She-clown ripoff!

When they're not smuggling dope into jail, or sneaking up behind vacationing narcozoologists, what do she-clowns do?

They gain the trust of elderly widows and empty their bank accounts.

Carrie L. Williams-Thompson, 48, of Prescott, Arizona, entertained as "Kooki the Clown." She also worked as a bereavement counselor (?!?) and is believed to have met the victim in that capacity. Kooki got herself a power of attorney and cleaned about a half million in clown cash out of the victim's bank accounts.

Police caught up with her in California, where she was performing at a fair. I can only hope she was in costume when she got pinched. Kooki is now awaiting extradition to Arizona.

Strangest of all, considering that this is a clown case, is that no drugs or perversion were involved. As far as we know.

World War G:: News from the front

"Behold him rushing forth from the flags and reeds. His enormous body swells. His plaited tail brandished high, floats upon the lake. The waters like a cataract descend from his opening jaws. Clouds of smoke issue from his dilated nostrils. The earth trembles with his thunder. "

--Botanist, naturalist and early alligator expert William Bartram, 1791

Mr. Bartram knew the score. If he'd been a blogger I'm sure he would have posted regularly on his alligator-related discoveries.

_____________________

It's been a while since I provided any updates in the ongoing struggle known as World War G. For those of you arriving late, World War G refers to the savage battle being waged against human kind by Alligator mississippiensis, better known as the American Alligator. I have not posted any alligator alerts, nor have I updated my alligator threat map in months. I pray that no one has been mangled as a result of my dereliction. Mea culpa.

Several of you have been helpful over the past couple of months, forwarding important news items my way. Official and unofficial members of the SRC Research Team Katy aka Dino, Dena, and Lulu have all provided fine service. Ladies, humankind thanks you.

Let's get down to business.

_____________________

There is no disputing the fact that alligator attacks on humans are on the rise. What mainstream science has refused to address is the expanding nexus between alligator activity and illegal drug use. These are the facts:

February: Dayton, Ohio police and US Marshalls raid the home of 20 year old Devon Nelms, wanted on a warrant for parole violation. They don't find Mr. Nelms, but they do find guns, marijuana, cocaine and two alligators guarding the back door.

March: Philadelphia police execute a search warrant at the home of 38 year old suspected dope dealer Mike Smith. They find four handguns, 62 grams of marijuana, four grams of cocaine, 8 ounces of codeine syrup, 56 pills, drug paraphernalia and an alligator of unknown size and disposition.

Police in Union City, California, conducting what they described as a "routine probation search", arrested 30 year old Eric Windom after finding a firearm, marijuana plants, and an undernourished 6' alligator. Strangely, no cocaine was involved.

May: Police in Toledo, Ohio, raid a home, shooting and killing a pit bull and confiscating several other dogs. They also find an alligator, and charge a resident with illegal use of food stamps. The article doesn't say, but I'd bet good money that drugs were involved. There's a video that nicely displays the house of squalor.

I have now documented 4 alligator-related criminal cases in northern Ohio in the past 12 months, including one alarming case that involved the arrest of a steroid-addled law enforcement officer.

Something is up. It looks to me like Ohio is the place that alligators have decided to establish the beach head from which to launch their expansion into the soft midsection of the nation. Rest assured, I'll be monitoring the situation as it develops. The bold, intuitive science known as narcozoology does not sleep.

More alligator information will follow in the next few days. Stay tuned. For those of you in gator country, remember that it's mating season, and that means our saurian adversaries will be even more aggressive than usual.

The watchword remains, as always: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Law Enforcement Quote of the Week

“Not a lot of drug dealers of the thug variety are going to keep a poodle.”

-Suburban Dayton, Ohio police officer Tim Harrison, commenting on the discovery of two alligators during a drug raid.

These are, uh, five of my favorite things

I think I'll just jump on the tag bandwagon and do this "five things" meme that's been flying around. No one tagged me specifically, so I'll be like that loud guy at the bar who jumps into your conversation and starts talking and then won't go away. I've seen a few versions of this, but I think I'll do Melinda June's since it's the most recent one I've seen. I've also seen nifty entries from Dr MVM, and MNMom.

Here goes.

5 things in my bag

-a Glock Model 26 magazine with 10 rounds of 9mm ammo

-a Leatherman folding knife that MizBubs gave me

-a cheap LED flashlight from REI.

-a Northwestern University Traffic Institute binder and legal pad

-extra ink pens, each bearing the name of some company that gave them out for free

5 favorite things in my room:

-MizBubs, although she's not there at the moment

-the top drawer of my dresser, which is where I have some airline vouchers, my cufflinks, finisher certificates from the marathons I've run, my cufflinks, a collection of old family photographs, casino matchbooks and a bunch of other neat small things.

-a picture of me and MizBubs taken in 1984 at the UIC campus

-a picture of my girls taken at a cabin in Minnesota in 1995

-my black kangaroo skin Lucchese cowboy boots

5 things I have always wanted to do:

-hike the Appalachian Trail (or any other really long hike)

-learn to fly an airplane

-go to a culinary school (even though I know enough to not want to be a professional chef)

-live in the country

-visit every continent in the world and just roam around

5 things I'm currently into:

-procrastination and exhaustion

-researching a book that I have a vague notion of writing

-planning camping trips

-guns and shooting

-finding and buying local foods, and supporting more local agriculture

5 people I'd like to tag:

MizBubs, and then any other people who want to respond to this. I originally tagged my eldest and youngest daughters, but I've been informed that they don't "do" tags.

Two years of sprawling ramshackle goodness

2 years and 1007 posts ago I started this blog:

I'm finally going to follow my kids' examples and start a blog. What I hope to do is have a place where I can spout off to a potentially large audience (much larger, anyway, than family campouts, holiday meals and parties) and also to connect folks with widely varying interests and backgrounds. We'll see.

I'm still having fun with it. Best of all has been all the cool stuff I found because you stopped by here. Thank you!

And now, to celebrate my second year of blogging, I'm going to continue a tradition that I started on last year's anniversary. I'm going to link to one of the first pictures I posted-- what is now possibly the most popular gut surgery picture on the internet.

See you next year!

Two big events rolled into one!

What two big events are those, you might ask?

Well, of course today is Derby Day--the running of the 134th Kentucky Derby. There will be bourbon, and hats. And lots of flowers, which brings me to my next big event.

I have to leave for work in a few minutes, so I won't be able to watch the most exciting two minutes in sports at home. But I do have time to let you know about another event:

World Naked Gardening Day

From the website:

"Why garden naked? First of all, it's fun! Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment."

I beg to differ. I think that mostly what our culture needs, the vast majority of us anyway, is to move toward keeping your damn clothes on, and trying to preserve what shreds of dignity we have left. I've always thought that nudity is best suited for two human activities: f*cking and combat. But that's just me. I've included a photo from some WNGD promotional material:



I am glad that there's not a world naked driving day.

Enjoy your weekend.

__________________________

Note: I apologize for posting the racy photo you see above. I meant to post this family-friendly version of the nudist gardeners romping through the weeds:



Please accept my apology.

Get going!

This motivational message was brought to you by the official rat terrier of Sprawling Ramshackle Compound

Random Ten

Dixieland Rock—Elvis Presley

Bloodshot—The String Kings

Ne m’ecris pas—Edith Piaf

Overpowered By Funk—The Clash

Army Ants—Tom Waits

Christine—Siouxsie and the Banshees

Two Step a Erby—The Thibodeaux Boys

Hearse Driver—Os Catalepticos

Guilty—Yann Tiersen

Who Are the Brain Police?—Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention

Here's a clip of Elvis performing "Dixieland Rock". It's from the movie "King Creole", a delicious gumbo featuring Elvis as the delinquent with great pipes, Walter Matthau as the evil club owner, and Carolyn Jones as the bad girl with a heart of gold. It's set in New Orleans. Notwithstanding Margarita Fridays, I can't think of a better way to start the weekend.

I have been remiss

Yes I have.

I've been blogging nearly 2 years now, and I really enjoy it. Along the way I've met some really swell people, and there are eveen more that I haven't met, but feel like I know well enough to consider friends.

There are a lot of you out there with a lot of talent. I mean, really. There are some creative people out there and they've got commercial ventures that deserve recognition. I've been meaning to promote these for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it. Until now. I'd love to see any of the people I'm about to mention get rich from their art and their hard work.

_____________________

First there is Jin, proprietor of Uniquely Yours Pastry Shoppe. Let me tell you something--she is one hawt cheesehead, and she is an absolutely magnificent pastry chef! My introduction to her art was the Black Pearl:

Dark Belgian chocolate ganache is infused with a perfect balance of organic black pepper, ginger & wasabi. Dipped in more dark Belgian chocolate, then rolled in toasted black & white sesame seeds for crunch.

Please, do your tastebuds a favor and order something from her.

Amy Guth is talented and funny and unbelievably gracious. I'm a sucker for anyone who treats my daughters so well and is so genuinely kind to them. She's the author of Three Fallen Women from So New Media. She hosts the ongoing Fixx Reading Series, and most recently she's organizing and promoting the upcoming Pilcrow Lit Fest.

Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein has an amazing collection of postcards (if you're lucky you might even get one in the mail), and a taste for vintage communist propaganda. He's one talented monkey, and he may be the Compound's favored candidate for president in 08. Here's the thing, though--he's also a writer! I read his first novel, Trouble DeVille, and I've been bogarting it ever since, which has kept Splotchy from reading it. Dr. MVM's debut novel is a complicated southern mess, replete with bible thumpers, lesbians, white supremacist webmasters and plucky independent bookstore employees. I told him that I was impressed with how many plot lines he was able to weave together, coherently, since my attention span barely allows me to finish typing this sentence. There's gunplay, and a cute gal with a gun on the cover, which I love. Click here to see how you can order this book.

Splotchy is, I think, one of the smartest, cleverest and funniest bloggers around. Plus I happen to know he's a truly decent fellow, and does good works when he's not entertaining us all. He's making a movie, too, but I can't plug that because he hasn't shot it yet. But here's what I can plug: his fabulous line of iSplotchy gear, available for purchase right here.

What can I say about Katie Schwartz? Schwartzy, as I think I'll start calling her, since she calls me "Bubbsie". She makes me blush because she repeatedly uses the "c" word and all. The reason I mention her is that she's got a book coming out soon, and if it's half as good as her normal musings on this and that it's going to be awesome. Look for her upcoming book Emotionally Pantsed from So New Media in the next few months.

Becca from No Smoking in the Skull Cave lives here in northern Illinois, and yet we have not met her. She has excellent taste in pinups and exploitation movie posters. Her blog is occasionally not safe for work--as a matter of fact, I can't read it at work because it's filtered--but that's another reason to love it. Becca is an artist and has a business called Wink Studios. Recently we did some remodeling, and I bought MizBubs this original drawing for her tiki bar:



Becca was a pleasure to do business with. If you get a chance to buy one of her drawings, do it.

Write Procrastinator is, as you may have guessed, a writer. I like his style. He has given me one of my favorite phrases:

"Procrastination? It's CRACK for writers."

In addition to his regular blog he's got some clever side projects too.

He's got some good swag over here.

_____________________

That's it for now. I'm off to beautiful Springfield, Illinois, my least favorite city in the midwest, for the 2008 Illinois Police Memorial. Our honor guard will be participating in the memorial ceremonies. This year the memorial falls on May 1, which is usually celebrated here at the Compound with labor songs, red banners and maybe a trip to the Haymarket Martyrs Memorial.

I'll be back in a couple of days.

Take care.

Happy Lee Elia Day!

I'm not a big sports guy, but every once in a while something happens in the world of professional sports that has larger cultural significance. Like Lee Elia's inspired monologue of April 29, 1983. Many Chicago media outlets are commemorating the event, and some columnists have even suggested naming today "Forgive Lee Elia Day". Forgive him? I'd like to thank him.

Elia was in his second season as manager of the Chicago Cubs, and they were off to a 4-15 start. Lee decided to tell a group of sportswriters how he really felt, and the rest was history. This audio proves yet again that middle-aged white male rage is simultaneously terrifying and hysterically funny.

Here's a link to the uncensored audio clip. Crack open an Old Style, sit back and enjoy. If you're playing this at work, or around your kids, make sure you turn the volume up nice and loud.

No, seriously, don't do that. This is very NSFW.

Have a nice day!

For Fran

One of the nicest bloggers ever, Fran, just celebrated her anniversary. I'm too disorganized and self-absorbed to have done anything special, or even been among the first 40 or 50 people to comment on her celebratory post. I ran around and finally put a little something together.

Fran, this is for you and yours!

From me and Fred and Barney and the guys down at the station.

Better late than never, right?

The Future, the way it used to be: Rocket Mail!

Howdy!

MizBubs and I met the lady to your right last December in Las Vegas. She was taken with my gold lame jacket, and we were both impressed by her atomic headgear and pneumatic sense of style. After a few drinks and a reasonably priced buffet, she agreed to stop by and help host our "The Future, the way it used to be" feature.

The year is 1957. A bold visionary by the name of Frank Tinsley reports that, in the not-too-distant future (1965), mail will be delivered via rocket:

IT’S Friday noon. In the home office of a giant New York corporation the final drafts of a secret merger are being signed. If they can be signed by the party of the second part in San Francisco and be back here in the office before the stock market closes—so that “buy” orders can be rushed to dealers throughout the country—a possible Monday financial slump can be averted. The atmosphere is tense. A micro- photo machine has been moved into the president’s office and a trusted operator inserts the sheets, one by one. Two tiny prints of each emerge, one for the files and one for mailing. The latter is sealed in a pencil-thin plastic carrier bearing the written address and the code punch for San Francisco. The carrier is then popped into a pneumatic tube that takes it to a central post office where it emerges into a sorting machine. Automatically identifying the punch mark, this device drops it into the San Francisco container. At scheduled intervals, an attendant seals these containers and inserts them in a large pneumatic tube to the rooftop heliport. Here our letter is picked up by a fast convertaplane that flies hourly between the city and the rocket base.

Arriving at the base, our pilot hovers over the Frisco-bound rocket. Mail containers are lowered to a loading crew perched high on the missile’s open cargo doors. Parcel post packages follow swiftly and the doors are swung upward and locked. The “service stand” retracts its telescoping tower, folds it neatly on its bed and pulls away from the missile pit.

You can see the rest of this nifty article at one of my favorite places, Modern Mechanix. Honestly, I am envious of all the cool stuff they've got over there.

April Showers

Bring dogs in scuba gear

Good morning sleepyheads!

It's Sunday morning, the coffee is strong and tasty, and for the moment there's nothing to worry about.

Enjoy your day!

Friday Random Ten

We can't abandon Johnny Yen and leave him as one of the last Friday Random Ten practitioners. No sir.

Here's my random ten for today:

Race Track Boogie—Renaud Veluzat

Mr. Block—Utah Phillips

Save Us—John Cale

Ballrooms of Mars—T. Rex

Round & Round & Round—The Cure

Uncle Jo’ Gimme Mo!—Gerald Clark’s Lere String Band

Honky Tonk Mind—Johnny Horton

Little Acorns—The White Stripes

Rock The Universe—Del Vaughn

Wake Up—The Arcade Fire

I got tired of the music I had up in the widget. I've been feeling pretty good, and I wanted some happy tunes. I asked the girls for some help. I asked each of them to give me a song or two that made them happy lately. Here's what I got:

The Birds and the Bees--Patrick and Eugene (Our youngest)

Birdhouse in Your Soul--They Might Be Giants (MizBubs)

Here Comes Your Man--The Pixies (Our eldest)

The 59th Street Bridge Song--Simon & Garfunkel (MizBubs)

Don't Worry About the Government--Talking Heads (me)

Help Yourself--Tom Jones (me)

Give 'em a listen, and I hope they make you happy too.

Law Enforcement Quote of the Week

"Once you think you've seen it all, something else comes around."

--Bellevue, Ohio Police Captain Matt Johnson, referring to the arrest of Art Price, Jr. for having sex with a picnic table.

Yes, you read that right. I overlooked this fellow and missed putting him in yesterday's Weenie-Waver Wednesday. Maybe we can create, oh, a table-f*cker Thursday for him.



Art Price, Jr. was spotted having sex with his picnic table four times. A neighbor saw Mr. Price walk onto his deck, naked, and stand the table on its side. Price then penetrated the table through the umbrella hole. The neighbor videotaped the event and turned the tape over to the police as evidence. He did this in view of kids at a nearby school.

Surprisingly, Price's family did not want to talk to the press.

Today's word is "masturbatorium"

It's been too long, and there are far too many freaks roaming the alleys and highways of our great nation. Knowledge is power, and you, the people, have a right to know.

It's time for the return of Weenie Waver Wednesday.

_____________________

Our first freak is Robert E. Lee of Mechanicsville, Virginia. Yes, that is his real name. Mr. Lee, a manager at a local Sears, was caught peeping into women's dressing rooms. According to the police, Lee had constructed a "makeshift masturbatorium" in the rafters:

...investigators discovered the Sears manager had created a makeshift masturbatorium from a service platform just above the ladies’ dressing rooms.

It appeared to investigators that the prefab peeping hutch had been in use for quite some time, the victim’s lawsuit alleges, and that Lee admitted to watching the girl and her mother trying on bathing suits.

“During the search of the room, police officials recovered sexually explicit magazines and seminal fluids,” the suit says.

At least it wasn't referred to as a "sprawling ramshackle masturbatorium".

53 year old David Nelson, of Billings, Montana was arrested in the reception area of the Comfort Inn. Mr. Nelson had made himself comfortable by getting naked and arming himself with a .45 handgun. He knocked on a few room doors, and then tried to climb over the desk.

Alcohol was involved.

Moving on to the world of politics....

John Hartley, a candidate for city council in San Diego, was arrested after witnesses saw him masturbating in public and then urinating into a cup at 4 in the afternoon. Being a politician, Hartley later tried to explain away the incident in a campaign mailing, using the classic freak's excuse of having to take a leak. Hartley is described as a "tireless door-to-door campaigner". Campaigner, eh? That's a euphemism I haven't heard before. There's more on his case here.

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In Florida-related news:

Thomas Blacine, the "naked tickler" was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Mr. Blacine was featured on these pages in October 2007.

Mr. Adrian Apgar (now known as "lefty") was arrested by police after being discovered in a canal, naked, apparently trying to sneak up on an alligator. When the police called out to Mr. Apgar he told them to be quiet, and asked them to turn their spotlights off.

Apgar appeared on this blog in November 2006 after he lost his arm in an earlier, crack-fueled naked encounter with an alligator. I will always be in his debt, because he inspired me to begin my research in the brave new science of narcozoology.

An unknown 30 year old woman told police that she was standing in an intersection directing traffic, topless, because God told her to. Why does God never tell anyone to get a job, or just straighten the hell up?

The Sunshine State is now on the brink of finally having an anti-bestiality law. Lawmakers heard a moving story from a local prosecutor before voting:

Before the vote, Leon County prosecutor Michael Bauer sent Rich and other senators a letter recounting his troubles prosecuting the 2006 case of a blind guy who had sex with his male yellow Lab "Lucky." The man explained "freely about his regular sexual acitivities with his dog and said he would take the dog for a walk prior to sex to 'prevent fecal impact.'"

You can read more about that blind guy, 29 year old Alan Yoder, here or here. The second story contains a classic defense attorney statement:

"However lurid the allegations may be, we should resist a rush to judgment." At least until after the attorney cashes the check.

Seriously, how would you like to defend this guy? Do you think this is the kind of groundbreaking legal work the attorney thought he'd be doing some day when he was in law school?

_____________________

30 year old Nicholas Hadzik was arrested for causing thousands of dollars in damage at a Pennsylvania motel and grocery store. Mr. Hadzik did this while he was naked. There's some video of the incident here.

Alcohol was involved. Clearly Mr. Hadzik never learned that naked, drunk and rampaging is no way to go through life.

I always like to read how other states name their criminal offenses. According to this story Hadzik was charged with "two felony counts of risking a catastrophe; three felony counts of criminal mischief; two misdemeanor counts of simple assault; two misdemeanor counts of open lewdness and two summary counts of public drunkenness." I like any statutory language that includes the words mischief and catastrophe.

Apparently that Mardi Gras feeling never stops for Sharon Hall, 50, of Alexandria, Louisiana. Police arrested her after she was observed dancing, sans pants, in front of a group of approximately 20 men in a local park. She also lifted her shirt a few times, had a crack pipe on her, and resisted arrest. No alligators were involved.

_____________________

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time, remember--constant vigilance!

Clown vs. Cop

This just in:

A Bessemer, Alabama motorcycle cop was injured when he was struck by a minivan. The minivan was occupied by two clowns. I did not make this up.

Further investigation is pending.

_____________________

Speaking of clowning and law enforcement, I wanted to tell you about an unsettling incident that happened on our recent vacation.

MizBubs' motor had finally run down and she retired to the hotel for the night. I scooted around the corner to Molly's on Decatur Street, my new favorite dive bar in the world (yes, even surpassing the Double Down Saloon in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.)

I was sitting at the bar, talking with Robert, my bartender, about a fellow MizBubs and I had met there the night before.

The fellow said his name was Jackie Jones. I thought he looked familiar, like someone I'd arrested, or maybe given a ride to the bus station, but that wasn't it. MizBubs thought he looked like a thinner, more sunbaked and dissipated Tommy Lee Jones. He looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun, but not doing anything sporty. At first he looked kind of like a street person, except his clothes, although older, were clean, and he was drinking Corona beer and smoking American Spirit cigarettes.

Within the course of a few minutes, Mr. Jones told us that:

He lives in the swamp.

He owns 13,000 acres in the swamp. Tammany Parish. (When I nodded and said, oh, on the north shore, right, he gave me a blank look.)

He's lived in the French Quarter since 1977.

He owns 7 buildings in the French Quarter.

He owns a home that's built in 1840.

Everyone in the French Quarter knows him.

Brad Pitt is his neighbor. Brad Pitt doesn't pay his bills though.

He knows a lot of movie stars, they don't impress him.

He's friends with Dustin Hoffman. He thinks celebrities like him because he treats them just like anybody else.

Nick...Nicholas Cage lives by him.

He joined the military when he was 13 years old.

When he was 17 he joined the navy.

He spent 5 years on a nuclear submarine.

He's rich.

He's worth 787 million dollars.

He can't read or write, but he's rich.

His mother is on the supreme court of the state of Louisiana. But he can't hardly read or write.

But he can make money.

These themes were repeated several times, in varying sequence. The two female bartenders treated him with amused affection, giving the occasional hug as they went by. He turned and got the attention of the little blonde bartender.

Jones: These people think I'm crazy.

Bartender (smiling): You are.

We left a little while after that.

So, I was talking to Robert the bartender the next night, and I asked him about this guy. "Oh, you met Jackie Jones, huh? He tell you his story?" I answered that I got part of it, but I'm not sure if I got the best part. I was intrigued as to how much might be true. Robert's reply?

"Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story."

Not long after that the place filled up, and I had a couple nice conversations with people coming and going from the bar. Then a balloon popped, and I heard a commotion behind me.

The advantage of sitting at an old bar is that, as you sit facing the big mirror running behind the bar, you can see what's going on behind you without too much effort. And what I saw almost knocked me off my barstool.

It was a clown. A she-clown. With balloons. A balloon clown was there in my bar, on my vacation. I was able to snap this picture, surreptitiously, with my cell phone. You can see her there over my right shoulder:



I looked up at Robert. "I didn't know this was a clown bar, man. That gives me the creeps."

"Normally it's not. Don't worry though, I gotcha". Robert then did the coolest thing anyone has ever done for me: he gave the classic point, then point with two fingers at your own eyes, then point back gesture to indicate that he wouldn't let anyone sneak up behind me. I was covered.

My theory is that some of the local clowning community, being familiar with my research and my reputation, got wind of my visit and sent in the she-clown to keep tabs on me. She must have gotten the fisheye from Robert, because she left shortly after that.

I made it back to the hotel safely. The work continues.

The camera adds ten pounds

"My God, his head is BIG. I mean, it's like twice the size of Nancy Pelosi's, and he's not that much taller."

--MizBubs, commenting on Newt Gingrich's head after seeing the We Can Solve It commercial featuring Pelosi and Gingrich. After a couple of bourbons.

Hard Times

Now for the hard part. The sadness.

I knew it would hit me at some point.

I planned on taking MizBubs and the girls to show them where I worked when I went down there with some brother officers after Katrina, and I wanted to show them the houses we gutted in St. Bernard Parish in March 2006.

We didn't make it to the 2nd District at Napoleon and Magazine, but we did head to St. Bernard Parish.

St. Bernard Parish lies just east of New Orleans. It's a middle and working class parish, full of modest homes, businesses, chemical plants and oil refineries. If you like shrimp, a lot of your favorite shellfish comes from there.

It's also the home of the Chalmette Battlefield, where the Battle of New Orleans was fought. The battlefield has recently reopened to visitors, but there's not a lot to see there. Here's a view from behind the American lines, looking out toward the British:



We drove east into St. Bernard after eating lunch at Elizabeth's, home of praline bacon. When I went down there with Splotchy and MizBubs' sister and brother in law, we stayed in a tent city next to the Chalmette Battlefield and spent our days gutting a couple of houses whose owners had signed up for assistance from the parish.

Much of St. Bernard Parish is still a ghost town. No one has moved back into the two houses we gutted. I talked to a neighbor of one of them, and he said the homeowner took her Road Home grant and relocated. So had most of the other people in the neighborhood. A lot of people don't want to move back as long as MR GO stays open, making it possible for the next storm surge to again flood the area.

MR GO, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, was built in the 60's as a way to allow ships to pass from the Mississippi River directly into the Gulf of Mexico. It's now more than 3 times wider than was originally intended, and it acted as an expressway channeling floodwaters into St Bernard Parish during Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers has plans to close it, but the government is dicking around, and it remains open as I write this.

We drove back west into the lower 9th ward, and I showed the girls where the levee had broken. When I was there in March 2006 (nearly 8 months after the hurricane) the neighborhood looked like this:

One of the things that impressed me, in September 2005 and in March 2006, was how many people had hoisted American flags, either as they left or as they stayed and tried to get help. A defiant and poignant reminder: "HEY LISTEN! WE ARE AMERICANS, AND WE WILL NOT GIVE UP!"

I took this picture of a church just a few blocks from the levee in March 2006:

Here's how that church looked 3 weeks ago:



Most of the wrecked houses have been demolished and removed, but there are still some streets that are impassable because of debris. Now the neighborhood looks almost rural:

A short distance away from where this picture was taken we came to a haunting sight. The block had been cleared of all its houses, and looked at first just like a vacant field. Looking closer, there was a row of concrete stoops and driveway pads, one after the next, stretching the entire length of the block, each one representing a home and a family that was no longer there.

The instant I got the girls out of the car to stand and take it all in I felt like an asshole for asking them to do it. Everyone went silent and the silence stayed with us for a long time after we got back in and drove off. I wish every American could spend just a few minutes here, and maybe for a moment understand how profoundly we failed our own citizens. And maybe want to do something to help.

_____________________

New Orleans is in trouble.

For a first-time visitor to the French Quarter or downtown, you'd never know the difference.

Get outside the tourist area, and look around. The lower 9th ward resembles a war zone, and the middle and working class residential neighborhoods lakeside of St Charles are only partly populated. The population is about half of what it was. And the shitheads and criminals are back.

Just after the police announced that violent crime is down compared to this time last year, six more murders were committed over the weekend. According to this story in the Times-Picayune, rates for armed robberies spiked 25%, and assaults increased 33%. No one is exactly sure what to make of it all. No one's even sure of how to calculate the figures, since no one agrees on exactly how many people live in the city now. The NOPD says it's about 318,000 while another study estimates the population at 300,000. The police say they're "having a horrendous time dealing with the mentally ill". This is attributed to the loss of hundreds of hospital beds designated for mental health patients.

I met a young woman in a bar who told me about getting robbed on the street a couple of weeks earlier. A friend of hers had been robbed in the middle of the afternoon by an assailant wielding a shotgun. Almost everyone I talked to had a story about getting robbed or having a house or car broken into. I've never been anyplace where I've heard more people talk about crime.

There have always been gutter punks hanging around the lower quarter every time we've visited. It seems like there are a lot more of them now. They don't add anything to the atmosphere, I'll put it that way. There's nothing like seeing able bodied white kids sitting around begging when there's so much work to be done.

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Rich people like the French Quarter. We saw several for sale signs, and most of those signs were from Sotheby's. The lower quarter seemed almost deserted at times--you could tell that the buildings were occupied, but no one was around. A lot of property owners appear to be absentees. For all the Nick Cages and Brad Pitts buying real estate, few of them appear to be really living there year round. So where do all those shop clerks, and hotel staff and waiters and waitresses who work in the French Quarter serving tourists like us live? Not where they work, that's for sure. Rents have skyrocketed. Part of the charm of the French Quarter has been that it is a residential neighborhood. Now it seems in danger of becoming a ghetto for tourists and the very wealthy.

The vibe was different. I wasn't sure if it was me, because I'm a cop, bordering on paranoid, who distrusts and dislikes almost everyone. But my kids sensed it too. A certain wary, worn-down feeling. Some bursts of anger out on the street that I hadn't seen before--traffic disputes, drivers leaning on their horns and yelling. It wasn't much compared to what you see in a city like Chicago on any given day, but it seemed sadly different for New Orleans.



The upper end of Bourbon Street, closer to Canal, is more porno'd out than it used to be. While Bourbon Street has always had its seedy strip clubs (Bottomless! Topless! Moderate Prices) there are now more in-your-face clubs like Hustler, Deja Vu, Little Darlings, and the girls are out on the street soliciting business. The strippers looked tired and disinterested as they stood outside the door, one foot propped back behind them on the wall. It was sleazy, and not really in a good way. At least now my kids know what a stripper with a beer belly looks like.

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Then there's the "recovery". I honestly don't know what to think. In some ways progress has been phenomenal, and in others heartbreakingly slow. I ran into a cop from St Tammany Parish at the ILEETA conference. He claimed (and I have not been able to find any figures for this) that for the amount of money pledged to Katrina recovery, and spent without anyone really knowing where it's gone, you could've cut a check for $1 million to every displaced family and be done with it. Like I said, I have no idea if he's correct, but it does look like the Bush administration has approached Katrina recovery with the same prudence and oversight that they've shown in Iraq spending.

This was a front page story while we were down there:

ROAD HOME DETOUR

Owners of homes the government built on contaminated soil are running into bureaucratic snags in selling their homes to the state

The article features a woman who purchased a town house from HUD as part of a low income housing project. The townhomes were built on a toxic dump, later designated as an EPA Superfund site. After surviving cancer, probably caused by the poisons she'd been living on, she lost her home when the levee broke. Now the Road Home program won't pay for her property because her home sits on contaminated land.

I guess we're all beginning to suffer from Bush cronyism and corruption fatigue, because I don't remember this story getting a lot of air time. The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) resigned, and is under investigation for awarding contracts to political buddies. According to this story in the Chicago Tribune:

The FBI is looking into ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by HUD for work as a construction manager in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

How long, Lord?

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Now, don't despair, because that does no one any good. New Orleans and the people who live there are keeping on. They are a stubborn bunch, and they're not about to just give up and let the city die. Me, personally, I feel like I owe them, for all the hospitality they've shown me, for the food, the music, the cocktails, the stories, you name it. So here are a few ways an average Joe or Jane can help out:

New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity

I can't say enough good about these people. You can click on that link and donate, or even better do like Splotchy and I, and get down there and volunteer. Build something. Splotchy is a mensch, he's been down there twice, but I aim to catch up with him this summer. Here's individual links to make it easy for you:

St Bernard Parish project

Musician's Village

Donate Online

There. Wasn't that easy? I'm sure if you spend a little time you can find dozens of other worthy ways to donate time, goods or money. Please do, and if you find a good charity, please let me know and I'll include it in this list. Here's a good idea: plan your own trip to New Orleans! They'd love to have you, and it's probably one of the only places in the world where your tourism dollar actually helps. You can have a good time and participate in the rebuilding of a great city at the same time. Let me know if you go there, I know some good places to eat and drink.

Closer to home there's someone else who is doing her part to help out. Chicago's very own Amy Guth is organizing the upcoming Pilcrow Lit Fest, right here in Chicago May 22-25. They also has a blog with lots of neat interviews. The lit fest itself will be a blast--you'll get to meet loads o' cool authors, including the sweet and hilarious west-coaster Katie Schwartz.

Anyway, Pilcrow is asking for donations, and you'll find a little donation widget later in this post, as well as in the top right corner of this blog. Why? I'll just steal this bit of text from their site:

Why are we asking for donations?

Pilcrow has a small staff, dedicated to bringing together great writers and publishers in Chicago. Our fundraising goal on May 24 is to raise money for the NOLA Libraries through a silent auction of Rebuilt Books.

Creating and curating a festival takes lots of little things that take a little money.

Name tags, lanyards, printer catridges, a case of wine, cornbread muffins, and other odds and ends that haven't made our list yet.

Since many of our friends can't volunteer time, they asked to make it easy to donate money. And so we are using ChipIn. The goal? To raise money to throw the event which will raise, we hope, buckets of money for New Orleans Libraries.

Here's a link to the New Orleans Public Library "How To Help" page, detailing different ways to help out.

Thanks for doing what you can. My wife and my mistress both say thanks.

Still talking about New Orleans

We've been home three weeks now, and I can't get that place out of my head. Since I can't, y'all are stuck with having to read about it when you visit here. I have a mountainous backlog of alligator stories, weenie wavers and freaks to get out there. I'm afraid I've fallen down on the job in the public service announcement department, so I'll try and make these trip notes as brief as possible. The fact is, though, it makes me happy to talk about my favorite city, so it will probably be another day or two for me to get back to the usual stuff.

So far you've seen my feeble attempt at blogging on location, a short post about missing it, a brutal self-assessment, and most recently talk of swamps and offbeat roadside attractions on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain.

But what about the city itself?

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A lot of stories start like this:

A guy goes out of town to a conference, and then meets her. You know the kind of story I’m talking about, right? A romance, I guess. Well, maybe romances don’t start that way, come to think of it. Stories about affairs and one night stands do.

I’m not talking about a one night stand or any short-lived affair. No sir.

Let me start over. Go back about 10 years and picture a man who might bear more than a passing resemblance to yours truly: a regular guy, late 30’s, happily married with a wife and two kids. Hard worker, good provider, good husband. All that stuff that usually describes a character in a situation like this. Solid. Reliable. Suburban.

So this guy goes to a conference, out of state, to a place he's never visited before. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is by himself, among strangers: no coworkers with him, and no friends or family in the area. The city of New Orleans is only about an hour's drive away. When the day's training is finished, he hangs around and drinks with his fellow attendees, and he starts to get restless. Underneath that solid suburban image lie some wilder, more primal impulses. He's good at talking people into things, and he eventually gets his roommates--a private security contractor who doesn't drink, an Australian prison guard who does, and an Air Force criminal investigator--to agree to drive to New Orleans for an evening. The airman has a government rental car, and the teetotaling security contractor agrees to drive it. The Australian is along for the ride.

About an hour later they're following an exit sign from I-10 that says "Vieux Carre" and minutes after that the car is parked and just after that go-cups are in hand. The first beer is cold and perfect. Another go-cup, or two, and everyone's laughing and talking a little louder. Some boys are tap dancing on the sidewalk, a shill is trying to get them into a strip club, and someone else tries to tell the Australian where he got his shoes at. Things begin to blur.

Then he sees her. Really sees her, and he is gone. He didn't know it yet, but at that moment--intoxicated not so much by the beer as by the sound and smell of her all around him--he was hopelessly in love. In the next couple of hours she fed him, and got him mildly drunk, and wrapped him up in a warm, slightly stinky embrace of music and laughter. She told him stories.

She wasn't necessarily good for him, or for that matter, for herself. She drank too much and carried some extra weight, and she tended to get a little loud. As beautiful and gracious as she was, she could be kind of slovenly. She always hung out with a criminal element. But she was hot, and he couldn't get enough.

Over the years he'd return to her, again and again, and each time they reunited it was exquisite. He began to feel insanely protective of her, and would jump into a car and drive for hours to come to her when she needed help. When he was away, he spent hours pining for her.

Ah, let's drop the ridiculous pretense. That "guy" was me.

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MizBubs says that New Orleans is like my illicit lover. I don't care that my lover has a lot of unhealthy habits and doesn't do what she's supposed to do. After 10 years she still makes my heart race. I even introduced her to my wife and family, and they all got along famously. They're very open-minded in that regard.

As I've said before, this was the girls' first post-Katrina visit. They were excited and happy to be going back, even if they were a little apprehensive.

We stayed at the Le Richelieu Hotel in the lower end of the French Quarter. It was lovely. Nice little courtyard with a pool, and a cozy little bar where they make a great bloody mary. Here's what it looked like as I reclined in my patio chair:



Here's what the front entrance looks like:

One of the best things about the Le Richelieu was that I saw the most wonderful redneck woman there. Now, before I tell you about her, let me describe the guests at this hotel. There were a few families, a few European tourists, quite a few older couples, and a lot of gay and lesbian visitors. Not many 20-somethings or raucous types; they tend to stay closer to the action on Bourbon Street. What I'm saying is, it's kind of a classy place, even though I was there.

You can imagine how pleased and surprised I was to walk down to the bar one afternoon and find a 30-something hot mom sunbathing by the pool. She looked way more Daytona Beach than French Quarter.

She wore a revealing confederate battle flag bikini. She had a navel piercing tucked into the stretch marks of her reasonably-small but obviously child-bearing belly. Bleached blonde hair with dark roots well0-displayed. Oh yeah...

My youngest daughter is a good sport. I may be a voyeuristic freak, but I didn't want to get caught looking like one. I got my daughter to take a camera phone picture for me. I tried to get her to take one from in front, but the girl has her limits.

Our first night there we ate at the Praline Connection on Frenchman Street, and sadly it was one of the places that wasn't as good as I remembered. The staff is still friendly, and the greens and fried dill pickles were excellent, but that was it. The jambalaya that my eldest ordered had what appeared to be frozen vegetables in it, and she only took a few bites of it before pronouncing it no good.

On our way back to the hotel we were grabbed by a couple of fellows outside the Balcony Music Club at Esplanade and Decatur, and invited in to see a show. The girls must have fitted the young hipster demographic they were looking for to fill the club so they'd be booked again. As we went in my rule-following youngest looked back at me and mouthed "we're not 21" and I told her not to worry. I wish I could remember their names, because they were good. The guitar player's name was Micah.



I found out that in many quarters Miller High Life has replaced Pabst Blue Ribbon as the hipster beer of choice.

The first thing that my daughters noticed was that the Quarter is cleaner than it was before. There are now fleets of imposing black garbage trucks and an army of uniformed sanitation workers swarming the French Quarter. They belong to SDT Waste and Debris Services.

The owner, Sidney Torres IV, is the son of a prominent local attorney and former personal assistant to Lenny Kravitz. This is the first time I've seen more sanitation workers than cops in the French Quarter. As nice as it is to see things cleaned up, there is something vaguely creepy about constantly seeing these trucks and their Nextel-talking workers, all over the place. It reminded me of Soylent Green, or Brazil.

The second thing they noticed was that a lot of places closed early. Our favorite bar, the Napoleon House, now closes at 6pm. It used to be a favorite late night hangout of ours. They still make a great Sazerac, and the food is still tasty. They're the only place I know of that serves a muffuletta sandwich warm instead of cold.

My favorite cigar shop is still on Decatur Street, still hand-rolling excellent smokes

We saw more brass bands on this trip, which was a good surprise. There were two or three at different times around Jackson Square

On our last night we walked back along Frenchman Street. If you've never been to New Orleans before, and you visit, do yourself a favor. Skip that Bourbon Street bullshit and spend most of your nightlife time on Frenchman Street. There's a bunch of great clubs, some good restaurants, and the whole area takes on the aura of a neighborhood block party.

MizBubs and I got to see Ingrid Lucia performing at DBA. MizBubs chatted with her after the show, and she was absolutely lovely and charming. You haven't lived until you've had a few drinks and watched a dark-haired beauty in a party dress sing an uptempo version of Rhinestone Cowboy.



Later that night we saw a brass band performing on a corner, and within a short time a crowd of about 150 people gathered and stopped traffic at the intersection. There were people dancing in the street and clapping along, and for a while it was possible to forget that anything bad had ever happened here.

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Scilla!

Continued from Splotchy (daffodil), Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein (iris), and dguzman (marigolds)

First tag of spring

The first tag of spring honor goes to Barbara from Bad Tempered Zombie. She got me good, requesting that I list 5 of my favorite websites. See, the thing is, she's Canadian, and they're just so darn polite that you feel like an utter shitheel if you don't respond.

I visit a lot of websites, and my favorites change pretty often, depending on what I'm interested in at the moment, or what I'm working on. If I'm planning a trip I become totally obsessed and can spend hours researching a destination. Here are a few of my favorite places this week:

Officer.com I usually check on this one a few times a day. I get ideas for training, lots of law enforcement related news, and the occasional freak story for re-posting here.

Real Clear Politics I just discovered this one a few months ago, and since it's an election year I stop by pretty often. They have a nifty feature where they average out the results from multiple polls. They've also got a good selection of articles and editorials from different sources and points on the political spectrum.

United Country Real Estate This is my place to daydream. I like to browse through the listings and imagine places I'd like to live in a few years. They have offices in nearly every state, and they have a special section for unique and historic properties.

Google News This is what I have set up as my home page on my work and home computers. I love being able to log on and get a snapshot of what's going on in the world at any given time.

Top Secret Animal Attack Files The name of this site speaks for itself. I'm a devoted fan.

More from the UCM Museum

I realized I forgot a few pictures, so here they are:

Darrel the Dogigator



The House of Shards

Entrance to the Amazing 32 Foot Alligator display!



The UFO crash site--the scene of an astounding event where a flying saucer crashed into a trailer

And a rarely-seen look at the interior of the alien homestead, once they settled in

Step right up

A few miles west of the Honey Island swamp lies the north shore town of Abita Springs. Abita Springs is home to the Abita Brewing Company, brewer of one of my favorite beers of all time: Abita Turbo Dog.

I was introduced to Turbo Dog during my first visit to Louisiana for a defensive tactics instructor seminar at the Louisiana State Police Academy. I drank a lot of Turbo Dog there, and it was a damn shame that no one I worked with was there with me, because if they had been with me then maybe I could've ended up with a cool nickname like "Turbo Dog." One of the great tragedies of my law enforcement career is that I've never gotten a cool nickname. But I digress.
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Abita Springs is a charming town. A little downtown area consisting of some shops, the brewpub, and an old grocery store, and lots of tin roofs on the houses. The houses ranged from cottages to larger Victorian homes. It reminded us of the town Spectre from the movie Big Fish.

As far as we're concerned, though, the best thing about the town of Abita Springs is the UCM Museum.

The UCM (you-see-um) Museum was created by a wonderful artist named John Preble. Mr. Preble is known for his paintings of Creole women, but it's clear that his true love is the roadside attraction. We were lucky enough to meet him when we first visited in 2004, but he was away (appropriately enough, in Florida) when we were there this time. He's a gracious man and fun to talk with, and if you are ever passing through the area you really owe it to yourself to stop by.

The UCM is housed in an old gas station and a variety of outbuildings, arranged, if you will, in a kind of folksy surreal compound. I can't tell you the joy this place gives us, so I'll just run through some pictures.

Here's the entrance



Go through that door and you're in the gift shop, which houses a nice collection of Archie McPhee type novelties, as well as work by Mr. Preble, some beautiful jewelry created by his wife Ann O'Brien (also a well known artist), and some interesting music and DVD's. (**note: I just discovered that Ms. O'Brien passed away in July 2006--you can read a lovely obituary for her here.)

When you walk out of the gift shop you enter the compound



There's a pond with a turtle in it, and Christmas lights overhead. Everywhere you look you find goofy little details: bottle caps nailed to walls, bits of machinery and old radios, folk art, clippings, paint-by-numbers artwork, you name it.

Elvis welcomed us into the first building

There's an extensive collection of paint-by-numbers pieces, perhaps the largest in the world. MizBubs thought this was a pretty peppy looking cat, and asked me to grab his photo:



There are all these cool dioramas with titles like "New Orleans Jazz Funeral" and "Tragedy on Dogpound Road". You press a button, and next thing they light up and there's music playing and stuff moving around. I love em.

Knowing the reptile-infested and swampy nature of the outlying areas, the proprietor reassures his visitors...or maybe he's sucking up to those reptile rights do-gooders



There's plenty of other stuff to see as you move from building to building

And finally, like in any good museum, you're funneled back into the gift shop at the end of your visit:

It's always a letdown having to leave there and return to real life outside. I think my youngest daughter wants to live there, or at least create her own version of it.

Thanks for coming along.