It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel sick. What the hell is going on around here? I think we need to sign a petition to pull out every idiot in all of the departments in this city. I just read and heard some fantastic news that will go down in the “We are retarded” file. How in the hell are we supposed to get anything done with our current leaders. I think every one of them should be fired. I think they should be held accountable for everything that happens to us from here on out. Katrina did some damage, but they are pouring salt in the wounds. Does anyone have a list of schools attended by the City Council or the Police Chief? They must have been home schooled and rewarded for putting the round peg into the square hole. How can they look at themselves in the morning and knowingly continue doing a job they know they can’t handle. Here goes:
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Jack Ware and Heather Buck brought up some interesting points in today’s posts. I believe it is all part of the “Dumbing Down of America” affect that the media claims is front page news. I watch it every day on T.V. and read it at nola.com. The media presents us with the “news” as if we are slobbering idiots soiling ourselves at the drop of a hat. We aren’t all in special ed classes. Some of us actually are free thinkers. The paper is controlled and writes what ever it wants to. Television, I believe is a worse offender. They only have 30 minutes to fill your heads with fear and anguish, and then they kick you in the nuts at the end with a lighthearted story of a guy who saved a cat from the flood by jamming it up his ass, just to make sure you were listening.
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**from this article

My favorite phrase from today. In an astonishing, and unprecedented report issued by the RAND Corporation today they attest, in 66 short pages, that New Orleans should “build smarter”. Why, you may ask, does a think tank have to tell us this? Well, it’s because that isn’t what we’re doing. We’re using “inherent bias towards creating what used to be” as a huge lever to push things back into place just like they were and it’s a bad idea. There were a lot of things wrong with this city before, some of those wrong things have resurfaced - I believe there was a shooting at 8am today - 8am. Not 3am, not 4:30 when most reasonable people are sleeping. I was already at work by 8am. No progress has been made to correct the things that were wrong and preserve the things worth preserving. It hasn’t even been considered as an option. The assumption is that we bring everything back to the way it was. Well at least one part of that plan is working out - we are, after all, the murder capital of the U.S. again.
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And today I am going to hate on the media telling me about race issues in my city. Did y’all see this article that seems to be everywhere today? I tend to look at the world through my rose tinted, super sparkly plastic sunglasses, but this shit fills me with rage.
I am done with Katrina as a black/white issue. I am done with the recovery as a black/white issue. I thought others were, too. And I really hate when the articles talk about ‘white neighborhoods’ and ‘black neighborhoods’ because I want to see the map that has these neighborhoods on it. White people live in the lower ninth ward. Black people live uptown. I think I have to stop reading the paper for a while, maybe, so that I can simmer down a bit.

Paul P’s posts have inspired me. He calls a spade a spade. I like that. Sometimes all the positive energy around town can be sickening. After 9/11, people were speculating about the “end of irony,” whatever that meant. It seems that Katrina has led to the end of jaded cynicism, but I for one cannot stand idly by and allow this to happen. I am a curmudgeon, and I will not allow myself to be shut out.

So right now I’d like to take the wind out of some “sacred” institutions around town. Here goes.
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Let me admit, for just a minute, my whiteboyness.

I have no clue what’s going on in the hip-hop world. I am a) 52 years old and b) whiter than rice dumped into a tin of refined sugar on a snow day. But, give me credit, I am learning. Over the past couple of months I’ve been exposed to a lot more hip-hop while at work and I’ve been paying attention to the tunes, the fans and the message(s). Just like so many folks in the 1950s said that filthy, oversexed and hard-to-understand rock ‘n’ roll was going to die, so have folks been prematurely preaching the end of hip-hop for a couple of generations now.

…which brings me to a reader’s suggestion to talk about the upcoming Hip-Hop For Hope event. All the information is right here. Thanks for the notice.

Fellow Metroblogger Chris Martel has been an avid follower of the local hip-hop scene and says it’s a good one. And any well-organized event that’s going to promote this kind of scholarship and school support certainly gets my backing. And, frankly, the image of bug-eyed Uptowners being serenaded by hip-hop in their own neighborhood (like there’s never any from passing cars anyway) amuses the hell out of me. I say move the 2007 event to Audubon Park.

At any rate, the word is out. I’ll be working that night and won’t be able to attend, though I’ll be nearby and ll’m sure I’ll be able to hear it if I get a chance to go outside. And, honestly, I’m just glad it’s Hip-Hop For Hope and not something like Bluegrass For Books. That’s nasally crap makes my ears bleed.

Enjoy.

Heather ain’t kidding. At Saturday night’s Big Easy Rollergirls bout, the beer was cold, the girls were hot, and Miss Buck Wild was on fire! Set amid the glittery, papier-mache, Carnival glamour of Mardi Gras World, it was an adrenaline-filled spectacle that had even sissies like me leaping to their feet and screaming–only partially ironically–”Kill her! Trip her! Knock the bitch out!”

The boyfriend took a handful of photos, in case you’re curious. Since the bout marked the culmination of his 72-hour birthday fiesta, though, he wasn’t as diligent a photographer as he might’ve been. Still, there are some good panorama shots for wallpaper and such. Download ‘em–then buy your tickets for the November bout before they sell out again.

I went to see a friend’s band play Saturday night. The show was at Southport Hall. I didn’t know it was a benefit sponsored by Common Grounds, but was happy to see that I was paying a $15 cover for a good cause. I had heard of this group on the radio or on T.V. before, but never really knew what they did. Apparently they are volunteers from places afar that have come here to gut houses. Now, of course you know, this is not going to continue in a happy direction, that, unfortunately, is how I roll. This dude comes out of nowhere and sits next to us and the conversation follows thusly:
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On Saturday night Mardi Gras World hosted the second Big Easy Rollergirls bout and once again, the event was sold out! The Times Picayune had written an article on Friday hyping the event, but the bout had actually sold out two weeks prior to that already. The Gambit had also written a nice story on the local ladies last week.
The October bout was much scarier than the September one. The teams took on Halloweeny names: the Rinkwraiths and the Carries. They were dressed as you would imagine; Rinkwraiths in black hooded capes and the Carries in pink prom dresses coated in blood. The bout was great: the skating was fast and furious and the girls all displayed great skill and teamwork. Manwich provided some great live music and there was plenty of beer and cocktails to be had by all.
I know it seems premature, but anyone who is interested in going to the November bout should order tickets now - at the rate they have been going these tickets may be sold out by the end of next week! Go to www.bigeasyrollergirls.com and order some bout tickets now before they are gone. The theme of November is “The Axles of Evil v. The Legion of Zoom.”

After all these many months of people helping me out with this or that thing that needed to be done that I was either incapable of doing, or they could simply do better or faster; I was able to help someone else for a change. Well, sort of. A friend of mine needed to tear down a building in his backyard. He’d bought a house in my neighborhood that needed very little work, but being British, he wanted a garden in his backyard (don’t ask me, people). Problem was, about 20% of his sizable backyard was consumed with this, uh, we’ll call it a shed. A big shed. A big shed made of cinder blocks and barge board.

He was originally going to have someone tear it down and haul it off, or get a dumpster - both expensive propositions. So I suggested; suggested in a rather pushy manner, that we tear it down and put it on the curb for the city to haul off before the November 1st deadline when they’ll stop picking up debris (not sure how enforceable that is The idea that the city can enforce anything is laughable at this point.). So that’s what I spent most of the last few days doing and let me tell you, cinder blocks are heavy! It was nice hanging out with friends and actually doing something. I’m so sick of meetings. There was actually a planning meeting for my neighborhood going on when I was heading over to his house that first morning. I walked past that big plate glass window, with all the people sitting inside. I was pushing a wheel borrow with some tools in it and thinking that someone in that room is probably saying the phrase “We should…” to start a sentence.
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