Archive for the ‘A&E’ Category
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It takes some doing to kerfuffle both the readers of the Daily Kos and, say, Michelle Malkin, but Audi managed to do it during last night’s Super Bowl with its “Green Police” commercial. Here it is:
In precis: Cheap Trick sing a version of their insanely catchy “Dream Police” retitled “Green Police,” in which Americans are busted for using incandescent lights, requesting plastic bags at the grocery store, not composting orange parings and a host of other infractions. At the end, an Audi driver sails past a Green Police checkpoint while a title card appears: “Green has never felt so right.”
The problem is that in our black-and-white, liberal-and-conservative, spell-it-all-out world, no one seems to know whether Audi was making fun of the eco-conscious, or cheering for the eco-conscious — and without that spelled out plainly in Big Capital Letters, those on both sides of the issue could agree on one thing: They didn’t like it. (For similar suspicious, puzzled reactions from polar opposite ends of the eco-spectrum, go here and here. Bonus points if you can count the number of people who say some sort of variation on “I’ve got as much of a sense of humor as anyone, but…)
So what was the intent of the commercial? To get people talking about Audi, of course. And by that standard, it was a success. Did it make me want to buy one? No, but it did make me want to get a copy of Cheap Trick’s greatest hits.
Edited to add: Now CBS News is weighing in on the puzzlement:
Environmentalists weren’t sure whether to celebrate or denigrate the spot. Grist magazine’s David Roberts writes that at first blush it seemed like an appeal “to angry white men with the same old stereotype of environmentalists as meddling do-gooders obsessed with picayune behavioral sins.”
“The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more [that] interpretation just doesn’t quite fit,” he goes on to say. “The thrill at the end, when they guy gets to accelerate away from the crowd, turns on satisfying the green police — not rejecting or circumventing them, but satisfying their strict standards. The authority of the green police is taken for granted, never questioned. If you’re looking to appeal to mooks who think the green police are full of it and have no authority, moral or otherwise, why would you make a commercial like that?”
Conservatives also seem to be split: While Newsbusters writes, seemingly approvingly, of the spot’s “futurist vision of environmentalism running amok,” Bob Ellis called it an “downright offensive” and “presented with too much seriousness to be taken any other way than as approval of such Gestapo tactics.”
And sometimes a car commercial is just a car commercial.
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It would be nice to think you might get these shoes at the Muses parade on Thursday. Terence Blanchard and Robin Burgess already have the shoe on the right, which they received yesterday, before second-lining on St. Charles Avenue after the Super Bowl. The original picture of Fats Domino and Drew Brees from last year’s Domino Effect concert is after the jump. Photos and shoes by Erika Goldring.
Read the rest of this entry »
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If you STILL haven’t decided where to watch the game…
OR if the mere suggestion of crunk-azz brass band music before during and after the victory of the Saints Superbowl win is enough to curl your toes and make you chuck all other ill-plotted plans…
OR if you live downtown and wanna catch the the game close to home but not in the home and are looking to keep it hood simple…
OR all of the above…
Then the Goody’s on St. Claude at Louisa is what’s popping today, tonight and every Sunday night.
Opened last Thanksgiving weekend, Goody’s is the new jumping spot downtown. The restaurant bar, launched by Stooges Brass Band trombonist Garfield Bogan, features weekly performances by the Stooges and is home to the second line and brass band community as well and Bogan’s motorcycle club the Tru Riders’. The club also hosts regular poetry nights and has plans in the works to bring in other music acts such as the Baby Boys Brass Band. “New Orleans don’t really have live music on the strip,” says Bogan. “We’re about to bust the strip wide open.”
For the colossal WHO DAT! game today, Goody’s is serving free red beans and rice and fried chicken and featuring a Saint’s themed Black and Gold rum cocktail and music sets by the Stooges. The kitchen is also serving its full menu of creole soul food which has been characterized by regulars as “off the chain” (the crawfish pasta and the onion rings are the items customers were making the most noise over).
Above is a clip from a weekly set (now moved from Thursdays to Sundays at 9pm) by the house band known known for creating the most fun performances on the second line parade route. Stooges got the good good - now on the regular, stationed at Goody’s Restaurant and Bar 3200 St. Claude Ave. (504) 470-9000. Kitchen open 11am-9pm daily except for Tuesdays
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We could tell you about our parade coverage (complete with pocket maps); about David Winkler-Schmit’s reporting about the Books for Prisoners program; about Clancy DuBos‘ memories of the political gadfly ‘Hippo’ Katz; about Noah Bonaparte Pais covering RJD2, Q&P Maritime Ball, Festival of the Rising Sun, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Screaming Females and the B-52’s; about Ian McNulty’s profile of the Vietnamese bakers putting their own spin on king cakes; or about our monthly health and wellness supplement, H+W.
But we all know what’s consuming us this weekend. “Glory Bound.” Do it, Aaron and Theresa:
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At the final televised mayoral primary debate Feb. 4 on WWL-TV, all six candidates had the chance to take their last shots at their opponents. Frontrunner Mitch Landrieu was the big target, but John Georges, Troy Henry and Rob Couhig all came in for some drive-by criticism from other candidates.
Early in the debate, in a question about community policing, Landrieu made a reference to NOPD officers in communities meeting citizens, “not just as a Gestapo.” The Georges campaign jumped on the choice of words; within an hour of the debate’s end, they had issued a press release blast headlined “LANDRIEU: NOPD IS A GESTAPO” and calling on the candidate to apologize.
But it was Couhig who seized the opportunity to bring up the issue that had been hot gossip in local political circles for nearly a week: the discovery of a 1980 photograph from a party at Tulane’s Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity, in which several members posed for photographs in blackface. John Georges was a member of the frat at the time, and would become its president in 1981.
In answering a question about how the next mayor would heal the racial divisions in New Orleans, Georges stressed the diverse makeup of his company, Imperial Trading, noting his employees were “50 percent African American, 50 percent female and the leadership of my company is African American.” That left an opening for Couhig to parry, “There’s a bigger issue out here, and it has to do with Mr. Georges. I was so disappointed today when I was presented with evidence that an organization he ran had people in blackface parading around. How can you be mayor if you condone that in an organization you were the president of?”
Georges, seated directly to Couhig’s left, replied, “You know, you don’t respond to blogs. It’s not true. Those are all misrepresentations. I never condone anything such [sic], and it’s just last-minute political tactics.”
The blog in question, American Zombie (theamericanzombie.blogspot.com), had on Feb. 2 published several photographs from Tulane yearbooks featuring the Dekes in various party-animal shots, some of which included members dressed in blackface at a yearly event called the Debutramp Ball. While the blog’s author, Jason Berry (no relation to the local Catholic Church sex-scandal historian of the same name) did not claim Georges was one of the men in blackface, the photos did establish that the fraternity had worn blackface in 1980, when Georges was a member. He became president of DKE the following year, and the Debutramp Balls continued through the 1980s before DKE had its charter permanently revoked by Tulane University in 1987 after a blackface march near campus.
Reached the day after the debate for comment, Georges spokesperson Helena Moreno said, “John made a public statement on the issue last night during the debate that he won. On the contrary, we are waiting for Mitch Landrieu to explain himself to the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department after calling them the Gestapo.”
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Photograph by Greg Rhoades
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There are lowlifes and there are lowlife scum-of-the-earth piss buckets that don’t give a second thought to stealing a man’s instrument. And not just any man, mind you, or any instrument. Uncle Lionel Batiste, among the eldest of the elder statesmen of New Orleans jazz musicians, had his bass drum stolen (this, one and only hand-made bass drum) after marching with the Treme Brass Band in Krewe de Vieux.
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The man is 79 years old. He made the drum himself and used it not only to preserve the New Orleans sound of music, but to teach and mentor countless musicians under him. Unc is a city treasure and his drum is an artifact. Whoever stole that drum is either very ignorant or very hateful, but either way, they must be found, caught and made to pay.
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You do not steal a man’s drum. Especially if he’s still alive and beating it. Anyone who sees it - on the street, on eBay or wherever - that drum is stolen goods. Let’s get it back into the right hands and back into the groove.
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Check out this weeks Gambit for parade previews; and if you want a handy route map and schedule to print and put in your pocket- click here.
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