At 9 p.m. CT on Sunday, October 26, the National Geographic Channel will premier the documentary special Inside New Orleans High - a compressed look at life with the students and teachers at Walter L. Cohen High School in New Orleans. The high school, located Uptown near Dryades and Louisiana, is according to a NGC press release “one of the most dangerous high schools in the country… where more money is spent on security than on books, and violent gangs dominate the school.” (It’s also the alma mater of sissy rappers Big Freedia and Katey Red, who I profiled in Gambit a few months ago.) The show intimately follows three students and one first-year teacher through six months of the school year at Cohen. 

The Arts Council of New Orleans kicked off its Art in Public Places program last week, featuring 20 public art projects displayed throughout the city by local and regional artists.

Installations include Scrap House by Sally Heller and Travis Linde, and Fragile Land: Rotunda by Michel Varisco, with more to come in the following weeks.

A couple of things to ponder with 12 days till political Christmas:

“Spread the wealth” and “socialism” have become the four-letter buzzwords of choice at Palin/McCain rallies. (Hey, they beat the hell out of “terrorist!” and “kill him!”) It’s one thing for Sen. McCain, a 26-year Beltway veteran, to have selective amnesia about the purpose of taxation. (It is, by one definition, the equitable redistribution of capital.) But it’s especially interesting to hear these charges coming from the governor of Alaska, a state in which every citizen receives a dividend from the Permanent Fund — in essence, a $2,000 piece of the mineral-wealth pie. In addition, in the boom year for oil profits that is 2008, every Alaskan is also receiving a second check in the amount of $1,200. (For certified procreation experts like the Palins, that amounts to $22,400, or nearly double a minimum-wage earner’s annual salary.) Explain, please, Governor, using your campaign-financed word-a-day calendar and your night-school Ph.D. in communistic regimes, how that kind of spreading of the wealth isn’t socialism?

As for Palin’s platinum pantsuits: The $150K RNC shopping spree is more of a bemusement than a serious concern, just one more seepage from the reputation sieve of a hockey mom who gets booed at hockey games, a frontierswoman who buys tanning beds, an outdoorsy type who supports aerial hunting but who opposes the protection of endangered species, a maverick reformer who is under investigation for ethics violations, a fiscal lockjaw who lost millions of dollars in earmarks for an unused road to a never-built bridge to nowhere, and a self-appointed delineator of pro- and anti-American districts whose husband pledged allegiance to a secessionist group until months before she began her Neil Armstrong-like ascent from the city hall of Wasilla to the governor’s office in Juneau. Stalwart supporters of Sen. McCain’s “Who is the real Barack Obama?” disinformation campaign, if there still are any of you left out there, care to comment on Todd Palin’s affiliation with the Alaska Independence Party?  

In New Orleans it sounds like a joke, but there really is a diploma in wine.  And as living proof, I am currently a diploma candidate at the Wine & Spirits Education Trust in London.  They offer a two-year program to develop product knowledge to a specialist level and the diploma can also be used as the prerequisite for a Master of Wine (of which there are only 277 worldwide).  The course is incredibly interesting - as well as challenging and  tedious.

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(Stick with it! Wine & book recommendations after the jump)

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You know the Hornets’ season is coming up when you look at the calendar and see a full week’s worth of Hornets events. Leading up to their season opener at Golden State, the Hornets will be making appearances at the Audobon Zoon, at Fulton Square and in New Orleans East, among other locales.

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It all starts this weekend with Chris Paul holding a media event on Saturday with Garth Brooks (I know, right? Random) and Copeland’s to announce CP3’s own dish to be served at Copeland’s locations nationwide.  Then Hugo, some Honeybees and a handful of Hornets players will be at Audobon Zoo on Sunday night from 5 to 9 in what I hope will include more than just Hornets players standing around and competing with the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) for attention. Read the rest of this entry »

Memo to Lindsey Evans, ex-Miss Louisiana Teen USA: If you’re going to dine and dash, make sure you don’t leave behind your purse. Better yet, make extra sure that purse you just left behind has no dime bags in it.

Four months after dropping the double platinum album Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne has released (in a manner of speaking) another Carter III… Dwayne Carter III, his son, who was born yesterday afternoon. The public only learned of the impending delivery from the stork on Saturday, when the rapper asked audiences at a taping of BET’s Hip-Hop Awards to give a shout-out and a prayer to the imminent baby. Wayne (Dwayne Carter Jr., at home) has a daughter, Reginae, with his ex-wife Antonia Johnson.