Thursday, June 5, 2008
Thursday afternoon news wrap
Posted by Kevin Allman on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 9:08 PM
HIRED! NEW LSU CHANCELLOR: It's Michael V. Martin, president of New Mexico State University. The Baton Rouge Advocate has all the juicy financials...
FIRED! SENIOR AIR FORCE OFFICIALS: According to CNN, "The top military and civilian leaders of the U.S. Air Force were forced out Thursday over the handling of nuclear weapons, the Defense Department secretary said." The network calls it a "nuclear gaffe," two words that just don't belong together under any circumstance...
NEW STATE LAWS: Don’t smoke in the car while the kids are there. It used to be common sense, now it’s likely to become law. Also: mandatory minimum car insurance might be going up statewide...
COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER FELLA: The Rev. Grant Storms, scourge of the annual Southern Decadence festival and general nuisance, was slapped down today by, of all groups, the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
An activist's lawsuit claiming a Wisconsin gay rights group defamed him by accusing him of advocating the murder of gays is frivolous, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday.Anti-gay activist Rev. Grant Storms of New Orleans sued gay rights group Action Wisconsin after it took excerpts from a 2003 speech Storms made in Milwaukee and claimed he was advocating the murder of gays.
Storms' lawsuit was dismissed in 2005, and he was ordered to pay court costs and attorneys' fees. The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld that decision, which had been reversed by an appeals court.
The high court's 4-3 decision means Storms' attorney James Donohoo will have to pay more than $87,000 in court costs and fees because the court said he should have known the lawsuit was frivolous.
Reached for comment, French Quarter residents burst out laughing and started their weekends early...
Summer Wishlist from the Pups
Posted by Sarah Andert on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 8:25 PM
The heat of Louisiana summers is fast approaching and up to this point we've been lucky enough to avoid a lot of the sticky, sweltering weather that's usually settled in by now. Looking forward to the coming months I imagine many of us are procuring the necessary supplies to make it through the season— bathing suits, kiddie pools, sprinklers, hoses, sunscreen, air conditioning units, sun shields for the car, shady umbrellas... just about anything and everything that could possibly keep us cool.
Now imagine if you had to collect said items without the use of opposable thumbs while wearing a fur coat. Add to that an absence of a vehicle, no currency, and no voice. Those are the odds facing rescued animals at the Louisiana Humane Society's post-K shelter in Tylertown, Miss. Due to the heat and a shortage of resources, humane society employees have compiled a summer wish list of supplies desperately needed to help care for the animals and maintain rescue operations and investigations into other cruelty cases throughout the summer.
From Blight to Breakfast
Posted by Ian McNulty on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 8:02 PM
I recently wrote a column about the transformation of the building that today is the Ruby Slipper, a café serving breakfast and lunch in Mid-City.
I can clearly recall the first time I walked through the door of that building years back, and the memory is vivid because I was pretty scared.
At the time it was a place called Tony's, a minimal market that I happened upon during a beer run for a friend's Endymion parade party nearby. The walls were tagged up with spray paint turf markings. Discarded malt liquor bottles and junk food wrappers littered the ground outside. The clerk was protected from his customers by a thick pane of clear plastic. It was a tense place, and the animosity between shopkeep and patron was palpable. I couldn't wait to slide my money through the gap in the plastic shield get out of there.
A few years later I bought a house around the corner from Tony's and got to know it as a drippy, leaky, dirty place for cheap po-boys, an emergency pint of milk and hard looks from the ne'r-do-wells lingering outside on hot afternoons.
Today, I fairly skip to the same door early in the morning and I might bring my friends along by the collar to show them the place at lunchtime.
For all the grand announcements, million-dollar consultant fees and planning workshops coming along as the city rebuilds, nothing is making such a tangible difference as individuals who believe in their neighborhoods and have the drive to make them better. It's happening block-by-block as people fix up damaged houses or pry neglected properties loose from disinterested owners to give them new life. And it's happening at the corner of South Cortez and Cleveland street at the Ruby Slipper.
- Ian McNulty
Chicks dig tranny rappers: hetero noses out of joint
Posted by Alison Fensterstock on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:45 PM
A panel discussion at this past Monday night's Industry Influence hip-hop networking event devolved into a shouting match with more than a whiff of gay-bashing about it when the topic of sissies, or gay male bounce MCs who dress in drag, hit the table.
The monthly event, hosted by Q93.3FM DJ Wild Wayne and rapper Sess 4-5, usually draws a couple of hundred New Orleans rappers, producers, video girls and other hip-hop denizens that range from newbies to players with serious juice. (The former Cash Money in-house producer Mannie Fresh, for example, was on the panel: when the squabbling started, he wisely seemed to decide he was too famous to have to talk smack, and stayed mum for the duration.) The two scheduled panel discussions each night can last hours, but usually don't end in yelling. The controversial issue of homosexuality in the black community, though, which has been a point of contention in the bounce scene since the beginning, heated up the mics - and not in the, you know, fly way.
"The biggest Katrina judgment in Louisiana..."
Posted by Kevin Allman on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 4:46 PM
Marc Robert II, owner of the Robert Fresh Market chain, has been awarded $21 million by a federal jury that ruled his insurer, United Fire & Casualty, failed to pay for Katrina damage. Robert's attorney, Philip Franco, is calling it "the biggest Katrina judgment in Louisiana or Mississippi that we know of."
Read the Associated Press report here.
Thursday, Thursday
Posted by Kevin Allman on Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 2:06 PM
HEADED TO THE FREEZER?: You already know that U.S. attorney Jim Letten indicted three members of Rep. William Jefferson's family yesterday (including property tax assessor Betty Jefferson). Here's all the poop...
SAINTS: The front office cuts VP Rick Mueller after nine years, saying the team “wanted to go in a different direction.” Translation: It’s not you, Rick; it’s us. Still friends?...
BYE-BYE NATIONAL GUARD: They're outta here by October. Thanks, y'all...
RETURN OF THE ROOSEVELT: Hilton Hotels makes it official: the old Fairmont will be reopened in 2009 as a Waldorf-Astoria property and returning to its original name as the Roosevelt. Also coming back: the Sazerac Bar and the Blue Room. Hey, Hilton: can you leave the big-screen TV out of the Sazerac this time? Really spoiled the atmosphere...
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE: Now it's said that Entertainment Tonight knew it was telling a fib when it reported Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins. Well, so much for Mary Hart's Pulitzer Prize...
GA$: Where's the cheapest $4/gallon gas in your faubourg? Enter your ZIP code and this calculator will tell you the pump prices close to home.
