The Way That Jazz Goes Down
I’ve come to believe that memory inhibits creativity and spontaneity. I kind of know this from experience; at least I think that I do.
For example, decades ago, a younger me, down on my luck, took a temp job as a dishwasher. I was sent to a club to bust suds.
There I was, up to my elbows in plate scraps, bemoaning my fate, when through the kitchen wall (adjacent to the audience) came the sounds of a gifted jazz artist and… viola, I had an epiphany. I was there, yes I was, (or at that time I was here, the lines kind of get fuzzy). And I was actually being paid to listen to one of the all time great performers of my time!
I remember this, and I remember Ahmad Jamal coming into the kitchen to scam a bite and me feeling special and a part of it all. I remember it like it was yesterday.
From that moment forward, I became a musiholic. I ate, slept, woke, dreamt, and lived music. No artist was too obscure, no venue was out of bounds, no form was ignored, no rolling stone was unturned, and I even put a full Nelson on Willie.
I started to, and still do, listen to Dylan and Dvorjak, The Beatles and Beethoven, Tom Waits, Aretha Franklin, Doctor John, Otis Redding, Neil Young, B.B. King, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson, Clyde McFadder, Eric Satie, Bessie Smith, Peggy Lee, Marvin Gaye, Nat Cole, Elvis, The Dixie Cups, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Vladimir Horowitz, Mendelssohn, Santana, Brubeck and a thousand other artists that you can but hope in your dreams to appreciate.
Listen up! I was actually paid to tend bar and see Miles Davis perform, not once but a half a dozen times (at least)! Top that!
But, I also recall Jazz Fest being twelve dollars, phone calls being a nickel, bus rides being a quarter and my pay being not much more than it is today.
Where does that leave me? I’ll tell you. In a quandary and quagmire. Am I still gonna try my damnedest to get as much time off from work to blow my hard earned to be out there at the Fair Grounds to cram more music into my already overloaded skull? You bet your sweet ass I am!
Do I understand why thirty five years of profit can’t be accounted for so that prices go up, tickets become more inconvenient to procure and Mother Nature more unpredictable, for the privilege of seeing performances by legends of the music world and be actually there when they do their thing? Yep.
Every year I make whatever sacrifice it takes to be there or be square. Sure, there are forces at work beyond my control or understanding that put on the greatest show on earth; but I’ve got to be there! My life, my soul and my heart beats to the sounds of Johnny Vadokovitz (SP) on drums at the Jazz tent. The Dixie Cups and The Dixie Chicks melt my shorts and to be in the Gospel Tent is truly a religious experience. And I’ve got to be in the audience! This year, as in all previous, The New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival will not be televised …Jazz Fest is LIVE!
My policy is to get tickets and worm my way into as many and any hours that I can squeeze in, I pour over programs and maps, make the necessary strategic plans to see my favored performers and then upon arrival scap it all and go where the sounds take me. And I travel light, fast and able. There’s gut in my strut, glide in my stride and no shame in my game.
Okay, I hate the car lot in the space where a stage should be, I don’t understand why the beer doesn’t give me a buzz or how come this year they’re going to build bleachers for high rollers to get a better view than us shmucks on ground level. I don’t know why thirty something’s carry poles with flags and travel in packs. I wonder why folks buy tickets and then claim real estate with blankets, folding chairs and tarps and treat you like a trespasser and interloper should you tread on their sacred ground. I also can’t fathom why people carry so much gear with them, like chairs and backpacks and jungle fashion. And you know what? I don’t care.
In my own warped mind, I don’t think that they really get it. This is not Survivor Twelve, it’s the friggin’ Jazz Fest!
Dig this; a few years ago my step was losing its pep, my ocean was losing its motion…my get up and go was getting’ up and goin’. So I spy this rain tent, you know, one of those misting places that you stumble upon and can never find again?
So I go in out of the din and the glare and all of a sudden it gets quiet; I mean real quiet. The fine mist of cool jetted water is not quite wetting me as much as it is centering me. I can hardly make out the shapes of people around me but I’m sensing that there are them and we’re headed in the direction of this light at the end of the tunnel, if you will.
Nobody’s in a hurry, so naturally I’m not either (you know, go with the flow..?)
So, I’m cruisin’ thinking everything’s cool and this light is getting brighter, all of a sudden I can see the forms in front of me and we’re headed for this opening and we get closer and closer and it starts to open up……SHAZAM!!
The sounds of people having a great time, music all around us, the sun is shining and I smell food cooking. My body temperature welcomes the Sun’s rays and I believe, yes I do, that I have just gone to heaven!
Every year I start my Festin’ with a dozen raw oysters and the hoisting of a beer to my loved ones who’ve passed on or merely passed on by and hope that their heaven is at least as good a time as mine will be; and like I said: be there or be square. See you at the Fair.
Showing posts with label New Orleans News and Views. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans News and Views. Show all posts
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Crayons in the French Quarter
Rejection and despair. That’s the sound that is made when a crayon hits the floor; and, Green was face down in a pool of dust. Again. And, that was the sound that had just interrupted a story that I was trying to compose.
But, I digress, (as an aspiring writer, I’ve always wanted to watch myself, coolly detached, type ‘but, I digress’ into a story, along with other phrases like ‘It gave me great pause’ and words like ‘trepidation’ and ‘indigent’) and since you asked, here’s the story:
I had put aside my borrowed copy of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. In the book, he talks about his misadventures being indigent in these places in the nineteen twenties or very early thirties. I had decided to do a piece on the people who fall through the cracks here in New Orleans. I have a current passing, and sometimes personal, relationship with about a dozen local ‘unfortunates’ and recently it has given me great pause, I think because, on some subliminal level, I can relate to them and their missed fortunes.
I was also marveling at how much so little has changed for the poor over centuries of progress for mankind; as if the impoverished, being one of the lost tribes of Israel, passed their misery from generation to generation.
I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem in D minor and reflecting on how, with one twist of fate, we are all a step away from living on the street or relying on ‘the kindness of strangers’. I’m convinced that, without my consent, an event or, series of events, could have me (like others that I know) eating from trashcans, sleeping in doorways and carrying my life in a black plastic garbage bag. Possibly, my ‘twilight years’ would be spent lying in a mental ward getting my Pampers changed, as I bark like a duck. One degree of separation, that’s how I was seeing it.
I considered getting a cell phone, surely that would save me from a future of cheap wine, generic cigarettes and asking that cute couple from Des Moines to give me money for standing still, on a milk carton, painted silver. In New Orleans being a living statue on a street corner is a vocation; one step above begging, they do not have cell phones. People hurrying from paying jobs to warm hearths have cell phones. The upwardly mobile, drinking snappy cocktails at swank joints, have cell phones. I do not have a cell phone.
After a recent conversation with my older sister on whether poverty was hereditary or contagious, I came to the conclusion, that in my case at least, it is both. I know no one who is not living from paycheck to paycheck, when they’re that lucky, including every member of my family. You can probably guess what I have to say to that smart-ass that coined the phrase that “money can’t buy happiness”!
In addition, I’m not aware that I’ll have an alternative financial plan, should some mishap occur in my life. I don’t even have a primary financial plan. As I see it, I’m living in a world where college buildings will get millions, and the benefactor’s names will be emblazoned on them, possibly along with their cell phone numbers. Meanwhile, the majority of the population; the impoverished, the insufficient, and the undereducated (the un-cell phoned) will get minimum wage, (at best) and no benefits, ignored by the very people that have it in their power to help them. Maybe the folks with cell phones are hooked up to a higher power, or something. Maybe folks with cell phones never slip through the cracks. My head was hurting; I was obviously putting a strain on my brain.
***************************************
Then, between Introit and the Kyrie Eleison, as if by design, a crayon, known only as Green, bit the dust.
I kept the basic box of eight crayons by my desk in the hopes that remembering all of their names would be proof enough that dementia wasn’t setting in. What do I know? Twice before, I’ve found Green out of the box and thought ‘that’s it, I’ve got Alzheimer’s’. This time though, I caught them red handed! Who? The other crayons, of course. What were they doing? Practicing color discrimination! Why were they doing that? I don’t know, maybe it’s just what they do where they come from, kinda like us. Where do they come from? That parallel universe that I’m always talking about
From now on, my theory that there is a parallel universe that is invading us with bad tippers, digital watches, haters and cheaters will include crayons with their own agendas. How else would you explain a CEO who builds a house for a hundred million dollars while John Q. Shareholder takes it in the shorts, if certainly not for a parallel universe and its invasion? These types certainly can’t come from this planet. Period. No member of Homo Sapiens could think or act like that. It belies the term. For the unenlightened, ‘Homo Sapiens’ literally means ‘wise man’. I certainly don’t feel very wise, but, I also didn’t consider myself the type of ‘homo’ that would strap on a body bomb and visit a shopping mall for a little ‘catch back’. That, my friend, takes an alien.
I wondered if there was a correlation between the secret life of crayons and man’s inhumanity to man. To this end, I decided to take my color discrimination theory a step further and perhaps learn something that would be of use in my future, and possibly the future of the world.
I went to Walgreen’s and parted with my ‘hard earned’ for a box of sixty -four Crayolas™. There are other, less expensive, brands and bigger boxes, but, sixty four is the largest quantity you can buy in the French Quarter and Crayolas ™ come with a handy sharpener and are made in the good old U. S. of A. (non toxic, of course). I was hoping to surprise the invaders and learn something about their culture, and perhaps save our planet.
Walking home with my purchase was a joy. It was a clear, warm afternoon in the French Quarter and the smells of Tea Olive and honeysuckle were in the air, and the air was full of expectation. The slight breeze whispered of great potentials and happy endings. I was content to meander in a southern miasma of partial amnesia, if you catch my drift.
‘Drifting’ my way through the narrow streets, past centuries old cottages and ornately ironed balconies brimming with ferns and flowers, I wondered how much had changed over the years in crayon land. Was the color ‘Flesh’ expanded to include ‘Asian’, ‘Hispanic’, and a myriad of ‘African American’ colors? Or was it now called ‘Band-Aid’ or ‘Caucasian’? Were the Greens grouped with Blues because envy was safe with melancholy? Were the Yellows now cowering in their own section, and was ‘Aqua Marine’ now in a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t tell’ area? Were the crayons of my youth ‘toxic’ (we used to eat them, you know)? The possibilities were endless.
The box sat on my desk unopened for days. I pictured an uneasy truce between the colors being so closely confined and sealed to boot. I wondered what terrors the opening of the box would unleash. Would they behave? I recalled finding a Yellow Penway ™ Crayon in the street a few days earlier; it was broken in three places, obviously the victim of turf wars.
I read the box. Did you know that in Easton, Pa. there is a factory that makes Crayolas? And, that you can call them toll free at 1-800-crayola for a seventy five-cent coupon off your next purchase, you can tour the factory if you ever get up that way, and that, no, they are NOT made by Oompa Loompas. I called them, and they told me that stuff. They have a website, and, of course, it’s www.crayola.com. I also called their marketing firm (not toll free) and I’m awaiting a call back or press package or something.
See, isn’t that better than dwelling on the fact that a third of the adult population of New Orleans can’t read above fifth grade level? How smart does that make you?
****************************************
I finally decided to open the box. I mean, hell that’s more important than the fact that less than half the registered voters actually vote here (and only a fraction of those eligible even register).
First I stood the box on its head for a couple of hours to disorient them. I don’t want any oriented crayons, not on my watch.
And then for the moment of truth.
***********************************************
I opened the box slowly, carefully, with extreme trepidation, forgetting to breathe.
“Holy Cannoli” I exhaled, “they’re in four smaller boxes and there’s no rhyme or reason to their distribution!” I said to no one in particular. The cat eyed me suspiciously from her perch atop the computer printer. I cleared some space on the desk, dumped the crayons out and tried to make some order, or at least get some sense. I started by looking for ‘patterns’ and some emerged.
The Greens were outnumbered, the Red family that drifted into the Oranges held the power, Yellows are almost extinct having inter bred with every other color. Purples were uppity; Silver was being treated like a red headed stepchild, while Black and White simply did not give a shit.
The colors will boggle your mind. There’s Orange, Red Orange and Yellow Orange. There’s Macaroni and Cheese, Purple Mountain’s Majesty, Timberwolf, Asparagus (looking a little overcooked if you ask me), Tumbleweed and Granny Smith Apple! I kid you not. There’s even a color called Bittersweet; I had wondered about that.
But, it was the family of the Blues that blew my mind: Cadet, Turquoise, Pacific, Sky and Robin’s Egg Blue. Cornflower, Cerulean (?), Periwinkle, Blue Green (not to be confused with Green Blue), and of course Blue. I wondered how many shades of the blues there were, and, would B. B. King be able to sing about them all?
Putting them back (in order, of course) I didn’t see Aqua Marine and there were no flesh tones of any ethnic group in evidence. My neighbor assures me that there’s a box of ninety-six out there and has intimated that the next time she leaves the French Quarter she’ll look for it for me. As a hard core Quarterite, I live with the shopping policy that: “If it’s not found in the French Quarter, I don’t really need it”
There, that’s easier than trying to figure out why it seems that The American Dream is being filmed in Myopic-Vision and is being directed by Frederico Fellini, from beyond the grave; hang on……, I thought I just heard Raw Umber telling Olive Green to “Stop whining and get a !@@##$$%%*8* Job!!”
It’s time to reseal that box, there is such a thing as too much information. And besides, who’d believe me?
But, I digress, (as an aspiring writer, I’ve always wanted to watch myself, coolly detached, type ‘but, I digress’ into a story, along with other phrases like ‘It gave me great pause’ and words like ‘trepidation’ and ‘indigent’) and since you asked, here’s the story:
I had put aside my borrowed copy of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. In the book, he talks about his misadventures being indigent in these places in the nineteen twenties or very early thirties. I had decided to do a piece on the people who fall through the cracks here in New Orleans. I have a current passing, and sometimes personal, relationship with about a dozen local ‘unfortunates’ and recently it has given me great pause, I think because, on some subliminal level, I can relate to them and their missed fortunes.
I was also marveling at how much so little has changed for the poor over centuries of progress for mankind; as if the impoverished, being one of the lost tribes of Israel, passed their misery from generation to generation.
I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem in D minor and reflecting on how, with one twist of fate, we are all a step away from living on the street or relying on ‘the kindness of strangers’. I’m convinced that, without my consent, an event or, series of events, could have me (like others that I know) eating from trashcans, sleeping in doorways and carrying my life in a black plastic garbage bag. Possibly, my ‘twilight years’ would be spent lying in a mental ward getting my Pampers changed, as I bark like a duck. One degree of separation, that’s how I was seeing it.
I considered getting a cell phone, surely that would save me from a future of cheap wine, generic cigarettes and asking that cute couple from Des Moines to give me money for standing still, on a milk carton, painted silver. In New Orleans being a living statue on a street corner is a vocation; one step above begging, they do not have cell phones. People hurrying from paying jobs to warm hearths have cell phones. The upwardly mobile, drinking snappy cocktails at swank joints, have cell phones. I do not have a cell phone.
After a recent conversation with my older sister on whether poverty was hereditary or contagious, I came to the conclusion, that in my case at least, it is both. I know no one who is not living from paycheck to paycheck, when they’re that lucky, including every member of my family. You can probably guess what I have to say to that smart-ass that coined the phrase that “money can’t buy happiness”!
In addition, I’m not aware that I’ll have an alternative financial plan, should some mishap occur in my life. I don’t even have a primary financial plan. As I see it, I’m living in a world where college buildings will get millions, and the benefactor’s names will be emblazoned on them, possibly along with their cell phone numbers. Meanwhile, the majority of the population; the impoverished, the insufficient, and the undereducated (the un-cell phoned) will get minimum wage, (at best) and no benefits, ignored by the very people that have it in their power to help them. Maybe the folks with cell phones are hooked up to a higher power, or something. Maybe folks with cell phones never slip through the cracks. My head was hurting; I was obviously putting a strain on my brain.
***************************************
Then, between Introit and the Kyrie Eleison, as if by design, a crayon, known only as Green, bit the dust.
I kept the basic box of eight crayons by my desk in the hopes that remembering all of their names would be proof enough that dementia wasn’t setting in. What do I know? Twice before, I’ve found Green out of the box and thought ‘that’s it, I’ve got Alzheimer’s’. This time though, I caught them red handed! Who? The other crayons, of course. What were they doing? Practicing color discrimination! Why were they doing that? I don’t know, maybe it’s just what they do where they come from, kinda like us. Where do they come from? That parallel universe that I’m always talking about
From now on, my theory that there is a parallel universe that is invading us with bad tippers, digital watches, haters and cheaters will include crayons with their own agendas. How else would you explain a CEO who builds a house for a hundred million dollars while John Q. Shareholder takes it in the shorts, if certainly not for a parallel universe and its invasion? These types certainly can’t come from this planet. Period. No member of Homo Sapiens could think or act like that. It belies the term. For the unenlightened, ‘Homo Sapiens’ literally means ‘wise man’. I certainly don’t feel very wise, but, I also didn’t consider myself the type of ‘homo’ that would strap on a body bomb and visit a shopping mall for a little ‘catch back’. That, my friend, takes an alien.
I wondered if there was a correlation between the secret life of crayons and man’s inhumanity to man. To this end, I decided to take my color discrimination theory a step further and perhaps learn something that would be of use in my future, and possibly the future of the world.
I went to Walgreen’s and parted with my ‘hard earned’ for a box of sixty -four Crayolas™. There are other, less expensive, brands and bigger boxes, but, sixty four is the largest quantity you can buy in the French Quarter and Crayolas ™ come with a handy sharpener and are made in the good old U. S. of A. (non toxic, of course). I was hoping to surprise the invaders and learn something about their culture, and perhaps save our planet.
Walking home with my purchase was a joy. It was a clear, warm afternoon in the French Quarter and the smells of Tea Olive and honeysuckle were in the air, and the air was full of expectation. The slight breeze whispered of great potentials and happy endings. I was content to meander in a southern miasma of partial amnesia, if you catch my drift.
‘Drifting’ my way through the narrow streets, past centuries old cottages and ornately ironed balconies brimming with ferns and flowers, I wondered how much had changed over the years in crayon land. Was the color ‘Flesh’ expanded to include ‘Asian’, ‘Hispanic’, and a myriad of ‘African American’ colors? Or was it now called ‘Band-Aid’ or ‘Caucasian’? Were the Greens grouped with Blues because envy was safe with melancholy? Were the Yellows now cowering in their own section, and was ‘Aqua Marine’ now in a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t tell’ area? Were the crayons of my youth ‘toxic’ (we used to eat them, you know)? The possibilities were endless.
The box sat on my desk unopened for days. I pictured an uneasy truce between the colors being so closely confined and sealed to boot. I wondered what terrors the opening of the box would unleash. Would they behave? I recalled finding a Yellow Penway ™ Crayon in the street a few days earlier; it was broken in three places, obviously the victim of turf wars.
I read the box. Did you know that in Easton, Pa. there is a factory that makes Crayolas? And, that you can call them toll free at 1-800-crayola for a seventy five-cent coupon off your next purchase, you can tour the factory if you ever get up that way, and that, no, they are NOT made by Oompa Loompas. I called them, and they told me that stuff. They have a website, and, of course, it’s www.crayola.com. I also called their marketing firm (not toll free) and I’m awaiting a call back or press package or something.
See, isn’t that better than dwelling on the fact that a third of the adult population of New Orleans can’t read above fifth grade level? How smart does that make you?
****************************************
I finally decided to open the box. I mean, hell that’s more important than the fact that less than half the registered voters actually vote here (and only a fraction of those eligible even register).
First I stood the box on its head for a couple of hours to disorient them. I don’t want any oriented crayons, not on my watch.
And then for the moment of truth.
***********************************************
I opened the box slowly, carefully, with extreme trepidation, forgetting to breathe.
“Holy Cannoli” I exhaled, “they’re in four smaller boxes and there’s no rhyme or reason to their distribution!” I said to no one in particular. The cat eyed me suspiciously from her perch atop the computer printer. I cleared some space on the desk, dumped the crayons out and tried to make some order, or at least get some sense. I started by looking for ‘patterns’ and some emerged.
The Greens were outnumbered, the Red family that drifted into the Oranges held the power, Yellows are almost extinct having inter bred with every other color. Purples were uppity; Silver was being treated like a red headed stepchild, while Black and White simply did not give a shit.
The colors will boggle your mind. There’s Orange, Red Orange and Yellow Orange. There’s Macaroni and Cheese, Purple Mountain’s Majesty, Timberwolf, Asparagus (looking a little overcooked if you ask me), Tumbleweed and Granny Smith Apple! I kid you not. There’s even a color called Bittersweet; I had wondered about that.
But, it was the family of the Blues that blew my mind: Cadet, Turquoise, Pacific, Sky and Robin’s Egg Blue. Cornflower, Cerulean (?), Periwinkle, Blue Green (not to be confused with Green Blue), and of course Blue. I wondered how many shades of the blues there were, and, would B. B. King be able to sing about them all?
Putting them back (in order, of course) I didn’t see Aqua Marine and there were no flesh tones of any ethnic group in evidence. My neighbor assures me that there’s a box of ninety-six out there and has intimated that the next time she leaves the French Quarter she’ll look for it for me. As a hard core Quarterite, I live with the shopping policy that: “If it’s not found in the French Quarter, I don’t really need it”
There, that’s easier than trying to figure out why it seems that The American Dream is being filmed in Myopic-Vision and is being directed by Frederico Fellini, from beyond the grave; hang on……, I thought I just heard Raw Umber telling Olive Green to “Stop whining and get a !@@##$$%%*8* Job!!”
It’s time to reseal that box, there is such a thing as too much information. And besides, who’d believe me?
Statistics in New Orleans
Thirty Helens agree: “there’s no disgrace like home”. In a nutshell, that about sums it up for me. No, rats are not gnawing at my brain; I’ve come down with a case of Mathematic Statistic Constipation (MSC) compounded by Sensory Media Overload (SMO).
Oh, I know that you think that I have it made with my girlfriend that drinks beer out of the can, a dog that plays pool for money and a monkey that cheats at cards; and you’re thinking “Plus, he continually gets paid to write drivel in a great urban publication, what are the odds of that?” I’ll tell you. About a hundred thousand to one.
You might add that I’m one of 4,300 people who has found space to rent in one of the 2,000 buildings in the french Quarter, that I’m not one of the 1,000 cases a day that need to be seen at Charity Hospital, or one of the ‘one a day average’ killings that take place in this city (counting those by law enforcers). What are the odds?
I’m not one of the half of the population that’s unemployed or the quarter of the population that live in poverty. I am not one of the more than 3,000,000 people that have lost their jobs since the current administration took office. I’m not one of the 46% of children born in Louisiana into single parent homes. The 60% that live in poverty and 17% that are reared in households with an income of less than $7,500.00 a year”. I’m not one out of every seven women in Louisiana that have been or are being stalked (up 20% over national average).
Statistically speaking, I am not one of the 30% of the adult population that cannot read above a fifth grade level. I’m also not part of either the 39% population stuck in illiteracy level one, or the 75% of the population (and this is all in New Orleans) stuck in illiteracy level two”. I am stuck up to my kiester in statistics!
I am part of the 56% of eligible voters that has registered and part of the roughly half of the registered voters that actually do vote.
Does any of that do me any good? No. 99% of the ideas that I have to save humanity are largely overlooked by 100% of the people who could implement those policies.
Where I work, there is a notice, posted by The Louisiana Restaurant Association about crime in the workplace. It says that there is one robbery every 46 seconds, one assault every 29 seconds, one rape every 5 minutes, and one murder every 21 minutes. Is this America?
I decided, hey, I can come up with statistics on my own. I funded a private study, retained an independent research team of expert (me), and came up with these startling, if not facts, at least, plausible statistics. This is only a small %
Life
87% of the public wish Ben and Jen would just go away.
Of the 59 parts of my body that a glamour magazine says “I want ‘her’ to know about” I can only think of 2%.
Only 12% of cars (including cabs and cops) use turn signals.
Nobody likes rap music. It’s just that 85% of young people don’t know how to sing.
Like most screaming heterosexual men, I spend 57% of my time thinking about women and glasses of beer. What do I do with the other 43%? Sleep mostly.
The Universe
98% of people think that if indeed money can’t buy happiness at least it can purchase acceptable substitutes; of those 98%, 100% think that money can buy anything.
Only one person in Flushing, Queens, New York knows all the words to “The Tattooed Lady”. What are the odds?
94% of the population know what a ‘kit’ is; these same people do not know what a ‘caboodle’ is.
There is an editorialist that can use the term ‘87 Billion Dollars’ no less than ten times in a single article.
99% of dead people do not look like they’re ‘only sleeping’.
We’re all overweight.
Every government, at all levels, lies 78% of the time about matters concerning their credibility, capability, culpability or any other ability questioned.
There is a bookstore in Austin that has 1,000 different magazines, 0% are soft or hard pornography.
100% of all the money that I should have been saving for my retirement has been spent on sex, drugs and Rock and Roll.
There are only three degrees of separation between you and someone who’s been mugged. 100% true.
Everything Else
There’s no such thing as consumer confidence to 87% of people with incomes of less than $50,000.00 a year.
It costs a family of three roughly 50% less income than it takes a single parent with two children.
99.9% of everyone you know has had a bicycle stolen or knows someone who has.
‘Canoodle’ is not in the dictionary; but tell someone that you did a little of it last night and 66% will smile knowingly.
Winking with both eyes at the same time will only upset 2% of the population.
96% of people that are alarmed by American jobs that are lost to foreign markets buy goods from other countries without checking the origin on the label.
Public littering is a way of life to 81% of the population in New Orleans. Spitting percentages are higher.
New Orleans, as a city, does not have the highest % of murders in the
U.S.A. The fact is that New Orleans is 15,000 people shy of being called a city (We’ll have to be satisfied with having the highest homicide rate per capita in the country). Question: what happened to those 15,000 people?
Probably, you’re as scared as I am about answering your door on any night, including Halloween. Incidentally, the term ‘probably’ is defined as a 40-70% chance that what you expect will or will not happen. Think about it.
Oh, I know that you think that I have it made with my girlfriend that drinks beer out of the can, a dog that plays pool for money and a monkey that cheats at cards; and you’re thinking “Plus, he continually gets paid to write drivel in a great urban publication, what are the odds of that?” I’ll tell you. About a hundred thousand to one.
You might add that I’m one of 4,300 people who has found space to rent in one of the 2,000 buildings in the french Quarter, that I’m not one of the 1,000 cases a day that need to be seen at Charity Hospital, or one of the ‘one a day average’ killings that take place in this city (counting those by law enforcers). What are the odds?
I’m not one of the half of the population that’s unemployed or the quarter of the population that live in poverty. I am not one of the more than 3,000,000 people that have lost their jobs since the current administration took office. I’m not one of the 46% of children born in Louisiana into single parent homes. The 60% that live in poverty and 17% that are reared in households with an income of less than $7,500.00 a year”. I’m not one out of every seven women in Louisiana that have been or are being stalked (up 20% over national average).
Statistically speaking, I am not one of the 30% of the adult population that cannot read above a fifth grade level. I’m also not part of either the 39% population stuck in illiteracy level one, or the 75% of the population (and this is all in New Orleans) stuck in illiteracy level two”. I am stuck up to my kiester in statistics!
I am part of the 56% of eligible voters that has registered and part of the roughly half of the registered voters that actually do vote.
Does any of that do me any good? No. 99% of the ideas that I have to save humanity are largely overlooked by 100% of the people who could implement those policies.
Where I work, there is a notice, posted by The Louisiana Restaurant Association about crime in the workplace. It says that there is one robbery every 46 seconds, one assault every 29 seconds, one rape every 5 minutes, and one murder every 21 minutes. Is this America?
I decided, hey, I can come up with statistics on my own. I funded a private study, retained an independent research team of expert (me), and came up with these startling, if not facts, at least, plausible statistics. This is only a small %
Life
87% of the public wish Ben and Jen would just go away.
Of the 59 parts of my body that a glamour magazine says “I want ‘her’ to know about” I can only think of 2%.
Only 12% of cars (including cabs and cops) use turn signals.
Nobody likes rap music. It’s just that 85% of young people don’t know how to sing.
Like most screaming heterosexual men, I spend 57% of my time thinking about women and glasses of beer. What do I do with the other 43%? Sleep mostly.
The Universe
98% of people think that if indeed money can’t buy happiness at least it can purchase acceptable substitutes; of those 98%, 100% think that money can buy anything.
Only one person in Flushing, Queens, New York knows all the words to “The Tattooed Lady”. What are the odds?
94% of the population know what a ‘kit’ is; these same people do not know what a ‘caboodle’ is.
There is an editorialist that can use the term ‘87 Billion Dollars’ no less than ten times in a single article.
99% of dead people do not look like they’re ‘only sleeping’.
We’re all overweight.
Every government, at all levels, lies 78% of the time about matters concerning their credibility, capability, culpability or any other ability questioned.
There is a bookstore in Austin that has 1,000 different magazines, 0% are soft or hard pornography.
100% of all the money that I should have been saving for my retirement has been spent on sex, drugs and Rock and Roll.
There are only three degrees of separation between you and someone who’s been mugged. 100% true.
Everything Else
There’s no such thing as consumer confidence to 87% of people with incomes of less than $50,000.00 a year.
It costs a family of three roughly 50% less income than it takes a single parent with two children.
99.9% of everyone you know has had a bicycle stolen or knows someone who has.
‘Canoodle’ is not in the dictionary; but tell someone that you did a little of it last night and 66% will smile knowingly.
Winking with both eyes at the same time will only upset 2% of the population.
96% of people that are alarmed by American jobs that are lost to foreign markets buy goods from other countries without checking the origin on the label.
Public littering is a way of life to 81% of the population in New Orleans. Spitting percentages are higher.
New Orleans, as a city, does not have the highest % of murders in the
U.S.A. The fact is that New Orleans is 15,000 people shy of being called a city (We’ll have to be satisfied with having the highest homicide rate per capita in the country). Question: what happened to those 15,000 people?
Probably, you’re as scared as I am about answering your door on any night, including Halloween. Incidentally, the term ‘probably’ is defined as a 40-70% chance that what you expect will or will not happen. Think about it.
A View for Obama from New Orleans
In my youth I was told that I could grow up to be President and furthermore, that I could petition the Lord with prayer. Thus far, all evidence that those are true statements are to the contrary.
On a 1975 album by the Tubes, a tune called ‘What do you want from life?’ promised me that as an American citizen I was entitled to, among other things, a heated kidney shaped pool, a Gucci shoe tree, Bob Dylan’s new unlisted phone number, Rosemary’s baby, a foolproof plan, an airtight alibi and a statue of a baby’s arm holding an apple.
According to recent emails, I also deserve lower body fat, higher energy levels, wrinkle reduction, sexual potency, better memory, muscle strength and lower mortgage interest rates. Also, at my request, I can have human growth hormones, relaxers, sedatives, university degrees, viagra, lower credit interest rates, and the ability to investigate any of my friends.
Add to that, I can get Heather’s (and her pre-pubescent friends) web cam shots, the websites of young Russian and Japanese women that are just frothing at the mouth to wed me, Paris Hilton’s xxxx video (with sound), breast enhancement, a gargantuan penis and staying power; and honey, I CAN BE COMPLETE!!!
What went wrong?
Me. I must have missed something growing up. This could be equated to our politics. I know that if I lived in a Democratic society I would have leaders that would do what I tell them is best for me. And, if I happened to vote Republican, I would get leaders that I could count on to do the best for me and that no one would tell me lies. This is simply not true. For leaders and example setters, I have charlatans.
Also, I’m told, as an American, I should be able to count on the media to tell me that there are limitations specific to my economic, physical and intelligence station, and not to jerk me off. This has also not been the case in my recent memory.
Is the media Republican or Democrat? Good question. By the above criteria the media is neither. The media is a Dictator. A dictator and, in essence, a vanity manipulator.
Don’t get me wrong; I have paid my buck at the kissing booths of life:
“Hate that gray? Wash it away!”, “Lose 20 lbs. in two weeks!”, “learn the love secrets of the stars’, “A cleaner closer shave”, “Good for coughs, colds, sore holes, puts hair on anything but a cue ball!, etc. etc. etc.”
Like a lot of Americans, I play the lottery, have lost my paycheck at black jack tables, bet my life on someone to love me for the rest of my life and read books on invisibility, physical immortality, gotten drunk on the elixir of patriotism and taken the Course in Miracles. So?
So, should I not be content with the words that my parents praised my birth with? “He’s got five fingers on each hand, he’s got ten toes and, thank God, he ain’t a moron!” I should be so flattered, I should think that. I don’t
It seems to me that it’s become more important who it is that wins than what it is that’s right. I am suspicious that, as they say, ‘something is rotten in Denmark’, I smell it, I feel it, I know it. The world I live in demands that I should BE SOMEBODY, but it never tells me how to be that somebody; or whom that somebody is. I did not come with an owners manual; so, like a blind man in an unfamiliar space, I’ve been trying to feel my way through life.
I think that there are a lot of us lost Americans, the ones who didn’t become President, the ones whose prayers have not been answered, that may wonder these same things.
It’s as elusive as a fire fly, but as pervasive as planters warts. The rich get richer, the poor have children, the criminals take what they want, the mighty are felled to rise again and the downtrodden are snatched from the brink once again to be given one final flogging. Is this goodness being rewarded? Does God move in mysterious ways? Give me a break!
By all the evidence collected thus far, it’s not a reach to say that: some people get more than their fair share; not because they deserve it, but, by the fact that they’re willing to stick it to some smaller guy, the average Joe. Period. And there are more of us smaller guys than there are them, so go figure. Greed talks and the rest of us walks.
This is not a rant or a rave, but more of ‘I’m weary of folks telling us how fortunate we are instead of letting us in on the screwing that we’re taking. Dry, hard and up against a tree.
And I know that I should be grateful, yes downright grateful, and I remind myself constantly so, that it is a miracle that I am alive, six feet above ground and warm to the touch… BUT. I see people eating from garbage cans, I read about death in the daily papers, I know people who work abnormally hard just to stay financially afloat. I know people who will never get adequate health care, whose children will never be adequately educated and whose future (if not stopped by a bullet) will be to step into their parents miserable places unless we can find a way to break that cycle. Remember, these are also people that were told that they could be President, and not told that they would never be able to afford to visit the dentist regularly.
What do I want from life? I want what a lot of us Americans want: change for the better. The truth would be a start. And yes, I’m not as tall as I appear on film.
On a 1975 album by the Tubes, a tune called ‘What do you want from life?’ promised me that as an American citizen I was entitled to, among other things, a heated kidney shaped pool, a Gucci shoe tree, Bob Dylan’s new unlisted phone number, Rosemary’s baby, a foolproof plan, an airtight alibi and a statue of a baby’s arm holding an apple.
According to recent emails, I also deserve lower body fat, higher energy levels, wrinkle reduction, sexual potency, better memory, muscle strength and lower mortgage interest rates. Also, at my request, I can have human growth hormones, relaxers, sedatives, university degrees, viagra, lower credit interest rates, and the ability to investigate any of my friends.
Add to that, I can get Heather’s (and her pre-pubescent friends) web cam shots, the websites of young Russian and Japanese women that are just frothing at the mouth to wed me, Paris Hilton’s xxxx video (with sound), breast enhancement, a gargantuan penis and staying power; and honey, I CAN BE COMPLETE!!!
What went wrong?
Me. I must have missed something growing up. This could be equated to our politics. I know that if I lived in a Democratic society I would have leaders that would do what I tell them is best for me. And, if I happened to vote Republican, I would get leaders that I could count on to do the best for me and that no one would tell me lies. This is simply not true. For leaders and example setters, I have charlatans.
Also, I’m told, as an American, I should be able to count on the media to tell me that there are limitations specific to my economic, physical and intelligence station, and not to jerk me off. This has also not been the case in my recent memory.
Is the media Republican or Democrat? Good question. By the above criteria the media is neither. The media is a Dictator. A dictator and, in essence, a vanity manipulator.
Don’t get me wrong; I have paid my buck at the kissing booths of life:
“Hate that gray? Wash it away!”, “Lose 20 lbs. in two weeks!”, “learn the love secrets of the stars’, “A cleaner closer shave”, “Good for coughs, colds, sore holes, puts hair on anything but a cue ball!, etc. etc. etc.”
Like a lot of Americans, I play the lottery, have lost my paycheck at black jack tables, bet my life on someone to love me for the rest of my life and read books on invisibility, physical immortality, gotten drunk on the elixir of patriotism and taken the Course in Miracles. So?
So, should I not be content with the words that my parents praised my birth with? “He’s got five fingers on each hand, he’s got ten toes and, thank God, he ain’t a moron!” I should be so flattered, I should think that. I don’t
It seems to me that it’s become more important who it is that wins than what it is that’s right. I am suspicious that, as they say, ‘something is rotten in Denmark’, I smell it, I feel it, I know it. The world I live in demands that I should BE SOMEBODY, but it never tells me how to be that somebody; or whom that somebody is. I did not come with an owners manual; so, like a blind man in an unfamiliar space, I’ve been trying to feel my way through life.
I think that there are a lot of us lost Americans, the ones who didn’t become President, the ones whose prayers have not been answered, that may wonder these same things.
It’s as elusive as a fire fly, but as pervasive as planters warts. The rich get richer, the poor have children, the criminals take what they want, the mighty are felled to rise again and the downtrodden are snatched from the brink once again to be given one final flogging. Is this goodness being rewarded? Does God move in mysterious ways? Give me a break!
By all the evidence collected thus far, it’s not a reach to say that: some people get more than their fair share; not because they deserve it, but, by the fact that they’re willing to stick it to some smaller guy, the average Joe. Period. And there are more of us smaller guys than there are them, so go figure. Greed talks and the rest of us walks.
This is not a rant or a rave, but more of ‘I’m weary of folks telling us how fortunate we are instead of letting us in on the screwing that we’re taking. Dry, hard and up against a tree.
And I know that I should be grateful, yes downright grateful, and I remind myself constantly so, that it is a miracle that I am alive, six feet above ground and warm to the touch… BUT. I see people eating from garbage cans, I read about death in the daily papers, I know people who work abnormally hard just to stay financially afloat. I know people who will never get adequate health care, whose children will never be adequately educated and whose future (if not stopped by a bullet) will be to step into their parents miserable places unless we can find a way to break that cycle. Remember, these are also people that were told that they could be President, and not told that they would never be able to afford to visit the dentist regularly.
What do I want from life? I want what a lot of us Americans want: change for the better. The truth would be a start. And yes, I’m not as tall as I appear on film.
Gumbo Logic in New Orleans
‘Wasted and wounded; it ain’t what the moon did, and God what’m I payin’ for now?’
I resisted the temptation of having a beer for breakfast. Well, almost. Then again, what was I supposed to do, leave it by itself in the fridge and me on the verge of a hangover…..question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, the choices we have to make when we’re on our own, especially when we have the whole day off.
Speaking of choices, is it just me, or is anyone else out there feeling older by the nanosecond? I mean, I hear folks talk about computers that will do everything but wipe your behind and my response is to go out and buy my landlady flowers to help her overlook the fact that I sit out late on the porch smoking Luckys, drinking PBR and listening to Buddy Holly on my turntable singin, “ that’ll be the day-hey-hey, when I die.”
I read in the paper that because Chinese people have to learn how to write all those squiggly kinds of handwriting (whatever it’s called) that they suffer from a lack of creativity. Who knew? Yet it figures, ten thousand years of civilization and the best that they can come up with is Moo Goo Gai Pan? C’mon my yellow brothers, we, on the other hand, know how to butcher people in the street as well as in other countries, and we’ll go you one better…. our children can do it as well, even in their schools!! Just think, maybe because our kids are dumber than dirt, they can concoct ways of smuggling AKA 47s into the gym without being caught… way to go guys.
In the same newspaper, I learned that if we stopped spitting and urinating in public, our crime rate would go down. Well, I tell ya, this American did his part only as recent as last night. That’s right, I could’ve whipped that bad boy out and let’er rip on the fence post, but did I? Not on your tintype! I held it!!! And I just know, that the world is a better place for it.
AND, just yesterday while listening to the plan to rescue a three-legged dog (anybody want one?) I heard about a State Trooper who apprehends an alligator, lassoes it, drags it behind his pick up to a ditch and puts a bullet through its head. Let’s see, what reading level would you put that role model at? Is it just me?
It seems to me that I come from a simpler, more gentle time; a time when singers were harmonizing “could it be I’m falling in love?” as opposed to grunting “gotta find me a Project Girl uh, uh!”
I’ll tell you how it was when I was growing up as opposed to how I see things now.
1. Then: I believed that by dressing smartly, learning to converse intelligently (on a variety of subjects), having skills on the dance floor, speaking politely to everyone but my peer group and, later on, knowing how to handle my alcohol intake would gain me the respect I thought that I deserved.
2. Then: I considered crossing at the corner, saving a candy wrapper for the next litter can, and finding a reason to compliment the next person I spoke with.
3. Then: I considered asking questions instead of demanding answers, meaning “excuse me” instead of “get out of my way” and never to taking a kindness as a weakness.
4. Then: I put romance before finance and even politeness before truth. I had never heard the phrase “talk shit, take none” and wouldn’t have believed it if I had. I practiced patience. Go figure.
5. Then: I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or younger than seventy, weighed my words before I spoke them and knew that this was ‘all about me’ but tried not to let anyone else see it. I believed in miracles.
6. Now: I don’t know. It seems that not only am I out of step and time, but that the drummer that I’m marching to got shot in a cosmic drive by long ago by weapons of mass distraction. I wonder if that last beer had a buddy in the box?
7. Now: good guys do finish last, bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them and being meek does not insure me of any inheritance what so ever.
8. Now: the phrase “have a nice day” means nothing. No one is having a nice day. What are you looking at? You know that it’s true! Do the terms ‘two weeks to live’, ‘ got mugged on the corner’ and ‘there is no cure’ sound foreign to you?
9. Now: I look a someone riding a bike to see if it’s mine that was stolen, make sure that I lock the door behind me and look over my shoulder when I walk home at night.
10. Now: I just don’t know.
Here’s what’s in today’s paper, and I’m not making this up.
1. In the 1990s New Orleans lost 9,000 jobs, mandatory helmet bill killed in House, Panel OKs easing video poker rules, they’re clearing out Tallulah Prison, SARS fatality rate higher than thought, Malvo’s confession can be used and a man is arrested after a ten hour stand off.
2. In the main section there are ads for one-day sales, no interest or payments till June 2004, you won’t believe our low prices, sex for life and it’s the laser procedure you’ve been waiting for.
3. In other news: man shot, killed after visiting friend, New Orleans man admits to 1976 rape and killing, man, 81, booked on obscenity charge and 4 are accused of beating deputy in a parking lot. There’s a woman arrested in a shooting, a man sought in a slaying, and, a girl, 16 sent to jail after shooting her boyfriend claiming that they were in bed and she was merely ‘playing’ with the gun. Oh, and a seventeen year old student died Thursday of blows to his head. Do you wonder why I drink?
4. Here’s one on the front page of the sport section: “ The 1-2 punch of Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isadore last year accelerated the ecological nightmare known as coastal erosion.
On the lighter side: Jade Jagger designs jewelry for the stars, plasma screens are so sleek, they hold a sophisticated, almost artlike allure, Ben and J. Lo have found a Georgia retreat and there’s a new computer that will wipe your butt (alright, I made that one up)
Oh, and if you needed to know: my horoscope advises me to write in a journal, Snoopy is starting on a book entitled ‘The Dog’, the answer to 27 down is not ‘Rosebud’ and today is Jimmy Ruffin’s birthday.
Excuse me while I fetch a beverage.
I resisted the temptation of having a beer for breakfast. Well, almost. Then again, what was I supposed to do, leave it by itself in the fridge and me on the verge of a hangover…..question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, the choices we have to make when we’re on our own, especially when we have the whole day off.
Speaking of choices, is it just me, or is anyone else out there feeling older by the nanosecond? I mean, I hear folks talk about computers that will do everything but wipe your behind and my response is to go out and buy my landlady flowers to help her overlook the fact that I sit out late on the porch smoking Luckys, drinking PBR and listening to Buddy Holly on my turntable singin, “ that’ll be the day-hey-hey, when I die.”
I read in the paper that because Chinese people have to learn how to write all those squiggly kinds of handwriting (whatever it’s called) that they suffer from a lack of creativity. Who knew? Yet it figures, ten thousand years of civilization and the best that they can come up with is Moo Goo Gai Pan? C’mon my yellow brothers, we, on the other hand, know how to butcher people in the street as well as in other countries, and we’ll go you one better…. our children can do it as well, even in their schools!! Just think, maybe because our kids are dumber than dirt, they can concoct ways of smuggling AKA 47s into the gym without being caught… way to go guys.
In the same newspaper, I learned that if we stopped spitting and urinating in public, our crime rate would go down. Well, I tell ya, this American did his part only as recent as last night. That’s right, I could’ve whipped that bad boy out and let’er rip on the fence post, but did I? Not on your tintype! I held it!!! And I just know, that the world is a better place for it.
AND, just yesterday while listening to the plan to rescue a three-legged dog (anybody want one?) I heard about a State Trooper who apprehends an alligator, lassoes it, drags it behind his pick up to a ditch and puts a bullet through its head. Let’s see, what reading level would you put that role model at? Is it just me?
It seems to me that I come from a simpler, more gentle time; a time when singers were harmonizing “could it be I’m falling in love?” as opposed to grunting “gotta find me a Project Girl uh, uh!”
I’ll tell you how it was when I was growing up as opposed to how I see things now.
1. Then: I believed that by dressing smartly, learning to converse intelligently (on a variety of subjects), having skills on the dance floor, speaking politely to everyone but my peer group and, later on, knowing how to handle my alcohol intake would gain me the respect I thought that I deserved.
2. Then: I considered crossing at the corner, saving a candy wrapper for the next litter can, and finding a reason to compliment the next person I spoke with.
3. Then: I considered asking questions instead of demanding answers, meaning “excuse me” instead of “get out of my way” and never to taking a kindness as a weakness.
4. Then: I put romance before finance and even politeness before truth. I had never heard the phrase “talk shit, take none” and wouldn’t have believed it if I had. I practiced patience. Go figure.
5. Then: I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or younger than seventy, weighed my words before I spoke them and knew that this was ‘all about me’ but tried not to let anyone else see it. I believed in miracles.
6. Now: I don’t know. It seems that not only am I out of step and time, but that the drummer that I’m marching to got shot in a cosmic drive by long ago by weapons of mass distraction. I wonder if that last beer had a buddy in the box?
7. Now: good guys do finish last, bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them and being meek does not insure me of any inheritance what so ever.
8. Now: the phrase “have a nice day” means nothing. No one is having a nice day. What are you looking at? You know that it’s true! Do the terms ‘two weeks to live’, ‘ got mugged on the corner’ and ‘there is no cure’ sound foreign to you?
9. Now: I look a someone riding a bike to see if it’s mine that was stolen, make sure that I lock the door behind me and look over my shoulder when I walk home at night.
10. Now: I just don’t know.
Here’s what’s in today’s paper, and I’m not making this up.
1. In the 1990s New Orleans lost 9,000 jobs, mandatory helmet bill killed in House, Panel OKs easing video poker rules, they’re clearing out Tallulah Prison, SARS fatality rate higher than thought, Malvo’s confession can be used and a man is arrested after a ten hour stand off.
2. In the main section there are ads for one-day sales, no interest or payments till June 2004, you won’t believe our low prices, sex for life and it’s the laser procedure you’ve been waiting for.
3. In other news: man shot, killed after visiting friend, New Orleans man admits to 1976 rape and killing, man, 81, booked on obscenity charge and 4 are accused of beating deputy in a parking lot. There’s a woman arrested in a shooting, a man sought in a slaying, and, a girl, 16 sent to jail after shooting her boyfriend claiming that they were in bed and she was merely ‘playing’ with the gun. Oh, and a seventeen year old student died Thursday of blows to his head. Do you wonder why I drink?
4. Here’s one on the front page of the sport section: “ The 1-2 punch of Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isadore last year accelerated the ecological nightmare known as coastal erosion.
On the lighter side: Jade Jagger designs jewelry for the stars, plasma screens are so sleek, they hold a sophisticated, almost artlike allure, Ben and J. Lo have found a Georgia retreat and there’s a new computer that will wipe your butt (alright, I made that one up)
Oh, and if you needed to know: my horoscope advises me to write in a journal, Snoopy is starting on a book entitled ‘The Dog’, the answer to 27 down is not ‘Rosebud’ and today is Jimmy Ruffin’s birthday.
Excuse me while I fetch a beverage.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Saving the planet in New Orleans
News from the front: no progress has been made and the wind, my friend, is whistling at your doorstep, down your chimney and up your ego like the Dire Wolf, all six hundred pounds of sin. It’s hotter than July (go figger) and that storm is forming in your aura, if nowhere else. I’m at a category three myself.
I know what you’re thinking: what else can happen? Well, this: we got a bunch of yahoos wanting us to believe that their temporary agendas, with outcomes that we can or cannot predict, alter or effect are dialogue that we should consider considering. Go ahead, they seem to say, use what few brain cells that you have left to store useless information about the inhumanity (on all fronts) of our lives and conditions. But, you know what? All of our challenges will not amount to a hill of beans if we don’t take care of the hill itself. The rest is, after all, just mental masturbation, Capeesh?
Shot at and missed, shit at and hit. The war, the economy and gas prices, sure, are important; but, do you really concentrate on socks and shoes if you aint got no feet? Do you lock the doors when the walls cave in? Or… if you ain’t got a planet left to wage war on…what’s the point of having peace talks?
The big ‘E’ word. The environment. And how would you like to come see the poster child for environmental dysfunction? Well, ‘c’mon down!’ Come on down to New Orleans and The French Quarter!
As residents and workers here, we can’t help but chuckle when we see a tourist, inebriated or not, trip over what should be a smooth walking surface. The city says the sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the landlords, the VCC says it has a say on what goes on there and not to fool with blockage or adornment. Landlords and residents shoot the bird at any responsibility and say that if they are city streets, let the city take care of them. It’s the big ‘not my problem’ all the way around and then someone busts their butt.
Oh, and watch out for fallen light posts (or non existent ones). The city says to report a missing or broken light post just submit it’s identification number (?) The story of our lives here – take a number. By the way, THE LIGHTING DEPARTMENT ONLY INSPECTS DURING THE DAY!!!
Demolition by neglect? Where would you like to start?
Add to that, the dark corners where disrespect and crime flourish and there’s no better example of environmental disaster than the vomit and blood and urine and condoms and used hypos on our streets; unless it’s the frigging trash, like the drunk passed out in your doorway.
I know what you’re thinking: “why Phil, it’s a hell of a lot cleaner now that we have a trash company looking out for us”. Nooooo, Fool… we’ve got ten times the number of cleanup elves sweeping up after us… so fast that we can’t let a hint drop without someone being there from SDT to catch it before it hits the ground. We are NOT better citizens about cleanliness, we just have more baby sitters. With your eyes open you can still see trash being tossed everywhere; cigarette butts, chewing gum, chicken bones, go cups and a zip code of spit being left on our streets to be hosed down and picked up by our bazillion dollar trash service.
Paint, kitchen grease and construction mediums being flushed down our storm drains and ultimately to the lake? Let me count the ways.
Recycling? In your dreams, Sucker. One of the other things we have not come to grips with is that you can’t just throw something away… there is no away! It has to go somewhere, and if something that can be recycled is not recycled, you wind up wasting one resource and exploiting another to replace it.
Glass, cardboard, plastic, paper and even compost are parts of reclamation in any civilized community. Simple stuff like a deposit on a bottle, money for cans and cardboard or at the least, an environmental Nazi to fine the shit out of people that don’t take the life of the planet seriously are ideas that haven’t even occurred yet.
Yes, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City. We’ve got an epidemic of complacency that IS stuck on stupid. We have people that know the difference in right speech, right thought and right action with their ears in an iPod and their pants around their asses. We have parenting with no skills, models with no roles and lots of work with no pay.
We’ve been hung out to dry on every level and now the long slow hurricane season of the soul sets in with flash flood watches covering the southern portion of my disposition and a line of thunderstorms developing in the western region of my mental health and the northern regions of my ability to deal rationally with my precarious emotional situation. Severe weather well into the afternoon except for a lone gust of wind in my bedroom in a high pressure zone with a 103 and millibar high pressure zone and weak pressure ridge extending from my eyes down to my cheeks.
We know what needs to be done, what needs to happen and yet with daily life and every indiscretion that we allow to happen, another nail is driven into the coffin of the planet. It is said that an impotent person, an oppressed person, a beaten person does not make waves, and the ignorant get away with crimes against nature. Not one of us is truly enfettered and alive until we complain about the stuff that bothers us… the things around us that insult us.
Our sensibilities have left us for dead and put vice grips on our hearts and minds. Well, the forecast for the extended period of time until we wake up and take it all back is high tonight, low tomorrow and---
precipitation--------is-------expected.
(Excerpts of this piece lifted from Tom Waits and others… but, of course, you knew that.)
I know what you’re thinking: what else can happen? Well, this: we got a bunch of yahoos wanting us to believe that their temporary agendas, with outcomes that we can or cannot predict, alter or effect are dialogue that we should consider considering. Go ahead, they seem to say, use what few brain cells that you have left to store useless information about the inhumanity (on all fronts) of our lives and conditions. But, you know what? All of our challenges will not amount to a hill of beans if we don’t take care of the hill itself. The rest is, after all, just mental masturbation, Capeesh?
Shot at and missed, shit at and hit. The war, the economy and gas prices, sure, are important; but, do you really concentrate on socks and shoes if you aint got no feet? Do you lock the doors when the walls cave in? Or… if you ain’t got a planet left to wage war on…what’s the point of having peace talks?
The big ‘E’ word. The environment. And how would you like to come see the poster child for environmental dysfunction? Well, ‘c’mon down!’ Come on down to New Orleans and The French Quarter!
As residents and workers here, we can’t help but chuckle when we see a tourist, inebriated or not, trip over what should be a smooth walking surface. The city says the sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the landlords, the VCC says it has a say on what goes on there and not to fool with blockage or adornment. Landlords and residents shoot the bird at any responsibility and say that if they are city streets, let the city take care of them. It’s the big ‘not my problem’ all the way around and then someone busts their butt.
Oh, and watch out for fallen light posts (or non existent ones). The city says to report a missing or broken light post just submit it’s identification number (?) The story of our lives here – take a number. By the way, THE LIGHTING DEPARTMENT ONLY INSPECTS DURING THE DAY!!!
Demolition by neglect? Where would you like to start?
Add to that, the dark corners where disrespect and crime flourish and there’s no better example of environmental disaster than the vomit and blood and urine and condoms and used hypos on our streets; unless it’s the frigging trash, like the drunk passed out in your doorway.
I know what you’re thinking: “why Phil, it’s a hell of a lot cleaner now that we have a trash company looking out for us”. Nooooo, Fool… we’ve got ten times the number of cleanup elves sweeping up after us… so fast that we can’t let a hint drop without someone being there from SDT to catch it before it hits the ground. We are NOT better citizens about cleanliness, we just have more baby sitters. With your eyes open you can still see trash being tossed everywhere; cigarette butts, chewing gum, chicken bones, go cups and a zip code of spit being left on our streets to be hosed down and picked up by our bazillion dollar trash service.
Paint, kitchen grease and construction mediums being flushed down our storm drains and ultimately to the lake? Let me count the ways.
Recycling? In your dreams, Sucker. One of the other things we have not come to grips with is that you can’t just throw something away… there is no away! It has to go somewhere, and if something that can be recycled is not recycled, you wind up wasting one resource and exploiting another to replace it.
Glass, cardboard, plastic, paper and even compost are parts of reclamation in any civilized community. Simple stuff like a deposit on a bottle, money for cans and cardboard or at the least, an environmental Nazi to fine the shit out of people that don’t take the life of the planet seriously are ideas that haven’t even occurred yet.
Yes, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City. We’ve got an epidemic of complacency that IS stuck on stupid. We have people that know the difference in right speech, right thought and right action with their ears in an iPod and their pants around their asses. We have parenting with no skills, models with no roles and lots of work with no pay.
We’ve been hung out to dry on every level and now the long slow hurricane season of the soul sets in with flash flood watches covering the southern portion of my disposition and a line of thunderstorms developing in the western region of my mental health and the northern regions of my ability to deal rationally with my precarious emotional situation. Severe weather well into the afternoon except for a lone gust of wind in my bedroom in a high pressure zone with a 103 and millibar high pressure zone and weak pressure ridge extending from my eyes down to my cheeks.
We know what needs to be done, what needs to happen and yet with daily life and every indiscretion that we allow to happen, another nail is driven into the coffin of the planet. It is said that an impotent person, an oppressed person, a beaten person does not make waves, and the ignorant get away with crimes against nature. Not one of us is truly enfettered and alive until we complain about the stuff that bothers us… the things around us that insult us.
Our sensibilities have left us for dead and put vice grips on our hearts and minds. Well, the forecast for the extended period of time until we wake up and take it all back is high tonight, low tomorrow and---
precipitation--------is-------expected.
(Excerpts of this piece lifted from Tom Waits and others… but, of course, you knew that.)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Tenants rights in New Orleans
True story, A neighbor of mine is lamenting a leaking roof, I call City Hall to inquiry about her rights as a tenant. The woman on the other end says, “I didn’t know they had any”.
Well she was wrong of course. Although tenants rights haven’t changed much in Louisiana since the early eighteen hundreds (that’s right!) you do have one overwhelmingly simple and basic right. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to suck it up. And if you’re reading the right to ‘shut up and pay your rent’ here, you’re reading right.
Here’s how it works. You find a place that you can afford and maybe it even suits your needs. The landlord hands you a years lease and you sign it, most of the time not bothering to read it. Face it, most people are on the verge of desperation when they finally get to that point. You spend a year making it as livable as you can and what happens? Your lease is up and there is no new lease, you now join the ranks of the month to month renters, which means you have only the above right.
In the first year, if you’ve registered (and only if you’ve registered) your lease at City Hall, you are pretty much guaranteed a place to live with repairs and maintenance supplied by the landlord at a specific price: your rent. After that all bets are off. This is the state that most of us are in. It only takes five to ten days to get you out after that. You’re now at the mercy of the landlord. The kindness of strangers, so to speak.
During World War Two, renters in the USA were given a right called rent control, which assured them of a definite place to live at a specific price for as long as they could afford to live there. Any rent increases were carefully monitored and minimized. After the war only ten states kept it. Louisiana did not keep it.
Do you want rent control? It’s not easy to get. In 1987 the folks in Milwaukee voted for and passed a referendum in favor of rent control. The state legislature annulled it.
Then again it is easy to get rent control. All a city has to do is have its mayor put it into effect. Simple, huh? Don’t hold your breath.
In response to the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, The Federal Government funded a legal service to craft a model renter-landlord code. It was drafted in 1972 and approved by the American Bar Association in 1974. Today most states use the Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act (URLTA) as a guideline when writing their own laws regarding landlords and tenants. Louisiana has not.
However, the URLTA does not cover security of tenure, control over rent increases, reduced rent for reduced services, freedom of speech in relationship with the landlord, condominium conversion protection for tenants, appointment of a receiver to manage the building if the landlord fails to or the payment of interest and separate handling of security deposits. All things that we already don’t have.
It does limit the landlord’s free access, hold a standard of a warranty of habitability, and protects against landlord’s retaliation.
Do you think that your landlord’s got you by the cajones? I’m sure as heck that he does.
Here’s what the New Orleans Legal Assistance office recommends: read your lease carefully to learn what the landlord is responsible for and what your responsibilities are. Look carefully around your new place and make sure everything works and is in good order. Have someone as a witness and take photos. Get everything in writing and get and keep all receipts.
The law does state that if you do not get your deposit back in thirty days from moving you have to be told why not, and if you’re not to get all of it back, why that also. However, it’s still you word against the landlord’s, and guess who gets the benefit if the doubt? Right.
You have the right to make necessary repairs that the landlord won’t (given sufficient notice) and take it off your rent and the landlord has the right to evict you with no reason. Simple.
Remember, it’s the landlords that write leases and your rights depend on what the lease says. In the past it has been the landlords who wrote the laws governing renters and property, and those laws are still in effect, by the landlord-for the landlord. It’s landlords that can afford to attend political fundraisers to keep those laws in place.
And without someone with a little more authority than me, choosing to change things the renter will always take it in the shorts. And no, Virginia, not all landlords are mean, evil, money grubbing monsters that take their families to Europe, on your dime, as your bathroom ceiling caves in, but there’s nothing stopping them from becoming exactly that.
Well she was wrong of course. Although tenants rights haven’t changed much in Louisiana since the early eighteen hundreds (that’s right!) you do have one overwhelmingly simple and basic right. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to suck it up. And if you’re reading the right to ‘shut up and pay your rent’ here, you’re reading right.
Here’s how it works. You find a place that you can afford and maybe it even suits your needs. The landlord hands you a years lease and you sign it, most of the time not bothering to read it. Face it, most people are on the verge of desperation when they finally get to that point. You spend a year making it as livable as you can and what happens? Your lease is up and there is no new lease, you now join the ranks of the month to month renters, which means you have only the above right.
In the first year, if you’ve registered (and only if you’ve registered) your lease at City Hall, you are pretty much guaranteed a place to live with repairs and maintenance supplied by the landlord at a specific price: your rent. After that all bets are off. This is the state that most of us are in. It only takes five to ten days to get you out after that. You’re now at the mercy of the landlord. The kindness of strangers, so to speak.
During World War Two, renters in the USA were given a right called rent control, which assured them of a definite place to live at a specific price for as long as they could afford to live there. Any rent increases were carefully monitored and minimized. After the war only ten states kept it. Louisiana did not keep it.
Do you want rent control? It’s not easy to get. In 1987 the folks in Milwaukee voted for and passed a referendum in favor of rent control. The state legislature annulled it.
Then again it is easy to get rent control. All a city has to do is have its mayor put it into effect. Simple, huh? Don’t hold your breath.
In response to the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, The Federal Government funded a legal service to craft a model renter-landlord code. It was drafted in 1972 and approved by the American Bar Association in 1974. Today most states use the Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act (URLTA) as a guideline when writing their own laws regarding landlords and tenants. Louisiana has not.
However, the URLTA does not cover security of tenure, control over rent increases, reduced rent for reduced services, freedom of speech in relationship with the landlord, condominium conversion protection for tenants, appointment of a receiver to manage the building if the landlord fails to or the payment of interest and separate handling of security deposits. All things that we already don’t have.
It does limit the landlord’s free access, hold a standard of a warranty of habitability, and protects against landlord’s retaliation.
Do you think that your landlord’s got you by the cajones? I’m sure as heck that he does.
Here’s what the New Orleans Legal Assistance office recommends: read your lease carefully to learn what the landlord is responsible for and what your responsibilities are. Look carefully around your new place and make sure everything works and is in good order. Have someone as a witness and take photos. Get everything in writing and get and keep all receipts.
The law does state that if you do not get your deposit back in thirty days from moving you have to be told why not, and if you’re not to get all of it back, why that also. However, it’s still you word against the landlord’s, and guess who gets the benefit if the doubt? Right.
You have the right to make necessary repairs that the landlord won’t (given sufficient notice) and take it off your rent and the landlord has the right to evict you with no reason. Simple.
Remember, it’s the landlords that write leases and your rights depend on what the lease says. In the past it has been the landlords who wrote the laws governing renters and property, and those laws are still in effect, by the landlord-for the landlord. It’s landlords that can afford to attend political fundraisers to keep those laws in place.
And without someone with a little more authority than me, choosing to change things the renter will always take it in the shorts. And no, Virginia, not all landlords are mean, evil, money grubbing monsters that take their families to Europe, on your dime, as your bathroom ceiling caves in, but there’s nothing stopping them from becoming exactly that.
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