Okay, FINE. I'm posting for a third time in the same day once again. I heard this on WWOZ on the way to pick up the little guy from school, and, as Dan is fond of saying, I just thought I'd share.



Eat your hearts out, those of you with mere brass balls. Ha!

Recent comments at Adrastos' concerning the sick picture of two even sicker people who just happen to be city officials:

Me: This picture is horrific. And one of the best of the nola.com comments was somebody saying that she/he'd like to bring some inappropriate comments to the nola.com webmasters' attention: all of the comments on the picture.

Incidentally, the little guy found the rocket launcher gun that came with his Buzz Lightyear doll and shot me with it this morning. The Walking Id's latest idiocy shows me that some kids never grow out of those impulses. God help us all.

Jeffrey: With all due respect, if you can't laugh at this picture what can you laugh at?...I mean, am I supposed to make sure everyone understands that playing with guns is irresponsible... and that the mayor and police chief are engaging in an idiotic glorification of the violence they are charged with combating... and that heavily arming a metropolitan police force in this fashion is in and of itself disturbing?

Becuase... you know... duh. I didn't realize we were all in kindergarten all of a sudden.

Me: I really think the joke is on us. Meaning, we need to get the Walking Id and Chief "Patrol Alone for Sixteen Hours" Riley out of City Hall. Period.

And that's the truth. For more on why, check Maitri's comparison.

Update, 2-14: oooh, City Hall is saying that the picture was taken out of context. And nobody will be buying a Photoshop excuse if it comes up. So the Times-Pic editors didn't go with the pictures the mayor's office sent 'em of NOPD officers handling their weapons correctly and using their new resources to help this city. That's their right. The one picture that ended up in print has simply illustrated what many in this city already know - that this overgrown child is not (and has largely never been) acting in this city's best interests.

"What the hell is this? This is horrible. Come see this!!!"

Curious, we looked up. She was gesturing to a fellow waitress, who was taking her time. She took her time explaining it to us curious diners.

"It's a picture of the owner with Barack Obama here. And somebody attached this sign beneath it and misspelled both his name and Hillary's name. I mean, come on!!!!"

"Yeh, if you're gonna support a candidate, at least spell his or her name correctly!" Fellow Waitress said as she passed by.

"It drives me nuts," the first waitress said. "I was out at a place on Oak Street Saturday, and somebody wrote in chalk on the sidewalk in front to 'Vote for Bark Oboma'. A friend of mine was out there when this Tulane student was writing it on the pavement, and he corrected her on the 'Oboma' part, so at least she tried to chalk in an 'A' over the second 'O', but still..."

"Lemme take a look at it," the woman at the table next to me said as she slid out of her seat. I followed and saw that "Barack" was "Barak" and "Hillary" was "Hillery". Two conflicting messages were written on the envelope stuck to the wall.:

This man's Barak'n my world!
Vote Hillery!

"Oh, hey, I'll correct it!," the woman said. "You got some extra paper and a colored pen?"

"Yeah, sure!"

"Wait...never mind, I found some right here!"

More discussion followed at the sorry state of spelling and grammar as well as punctuation amongst the English speakers and proofreaders of this country. Everything from billboards to TV ads were criticized, not to mention da local paper.

"Whoops!" the woman doing the corrections said. "I need another piece of paper. I gave 'Barack' an extra 'R'. And I'm a writer, no less!"

" 'Barrack' Obama?" I hooted. "There's a pro-war candidate if I ever heard of one! Ha!"

The new sign was taped under the picture.

"Anybody want anythin' from the store?" a large man asked the diner employees.

"Yeh, a million dollars!" Fellow Waitress yelled.

I walked over to the jukebox and put on "London Calling", "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl", and "Your Cheatin' Heart", 'cause I still had thoughts of this broad in my head. I went back to reading about urban planning and wondered if some of what I was reading about was what was ultimately causing us to lower all our standards.

And I'm not simply talking about spelling and grammar... I'm talking about the possibility of working for something better without having it usurped by "the market economy".

"That was more fun than a movie, and much cheaper!" the writer woman said to me as we were leaving the diner.

"Kind of sad, actually," I said. On many levels, was what I meant. The movies cost too damn much. The stories in most of the movies offered are such crap.

And comparing life to the movies is a sad comment on life.

Woohoo! The New Orleans blogpocheh's numbers have reached 300, according to our chief compiler, Mominem. Yashir koach, everybody! Robert Crumb would doubtless snarkily say:
Uhhh, that would be "Keep on bloggin'. " And your feet don't HAVE to be that big here, but it helps.

Looks like this member of the NOLA blogpocheh inadvertently set the background for the recent Bordeaux Street bust of Chinese nationals passing military secrets to their home country. China's been busy, indeed. And, for those folks who "wish he'd gotten away with it", well, Klaus Fuchs was a nice guy, too.

And I second E - Lolis Eric Elie definitely came to the public housing hijinks table waaay too late. His last few columns seem to be making up for lost time on many fronts, actually. To look at it another way, they might be a nifty device to keep these issues in the public eye - which would necessitate checking out further columns of Elie's to see if he'll follow through. I'm not holding my breath, however - if things get really bad and he sharpens his criticism to a fine point, his writing may end up buried in the Saturday editions. Which can only mean one thing: before you go out on Saturday night, read that day's paper for the real news. It could well give you more reason to drink (not that anybody in this town needs a reason...).

Oh, and mazel tov to Terrance Simien and Terence Blanchard on their Grammy wins! Blanchard's A Tale of God's Will is an excellent album - his "Wading Through" is haunting melody with a hint of "It Ain't Necessarily So" wafting over a musical re-creation of flood waters that need to be overcome in order to ensure survival. That's the one that sticks in my head the most.

The one that I've been trying to wrap my head around, however, is the case of Amy Winehouse. She won five awards, tying Lauryn Hill's numbers from ten years ago. For a few moments there, she was absolutely speechless on getting Record of the Year for "Rehab", then she regained her composure, thanked her record company, her publishers, her musical collaborators, her parents (hugging her mum at her side) and dedicated it to her husband (her "Blake incarcerated") and to London. You gotta love the spunk and the attitude, not to mention the working-class London accent. I do hope she is happy and healthy, because she is one of these folks who is fully conscious and respectful of jazz history: "She was totally knocked back that Tony Bennett was calling her name and she kept calling to her dad because they're both huge fans of the crooners of that age."

And hey, if you don't believe me, check her "Moody's Mood For Love". She made a classic her own.

Great ability...and some good songwriting.....with a touch of a punk attitude...




...can make for some good stuff.

Trouble is, she's living the life she writes of in her songs much, much too hard (and people wonder about her beehive...). Amy, madame, we'd all love to tell Ron Jeremy to "f--- off", but nobody really needs excessive amounts of drugs or alcohol in their system to do so.

The biggest problem with sad souls such as Winehouse, is, once again, this idea that the only way to be "authentic" in writing and performing tough is to live even tougher. And women have the hardest time trying to balance themselves on that fiber-optic-thin tightrope. In some ways, it's just as hard as it was forty years ago (!) because the media scrutiny has made it impossible for celebrities to develop outside of the public eye unless they remove themselves nearly completely from the scene as Lauryn Hill did shortly after winning her Grammys. But there's another element to all this that hasn't gone away (and is also why it blows my mind that it happened forty years ago and is still happening), and Linda Ronstadt commented on this recently:

I felt that I was artificially encouraged to kind of cop a really tough attitude, you know, because rock 'n' roll is kind of tough and it was a, quite an identity crisis that women had. You know there was Janis Joplin...she was really funky and she wore a see-through blouse and she was actually quite literate and (a) quite shy and lovely person, but you know she had to be really a red hot mama, drinking...Southern Comfort and being drunk and kind of slobbering or whatever it was you were supposed to be doing.

Who else could you put in this group of women performers? Lucinda Williams comes to mind. On the country and western side of things, Jeannie C. Reilly had a lot of talent and really wanted to be the next Loretta Lynn, but the success of "Harper Valley PTA" railroaded her into a cleaned-up version of rock rebellion and had her in a miniskirt for the rest of her performing days. Less talented but hyped-all-out-of-proportion celebs let themselves be pushed around by this nearly insurmountable force at work in popular music and its ever-present adjacent media engine.

What I really want is for somebody like Marshall Chapman who has been through hell and back as a singer/songwriter (a woman told to slow down by Jerry Lee Lewis, of all people... ) to tell this London girl she doesn't need to pull a "Leaving Loachapoka" and go "ninety miles an hour with her hair on fire". Really, she doesn't.

She just needs find another way to be who she is without being a holy terror to herself. Because, God bless her, she is quite capable of giving as good (and as bad) as she gets. Amy, what you've got ain't so bad. Don't give it away so easily and horribly.

Yep, every once in a while, when I get to feeling a little melancholy about being here, I actually open the paper and take a look:

Everybody needs to make it their Life's Work to teach at least one kid to say, 'WHEE!' And mean it! - Jill Conner Browne

And there on Mardi Gras Day on the St. Charles parade route awaiting Rex was Cooper Manning, in a typical Carnival scene. He was standing on a ladder behind his three young children with wife Ellen below, wearing a New York Giants No. 10 jersey in honor of Eli. They had just returned from Arizona after seeing the incredible victory by New York in the Super Bowl and celebrating with the Manning family.

Someone asked him why he didn't go to New York for the ticker-tape parade honoring the Super Bowl champions and his MVP brother.

And then came a not-so-surprising reply from a born-and-bred Orleanian. He said he couldn't live with himself if he didn't get home "to see at least one real parade."

The kind that throws beads. - Angus Lind

Two streetcars collided head-on at Canal Street and North Gayoso at 8:17 a.m., injuring 23 people, according to a Regional Transit Authority spokeswoman. By 9:15 a.m., the last injured passengers were being loaded into ambulances, and both streetcars had been removed from the scene....

Lonnie Daw was operating streetcar No. 940, and suffered neck injuries. Richard Garrnett was driving streetcar No. 933, and was cut in the head. The remaining injured were passengers, who suffered cuts, bruises and back injuries, Cook said.

From a nola.com commenter:
Well I am sorry to say for the mistake and we truly did not meant to offend anyone. The correction on the two drivers names are as follows:

Clarence Ray Nagin, Jr.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco

Oh, what can I say? It's still my kinda town.

Sorry to brag, but...

I have a new toy:

...and just when I think I have the bestest husband in the whole wide world, who actually brought me something I asked for from the fire sales at the CompUSA that's closing in our area and said, "Happy belated birthday!", he says, mostly seriously, that I need to start putting advertising on this beloved blog to help cover the cost of the thing.

Oy vey. Has it really come to this? Well, if you check the sidebar, I guess it kinda has. And no, I am not going this route...unless somebody wants to pay me for writing about risque Carnival throws. Anyone? Anyone?

*crickets chirping*

Didn't think so.

I'm thinking I should have gone into more serious endorsement of some of our local winners who are now part of the local Democratic Party Exec. Committee in their district. Mazel tov to Karen Gadbois and Kim Marshall! I only wish I coulda voted for ya, but I'm not in your district. I wish I'd been able to put Oyster over the top, but I'm a registered independent (sniff).

I am getting restless. At least some of our long overdue rent checks have arrived, so maybe I can finally get going on the glass grind in the back shed. I certainly hope so.

Update, 7:51 PM: And then I read what Athenae has just posted.

"...it's not just about... them assuming you're a loser. It's that the only way we can assign value to an occupation of which we've not heard before, the only way we can understand it, is to find out how much it pays."

That's kind of what some family gatherings are like for me. About the only folks in my family who have some appreciation of what I'm doing are my mom and, possibly, my mother-in-law.

What this is, however, is different. My husband has never read this blog, but he sees how important it is to me to be doing it and to be reading the work of others. Some of this is an attempt to get me to find what I love and have it provide some sort of benefit aside from better mental health for me and a demonstrated ability to make connections and kinda sorta influence people. Plus, I have complained high and low at times about how much being mom at home can have me feeling as though I'm driving the crazy bus and the brakes have been cut.

Where do I go from here?

Important elections coming up! Go with this guy's voting advice. It's a momentous occasion that there are even recommendations coming from that neck of the virtual woods that don't run along the lines of imbibing Rodeo Lawyer beer, firing Les Miles, or just generally being an enlightened advocate of burning the Saints' black pants. Oh - there is that bit at the end about burning the condos. Really, folks, you don't need to do that, since foreclosure happens.

Important job openings with the Inspector General of New Orleans' office need to be filled! Head here for more information.

Important source of many, many Mardi Gras pictures: Sophmom's latest post. Poor lady had to experience Mardi Gras vicariously through Nola.com's ParadeCam at her place of business. Next year in New Orleans! Another few good pic sources: Michael Homan, Howie Luvzus, and dsb nola, as well as Jeffrey's Ash Wednesday/clean-up time post.

Important reviews of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations show on New Orleans, which aired this past Monday, can be seen at AshMo's, Clay's and Pistolette's. Almost makes me wish we had cable or satellite TV. Oh, well...we'll just have to drop by Les Halles the next time we're up in Nu Yawk and give the place some of our bidness. And, if we see Monsieur B in this area soon, we'll be paying for whatever he imbibes as well. L'chaim!

Important ton of bricks on my head:

The last time I did any glassblowing whatsoever was February 14, 2004.

It was the first and only time I've brought my son into a hot glass studio, and he made himself at home, even at the tender age of 14 months or so. It was the studio's first-ever open blow day, and anybody with skills could step right up to the bench, grab a pipe, and gather out of the furnace. When we came to visit, my former glassworking partner almost all through college had just taken ownership of the studio and we were dropping by to say hello and take a mini-vacation from the NYC rat race. Rows of chairs facing the hot shop were set up in the gallery while a small team of workers busied themselves for over an hour making a blown glass heart with sculpted hot bits of glass that were brought over to the gaffer and transformed from molten honey into a leafy vine that snaked around the heart. I put my name into the raffle for a drawing for a pair of hot glass shears, and was elated when I was chosen. I still have those shears, which I fully intend to use someday when I have my own table torch.

After seeing this masterpiece being worked on for such a long length of time, I jumped up there and popped out a hollow-footed wineglass I'd made two of for my wedding. When Dan had taken a drink out of one of them in mid-ceremony, a splash of wine had become trapped in the foot and kicked back on him when he tipped the glass back a little more. Got a nice giggle from him under the chupah!

I'd warned the people there it was going to be quick, and it was - fifteen minutes. Blink and voila! there was the glass. Dan told me later the toolmaker who had come for that day to donate the tools for the raffle and sell some more was really surprised and amazed. Hey, I aimed ta' please, and I figured the crowd there was waiting for their turn to step up.

My former partner in glass certainly stepped up to the ownership and management of the public access studio for many, many years. When I walked away from the shop that day and went back to full-time mommyhood, she kept on keepin' on with a very hard, stressful job. Having taken a few years to recover from a similarly stressful management of a production studio and gallery, I had a good idea of what she was going through. It can become your life, your blood, your baby. The source of great pleasure and satisfaction, as well as the fount of much cussing, kicking, and screaming, just 'cause stuff happens.

I received an email from the studio that the place was shutting its doors after many years. I immediately gave my friend a call and heard the relief in her voice. For personal reasons, she'd made the decision to close up, and it was absolutely the right decision. I am very, very happy for her and wish her well. I certainly hope she never looks back, which can be easier to say than do...but I am confident that she will keep her mojo workin' no matter what she does.

Best to family and friends, Ms S, and I cannot tell you how much I wanna make it to the closing party!!!!

And yes, I have not used the shears on any materials such as paper or plastic. They are being saved for glass and glass only. I'm keeping my promise on that.

Important notice: Ladies and gentlemen, I wrote this rant late at night when I couldn't sleep for all the quiet that had settled on my 'hood. I know that the magazine mentioned below is no vehicle with which to start a social revolution. It is, however, an indication of how blithely a certain segment of society will go about its business as always, denying that change needs to come, accepting the current educational climate as inevitable. The stuff I'm spewing about can certainly start with them, or they can get outta the way.

Dammit, dammit all to hell. I am so angry I could spit grenades. And it's all 'cause of a couple of articles in February's New Orleans magazine, in combination with my thoughts about this great lady's experiences in the RSD.

The magazine's IT schmucks haven't updated their site yet. Idiots. Then again, it is right after Mardi Gras. I'll give 'em that much. And yes, I know I shouldn't be wasting my time on the sometimes narrow view this magazine takes of things. (HammHawk, dude, your astute rebuttal of that article's hint is nowhere to be found in the letters to the almighty editor of the magazine. Sad, really...) The February issue focuses on the schools - the charters and the private schools. The only mention of the Recovery School District is in an article entitled "Charter Schools: Making The Grade" by Dawn Ruth.

The philosophy behind the charter school movement is pure Darwinism - only the strong survive. As the theory goes, "strong" means "successful", and successful means standardized test scores that show school children - poor as well as rich - can read, write, and compute at least at a basic level. That would be good news for New Orleans parents and the region as a whole but since many of the city's new charter schools are only six months old, it will be another four or more years before anyone can pass fair judgment as to whether charters are the answer to New Orleans' past education woes.

...Overall, New Orleans charters performed better than traditional schools but that outcome is not surprising considering RSD schools struggled with serious problems including a shortage of classrooms and teachers to meet the demand of an influx of returning students. Since then, most problems have been resolved.

I think Ms Ruth could have dug a bit deeper into the situation, especially after the New Orleans LEAP scores were released in August. Michael Homan has some great thoughts on the subject that could certainly use some elaboration, especially some important words from a Ralph Adamo article, the effects of white flight on the quality of the public schools, and the toll the current roadblocks to rebuilding can take on a caring parent who loves this city so. Seems Michael Tisserand is one of the few journalists to examine the realities of the charter school situation a little further. Oy vey.

The reality is that the current climate here doesn't favor the regular public schools, whatever those are. The ones I'm talking about are the state-run RSD schools that are not charters. The ones that are largely being bolstered by teachers who are run through the Teach NOLA program with not much more than a bachelor's degree are taking their toll on those souls. The salaries need a boost for certified as well as uncertified teachers. It is all more than enough to drive sane, caring people completely insane.

More evidence that the current climate is giving the RSD the proverbial finger? Try the next education article in the magazine on for size: "The Cost Of Learning: High School Tuition Vs. College Success". The thing reads like another big ad for Darwinism, pulling back from its conclusions a tad at the very end to try to instill hope in those readers who have been crushed by its endorsements. Kathy Finn writes:

In New Orleans, as elsewhere, private institutions are sometimes criticized as having abetted an exodus of students from taxpayer-financed elementary, middle and high schools. It's an argument that likely will arise among people who champion the need for high-quality public eduaction. But many educators believe the existence of solid private schools helps to raise the bar for teachers and pupils throughout the area.

The importance of making a good education available to all, regardless of financial status, seems indisputable. However, it's difficult to challenge the theory that having quality private schools available as an option can also mean a great deal to the quality of local education overall.

In other words, everything is hunky dory, because it's optional. Survival of the fittest, folks. But hey, when you're talking entry to top colleges, the sky's the limit, right? Spend and spend away on your kids, 'cause it's worth it. Check the stats that are cited to help the young 'uns compete with record numbers of Ivy League applicants and loads of foreign-born and raised applicants in the bargain:

In researching the path to eight of the top colleges in the U.S., the (Wall Street) Journal (note: I'm trying to find this article, but the online Journal wants $79 for the privilege) identified some 70 high schools that send the largest number of seniors into those colleges. While annual tuition at a few of the feeder high schools runs as low as a few thousand dollars, and annual tab above $20,000 is much more typical and tuition at a few of the prep schools runs close to $40,000.

Fortunately for local families, some excellent private schools are available at far lower prices. At Isidore Newman School in New Orleans - long one of the most expensive private schools in the local area - high school tuition for 2008 is listed at just over $15,000. Tuition at the highly respected Metairie Park Country Day School, meanwhile, will stop just short of that mark for 2008, as will the tab at Louise S. McGehee School.

Yep, getting your kids into Harvard still requires loads of dough for the right "feeder schools". But guess what????? New Orleans can give it to you at near-bargain prices!!!! I'm waiting for the Special Man* to pop out from someplace and tell the parents to let their kids have it....with noooooooooo problem!!!! except now they have to save for high school and college.

But don't despair, those of you who can't afford all this for your children!

...when it comes to comparing outcomes among private, parochial and public schools, many educators say the real key is parental involvement. Students who have abundant support and encouragement from their parents throughout their school years are far likelier to achieve their full potential than are students who lack parental attention, no matter what type of school they attend.

Nobody could tell you that better than an RSD teacher:

Today was report card conferences. Two parents from my homeroom class came to collect their child's report card. One of those volunteers/works at school. Other parents from other homerooms came in but most didn't stop to talk. Just took their kid's failed test and left. I want to cry just looking at the math grades in comparison to most students' other grades. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong to give out all those Fs.

Today I feel like shit. Just personally, I felt like shit about today. The kids were little bastards all day. And the parents, by their absence, proved to me why this is the case.

Yeah, fine, standards are needed. There's not so, so much wrong with giving these kids some basic skills. But standards should not be the only thing looked at in all this mess called education. So many things are wrong. Throwing money at it isn't going to help if that money isn't used wisely, which was one of the many reasons why pre-8-29 New Orleans public schools were largely failures, with a few exceptions. Parents dropping their kids off and leaving their responsibility to those kids at the school doors for the duration as well isn't working, either, which warrants a greater examination of the stresses on parents that center around work, finances, and simply providing food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their kids. Politicizing the system has its pitfalls as well, as I saw in a recent article.

A further examination of how we perceive community and how that could help us all is definitely in order - folks like Michael Homan have been working to get quality schooling right in their own neighborhoods that isn't going to break backs from the cost. A recent observation from the cantor of an area synagogue, on seeing the middle school-aged kids at my religious school schmoozing with each other at break time, puts this in some perspective - he said it was amazing seeing all these Jewish kids all together like this because, all together, they represented so many different secular (i.e., non-Jewish) area schools, private and charter, as well as places like Ben Franklin High School, which is still under the old Orleans Parish SD. In fact, once many of these kids are about to enter college, it may be at gatherings of synagogue youth groups that they hit it off with somebody only to then discover that, all through their schooling years, they lived only a couple of blocks apart all that time. I personally found that to be a little sad. Having one kid a couple of blocks away from the other going to an entirely different school outside of the city limits can diminish one's sense of community at home unless parents take an active role in their neighborhoods as well.**

In the end, little rings truer for me than the conclusions a prep school college counselor comes to about that whole process:

Powerful emotions get mixed up in the college-admissions process. Michael Thompson wrote in "College Admission as a Failed Rite of Passage" that central to this experience is "the most important and most difficult transition in all of life: the end of childhood and the late-adolescent separation and individuation from parents." He continued,

The frantic involvement of many parents in the process is, from my perspective, a cover for this profound parental anxiety: Did I do a good job with this child? Did I do everything I needed to do for this child? Is this child prepared? Is this child going to have a good life? ... Such fears about letting go of an unfinished child exist in all families. How can we let go of a child who is still so young in so many ways?

Surely he's right about this. Also lurking uncomfortably beneath the surface of these waters are class anxiety, the culture wars, and a whole set of unexamined prejudices about what does or does not constitute a "good" college. All this drama is nice for admissions offices that like to see applications stacked to the roof and supplicants spilling out into hallways as they wait nervously for information sessions to begin. None of it is good for seventeen-year-olds just taking their first tentative steps into adult life.

Articles such as the ones in the current New Orleans magazine feed that parental anxiety most of all. They crap all over the hardworking, unsung heroes who are the folks who are teaching in the RSD and overcoming the humps as best they can. They shortchange all our kids with their obvious and subtle biases.

Next time my husband renews his WYES membership, I'm gonna tell him to tell YES we say "no" to the New Orleans subscription. Put that money into better programming... 'cause it certainly ain't helping that magazine out any.

Survival of the fittest. Heh, heh.

___________________

*Yes, I know that's not the real Special Man in the commercial...but you gotta love the box of chicken thrown into the deal, right?

**All community-oriented thoughts influenced by my recent readings of Dolores Hayden's work. Skewer me in the comments if you must...

Aaack! My husband is out of town. He had to leave on Mardi Gras for Gulfport to take a flight to D.C. on business. Typical. At least he left after nearly everybody visiting got pancaked. (It turns out, according to NOLA Cleophatra, that Mardi Gras is also the perfect time for other pancake hijinks. Hey, we had no clue. We just like pancakes. Next year: a gray brick road pancake race!)

Why am I aaacking, then? 'Cause he's the only one who knows how to download pictures off my son's Fisher-Price digital camera, and he refuses to explain to me how to do it until he gets back from his trip. Grrrrrrrr....

So pictures will have to appear at a later time. Sorry. 8-(

Anyhow, our first big Krewe of Pancakes and Syrup gathering came off quite well. We pulled in our pal Justin, his wife, Justine, and their pals, who toted mimosa ingredients with 'em. Edie came first and had to advise Justine via cell phone what the house number was, since she didn't recognize the house - she hadn't seen it since before it was repainted. Dan's klezmer triomates came next, bringing two friends each, along with some Nutella and some mixed nuts, not to mention a little extra champagne for mimosas. Everybody dug into the three king cakes there to start, two of which were my homemade ones and one was a chocolate cream cheese from Winn-Dixie. I knew it was Clay's birthday, and I almost did a multicolor sprinkle job on one of the king cakes, but I opted for a black and gold on one instead; the other was traditional purple, green, and gold.

Just as I was starting in on the second pancake batch, Sheckrastos and Dr A dropped in with some pecan bread pudding, a few bottles of Mardi Gras Bock, and some marvelous meatballs. By then, people were starting to venture out onto the parade route and calling in to our phones to let us know that Zulu had arrived. I walked the dog shortly before 7 AM and observed that our bead-eating tree spot was, once again, part of a roped-off area that nearly blocked off the entire sidewalk in front of the bank. Once again, I was happy to stay in and flip some flapjacks. Next year when I encounter that kind of stuff, I'm gonna play parade territory terrorist and bring a box cutter with me. HEY! Great costume idea!!!!! Then again, maybe not...

A little afterwards, the Oyster clan came through, helping us take a big bite out of the third batch of pancakes. Lovely let us know how obsessive Obamoyster can get about overanalyzing the facial expressions of the presidential candidates in mid-debate, constantly rewinding videotape to capture the nuances of each raised eyebrow, each subtle twitch of the corners of one's mouth, each tilt of the head. Pearlgirl did her best to capture this sort of subtlety with the little guy's digital camera, playing pancake party paparazzi to the hilt. That's the other reason why I want to download the pictures, 'cause she took some good ones! Grrrrrr.....

At one point, Edie came running back to the house, adamant that she had to have a hamburger, right that second!!!! The smells coming from all the curbside barbecues, fried chicken trucks, and carny corndog stands had her craving some junk food. Dr A's meatballs to the rescue!!!. Edie slathered some Blue Plate mayo on some hamburger buns, stuck some heated-up meatballs between 'em, and satisfied her junk food hunger for a bit. The other reason why she came back was that things were getting testy around the roped-off area in front of the bank. Some folks were getting seriously ticked off at how little was left of the sidewalk and were making something of it. I grabbed my first beer of the day after that.

Shortly after the Oysters left and Shecky and Dr A headed out for a bit, Celcus and Cleo came by, and we talked of all sorts of matters. A drumming sounded in the distance, and we peered out the front windows as a large samba band and its marchers drummed their way down the gray brick road. I kicked at the windows, ticked that I couldn't open the damn things - they were still painted shut. While they were there, a friend of one of the klezmer trio mates came back, elated that he'd received a Zulu coconut, and he hadn't had to pay for it like he'd paid for one at a synagogue auction the year before.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up some, hanging with the little guy, greeting Shecky and Dr A as they walked in with cans of Miller Li...uhhh...Rodeo Lawyer beer, a sure-fire sign they'd been to see Jeffrey and Menckles at their spot (I should have handed those two the tallboy six-pack of the RLB I'd gotten just for them when I saw 'em on Saturday. Oh, well...). They rested their legs and tactfully watched Cars with the little guy (He did what in his cup??!?!??) while Shecky speculated what car love would be like (just...use your imaginations, y'all. Eccch.).

I had seen earlier in the day by way of the Net that Mike Huckabee had taken a state. I flipped the TV over to a network showing mostly Republican primary results, and it projected a win for McCain in Missouri. I switched over to the Rex ball on the local PBS station in time to see the highlight of the whole thing - the Marine Corps Reserve Band doing a stylin' drumline thing. How did I know it was the highlight? The band went into the "Star-Spangled Banner" shortly afterwards, and the scene switched to all the society broads standing in their finest. One of them couldn't conceal her yawn - and the king and queen of Rex hadn't arrived yet!

Dan had called earlier. He'd made it to D.C., and he ran into a family on the Metro that was headed for a Mardi Gras celebration somewhere outside the Beltway. He immediately handed over most of the big bag of beads he'd brought with him to the family, who were elated. It turned out they came from New Orleans originally. If he'd had an extra king cake with him, I know he'd have given them that, too - but he had to bring something to the conference.

I just wish he'd been able to stay here for the whole day.

Oh, well. I now need to dig up the Fisher-Price digital camera manual. Got to get those pictures up!!!!

UPDATE!!!!: I got it.

The little guy in a rare state of repose. He spent nearly every parade moseying around back by the bank ATM, schmoozing with any and all other kids hanging out nearby and picking up broken strands of beads and swinging them around to make arcs that looked similar to this. He really doesn't care about getting parade swag. Not one bit. (sigh) I was, however, heartened to see him chase down a Tucks football that bounced into his territory on Saturday.

What follows are Friday night parade shots of Hermes and Krewe D'Etat floats.:

Pearlgirl's pics in another post. Soon, very soon! 'Til then:

Looove me! I am the cutest Dorothy alive!!!!!!

All on a Bacchus Sunday (or is it a Thoth Sunday?):

Popped into Surrey's for breakfast and met up with a retired couple from Bayside, Queens, outside the door. It was a hoot to talk Nu Yawk with 'em for a bit, like having my Long Island grandparents here for a chat while insanity reigns....only this couple really really loved New Orleans and wished they could move here permanently. "You gotta deal with the summers first," Dan said bemusedly.

The little guy went walking through the restaurant while we were waiting for our breakfast, and he saw some small wall hangings of funky-looking shotgun houses with mirrors for windows. He stood in front of a couple's table, mesmerized by them, asking me what kind of house it was. "It's a shotgun house, honey," I told him.

"And what's that one, Mom?" he asked pointing to another house next to it.

"That's a double shotgun," I told him. "Excuse us, please," I said to the couple with a smile.

"Oh, no, that's okay," the man said.

He then turned to my son and said," That shotgun's about to be turned into condos, see. And then the bank will foreclose on it!"

Evil laughs came from the man's companion and myself. "It's true, but it's sad," I said, and we all agreed, as the kid went wandering around and asking me if every house on the wall was a shotgun. Yes, yes, and yes again. And it's shaping up to be quite a 'hood, apparently.

___________________

Nothing spoils parading fun like having somebody mark off our parade spot with packing tape attached to parade chairs and a cooler on wheels, with our bead-eating tree roped into the bargain as a territory marker. If it weren't so crass, I'd have spray-painted it as our spot a long time ago, but that ain't right. I set up the chairs just outside of the tape zone and settled in to mark time for us until Thoth came down the pike. Dan and the little guy came by most of the way through Babylon, and Dan set about trying to annoy the packing tape crew as much as he could. "Can I go get your scissors from home and just cut that crap?" he asked me.

"No objections from me," I said as a float went by and Dan went running off to whore himself for doubloons. Yeah, we've got our priorities straight.

At one point, the little guy bummed his way up on a ladder with the son of a lady whose mother was visiting from Germany. Normally, the family doesn't go out and see this many parades, but they decided to take it all in just for the frau. The kid worked it up there with the boy and got a spear and some stuffed animals from Thoth. The lady's daughters worked it on the ground and one of 'em came back with some stars and bars beads around her neck. "Look what I got, Mama!" she said.

The lady took one look at those Confederate flags and gave her daughter a short history lesson on what they stood for right then and there. The beads came off and went into their bead bag. The frau, who was sitting next to the swag bag, picked them up out of the bag and put them on herself. Her daughter turned around and saw them on her. A short discussion in German followed along the lines of what the lady had just told her own daughter, with something about the Nazis thrown in for emphasis. The frau pulled the beads off superfast after that and tossed them in the bag.

"I can't believe somebody would buy those, let alone throw 'em at a parade!" I said to the lady.

"Well, that's Mardi Gras for ya," she said. Oy vey.

I got my sign ready for when float 16A came around:

Hey Huck!
Upchuck Us Somethin', Mister!

and it was in that way that I got to meet yet another fellow blogger. Huck, man, one of these days, you'll just have to take the mask off. We've gotta stop meeting like this! Thanks again for the throws with an actual country's flag on 'em and not the stars and bars. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

_________________

We decided to poop out on Bacchus (largely because of the packing tape crew...I did get some perverse satisfaction out of the fact that a float rider tossed an open Coors Light at one of the members of the crew, soaking her lap. What goes around comes around) and headed over to Edie's for the Super Bowl, some chili, some beer, and some copious amounts of nacho dip, and ice cream. I am now glad that we made that decision, since it was one helluva game that even had Edie's daughter on the edge of her seat. It certainly made history, y'all, and we even got back home and got a parking spot on our block.

Life is goooood.

However, just 'cause life is good for me right now doesn't mean that city officials have quit being pigheaded idiots for the duration, just 'cause it's Carnival. Main offender of the day: the Walking Id. Otherwise known as the Grand Liar Whose Pants Are On Fire.

Urrrgh. For the second year in a row, I had to miss Muses and could only experience their parade through the swag Dan brought back. Four Parades In A Row + One Extremely Tired Little Guy = Mom And Little Guy's Early Exit From The Parade Route.

And then I turn on the radio and hear the author of a certain Atlantic article being interviewed by Scott Simon.

First, Kill All the School Boards :

I asked Marc Tucker, the head of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (a 2006 bipartisan panel that called for an overhaul of the education system), how he convinces people that local control is hobbling our schools. He said he asks a simple question: If we have the second-most-expensive K–12 system of all those measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but consistently perform between the middle and the bottom of the pack, shouldn’t we examine the systems of countries that spend less and get better results? “I then point out that the system of local control that we have is almost unique,” Tucker says. “One then has to defend a practice that is uncharacteristic of the countries with the best performance.

“It’s an industrial-benchmarking argument,” he adds.

Some intriguing conclusions by Matt Miller:

What of school boards? In an ideal world, we would scrap them—especially in big cities, where most poor children live. That’s the impulse behind a growing drive for mayoral control of schools. New York and Boston have used mayoral authority to sustain what are among the most far-reaching reform agendas in the country, including more-rigorous curricula and a focus on better teaching and school leadership. Of course, the chances of eliminating school boards anytime soon are nil. But we can at least recast and limit their role.

In all of these efforts, we must understand one paradox: only by transcending local control can we create genuine autonomy for our schools. “If you visit schools in many other parts of the world,” Marc Tucker says, “you’re struck almost immediately … by a sense of autonomy on the part of the school staff and principal that you don’t find in the United States.” Research in 46 countries by Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich has shown that setting clear external standards while granting real discretion to schools in how to meet them is the most effective way to run a system. We need to give schools one set of national expectations, free educators and parents to collaborate locally in whatever ways work, and get everything else out of the way.

My legs are achy as all hell, and I must rest for today's parades. Talk amongst yourselves. Next year, Muses for Mama!!!!

Oh, and I had to look this up, because I saw this graphic on the side of an NOPD Mobile Command unit at the beginning of one of the parades:

and all I could think of was a silly SNL skit. The explanation behind the name is a great deal more serious than what I thought, though. I suggest NOGAP change the name pronto.