The popular NPR news quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me recorded this week’s episode at the Mahalia Jackson Theater last night in front of a packed house. The episode will air at 10 a.m. Saturday on WWNO 89.9 FM.

Host Peter Sagal and judge/scorekeeper Carl Kasell (pictured) were joined by panelists Mo Rocca, Roy Blount Jr. (author of Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans) and Amy Dickinson. George Porter Jr. was the celebrity guest tested on an area of knowledge totally unrelated to his expertise. He also was quizzed about the meaning of Mardi Gras Indian and Meter song titles (but it seemed no one briefed Sagal on how amicable the Meters breakup was). Tune in to hear the secret of a professional musician staying married for 43 years; what Dickinson thinks Houston is for; thoughts on the tickling and nudist habits of congressional members; and Mo Rocca’s bold prediction about Drew Brees’ greatest secret.

You know a phenomenon has gone mainstream when it’s written up in Vanity Fair, the coffee-table bible of trends and tastes from high to low. And so it goes with “sissy rap,” which was the subject of an award-winning Gambit cover story by Alison Fensterstock in 2008 — and is now immortalized in VF under the headline “New Orleans Sissy Bounce: Rap Goes Drag.” The article, by Brett Berk, begins:

You do not need to spend much time in New Orleans to realize that it occupies a unique position within the pantheon of American cities. As different from similar-sized towns like Pittsburgh as a coyote is from a mound of cottage cheese, the Big Easy is wholly it’s own scrappy, disheveled self (and I mean that as a compliment).

Berk goes on to profile the biggest New Orleans sissy rappers, including Katey Red (who tells him “It’s not sissy bounce. It’s Bounce music. It’s just sissies doing it”), Sissy Nobby, Big Freedia and Vockah Redu.

Whatever you (or Katey) want to call it, this seems to be the season of the sissy. Vockah is also on the cover of this month’s Antigravity magazine, and a clutch of New Orleans rappers (sissy and otherwise) will be appearing at the New Orleans Bounce Showcase at South by Southwest Mar. 20. Then, on April 22, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will present Where They At: New Orleans Bounce and Hip-Hop in Words and Pictures, an exhibit curated by Fensterstock and Aubrey Edwards, which will go on for most of the summer and have a satellite exhibition at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

In the meantime, don’t miss the Vanity Fair story, which reveals something truly interesting: Katey Red is starting her own marching band, which we hope is rehearsed and ready for next Mardi Gras.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found 33% of smartphone owners now read news on their cellphones — a number that’s bound to rise as more people adopt smartphones and more news orgs develop specialized apps to meet the need.

Leading the media market in New Orleans, smartphone app-wise, are WWL-TV and Fox 8 News, which are now offering free, ad-supported iPhone applications featuring current news content.

Which one is better? It depends. WWL’s is easier to navigate and seems more intuitive; Fox 8’s is a bit more stylish and customizable, and the font size and layout of the stories are definitely easier on the eyes. What may break the tie is WWL’s video offerings — you can watch selected stories or a weather forecast on the go over a basic Internet connection; Fox 8’s app doesn’t have that function.

The good news is: both apps are pretty good for keeping up with New Orleans news, and they’re both free from the iTunes Music Store. Why not try them both? Here’s a couple of screenshots for comparison, with more below the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes you come across situations* that are so vile you almost don’t want to feed their energy by paying attention to them. But the March 2010 cover of Offbeat Magazine makes a reference too appalling to ignore.

There’s no excuse for the editors of a music magazine to be ignorant of the lyrics to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.”

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Contact Offbeat Magazine at offbeat@offbeat.com or 944-4300. Let the editors know their publication’s allusion to hate crime is shameful and disgusting.

*Thanks to writer Jamey Hatley for bringing this to my attention.

There’s Tinseltown stardust in the air for our local investigative TV guys, it seems. First now-retired Richard Angelico turns TV pitchman for a cash-for-gold company (would someone please upload that to YouTube?), and then Travers Mackel, we hear, has filmed a Mackel-evellian cameo for David Simon’s new series Tremé. But none of these star turns can compete with Peabody award-winning journalist Lee Zurik, who is making his debut as a flea in the Contemporary Arts Center’s upcoming production of Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Gambit’s own I-Team has obtained footage of “Flea Zurik” (which will no doubt be played on an endless loop at City Hall) and we’re presenting it here for the first time. Enjoy.

From James Gill’s February 21 column:

“I am sorry to disappoint all the readers who wished to apply for the position, but New Orleans does not employ a ‘sex assessor.’ That was a misprint in Wednesday’s column. It should have read ‘tax assessor.’ Slips don’t come much more Freudian than that.”

Thanks to the Columbia Journalism Review for the alerting its readers to that gem.

Essence’s Michele Norris has an “Exit Interview” with Hizzoner C. Ray Nagin in the March issue of the magazine. It’s brief, but a little doozy it is:

ESSENCE: People in New Orleans are bothered by a sense of corruption hovering over the city. With both the police and technology departments currently under federal investigation, why haven’t you done more to combat these problems?

NAGIN: There was no corruption under my watch. I’ve only had one instance where there was a mention about anything corrupt, and that was an indictment, not a conviction, where a former employee may have improperly used a credit card. But if you’re talking about the previous administration’s indictments, that happened before I got here.

Many more quotable quotes in the interview (including “There’s been a concerted effort to minimize my accomplishments”). Pick up the March issue of Essence for the whole thing, or check the magazine’s Web site in a week or so (not sure if they’ll be posting it online).

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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Screen grab taken from NOLA.com

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You know, I’ve had my fun taking jabs at NOLA.com and their (lack of) diverse online content, but I must say they are doing a bang-up job covering all things Super Bowl so far. Well, at least I thought as much until I saw them use a four-month-old photo taken by Jonathan Bachman on their front page (thumbnail on the bottom left-hand corner). That is, how you say?, bullshit.

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Of course, upon further examination it becomes apparent that the photo they stole from us is really a screen grab from a Saints tribute video that stole the photo from us first. Yes, that totally absolves a major metropolitan newspaper’s Web site from running an unaccredited photo from a credentialed photographer on their front page. Totally.

The Washington Post previews remarks made by Education Secretary Arne Duncan while taping an interview for Washington Watch with Roland Martin, set to air Sunday and Monday on the cable news channel TV One.

Here’s one excerpt:

“It’s a fascinating one. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘We have to do better.’ And the progress that they’ve made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that — that city was not serious about its education. …”