-- A New Yorker's Love Song for NOLA

by Michael Jahn

I've lived in New York City for over 30 years, most of that in Manhattan, and like many Big Apple lifers thought that it was the center of the universe and that I could live nowhere else. I felt that despite the ravages of Wall Street, wealth, and 1,000-percent rent increases, the outward exile of musicians and artists to the point where they can't even afford to live in Brooklyn anymore, that there was nowhere else for me. New York, specifically the jagged Cambrian boulder known as Manhattan, was my forever love.

And then I set foot in NOLA, an acronym that if you haven't heard it stands for New Orleans, Louisiana. Its other names are more familiar - the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the City that Care Forgot, and I might add "the city that can't decide if it's in the southern United States or northern Costa Rica."

I set one foot in the town and said "oh yeah, I can do this." It was the same way I felt on climbing up on the Cambrian boulder in 1966. You know about the music and the voodoo and the jazz funerals and the food and the booze and Dr. John and all that, and you can throw in Coco Robicheaux, who I only missed a few week ago because I couldn't afford to get across the Lake Ponchartrain bridge to Covington to catch his gig. You know all that or can look it up.

Did I mention that annual spring party that instills in so many permanent residents the fervent desire to spend a few days with the relatives in Baton Rouge? You know about that one, too.

I want to talk about NOLA's groove and what's in the air and how people feel about life and their city.

If New York is the capitol of the known universe, as it thinks of itself, New Orleans is capitol of a parallel, antimatter universive that floats just to the left of Andromeda.

Listen to me. New Orleans is the Greenwich Village that I recall from the mid-sixties. It's hip and musical and artistic and friendly and supportive - more like demanding - of eccentricity. There's a mellow groove that anyone possessed of an artistic sensibility will find irresistable. It's friendly and possessed of a terrific civic pride. No one loves their town the way NOLA people love theirs and they're out there every day promoting it, especially now that it was nearly taken away.

You want an emblem that's more to the point than the fleur-de-lis that's so ubiquitous it's on their professional football team's uniforms? (There ain't no apple on the New York Giants' helmets.) Take the streetcar, and I'm thinking here of the Canal Street Streetcar, and if you want to be even more specific, the Red Line.

The streetcar tells you why the town is called "the Big Easy." That title implies that the pace of life is slower in New Orleans than elsewhere, and let's think for the moment of New York. This is true enough. But nearly everywhere is slower than in New York. Even in L.A. it's slower, even in Washington, DC, and even in Chicago, which comes the closest to Manhattan in terms of testosterone frenzy.

I haven't been to Key West, but I imagine that it's slower there than in anyplace where Jimmy Buffett doesn't reside. Resort towns don't count.

The words "the Big Easy" don't mean slow so much as they mean family and caring. And the streetcar is emblematic, far better than the fleur-de-lis or the silhouetted black guy leaning against a lamppost playing the sax. It ambles along slower than any vehicle save for any vehicle save those cruising for parking spots at the mall. It moves along a wide strip of flat concrete in the middle of the street. The tracks are set into the concrete. Police cars sometimes amble down the same path. So do people with shopping carts and baby carriages. The streetcars, built prominently in 1923 and open to the elements, amble along at something like three miles an hour, slow enough that you can cross in front of it on foot, like ten feet in front of it, and not get run over because the streetcar will stop.

There are official stops every few blocks, but you just might get picked up anywhere.

If you cross in front you might get yelled at, but what do you expect? However the yelling will come from the operator, who is sitting in the front looking out a big open window, and he or she will say "what's the matter with you today? What are you doing out here at ten in the morning. What did you, lose your job again. How's your brother?" And the tourists in the car are slack-jawed at the fact that the driver has not only stopped for you but has lapsed into conversation and soon might add "get on and sit down and I'll drive you to work."

Last week the driver of a car I was on stopped to ask a woman pushing a baby carriage how her kid was. And none of the passengers minded, nor would they mind, because they live in the Big Easy where cooing at a baby is more important than getting to work on time.

This don't happen on the avenue, Fifth Avenue, people. Or on Sunset Boulevard or on South Wabash.

Okay, the hurricane. Yes, the hurricane. They survived it and, being entrepreneurs in the traditional art of substance abuse, promote a drink named the Hurricane. There are various recipes, but the one I saw most recently mixed four ounces of dark rum with an equivalent amount of orange and pineapple juice and some grenadine. You don't want to have more than one unless you can take the next day off.

You also don't want to be a young woman flashing her breasts on Bourbon Street in exchange for a string of cheap beads unless you don't mind it being on the Internet forever. Not everything that happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans, though a goodly amount does.

What survived the hurricane (the storm, not the drink)? If you are a tourist, businessman, or casual visitor, just about everything. As an older white man said, uncharitably, "everything that matters survived." Which is to say that many of the poorer neighborhoods did not. But just walking around the Central Business District, the French Quarter, the waterfront (ironically enough), and the Garden District you might say "what hurricane?"

But in the pages of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, every third story is about picking up debris or rebuilding, and it's been over two years. And if you wander away from "the Quarter" and over to the Warehouse Arts District and look at some of the warehouses that really are warehouses, you might notice that many of them have been painted up to about five or six feet off the ground. This is a bit creepy once you have figured out the owners are covering up high water marks.

And the hurricane remains in the form of tee shirts, the inevitable tee shirts - "FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass," "NOPD: Not Our Problem, Dude," "I was in New Orleans During Katrina and all I Got was a Plasma TV," and, more elegantly, "Make Levees, Not War."

And the word "rebuild" is everywhere.

This is necessary, of course. A lot remains to be done. The poor are hurting. The musicians are hurting. The real estate market is way constricted and getting uncomfortably New Yorkish. A year before the hurricane someone told me about a two-bedroom apartment in the French Quarter that rented for $600 a month. Telling this to a cabbie on the way to the airport, my discovery was scoffed at and I was told that I could get one for $250 in a different neighborhood, one that doubtless has since washed out into the Gulf of Mexico.

As for the one in the Quarter, as of last week it was $1800 a month, the shortage of housing is so acute. And in October I dropped in on an outdoor party/street fair and a developer showed me fancy color brochures for a condo he is putting up in the middle of the Warehouse Arts District. He showed me the floor plan of a two-bedroom apartment for $350,000. "You might want to pick up one of these," he said, as if suggesting I buy a beignet at Café du Monde.

Go ahead and do it, buy a condo. Get something on the second floor or higher. The levees are still a question mark.

By the way, and the reputation notwithstanding, beignets are overrated. They are heavy plain donuts with confectioner's sugar thrown on them.

There is no snappy ending to this story except to say that NOLA is a gem among world cities, proof that you can have artistry, imagination, family, friendliness, and pride in the middle of a major American city. Or northern Costa Rican city. Go there. Throw a couple of bucks at a street musician (better than at one of the horrid rock bands you will hear on Bourbon Street), get sick on beignets and hurricanes oh, and, what the hell, flash your boobs and get immortalized on YouTube. Buy one of the really classy tourist tee shirts, like the one that reads "I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street." Maybe don't.

Go to the Market Café at Decatur and St. Philip and nab a catfish po'boy for $10 and listen to the free music. Volunteer to build houses and clean up. Try out the streaming audio at the Rajun' Cajun (http://www.klrzfm.com), and get a room at the Day's Inn French Quarter, which may stay at $59 a night six blocks from Bourbon Street at least until it is renovated following Katrina, renamed the Canal Street Hotel, at which point I presume the room rate will at least double. So what if the phones don't work and there's plaster dust in the room and nowhere to hang your clothes and, like me, you may have to scavenge a wastebasket out of an even-more-unfinished room.

You're on the streetcar line, the Red Line, and the car ambles by every fifteen minutes and the conductor will stop for you and take you for a ride, stop and coo at babies, and point out the restaurant where Bill Clinton eats (second floor, last table on the right by the window).

And you'll understand what they mean by "the Big Easy."

--'Wait a second, Honey, while I put Putin on hold'

by Michael Jahn

Those who were paying attention during Rudy Giuliani's 1994 inauguration as New York's mayor will recall his then-seven-year-old son Andrew running wild onstage, imitating his father, mugging for the cameras and stealing Dad's thunder.

If a man can't control his children, some wondered, how can he control a city?

Well, he sure can't control them now, for both Andrew and his sister Caroline appear to hate their Dad. But that's not the point.

Last month Giuliani interrupted a speech to take a cell phone call from his current wife.

If a man can't convince his wife not to call him while he's giving a presidential campaign speech, some wonder, how can he convince Iran to give up developing that Death Ray?

For once, the old standby "I told you never to call me here" makes sense.

Imagine, if you will, President Giuliani talking to the Russian President on the Hotline, when the wife calls from Rodeo Drive.

"Wait a second, Honey, while I put Putin on hold."

-- It's Candy-Christ Time Again in New York

IT’S CANDY-CHRIST TIME IN NEW YORK AGAIN
by Michael Jahn


Artist Cosimo Cavallaro's life-size chocolate Jesus is back!

The controversial work of art is scheduled be mounted at the Proposition Gallery in Manhattan's Chelsea. Its title is "My Sweet Jesus." Christ is depicted as anatomically correct and bereft of loincloth. The sculpture will be on display along with chocolate sculptures of eight Catholic saints. They're dressed. Invitations to the exhibition will feature a Virgin Mary with scratch-and-sniff breasts.

Censorers please note -- this could be much worse.

Conservatives are already in protest, against not only the exhibition but its confluence with All Saints Day. Earlier this year, a similar attempt to display "My Sweet Jesus" in conjunction with Holy Week (that's the one before Easter), was killed by the resulting uproar.

If all this sounds familiar, it is. In 1989, photographer Andres Serrano exhibited "Piss Christ," a photo of a plastic crucifix in a jar of his own urine, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A scandal ensued

Ten years later a painting, "The Holy Virgin Mary," by British artist Chris Ofili, also exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, showed a black Mary surrounded by elephant dung and clippings of female genitals. Cementing his legend as a patron of the arts as well a fan of the First Amendment, "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani tried to evict the museum from the city-owned building it leased. He also sued the museum. A United States Federal Court judge ruled against him.

Shortly thereafter artist Renee Cox exhibited "Yo Mama's Last Supper," an image of the famous feast with the artist herself, nude, as Jesus. It too was shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and again Giuliani's critique was scathing. He threatened to cut off the museum's funding.

Ya gotta wonder how President Giuliani will show his appreciation for the arts and his respect for the First Amendment.

Safe to say that there will be no chocolate Jesus at a Washington gallery, no marzipan Mary at a Federal Court building, and as for that Jujyfruit fresco of the conservative members of the Supreme Court ...

--Marion Jones, George Bush, and Giving it Back

by Michael Jahn

Anybody else out there think it's bizarre that Marion Jones might get thrown in jail for lying to the authorities about using steroids but Bush won't get thrown in jail for lying to us about starting a war?

isn't there something basically weird that it's okay for the cops to lie to us but we can't lie to them?

And what about fleeing to evade prosecution. That's illegal too. You knock over a 7-11 and what are you supposed to do, stand there and wait for the cops to come and then tell them exactly what you did?

Why not just deputize criminals and let them arrest themselves?

Marion Jones may have to give back her gold medals. How about having George Bush give back the 2004 election?

-- O.J. Simpson Was Looking for 'the Real Cutlery'

O.J. Simpson Was Looking for 'the Real Cutlery'

by Michael Jahn

Reliable sources say that, rather than looking to retrieve such sports memorabilia as signed jerseys and helmets, when O.J. burst into a hotel room in Las Vegas he was looking for "the real cutlery."

For years after being acquited in his criminal trial but convicted in a civil trial, Simpson said he would look for "the real killers."

In fact, sources say, he was looking for the knife that he is alleged to have used in the murders of his wife and her friend that famous night in 1994. The 12-inch stiletto was missing until a week ago, when it turned up on eBay.

According to sources close to the Las Vegas police who questioned him after the robbery, Simpson believed that a sports memorabilia broker had purchased the knife and planned to sell it in Las Vegas. That turned out not to be true, as Simpson discovered. The dealer is said to have been trying to sell such other Simpson collectables as a framed photo of the Hall of Fame football star alongside FBI tough guy and reported drag queen J. Edgar Hoover.

--Hollywood Star and Rich Arab Boyfriend Die in Drunken High-Speed Crash

Hollywood Star and Rich Arab Boyfriend Die in Drunken High-Speed Crash

by Michael Jahn

If you followed the Princess Di anniversary hoopla -- and if you managed to avoid it please share your secret -- you would think that Joan of Arc, not the former Diana Spencer, was killed in that Parisian wreck.

Diana seems like she was a decent sort who suffered at the hands of a caddish husband. That makes her like every other chick-flick heroine. You know, the wife is upstairs caring for her dying mother while the husband is in the basement banging the babysitter. She began her public life as inoffensive arm candy and ended it in a flurry of noblesse oblige. That is what royals do, and noblesse oblige is better than no oblige, but she did it particularly well.

That does not, however, qualify her for canonization.

Which is exactly what's on the mind on the hordes of writers, actors, and other hacks who are living off her memory and what they would like people to believe is her memory. They want to sell books, magazines, and the commercial space within their soap opera documentaries.

Imagine what the headline might read should a beloved blonde American icon - hold on, I'm trying to think of one - okay, let's go with Jennifer Aniston, flame out while fleeing surveillance by going 80 miles an hour through a tunnel with a rich Arab she was courting after being abandoned by the caddish husband.

JEN AND RICH ARAB BOYFRIEND DIE IN DRUNKEN HIGH-SPEED CRASH

There would be no canonization. Instead, we would hear a lot of talk about blondes and rehab and she would be compared with Lindsay Lohan and the rest of that lot. Now we're hearing Di being compared with every saintly, misunderstood and eventually martyred woman in history.

And can you just IMAGINE what Fox News would say about the rich Arab boyfriend?

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-- Bush Would Outsource 9-1-1- Calls to India

Bush Would Outsource 9-1-1 Calls to India

by Michael Jahn

Sources within the White House have revealed that the Bush Administration is pushing a plan to outsource emergency 9-1-1 calls to India.

Right now almost the entire United States is serviced by the 9-1-1 emergency network. Most 9-1-1 called are directed to one of 6,200 Public Safety Answering Points nationwide. Those are in places like New York, Chicago, Chattanooga and Baton Rouge. If the Bush plan were approved, the calls would be answered in places like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Thiruvananthapuram.

Depending on who you believe, from one-half to two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies outsource to India. Why, to thank them for ministering to spiritually bankrupt rock stars and providing staff for our convenience stores?

No, because in Portland a typical salary for a 9-1-1 call taker is $36,995. In
Thiruvananthapuram it is about 170,000 rupees - around $4000.

Okay, so ghee is cheaper in Thiruvananthapuram.

One White House insider, who wished to remain anonymous, defended the president's plan. "If the Indians can explain Windows 2000 they can manage to send a paddywagon to Hollywood and Vine," he said.

Or send a District of Columbia Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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