It’s the first weekend of Jazz Fest. Absent free tickets, we’re not attending this year. We will, however, be going to our top secret location just outside the Fairgrounds to hear Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’d be heartbroken if we didn’t do that. I hope that the weather will co-operate. There’s a chance of severe thunderstorms tomorrow. So it goes.
Hats are popular at Jazz Fest. That’s one reason I posted the Degas painting as the featured image. Another is that Degas spent time in the Crescent City visiting his Creole family; some of whom identified as black and others as white, much like theHerriman-Chasse clan I recently discussed in this space. It’s why gumbo is used so often as a metaphor to describe the natives. I’m equally inclined to compare New Orleans to a crazy quilt. The creator of Krazy Kat was born here, after all.
In other local news, the Saints have signed 32-year-old running back Adrian Peterson. His age is not my problem with the signing: it’s his status as a child beater. I wrote about it 3 years ago: Adrian Peterson Did Not Spank His Son, He Beat Him. So much for all of Sean Payton’s blather about bringing in players with “character.” This one has or had a “whooping room” in his Houston area house full of belts, switches, and the like.
This week’s theme song comes from the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album of the same name. Into The Great Wide Open is best known for its swell video and “rebel without a clue” chorus. The latter surely applies to the current occupant of the White House. The deplorables among his supporters are a rabble without a clue.
While we’re on the subject of Tom Petty, here’s a sleeper track from that very album:
I’m fond of that song because it reminds me of one of the main drags of my native Peninsula: El Camino Real. That’s the king’s highway in Spanish. It spans several Bay Area counties and was where teenage me used to cruise. We didn’t have the internet to occupy us so we drove about aimlessly. One of my cronies always called it the Elk. That’s a bit too gamey or clubby for my taste. It must be time for the break.
The firings weren’t culling deadwood analysts or former jocks who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with a searchlight and a posse. The firings included people with nearly 20 years of experience, such as college basketball expert Andy Katz, NFL insider Ed Werder and investigative reporter Steve Delsohn.
Network President John Skipper dug deep into his “The Pointy-Haired Boss’ page-a-day buzzword calendar” to explain the firings:
“Our content strategy — primarily illustrated in recent months by melding distinct, personality-driven SportsCenter TV editions and digital-only efforts with our biggest sub-brand — still needs to go further, faster … and as always, must be efficient and nimble. Dynamic change demands an increased focus on versatility and value, and as a result, we have been engaged in the challenging process of determining the talent — anchors, analysts, reporters, writers and those who handle play-by-play — necessary to meet those demands.
Today we underwent and completed a reduction in personnel in our news division in several of our Tennessee markets, as part of a transformative strategy for the USA TODAY NETWORK–Tennessee. We recognize that this has been a tough day, and we respect and appreciate the work of all our colleagues, especially those who have been impacted by these actions — through no fault of their own.
We’ve previously spoken about the new ways we will be able to better serve readers, communities and customers as we fully form the statewide network. Today was the first step as we re-secure and level-set our economic vitality to support our journalism.
Gannett president and CEO Bob Dickey explained in a memo to employees announcing the cuts: “These moves are central to our transformation into a leading, next-generation media company. The positive impact of these efforts will take time, which in the near-term requires us to assertively manage our costs.
Looking ahead, Dickey wrote: “Over the next 18 months, we will continue to build our scale and invest in important digital capabilities and experiences — such as critical e-commerce infrastructure and significant upgrades to our digital content platforms.”
“In essence, we are resetting the legacy side of our business so we can continue to publish a high-quality newspaper delivered to loyal subscribers’ homes seven days a week,” Silvestri wrote in an email to employees on Monday. “At the same time, we also push ahead on adding to our growing digital audiences and developing new revenue segments such as premium magazines, e-commerce, paid RTD events, sponsored content, and archive products and services.”
The story, which can be accessed through this link, details the formation of NOLA Media Group, a digitally focused company that will launch this fall and that will develop new and innovative ways to deliver news and information to the company’s online and mobile readers. NOLA Media Group will be led by Ricky Mathews. Also this fall, The Times-Picayune will begin publishing a more robust newspaper on a reduced schedule of Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only … Many current employees of The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com will have the opportunity to grow with the new organizations, but the need to reallocate resources to accelerate the digital growth of NOLA Media Group will necessitate a reduction in the size of the workforce.
THAT WAS THE ONE!
Trying to make sense of this is like trying to fuck a porcupine: It’s not worth it and even if you pull it off, it still hurts. ESPN decided that it wanted to save money and it’s always easier to cut people than it is to improve anything else. In doing so, it looked like the company just started throwing darts at an employee list and made the cuts accordingly. Anyone with a brain has already made the obvious realization that a) this won’t save ESPN money in any meaningful way and b) won’t improve the product.
If anything, we are supposed to learn from the fuckups of others. When newspapers were fucking over subscribers, cutting content and wasting money on “re-envisioning content-based engagement” with readers, most intelligent observers saw this as nothing more than a profit grab: Save money in the short term, kill the publication in the long term. As that continues to come to fruition, ESPN (which had always been a cut above when it came to seeing where things are going and getting there first) decided to follow the same shitty path as their ink-stained counterparts.
In some cases, we won’t notice the missing people, just like you don’t notice when your team cuts some fourth-round draft pick during training camp. However, overall, as the team begins to atrophy and the overall quality of play sags, you start wondering what happened to all those guys (and in ESPN’s case, gals) who used to be able to help win games.
It is fair to say that it is unclear what will happen next at ESPN, but it is also realistic to say it’s obvious it won’t be positive.
Spring is prime time for crawfish boils or as the natives say, berls. We’ve been to two in the last three weeks. The first one involved some of the usual suspects and nothing unusual happened other than a five-year-old girl pointing at the sacks of live crawfish and asking, “When will they be dead?” That’s a sassy Louisiana child, y’all. It’s one reason why her mama nicknamed her the Benevolent Dictator. I’m not so sure about the first bit though…
Something quite eventful happened last weekend at the second shebang. The berl was thrown (not by Milton Berle or Burl Ives) by one of Dr. A’s first year medical students. He’s an older student who was a helicopter pilot in the Army and is still a reservist. That’s one reason he lives at Jackson Barracks near Arabi, Louisiana. That’s right, it was an Arabi spring crawfish berl…
When I first heard our host’s name, I remarked that it was the same name as the man who sold us our house after renovating it in 2000. It’s a fairly common name so we agreed it was unlikely that her student was a Junior. Guess what? It’s a small fucking world after all. Our host’s father had indeed renovated Adrastos World HQ and Dr. A’s student had worked on the project. The latter was somewhat freaked out by the string of coincidences but I told him not to sweat it because it made him de facto teacher’s pet. Besides, the man knows how to boil crawfish. It’s an indispensable skill as far as I’m concerned.
This week’s theme song is the title track of Rodney Crowell’s 2003 album, Fate’s Right Hand. It seems that one of his daughters didn’t care for the song at the time. Somewhere in my archives I have a circa 2004 Crowell concert at which he introduced Fate’s Right Hand more or less as follows:
“My daughter hates this song. She told me it’s undignified for me to talk about poontang and the narrator of the song having a pole in his pants. I told her that I’m a country singer and her mother and grandfather are both country singers. We’re not dignified people. She reminded me that Grandpa Johnny was the most dignified person she knew. I couldn’t argue that point so I changed the subject.”
Fate’s Right Hand is a list song. The most famous list song I can think of is Irving Berlin’s You’re The Top. Another list song classic is REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine.) I don’t feel like listing list songs so here’s Fate’s Right Hand:
Rodney is fond of list songs. He wrote one about greedy yuppies for his 2005 album, The Outsider complete with the refrain: give it to me, give it to me. I will comply:
Give it to me, give it to me. You may not be as demanding as the coked-out greed head in the song but let’s take a break anyway. Give it to me, give it to me.
The French Quarter Festival is this weekend. It used to be a favorite of mine but has gotten more crowded and touristy as the years have gone by. Bigger is not always better but that’s the mentality that drives events in New Orleans in 2017. So it goes.
Allergy season continues apace, exacerbated by the wind. There’s flying pollen in the air. The good news is that I haven’t seen any Buckmoth Caterpillars blowing in the wind. They’re nasty little buggers that will sting the hell out of you given half a chance. In fact, a friend of mine was cutting her grass and learned that even if you cut a Buckmoth, they can still sting you. It’s another reason to avoid yard work. Nature is dirty and stingy.
This week’s windy theme song was written by Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew. It was first recorded in 1957 by R&B legend Roy Brown who had his sole cross over hit with Let The Four Winds Blow. The Fat Man cut his version in 1961. We’ll go in chronological order.
Windiness is nothing new for this feature. Neither is a pounding piano or honking sax.
It’s baseball season, which means hope springs eternal for last year’s also-rans. My Giants lost on opening day but star pitcher Madison Bumgarner hit two homers. Pitchers rarely do that in the NL and never in the AL because of the accursed DH rule.
The Insult Comedian dodged throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener. I guess he was afraid the boos would drown out any cheers. All Presidents receive both at sporting events. Still, it would have been amusing to see Trump in action. He once claimed to be the best high school ballplayer in New York. It’s another whopper: Hall of Famers Jim Palmer and Rod Carew played high school ball at the same time. Sorry, Donald.
Speaking of putting on a show:
Baseball & Vaudeville: There’s a swell article at the Atlantic about how sports and show business intermingled in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Playing baseball was not a lucrative profession back then so some players took to the stage. One of them was New York Giants outfielder Turkey Mike Donlin who brought his manager, John McGraw along for the ride:
I also learned that there’s a vaudeville archive at the University of Arizona. I wonder if they have any gag props?
Let’s move on to a more serious segment. April 6th marked the 100th Anniversary of United States entry into the Great War.
The Forgotten War: The Korean conflict is often called that but-thanks to M*A*S*H in particular-it’s still more remembered in America than World War I. The Great War was an important event in world history but, in show business terms, World War II had better villains and bigger explosions. There are so many books and films about that conflict that it won’t be forgotten.
There are two articles about America and the Great War that I’d like to bring to your attention:
Former Bush speechwriter and Never Trump conservative David Frum has an excellent piece at the Atlantic, What If the Allies Had Lost World War I? It’s from 2015 but it’s still pertinent.
The short answer is that Americans have short memories when it comes to our own history. It’s one reason the Insult Comedian is watching teevee at the White House instead of Trump Tower.
Also forgotten are some Hollywood movies produced at the end of the Hoover administration. In the face of a passive laissez-faire Presidency, some Americans wanted a strong man and the movies reflected that desire.
The Power and the Glory (1933) embodied the hankering for a superman in title, sentiment, and central character. Directed by William K. Howard from a screenplay by Preston Sturges, the film is often considered a precursor to Citizen Kane (1941) because of its pioneering use of voice-over narration. The Power and the Glory resurrects the deceased and unmourned railroad tycoon Tom Garner (Spencer Tracy) for a meditation of the price of greatness. Personally flawed but professionally flawless, Garner rises Horatio Alger–fashion from pauper to plutocrat.
Hollywood’s Fascist flirtation faded with the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the revival of what his cousin TR called a more “muscular government.” The reason FDR is atop my President’s list is that he saved the country from dictatorship. He would be appalled by Donald Trump but also confident that we can move past this disaster.
Speaking of Fascism and the movies, there’s an interesting piece about a Nazi era movie star in the Guardian:
The Nazi Marilyn Monroe: Hitler and Goebbels wanted Marlene Dietrich to be the Nazi’s pin-up. Marlene wanted nothing to with their murderous regime and remained in splendid exile in Hollywood. They had to make do with Kristina Söderbaum who was more of a blond bombshell than a blond venus like Dietrich.
We drove to Horw, near Lucerne, to interview Söderbaum, star of many films, most of them directed by her husband, Veit Harlan. These included Jud Süß, widely regarded as the most antisemitic film ever, and the ridiculous epic Kolberg, about the Napoleonic siege of the Prussian city. Söderbaum was so often drowned in her films that she became known as the Reichswasserleiche, the official State Water Corpse.
<SNIP>
Söderbaum claimed Joseph Goebbels, head of Nazi propaganda, didn’t much like her. His taste – apart from his wife, Magda – ran to dark-haired actresses. “He told me I was not sexy but erotic,” said Söderbaum. Still, she added, “terribly many people fell in love with me. But whether that made me a sex symbol or not, I don’t know.” For her part, she found that: “Goebbels had very nice eyes but,” she added with a laugh, “he was a devil!” She said Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, was always very pleasant to her – and Harlan would often remark on his amazing eyes. She was not unimpressed by Hitler’s eyes herself.
Söderbaum could be described as the archetypical feminists’ nightmare. A beautiful woman, a very convincing actress, totally obedient and devoted to her forceful husband, she told me she had lived “in a gilded cage” and “went everywhere in a limo”. But I saw no signs of curiosity about life beyond the bars. In her autobiography, she seemed surprised by the postwar hostility towards Harlan, astonished that their children were taunted as Nazis at school in Sweden.
In a word: clueless. If she were around today, she might have been one of the Insult Comedian’s wives.
Documentary Of The Week: Söderbaum’s director/husband Veit Harlan is the subject of a 2008 documentary, Harlan-In The Shadow Of Jew Suss. He, too, was baffled by the controversy his work stirred up and maintained that Goebbels made him do Jew Suss. There’s nothing to support his story.
The film features extensive interviews with members of Harlan’s family; most of whom take a dim view of his movies. An interesting filmic footnote: Harlan’s niece Christiane was married to Stanley Kubrick for 41 years until his death in 1999.
It’s trailer time:
Harlan-In The Shadow Of Jew Suss is currently streaming at Amazon Prime. I give it 3 stars, an Adrastos Grade of B, and an Ebertian thumbs-up.
This has been a somewhat sombre edition of Odds & Sods so it’s time to lighten things up before we go.
Tweet Of The Week: This tweet proves that even ladies in fur coats dislike the Trumps:
Ivanka Trump's neighbor watched the protests outside her house in fur coat and with a glass of wine. pic.twitter.com/L049gms76O
Penn State trustee Albert L. Lord said he is “running out of sympathy” for the “so-called” victims of former Nittany Lions assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, according to an email sent to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Lord, a former CEO of student loan company Sallie Mae, also defended Graham Spanier, the dismissed Penn State president who was convicted of one count of child endangerment last week for his handling of complaints about Sandusky.
“Running out of sympathy for 35 yr old, so-called victims with 7 digit net worth,” Lord said in the email sent Saturday. “Do not understand why they were so prominent in trial. As you learned, Graham Spanier never knew Sandusky abused anyone.”
Do you know how hard it is to prove criminal negligence? A career prosecutor I knew explained it to me once, fed up with my bitching that he should be throwing every rape-enabling bishop in jail. You basically have to have a letter signed by the person in charge saying we acknowledge the criminal in question was raping kids, we knew there was a likely chance he’d rape more kids if we did nothing, and we just didn’t care that much.
The emails were between then-PSU Prez Graham Spanier and two other officials who already are charged with perjury in the case, former athletic Tim Curley and former senior VP Gary Schultz.
NBC reported the PSU brass decided it would be “humane” not to tell law enforcement about a 2001 incident involving Sandusky’s alleged sexual abuse of a boy in a football locker room shower.
Actual convictions on charges like this are incredibly rare. You have to be incredibly bad at incredibly awful things for people to forgo the usual “well, I don’t know how I would have acted in that case if it was my friend” bullshit and head straight to “Oh my GOD, what were you thinking?” This is like seeing a fire start, realizing it’s going to burn down your house, shrugging and going out for 10-cent-wing night.
And this trustee jackhole doesn’t have sympathy? Good thing that’s not now the legal system works. Your sympathy doesn’t mean jack shit, you ambulatory butthole. The law don’t care. The law says KIDS WHO GOT RAPED come before clueless fucks like you every time.
We seem to have hit peak pollen this week in New Orleans. Achoo. As a result, I awaken each day with watery eyes and a runny nose. Achoo. It’s most unpleasant as is my daily sinus headache. The good news is that we’re supposed to have some rain to wash away the sticky yellow stuff. The bad news is that it won’t happen until later today when we have plans to attend a festival not far from Adrastos World HQ. Oh well, that’s what umbrellas are for.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or watching teevee with the Insult Comedian, you know that Chuck Berry died at the age of 90. This week’s theme song, Promised Land, is my favorite Chuck Berry tune. I was introduced to it at the first Grateful Dead show I ever attended. It was a helluva opening number.
I have three versions for your entertainment: Berry’s original, the Band’s rollicking piano driven take from Moondog Matinee, and the Dead live in the Nutmeg State. It’s time to jet to the promised land, y’all.
I remain mystified as to why Chuck wanted to get out of Louisiana and go to Houston town. There’s no accounting for taste. Let’s ponder that as I insert the break, but not where the moon don’t shine.
Mulkey explained her comments in the postgame press conference, saying she was tired of hearing the scandal discussed on a national stage by people not involved in the investigation who “don’t know what they’re talking about.” She said the scandal is over and she would send her daughter to the private Christian university, claiming the “problems we have at Baylor are no different than the problems at any other school in America.”
I’m gonna tell you how you can get around the horrible damage to your reputation and the very bad publicity and the unbelievably damaging effect of having people say mean things in the papers and on TV and maybe at the wing place when you’re just trying to have a beer. I’m gonna tell you how to finally be free of all that.
Here we go.
Don’t commit any rapes. Strive for the number of people you rape to be zero. Try really, really hard. No rapes. That’s the goal.
If you are in charge of things at a large organization such as a college, and your employees, your students, your players, your coaches, are raping and you find out about it, you in order: Call the police, shitcan and/or expel the rapists, and hold a press conference admitting to the two former actions and apologizing for having rapists near you.
If it seems like your entire program is just riddled with rape and rapists and there are too many of them to count, possibly take a break from footballing to figure out the raping part.
Refrain from acting like somebody writing a mean tweet about you is equivalent to rape. Don’t whine about how hard this all is for you, the accused rapist or enabler of rape. If you must, employ lawyers and PR people who understand when to talk and when to shut up.
You do these things, instead of doing what that lady up there did, and people will still hate you but they will hate you slightly less. Don’t compound your shitheaditude by being a shithead about having your shitheadedness exposed.
I’m a bad American sports fan. I don’t *have* to watch the entire Super Bowl unless there’s a team I like playing. Last night, we watched an old John Ford movie, then tuned in for Lady Gaga’s half time show and the rest of the game. A lot of people missed her subtle political subtext but my friend Roberta did not:
Sometimes the subtle can be radical. I found her opening with snippets of “God Bless America,” “This Land is Your Land” and the pledge to be audacious and absolutely brilliant. She let the righties know that they have no monopoly on love for the USA, and she reminded lefties that there are bigger reasons to fight for what’s right than whatever our own, personal identity may be. And then came the Big, Gay Anthem. It was a million times more brilliant than an overt FU to Trump. Had she done something blatant, it would have fulfilled the negative expectations of the haters and allowed them to dismiss her as just another rude, obnoxious liberal. By making the song selections she did, she made it impossible for them to do that. It’s really quite genius.
Thanks for boiling that down so I don’t have to, R. It’s good to have clever friends who understood that Gaga was working with a scalpel and not a meat dress cleaver last night. And, yes. I like Lady Gaga. Sue me.
Everything is political in the winter of our discontent including this Super Bowl. (I refuse to use the Roman numeral: it’s pompous beyond belief.) Much of the country was rooting for the underdog Atlanta Falcons and against the plutocratic Patriots with their overt ties to Trump via owner Robert Kraft, Coach Grumpy, and Brady the ball inflator. I was too despite the fact that many in New Orleans consider rooting against the Falcons to be a Nolier than thou litmus test. The Falcons are, of course, the Saints arch-rivals but that’s mere sports hate. Real world concerns trumped sports hate for me yesterday.
One reason I pulled for the losing team is some of the people who were rooting for the winning team. The president* was one but so were some more blatant bigots. Here’s a sampler from my old “friend” the erstwhile Gret Stet Fuhrer and that punchable Nazi, Richard Spencer:
Can White people celebrate that the greatest football player in NFL history is White and an open Trump supporter? #SuperBowlpic.twitter.com/fBdsxiPZCo
Rumor has it that Trump wants to gay marry Tom Brady but is afraid of Mike Liar Liar Pence On Fire’s reaction. I suspect the white-haired prevaricator from Hoosierland could find a way to rationalize it. It’s his specialty as Trump’s Veep.
Let’s do some virtual Nazi punching:
Rooting for the Pats!
1/ Belichick & Brady support Trump 2/ Three White widereceivers 3/ Consistently NFL's whitest team 4/ ATL is dreadful
Can’t have a majority black city’s team win the big game. Of course, it’s already happened with the Saints. (I’m too lazy to research other possibilities. Again, sue me.) Also, one of the white receivers is Jewish. Chew on that, you fourth-rate Streicher.
Spencer also called Brady an Aryan avatar. I am not making this up. Does Spencer’s fulsome praise make Brady a white nationalist or neo-Nazi? Of course not, but his silence about his less savory fans makes him look like a worm, weasel, or toady. The Patriots represent one of the bluest regions in the country so I hope that someone in the Commonwealth calls him on this shit. It would give Brady the chance to spout *new* clichés. The old ones are getting a bit shopworn.
Another thing that makes me a bad American is that I didn’t pay much attention to the ads. I’ll let others talk about them elsewhere. I was too busy trolling lefty Saints fans who allowed their sports hate to overrule everything else. I don’t get extreme sports hate. I dislike some sports teams but I *hate* racism and bigotry and those who go along with it infinitely more. There’s a perfect example here at First Draft of putting real world concerns above sports hate. Athenae and Mr. A are ardent Packers fans who hail from Wisconsin yet they live in Chicago, which is home to the Packers arch-rival, Da Bears. I guess they should move in order to satisfy the purity trolls. It’s just sports, it’s supposed to be fun and unimportant. Football isn’t life, it’s just a game.
I, for one, am glad that this particular Super Bowl is over. Its peculiar mix of sports hate stupidity and politics will not be missed. One good thing that happened was that Roger Goodell got booed last night in Houston. Sometimes you get the sweet with the bitter.
I think Mick and Keith got it right by analogy with this song so I’ll give them the last word:
The only predictable thing about the weather in New Orleans to start the new year has been its unpredictability. It’s been warm and muggy, wet and damp, foggy and chilly. You name it, we’ve had it, except, that is, for snow. The last time it snowed here was in 2008. Thousands of pictures were taken of the St. Charles street car in the snow. It melted quickly and hasn’t happened since. So it goes.
It was Twelfth Night yesterday, which means that we can finally eat king cake, and, more importantly, hang our krewe flags on our houses. I’ve been wanting to fly the Spank flag for months but Dr. A wouldn’t hear of it until yesterday. So it goes.
Here’s the flag with Dennie the den of Muses cat:
End of laginappe Carnival catblogging, make that reblogging. If you blog long enough you end up repeating yourself, repeating yourself, repeating yourself…
This week’s theme song, Born Under A Bad Sign, was written for blues great Albert King by Stax Records legends William Bell and Booker T. Jones. It seems to fit the mood of at least half the country as we contemplate the next administration. I’m not sure whether to feel cursed or resigned but I’m certain that the shit brought to the surface in 2016 will continue to stink. Shit’s a funny thing, no matter how you disguise it, it smells just as bad. So it goes.
We begin with a version King recorded in New Orleans in 1978, produced by Allen Toussaint:
We continue with an instrumental version by the man who wrote the music:
Finally, a swell 1993 rendition by the great Paul Rodgers:
Now that we’ve admitted to being down since we began to crawl, we’ll shoot for a rebirth (no, not the brass band or the pale ale) after the break.
It’s time to take a look back at 2016. It may be an exercise in egotism but it’s mine, all mine. Last year’s best of Adrastoswas a top thirty list, this year we have a plus-one. Sounds like a dinner party, doesn’t it? It’s time to belly-up to the buffet…
2016 was a good year for satire, but a terrible year for the country. And I was a better pundit than prognosticator. So it goes.
Here’s this year’s crop of posts in chronological order:
The most publicized criminal trial in New Orleans for at least 20 years ended with Cardell Hayes being found gulity of manslaughter. The whole mishigas was the result of a road rage encounter with former New Orleans Saints defensive captain Will Smith. Race was not an issue as both Hayes and Smith are African-American. Hayes was charged with second degree murder, so the reduced charge seems to be the result of a jury compromise. It means they were able to see through the smoke blown by both sides during the 7 day trial.
I’ve been sympathetic to Cardell Hayes. I have an elderly around the corner neighbor lady who knows him. She’s one of those people whose name I used to know but forgot. I’m now too embarrassed to ask since we’ve been chatting for 15 years. We had this conversation last week:
NL: You been following the Cardell thing?
A: Yes, m’am. What do you think about it?
NL: I been knowin’ Cardell and his people for 30 years. A nice man. What you call a gentle giant.
A: What do you think happened?
NL: I believe Cardell. I think he scared that night. His auntie told me he broken up. Wishes he didn’t have that gun in his car. I liked it better when men settled their bullshit with their fists.
There it is in a nutshell. Despite being a very large man (6’6″ 300 lbs) Cardell Hayes had a gun. He got into it with another very large man with a gun in his glove box. No guns, no death. Cardell wasn’t cruising around looking for trouble. But he found it. Big time.
The crucial moment in this tragedy was when Will Smith’s car kissed bumpers with Cardell’s vehicle on Magazine Street. If Smith had gotten out the car, introduced himself, and inspected their bumpers, no road rage episode. There might not have even been a fight. Instead, Smith was driving shit-faced drunk and kept going. It was the prelude to this tragedy.
After Hayes caught up with Smith’s party, one of his cronies Richard Hernandez started screaming at Hayes and ripped his shirt off as if in a bad action movie. Another witness, former Saints star Pierre Thomas, said that in his neighborhood, when a guy rips his shirt off he’s ready to fight. Yeah, you right, Frenchy. It’s stupid in your hood and it was lethal in the Lower Garden District.
This is a tragic case. Nobody behaved particularly well at the scene with the exception of Raquel Smith who tried to defuse things. This was one situation where mentioning one’s celebrity status might have helped instead of coming off as pompous. Cardell Hayes did not know the identity of the large drunk screaming at him in the dark. He only learned that it was one of his favorite NFL players after the fact. He broke down in tears when he learned he had shot Will Smith. That’s the thing about football: the players aren’t always recognizable because of helmets and face masks. It helps them stay safe on the field, but it was perilous on that April night in New Orleans.
Speaking of bad behavior, the lawyers in this case traded barbs and insults from the moment John Fuller was hired to defend Cardell Hayes. Their petty bickering even came up during closing arguments. I’m appalled by this unprofessional behavior: nobody cares if they dislike one another. The trial isn’t about them, it’s about the defendant and his victim. Of course, the lead prosecutor is the District Attorney’s kid and Mr. Cannizzarro is not exactly warm and fuzzy. Like father, like daughter.
In the end, I think the jury reached a fair verdict. Second degree murder was an overcharge. What really happened out there remains murky but one thing is certain: if these men were not armed, Will Smith would be alive and Cardell Hayes would not be facing a long prison sentence. I hope that the Judge will be merciful. She has considerable discretion in sentencing since it’s manslaughter. I wish I could say that the Hayes/Smith tragedy will serve as a cautionary tale that it’s a terrible idea to go about armed but I know better. So it goes.
The spirit of Boaty McBoatfaceis abroad in the land. Our local Triple-A baseball franchise has changed its name from the New Orleans Zephrys to the Baby Cakes. I am not making this up. And that is why the New Orleans Baby Cakes is/are malaka/malakas of the week.
I already feel sorry for the Miami Marlins minor leaguers who will have to wear this icky logo on their uniforms. It looks like something you’d put on a shirt for a kid’s T-Ball team. It’s bad enough playing in a farm system with a giant toddler like Jeffrey Loria at its apex; just imagine a Latino player having to tell their Abuela they play for los pasteles de bebé or los tortas de bebé. Holy Gringos Locos, Batman. Of course, this is a country insane enough to hand the nuclear football to the Insult Comedian so nothing surprises me.
As a marketing ploy the renaming has been a great success and I’m probably playing into their hands by writing this. It’s made a minor league baseball team the center of local attention during football season. We should be talking about the bizarre ending to the Saints game on Sunday, instead we’re talking Baby Cakes. It’s way too early for King Cake, y’all.
This is what happens when you let people on the internet vote on a team name. New Orleans has been Boaty McBoatfaced. If they insist on keeping the new name, they should become the Metry Baby Cakes since they play in suburban Metairie. Jefferson Parish can add the name to its malakatude hall of shame alongside Parish President Mike YenniandFamily Gras.People need to stop adding gras to everything: it means fat.
You’re probably wonder why the malakas who run the New Orleans minor league team picked this moronic name. I’ll let one of 44 people who likes it, Zombie Picayune art critic Doug MacCash explain:
It is an utterly indigenous allusion that relies on the knowledge of New Orleans Carnival customs. Who beyond the Louisiana borders could successfully deconstruct the meaning of a bat-swinging infant king surrounded by a purple, green and gold pastry ring? The symbolism is ours alone. Resolutely unique.
Yet it is not a cliché.
Just the opposite. Until Tuesday it was certainly not in common use as a description of a King Cake. Again, the implication is entirely unique to our ball club. The name is an instant classic.
It’s a name that is immediately familiar. Too familiar, even. Baby Cakes sounds like a term of endearment in an old gangster movie. It’s a name with a wink, a name with a nod, a name with a knowing smile, baby. It’s a name that has happily sipped a hand grenade cocktail on Bourbon Street and lunged for a long strand of beads. It’s a name that could easily get into mischief if left to its own devices.
It’s so us.
Excuse me while I rummage for a barf bag. His highfalutin, pretentious language is a bit rich for this baseball fan. This is the name for a baseball team, not a bakery or a bar that serves sickly sweet drinks to soused students with fake IDs. In the immortal words of Bill the Cat:
I think Oscar the Cat just coughed up a hairball in reaction to the name.
We also have cockroaches the size of manhole covers, why didn’t they consider the New Orleans Cockroaches or Palmetto Bugs? We also have termite swarms, so why not the New Orleans Termites? Because that would be stupid, that’s why. So is Baby Cakes. Oy, such malakatude.
I went on a bit of a tweetstorm after the announcement. Here’s a sample:
@cakesbaseball Worst name ever. Demeaning to the players obliged to wear the uniform. What are they dolls?
The PC police? What are you on about, man? The name is stupid, not politically incorrect whatever the hell that means. One can have a sense of humor and think this is a terrible idea. I may have to send these guys to stop the lions from yellin’ aloud:
My primary objection to the name is that it’s a gimmick dreamed up by people who seem to dislike the game they’re promoting. It’s like Fox Sports with their in-game interviews and Joe Buck, a twerp who has admitted to not liking baseball, speaking of which, here’s a message for Baby Cakes management:
The bright side of Stupid Namegate is that it has distracted me from the horrendous aftermath of the late election. It’s fun to kvetch about the Bad Idea police who labored mightily and gave birth to this dud. This is a misdemeanor, not a felony.
The General Manager of the New Orleans minor league team, Augusto Cookie Rojas, has a baseball marketing, not playing field background. I initially thought he might be related to the scrappy middle infielder best known for playing for the Phillies and Royals from 1962-1977, but he is not. Fun fact: the Real Cookie Rojas played all nine positions in the early days of his career. The Other Cookie Rojas is now known for giving a ball club the worst name ever. And that is why the New Orleans Baby Cakes is/are the malaka/malakas of the week.
It took all seven games, and extra innings to boot, but you did it. You broke the Curse of the Billy Goat and won your first World Series since the end of Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. The long wait of “next year” is over. It’s done.
World Champion Chicago Cubs.
I bet it sounds great.
As a Cleveland fan, I have to admit it hurts more than I thought it would. In the end, I was just exhausted. Down 1, down 4, comeback, comeback, extra innings, rain delay, down two, rally for a run, lose with an out from the last guy left on the bench batting… Like my team, I had nothing left to give.
I remember saying at the beginning of the year that it would be amazing if the Cubs and Indians made the series because it would be great either way. Tonight, watching the Tribe’s chances slip away, I realize I was wrong about that.
I came to my first conclusion based on the last time we lost in a Game 7. We lost to the Carpetbagging Marlins, a team built Enron: Gobs of money spent to guarantee a prize for the owners, only to have everything come crashing down shortly thereafter. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at the 1997 and 1998 Marlins rosters. It’s like two completely different teams.
They were an expansion team with five years experience.
They were a collection of overpaid free agent talent.
The Cubs are none of those things: They grew their own talent, they suffered (Jesus, have they suffered) and basically each game was what it was.
Unlike every other historical moment in Cleveland sports, you don’t have a “THE” moment, like “The Drive” or “The Fumble” or “The Shot.” You also don’t have a “blame” factor. If you asked me why we lost this series, I can’t point to a single person. It’s not “Jose Mesa” or “David Justice” or “John Elway” or “Michael Jordan.” The closest, I guess, would be Tyler Naquin, who misplayed that ball in center during Game 6, but hell, that wasn’t even close to being in the same league as these others.
I go back to what I think Bert Sugar said about watching the Holmes-Cooney fight in 1982: One was a complete fighter. One was an incomplete fighter. As the fight wore on, the difference became obvious.
The Cubs had all the pieces and everything clicked at the right time.
The Indians didn’t and eventually, it caught up with them.
That said, the realization that this wasn’t going to be as great as I thought it was settled in when it seemed like every friend I had came out of the closet as a Cubs fan.
Still, it doesn’t feel any better watching the outcome of that Faustian bargain come to bear so soon. Yes, I am happy that you’re happy, but having to hear about it 24/7 is like having a best friend telling you how good your ex is in bed. I get that you’re happy, but damn…
So this year is your next year and congratulations for that. I’m sure it’ll take a while to get adjusted to the “Can we still be loveable without being losers?” thing and trying to figure out how to kind of sweep away that whole “Man were we dicks to Steve Bartman…” episode. Take the chance to soak it all in and enjoy it.
All I ask of you is that you savor your win without being unnecessarily cruel to me and mine. We weren’t the bad guys in this. We just happened to be the team that got in your way when the wheel came around for you. Like you, we play the game the right way, we have a great manager who inspires his guys and we hate Joe Buck, too.
Above all else, though, do your best not to turn into Red Sox fans, who got three championships in ten years and bitched about not winning more. Don’t bitch about your payroll if it swells to only the second-largest in baseball or that your team only pilfers a 20-game winner from a lesser team EVERY OTHER year. Don’t let the media around you create some bullshit “-gate” that has everyone on DriveTime Sports Call-in bitching that everyone should get fired and the team should start over.
I’ve been spending more time on Twitter during the World Series. It’s a way to kill time while managers Terry Francona and Joe Maddon change pitchers 96 times per game, which, in turn, causes me to cry 96 Tears:
Enough about baseball overmanaging a subject that only Doc, Linkmeisterand I care about, on to some random political tweets. I usually post them one at a time but I’m working on something long so this is a good way to kick the can down the road.
Sounds like what will happen to the country if the Insult Comedian is elected. I don’t know who this Daniel dude is but he won the internet yesterday with that Thelma & Louise tweet. He looks pretty young so I guess he’s not the guy in the Elton John-Bernie Taupin song.
We continue with a tweet from comedian George Wallace who is so not the former Alabama Governor:
Workin' folks in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Missouri, Jawja, Florida… Moneydiaper McStupid is one lyin' motherfletcher pic.twitter.com/sLXdD4i6QI
Mondeydiaper McStupid is a new one on me. Since I have a First Draft fuck quota to meet, I’ll call a motherfucker a motherfucker. I hope George wasn’t talking about teevee sleuth Jessica Fletcher. Now that I think of it, Angela Lansbury played the conniving Commie mommy in the original Manchurian Candidate, which Keith Olbermann referred to in this tweet:
Team Trump is trying to steal Michigan, a state the GOP hasn’t won since 1988. Willard Mittbot Romney tried the same thing in 2012 but he grew up in the land of Reagan Democrats so it made some sense. Here’s Team Trump’s “uplifting” billboard:
According to a couple of my #Detroit peeps, these billboards have appeared on along the Lodge Fwy, I-96, & l-75. pic.twitter.com/55Cz971q9J
John Ford View Of Monument Valley by Louis Dallara.
I have been fixated on the Presidential election and the World Series so I haven’t got any local tidbits to share this week. Shame on me.
When this post hits the internet, I will be at Tipitina’s with my sweetie seeing the Jayhawks. I cannot report on the show because I’m writing this beforehand. It makes me feel like a time traveler, which, given my obsession with the Wayback Machine, seems appropriate. I may have to bone up on the Back to the Future movies now that time travel is my thing. It’s a pity that my wife is a sane scientist, not a mad one, but one can’t have everything..
This week’s theme song was written by Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. I never thought I’d write that phrase but I just did. The whole farce between Dylan and the Nobel committee is one of the funniest things since A Day At The Races: Get-a your tootsie frootsie ice-a cream. Dylan is likely to reject the award: it’s a pity he can’t send George C Scott or Marlon Brando to accept it on his behalf. Now *that* would be funny: bring on the award rejecters to accept the Nobel fucking prize. I do wish Dylan would accept the prize money and donate it to a worthy cause like, say, my cats…
Back to the theme song. I like Dylan as a songwriter but I’m not a fan of his singing, which is probably why I chose these versions of My Back Pages. The first one is from Bobfest in 1993. Dylan sings a verse but so do Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and George Harrison.
The best known version of My Back Pages is by the Byrds from their 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday. Ain’t nothing quite like the sound of McGuinn’s twangy 12-string guitar and Byrdsy harmonies:
“Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” are words to live by at least until the break. After that all bets are off.
When the Cubs punched their first World Series ticket since 1945, I got a text from my wife:
“Your cousin is at the game. I saw a picture on Facebook.”
My cousin is a familial strain that reached into Illinois somewhere after my grandparents divorced. When her father couldn’t get a job in education in Wisconsin, my grandfather made “a few calls” back in the day when that was a standard practice and helped him land a teaching/coaching gig south of the border.
It was my aunt and uncle, three cousins, my grandfather and his wife who all took up residence in the Greater Chicagoland Area.
They always lived “around” Chicago, but never IN Chicago. No L stops or delis where you needed to speak Polish to get served. They were basically the exemplar of what drove my wife nuts in discussing Illinois geography with people:
Her: “So where are you from?”
Burb Kid: “I’m from Chicago!”
Her: “I grew up on Hermitage Avenue. What street are you?”
Burb Kid: (blank stare) Uh… I’m from Wilmette…
Her: YOU’RE NOT FROM FUCKING CHICAGO!!!!!
As a child, I looked forward to trips down there. I always left disappointed, as she seemed to exude what became known around these parts as “Just THEIR Way.”
Aloof. Self-absorbed. Dismissive.
Maybe it was that I was the little cousin (she being three years older than I) who was always forced on her. Maybe it was that we just sat on opposite sides of the gender pivot at all the wrong times. Maybe it was just irreconcilable differences in regard to upbringing (My uncle, the coach, was like the dad in “Pitch.” My parents encouraged me to do things I liked, as opposed to whatever obsession fueled them.)
Mom always assured me that eventually we’d grow out of those awkward phases and become closer. Mom was wrong and almost diametrically so.
When she got married the first time, I was required to serve as a reader. I protested against going, as the student newspaper was starting back up after a seven-month shutdown. This was going to be our crowning moment.
Mom basically slammed the door on that one and although I was an adult who could do whatever I saw fit, I needed to do things for the betterment of the family.
So I went. She never even noticed. Neither did any of the other “Illinois Family.”
The only perverse pleasure I took out of the whole thing was that about three years later, my cousin divorced. I would commonly snipe that at least the paper survived longer than the marriage.
She was in and out of college and blew through money like water, leaving behind her a party trail and a ton of debt. Her father throwing around his sizable weight to get her gigs here and there. Eventually she became a teacher, although I have no idea how the hell this is even possible. Of all the people I thought of as being kind and decent toward childhood betterment, she was the last one I’d imagine that would fit that bill.
I often felt like this scene in “The Ref” in dealing with her:
Eventually, she remarried to a man who had been adopted by a wealthy family as a child. He’d been divorced once as well and really never found anything that was his calling. Thus, he schlubbed along until my uncle helped make him a coach as well. When his parents died, he inherited extremely well and thus my fuck-up cousin and her doughy husband were suddenly able to live the life she always thought she deserved.
Concert? All of them and the best tickets.
Casinos? Black Jack for hours on end.
Travel? Florida, Vegas, whatever feels good.
Sports? Season ticket to the Badgers (my uncle emphasizes his ties to the UW to the point of absurdity; his kids never even sniffed Madison’s admission standards, but they are constantly adorned in Bucky-wear and participating in the “traditions” of sport).
The Cubs games are the latest extension of the way in which her family (all but my aunt, who seems to almost take pride in being a Milwaukee-rooted South-Side Polack who grew up over a tavern and just happened to move south) approach life. Truth be told, I can’t remember ever seeing anything Cubbie-related in their house or hear of a passion for the Northsiders. Still, now that this is a thing, she’s into it as are the others in her family.
It’s “the place to be” so they are there. It’s “the thing to do” so they do it.
When it comes to the nouveau riche and the inheriters, the baseball metaphor often applied is that they think they hit a triple but they were actually born standing on third base. I think a more apt description here would be that she thinks she hit a triple, but she landed on third thanks to a three-base error.
Over the years I’ve been accused of playing the “city mouse/country mouse” card on this blog: I perpetuate idea that Chicago is a vast urban hellhole with nothing that doesn’t reek of bus exhaust or homeless people’s pee.
OK, I’ll cop to that, but that’s not what this is.
When I see the Cubs fans they tend to put on TV in this World Series, I tend to see two groups of people featured:
103-year-old fans who get wheeled into the stadium valiantly fending off death for at least one more game in hopes of seeing the Cubs win it all before they die
Fuckheads like my cousin: Loud, belligerent, assholes who view things as their birthright and will never condescend to consider others.
The first group, I have no problem with at all and if my team can’t win this year, I’m glad they’ll at least get that moment for themselves. When the Red Sox got it in 2004, I was happy for all the people who lived long enough to see it and even those who took Red Sox caps to the cemetery for their departed loved ones.
As for the second group, I know many Cub fans and I know they’re not all like this. I’ve been there with them when we had to produce the 2003 coverage of the Cubs coverage for our paper. I’ve been with them when we both said, “Maybe next year for one of us” in hopes that we could either end with an “Indian Summer” or a “Goat-buster” in October.
But it’s like Jeff Foxworthy once said about Southerners: “We just can’t keep the most ignorant among us off of TV. When there’s a natural disaster, they never find a doctor or a lawyer. It’s always the woman in the sponge rollers and the muumuu.”
The Cleveland slogan this post season has been #RallyTogether. LeBron James has shown up repeatedly at the playoff games and called for support for the Tribe during his own crowning moment. Even in the worst of times, Clevelanders have always exuded that “We’re in this together” vibe.
For Cub fans, #FlyTheW has been the calling card. For those like my cousin, though, I think a better one might be #FuckYouImGettingMine
Curt Schilling and Breitbart Dude. Photo via New York Magazine.
This was originally supposed to be a malaka of the week post. Heaven knows, Curt Schilling may never be a baseball hall of famer but he’s definitely a candidate for the malakatude hall of shame. Once again, I came up with a clever title, which sounds a bit like a wingnut version of from Tinker to Evers to Chance.And that is why Curt Schilling is NOT malaka of the week.
People often wonder why some famous athletes don’t get involved in politics. Curt Schilling is a good example why some jocks should not go there. Schilling has gone from Boston Red Sox hero to a cautionary tale in 12 years. That may be forever on the internet but it’s a mere blink of the eye for those of us who either study history or take the long view of life. More people should try it. End of sermonette on the non-mount.
Schilling’s bloody sock moment came in the 2004 American League Championship Series against the hated Yankees. The BoSox rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Bronx bastards and one source of inspiration was Schilling’s John Wayne dude moment. I apologize in advance for making you listen to Buck the younger and lesser:
That made Schilling a hero to Red Sox nation as he helped end the so-called Curse of the Bambino. Enough with the curses. Because of that, liberal Democrats forgave Schilling for actively supporting Bush-Cheney in 2004 against hometown hero, BoSox fan, and Athenae boyfriend, John Kerry. Big John had ownership and Theo Epstein on his side, so all was forgiven by a fan base that the New Yorker’s Roger Angell once called “gentle Fenway transcendentalists.” I’m not sure if Rog has met any Red Sox fans from Southie but the image is so swell that Imma cut him some slack.
Schilling’s first foray into politics was a mere preview of wingnut coming attractions. The election of the first black President knocked a few screws loose in that big blonde head. That’s right, Schilling became a full-fledged teanut, but what really set him off were advances in gay rights and the backlash to it.
Back in April, Schilling was sacked from his gigas a baseball analyst at ESPN. His undoing was an itchy Facebook finger. The offending status was over the second B in our title: bathrooms. That’s right, the Curtster is a fan of the North Carolina bathroom bill:
A man is a man? That gives me an excuse to post an anti-machismo Who song. Thanks, asswipe:
Since Schilling is a Trump-style show-off who lives for attention, he’s flirting with the notion of challenging Senator Professor Elizabeth Warren when she’s up for re-election in 2018. This is akin to a kamikaze mission or volunteering to go to the Little Big Horn with his fellow blonde egomaniac George Armstrong Custer. Charlie Pierce, for one, hopes he goes for it:
Look, if I had a brand new local weekend radio talk-show to promote, I might do a lot of hilarious stuff, too. But Curt Schilling—who knows more about everything than you do, loser—has developed a marketing plan unlike anything I’ve ever seen. He has decided to be the funniest man on earth. There is no competition.
(By the way, if you’re not following ol’ @gehrig38 on the electric Twitter machine, you’re not having nearly enough fun in this world. Whatever the world record is for retweeting garbage directly from Breitbart’s Mausoleum For Chronic Unemployables is, Schilling has blown it up. And a couple of weeks ago, he explained how he could clean up the problems with the VA in two years. Whaddaguy!)
Recently, you may recall, Schilling announced that he was thinking seriously about challenging Senator Professor Warren in 2018. Again, I say that baby Jesus does not love me enough to make this happen.
As you may have gathered from Charlie’s gleeful post, Schilling has taken his mouthy machismo to BreitbartRadio. This amounts to a meeting of 2016’s B3s: we’ve gone from Breitbart-Bannon-Bossie Man to the Bloody Sock Bathroom Breitbart Baseballer. Is that 4 Bs? Oh well, I never claimed to be a math wonk. My work here is *almost* done.
I’ve conclusively established that Curt Schilling is malakatude hall of shamer but what about the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown? He’s attracted support in his four years on the ballot: receiving 52% the last time around. But will he get over 75%? I hope not. His on-field case is a decent one although his list of comparable pitchers includes only one hall of famer: current Fox Sports analyst and former Braves star John Smoltz. Schilling *does* have a great post-season record: 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA. But will the bloody sock be enough to trump the other Bs: bathrooms and Breitbart? Stay tuned.
You’re living under a rock if you haven’t heard that the Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago Cubs in game one of the World Series last night. You’ve doubtless heard that the Cubs have not played in the Series since 1945 and have not won it since 1908 *before* Wrigley Field was built. The Indians lost in 1995 and 1997 and last won the fall classic in 1948.
Now that I’ve stated the obvious, it’s time for some pictures. First, the 1908 Chicago Cubs with a somewhat bedraggled mascot:
They don’t make mascot outfits like they used to. That’s a good thing in this case.
The next picture was taken after the Indians won the World Series in 1948. It features the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby, and Polish-American pitcher Steve Gromek. It’s a moment of pure joy.
I’ll have more to say about the 1948 Indians, Bill Veeck, and integration on Saturday. But I did weigh in on the team’s Chief Wahoo logo/mascot:
One of life's rich ironies is that the team with the racist logo was the first AL team to integrate. Second overall.
I decided not to whinge about the heat to open the post this week. Why? We’ve had our first genuine cool front of the fall, that’s why. I was tempted to dance in the streets but that would be undignified even for me. I only dance in the streets during Carnival.
This week’s theme song was inspired by last week’s successful fundraiser. Posting the Temptations show and Oscar begging made me want to hear some more sweet, sweet soul music. Ain’t nothing sweeter than hearing Eddie Kendricks croon Just My Imagination (Running Away From Me.)It was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong who specialized in funkier tunes than this lilting soul waltz. They nailed it: Just My Imagination went to number-1 on both the pop and R&B charts.
We begin with the Temptations’ glorious studio version produced by Norman Whitfield:
The Rolling Stones covered Just My Imagination on the 1978 album Some Girls. I’m terribly fond of the live version they did during their 1981 tour, which I saw at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Here’s a backstage view of the Stones live in the swing state of Arizona:
You may have noticed that I didn’t use the entire title in the post header. There’s method to my madness for a change. There’s also a swell Cranberries song of the same title. Let’s give it a spin:
That video gave me butterflies: Irish butterflies. It’s time to regress from a butterfly to a larval caterpillar. Trust me, I know that’s impossible but I wrote myself into a corner. Guess it’s time to give y’all a break by going to the break.
Let’s get something out of the way. It’s still hotter than it should be in New Orleans. Fall has fallen with a thud as it may end up as the warmest October in recorded history. End of black market weather report.
In this week’s spirit of deja vu all over again (thanks, Yogi) I promised an update on beleaguered Jefferson Parish President, Mike Yenni. The sexting bastid is still in office after telling the public that it was “in my best interests” to stay. That inspired a scathing teevee commentaryby the man with one of the best names in punditry, Clancy DuBos. The video won’t embed but the text rocks:
When Mike Yenni couldn’t avoid facing reporters yesterday, here’s what he said about his decision not to resign:
“It’s in my best interest to do what I was elected to do,” he said Monday.
Think about that statement, folks. He’s saying that his interests are more important than those of Jefferson Parish and its people. His interests.
This is a good time to remember the original Mike Yenni — the real Mike Yenni — and his father, Joe Yenni. They are revered because, as parish presidents, they always put the parish’s and the people’s interests ahead of their own.
This guy, who was born Mike Maunoir but changed his name to Yenni, now makes it clear through his actions and his words that he is not worthy of the Yenni name.
For the sake of the parish, he should resign.
Ouch. I think Yenni is hanging on in order to have something to trade with prosecutors if charges loom. A poll was taken showing that 79% of JP voters want his name changing ass gone. Double ouch. I wonder if there will be a Downfall video any time soon.
The only recourse Jeffersonians have is a recall election. It will be tough but a Metry lawyer, whose father used to be one of the bosses of that parish who was tried but acquitted of corruption charges in 1995, is pledging $100K of his own moolah.You cannot make this shit up, y’all.
That concludes this episode of “As Jefferson Parish Turns.” Cue the Hammond B-3 organ. No, not B3 that’s a different kettle of fish altogether.
My mama done tole me to move on to this week’s theme song. Blues In The Night was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer as the title song of a mediocre 1941 movie. The tune has become a classic thanks to all the fabulous versions out there. We have three versions for your enjoyment today. Let’s kick it off with a jazzy rendition by Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson.
Here’s Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle’s torch song interpretation.
Finally, a 21st Century version from the late, great neo-chanteuse Amy Winehouse.
My Mama done tole me to go to the break before we send in the scary clowns.
