i'm gonna dance one leg off in the rain

The Butthole Surfers perform Movin to Florida at the original Tipitina's in New Orleans.

Florida Street housing projects in San Antonio were the place to buy acid back in the early-to-mid-80s, so going down to Florida isn't a reference to a beach vacation. Or so I've, uh, been told. By people whose names I don't remember. Who also happened to mention that the Florida dealers switched to the crack product in the late 80s as it was more profitable. And that Gibby Haynes was accounting student of the year at Trinity University, his (and my) alma mater. His dad's a Dallas celebrity: Mr. Peppermint



And that, faithful readers, is your random indie rock trivia for the day.

new TV addiction

I am completely addicted to Ninja Warrior on the G4 network. Gah.

the band I love the most

When I was in high school, I loved The Cold. All the cool kids loved The Cold, and all the not-cool kids loved The Cold. All the girls wanted to BE Barbara Menendez. I still love the Cold. Just the other day I was karaoke-ing to The Cold's CD. About five years ago, I went to see a reunion gig at Howlin' Wolf and saw like a zillion people I hadn't seen since the 80s.

Random factoids for those of you NOT from New Orleans: Bassist Vance DeGeneres is Ellen DeGeneres' brother. He also was one of the creator's of SNL's Mr. Bill, and was a correspondent on the Daily Show for a while. He is also likely the origin of my string of crushes on dark-haired bassists. Lead singer Barbara Menendez, I hear, shows up on the Ellen Show periodically. She has a different last name now, but she'll always be Barbara Menendez to me and her legion fans.

okay, it's a little tired, I know...

but it's still kind of funny. I particularly like the ADD one.



1. Schizophrenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?

2. Multiple Personality Disorder --- We Three Kings Disoriented Are

3. Dementia --- I Think I'll be Home for Christmas

4. Narcissistic --- Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

5. Manic --- Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and
Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and.....

6. Paranoid --- Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me

7. Borderline Personality Disorder --- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

8. Personality Disorder --- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna
Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

9. Attention Deficit Disorder --- Silent night, Holy oooh look at the
froggy - can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?

10. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder --- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle
Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle

Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle

Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle

Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle

Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

Yankees, take note:

Thanks to my pal Dick Ford, you can see what Real Southern Cooking and Eating looks like.

Check it:

southern eating

(Yo, Dick: if I'm farking your bandwidth, let me know and I'll cut it out.)

Note that the giant pan of fried chicken is the first to fall.

While you're there, go look at his video art: Dick Ford

Yoga as a practical skill

Say you wake up one morning to find that your toilet seat has a crack in it. No idea how it got there, but these things happen. The crack, however, pinches the back of your thigh. You go off to Lowe's and buy a mid-range white wood toilet seat. You pass up the twice-as-expensive ANTIMICROBIAL toilet seat in fancy space-age plastic, despite your inner germophobe's best efforts at getting you to spend the extra fifteen bucks.

You figure, well, if they sell them at Lowe's, and the box says "easy installation," all you need is a Phillips screwdriver, it can't be all that hard. Right? In theory, yes. You unscrew the bolts holding the old seat down, lift, drop a new seat on, attach bolts & nuts, tighten, bada-boom.

But wait. The old toilet seat does not appear to have bolt tops visible. No, no indeed. You must unscrew the nuts from *beneath* the toilet bowl rim in order to get the bolts off. Your bathroom is very, very small. You cannot find your socket set (socket wrench? check. Sockets? Who the hell knows?). You try to unscrew the nuts by feel instead of sight. It takes a while to figure out that the righty-tighty-lefty-loosey rule is in fact REVERSED when unscrewing the nut. It's impossible to grip a nut with pliers if you can't actually see it. It's wedged up under the rim, at an angle. Onto the floor with you.

For the bolt to the left, you must lie on your side, bend to the left (like an L) and tilt your head up about 45 degrees while unscrewing the bolt that has been stuck there for at least 6 1/2 years. Fortunately it's not stuck or rusty, but it's awkward as hell. Okay. Broke a sweat there. Now for the other side. No way can you lie down due to tiny, tiny bathroom space. Lo and behold, yoga comes in handy! You stand up, perform a deep waist bend, hang your head to your right, lower than the rim of the toilet seat, turn your head to the left, use your right hand to unscrew the bolt, and after a great deal of non-yogic cursing, that nut comes off.

NOW it's easy-peasy. Lift seat, put down other one, plastic nut, plastic bolt, yadda yadda, nice new non-cracked toilet seat. I hope the fifteen dollar seat lasts a while, because I really, really, do not want to do this again.

I also hope the damned thing wasn't made in China. I forgot to look before I bought it. Hell.

dementia

When my grandmother was living with my parents after my grandfather's death, I lived in their garage apartment. Somewhere on the road to full Alzheimer's dementia, Grandmother forgot she had grandchildren. Hence, she believed that I was some poor homeless orphan that my mother, out of the kindness of her heart, had taken in, since I had no proper family.

Whenever I called her "Grandmother," she would smirk a little and get this look on her face like she was humoring me by answering to that.

extreme lounging

Well, hell. My Saints finally get a big win and where am I? Sleeping through the whole damn game. Sumbitch.

should've named him Martha

Apparently Bennet, the middle cat, does not approve of lackadaisical housekeeping. He has taken to peeing on clothes left on the floor. One item is fine. Two items? Constitute an impromptu litterbox.

forty

Ayiyi. The champagne in the Kir Royale, it makes the Jezebella sleepy.

parades

Tonight' t-day party was less chaotic than usual because the Designated Drunk is in NYC. She went for the Macy's Parade. None of us New Orleanians understand why one would want to attend a parade where they don't throw stuff at you. Furthermore, you can't drink and it's frackin cold.

This is not a parade protocol I can get behind.

OMG

I will have to poke myself in the ears with giant, er, poking sticks, if I see or hear one more "news" story about "cutting calories at the holidays". Is there really and truly so very little happening in the world that there's time for "Weight Loss Wednesday" in a 30-minute newscast EVERY SINGLE WEEK?
Somehow, I think not.

CNN debates

I sure like that Dennis Kucinich. I'd like to live in a country where he is electable.

do you blame?

election time in Mississippi

Yesterday, I voted for a dude named "Popcorn" because his opponent was the Douchebaggy McGee who wanted to know about my John Kerry bumper sticker a few weeks ago. Well, McGee's also a pro-life, anti-gay, pro-business godbag. I have no idea what Popcorn stands for, but he ran as a Democrat* and he wasn't the other guy.

Also, when I got to the voting precinct, some godbag had taped flyers for a church revival on the front door and on either side of it. I told the election workers that I felt a revival flyer was inappropriate in this venue, and to their credit, they agreed promptly and went and took them down right away. I was kind of ready for an argument, and was also ready to take them down myself. Fortunately I did not have to stamp my feet and make a scene.

*Alas, running as a Democrat in Mississippi is a nearly meaningless exercise. I only saw one third-party candidate, from the "Constitution Party," which I hear is even farther right than the R's.

Saints are coming back! Woot.

They tromped all over the 49ers yesterday, to the point where I kind of felt a little sorry for San Francisco, losing so badly at home. Not bad enough to wish they'd won, obviously.

So, we're 3-4, woohoo. We looked great, and the 49ers fell apart. We do best when Brees mixes it up, passes the ball to a different person every time, like to people who I never knew existed. It's a good strategy, and one I've never seen the Saints use before the Peyton/Brees era.

I'm noticing that a lot of my favorite Saints have moved on: Sammy Knight, Joe Horn, Michael Lewis (who's with the 49ers now; I had wondered where he'd gone), Ricky Williams (in spite of, or perhaps because of, his complete eccentricity), and Morten Anderson.

I'm growing rather fond of Scott Fujita & Mike McKenzie. They've got style and panache with their bone-crunching tackling skills. They kinda look like they're having a good time, ya know? Well, and there's Reggie and Deuce. Ya gotta love them, but it's too obvious. I hate that Deuce McAllister is out for the season. The man is reliable like a tank and seems like a nice guy to boot.

For some reason I'm never all het up about the quarterback; I guess it seems too obvious. Kinda like in fourth grade, when I refused to admit a fondness for Shaun Cassidy. I preferred the brunette Hardy Boy, Parker Stephenson, because it was the contrary thing to do. Likewise: sure, Drew Brees is doing a great job out there and seems like an all-round good guy, but he's got all the fans he needs. So do Reggie and Deuce. Give me a scrappy eccentric with less visibility any day of the week. I'm leaning towards Fujita as my main man this year.

In slightly related news, I'm still looking for the perfect fleur-de-lys tattoo. I can't get a Saints tattoo for fear that Tom Benson moves the team. I sure don't want to be marked as a "Peoria Saints" fan down the road, right? So I need a good NOLA fleur-de-lys that translates to the ink-on-flesh medium. It'll invoke the Saints without being an actual Saints logo.

More Mississippi Idioms

Not only does one "cut off", say, the air conditioning, one can also "cut it on".

Furthermore, and I may have mentioned this before but I'm too lazy to check: hereabouts, one uses a "buggy" to shop for groceries, not a grocery cart.

And if you're going anywhere, in any direction, you are going "down to" wherever. Someone from Mississippi could very well tell you he'd gone "down to Alaska" last week.
[I'm kind of afraid to parse this one.]

what happens at my house every morning

where I live

Alas, I cannot find anywhere the Robert Smigel "Blue Christmas" TV Funhouse that calls the giant red state I inhabit "Dumbfuckistan." The giant red state that is all the red states squished together, the ones between the enclaves of un-affordable blue states.

Mississippi isn't nearly as bad as everybody thinks it is. Whenever you see Mississippi in TV shows and movies, it's usually a version of 1965 Mississippi. People do not get lynched here anymore. Old white men do not stand around gas stations chewing on straws and squinting at yankees who are about to uncover the civil rights murder no southerner was smart enough to solve. People do have running water and electricity, and hardly anyone wears overalls. We do all own shoes. We have movie theatres and sushi and health food stores and spas and museums.

But it does suck. A lot of people are poor here. Really poor. Public education? It sucks. So poor people aren't very well-educated. They smoke when they're pregnant. They leave their kids in front of Cartoon Network 24/7. They give babies sweet tea in their bottles. Not from meanness or stupidity, but sheer ignorance. Just don't know no better. Most educated people give lip service to equal rights, but the level of ignorant racial bigotry just beneath the surface is sometimes mind-boggling. The misogyny is even less hidden. Homophobia? It's what's for breakfast.

On top of poverty and ignorance, slather on a layer of evangelical christianity of varying stripes: southern baptist, pentecostal, church of christ, megachurch, you name it. Whatever it is, it don't like no homos, no jews, no evolution, and it sure as shit don't like no democrats. Not the yankee kind anyway. Because Mississippi Democrats are nearly indistinguishable from Mississippi Republicans.

To wit: we have a gubernatorial election coming up. Our incumbent, Haley Barbour, is a former lobbyist for big tobacco and big oil. He is anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, pro-development, pro-business, and a Republican. His opponent, John Arthur Eaves, carries a bible around in his ads. He is anti-gay rights, anti-abortion, pro-prayer in schools, pro "family values," a personal injury lawyer and a... Democrat?? Huhwhat? As far as I can tell the DNC is having nothing to do with Eaves. I have no idea why he's even registered as a Dem, except that it allowed him to get on the ballot, because Barbour would've knocked him out in a Republican primary. So basically, we have one godbaggy republican, or the other.

I live here, and there are things about it that don't suck. The landscape is nice. The food's pretty good. People are generally courteous to one another, and the cost of living is low. There's a lot of music and literature to be had.

On the whole, I tend to blame evangelical christianity and its bedfellow, red-state republican brainwashing, for most of what is still wrong with Mississippi. If anybody in charge gave a shit about anybody but rich, white, heterosexual christians, the public school system would work. Welfare and Medicaid/Medicare would be fully funded. Everyone would have access to reproductive health services, day care, and post-secondary education. But that's not the case. The poor keep on getting poorer and more ignorant; and the rich? They get richer and build bigger walls around their gated communities.

And those gated communities don't look a damned thing like Mississippi. They look like Phoenix, and Houston, and Atlanta, and every other boring cookie-cutter McMansion gated community in America. It's their loss, but it's also our loss. If I were anything but white and hetero, I would've never moved here. There is an as-yet undocumented brain drain (I'm willing to bet) of talented and brilliant African-American and homosexual Mississippians who just had to get the hell out. It's not about violence, or structured bigotry, though. There just aren't many opportunities for people who don't meet the honky heteronormative model.

so get this

Local state senatorial candidate rolls up behind my place of employment last week, and asks a co-worker who's standing out back:

"Whose white car is that with the JOHN KERRY sticker!?"

Asks it, I might add, in a state of RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION that someone in this godforsaken shithole of a godbaggy small town should DARE, DARE to sport a Democratic bumpersticker.

Now, I know that election is long gone, and I am a lazy-ass mofo who should've taken the sticker off long ago, but you know what? NOW it's staying on until I decide which presidential candidate I'll be supporting.

Ass-hat, godbaggy asshole. I dare him to come have a chat with me about my freedom of speech. I don't give a rat's ass if he works with my boss's wife or has a stupid rush-limbaugh-wanna-be radio show: I will fucking well rip off his head and shit down his neck if he steps on my freedom of speech. Ass.