The Only Political Post I'm Going to Write

I watched part of the McBama debate last night and I was once again struck by how little I liked either candidate. I was only 17 in 2000 so I can blame HangingChadGate and 9/11 and Iraq on everyone else, but in 2004 I was so distrustful of both candidates that I didn't vote. Now what with the economic downturn fully-fledged into an economic crisis, I wish I had voted for Kerry so I could legitimately complain at how bad W had fucked up this country. But that's not what I want to talk about...

I've been called a homophobe more times then I've been called good looking. I've been called misogynist more times than I've been called tall. Where am I going with this? As much as I don't trust Obama, I can't possibly vote for anyone in a party whose taken an official stance against abortions or gay marriages. In the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, the framers made clear the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life's a tricky one when your talking about abortions especially late termers, but the liberty for a woman to choose is pretty clear, and if that child will hamper her pursuit of happiness, then that's 2 to a shaky 1. When it comes to gay marriages, I'm going to paraphrase Jon Stewart because I don't remember the exact quote: I'm against gay marriages, that's awful, oh wait, you mean I don't have to marry a dude? Then why would I care? If someone finds comfort in the arms of someone with matching genitalia, then that sounds like pursuit of happiness to me, to say nothing of liberty. We hold these truths to be self evident, unalienable rights, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I can't figure out why that's so hard to understand.

It all goes back to religion and religious extremists. As near as I can figure, the only people who really get fired up about pro-life and against gay marriage are the extreme Christians (I'm looking at you Southern Baptists)who spent a bunch of time looking through the bible trying to find something that they could interpret to mean that stuff that they don't agree with is immoral.

Anyone who lets their fear be mongered by Hannity or OReilly and the rest of the Fox News crew is an idiot. I don't care if you're a world famous economist, if you're a Grammy winning artist or a successful entrepreneur, if you watch more than 5 minutes of Fox News on a regular basis and do anything but laugh at it, you are a victim of brainwashing and I feel sorry for you.

Rant over, I do have one positive thing to say and that is it appears that both energy independence and sustainability have become priorities on both sides of the aisle. I occasionally get these chainemails from the Hannity types talking trash about Al Gore and how his scientists lied and all sorts of other bullshit about how people that can't afford our ridiculously priced healthcare system don't deserve it. But, it seems, saying that global warming isn't real has become political suicide, which is great.

Always Evacuate to a Place that has a Hot Tub

I try not to worry about things. Worrying only begets more worrying and the next thing you know you’re having a seizure and ruining your favorite t-shirt. The thing about worrying is, if something goes wrong it’s either your fault or it’s not. If it is your fault then maybe you should of done something about it instead of worrying, and if its not your fault, that what purpose did the worrying serve except to upset, stress, or cause you to throw up on other people.

In the middle of a ferocious hurricane season, it’s easy to tell the natural born worriers from those that aren’t. Surprisingly, it seems the ones who print out the latest spaghetti models and post them outside their office are actually the calmest. It’s the one’s who refuse to admit that they know what wunderground.com is, that are in the most danger of soiling themselves or elsewise acting irrationally.

When all the computer models are pointed at you though, I suppose you are allowed to freak out a little. Such is not the case with Ike (I like Ike, but how do you get that from Dwight?) The latest models all show Ike hitting around Corpus Christi, TX and the people of New Orleans will be spared another mass evacuation. Someone told me only 10,000 people didn’t evacuate for Gustav, the storm our Mayor, Governor, and National Weather Service called The Storm of the Century. Katrina gets to keep that title for now, and will probably keep it longer than C. Ray stays in office, but that’s neither here nor there.

We evacuated the Saturday before Gustav was supposed to make his late Monday/early Tuesday landfall. I packed 4 days of clothes, 3 books, the highly portable electronics (laptop, MP3), my guitar and cooler full of water, Gatorade and string cheese. I cleaned out anything that I didn’t want to find in my refrigerator an unrefrigerated month later, started the dishwasher and headed for higher ground. I-10 was a parking lot until we got past Gulf Shores, and between three people we smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before we passed Jazz Land. By 2 in the morning we were still shy of Tallahassee so we stopped for the night in a shabby Days Inn with no pool and a lying sign about free wireless internet.

We got up early, ate Burger King breakfast and hit the road with spirits considerably higher than they were when we had stopped the previous night. I wiled away several hours reading aloud a pretty awesome book called The Diamond Age by my second favorite author. Keep in mind at this point we were still visualizing disaster scenarios and wondering when we’d see home again. We hit Orlando and stretched our legs right to the TV to turn on CNN. I unpacked the booze and made a strong drink, and didn’t worry about the storm again until after a long day of drinking, after everyone else was in bed, I smoked my last cigarette and checked the models and saw them all headed straight for Cocodrie, 50 miles west of the city, downgraded to a category 1, and wondered what everyone had been so worried about.

HEARTBREAK!

Gold medal favorite in both the 100M hurdles and my heart, Lolo Jones clipped the second to last hurdle with her toe allowing the rapping Dawn Harper to assume the lead and take the gold for the US of A. Lolo crumpled to the ground after finishing 7th and punched the track while tears streamed down her face.

Phelpsed- v. To dominate completely

As of right now golden boy Michael Phelps has more medals than Poland, Kenya and Denmark, and more gold medals than Italy, Ukraine, and France.

Awesomest Thing I've Seen Today

Anybody need a butler?

I haven’t really written anything since Jazz Fest, but you haven’t either so go fuck yourself. And besides I didn’t finish writing those Jazz Fest posts until like three weeks afterwards so really it’s only been like a month, or two. Holy shit, that was like two months ago. It’s amazing how time flies when you have actual work to do. I’ve been working on this project for a little longer than two months now, which come to think of it is why it took me so long to get around to the Jazz Fest posts. When I was writing them one of my friends asked me how I could possibly remember all the stuff that happened. The answer is easy, I could write more about those four days three weeks later than I can about the last two months right now. Let’s see, I went to the beach and hung out with the fam, it was cloudy and cool one day but we got wasted anyway, Saturday was nice and we had an awesome dinner with shellfish appetizers and baked Salmon and garlic bread. My parents came to visit the dirty and found the heat oppressive. On my birthday I bought a white linen suit and wore it to a fancy French dinner and then we got drunk at the art museum where we did the cupid shuffle with Big Sam and his Funky Nation. Tha Carter III came out. We went up to my buddy’s family farm in east bumblefuck Louisiana. His little sister’s friend still creeps into the naughty part of my brain at weird times. My advice to them was: having a real job is waaaayyyy overrated. For the Fourth of July we had a kegger at the St Charles house and set off fireworks in the neutral ground, natch. The next day we ate left over ribs and watched concurrent terrible movies on USA and TNT all day. I got Guitar Hero and I’m ¾ of the way through it on expert, I’m pretty awesome. There’s a lot of other drunken random shit in between all that, but even if you pick out the four best days, it’d be hard difficult to beat the second weekend of Jazz Fest.

I guess my point though, would be how easy it is to fall into the rhythm of the day to day, I call it cruise control. It’s fucking draining though. Cruise control was a better term for it in college when you’d wake up one day after celebrating midterms and it would be finals time. Now it’s like everyday you have to do the routine, snooze alarm, breakfast, shower, teeth, drive, sit, coffee, etc. and then the next day you wake up and you’re forty? Fuck that man, without music, my favorite neurotoxins, or if I didn’t love my job I would’ve flipped a long time ago, not that long, I'm two weeks shy of my two year anni. They say the key is to get more sleep, which I’ve been on a campaign to do. But yeah, bitch fest over, real job = overrated.

Time has always been one of my favorite things to think about. Assuming I’m not insane, you’ve noticed that first time you drive somewhere far away it seems to take longer than the return or any subsequent trips. This has to do with my theory of relativity which borrows slightly from Einstein’s. It has to do with frame of reference, and it goes something like this: a ten year old and a twenty year old experience the same moment, say the moment right before a sail boat tips, when you know it’s going to but it hasn’t quite yet. That moment, however brief, will feel twice as long to the 10 year old because his frame of reference, or the collected sum of his experiences is half as long. Relatively speaking the fraction of his life up to then that he spends in that moment is twice that of the twenty year old (really it would be thrice because no one remembers being five.) On a larger scale, and to take it back to school, how much quicker did your senior year of high school feel then when you were a freshman? On an even larger scale and to bring it back to my rant, as we get old, each day feels shorter.

Once when I was a little kid I asked my mom what it meant to stop and smell the roses, this is a true story, I honestly did not get the point of that saying, she said, honest to god, she said, one day when you’re older you’ll understand.

aka Mr Lemonhead

Sticker Cars Part One

Presto

This is pretty sweet

In case you were wondering...

In case you were wondering how one gets the nickname Shorty...

Jazz Fest Part II

I've been lallygagging the shit out of writing this post but I started it this past weekend and I figured I'd get it out before it had gone the way of the AP Chemistry and European History.

I left off Friday night dancing to four nerdy white guys at the Bon Temps until sunrise...

Saturday I chose not to go to the festival, missing the Roots and Steel Pulse, a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to save up (and by save up I mean sleep until 5pm) for the big Saturday night -> Sunday push. I drank a few beers watching Under Siege waiting for those who made it to the fest to return. We then went to one of my favorite New Orleans eateries, Dick & Jenny's, and got in line for a table at around 8 o'clock. We then went around the corner and I had a few Gin and Tonics. When we finally got our table around 11:30pm, I was a little drunk, to say nothing of the rest of that party who had drinking steadily since noon. The food was obviously out of this world and dinner was otherwise fairly unremarkable, except for the part where we got free dessert for leading the dining room in a Journey sing along. It is fair to say I didn't stop believing how good my tempura soft shell crab in Thai curry sauce was.

From Dick & Jenny's we walked our full bellies to an even fuller Mae's where the majority of our party cabbed it home to cuddle/pass out. I however had tickets to the Greyboy Allstars back up the street at Tips. The Greyboys always play the last Saturday night of the Fest at Tips and they never start before 3am and it's always sold out. This year, having never been, I bought tickets a month ahead of time. Denson and Walter and the rest of the boy's funked us until about 6:30am at which point I collapsed into bed for a couple of hours and went back out to the fest.

On feet too numb to be sore we made the long walk to the fest for the last time of the year. Liuzza's is closed Sundays so there were no Bushwhackers to be had. In a daze I ate my last Cochon De Lait poboy of the fest and arrived at the Gentilly stage just in time to see Galactic and get the Inspector Gadget song stuck in my head the rest of the day. I ran into an old college classmate who was in town for the weekend and I was regretting not having seen up to that point. I used to do homework at this girl's house and then we'd sit around on the porch and drink beers afterwards. I probably did less than 25% of the homework that was assigned to me throughout my college career, and I'm positive I would've blown off those assignments as well if it wasn't for her. After Galactic we stayed to watch the Raconteurs who played a decent if commercially successful set. It was nice though, to see a rock show in between so much jazz/funk/blues/latin fusion. From there I circled back around the back of the main stage to at least be able to say I saw Santana, a move I immediately regretted when as soon as we cleared a sight line to the stage he promptly started playing my least favorite song of all time, by anyone, evar (Smooth, fucking hate that fucking song.) So anyways we picked up the pace and continued the circle around to the Blues Tent to close out the fest with the Derek Trucks Band.

It would be the third time I'd seen the Derek Trucks Band and I'm a huge fan (obviously huge enough to completely forgo the highly touted Neville Bros. closing the festival on the big stage.) We rolled up right as Keb Mo was finishing up and the aisles of the Blues Tent cleared out like the people could smell us walking in. We posted up front and center leaning on the railing that was in front of the stage. I patted myself on the back for the good luck and began worrying if there would be enough crowd soon enough that I could pee my pants without anyone noticing because there was no way I was leaving that spot. Five excruciating minutes later an usher told us that in the blues tent there is no standing room except at the very back. I jogged to a portapotty line that wasn't 8 deep and got some decent Zen considering the circumstances. After returning to th bak of the blues tent where luckily my krewe had staked out a pretty good spot in the merciful shade and saw what was probably one of the awesomest slide guitar performances in my life. Also, Derek has an sweet jazzflute player who I can't help but idolize. Derek's wife, Susan Tedeschi who's made a career out of opening for acts like B.B. King, Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal, also joined him on stage for a few songs which was nice as she can sing worlds better than he can. They finished up their set and went offstage and the MC appeared to try to tell the crowd to go home which enough did to allow us to move up fairly close to the stage to pound our hands together and scream for what seemed like 20 minutes before they came back on stage and tore off the best version of one of my top five favorite songs of all time I've ever heard.

Jazz Fest is the Best

So that was the friday before this past, the only day I made it out to the fairgrounds that weekend. I'll regret for a while missing Billy Joel, and may regret missing Al Green for the rest of my life. If you'd seen that doppler radar picture though... you'd probably've stayed home too.

I did my best to make up for it this past weekend, and the photos are yet to go up on the official Jazz Fest website, but I'll talk you through one of the longer weekends of my short life.

Thursday I got up early and went to work as if it were any other day, except everyone was surprised to see me as I had made clear my intention to go to the Fest. I put out a couple of fires and then went back home to change out of my work clothes and get into the spirit of things. I drove to my friends' house which we use as Jazz Fest home base, and met my friend and two of her bff's from from out of town. I drank a Maker's on the rocks and listened to Sneaking Sally through the Alley inordinately loud while they got themselves ready. The walk to the Fest from the house googlemaps at 1.7mi, and is way worse on the way home. Along the way however, is a famous bar/restaurant (that may be the first time I've ever spelled restaurant correctly on my first try) called Liuzza's that serves a milkshake-like daiquiri called a bushwhacker that makes the walk tolerable. From Liuzza's we walked along bayou St John to the aptly named Idealmart to buy plastic pocket-sized bottles of alcohol (for smuggling) and other supplies. We (my friend and her two bff's whom she only apologized for like 27 times) then walked along the bayou to the Fest. We made it in time to see the last two Bonerama songs and say hi to some hippies before heading over to the Gentilly stage for Kermit Ruffins. Kermit was obviously stoned and played two too many slow songs but made up for it with his charisma, his musicianship and medley of Top-20 club bangers that his drummer sang and pretty much killed. I'm pretty sure that from there we went straight to the Acura stage and got settled in for good 2.5 hour Widespread Panic set that was broken up by a short Mardi Gras Indians set at about the 1:05 mark. The last time I saw Widespread was probably more than five years ago but I've always been a fan. Their new guitar player (who at least 3 people told me was the greatest guitar player ever) is quite good and I salute his eschewing of the PRS he was playing on some of the songs I didn't recognize for a good old fashion American Strat on the songs I did. By the time the show was over and my love for Widespread was thoroughly rekindled, I was pretty drunk and approaching exhaustion. We walked the almost two miles back to the house where I may or may not've collapsed on the couch. We did however go to a nearby noodlehouse where I set my mouth on fire with rooster sauce and drank a mai tai and don't really remember what I ate. My friends graciously put me in a cab before they headed downtown to my favorite bar to see Rebirth, I think. My destination however, was Tipitina's where I had reserved tickets to see my mandolin mancrush, Sam Bush. If you've never been to a Sam Bush concert, alone, exhausted, and completely shitfaced I'd have to recommend it. He played one of my favorite John Hartford songs called the Good Ole' Days (that my dad informs me he recorded with John Hartford), and then just to fuck with my head jammed it into Whole Lotta Love (which sounds surprisingly awesome when played on the mando.) He then went off stage and came back with Up on Cripple Creek for an encore, that asshole. So I'm falling down drunk, completely alone walking out of Tips, I do what any sane human would do in that situation; I walk to Mae's. Unfortunately, on the walk, I stubbed my toe on one of NOLA's more awesome sidewalks and because my foot and sandal are covered with blood am not allowed into Mae's. I made a few calls and jumped in a cab and rolled over to my buddies' house and administered some first aid We then went to the Maple Leaf and saw some allstar-type funk band including Bonerama's awesome-jawed drummer, Zigaboo's Afro'd guitar player, and the guy who I always see playing the sax at Dos Jefe's. According to my friends I fell asleep at the bar, which I felt bad about until someone told me it happened around 6:00am (or 23.5 hours after I had woken up.)

Friday I woke up around noon and took the truck over to my buddies' house and picked him up and his out of town crew. We rolled over to my friends' house and we did the walk again, including the stop at Liuzza's. Saw Zigaboo and his crew funk it up for a little while and then Trombone Shorty blew my mind. Shorty (and his saxophonist who, were I a chick I would definitely bone) put on what was a definitely a sleeper pick for best show of the weekend. After Shorty we got food, beer, and bathroomed and then got set up to see Stevie Wonder, who spent ten minutes talking about politics in a voice too low to hear and then played three excruciatingly slow songs so we cruised over to Congo Square to see Franti & Spearhead which was awesome. I've become a big fan of Franti since the first time I saw him live, prior to which I had an argument with a dude a saw at the show about how much I disliked his preachy attitude. That was back when Stay Human was the only Franti I had heard and I'm still not sure I'm anti-death penalty. Yell Fire though has some great songs on it, and I'm definitely anti-war so I'm not, for lack of a better word, distracted by the politics in his music. Anyway dude didn't bring up the fact that I once had one of those recordstopscreech moments at his house party when I said I didn't like Franti, which I appreciate because I'm embarassed about it in retrospect. If you've never seen Franti though he is an electrifying presence who stands about 7 feet tall and dances around and speaks from the heart and his band rocks. Every now and then it would start raining and he would come down into the crowd and dance around. Soaked to the core we walked back to my friend's house and I hadn't really been drinking so I drove everybody home and then we met up at one of my favorite bars, Le Bon Temps Roule, and saw Simon Lott and Anders Osborne. Simon Lott is the drummer that the guys from Galactic would rather play with because Stanton Moore is a douche and Simon Lott is a way better drummer. Bills must be paid though so Galactic with Stanton Moore still exists. A few more friends showed up and I noticed at one point that like twelve people that I truly care about were at this one bar and the good times were indeed rolling.

That was Friday. More to come.

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?

You Do NOT Fuck With This Dude's Elephants

Tony Jaa from the movie The Protector:



This continuous shot took like 5 takes, and the first one they had to stop like 2/3rds of the way through because the guy carrying the steadycam couldn't keep up.

And this is the scene where he gets really pissed and just starts breaking shit:

Fazz Jest

The Jazz Fest block schedules are up and I'm more excited than a pedophile at a swim meet. Let's make a preliminary plan:

(First) Friday April 25th – There’s always two bands you want to see playing at the same time, and that trend continues with Leo Nocentelli’s super group at Congo Square competing with Robert Plant & Allison Krauss on the Acura stage. A dilemma to be sure, followed closely by Burning Spear on the Congo Square stage with Ozomatli w/ Chali 2na on the lawn over at the Gentilly Stage. Late Night: Dumpstafunk at Howlin’ Wolf

(First) Saturday April 26th – Piano day: Jon Cleary > Dr. John > Billy Joel, all at Acura Stage, get a spot and post up. Late Night: Bonerama at the Maple Leaf

(First) Sunday April 27th – This is going to involve some leg work, but I think I can get from Irma Thomas at the Acura stage all the way over the Fais Do Do for some Del McCoury roots music, swing by the Gentilly Stage for some Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello, all the way back to the Acura to catch maybe five minutes of Tim McGraw for research purposes, then settle in for the duration at Congo Square with Al Mother Fucking Green. School Night.

Wednesday April 30th – Soulive at One Eyed Jacks.

Thursday May 1st – Widespread on the Acura stage, preceded by PBS and Bonerama, probably another get there and post up day. Late Night: Sam Bush and Trombone Shorty at Tips or maybe Rebirth and Page McConnell at some place called the Sugar Mill.

(Second) Friday May 2nd – Another competeing problem with Stevie Wonder on the Acura stage and Franti at Congo Square. On the surface this is a no-brainer but I’ve seen Franti outdoors and in, and the former is way better. But when am I ever goiong to get the chance to Stevie Wonder again? Probably never. Late Night: Soul Rebels at the Balcony Club or possibly Gov’t Mule at the CAC.

(Second) Saturday May 3rd – I’ve never been a huge Jimmy Buffet fan, so I can skip him and choose between Diana Krall on the lawn, Steel Pulse at Congo Square, Irvin Mayfield in the Jazz tent or (most likely) Kenny Wayne Shepard in the Jazz Tent. Late Night: Franti and Greyboy Allstars at Tips.

(Second) Sunday May 4th – More competition, but as much as I would like to see the Raconteurs (as much as I make fun of him, Jack White is as incredible musician) I think Santana is going to have to take precedence, then Derek Trucks at the Blues tent for a little while before rolling back to Acura for the Neville Brothers. Late Night: collapse in total exhaustion.

More Saints Rumors

I've been kinda busy/lazy of late but here's a few Pro Football Talk rumors that have me salivating but are probably never gonna happen.

1) Pac Man Jones- The subject of many a joke, Tennessee Corner Back Adam Pacman Jones (Pacman because he gobbles up balls, I guess) sat out the 2007 season for off the field issues involving strippers, a paralyzed bouncer, and Nelly. He was scheduled at one point to make an appearence as a professional wrestler, but the Titans decided that would be breach of contract. Although a bulk of the rumors have him going to the Cowboys, Pacman is an elite corner, of which the Saints are in dire need. He also proved himself as an elite kick returner, which Reggie Bush has not. As far as I can tell his only downside is that he's young, rich and loves strippers, which when you think about it, makes him a pretty likable guy. Getting Pacman for a conditional second round draft pick would be a steal.



2) Jeremy Shockey- Former UMiami standout TE and current broken legged Giant Jeremy Shockey is supposedly on the market, and is one of the top ten athletes in the league at his position. For those not familiar with the way the end of last season played out, you may be interested to know why the Giants would be so interested in getting rid of such a player. The answer is, as soon as Shockey broke his leg the team started playing better and went on to win the Super Bowl. Shockey is a brat who whines if he doesn't get his looks, and has a tendency to cause unrest amongst the troops. Supposedly, the Giants want too much in return for Shockey which doesn't seem hard to me because I wouldn't trade my third string left tackle for him.

Overheard Quote of the Century

"Am I old or something? Isn't it... taboo/or whatever to wear the shirt of the band who's show you're at? Have these... children ever seen PCU?