is referring to the more preferable method of having one’s remains disposed of in New Orleans; namely, the “oven” method. This is where the body of a family member is shoved into a shelf in a mausoleum-like structure – then, after a year and a day of cooking to dust in the New Orleans heat, the way is clear to shove the next deceased family member “followin’ behind.” It is not desirable to be buried in the ground in New Orleans – when the city occasionally floods, bodies have been known to float up and out of their graves. At the turn of the century, deceased prisoners were disposed of cheaply and without ceremony, buried in the ground, sometimes several bodies deep.

The Complete Recorded Works of Edna Hicks
There are few voices that can provoke my imagination like that of Edna Hicks. Edna Hicks was born in New Orleans in 1896, the half-sister of the better-known New Orleans blues singer Lizzie Miles. Although Edna was not very well-known, her recordings are haunting and superb.

The short recording career of Edna Hicks began in 1923 – she produced a total of 32 issued sides for various recording companies in less than three years. On August 16, 1925, while on tour in Chicago, Edna was cleaning out a pot-bellied stove with a rag doused in gasoline. She did not detect the ember that was still alight in the stove’s belly, and so, on that day, she burned to death. She was only 29 years old.

Nearly 100 years later, it is hard not to consider her sad and violent death while revisiting her small but wondrous body of work. Her voice is so full of joy and hope on these recordings – and yet there is a dark cynicism that lurks at the edges of it all. It is almost as if she suspected how the end might come, and understood full-well the importance of living life to its fullest in light of its brutal brevity.

“Temptation Rag” – Bunk Johnson & Bertha Gonsoulin
Bunk Johnson was one of the great sources of our semi-imaginary history of jazz, quoted frequently and reverently by many a serious scholar on the origins of jazz. You would think that his tendency towards self-glorifying fibs would make him less important to the city’s image of its own past, but, in fact, that only made him more indispensable to it.
If that doesn’t makes any sense to you, you haven’t spent enough time in New Orleans.

In this version of “Temptation Rag,” a duet between Johnson, who plays trumpet, and Bertha Gonsoulin, who plays piano, Bunk weaves an elaborate tale of seduction, betrayal, joy, tragedy and redemption – alternating between keys both major and minor, and told, mercifully, without a single word. It is a tiny and obscure masterpiece, well worth seeking out.

3 songs by Blind Willie Johnson
The voice of Blind Willie Johnson has always scared me to death. The first time I heard the sound of it, I guessed him to be a man born into a world of tragedy and pain. My guess was smart money. Johnson’s mother died while he was still a baby, and at the age of seven his stepmother threw lye-water in his face, blinding him for life. Playing a musical instrument being one of the few ways a blind black man could earn a living in the early 1900s, Johnson taught himself to play guitar – using a pocketknife for a slide – and got busy.

Blind Willie Johnson was born in Texas, but he traveled to New Orleans often and recorded about half of his sides in a little recording studio above the old Werlein’s Music Store on Canal Street. When he wasn’t singing and playing into the single microphone dangling from a ceiling light above the music shop, Johnson spent most of his time here drinking, womanizing, and playing his unique brand of gospel blues for change on the bustling street corners of the city’s business district.

When I am in a certain frame of mind, the music of Blind Willie Johnson fits my soul like a glove, and there are three of his songs that nearly work as a soundtrack for The Sound of Building Coffins. The first is his definitive version of “Motherless Children Have a Hard Time,” which, in my mind, speaks to the predicament of the Morningstar children of The Sound of Building Coffins perfectly, especially to the weight placed on eldest sister Malaria, or, as Johnson sang:

Sister will do the best she can when mother is dead

As far as I’m concerned, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” is one of the greatest blues songs ever recorded – its power derived, in part, from its chilling lack of words. Johnson’s incessant moan glides in and out of the woven web of his otherworldly slide work in a way that is hard to describe – suffice it to say that the only verbal information truly needed resides in the song’s title. For me, this haunting performance describes fittingly the hard and thankless life of the Morningstars’ mysterious phantom benefactor, a man who lives a solitary existence in the swamps of the Bayou St. John so that he may endlessly serve those who can never know his name.

The third song of Blind Willie Johnson’s that feels straight out of the novel is “Let Your Light Shine On Me,” a song that seems to impossibly set right all grim wrongs depicted in the balance of Johnson’s catalog of recordings. It is quite simply the finest song of faith and redemption that I have ever heard.

Spiritland by Coco Robicheaux
When I had my jazz record shop in the French Quarter, Spiritland by Coco Robicheaux was always in heavy rotation on the jukebox. One of my goals in writing The Sound of Building Coffins was to portray the Vodou religion respectfully and without cliché. Although my fictionalized depiction of the faith includes elements of the fantastic, I strived to put across its beauty and sublime mystery without the cheesy horror trappings that have so unfairly plagued the faith’s reputation for many years in the form of cheap Z-grade cinema. Aside from the knowledge I’ve obtained from my wife – who was initiated into the faith in Haiti ten years ago – there is much truth to be found in the poetry of Coco Robicheaux’s magnificent songwriting, especially in his masterpiece, Spiritland. It continues to amaze me how simply Coco can lay out the gorgeous and all-inclusive simplicity of the religion – while at the same time saying so much about those mysterious holes that pervade the history of New Orleans itself. Witness:

I see my smoke, see it rise and swirl
With my imagination in the spirit world
In dreamtime the fire feels hot to the hand
Shines in the eyes of aboriginal man

We could sing these melodies
Older than our memories
But we must use our voice and hands
To make the music of the Spiritland

*
Related Links and Sources:
Coco Robicheaux’s website
His Spiritland CD can be bought only from Orleans Records
“Temptation Rag” by Bunk Johnson can be found on the CD In San Francisco
“The Murder Ballad” by Jelly Roll Morton can be downloaded from iTunes or purchased from Rounder Records on The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, Volume 3: The Pearls.
The Complete Recorded Works of Edna Hicks can be found at iTunes or at Document Records
The Complete Recorded Works of Blind Willie Johnson can be found at iTunes or from Columbia/Legacy Records.
*

Louis Maistros
http://louismaistros.com

 I recently got goaded in to signing up for Facebook as an alternative social network to Myspace. I was told it was less dramatic and the members more adult and serious.

Boy Howdy, was that far off the mark.

 I read more news today about the ongoing legislative battle over building a hospital in New Orleans, the proposed budget (which depends on $492 million from FEMA, who say they’ll only pay $150 million) is apparently “less than existing” to coin a phrase.

 I then saw a comment from a fellow facebooker, saying how happy he was that this had been thwarted. I wondered in his comment section why anyone would be ‘happy’ to see movement towards a New Orleans hospital shut down. The funding, wherever it goes, still needs to be in place. I personally think that rebuilding Charity Hospital is not the way to go, considering the wiring and plumbing that is decades old, nevermind being buried inside walls and, well… it just seems like a lot of work for an old building to become a 21st century hospital. If that’s even possible.

I think it would make a great new City Hall or office condominiums, but that’s just my humble opinion.

Anyway, I asked this question of the Facebookers. The response I got from someone named Glenn, was that I must be from Indiana and think ‘they’, implying New Orleanians like myself, must all be assholes. How this addresses my question I have no idea. How this answer was provoked by an honest question I have even less of an idea.

Anyway, I spoke my mind, said I AM local and I think the rebuilding is a bad idea, as I also think the 1.2 billion dollar mid-city sprawl is a bad idea. There must be something in between that’s affordable, workable and can actually come into fruition. Blah, blah, blah.

Glenn came back and called me an asshole and some woman named Michelle told me I was misreperesenting “what happened today”.

I have no idea what any of this means, but then I’m new to Facebook. They speak a strange language over there.

What I’m absolutely sure of is that I didn’t ‘misrepresent’ anything, because I only asked a question and ventured my opinion, as stated above. How this makes me an ‘asshole’ is beyond comprehension and also a waste of time, as I will certianly post a list of the many real reasons I am one, just for the asking.

So here’s the thing; I want to know all sides of this, and I would love a public forum with other New Orleanians (preferably not those angry facebook clods) regarding this situation. I’ve spoken to Termite on several occassions about the future of Charity, and the possibilities of turing it in to something spectacular, while building a hospital elsewhere. Today, I drove down Canal Street, almost in tears, looking at the ‘Back On The Market’ For Sale signs on the Saenger Theater, the For Sale signs on the Joy Theater, the nail shops and t-shirt grindhouses, the general slum-in-decline atmosphere, wondering about the Broadway South legislation we heard so much about, and it never occurred to me that We, The People, could be the problem. Maybe we just bitch so much (like you, Glenn) that nothing gets done. Maybe gloating over a legislative vote is more important than real hospital care. Maybe we’re so concerned over what each word ‘represents’ in our little universe that we lose the bigger picture of sharing ideas and concepts with a larger community.

Is it impossible to have a discussion about these things without crying ‘asshole’ and pointing fingers of ‘misrepresentation’ because someone honestly wants to know something? I hope not. Oh, god, I really hope not.

Let’s hear it, We The People. Let’s have a good old fashioned chat about this hot button topic, sans name calling, questioning the validity of each others birth right, or references to German dictatorships and socialist despots.  Let’s get right down to finding out what everybody thinks and why. This is how We The People used to educate ourselves. Let it begin now.

As for you, Glenn on Facebook, who never heard of humidcity and just knows I’m an asshole for trying to ask a single question, you’re invited, too. Bring some information, though. These humid city folks are used to actually dealing with the content of another human’s questions. And asking questions is how we learn, dumbass.

Lord David
Skull Club
New Orleans

The Louisiana Food Bank Association (LFBA) has requested $18 million from the state of Louisiana to support the Louisiana Nutrition Assistance Program (LANIAP) — a model program that allows the five food banks of the Louisiana Food Bank Association to purchase nutritious foods from Louisiana farmers, fishermen, vendors and wholesalers to help feed hungry families, children and seniors across all 64 Louisiana parishes.

In fiscal years 2007 and 2008, the LFBA received $5 million in state funding to support the LANIAP program.  LFBA has had tremendous success administering the funds and providing more than 14.8 million meals to individuals in need through a statewide network of more than 431 organizations, the majority of which are faith-based.

The economic downturn, increasing cost of living, and the rising number of unemployed and underemployed in Louisiana are creating more and more demand for food assistance through food banks and emergency feeding organizations across Louisiana. On average the five food banks of the LFBA are experiencing a 26 percent increase in the number individuals and families in need of food statewide.

2009 funding for Louisiana Food Banks and the Louisiana Nutrition Assistance Program (LANIAP) currently rests with the Senate Finance Committee. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, please help the Louisiana Food Bank Association by calling, faxing or emailing members of the Senate Finance Committee with the following message:

Senator:

I urge you to support an amendment to HB1 or the Supplemental Spending Bill that would provide funding, in full or in part, to support the Louisiana Food Bank Association’s LANIAP program that provides Louisiana food to Louisiana people.  The need is real, the situation is urgent, and it is the right thing to do.

Contact info for Louisiana Senate Finance Committee Members below the Jump:

Senator John A. Alario, Jr.
1063 Muller Parkway
Westwego, LA 70094
(504) 340-2221
(504) 341-0794 (fax)
alarioj@legis.state.la.us

Senator Sharon Weston Broome
P. O. Box 52783
Baton Rouge, LA 70892
(225) 359-9352
(225) 359-9353 (fax)
lasen15@legis.state.la.us

Senator Sherri Smith Cheek
9973 Mansfield Road
Keithville, LA 71047
(318) 687-4820
(318) 687-4077 (fax)
smithcheek@legis.state.la.us

Senator Jack Donahue
3840 Hwy. 22
Suite 200
Mandeville, LA 70471
(985) 727-7949
(985) 727-9904 (fax)
donahuej@legis.state.la.us

Senator “Nick” Gautreaux
209 E. St. Victor Street
Abbeville, LA 70510
(337) 740-6425
(337) 740-6400 (fax)
gautreauxn@legis.state.la.us

Senator Eric LaFleur
P.O. Box 617
Ville Platte, LA 70586
(337) 363-5019
(337) 337-6812 (fax)
lafleure@legis.state.la.us

Senator Edwin R. Murray
1540 N. Broad St.
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 945-0042
(504) 942-5968 (fax)
murraye@legis.state.la.us

Senator John R. Smith
611-B South 5th Street
Leesville, LA 71446
(800) 259-2709 / (337) 238-2709
(337)238-6444 (fax)
smithj@legis.state.la.us

Senator Mike Walsworth
4007 White’s Ferry Rd
Suite A
West Monroe, LA 71291
(318) 396-5499
(318)396-0192 (fax)
walsworthm@legis.state.la.us

Senator Gerald Long (Interim Member)
P.O. Box 151
Winnfield, LA 71483
(318) 628-5799
(318) 628-6120 (fax)
longg@legis.state.la.us

Senator Willie L. Mount (Interim Member)
P.O. Box 3004
Lake Charles, LA 70602
(337) 491-2016
(337) 433-8080 (fax)
lasen27@legis.state.la.us

Senator Francis Thompson (Interim Member)
P.O. Box 68
Delhi, LA 71232
(318) 878-9408
(318) 878-5650 (fax)
thompsof@legis.state.la.us

Great job there Warren.
I can see your bumper stickers now….

NOPD: when seconds matter, they’re only minutes away.

Another delusional egomaniac at the party.
Have you bought a new home for City Hall, too?
Is your crime fighting plan also a “done deal”?

Go away, loser.

Former city council-woman, member of the Louisiana House of Representativces and current moll of Mose Jefferson, Renee Gill-Pratt, had just been added to the roux being brewed in New Orleans’ US Attorneys office. The original charges reported here have been refined as more information was uncovered during the course of the investigation. The original indictment consisted of 31 counts against Mose and Betty Jefferson, (siblings of William,) and Betty’s daughter Angela Coleman. The superseding indictment released today adds three new charges and names Renee Gill-Pratt as a co-defendant. The superseding indictment can be read here, but just barely as WWL sees fit to plaster pop-up ads across half the text of the story.

Since I’m the lone sports nut here here at HumidCity, allow me to announce that the NFL SuperBowl site selection committee has chosen New Orleans as the host city for SuperBowl XLVII in 2013!

New Orleans won out over Miami, FL and Glendale, AZ, and this will be the tenth NFL Championship hosted by our fair city. We are tied at nine apiece with Miami who will host it’s tenth next year. The Louisiana Superdome currently holds the record of hosting venues with six.

Depending on who you listen to, the SuperBowl brings an estimated 400-600 million dollars to the host city economy. Not only that, but the SuperBowl has become much more than just a football game. It is now a week-long celebration of the NFL with attractions, special events, live remotes and literally something for everyone. Essentially, January 28th to February 3rd, 2013 will be a week-long commercial for the City of New Orleans culminating in a five hour worldwide broadcast which will reach over one-billion people.

Now some of you die-hard bead whores might notice that the dates above coincide with Mardi Gras kickoff weekend but fear not. We already had a similar situation in 2002 when the Big Game fell on Bacchus Sunday and if ever there were a chance for catastrophe, that was it, but we pulled off both celebrations with grace and charm.

Not mentioned is the fate of the AFC-NFC Pro-Bowl which the NFL is currently experimenting with. Traditionally the PB is held after the SB but this year it will be played in Miami one week prior to the SB. This will mark the first time since 1980 that the PB will be held outside of Hawaii. For 2011 and 2012 it will return to Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, but plans for 2013 are still undefined. I would suggest the local boys who helped swing the SuperBowl deal get cracking and convince the NFL to bring the Pro-Bowl here as well.

Regardless, mark your calendars kids, this is going to be one hell of a week in the Big Easy!

It’s well known that I am a bit of a socialmedia evangelist, the years since Katrina have shown me the power of using information technology to organize, share information, and build connectivity between people for the common good. As a result I tend to get more than a bit torqued when I run into the interface between technology and corruption, something that we’ve been getting an unhealthy dose of as “CameraGate” continues to unfold.

As Varg over at The Chicory said the other day:

But you should have left the anything having to do with crime free of your insipid hands. Because it’s something folks will quite likely pay attention to. They poke around and look into something like that. Especially after you tell an angry crowd of 5000 citizens that they are going to be an intricate part of your crime-fighting focus. People tend to get angrier after being promised something that ended up shrouded in questionable dealings.

And it amazes me that, when you knew you were meddling in the affairs of criminal justice and people’s lives were at stake, it may have been prudent for you to at least ensure the cameras worked. It certainly would have increased your chances of getting away with it. Because it wouldn’t have incited so many people to call attention to it. They may have let it slide if some high profile results had been rendered by your scam. Citizens are easily pleased like that.

Now the latest news hits- Dell Computers CEO Michael Dell will have to testify, per the Judge. The Austin Business Journal reports:

A New Orleans judge is ordering Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell to give a sworn deposition concerning his knowledge of the Round Rock company’s deal to provide crime cameras to the city of New Orleans, according to several published reports on Monday.

The same judge also set a hearing to determine if Dell Inc. should be held in contempt for failing to disclose corporate communications that show it sold camera casings to New Orleans in 2004, about two years earlier than originally thought.

At issue is a set of lawsuits facing Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) that accuse the company of participating in unfair business practices and selling cameras through a contract with the state of Louisiana that did not allow for the sale of such equipment. Southern Electronics and Active solutions–two companies that previously provided the city of New Orleans with crime cameras–filed suit against the city and Dell. In that suit, the plaintiffs claim that Dell conspired with a former New Orleans tech chief and city contractors to steal their business model. In a more recent development, the city of New Orleans last month also filed suit against Dell saying the computer-maker knew it was not following the parameters of its deal with the state.

Lets not flinch when shining a light on corruption, it is the only thing that can eradicate it if anything can. The fact that this is now reaching into these levels of power should ensure additional attention and hence a brighter spotlight, at least such is my hope.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder and Curator

Image: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com Rights: CC2.0

This Saturday, May the 16th, there will be a Bar.B.Que and Art Auction (as well as other fun mayhem) at the NOOMOON Compound, 823 St Roch Avenue, in the Marigny, from Noon until 8pm.

This will be followed by a cocktail party and reception at Skull Club, right around the corner at 1003 Spain Street, from 9pm until Midnight.

These events are a benefit for Kelly Israel’s Art House, an ongoing mosaic art piece, much like his mosaic cars; a Volkswagon Beetle, Volkswagon Bus, and Cadillac Hearse. These things must be seen to be truly appreciated. At least one of the vehicles will be in attendence, I’m told.

Sponsors include:

Noomoon
Skull Club
NOLA Rising
Funrockn
Miller High Life

For more details, go to:
http://skull-club.com/Events.html

This is gonna be just too much fun.
Really, it just is….

I just got this from my buddy Steve Picou and felt it well worth sharing with our audience:

Looks like the credit card reform bill is going to be voted on today. Please call Landrieu and Vitter and let them know you support the bill, S. 414.

Thanks to Consumers Union and the Pew Charitable Trusts, I recently spent a day in Washington as a citizen lobbyist for this bill. See my blog for the story.

FYI, call the Washington offices for maximum impact: Landrieu 202-224-5824 and Vitter 202-224-4623.

Steve Picou
http://nolamotion.com

-Loki, HumidCity Founder and Curator

I got to pass some time last night with a buddy of mine, let’s call him Jim. Jim’s not doing too well these days.

See, before Katrina, Jim used to be a school teacher here in town. Nowadays, he does construction work, building maintenance, all-around handyman jobs for wages paid under the table. I know, it’s wrong to live like that, but that’s how some people choose to make their way in the world. What can you do? Jim is not a lazy man, however. He works on at least three of these jobs at a time.

That’s what’s making it difficult for him to determine on which of these jobs he developed what he believes might be a hernia. Not that he would want to sue anyone over it. He just believes he might have been able to garner a little financial help in getting it taken care of. Not to pay a hospital bill to get it fixed, mind you, (hell, he could get that done at University Hospital right now if he wanted to) but to help him make it through the recovery time when he wouldn’t be able to climb or lift.

So he’s at a loss, but still pretty philosophical about it. What was getting him down last night was something else, something anyone of us could be facing following one of those unguarded moments when the bottom – literally – falls out of our lives.

Yesterday afternoon, long before I’d come upon him, Jim had gingerly dressed himself and left his home in the lower Quarter to head down to the Walgreen’s store on the corner of Elysian Fields and Saint Claude. He was going there to buy himself a jockstrap or two. From Jim’s house to that Walgreen’s is not normally a bad walk, but it was hot, and he did have to watch how he put his left leg down with each step he took, so let’s just say the walk was a little uncomfortable.

Finally, he arrived at the swooshing door that blew out a rush of cool air-conditioning to slap him in the face and wake him from his torpor. He made his way to the back of the store where such items are to be found only to find there were none.

With a sigh, he left and wondered where next to go. There was another Walgreen’s on Decatur Street in the Quarter, a block past Jackson Square, and he set out for that one with a careful limp.

Finally, another swooshing door, another blast of cold, another lack of “support”. This second Walgreen’s had no jockstraps either. What to do?

Well, he was only a few blocks now from Second Skin Leather on Saint Philip Street. He’d try to backtrack that far.

Lo, and behold, once inside, there they were, dozens of jocks in all kinds of styles and fabrics. Typical elastic cotton. Leather, Rubber, Vinyl. Double back-strapped, single back-strapped – no back-straps, an engineering marvel, probably useless for Jim’s needs, but something to keep in mind for the holidays. Sadly, Second Skin did not exhibit any in Jim’s size. There were smalls, larges, extra larges, double-XL’s, triple-XL’s, even 4-XL’s (something for me to keep in mind for the holidays), but no mediums. He asked the cashier if there were any others in the back and was told there were none.

“… But we’ll be ordering more in September.”

Jim figured he couldn’t wait that long, so he decided to gird his loins, so to speak, and try to make it to Canal Street where he could surely find what he was looking for.

Canal Street has long since crumbled from its high perch as a capital of commercialism and is now a banal street of empty buildings perched alongside ritzier-than-ritzy hotels, McDonald’s burger joints, a Radio Shack or two, and lots of athletic shoe retailers.

But you know what? Nobody sold jockstraps. Not even Saks Fifth Avenue in One Canal Place. Jim checked.

He finally had to admit defeat and succumb to a bout of despondency. He found a bench to rest his nut on and bewail his fate until he had regrouped enough energy to make his way back through the narrow Quarter streets to sit with friends at his neighborhood bar and quaff a few pitchers of beer. Perhaps not a wise choice of beverage for a man in his condition, but people are people. Whatcha gonna do?

That’s where I found him and heard him roll out his tale as if he were some blind and bearded bard from a long-ago world creating a new myth. It’s a myth that fills my soul with a particular existential terror. No common jockstraps (in medium) to be found within walking distance of – of all places – the French Quarter of New Orleans.

We live in a wasteland of despair.

But Jim goes on. I imagine him this morning, tentatively climbing another long ladder to reach the second-story eave of a home in the Bywater to slap a coat of paint onto it. Tomorrow, he might be cautiously carrying lumber from a nearby truck to another place in the Marigny where he will saw and later hammer it between two posts to make a wall.

All without a ball …

- Bigezbear

While we discuss the darkness of mediocrity and the pagent of stupidity that IS City Hall (Nagin & Riley met only 6 times in all of 2008?), there are far worse horrors, lurking everywhere, even, it seems, at the Walmart in Abbeville….

Abbeville, LA) – A lawsuit has been filed against a Wal-Mart store in Abbeville, seeking damages for a woman who claimed she was threatened by a nutria inside the store. Rebecca T. White and her husband, Randal White, filed the lawsuit in state district court in Abbeville April 22nd. The suit claims a wild nutria ran toward the woman, causing her to pull her shopping cart back toward her for protection. The Whites’ attorney, Anthony Fontana, says the shopping cart rolled over the plaintiff’s foot and caused an injury that required surgery. In the lawsuit, White claims employees had allowed the nutria to wander through the store and had given it a name–”Norman.” Wal-Mart officials say they have not been served with a lawsuit but are investigating the incident.

 I just ordered ‘Willard‘ from Netflix.
You’ll have to wait your turn.

Lord David
Skull Club
New Orleans

These past few weeks have been dull for me – not dull as in boring, but dull as in unpolished, unsaturated, lusterless. I’m living my life in half light while fighting to douse a fire of rage consuming my spirit.

Since I was a child, I’ve owned a visceral abhorrence to injustice of any kind. It’s such a strong component of my marrow that I’ve never learned to detach myself and move away. When confronted with it, I find myself rooted, spellbound, looking upon it, not able to shift my gaze while I seethe, my stomach roiling.

Lately, I’ve been wondering about the rise of mediocrity in the world. For years, I’ve noticed the bent toward less and poorer education in our country’s schools. It always stood to reason, a population fixed in ignorance is easily led. Those few who have the wherewithal to receive a deeper education, sans any hint of a Socratic methodology, would rise to an elite status and herd the flocks of sheep.

I remember a few years ago, participating in a work-related conference about the future of the workplace in a brave, newly-imagined world rising above a fast-approaching horizon, hearing a city official declaim against encouraging students to strive for college admissions and declaring a need for more technical schools, since “everybody’s gon’ always need a plumber.”

Today, the “plumber” speaks to the masses in the marketplace and the myriad town squares.

We have relegated generations of children to a lifetime of ignorance and banality.

My world is small and circumspect, but if one cannot see the world in a grain of sand, one has no sight; and what I see is that the second rate has throttled excellence and ground it into the mud where fewer and fewer can glimpse its luster.

- Bigezbear

It’s true, New Orleans has many problems. And many critics, including, at times, myself.
There is a tendency to bitch about the bad, because, well, it’s bad, and to not talk so much about the many great things that happen here, because, quite honestly, we’re too busy enjoying them. Or at least, I am.

Never in my life, which is a long, varied and checkered marathon of mad experience, have I seen so much music, art & creative spirit spilling over the top in just one place. It’s simply amazing.

In celebration of that, The Skull Club joins the St Claude Art District in the Second Saturday of the Month Gallery Shows, with a Reception, this Saturday Night (May 9th) from 9:00pm until Midnight (at least) after the others have closed down.

Please come join us for a few cocktails (cash donation bar) and unwind among other creative minds, surrounded by the works of local artists. They may be sitting right next to you, for that matter. It happens. A lot.

 While many great American cities host galleries and art shows, music and theater, New Orleans is unique in that the writers, performers, artists and actors are among us, all the time. The line between creativity and existence here is long gone. Each and every one of us is part of the endless pagent that is New Orleans, perhaps the Greatest Show On Earth. How can you not love it?

I hope to see you there.
Your invitation follows.

Lord David
Skull Club
New Orleans

Levees.org has uncovered an interesting item in the Army Corps of Engineers ledger: $1,000,000 for public relations.

It seems that instead of fixing the levees in New Orleans, the ACE thinks it’s easier to fix their image. And apparently it is. The PR firm hired by the Corps, Outreach Process Partners, touted their fantastic work on their website with a nifty graphic taking credit for reducing negative articles about the Corps. The graphic showed that between Oct ‘06 and Jun ‘07 the Corps racked up over 13,000 negative articles in the media. That same stretch from ‘07 to ‘08 lists only 305 negative articles with OPP’s help.

Really? From 13,000 to just 300 in one year? Those guys are good. Or they’re lying. Clearly they do not count the blogosphere as media.

Less than 24 hours after the Levees.org released this news, OPP pulled the page from their website, but Levees.org cached it and it can be viewed here. You can view the “edited” page here for a comparison.

Now ask yourself, how much flood protection would one million dollars buy? How many homes could be raised? How much higher could the levees be raised with a million dollars of dirt? How much more of Plaquemines Parish could be brought into the flood protection area? How much drainage work or infrastructure repair could be done? Congress has repeatedly refused to allocate funding for an independent investigation into the levee failures, relying on in-house investigations which have been tame at best, but they clearly have no problem rubber-stamping an assload of cash to hide bad press.

And here’s the fun part… the PR firm is based in Annapolis, MD. But then I doubt the PR firms in New Orleans would dare to take any amount of money to defend these charlatans. OPP (I find that hilariously ironic, don’t you?) is owned and run by Janice Roper-Graham who started the company after serving as vice-president of the Government Services Integrated Process Team. While at GSIPT, Roper-Graham worked hand-in-hand with Ogilvy PR to improve public perception of FEMA during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. (One wonders if she fed Bush the “Heckuva job, Brownie” line.) She also runs TransCom Partners, a firm which specializes in media relations for government agencies involved in transportation, engineering and construction.

From OPP’s website:
OPP provides media support for print, broadcast and Internet media on local, national and international levels including outlets such as the Times-Picayune, WWL-TV CBS New Orleans, Associated Press, USA Today, The Weather Channel, The Today Show, French TV Channel 5, and Engineering News Record on issues such as Hurricane Gustav, “paper in the floodwalls” and other investigative responses, seepage, peer review and the state of the hurricane and storm damage risk reduction system.  As part of this cause, OPP fosters strategic relationships with media outlets that result in more accurate and balanced stories.

Remember that the next time you see a story on the Corps. OPP’s contract runs through September of 2010. It seems to me that if the Corps would do their job properly, they wouldn’t need to waste our tax money on a PR firm. But then what the hell do I know.

-M Styborski

The further adventures of our wild and wacky former technology chief, Greg “Put It On The Card” Meffert are coming to light, and let me tell you kids this is a family values extravaganza!

In his last 18 months working for the city Meffert racked up over $130,000 on the credit card billed to a subcontractor working for him at City Hall. The part that really gets me though is the absolutely insane bill he ran up on strippers. As Chris Rock puts it “No matter what a stripper tells you, there is no sex in the champagne room.”

Quotes via NOLA.com, running commentary from your truly:

On March 15, 2006, Meffert went to San Francisco and spent more than $2,700 at the Gold Club, “San Francisco’s premier gentleman’s club, ” according to the strip club’s Web site.

Think about it, close to three grand at a strip club. Those had better have been some impressive lap dances because that sure as hell could not simply be the bill for all the overpriced drinks. I guess he had to get his family values on before the next afternoon.

The next day, his wife, Linda, and their two children joined him, and they went to Yosemite National Park for five days.

Total cost charged to the NetMethods card for less than a week in California: $10,463.

Zippity do dah day! I’d love to be able to spend 10K+ on a one week vacation! Oh wait, that’s right, he didn’t ! It was all billed to Mark St. Pierre, the subcontrator who reported to him at City Hall. I guess St. Pierre was bucking for a good performance review…

Meffert used the NetMethods card on strippers in New Orleans, too. He spent $1,000 at Rick’s Cabaret International in the French Quarter in March 2005. Two weeks later, he spent $1,400 in one night at Visions on Downman Road. He spent another $1,160 at Visions a year later.

There you go, at least this time his stripper habit was fueling the local economy in New Orleans.

Go take a look at the catalogue of corruption detailed on NOLA.com. They have scans of the credit card statements and much more over there. Check it out, its nauseating to say the least.

-Loki, Founder and Curator of HumidCity

Photo courtesy of brettnielson, used under its Creative Commons license

It’s been quiet here on HumidCity for the past ten days or so while my lovely wife and I moved house. I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I am now one of the many NOLA Bloggers blogging from another state. To be honest it has been not only a crazy fortnight but an educational one as well.

You see we now live in the United States again, as opposed to the city that was hung out to dry by the nation after our federally constructed levees failed. I’ve been reminded of what that entails and am realizing how much we have grown to put up with in New Orleans that is flat out unconscionable. Between Ray Nagin, George Bush, teenage murderers and a fearsome array of carpetbaggers and scalawags our people have been swindled out of much that most Americans take for granted. This, I feel, is at the root of a lot of the misunderstanding we get from those who live outside of the flood zone.

There is so much that is incredible and important about New Orleans, things that can exist nowhere else on the planet, that residents accept the unacceptable hardships presented by the self seeking scum who run the show. Since I now live someplace where infrastructure works and living is not outlandishly expensive I can truly see just how asinine the situation is.

The little things throw it into sharp relief. The fact that I can get two gallons of dairy fresh milk for less than the price of one in New Orleans and NOT pay 9.5% sales tax on them is stunning to me. Think about that one detail alone and consider it in the context of the ridiculous poverty(pdf) that most of our neighbors live in. Think about that over the course of a year. It’s worse than a pack a day cigarette habit.

Yes, there is crime and imperfection anywhere you go, but all of the shooting deaths I’ve heard of have been back home in NOLA. Forty funerals have happened within my varied social circles since the storm, I don’t even want to think about how many were due to lead flu (it’s airborne you know). Every day as I read the news from home there are more shootings, even within the environs of the Vieux Carre (Did you hear about the early morning killing at Monaghan’s Erin Rose the other day?). In Cincy an auto accident is enough to make the paper.

Now before someone gets their panties in a twist I am NOT screaming about how horrible NOLA is. I am pissed. Pissed off that we allow these bozos to profiteer while the people of the neighborhoods pay the price, be it in ridiculous prices or in lives. I may have relocated to Cincinnati, but I’m a native and my heart will always be in NOLA.

As long as idiots like Jindal and Nagin are at the helm we will continue to see reverse progress. Whether it is the stupidity of our governor’s anti-science stance or C. Ray’s escapades the results will be both horrific and disrespectful of our populace. Science conventions are avoiding and canceling their events in Louisiana because of Jindal’s creationist stance. Hardly what I call a boost to the economy.

Then there is the NOPD. I’ve been vaguely restrained in my writing about them due to the fact that I had good reason to fear reprisals. I am well known and easy to track down. While I know there are good cops on the force they are in the minority. When Gustav was looming I was resolute in my decision to ride it out, my mind was changed by one of the good cops that I know. He warned me that the storm was not the worry, but rather that “the only cops staying are the thugs who are looking forward to an excuse to crack some heads unsupervised.” Maybe that family who wants the NOPD brought up up on charges for her son’s shooting is on to something. The situation is intolerable.

I think the thing that has made the most impact on me since getting here is the fact that the kids here get to be kids. I do not see that predatory look in their eyes. I see parents on the street on a regular basis. Not once have I seen the bulge denoting a 9mm pistol in any of their waistbands. Even the little ones say please, thank you, and excuse me. It has, on several occasions now, brought tears to my eyes.

There are too many good people and too much that is unique in all the world that resides in New Orleans to allow this shite to continue. I know what it means to miss New Orleans, I also know what it means to cease to fear now that I am away. These two feelings are what I believe is behind a lot of the negative writing one sees online from former residents. It is easy to only see the evils once you are no longer immersed in them, the trick is to remember the good. I refuse to embrace such oversimplification, but I will also no longer hold back when it comes to the things that are broken.

-Loki, HumidCity Founder and Curator

Let’s hear it for whatever-the-heck-this-H1N1-strain-of-flu is called:

Tom Lehrer – I Got It From Agnes

Instead of all the little old ladies talking about how “Dottie had a heart condition and she died, but not before giving it to ______”, put on the Tom Lehrer. Then we can all celebrate National Brotherhood Week once they have all decided on a name for the damn virus that won’t offend anybody here on Earth.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit down with some jello flu shots ’cause the damn flu was just mentioned on the national news about a bazillion times and drown away the pain I feel from the buckmoth caterpillar sting I got on my heel at the park. Somebody find a cure for the %!*&/?! caterpillar barbs while they’re at it.

Liprap

Update, 11:36 PM – Via email:

Late this evening, the school was notified by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals Office of Public Health, that one of the eight suspected cases of Swine Flu in Louisiana is a student at (my son’s) School. This is NOT a confirmed case of Swine Flu, and thus there are no recommendations to close the school, but out of an abundance of caution, we are notifying parents of this development.

Pass me a pigfoot and a bottle of beer, y’all. And I don’t care about its political or dietary correctness.

Anudder update, 5-3: Well, seems the suspected case of Hone None Flua is an actual case.  School’s doors are closing for three days.  I now have some Abita Strawberry Ale to go with my jello flu shots as  I await the fuss that will be made as to why school hasn’t been closed for two weeks so’s the classrooms can be fully disinfected.