"An article on Friday about a decision by the New Orleans Hornets to change the team’s name to the Pelicans misidentified, in some editions, the bird population in Louisiana that was threatened by Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was, of course, the pelican population — not the penguin population."
Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.
What makes for a very scary story? It helps to be a child when you're hearing the tale, because you're already terrified of everything after dark. It's also a good idea to be at home alone while you're reading, so that every burp of the water pipes or cough from the weird neighbor in the next apartment sounds like the foretelling of your horrifically slow murder at the hands of THE DERELICT CLOWN. This is due to the power of The Devil, who creates suspense.
Without suspense, the glaring holes in most ghost stories become [...]
In the case of the Danziger bridge shootings in New Orleans, after Katrina, five police officers have been convicted of an impressive array of charges, ranging from conspiracy to obstruct justice to false prosecution to planting a firearm to falsifying victim statements to fabrication of witnesses to "deprivation of civil rights by shooting." One of the victims was developmentally disabled and was shot in the back… seven times. The police officers were not, however, convicted of murder.
Natasha Vargas-Cooper: Dan Kois! I consider you a top critic. A man of refined taste and considerable insight. How do you defend your love for such a subpar project as "Treme"?
Dan Kois: Natasha! I consider you a canny TV viewer, and a recognizer of quality in all its forms. How do you defend your dismissal of such a quality project as Treme?
Natasha: A Battle of Wits!
Dan: Let us first define the terms of our debate.
Natasha: Personal attacks: allowed!
Who in their right mind would want to be mayor of New Orleans? With colossal disappointment Ray Nagin term-limited out, all the big names have declined to make a run. Step forward, then, fair-housing advocate James Perry, who, if this commercial is any indication, has both questions and answers.
Nobody can deny Manhattan's cultural primacy or its historical importance. But before we refloat the sunken city, before we think of spending billions of dollars rebuilding marble lobbies that may last only until the next storm, before we contemplate reconstructing the thousands of homes now disintegrating in the toxic tang of the flood, let's investigate what sort of place Sandy destroyed.
The city's romance is not the reality for most who live there. It's a poor place, with about 20.9 percent of the population living under the poverty line, and it's a brown place, where 55 percent are non-white. In 2011, in a full 123 percent of families living [...]
This time it's Newhouse/Advance's turn to destroy a newspaper: the New Orleans Times-Picayune, to be specific, which will fire a bunch of people, stop publishing daily and generally be suckier. (Also: "a new company, NOLA Media Group, will run the newspaper and its website, and another new company will print and deliver the paper." Innnntriguing.) Enjoy your new life blogging on this hot mess! Your move, McClatchy! Oh wait, Jake Gyllenhaal's uncle has got the destruction covered, okay, great. The whole thing about corporate reorganizing is most interesting: "Tribune and Advance are creating subsidiary companies for their newspapers." Hey, that's what I would do if [...]
Well, technically it is Mardi Gras everywhere, but nowhere is it more Mardi Gras than in New Orleans. Here's a little "mix" I made for you, which is naturally incomplete (WHY WON'T YOU LET ME EMBED "WHO SHOT THE LALA," YOUTUBE?) but is a pretty decent soundtrack for the day. Laissez les bons temps etc., everyone!
New Orleans may be suffering under many burdens. The city is the subject of a rather terrible television show. It's, you know, still rebuilding from a severe recent rainstorm, you may recall. Also it's being surrounded by an immense and ruinous natural disaster which is going to destroy local economies, at least a thousand miles of shoreline, at least a couple of multi-billion dollar tourism industries and then permanently change the way we think of America. But they're getting bike racks! Totally cute bike racks, installed by cute boys, under what is actually called the Where Ya Rack? program. Yes! Yay bike racks. Focus on the bike [...]
Part of a series about monsters and other scary things happening here through Halloween.
With its crisp autumn weather and golden piles of leaves and the smell of fireplace smoke on city streets, Halloween is the best time of year. Staggering beneath great stacks of costume boxes, UPS deliverymen maneuver through mazes of foam tombstones and doorways crowded with organic heirloom jack o' lanterns. Even the seasonal aisles at the corner chain drug store are worth lingering over this time of year, in a way nobody dawdles around the Eastertime merchandise or inflatable lawn pools of summer. Even the shabby costume superstore that appears for six weeks within some [...]
"Wardell Quezergue Sr., the bandleader, producer, composer, arranger and educator whose contributions to a plethora of New Orleans rhythm & blues classics earned him the moniker "the Creole Beethoven," died Tuesday morning at East Jefferson Hospital of congestive heart failure. He was 81. As an arranger and, occasionally, as a producer, Mr. Quezergue (pronounced ka-ZAIR) dressed up recordings with horns and other embellishments. His credits include Jean Knight's smash 'Mr. Big Stuff,' the Dixie Cups' 'Iko Iko' and 'Chapel of Love,' Professor Longhair's recording of 'Big Chief,' Robert Parker's 'Barefootin,' King Floyd's 'Groove Me,' Dorothy Moore's 'Misty Blue' and Dr. John's landmark 1992 [...]
Some of us turn to nola.com each day, the online presence of the New Orleans Times Picayune, to stay up to date on, like, New Orleans, and news of the Gulf. Apparently they have a football team-information regarding which blankets their front page. If you dig inside, you can find a news section though! There you can learn that the six-month federal deepwater oil drilling moratorium-the one that affected just 33 of the new Gulf oil drilling locations-is destroying America's small, family-owned businesses. In other news, the Deepwater Horizon well was, after five months, finally permanently sealed over the weekend.
Last week Slate's Josh Levin tweeted that a "Colts-Saints matchup would generate the most-lopsided mayoral food bet in Super Bowl history." (The bet wound up being King Cake, beignets, and cafe au lait vs. Indianapolis shrimp cocktail, which seems a little slack on New Orleans' part, but, you know, fucking Nagin.) A far more interesting wager, however, is happening between the directors of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. As a correspondent noted, it is likely the only time you will see the words "sentimental blancmange" in relation to Super Bowl speculation. Also: Go Saints.
