This is more of a suburban note but I prefer to confuse y’all whenever it tickles my fancy. Kenner is a rather benighted suburb of New Orleans whose sole claims to fame are that they have drive through Daiquiri stands and it’s the location of Louis Armstrong/Moisant Airport.

Pretty much everyone here pronounces this dreary burg’s name “Kenna.” It’s even turned up on some t-shirts made by two local companies. The one at the top of the post is made byDirty Coast and the one below is aFleurty Girl production:

Why am I going on about this?The Mayor of Kenner, Mike Yenni, recently took umbrage over his town being called Kenna:

Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni is not amused. Some shops that carry T-shirts with slogans of New Orleans-area neighborhoods have been selling shirts misspelling Kenner and including the slang term for “bro.” Some T-shirts say “Kenna bra” or “Kenna Brah.”

“It’s Kenner, not Kenna,” Yenni, a native of the city, said Friday, at a meeting of his Economic Development Committee.

The city was established in 1855 and first called Kennerville, after the Kenner family who owned sugar plantations on land that is now south Kenner.

Yenni chastised people who end the city’s name with a vowel as well as the T-shirts that poke fun at the city, some including an image of a woman’s brassiere. Any way you spell it, Yenni said, it’s got to end. “This is Kenner with an e and an r on the end of it,” he said.

Such precision from a man who changed his last name to that of his politically powerful Grandfather and Uncle both of whom were the President of Jefferson Parish. I had a Yenni to name him malaka of the week but preferred trotting out this XTC classic to mock his humorlessness: