My favorite new TV show of last year starts its second season on Sunday. It’s got drama, humor, great acting, brilliant writing, the most gorgeous woman on TV (Christina Hendricks, slinky in red), and style to burn. It’s also got painful families, repressed sexuality, unfulfilled women, male chauvinism, casual racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and quietly ruthless office politics. It’s AMC’s Mad Men. Do you like to watch, too?

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If a program was created to gut and board the homes of elderly and low income homeowners and was expected to result in 5,000 gutted homes, why was it suspended in July 2007 with only 870 remediated properties? A city official says it was because Dr. Blakely decided to shift the focus of the city’s recovery.

      The City Council Recovery Committee met today to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding New Orleans Affordable Housing (NOAH) program. According to Anthony Faciane from the Office of Recovery and Development Administration, NOAH was awarded $3.6 million in city and federal funds to remediate homes owned by the elderly and low-income homeowners.  Faciane says that a NOAH list that contained 1157 property records which showed numerous problems including houses that didn’t exist and property owners who shouldn’t have qualified for the program, wasn’t an official list, but only an intake form for possible property remediations.

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If ever there was a romanticization of drug use, this should cure it. Dope Sick Love (DCTV, HBO) follows two heroin addicted couples as they eek out an existance in New York City – scoring dope, shooting up and prostituting themselves to buy more drugs. The term “dope sick” refers to the feelings of illness addicts experience when they get desperate for a fix. It’s a longing more powerful than the bonds between partners, making this a gruesome look at the reality of these couples’ lives. Filmmakers Brent and Craig Renaud followed Matt and Tracey and Sebastian and Michelle around the streets and squats of Greenwich Village for 18 months to create this film. In gritty cinema verite style, there are no film effects or narration. It’s just the four people as they try to cope. Tracey’s parents try to get her out of the environment by renting the couple an apartment in Brooklyn, but they struggle to leave their addictions behind. The film screens (5 p.m. Fri., July 25) at Ashe Cultural Arts Center (1712 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 569-9070; www.ashecac.org). Admission is free.

I love when I see national news stories that reinforce topics we also cover extensively on a local level. Check out this New York Times article on the American Slow Food Chapter and watch for a mention of Slow Food in New Orleans.

Or, see here for another story on local eating and how some consumers have come up with various ways for securing local food despite a busy schedule.

Cheers!!

Courtesy of the incomparable Loki of Humid City, we learn that one “Ray Nagin” is now text-messaging via the Twitter social-networking service, which sends out micromessages known as “tweets” to its users and their friends.

And yet one suspects that the Twitterer known as “raynagin” may not be the same person currently steering the municipal oil barge known as New Orleans. Just check out some of Twitter user “raynagin”’s updates:

raynagin

time to get my lunch on. Kenya, where’d I leave my credit card?

11:55 AM July 18, 2008 from web

raynagin

gearing up to cold cock Lee

01:24 PM July 21, 2008 from web

raynagin

poker night with the bodyguards. Don’t wait up, Seletha. Daddy’s playin’ Texas Hold ‘Em.

10:03 PM July 21, 2008 from web

raynagin

CYA press press conference. Don’t tell the press.

about 23 hours ago from web

If you want to keep up with the “mayor,” just click here, and enjoy it while it lasts…because something tells me that it won’t be long.

I finally reached Jimmy Fahrenholtz this morning, and he says he will “take this all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to.” He was speaking, of course, about Judge Nadine Ramsey’s decision to bounce him from the Second Congressional District race. He filed his notice of appeal today (Wednesday, July 23), and briefs are due at the state Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal at 9 a.m. tomorrow. The case is likely to be heard quickly, as election contest suits are fast-tracked by the courts.

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You gotta love a politician who practices recycling as part of his campaign, but perennial candidate Morris Reed, a former judge at Criminal District Court, may be taking that notion a tad far.

Reed’s latest race (I’ve lost count as to how many times he has run and lost) is for Section “F” of Criminal District Court. This time, he is re-using the same push cards that he used in his failed bid for Section “A” of Criminal Court last October. Not just the same graphics, slogans and photos — the same cards!

Apparently he had a bunch of the old ones left over. As the attached photos show, he has hole-punched his qualifying number from last year’s race (it was #62), but he apparently didn’t bother to paste over or hole-punch the reference to Section “A” of Criminal Court. As noted above, he’s running for Section “F” this time around.

It probably won’t make any difference — voters in recent years have paid very little attention to Reed anyway. In last year’s outing, he finished fourth in a field of seven, garnering less than 8,900 votes citywide, just shy of 13 percent. Attorney Laurie White ultimately won that race in a runoff last November, and she recently was re-elected without opposition.

This time, Reed is one of five candidates in the race to succeed Judge Dennis Waldron, who announced his retirement earlier this year. He faces Yolanda King, Hunter P. Harris, Robin Pittman and Gary Wainwright.

Our local ABC affiliate is proving that terrible summer television isn’t just making viewers stupid on a national level. ABC 26 is stooping to new lows — and allegedly, stopping crime —with its hilariously pointless feature, Wheel of Justice:

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District B Councilwoman Stacy Head says that more than six months ago she approached the Nagin Administration requesting that they cut off New Orleans Affordable Housing’s funding. As previously reported and investigated by WWL TV’s Lee Zurik,  NOAH, a nonprofit organization and a city agency, has been accused of not living up to it’s contract obligation of gutting and boarding private houses for low income and elderly homeowners. 

     “I tried to resolve this in-house by getting confirmation from the administration that NOAH no longer would receive Neighborhood Housing Improvement Funds (NHIF) or federal housing dollars,” Head says. “(I did this) after I learned and discovered with backup documents and substantial evidence that a program designed to help low-income elderly was at best mismanaged and at worst fraud.”

     Head says despite her efforts, she received no such assurance from the administration they would cut off funding, or that NOAH would be investigated.

     Head is the chair of the Council’s Housing Committee and a member of the Budget Committee. She says when the idea was first presented in 2006 that NOAH would be running a remediation program, she thought it was a bad idea.

     “Considering the amount of legitimate housing needs that are out there, this is a horrible waste of public assets,” says Head.

     According to Sarah Lewis from Squandered Heritage, a local blog and organization that has been investigating the NOAH group, NOAH has been awarded $3.5 million to date in city contracts.

- New Orleans City Council: Busy day. Criminal Justice Committee meeting at noon; New Orleans Recovery Committee meeting at 2 p.m. On the afternoon agenda: the long-running tragicomedy NOAH!, with special guest stars Tonya Darden and Dr. Ed Blakely…

- John McCain: Arriving in New Orleans tonight, but the campaign isn’t releasing any details…

- Jimmy Fahrenholtz: Down for the count in the 2nd district Congressional race? Clancy breaks down what happened, and the Bald Cypress adds more info in a great comment…

- Reggie Bush: On the eve of Saints training camp, Bush named one of USA Today’s “five most intriguing running backs” (Ricky Williams is #1)…

- Hurricane Dolly: She’s coming ashore in South Texas. The great meteo geeks at Gulf Coast Weather are watching every twist and turn, as headline writers all over the country unsuccessfully resist the urge to write the words “Hello, Dolly.”