If you want to control New Orleans, sooner or later you have to cut a deal with pirates. John Georges was photographed by the New York Times while meeting with a representative from the Krewe of Wenches. Argghhhh! The accompanying story, however, was mostly about the people not running, or even close to running, such as Brad Pitt.

• SAINTS SAINTS SAINTS: WWL-TV’s Bradley Handwerger takes a look at what the national media are saying about the 6-0 New Orleans Saints.

• BAD LIEUTENANT…GOOD MOVIE?: CinemaBlend reviews Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which recently screened at the New Orleans Film Festival:

Though the New Orleans film community is rapidly growing, the crowd at the screening seemed uniformly bemused at Cage’s balls-to-the-wall performance, and appreciative that the movie managed to capture New Orleans as a mysterious, colorful, violent place… without a single shot in the French Quarter. There were no shadowy saloons, no gaudy voodoo queens—Cage is the burlesque here. The audience proudly bore witness to how each element of their town—its locations, its actors, its own myth—were used to bring out his performance, all too happy to provide the scenery for him to chew on.

Elsewhere, CinemaBlend shoots down rumors that the movie is going straight to DVD; it’ll have a “limited release” before coming to your TV in Feb. 2010.

• PUT ANOTHER CANDLE ON THE SLOT MACHINE: Harrah’s New Orleans turns 10.

• ALL BARK: The Canadian Press looks at the controversy over street barkers in the French Quarter:

On Tuesday night Ashley Roy, a 19-year-old college student dressed in shorts and a snug sweater, stood mindfully on the threshold of Jester Mardi Gras Daiquiris hawking a tray of shots with names like “Buck You Up,” and “Sex on the Beach.”

“The cops said I can’t sell shots on the street anymore,” Roy said. “I don’t know why. But it hasn’t really hurt my business. A lot of guys still come over and buy.”

(”Buck” You Up?)

• ANNE OF PALM SPRINGS: Former New Orleanian Anne Rice talks to Good Morning America about her latest book, and why she hasn’t been back to NOLA since Hurricane Katrina.

• AND FINALLY: There’s some sort of kerfuffle in Chicago over Mike Ditka and whether or not he endorsed a GOP Senate candidate. Not that we care, but buried in the kerfuffle was this nugget:

Ditka doesn’t buy that junk. He was a major Sarah Palin supporter during her run with presidential candidate John McCain in 2008.

Palin/Ditka 2012! Who’s with me?!?!

• six and oh: six and oh six and oh six and oh ….

• POW!: Rep. Charlie Melancon, way behind in the polls for the 2010 Senate race, comes out swinging against Sen. David Vitter:

If a company wants to receive taxpayer dollars, they should not be able to force victims to give up their constitutional rights as a condition of employment.

David Vitter has refused to explain why he voted to allow taxpayer-funded companies to sweep rape charges under the rug. We can only guess what his reasons were.

Vitter punches back:

If Charlie Melancon is truly ’shocked’ that David Vitter would vote against this amendment, one can only imagine his thoughts on President Obama and Obama’s Department of Defense having the exact same position on this amendment as the Republicans - which they do.

• OUR MAN IN HAVANA: More blowback on C. Ray in C.U.B.A.

• THE NEW K-VILLE?: NBC is developing a new show set (but not shot?) in New Orleans:

“Nola,” from writer Diane Ademu-John (”Medium”), revolves around a down-on-his-luck private investigator and a charismatic ex-con capable of being inhabited by ghosts who become unlikely partners to help solve the problems of New Orleans citizens, living or dead.

Yeah, well, good luck with that.

• MEDIA AT WORK: The CNN crew stinks on ice when it comes to Celebrity Jeopardy!; top anchors Wolf Blitzer and Soledad O’Brien managed to lose to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and one of the Desperate Housewives. (Blitzer’s final total: $-4,600.)

A CNN flack explains

:

“They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated.”

Have a nice day.

• TROUBLE: Lil Wayne pleads guilty to felony gun possession, may be spending a year in the pokey….

• HOLLYWOOD SOUTH: Production on the new Green Lantern movie moves to New Orleans….

• SPEAKING OF MOVIES: New Orleans-raised writer/actor Byron Lane will see his debut film premiere at the Austin Film Festival this weekend. Title? Herpes Boy….

• POOR POOR PITIFUL US: Sportswriter Rick Gosselin of the Dallas News writes about his trip to New Orleans for the Saints game last weekend:

Four years after Katrina, New Orleans still isn’t back. Not even close. The population has been cut almost in half from the 500,000 before the hurricane, and a city that survives on tourism is struggling to attract the major conventions that once flocked to New Orleans.

I’ve had some nightmare travel days in New Orleans returning to Dallas from games in the pre-Katrina years, showing up at Louis Armstrong International Airport two hours before my flight on Monday mornings and then having to scramble through lengthy security lines to board my plane on time.

But at the airport at 8 a.m. Monday, there was no one at the ticket counter ahead of me and only one person ahead of me in the security line. You could have rolled a bowling ball down the center of Terminal C and not struck anyone.

• UH…THANKS (WE THINK): Walt Pierce, editor of The Independent in Lafayette, sends up a salute from Cajun country:

We envy newspapers like The Times-Picayune and Gambit Weekly. New Orleans has corruption in its government institutions — widespread, endemic, congenital corruption; cancerous corruption that no chemical can ameliorate. It cannot be zapped by microwaves. New Orleans has bribes and kickbacks, back stabbing and malfeasance — all the colorful enumerations of bad, selfish, greedy behavior by which Louisiana’s political reputation is calculated. That malaise is apparently spreading with the city’s white flight: Mandeville’s recently former mayor pleaded guilty a week and a half ago to federal tax evasion and mail fraud charges. Now that’s working for the people (in the press).

• AND FINALLY: In a blogpost titled “Yet Another Sign Hoda Kotb Is Going to Snap,” Gawker offers a clip of the Today show, in which Kathie Lee Gifford lectures Hoda about, of all things, her Hula Hoop skills. (”Just tell me one more thing I’m doing wrong,” Hoda sighs.) Gawker adds:

You know what I’m waiting for? The day Hoda (Peabody Award winner, Edward R. Murrow Award winner) just walks right off the set.

Us too.

• 5-0: Say what? Say it again. 5 and 0. ESPN weighs in: “Why the Saints Are Best in the NFL Right Now.”

• THUMBS UP FROM HOUMA: Houma Today apprises President Barack Obama’s visit to Louisiana last Thursday and concludes “What President Barack Obama’s visit last week to New Orleans lacked in length it more than made up for in substance.”

• THUMBS DOWN FROM OPELOUSAS: The Opelousas Daily World is not as impressed: “We understand the demands on a president’s time, especially this president, who seems determined to throw every pressing, complicated national issue onto one big pile and tackle them all at once. Maybe we could catch the president’s attention — or at least the attention of Vice President Joe Biden — if we let it slip that in one lifetime, Louisiana has lost coastal land equal in area to Delaware, Biden’s home state.”

• NOT SORRY: That justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish? Totally not sorry, would do it again.

• CHANGES AT ANTOINE’S: ABC News reports on how Antoine’s is adapting to the 21st century…sorta.

• PLAYING THE KID CARD: The lawyer for the balloon boy’s dad says arresting his client in public would be “child abuse.” (Just tell him that perp walk = “ultimate reality TV”!)

• AND FINALLY: 5-0!: To commemorate the occasion, why not read Esquire’s interview with Saintsation Ashley Falgout?:

ESQ: Looking at the rest of the schedule, only the Falcons, Patriots, and Cowboys have winning records. Can anyone stop you guys?

AF: A lot of people say the Patriots and Cowboys, but I know we are going to blow them away, so I don’t feel threatened. The fans have a lot to do with it — their energy gets the players pumped up and hitting hard and being successful, and it goes full circle. The Cowboys game isn’t until December, and every one of my friends has claimed my two tickets. They’re fighting for them. I’m like, “Come on, y’all.” I’m putting everyone’s name in a hat.

ESQ: You can put ours in. Anything we’ve forgotten to cover here?

AF: Did I mention we’re gonna win the Super Bowl? Did I say that already? I think that’s it.

Have a good Monday.