Daddy, do we have to watch this?

My 7-year old son has said these words to me dozens if not hundreds of times. Usually they’re uttered when I’m watching the news, any golf tournament without Tiger Woods or, lately, a presidential debate. For the first time Sunday, I heard them during a Saints game.

I took my son to his first Saints game at the Superdome during the 2006 season. He was all of five years old. The Saints beat the Buccaneers thanks in part to Reggie Bush’s first touchdown as a pro, a lightning bolt punt return down the sideline. We leaped out of our seats and cheered until our throats were sore. My son was hooked for life. In the last two seasons, we’ve been to the Dome for a few more games, all of which the Saints somehow won. I hoped against hope that the Saints he would come to know would make all the big plays, win all the big games and be a team of joy and celebration, an escape from the trials and challenges of life in New Orleans. I hoped my son would be spared the feeling that pervades this city on a Monday morning following a Saints loss. The feeling that this isn’t what a team on it’s way to the next level, what a season leading up to the Superbowl or what a pivotal game against a division foe is supposed to look like.

My son is only seven and he knew things didn’t look right in Sunday’s game against the reviled Falcons. When Jerious Norwood turned a 5-yard toss from rookie QB Matt Ryan – by the way, is there any team more adept than the Saints at making rookies and second string QB’s look like Tom Brady? – into a 67-yard high-stepping touchdown run with 14:40 left in the game, my young Saints fan had seen enough. I turned off the TV and we went out into the yard to have a catch.

Daddy, let’s play two-hand touch! I’m gonna be the Giants!

The way things look right now, can you blame him?

Anyone need a lift?

You may have to snag a free ticket to the art exhibits down at the Contemporary Arts Center in order to be able to ride the shuttle. Be sure to do that on your first day. You will not be required to actually look at any of the art, however.

After a few days you may begin to arouse suspicion, so it’s important, when boarding the shuttle, to act like you give a fuck about celebrations of international contemporary art.

Thanks to NOLAfugees for a valuable tip that will save you some change on your daily commute AND just might increase your appreciation of contemporary art. If you live in Central City, the Prospect.1 shuttle can take you to work, or to places you never even dreamed of.

Hopefully no one was injured when a truck carrying a load of Taaka vodka overturned and deposited gallons of liquor on an I-10 off-ramp. Just in case, I’m heading over with plenty of ice… and olives.

Oui, On Peut – Yes, We Can! features musicians Dirk Powell, Christine Balfa, Jeffrey Broussard, Zydeco Joe Citizen, Corey “L’il Pop” Ledet, and Linzay Young offering up a zydeco version of Will.i.am’s Yes We Can. The video was filmed at the Whirlybird in Opelousas, Louisiana. A click on the map coordinates at the bottom of Whirlybird’s homepage curiously transported me to a Googlemap of the Lousiana Department of Corrections on I-49 in Opelousas. Whether that’s some inside humor (can the Boudreaux-bama and Thibodeaux-bama jokes be far behind?) or just a lack of an actual street address, it don’t get more pro-America than this. He toi!

Well, you know, I admire so much Senator Obama’s eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words.

Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He’s health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.

-Senator John McCain, October 15, 2008 Presidential Debate

Separated from the facial expressions and gestures that accompanied these statements, it’s a little tough to glean what Sen. McCain was trying to say here. In fact, having heard them delivered in the context of the debate, I’m still having trouble believing he meant to say what he said. McCain was probably trying to warn voters not to be taken in by a slick talker like Sen. Obama. But that isn’t what McCain said. He said something more like: watch out for this one, he’s eloquent *wink wink*. He even said it twice. And very ineloquently. As if eloquence, the command of language, the fluency and mastery of speech, the power of verbal expression, is something to be downgraded.

Ironically, a smidgen of eloquence on McCain’s part would have gone a long way towards making his statements minimally comprehensible. I’d say that McCain not only admires Obama’s eloquence, he envies it.

My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.

The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

Well, gosh darn it, they’re a team of hypocrites too, dontcha know. Please note that Gov. Palin curiously manages to hit all her final ‘g’s’ in her taped address to the Alaska Independence Party. Too bad there wasn’t an opportunity to say ‘nuclear’ in there. She might have nailed that one too.

Props to David Talbot and The Salon for putting this into sharp relief.

OK, everybody? Just like we rehearsed, all together, on three… one, two, three! We’re a team of mavericks!

mav·er·ick (māv’ər-ĭk, māv’rĭk) n.
1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.
2. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter.Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maverick (accessed: October 03, 2008).

Pardon my skepticism, Gov. Palin, but please, “a team of mavericks”? Seems to me McCain was branded by the Bush administration a while back and hasn’t bucked much lately. More alarmingly, McCain’s current tactics look like a direct lift from Karl Rove, who used a vicious smear campaign against McCain and his family to derail McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” in the 2000 race for the Republican nomination. McCain’s been roped and tied to Bush administration policies ever since.

McCain is no Tom Cruise, but if this “maverick” malarkey keeps up I’ll have to start referring to Gov. Palin as Goose, and if you’ve seen Top Gun you know that’s not the callsign you want.

Side Note: If Palin can pronounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name so well, why can’t she pronounce nuclear or learn the duties of the Vice President?

Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

Yeah, being accused of gender discrimination is really the biggest hurdle this proposal has to overcome. LaBruzzo may be kicking around fascist notions like eugenic sterilization, but you’ll be hard-pressed to call him a sexist.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

Wait, what happens if their kids turn out to be… dare I say it?… poor and stupid? Of course, how silly of me, someone still has to mow lawns and bus tables, right Mr. L?

“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare,” he said.

Gee, John, why not just shoot ‘em? Nothing wrong with a little state-sponsored eugenics among friends, after all. If my brain was more useful than a book of wet matches, I’d have more to say on this. So please, folks, take the ball and run with it.

First off, I don’t mean to make light of Ike’s inevitable lashing of the Texas Gulf Coast and the loss and suffering the people of that region may endure. However, I’m not so sure about the intentions of KHOU-TV in Houston. This is an actual screen capture from khou.com that I grabbed this evening at 7:37pm CDT. It has to be a put-on, right? I’ve heard and seen plenty of jokes riffing on the Ike & Tina theme since Ike, the hurricane, first showed up in the Atlantic. And, in case you haven’t read any of my previous posts, humor is my primary means of dealing with life’s overwhelmingly painful moments. Without knowing how a Tina Turner ad happened to wind up plastered on KHOU’s Hurricane Ike coverage, I don’t know whether to shake my head in amusement or disdain. Either this is an ironic coincidence of stupendous proportions or the epitome of exploiting a catastrophe as a heartless marketing opportunity.

UPDATE: Apparently this concert/contest was announced in August and the appearance of the ad is just the typical random occurrence of any online ad rotating through the pages of KHOU’s site. Accordingly I am now shaking my head in bemused disbelief. Be safe, Texas!

An update to my September 3 post: the tree that landed on my car during Hurricane Gustav was a pecan, carya illinoensis, probably a good 80 feet tall and over 100 years old. Tree and debris were cleared from the car today, after some wrangling with insurance companies and arrangements with extremely helpful and responsive Pointe Coupee Parish officials. I’ll head up there tomorrow to view the damage, take some photos, salvage what I can and wait for the insurance inspector to determine if my vehicle is a gone pecan. For those outside the reach of the local dialect, that’s pronounced “gawn puh-CAWN ,” ya heard me?