It was a horrible, wet day in Debrisville. Dr. A and I got stranded in Jefferson Parish because of street flooding and had a hair raising return trip home. It made me think of this rather wet Dead classic:
I've had this great John Hiatt tune jangling around in my head all week. In fact, my Hiatt fandom helped me clinch a sale at the shop this week. A couple came and looked around while I was playing my Portable John Hiatt CD. The guy was pleased to meet another Hiatt fan and told his wife, "We gotta buy something from this guy."
Thanks, John.
This week's entry features two preposterous albeit clever book titles. They also describe how I feel at this moment: like death warmed over. It's nothing too serious just a seasonal bug thingee or is that a thingamabob or a doohickey? I get confused when I'm a bit feverish...
The Landrieu manchild is in. He held both an in person event at Cafe Reconcile in Central and did some You Tubing to show that he can run with James Dot Com/WTF /Eagle Scout Perry and that doggone John Georges.
That whole "I love New Orleans" bit was heart warming I suppose. <shrugs> But what Master Landrieu needs is to mend some fences, explain his chronic indecisiveness and run a full-tilt, highly aggressive campaign. He needs to shoot for a primary victory, which entails getting 50% of the vote plus one. He *really* needs to avoid getting into a one on one run-off with an African-American candidate that he could lose as in 2006. Yes, there's no incumbent in the race BUT there are many black voters who will *never* cross over and support a white candidate for Mayor just as there are many white conservatives who will never support a Landrieu. That's as Naturally N'awlins as Frank Davis,y'all.
That's the sort of campaign I think Landrieu needs to run but will he? His entire career has been characterized by caution. I think Mitchell holds a finger in the air before crossing the street and caution won't win him the prize. He's tried that approach before and it made him a two time Mayoral loser.
Pedal to the metal, Mitchell. Try it, you'll like it. It could also help you avoid giving another concession speech.
We had some intense over night storms in New Orleans. I oughta know because the suckers woke me up repeatedly. Oh well, at least we didn't lose power like some other folks. Anyhoo, I just checked the rain gauge aka pluviometer at Adrastos World HQ and we had some 5+ inches. Yikes.
This post, of course, is a mere pretext to post some quasi-related music vids:
The answer to Mr. Fogerty's rhetorical question is an emphatic yes. The title of our next musical selection describes how I've felt the past few days here in gray, cloudy and dreary Debrisville:
... that is the question posed by Mitch Landrieu's latest reversal of course, change of mind or whatever the hell it is. Clancy DuBos broke the story that our very own Hamlet (or is that Adlai?) has decided to run for Mayor after announcing that he would not. Sound familiar? It should: he essentially did the same thing in 2006. In that year, Gorilla Ron Forman ran for Mayor on the assumption that Mitch would not. Hamlet Adlai Landrieu changed his mind, which is what he seems to do best.
This time around Leslie Jacobs is cast in the role of Forman. Here's Clancy again:
Speaking of Jacobs, she went to Landrieu — twice in recent weeks, according to my sources — and flat-out told him that she would not spend her money on an expensive TV ad buy if he were going to run. His response: “Nothing has changed.” That was his response as recently as two weeks ago, according to several sources. So … what has changed? (In fairness to Landrieu, sources say the “change” was the recent poll results, which, again, are said to be “overwhelming” for Landrieu.) Still, he seems to have led her on. What will he say to her now? Did he in fact call her personally?
I have no problem with politicians being ruthless towards their enemies but Leslie Jacobs, like Ron Forman, is allegedly one of Mitch's friends and/or allies. I wish he'd been this ruthless with Nagin during the 2006 campaign; instead he tip toed around and played patty cake with his opponent. It was one of the wimpiest campaigns I've ever seen: Landrieu never landed a punch and lost an election that was his for the taking.
Mitch Hamlet Adlai now claims that he's learned his lesson and will run to win. I'm skeptical. I strongly supported his candidacy 4 years ago but he'll have to earn my vote this time around. I'm not enthusiastic about a candidate who made the *same* pre-election missteps 4 years ago: it calls his judgment into question.
After 8 years of having a feckless slacker in the Mayor's office, we need strong leadership and I'm not sure if a guy who reminds me of Hamlet fits the bill; especially since he reminds me of Jack Benny as the hammy Polish actor Josef Tura who played Hamlet (badly) in Ernst Lubitsch's classic 1942 satire To Be Or Not To Be. At the start of the clip below, Robert Stack walks out on Benny during *the* soliloquy and who the hell wants Eliot Ness causing a fuss? I think some of Landrieu's supporters may also take a walk if his performance continues to be as unconvincing as Benny's:
Yeah, I know I swore I'd never say who dat and I won't; even after the city suffered a collective coronary during the Saints victory over the Redskins. Voo Dat is the krewe of PAN's theme for the 2010 Krewe du Vieux parade; everything else is highly confidential and hush, hush.
We're planning some surprises so gird your loins our something like that. Bob's your uncle and Mum's the word.
Voo dat.
David Johansen of the New York Dolls is a man of many styles and personas. Here he is as the ultimate lounge lizard, Buster Poindexter singing a Yuletide classic:
I've been a hostiliday slacker but it's time to provide a bit of holiday jeer. This is a creepy black and white clip of the Lawrence Welk Junior Band (who knew such a thing existed?) featuring the vocal stylings of some Mousketeers sans the silly hats. The kid playing the Hammond B-3 is rather demonic looking, I think Steven Seagal would taser the sucker if he saw him on the mean streets of Metry:
One of each actually. It's just a rubric that allows me to have a bit of morbid fun, which is what Pulp Fiction Thursday is all about.
One of the many unusual things about living in New Orleans is that people here don't mind being called by terms of endearment that bother people elsewhere. A grad school friend of Dr. A's was convinced that she was being sexually harassed when some male grocer or street car driver called her doll, darlin' or sweetie. I informed her that it happened to me every time I went to K & B and the middle aged female clerk called me sweetheart; a misnomer if ever there was one.
I considered making this another entry in the "snappy titles" series but I've done that 4 times thus far so I found another pigeonhole for these, uh, pigeons. In fact, I once knew an old Greek lady who used pigeon as an endearment and I never understood why. Maybe she was sweet on movie star Walter Pidgeon or something...
The first 2 books are pure-D trash with wonderfully lurid titles. I read The Brass Cupcake by the estimable Florida writer John D. McDonald way back when and recall it as a helluva good hardboiled read.
Holy crap, that sounds like I'm writing to Ann Landers or one of her sob sister advice columnist successors. Guess I should wake up and smell the coffee or something...
It's finally official: after conducting an epic political strip tease (love those tats) Irvin Mayfield is NOT running for Mayor. Last week, it looked as if he was in for sure and I wasn't the only one to take the bait either. I think the Picayune's Michelle Krupa is entitled to handbag the jumped up trumpeter for playing doctor with her and then not showing anything. Bad Irvin.
Of course, I thought the role of Irvin's "candidacy" was that of an ego tripper hopping on the carnival carousel that is NOLA's 2010 Mayoral election. This schedule is preposterous, Clancy has been on about it for years and he's right even if he looked like he'd been stung by a bee swarm on WWL-TV's 10 O'Clock news last night. You need a lighting clause in your contract, dude. It almost reminded me of the scene in To Have Or Have Not where Walter Brennan's character gimped about asking "Was you ever stung by a dead bee?"
Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, this whole thing of holding an election during the holidays, Carnival and a possible Saints trip to the Super Bowl. It explains a great deal about who we elect to office. Speaking of which, Nagin was on teevee claiming that the current compressed budget process has worked "forever, man." Say what? Nothing works here, Mr. Mayor. Nothing. No thing.
Finally, I'd like to announce that I will NOT be running for Mayor or anything else. I do, however, plan to keep running my mouth. It's what I do best, after all. None of the old in and out for me. I'll leave that to the experts:
Shep Zitler was a very fine man who passed away yesterday at the age of 92. He was the father of my friend and neighbor, Justin Zitler. I didn't know Shep as well as I would have liked but he was a remarkable man who survived the Holocaust and found the American Dream in New Orleans. When I feel down, I try to think of Shep and others like him who came through the worst with their humanity intact. Shep will be greatly missed by everyone whose lives he touched.
An earworm for a damp day. The video poses some eternal Jayhawky questions: what the hell is Gary Louris doing in a pool fully dressed? And what are those Indian chicks doing in it? And is that really long time Adrastos crush and Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker? It is. I'll let her explain:
And then I did this Jayhawks video. <snip> They're like my favorite band. I'm friends with both of them -- Gary's a really good friend of mine. And so I ended up in this video that was so bad, it's almost good. It's fun to watch because it's so horrendous. The label wouldn't let them play it because it was so fucking bad. And now I kinda laugh about it, and Gary laughs about it. I feel kind of responsible for it because I kind of hooked them up with the director, and the director was an awesome person, but I don't think the concept really worked with the song. And also I was three months pregnant and I hadn't told anybody, so I had this yellow dress on. It was kinda like, "Is she fat or something?"
It *is* an awesomely cheesy video but a great tune so I don't think Mary-Louise was sari for being in it:
Is it just me or is everyone else sick of the health care debate ad blitz on NOLA teevee? Some ads want us to thank Cao for voting aye. Others want us to thank Melancon for voting nay. Still other ads want us to tell Mary Landrieu what to do. I'd like to tell *them* to STFU. The whole damn thing has me both blue and cross.
It's these frakking ads' fault that I started the hostilidays early. Anyone buying this?
This is one I post every year since it's a *good* Christmas song by my favorite Canadian band, eh:
I'm proud of my First Draft colleagues Buggy Q and Virgo Tex for feeling the spirit of the season: hostiliday style. I'm sure Tommy T will catch on soon since the tune he posted was genuinely horrendous. There's some concern that mom may take the keys to the blog away but she's the one who brought me aboard so I'm sure she knew what she was getting into. If not, she's in for it now: bwa-ha-ha-ha....
The NOLA bloggers and our Scout have been indulging in this custom for several years. The videos have ranged from the well-done but offensive to traditional cheesiness to amateurish ineptitude. The key to the conflict is a ruthless dedication to bad and/or cheesy holiday clips: Liprap specializes in horrible chanukah tripe. During the hostilidays, crap is golden. Hmm, sounds like a repeat of the Bush administration...
Anyway it's time to link you to some of the shit my colleagues have thus far thrown up against the virtual wall in the hope that some of it will stick: Oyster; Ray Ward; Loki the Ohio monkey boy; Liprap; Maitri.
Additionally, any non-NOLA or non-First Draft blogger who wants to play, have at it. You can either post a link to your vile video in a comment here or email me at the address in the upper right hand corner of the blog. Btw, the war *always* ends inconclusively with *everyone* claiming that they "won." I contend that I won in 2007 with the uber offensive, but hilarious, Bob Noxious classic, Fuck Off, Santa. Others demur but they're fucking wrong...
Finally, what's a hostiliday post without a bad video? This is a feeble amateur Aussie version of The 12 Days Of Christmas, which is a pretty shitty song in its own right:
A final word on Thanksgiving 2009. Dr. A and I went to our friends Pat and Miriam's to dine. They live on the West Bank but I'm willing to cross the river because they're both superb cooks. In fact, Pat is the guy who has brought nutria stew to our house during Carnival; a popular, albeit exotic, dish that a certain bible dude/malaka has refused to eat.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Pat is an avid hunter and he usually serves duck on Thanksgiving. He also quite literally has ducks, ducks, ducks on the wall so every time I go over there I get a powerful earworm:
