Forever New Orleans

I’m going to drop my usual irreverent tone for a minute and talk about something I really care about.

The first summer I spent in New Orleans, there were five of us. Me and my four friends saw a lot of each other that summer, dining together almost every night and rarely separated on weekends. Of the five of us I am the only one still living in the New Orleans.
Some people are drawn to the west coast; some say it's ingrained in our nature to go west. Some people are drawn to New York; they say one out every three Americans is related to someone who lives in Brooklyn. Others, understandably, leave the country. Inexplicably, some set up shop in the Midwest. While people do come back, most don't.
I'd say of the five people I hang out with most, I'd say I'd be lucky if four of them still live here in a year and three of them in two years. Outside of that, I can count at least four others off the top of my head that are leaving in the next year and two more that as far as I can tell have no intention of staying in New Orleans for the long run. I can’t begin to tell you how sad this makes me. I can't see myself living anywhere else; New Orleans is a part of who I am. I’ve lived here long enough that it’s all I really know; it’s all I really care to know.

As I see it there are two legitimate reasons to leave excluding bankruptcy and other family emergencies and other life shattering events. If you happen to want a career in an industry that doesn’t really exist in New Orleans such as architecture, manufacturing, politics, engineering, finance … I really can’t think of anything we don’t have down here, and if there’s something missing than start your own business in this niche market and your all set (I’m looking at you Burrito Delivery guy.) So I guess there’s only one reason to leave that I’m ok with, and that is Master’s/Doc’s at really, really good schools. If you want to get an advanced degree, it’s my belief that you should do so from a top 10 school, otherwise your better off working and gaining experience in whatever you’d be “learning” at school. If you want to move to Boston to get your Ph.D. at MIT or at UT Austin, or U Cal Berkeley, rock the fuck on and best of luck to you, if you want to move to Baltimore and go to med school at Johns Hopkins, I’ll give you a ride. But if you want to get a masters in Engineering and you don’t get in to Ga Tech, UTA, or A&M, just go to UNO at night after work, you’ll be a much better person for it than if you spent all your free time teaching or lab ratting it up at BU or Vanderbilt (both of which have excellent top 50 engineering schools that I’m using to make a point, not berate, which only reminds me how off topic I’ve gotten.)

As a young urban professional in New Orleans I have no shortage of resources except my friends. I have a long history of forgetting and eventually losing friends I do not see on a regular basis. Some blame it on my short attention span, some call it “out of sight out of mind,” some call me a huge asshole. My point is only that every time someone leaves New Orleans it’s one less reason fro me to stay, and I don’t want to go; I love it here. I have a career here. I can see myself raising a family here, assuming I get around to that. I live here, New Orleans is my home.

A college friend sent me this video recently looking for some free pub:


If you’re not Youtube capable, it’s a promotional video from the visitor’s bureau featuring Kermit Ruffins (co-founded Rebirth in 1983 and is probably the most energetic and charismatic trumpet player working in New Orleans) singing about New Orleans while the video highlights various attractions including a trip through the Jacque-Imo’s kitchen, pounds from a server at Camellia, and various other restaurants and attractions from around town.

I agreed to shill the video for two reasons, (and I promise I’ll keep both of these this time) I support the video’s message, which is: you’ve been to the zoo, you’ve been to Columns, you had a great time, come back. The other reason is that I’ve been meaning to write this piece about people leaving for some time, and a little motivation goes a long way.

So, next time you get the chance, come to New Orleans, I’ll be here, you’ll have a great time, I promise.

Of course that is all assuming that Al Gore doesn't drown us all in the meantime.

Facebook's Lexicon

Facebook's Lexicon program counts the occurence of words written on walls and if used properly is full of interesting information.


Gen-Y LOVES Obama.
This one's funny and can be interpreted thusly: the regular cycle is weekly, the first peak is Holloween, with lots of parties and only a slight rise in hangovers, while the second peak is New Years with about as many parties, and a huge spike in hangovers.
This one shows what Gen-Y really cares about, the spike in beer is St Paddy's.

Discussing the Merits of Terrible Movies

You may notice the poll to the right has changed to something a little more relevant to today’s topic of discussion. I chose “No” but in the interest of full disclosure must admit to having seen Broken Arrow somewhere on the order of ten times, maybe even fifteen.

For those unfamiliar with the film, allow be to briefly synopsize (or you could just watch this video and get dared by me not to laugh). Two Air Force pilots are out on a training mission in a new top secret bomber over Utah. They are carrying nuclear tipped missiles for whatever reason. One of the pilots (Travolta), in turns out, is in cahoots with some terrorists and he steals the missiles, crashes the plane, and thinks he’s killed the other pilot (Slater) but hasn’t, and he (Slater) tracks him down and saves the day, with the help of a comely park ranger (Samantha Mathis, whose name sounds more familiar (oh, not Samantha Morton) than it should considering her only other role of note is as the voice of Crysta the fairy in Fern Gully the Last Rainforest, although to be fair she did play princess Daisy in the Super Mario Bros. movie alongside Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper, lol.) Rounding out the supporting cast is some allstar talent: Delroy Lindo (who I was suprisingly unable to find a picture of wearing COOGI, but this will go), Bob Gunton (“I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.”), Frank Whaley (says what again, gets shot), Howie Long (Son Chris Long will be a top 5 pick in next week’s NFL draft, thanks HGH), Vondie Curtis-Hall (Plays “Captain Prince” in Baz Luhrman’s Romeo+Juliet), Shaun Toub (plays the shop owner who shoots the little girl in Crash), Daniel Von Bargen (Got caught fucking his cousin in ’72), James MacDonald (if you haven’t seen Tigerland, you should), French Stewart (Spokesman for Clamato, presumably because they’re both weird and slightly nauseating?) and Kurtwood Smith (Red Foreman).

So in the course of arguing whether Broken Arrow is a good movie or not, I kept trying (and daring others) to come up with a good quote from the movie. Despite my certainty that a movie starring John Travolta and Christian Slater would have some awesome one-liners, and other’s certainty that they could think of one, no one was able to come up with so much as a character name. (This including a friend who can name like 15 actors from the movie Heat off the top of his head, not that that’s hard, Pacino, De Niro, Kilmer, Judd, Brenneman, Portman, Azaria, Voight, Sizemore, Trejo, Fitchner, Tone Loc, the President from 24, how many is that?) However, in case you’re like me and crave quotes from terrible movies:

Slater: You know - these exercises are fantastic. When the day comes we have to go to war against Utah, we're really going to kick ass, y'know?


Travolta: I do appreciate the money that you and your associates have invested in this operation, but it IS an operation. It's a military operation. And you don't know dick about that.


Travolta: Battle is a highly fluid situation. You plan on your contingencies, and I have. You keep your initiatives, and I will. One thing you don't do is share command. It's never a good idea.


Slater: You're out of your mind.
Travolta: Yeah. Ain't it cool?


Brett from Pulp Fiction: I don't know what's scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.


Mathis: Clyde, what exactly does a suspicious truck look like?


Slater: Endangered dirt. That's a new one.


Travolta: Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?


Gunton: It's still my money.
Travolta: And if we succeed, you and your associates will get a ton of it.
Gunton: *IF* we're successful?
Travolta: Look, Mr. Pritchett, I will deliver the weapons to the destination. But I can't depend and I can't guarantee that those assholes in Washington won't do something stupid like... not pay.
Gunton: What if they don't?
Travolta: Well, if they don't, the southwest will be a quiet neighbourhood for... about ten thousand years.


Guy from Crash: You probably thought I was a computer nerd, didn't ya? Ha-ha-ha, wrong! I was a Navy SEAL, lady. You really should see what I can do... with just my thumb.


Travolta: You know, Hale, I considered asking you to come in on this. Know why I didn't?
Slater: Because I would have said "no"?
Travolta: Nah, if you had said no, I'd have just killed you. I was afraid you were going to say yes. Because you don't have the balls to go through with something like this, we both know that.


[last lines]
Mathis: You know you're still under arrest, Captain.
Slater: [holding Terry's hand] Well, looks like you're gonna have to take me in.

Jail Bait Likely Headed to Jail, SWIS, Crazy Chirren

Six teenage girls (all technically minors) are in custody and may be tried as adults with felonies battery and kidnapping. The girls allegedly lured a fellow cheerleader who had been talking some e-trash on MySpace and took turns punching her in the face. The victim was left with two black eyes and loss of hearing in one ear. One of the future crack whores video taped the whole thing and put it on the internet expediting their trip up shit creek. The girls were rumored to be joking while in their jail cell that they wouldn't be making it to cheerleading practice.

Now before you watch the video, see if you can guess where these little darlings are from. Could it be Texas, the land of the Cheerleader? Could it be Los Angeles the land of the privileged crazy bitch? Or is it Florida, the land of white trash and eight year old kids on a bicycles with a guns?



Update: According to the news this morning there is a significant amount of this tape that has not been seen by the public. Prior to the part shown above there is allegedly a scene where the girl's head is slammed against a wall and she is knocked unconscious.

Not too long ago we had the tale of the girl who commit suicide because of MySpace trash talking. A co-worker of mine mentioned the other day that he checked his 14 year old's MySpace routinely for any sort of funny business. When I was 14 I had about three different email addresses, (none of which were accessible by my parents) supplying myself with various degrees of anonymity, two different AIM accounts, a rudimentary web page that was nothing more than downloading station for a live Moe. show and pictures of some models I had crushes on (Kate Moss, Tyra Banks lol!) I knew one kid who had a video camera, we used it a few of times to try and spy on each other hooking up with girls, which worked exactly 1 time. My high school had a social networking program called SWIS that was kind of like an intra-net based facebook with IM. Back then it was about as addictive as facebook mixed with crack. There were a few ways to fuck with people, chat invite bombing, logging in as someone else and doing stuff they wouldn't do (sorry Alyssa), other mostly harmless stuff, but the penalty for getting caught doing anything more than slightly innocuous was fairly steep and so most pranks were kept pretty tame.

There's an awesome facebook group called "Overheard at Tulane" where people post things they've heard around or nearby campus. The comments range from hilariously ridiculous statements about sex or drugs, to things that are beyond hilariously moronic. The more they are taken out of context the better. I bring this up because the kids who are writing on this board are not significantly older than these girls in sunny FLA. I however, can remember things that happened to me in 1990, the year that most of this year's high school seniors were born. Which is a round-about way of saying that I'm old and as such can say:
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH KIDS TODAY?