I think the overall feeling is: “Meh. Anybody’s better than Nagin.” Mayor Nagin who, it should be noted, is about to take yet another publicly funded trip with his wife, this one to the Mexican Yucatan. In the last few months he’s been to China, Australia and Cuba, but I guess the man’s got to get as much as he can in, ’cause soon he’ll have to reach into his own pocket for these things. (Or, even better- in jail, which tends to curb your itinerary.)

So, yeah, people are stepping up to run against him, and inevitably some candidates fall to the back of the pack. In trying to break out of the herd James Perry has decided to take the road less traveled, though I’m not sure I would call it the high road:

Wow.

Couple that with this morning’s NPR promo for an afternoon story on Jefferson Parish trying to keep out black low income residents (complete with a local sound bite: “It’s not about race! It’s about stable neighborhoods!”) and boy howdy, aren’t we just an interesting bunch of people today.

At least the moron justice of the peace who wouldn’t marry interracial couples (for the sake of the children. He was driven by boundless altruism, y’all) was forced to step down. My favorite part of that was that his wife said they were shocked at all the attention it had gotten, they just didn’t understand it. They didn’t do anything wrong, they say, what’s all this fuss? And you look at them on the teevee and realize that by god, they mean it.

But. Let’s keep an eye on progress. The yokels didn’t know what they’d done wrong, but others did, and took action. I’m sure the Jeff Parish good-ol-boys’ way of thinking is under pressure, too, and NPR’s attention will keep the light shined on them as they scurry around.

As for James? Well, I’m not sure if that ad represents evolution or devolution, but I have to say that cussing old people are pretty funny. And I’m sure it really pisses off the bigots, too, so that’s got to count for something, right?

You know, I’m generally pretty upbeat about the future of the city, but every so often I run into something that makes me wonder, like this gem, while I was checking out at the Rite Aid this morning:

Cashier1: My Mama was yellin’ at me all week, telling me how I gotta study and work so I can pass, but I just kept gettin’ more upset and cryin. I told her it don’t matter how much I study, ’cause when I get into the room, I just forget it all. Right after the test, I remember everything, but that don’t matter, do it?

Cashier2: Yeah, I had that problem, too, but it mainly went away during my last year, but it’s stress, ya know? That’s what messes you up.

Cashier1: I know it! But mama don’t care, she wants me to try anyway. I’m tired of trying and not never getting nowhere. I just want it to be over with.

Cashier2 (nodding emphatically): See, that’s why I was so happy when I came up pregnant with my son in 12th grade. It was so much pressure offa me- no more stressin! No more bein’ worried about no tests or walkin’ at graduation.

It left me so depressed I just wanted to sit down and cry; instead I wrote up the exchange in the car, getting it pretty close to verbatim.

Let’s see. We have one girl who’s likely got some sort of test-taking phobia, who actually has a mother who cares about her education, but a school with no resources to help her out.

And another girl who…I just don’t even know what to say. How many new mothers do you know? How many of them consider it all a stress free experience? Not to mention that it all happened just when she said her own school problems had eased up.

When graduating seems like more of a bother than raising a child, does it say more about the quality of her parenting, or of a school system that let her down?

Friday things kicked off downtown, and while I was getting dressed, the local news was covering the opening, including all of the new stuff for kids- special musical acts, crafts, and very excitingly, costumed characters to walk around and entertain.

Up pops this guy:

Who, along with his parrot starts singing a bastardized version of “What can you do with a drunken sailor-” he’d made it kid-friendly by turning it into “What can you do with a crazy pirate?”

Still, I was only watching with half an eye as I herded puppies, yelled at Alison to get it in gear, etc. But the further he got into the song, the more excited he got by it, until his head was really bobbing and weaving, the cap’s beaded fringe swinging and swirling…

I’ve become really attuned to annoyed birds and his sun conure was showing all the signs of peevishness spiraling toward snapishness. He glared suspiciously at the hat as it swung around…until the inevitable happened.

Hat met bird, bird went

PEEP!

and lunged at poor Papillion the pirate. After that his song was a little more subdued, and he kept an eye on the bird to make sure it wasn’t about to pull his ear off.

I fell out. It was by far the funniest thing I’d seen in forever, largely because I could totally relate to it.

So when I saw him strolling the Quarter on Sunday morning before the tourists were even out, I had to talk to him and took the above photos. I told him I’d seen the interview, and he grinned, stroking the bird, and said wasn’t it great that she had even given “a great piratey squawk” during the song. However you want to interpret it, buddy, you go ahead.

It was later noted that he must be the most genial looking pirate in the history of the world. I got curious and did a little work to find his name and site.

So it turns out he’s “Captain Papillion, the prodigious purveyor of positive pirating,” has a masters in education, and most importantly his resume includes winning the Pillager of the Year Award at last year’s PyrateCon.

Having never heard of such a thing, I checked it out, and omg, it’s fate! PyrateCon is the biggest pirate convention in the country- and it happens next weekend, right here in the French Quarter!

I can hardly imagine. Pirates. Everywhere. Piratey- pirates. Drunken pirates. Pillaging pirates.

I totally know what I’ll be doing next weekend.

Thank god I own a costume shop.

I much prefer these sort of white trash idiots:

(condensed from the Times-Picayune):

After allegedly stealing $5,000 from the Slidell convenience store where she worked, a Mississippi woman and her husband began a month-long escape, traversing three Southern states.

The pair began running from the law after Lisa Wade, then the clerk at the Circle K store at 1150 Front St., took about $5,000 on Feb. 15, police said. Keith Wade previously had been fired from the Circle K.

The convenience store’s security camera recorded Wade stuffing money into her pockets and showed her husband, who had been banned from the store, arriving shortly thereafter, police said.

The Wades, who later told police they’d thrown out their phones because they thought they could be used to track their whereabouts, had forgotten to delete text messages that discussed the heist, police said.

<snip>

After paying for the van, new tires, hotels and food, they had run their funds dry. So, they headed to Opelika, Ala., to see Keith’s brother, who was a pastor at a local church, police said.

But when they arrived in Opelika, they discovered his brother no longer lived in the area.

On Monday, Lisa Wade waited in the van while her husband walked into Opelika’s DMV to renew his driver’s license. A red flag popped up on the department’s computers.

So let’s see:
1)Steal $5k
2)Spend $5k+ to try to escape being caught with the $5k
3)Get arrested and have bail set at $7.5k

Brilliant!

In Mayor Kilpatrick’s state of the city address:

DETROIT — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lashed out at his opponents and the news media at the end of his 70-minute State of the City Address on Tuesday. He accused them of creating a “lynch mob mentality” in the scandal over his exchange of sexually explicit text messages with a former top aide.

He said he could not leave the auditorium with his wife and son sitting there without addressing the media storm that has followed his administration.

Detroit broadcasters, the mayor implied, are putting their own quest for ratings ahead of his family’s safety with their intense coverage of the scandal.

“I have to say this because it’s very personal to me,” Kilpatrick said. “I don’t believe that a Nielsen rating is worth the life of my children or your children”

You might remember that he’s in trouble not so much for having an affair but for costing the city millions in a whistleblower scandal. Nagin hasn’t sunk quite that deep, but just last month there was a big whoop-de-doo about his schedule and the man just has no internal appropriateness of scale sensor.

Exerpt from an interview with a local news channel who FOIAed his previous year’s schedule because…well…those of us who live here would like to know where the hell the man is. He doesn’t seem to be out and about except when he’s raising campaign funds for some unannounced future ambition. (emphasis mine)

oh, btw- I’m not sure how the Ayrians come into it, since the police chief is also black.

Nagin: My disappointment is the way some in the media are handling me personally ? Our local newspaper, for example, had me pointing a gun at the police chief. This got all over the Internet, all over the nation, and is now sitting on the most racist websites in America. Hate groups now have that picture, so now I am personally more at risk and my family is personally more at risk.

And I?m a little upset with this station cause you advertising about the ratings, about what?s getting ready to happen with my schedule, you put my personal schedule out there, I am coming back to the station and me and your news director are going to be outside in the parking lot having a good one on one. You do not put my family at risk.

Eric Paulsen: This was a schedule from last year, though.

Nagin: I don?t care. That schedule has formal stuff on it. It has patterns on it and now you have these Aryan race people focused on me and we’ve got some mental cases out in this community and you?re getting ready to put my schedule out there. Where are the other elected official?s schedule? Are you going to do a follow up on that? This has gone beyond the point of reasonableness. … I am sick of this.

The punchline to all of this is that the National Conference of Black Mayors was supposed to have their convention in Detroit, but instead decided to move it here, because our guy is so much better than theirs.

Anyway, here’s my absolute favorite part of Nagin’s rant:

And somebody approach me wrong, I?m going to coldcock ?em. That?s the bottom line. You can come with that foolishness if you want, but you?re going to see a side of Ray Nagin that you haven?t seen.

In case you’d like to see Mr. Chocolate City really fired up, here’s a link to the video.

And here’s commentary on his oh so daunting schedule.

‘Alright, quiet girls!’ I yell over the yowling. Still hoping against hope, I peer through the blinds.

‘Heeeey,’ Alfred calls, his standard greeting, grinning widely so as to best show off all four of his remaining teeth.

‘Yeah, Alfred.’ This is my standard greeting these days, delivered in flat tones while taking his measure. Looks like this could be a doozy. He’d made the extra effort and worn his eye patch over the empty left socket- a mixed blessing at best. He’ll expect to be paid a few dollars just for the courtesy. It made him look a pirate’ ragged at the edges, certainly one who’d seen better days, but still out to plunder what he could.

Oh, and the neck brace. How nice for me- a double header. Ever since he’d been hit by a slow moving car a year ago the brace came and went according to whim. Since it was here today, he must be looking for a little sympathy cash on top of the eye patch bonus.

‘I come to do some work. These leafs got to be taken care of. It looks bad.’ He points to a single leaf that had fallen onto the sidewalk, his manner both proprietary and reproachful: How could you let my walkway sink to this state’

‘Not today Alfred, I’m in the middle of…’

‘You in a mood’’ He eyed me critically, trying to calculate how far he could push today. ‘Hey, your pimple’s gone! God is good, see!’ he said, buttering me up.

‘Alfred, I don’t want to talk about that.’ Every day for the last week, this had been high on the list of preferred topics of conversation. That and how I looked a little ‘puffy.’ It never ceases to amaze me that things and normal adults would never dream of mentioning- like the fundamental unfairness of someone my age getting a pimple- could be endlessly fascinating to Alfred.

‘Looks good, that’s all I’m saying,’ he says, hurt. ‘I don’t mean no harm, you know me.’

‘Yeah, Alfred,’ I reply, noncommittally. ‘I do know you. Look, I’m really busy, and besides, I don’t have any money, so-’

‘Did I ask you for money?’

‘Not yet.’

‘I just come over to see what needs doin, didn’t say nothin’ about money.’ He pouted and took off his hat, showing off his new hairdo. For someone so generally disheveled, he takes an amazing amount of pride in his hair, having something new to unveil every week or two. Last week’s trim afro had been reborn into dozens of tiny neatly spaced twists.

‘Alfred, nobody expects you to work for free.’ Shit. That was a misstep for sure. ‘Look- I’m mad at you about-’

‘The cars, yeah, I know,’ he said with some small chagrin. ‘But I’m here now,’ he said, brightening.

‘Not the point. You were paid do to wash the car and you just disappeared.’

‘But I’ll do ‘em now!’

‘I didn’t pay you on Monday to wash it on Thursday,’ I gripe, wondering how my life had become a Popeye cartoon.

‘But it was raining on Monday!’

‘I paid you at ten AM- it didn’t rain until six.’

He grins. ‘Can’t blame me for tryin,’ can you?’

And therein lies the problem. He’ll never understand that I can blame him for it. In my previous life as a Yankee, if somebody was going to roll you for a few bucks at least they were quick about it, lest you change your mind.

But if Alfred didn’t at least pretend to work for it, he considered it charity. And he couldn’t abide charity, so we do this dance instead.

‘He home?’ Alfred asks, changing tactics. Maybe he’d get further with the man of the house.

‘It’s 1:00,’ I answer.

Alfred looks blank.

‘On a Thursday afternoon.’

His expression is unchanged.

‘He’s working!’

‘Call him.’ He looks away, fiddling with his neck brace, waiting for his command to be executed.
‘Excuse me?’ The tone made him look up, realizing he’d made a mistake along the way, even if he wasn’t quite sure what that might have been.

‘Easy baby, easy. God is good. I don’t mean no harm. You don’t have to call him, I’ll just wait til he gets home.’

‘No, you won’t. He’ll be back late, and you are not sitting out here all afternoon.’

‘Well, gimme $8.00. I’ll wash the car.’

‘I already paid you 10 to do it!’ The big snap was coming on.

‘When?’

‘MONday!’

‘You sure?’

‘Quite.’

‘Well, okay, if you’re sure,’ he shrugs, magnanimous. ‘But I’m thirsty. Gimme a couple dollars for a colddrink.’ Colddrink is local slang- all one word, it could mean anything from a water to a cold 40 from the corner store. In Alfred’s case it was almost certainly the latter.

‘I told you I don’t have any money,’ I say, knowing it’s all over.

I’d give him a handful of change, just be done with it. And he’d leave, feeling he’d triumphed. Having not done any actual work, this strange pirate would make off with his meager booty, feeling good, despite the fact that he owned little more than what he stood up in, and he’d be going through this again in a couple of hours, with some other neighbor, to get a few more bucks together.

But that was later. For now he had won the money for his colddrink, and God was good.

Besides, the logic is that if everyone gave him a little something, he can’t get too carried away or word will get around and his little cash cow will dry up.

But, good Lord, it’s easier just to wash the damn car myself.

Okay, to be honest, it’s more like “am deeply jealous of.”

Here’s what my afternoon was like:
1pm: Shit! I forgot I had a meeting at 5:30.
3pm: Realize I’d better change before meeting as my grass-stained jeans aren’t going to impress anyone.
4:45: Alison calls. Can you pick me up? Also, don’t you have a meeting tonight? What about dinner?
5:05: Get in shower, having realized I never got a chance to get one this morning since my schedule was thrown off this morning. (It doesn’t take much.)
5:15: Fling things around the bedroom in an effort to find “grownup” type clothes.
5:18: Give up on grownup, nonwrinkled clothes.
5:25: Leave house, hair still damp.
5:28: Back in house, find address of meeting.
5:45: Be last one to arrive.
6:33: Having forgotten to turn phone off, daughter calls. What did I end up doing about dinner? Hiss into phone that she should forage through whatever leftovers there are.
7:42: Have recovery drink at home.

Now, a breakdown of Stacy’s day:

1pm:

Okay, I give up. I have no idea, except that it involved a lot more than remembering to try to remember about the grass stains. I do not operate on the same plane as this woman.

Her house was immaculate, her kids phenomenally well behaved. She had her toddler on her lap, quietly drawing kitty-cats while we discussed matters. She got a call from her neighbor asking if she could drop her two toddlers off while she ran some errands. “Sure, no problem!” She orchestrated all four kids from the meeting, including letting them have popsicles without any ending up on furniture, in hair, etc. Her hubby called and she told him dinner was ready and waiting for him when he got home. After our meeting, she was having another meeting about the copper problem.

And she’s nice, too, dammit. Personable, funny, sharp as hell- neither shrewish nor Stepford Wife-ish in the least.

It was like watching someone of an entirely different species operate.

Possibly from another planet altogether- one that I will never, ever even be granted a visitation visa for, never mind citizenship.