Dr. A and I switched away from the DNC to watch the gay Mormon guy get voted off Project Runway last night. So, we missed two of the best speeches of the convention thus far, Bill Clinton and John Kerry. The buzz has been about Clinton but Kerry gave one of his best speeches ever. Big John also mentioned the T word: "America does not torture. Not ever." 

Thanks to Josh Marshall and the good people at TPM, I watched Kerry's speech this morning. It's well worth 13: 13 out of your day. It beats the hell out of freaking out over Gustav.

I started off the week with a post called Get Started, Get A Fire so I decided to continue the fiery theme with this week's edition of Pulp Fiction Thursday. I was also partially inspired by Joe Biden's combustible speech at the DNC. We start off with a real barnburner of a mystery and a sci-fi novel that involves flames *and* some sort of squid-like creature. I wonder if they considered Captives Of The Calamari as an alternate title? Mmm, calamari...

Burn, Witch, Burn is a helluva title in a sort of H. Rap Brown way. Burn, baby, burn. I wonder if that guy's mask is fire retardant? Finally, we have a bit of non-fiction, which reminds me of the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm wherein Larry David ponders how his friend Yoshi's father could have been a Kamikaze pilot in World War II. Why? Because Papa Kamikaze was very much alive. Banzai, baby, banzai.

Finally, I know I'll get flamed if I don't end with a marginally relevant video. I considered something featuring Arson Welles but went in another direction and since it's an election year, all roads lead to Ohio:

Mr. Wet sucks. Let me explain why. He's one of my best  friends in the NOLA blogosphere BUT the sumbitch stole my Gustav related post title: Achtung, Baby. It makes me wonder if he's a psychic from all those years of wearing a hat and living in the frozen North. (It somehow gives me perverse pleasure to imagine him plugging in his car whilst conversing with a neighbor who sounds like Marge in Fargo. Oh ja, you betcha.) But if Folse *is* a psychic, I'm thinking he's a fake; sort of like Sean Spencer the goofy fake psychic tevee detective on Psych. Hmm, now that I think of it, Mark's son Matt is a goofball in the Spencerian vein...

Anyway, since Mr. Wet stole my thunder, I decided to use a line from another great '80's "alternative" band, REM. The song Disturbance At The Heron House is actually political but the line "the followers of chaos out of control" sums up rather neatly the panic in the air here in Debrisville. Me, I'm just cranky that this fracking storm may goose step into town this weekend and force Southern Decadence to cancel. It's usually a big weekend for Quarter merchants. For the uninitiated, Decadence is a cross between boys gone wild and a gay pride event. As my good friend with a thick French accent and a Russian name, Paul Nevski, once said to me: "During Decadence, everyone in the Quarter is gay. Even the 'omophobes are gay."

Back to Gustav; at least the motherfracker has a proper scary name. I can respect a storm named Gustav; it evokes saurkraut, beer gardens and Prussian militarism. As of now, we don't know where this Teutonic twit of a storm is headed but Dr. A and I are eyeing it cautiously and plan to indulge in a bit of brinksmanhip before deciding what to do, which means we'll be inviting ourselves to my cousin Tina's house in Dallas if we need to bug out. Katrina was the first time we'd ever gotten out of Dodge and we're only doing so this time if Gustav is a giant Stasi agent of a storm headed right towards us.

So, it's time to wait, watch and prepare. I don't think freaking out helps anything but I understand why folks who were hit hard in 2005 are flipping out. It's time for us to be ghouls and root for Gustav to go elsewhere, which only people in the Hurricane belt are allowed to do.  I usually hope that storms head to Kleberg County, Texas, home of the King Ranch, where there are more cattle than people. So, Gustav moove in that direction so the followers of chaos won't get out of control:

The best speech of the evening was obviously Hillary Clinton's. As someone who has written a few speeches in my day, I was impressed with how artfully crafted and structured it was. The best bit was where she asked her supporters whether they'd been for her for themselves or for the good of the country; a brilliant rhetorical device. The speech as a whole was a strong pro-Obama *and* anti-McCain statement, which should marginalize the PUMAs (party unity my ass) among her supporters.Yo, PUMAs, STFU.

The cable teevee yakkers didn't like Mark Warner's speech but I did. The contrast he drew between Obama as Futureman and Walnuts as Pastman was probably too subtle for the media but as far as I was concerned it was subtle red meat. It was reminiscent of the 1996 campaign wherein President Elvis kept talking about a bridge to the 21st Century, which cranky old viagra dropping Bob Dole was unlikely to do. That, too, was subtle red meat. 

The best anti-Walnuts line of the night came from Senator Bob Casey's speech, which wasn't well delivered but I hope the line doesn't disappear cos it's what born again blogger Clancy DuBos would call a winnah. Casey pointed out that McCain had voted with Bush 95% of the time, which made him "a sidekick, not a maverick."

Repeat after me: subtle red meat.

Repeat after me: a sidekick, not a maverick.

Repeat after me: good night and good luck. We'll need it with Gustav on the loose...

No, not the Wild Bunch, I'd much rather write about Bill Holden and his gang shooting everything that moves than about Malaka Will Bunch. This guy is a so-called progressive writer from Philly who wouldn't mind if Hurricane Gustav hits the Gulf Coast because it will hurt the Republicans. LINK. This is the left wing equivalent of  those wingnuts who want another big terrorist attack because it will help the "daddy" party and hurt the "mommy" party. Using Bunch's logic one would hope for heavy American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan because it would hurt the McCaniacs. That's why he's not only a malaka but a fuckmook as well.

My new hero, Eli Ackerman, is the one who put the NOLA bloggers on the trail of this creep so head over to WCBF to read more about why we have our panties in a...uh...bunch. Bunch is also a Kosack, which is something else that qualifies him as a malaka in my book. Daily Kos may well be a progressive site but it's hard to navigate, plus who the hell wants to be called a Kosack? It sounds an awful lot like Cossack. And the original Cossacks were not very nice: they were lackeys of the Romanovs who perpetrated pogroms among other atrocities. 

Will Bunch, you should hang your head in shame as you take your place among the pantheon of malakas. You also might want to tell Markos Moulitsas about this dishonor; as a Greek-American, he knows from malakas.

Since Will Bunch is a Philadelphian I'll close by making like a Phillies/Eagles/Sixers/Flyers fan: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  

I've really enjoyed the Landrieu campaign's One Confused Politician ads. They're chock-full-o-smartassery and mockery can be an effective technique. Hey, it works for me. Kennedy's recent reply ad, Scary Mary, is crappy and cheap looking; even the screaming heads are cheesy and I usually like talking heads as you shall see shortly.

It doesn't pack the punch that Landrieu's flip flop ads do, which brings me to the point of this post. That's right, I have a point to make for a change. It had to happen. I'd like to suggest a theme song for Malaka John's fading effort to unseat the incumbent Senator from the Gret Stet. It's got a beat, you can dance to it and David Byrne sings it. Who could ask for more?

The Picayune picked a candidate for Dollar Bill's seat in Congress yesterday and it's State Rep Cedric Richmond. It's a pity, however, that the knuckleheads who run NOLA.com have NOT posted the endorsement as of yet so I have to link to WRNO radio's web site. Rush fracking radio, y'all. I guess the powers that be at NOLA.com are too busy NOT moderating racist and violent comments to bother posting this important item, which could propel Richmond into the upper tier of candidates for the Second District seat.  

Back to the Picayune: they followed up by printing a very flattering article by Frank Donze about their new protege today with a catchy headline: Legislator's fire stoked. Here at the Adrastos Virtual Cafe, we believe that such a fiery headline deserves a video tribute from someone that neither Donze nor Richmond is likely to have heard of, Graham Parker, after all, the Mona Lisa's sister doesn't smile:

The White House's new Gulf Coast Recovery Caudillo Douglas O'Dell is a retired leatherneck General and he gave a blunt and gruff interview to Bruce Nolan of the Picayune. LINK. O'Dell was very critical of NOLA Katrina Kaiser Ed Blakely for his inattention, indifference and failure to do anything to ride herd on a "bewildering" and highly bureaucratic recovery process. Kaiser Ed's response was classic: "He has only been here since the end of May, and in this time, he has made overblown and incorrect judgments about how the city works."

Hmm, remember when a certain puffed up know-it-all called people here "buffoons" and blamed slow progress in the recovery on the locals. That creep was, of course, a certain windy and pompous academic: Herr Professor und Kaiser Ed Blakely. Look in the mirror, Ed, it's something your boss is good at when he's not getting awards from clapping sycophants...

There were a couple of other money quotes from General O'Dell that are worth cutting and pasting and splattering across the page in red:

--> Blakely's office produces "ethereal visions" that vastly overreach in asking for federal recovery dollars. The city's plan for a new $1 billion criminal justice complex, for example, "is not grounded in reality."

Damn, that is so true. I have a friend (not a blogger) who deals with Blakely's office and she has described a bunch of people who know how to plan but couldn't manage a 7-Eleven in Bunkie. The last bit is my image but it's oh so true and O'Dell has figured out why:

--> When it comes to solving complex problems, the city has not delegated authority up and down the line to hurry progress forward: "Below Ed Blakely, there's virtually no authority and lots of responsibility. At Blakely and above, there's lots of authority, but no responsibility."

That, folks, in a nutshell is why nothing at City Hall works. We have a Mayor and Katrina Kaiser who are more interested in talking about what they're doing than actually doing anything. Neither of them wants to be bothered with details, man, because they look at the big picture, man or as Dr. A says when doing *her* Nagin impression: "It's complicated, man."

I didn't agree with everything O'Dell said in the article but it's refreshing to have someone speak the truth as they see it about the pipe dreams of the recovery. I got an almost Tweety-like tingle in my leg when O'Dell blasted the wildly unrealistic plan for a big ass criminal justice complex near the Parish Prison. Kaiser Ed, as always, passed the buck for the idea to FEMA and segued into a claim that getting NOPD and NOFD back into permanent buildings has been a top priority of his office. Really? Is that why there's still no permanent crime lab? Is that why some police and fire districts have worked out of trailers for nearly 3 years? Details, details, pesky details...

Sometimes I wonder what Kaiser Ed and C Ray have been smoking. It must be some pretty good shit for them to spend all their time in cloud cuckoo land. Wow, man. Let's play Maggot Brain again, man. Hmm, maybe they've been getting some fictional MILF weed from Nancy Botwin and the gang on Weeds. It could explain a lot, y'all.

Finally, I have to quote O'Dell's decription of Jeffrey's new buddy, Inspector General Robert Cerasoli: "he's tough as a woodpecker's lips."

Yo, General, I think you should start blogging, you have a gift for vivid imagery.

It has been a long and exhausting day. RT III was a great success. The programming was outstanding and neither Mr. Gloomy Pants nor I made fools of ourselves as moderators and my panelists did an excellent job of making me look good. Thanks, Kim, Greg, Ethan, Gordon and Brian.

The high point of the day, for me at least, came when WWL's Lee Zurik referred to bloggers making fun of his eyebrows during the Media-Blogging panel.  I couldn't for the life of me imagine who he was talking about but many of my colleagues laughed and looked at me. Go figure. Lee swore up one side and down the other that his eyebrows are real. Having been called out, I quite naturally sauntered over to the microphone during the question period and identified myself and the name of my blog. Lee said in a sarcastic tone: "Oh yeah, I read that one too." I admitted to the odd bit of eyebrow mockery and Lee with expert Sheckyesque timing said: "Lucy says hello." Baboom.

I closed by telling Lee that if there was ever a blogger band we had a name chosen: Lee Zurik's Eyebrows. Immediately after that panel Dr. A approached and said, "You're in big trouble, buster." I looked around for Mr. Keaton but he wasn't there. She reminded me that she was the first person to suggest that band name. We went over and spoke to Lee and I informed him of that discrepancy. He was very gracious and checking out his eyebrows up close and personal showed no signs of waxing, tweezing or plucking so I'll stop mocking his eyebrows until new evidence comes my way...

The Rising Tide shebang was swell. I spent part of the evening trying to get under Greg Peters' skin by giving him the full Rickles treatment It didn't work. The man is unflappable. Oh well, he's on my panel and if things get dull I'm going to ask him and Dangerblond to arm wrestle. My money is on the dame. Of course, he's meaner than a rabid wolverine so it could be a close call...

I saw something scary at the party: Loki was drinking Red Bull. The last thing he needs is to be overcaffinated. The man is caffeine on legs. Yikes.

I met Clancy DuBos of Gambit Weekly and WWL-TV for the first time. It's always odd to meet someone you've seen on tevee for many years and odder still to learn that they read your blog. He's a nice guy and very tolerant; he was even nice to Jeffrey who was on his best behavior, which is still marginal. As Dr. A and I left we saw Jeffrey chatting up NOLA Inspector General Robert Cerasoli who Jeffrey has been known to mock. All in all, it was an interesting and entertaining evening.

Someone asked me tonight how I can blog every day. It's like getting poison oak; when you got an itch, you gotta scratch or some such shit. Actually, it's become something of an addiction, ya'll. My name is Adrastos and I'm a blogoholic. It could be worse: I could smoke enormous cigars like Mr. Wet did tonight and we all know what that means. Paging Dr. Freud to the white courtesy telephone. Do they even have courtesy phones any more? Probably not but it scans well...

Okay, it's time for me to STFU and try to get some shut eye. <The bleachers erupt in raucous cheers> I have a rendezvous with destiny this afternoon and I'm always a bit jittery before I do any public speaking. As Pete Townshend would surely say at this point, it's just another tricky day. I think some whiplash power chords are the cure for what ails me:

Talking Points Memo has posted an interview done by David Kurtz at the recent Netroots conference with Rising Tide III keynote speaker, John Barry. 

 
I remember when Dances With Wolves was a big hit film and a popular parlor game was handing out ersatz Native American names. I'm glad to give Senator Walnuts one even if it doesn't involve his big mouth, which is the gift that keeps on giving. After days of hearing the MSM talk about how disciplined he had become, McCain pulled the "ask my staff how many houses I have" caper. It has the potential to become the Dukakis in the tank or Poppy Bush and the supermarket scanner moment of the 2008 campaign. On one level, I dislike the way campaigns end up focusing on trivia but, on the other hand, this time it's happening to the other side. Heh, heh, heh...

So, if you want to know how many houses I have, the answer is one and the bank owns more of it than we do. Btw, if I had a staff, I wouldn't have let them use the POW thing as an excuse as it trivializes and devalues that part of McCain's life; sort of like the old tevee show, Hogan's Heroes. I must, however, confess to liking Hogan's Heroes for its camp value. Speaking of which, C Ray reminds me of the vain, pompous, incompetent and fatuous Colonel Klink.

Yeah, that was a major digression even by my standards but sometimes, like Levi Stubbs, I can't help myself. I'd like to close by dedicating a song to Senator Walnuts and his wife, the Beer Heiress. It's not as apropos as posting Our House but I'm incapable of passing up a chance to post a Talking Heads tune:

It's shameless Rising Tide promotion time. Varg, Leigh and I will be plugging the big shebang at 1:30 PM on Eric Asher's show on WIST, 690 on your AM dial. WIST's new studio is in the Quarter so I'm closing the shop for a bit to bloviate about the glories of RT. I'm glad it's radio and not teevee because I'll be a sweatball when I get there.

One thing I love about some of the cheesier pulp books are the lurid and catchy titles of some of the more obscure amongst them. They usually involve sex and and/or both of which still sell BUT those were less explicit times so innuendo was, uh, in as in these two: 

Strumpet City sounds like a place Vitty and Senator Ass Crack would groove on. And the other one is just flat out silly as are the next two: 

I don't know about you but the mere thought that a Space Viking was coming at me, would alarm the hell out of me. But almost as good as the title is the writer's name, H Beam Piper. Lord, I hope that's a pen name.

That jazz bum looks like a poetry spouting beatnik to me, folks. Sort of like the guy Mr. Wet would have been if he'd been a teenager back in the Fifties. Crazy, Daddy-O, which reminds me of a cheesy Fifties film of that name that popped up on MST 3K:

Or is that questionable? Anyway, I'm moderating the final panel of the day at RT III at 2-fracking-45 PM. It's a challenge to be last but I'm hoping we're up to it and that the PM doesn't stand for post mortem. I've been slammed this week at work (the boss is a creep) so I'm asking my readers gentle and gentile alike if you have any questions you'd like to ask the politics panel; we're covering the proverbial waterfront except for Pakistani politics. Musharraf is on his own now that he and President Beavis aren't going steady any more. But if anyone wants to discuss the British Tory party's leader, David Cameron's hair, I'm your man. He changes his part more often than some people change their underwear...

The panelists are Schroeder of People Get Ready; Greg Peters of Suspect Device; Gordon Russell of the Times-Picayune; Ethan Brown, blogger and the author of Snitch and last but NEVER least Kim (Dangerblond) Marshall, blogger and political hack. (hackette? hackess?) Yes, I've stacked the panel with some cronies but they're funny so it's cronyism at its finest. Of course, Peters is a malaka but a tolerable one and since Homan may miss the conference we needed a major malaka around. Hmm, I wonder if Greg will be Homan's surrogate if Lord David wants to arm wrestle?

So, questions, pretty please with sugar on it. I'm begging you, it may be undignified but I've never claimed to be dignified.  I'm considering doing a McLaughlin Group style lightning round; the mere though of which scares the crap out of me. For example: Helena Moreno, the next Nancy Pelosi or the next Lucy Bustamante?

Now that I've begged for questions, it's time to post a classic song by Graham Parker and the Rumour that tends to undermine the whole damn post. Pay attention to me, not GP: 

I was wrong about candidate Jason Williams not having a campaign web site. LINK. It was on page three of my latest Google search, which means that I was too shiftless to go that far the other day. Once the case was solved, I found something to like about Mr. Williams: he's the only Tulane Law grad in the race. I was beginning to suspect a Jesuit conspiracy since all the folks whose names end in vowels went to Loyola Law. As a Tulane Law grad, I was feeling disenfranchised as well as green with envy. It doesn't mean I'll vote for Williams but what's a little bit of school pride among friends? Roll, Wave.

The other reason that I admitted to the error of my ways is that I like coming up with Erle Stanley Gardner-like titles. Speaking of Gardner, in last week's celebration of the pulps, I posted a cover of his novel, The Case Of The Counterfeit Eye. Here's an alternate cover: 

This doesn't have a helluva lot to do with Jason Williams other than the fact that he's a defense lawyer like Mason, and his creator, and that I'm sitting on de fence in this race... 

Tropical Storm Fay is putting the un into unpredictable. I just saw the WWL-TV noon news and the new weather guy, Jonathan Myers , was pretty darn candid about not knowing where the hell this thing is going because there are too many variables. I still think it's not going to be a big whoop of a storm since it's going to travel over a lot of land whenever it turns but hurricane forecasting is an art, not a science.

I've never posted a spaghetti chart before and probably never will again but this one looks like one of Jack the Dripper's mid-period works: 

Or does it resemble a 4 year old's fingerpainting messterpiece? In either case, it's all over the lot, which brings me to the sage advice of the philosopher price of Motown, Stevie Wonder: 

...is the headline for a War Room post by Thomas Schaller at Salon about the McCaniac tendency to use his former POW status as a defense for  everything: Subject, verb, POW. It, of course, paraphrases Joe Biden's brilliant "subject, verb, 9/11" line about Giuliani. The CW right now is that Biden will be on the Democratic ticket and, for once, I hope the CW is right; especially since Joe has kept his lip zipped about the possibility.

The best misprint/typo of the day come from an AP story about McCain's possible running mates:

"His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent."

Senator Walnuts is back in the Gret Stet. His last attempt at a photo-op on an oil rig was messed up by Hurricane Dolly. This time, Tropical Storm Fay is meandering slowly through Florida and will end up lord only knows where BUT McCain will have his close encounter with a derrick and I don't mean the Bad Shepherd.

One Gret Stet luminary Walnuts won't encounter is Governor PBJ who seems to be out of the Veepstakes at this point. Perhaps Walnuts has figured out what an annoying twerp PBJ is. The Boy Wonder was on Meet The Press on Sunday and kept saying: I got the job I want. I got the job I want. It was like a fracking tape loop, y'all. I can't get it out of my head: on and on and on and on and I didn't believe a word of it. PBJ is starting to sound like the Rain Man on steroids. (I wonder if he's an excellent driver?) I guess my dream of a Walnuts-n-PBJ sandwich may be over; guess I'll have to settle for a fluffer nutter...

In case you're wondering, I have no intention of posting a video of Strangers In The Night. I love Sinatra but not that tune. It's one of his worst hit songs with all that doobie doobie doo crapola. I keep expecting him to sing the chorus of Black Water or something equally frightening. Instead, here's something Walnuts *might* have belted out on Florida's Space Coast yesterday if life were a musical and Count Basie's Orchestra just happened to be there:

The very important race for Orleans Parish District Attorney has been flying under the radar thus far. LINK. The two best known candidates are both Italian-American: Judge Leon Cannizzarro and Ralph Capitelli. Cannizzaro was a legend as a tough, no-nonsense judge at Tulane and Broad before ascending to the fancier climes of the appellate court. I tried a few cases before Cannizzarro in my days as a mouthpiece and knew to be well prepared or he'd bite my head off and spit it back at me. Splat. That's why I refer to him as Judge even though he stepped down from the bench when he leapt into the DA's race. He's a bad mutha. Shut your mouth...

Ralph Capitelli has the endorsement of the Singin' DA, retired, Harry Connick. He, too, has a formidable reputation as both a defense lawyer and as one of the members of Harry's choir. I've never met Capitelli but the folks we have in common think highly of him. 

Dr. A is acquainted with Linda Bizzarro who is a former federal prosecutor. I want one of her yard signs because I love her name. If your name is Bizzarro, you should have fun with it. Imagine the slogans: Turn New Orleans Into Bizzarro World. Scratch that, it's *already* Bizzarro world as well as Debrisville. (Does anyone know whether or not Ms. Bizzarro is Italian too?) 

Jason Williams is the lone African-American candidate, which automatically gives him a shot despite his thinnish resume and lack of a campaign web site that was easily googleable. How can you run for office in 2008 and not have a web site? Even Senator Walnuts has one and he thinks that yahoo is one of his Appalachian supporters. One of the things that I *do* know about Williams is NOT a plus: he's former Mayor Sidney Barthelemy's son-in-law. Sidney was even more low key in office than Nagin. He put the feck into feckless or some such shit. Williams also has the support of the hacks of OPDEC. <running for the exit with Karen and Kim in hot pursuit>

I wish had more wisdom to impart about the candidates. Three of the four are very qualified on paper and I know so little about Jason Williams that he *might* be better than I suspect. BUT Slow Eddie Jordan was also qualified resume-wise and we all know how that worked out. I'm going to have to haul my ass to some forums to see the candidates in person because they're all vowing to be tough on crime and good administrators; yadda, yadda, yaddd. Position papers are well and good but good judgment is the most important thing for a prosecutor to have.

I'm hoping that the folks on my RT III politics panel will know more about these folks than I do even though I plan to do some homework this week. Gordon, I'm counting on you, dude. 

Since Mark Folse cross-posted *his* Blog Carnival piece from Humid City, I decided to do likewise. Mark certainly sets an example, a bad one, but an example nonetheless. I have no idea where he got the notion that this blog was snark infested. I'm a sweet fella, really I am. Hell, Jeffrey's fiancee Menckles calls me Muffin. Actually, a line from the great Lancaster-Curtis film Sweet Smell Of Success might apply: "You're a cookie laced with arsenic." Clifford Odets wrote that line and dayam it's good. Hmm, did that sound like snark to you? Oh well, what the hell...

The other reason I decided to cross-post is that, thanks to the dolts at AT & T, blogging will be light from work this week. Do I hear someone cheering? Okey dokey, here's the Humid City post, Three Years On by Adrastos:

The proverbial shit hit the equally proverbial fan almost three years ago. It was the first time Dr. A and I and had ever evacuated and, like a dumbass, I’d set our house alarm so early in the morning on 8/29/05, my cell phone rang. The operator said our alarm had gone off and they couldn’t reach the police.

“There’s a hurricane,” I said a bit exasperated.

“Really? We’ll try again later.”

“No need. The cops have their hands full.”

I assume that the operator eventually heard of our little problem and stopped calling NOLA 911. It was down for quite some time for some obscure reason…

We were lucky and all that had happened was that a tree limb grazed the roof of our house, which set off the alarm. We were even luckier in the long run since we live in the sliver by the river. It didn’t matter much to us as we watched the water race into the rest of the city: we were pissed and took it very personally.

Three years on, some things have gotten better and others have stagnated. Most of our elected officials are still dolts, fools and poltroons but there’s been a groundswell of activism from the citizenry that have given us a few rays of hope. Of course, y’all know that already since you read Humid City; the megaphone for a man who doesn’t need a microphone, Loki.

The best thing that happened to me post-K started in late December of 2005 when I began blogging. Initially, I had about 44 readers all of whom had known me for years or were part of my rather untidy extended family. Then a funny thing happened, I discovered during Mardi Gras that there was a group of NOLA bloggers who started leaving comments on my posts so I began reading them.

The first blogger I got to know well was the late, great Ashley Morris. We traded comments, jokes, insults and emails. Ashley was also the first NOLA blogger I met in person. It was primary election day 2006 in Orleans Parish and Ashley invited me to stop by to drink beer and gossip about music and politics two of our shared passions. I did and it was love at first sight. Maybe not love but a close friendship was formed until he left us last spring. Nah, it *was* love, I still miss him. He was a great guy and an even better mime albeit a self-loathing mime. I’ll always owe him for inducting me both into the NOLA blogger cult and the Cult of Lafcadio aka the Krewe of PAN.

Shortly thereafter, I met Dangerblond who stopped by my shop and was disappointed that I wasn’t a tough talking Greek sailor with tattoos up the wazoo. Frack you too, Blondie. My wazoo is very delicate…

I met Oyster and Maitri at what was a proto-Geek dinner at Shane and Becky Landry’s house. Ash and Kim were there as well and Oyster was upset that I didn’t insult him enough. I think I’ve made up for lost time since then although I’ve never told him that he reminds me of teevee’s Lurch…

I first met the Joseph Smith founder of Humid City at the inaugural Geek Dinner. He was racing about like a crazy monkey; talking a mile a minute, smoking cancer sticks like a fiend and trying to cook Jambalaya at Alan Guiterrez’s sweat lodge in the Quarter. That was the night that I was able to put names to some of the faces of the NOLA bloggers and formed friendships with the more tolerant among them: Mr. Wet, Bart, Ray, Lisa, Schroeder and the gentlewoman from Georgia, Sophmom, to name but a few. I also met my arch nemesis, the Malaka from Nebraska, Michael Homan but you gotta take the bitter with the sweet,. I had no idea what an odd little man he would turn out to be but his wife and kids rule as well as rock…

The geek dinners and odd meet-ups spawned the Rising Tide conferences. It’s always a chaotic process to help organize the event but it somehow turns out well. It’s like being a teenager or something: you gotta have zits before you grow up. Shameless plug time: RT III is around the corner. Not only will you hear the original Rising Tider, John Barry, but you’ll get a chance to see Lee Zurik’s eyebrows in person and ask Gambit’s Kevin Allman the pressing question: which brother do you prefer, Duane or Greg? My money is on the dead rock star. Register and/or donate early and often.

When Loki asked me to guest post at Humid City, I insulted him and then accepted. It’s the way our friendship works. I’ve always enjoyed reading the eclectic folks who post here, to paraphrase The Wizard Of Oz: pirates, Lokis and bears, oh my. Loki is part jester, part carnival barker and all energy. Just thinking of his schedule wears me out so I’ll close by thanking Loki for the guest post shot and go back to my usual stand.

I lied. I gotta repeat my new mantra one more time: pirates, Lokis and bears, oh my…

In the hey day of MTV and VH-1, a great video could turn a good song into a big hit. That's what happened with Squeeze's Hourglass. It's not among *my* top twenty tunes by one of my favorite bands but it was their second biggest hit in the US and A. Why? Because of the witty and art historically cool video that was directed by Adrian Edmondson of Young Ones fame. It's Squeezy surrealism with giant dollops of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte style imagery. My favorite bit is when Jools Holland pops out of a coffin dressed in a bowler and black suit like one of Magritte's droogs. Enjoy.