theredpanther

01:01 pm: Part 2 Text dump -- the end of a (phone's) era
( costumes, blackouts, hookers, gay, hot mess, library gossip, hangovers, taco bell, russian mail order bride, barfing, shirtless teens... and more! )

Tags: text

09:23 am: The "my phone is dying and I'm getting a new one" long overdue text dump, Part 1
8-28, 1:45 am
OUT: Big gay Thursday at the abbey next week. The doctor will be in. Spread the big gay word.
( More gay shenanigans back here )

Tags: text

09:40 am: Colored between the lines


This is it... the first shot, still at the shop.

It's swollen and shiny with goo and ooze, and the colors will settle a little differently while it heals. But this is the general idea.

YAY YAY YAY!

Scott Allen is a genius. Just sayin'.

12:43 am: Wuss
So I finally got my color filled in on my tattoo. It took FOUR HOURS. And I cried right around the 2:45 mark (in all fairness, it was a very sensitive and highly detailed area). Which embarrassed the crap out of me.
I spent the next hour+ trying to disassociate myself from it by thinking about the crazy shit that girl in Martyrs went through. (If you have not seen the movie Martyrs, DO SO ASAP. It's freaking AMAZING: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1029234/ ... by far the best movie I saw this year.)

Anyway. I also threatened to punch Scott in the face at one point.

So yeah, this is my first tattoo that caused me to shed a few tears (maybe three) and threaten my tattoo artist with physical harm. And it still hurts like a motherfucker.

And I can't wait for the swelling and oozing to stop so I can get a really good look at it.

But I already know I LOVE IT.

07:29 am: TONIGHT! Get yer metal on.



Come see my boyfriend act a metal fool. They'll be handing out BLACK/DEATH Xmas presents, and rockin' the fuck out.

10 pm: The Bar in Metry. You can be among the first to see my tattoo all colored in and fancy!

08:17 pm: books books books
I am spending this week in my closed library, packing the whole place up, in hopes that renovations and repairs will happen soon.


Just in case you didn't know, there are a FUCKLOAD of books in a library. And you need a lot of freaking boxes to put them in.

Only two more days! HOPEFULLY.

Oy. I'm exhausted.

11:21 am: sweet!
quick, someone, I need $25,000.

IT'S IMPORTANT.

09:53 am: tiny houses
While I am not at all suited for living in a tiny little house and traveling the world (I love my house, I have too much stuff, I love New Orleans and don't want to leave, and my job doesn't really let me travel around too much), I do have fantasies of packing it all in and buying one of these little guys, and driving around, setting up home wherever I feel like it.

Preferably next door to a rockin' bar, because drunk driving your house seems like a REALLY bad idea.

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses/fencl/

06:17 pm: happy bday to me!
http://www.ticketnews.com/David-Sedaris-tour-maps-US-performances-for-spring-2010-11925855


David Sedaris tour! Coming to New Orleans! ON MY MOTHERFUCKING BIRTHDAY!


Guess y'all know what I'm doing next year for the birthday.

06:20 pm: Jesus only loves those who can read his word
Thank you, Overheardinnewyork! This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while:


Bible flier girl: Would you like a pamphlet to read about the good news of god?
Blind guy with walking stick: It's in Braille?
Bible flier girl: Oh, umm, no it's not.
Blind guy: You've got to be kidding.

--32nd & 7th

Overheard by: The WC




http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020934.html

04:18 pm: Why two seconds of research is a good idea
So I was driving down St. Charles Ave the other morning, and I noticed that someone had put up signs all up and down the Avenue. Like, one on every single post, sign, light, tree... whatever. Someone really had something important to say, I logically assumed. So I take a look.
Every single one is a plain piece of white paper with this on it:

RECALL GAO


I'm assuming they're referring to this man: http://josephcao.house.gov/

But as you may notice, his name is Joseph Cao. And not only is he the first (ever!) Congressman of Vietnamese descent, but he is also the only Republican who voted in support of the House Health Bill. So I could see why someone might be upset with him, assuming they disagree with his vote.

But for god's sake, people!!!! If you want to make a statement, SPELL IT RIGHT. I mean, sure, it's pronounced "gow"... but omg, how hard is it to get that right? Apparently very. Oy.

02:04 pm: Why I don't write book reviews... because: my criticisms are personal and ridiculous
So.... I just finished reading Shake the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New Orleans, about Zack Bowen, a New Orleans resident who -- simply put -- killed his girlfriend Addy, dismembered her and stored her in various parts of the kitchen, lived with her corpse for over a week, and then killed himself by jumping off a French Quarter hotel. This all happened just about 3 years ago.

I of course heard all about this when it happened. I didn't personally know them, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that our paths had crossed more than a few times, that we had sidled up to the same bar at the same time or right after one another, or that we had just passed each other on the street. Their haunts -- the Lower Quarter -- were and are my haunts. The reason I bring this up? I know their world. I know it because it is also my world.

And I read this book because I wanted to know what happened. I wanted it to make a little sense, because three years ago, my heart broke for them, because obviously, at that point, things have gone terribly wrong, and that usually means there was a lot of hurt involved. And in that, this book is -- well... HALFWAY successful. I learned A LOT about Zack. Addy... not so much. I learned she was a TERRIBLE drunk, violent and mean. But that she was nice when sober. And, well, that about sums up what you get about her.

ANYWAY. I'm not going to go into all of what it was about -- read the book if you want to. But I am irritated enough that I have to point something out about this book: omg so many little things wrong, or misleading, and/or so opinionated as to be insulting (to me, at least). And the problem with factual errors and misleading information in a nonfiction book is that it makes me wonder: what else was wrong that I don't know enough about to catch?

The author clearly spent a hell of a lot of time researching this book, esp Zack's life before Katrina, as well as the effects of war on military personnel. So then why on earth would he get other dumb little things so wrong?

1. The Huey P. Long Bridge? Does not connect New Orleans to Jefferson Parish. Does not go into Gretna. The Crescent City Connection sure does, and clearly it is the bridge he's actually talking about, even though he refers to it as the Huey P Long. He talks about the CCC later in the same paragraph, so I don't understand how such a dumb error was made.

2. He says "Nagin officially announced residents could return home on Monday, Sept 19." But really, that's when Nagin announced that he was NOT allowing people to return, and instead ordered another evacuation, for Rita. People were turned away. I had actually returned a day or two before that anyway, planning on sneaking in, and the National Guard stopped me, asked for my ID, and said, "We're going to start letting people in soon anyway, so go ahead." So yeah, technically, there were plans in place to allow residents back, but there was no official announcement on the 19th. Instead, people were stopped at the edge of town and turned back.
Anyway, the way he's written it, that's when people were allowed back in, like, for good. Which was definitely not the case.

3. He starts talking about the post-K razing of the projects. And he says this, "The city's elite simply wanted to purge its poor (and black) citizens from the city." REALLY? Was it really that simple? Because I seem to remember lots of poor (and black) citizens calling for the destruction of those projects too. Some of them even LIVED in them.
Regardless of how anyone feels about the razing of the projects, I have a really hard time with some guy who moved here years after Katrina to investigate a murder-suicide having any opinion on the razing or not-razing of those projects. He doesn't know how it was pre-K with those projects. He didn't live near them, he didn't drive through them, he doesn't know the horror stories (or even the occassional but wonderful and uplifting stories) that came out of them. Who the hell is he to be so arrogant about something he has no first-hand knowledge of? And who is he to assume that the "city's elite" are the only ones who wanted them gone, or even WHY they wanted them gone?
Because I sure as hell was behind razing most of them, and rebuilding them in a way that is more conducive to community and safety, and less conducive to crime and kids getting shot by accident in the courtyards. (See St Thomas Projects vs the new River Garden development for my reasoning behind that.) And lord freaking knows I'm not part of the city's elite.

4. He refers to the NYTimes paper version as "the dead-tree version", after casually mentioning that he reads it online. Dude, really? You wrote that sentence for a book. That you wanted to get published. On paper. Who the fuck are you to cast stones about paper usage? This isn't factually wrong, of course, but it sure is annoying!

5. Something he got right that amused the hell out of me? Zack and Addy's apt, where the murdering had gone down, had to be rented out after the fact. And it was, to "a dancer at a French Quarter strip club." Yes indeed... that would have been B's Child Bride, Lauren. Ha ha! I love it when things come full circle like that.

6. He refers to the "New Orleans suburb of Gretna", which I suppose to some new-to-town person, a case could be made for that. But Gretna isn't a part of New Orleans at all. It's not even in the same parish. And as everyone here knows, that's just crazy talk.

7. He purports that this book is about Zack (and by extension Addy), and how his experiences as a soldier at war contributed to his downward spiral. Now, first off... a lot can be said for the fact that Zack wasn't really doing all that fantastic before the war. He wasn't exactly living the American dream. But certainly a lot can be said that being in a terrible situation like war will certainly do terrible things to your mental health.
But then he spends a lot of time talking about the high murder rates after Katrina. He even goes as far as to highlight almost every "notable" murder case (Robin Malta, Helen Hill, Jessica Hawk, Dinerrel Shavers, and of course, Wendy, and more), as if somehow tying them to Katrina. Which I don't get. This city has a history of terrible crime and murder reaching back far beyond Katrina. And I don't think that you can blame the current out-of-control wave of crime on Katrina. I think there are a lot of things you can blame it on -- terrible education, extreme poverty, lack of job opportunity, drugs.... for starters -- and yes, while Katrina did not help any of these things, and in some ways made some of them worse, I find it too simplistic to link this crime all together as solely symptomatic of Katrina's aftermath.
But regardless of all that: what does this all have to do with Zack and Addy? Yes, it was hard to live in New Orleans after Katrina. We all know that. But to go on and on and on about the murders in New Orleans that occured AFTER Zack and Addy died... I'm not sure I see the point, other than he really likes writing about sensational murders. It seems kind of like he just wanted to list them all for us. I suppose his point could be that this is a story about: PTSD and the effects of war; Zack and Addy; New Orleans crime after Katrina. And while they all are connected in some ways, I don't see that this book was the right way to tie them together -- or that they needed to be tied together to this extent -- because I feel that the point was lost. To the point for me that I'm not entirely sure what the point actually is anymore.


8. And speaking of Wendy's murder.... He says that the parents of the three boys turned them in to the police two days before her second line on Saturday. Which is not accurate. The first two were turned in on Tuesday, and the last one on Thursday. Small error? Yes. But still an error.


So my complaints -- that there are inaccuracies and that things are misleading and that they are things that annoy me -- are all pretty small things. And maybe I'm being way too nitpicky. But when you change the facts to fit your story, or so they flow better, then you've still changed the facts. And if you want to call your book "a true story", you should make sure you're telling the facts the right way. Because when you don't, obsessive people like me catch them, and then are forced to wonder what other facts you've altered to fit your agenda. Whatever the agenda is, which I'm still a little fuzzy on.

Otherwise: if you want to know all about Zack and what he went through and what he did to Addy, this is your book. And you can skip the last 75 pages and still get what you need.

Anyway. I felt fired up enough while reading this to write all about it. And I do feel better now.



Photos of the last few months, including Halloween and my mystery black eye, coming soon. I hope. :)

07:35 pm: Gltiz!
For when your child just isn't good enough.

04:41 pm: Text dump! Way overdue
( Because we are HILARIOUS drunks )

Tags: text

10:37 pm: Alexander, MyQueen
So I was perusing Alexander McQueen's Spring 2010 show, and oh man, I think it's brilliant. Everything is so lovely, and although I can't picture myself actually wearing any of these dresses, I really want to ... touch them. Hang them on my wall. Hire someone to walk around in circles around me while wearing them. They're beautiful. They're more art than fashion, but still completely wearable. Well, if you are gorgeous and a size 0 and can walk a runway like nobody's business.



BUT. They are nothing -- NOTHING -- compared to the shoes. I mean, yeah, it's no big secret that I am a little obsessed with shoes. But these? These are like I've died and gone to shoe heaven/nirvana/amazingness beyond my wildest dreams. Again, I don't know if I'd wear all of them (well, if I somehow magically got these in any color on my feet, you would have to Dorothy Gale me to get them off), but I certainly would wear most of them as often as I could. And those I wouldn't wear? I'd like to have them in my house on display under lights and pet them every day.

LOVELY AND AMAZING.

Tags: shoes

03:33 pm: Tomorrow night! Local punk and metal at the Howlin' Wolf!


Come see me and listen to my awesome boyfriend scream a lot.

10:08 am: Guess who got a new tattoo???
Well, the first half of a new tattoo...

( ME! I DID! AND I LOVE IT! )

10:34 am: I wish I had a landlord.
Some days, I love owning a home that was built sometime before 1896 (that's the earliest I could find it on the Sanborn maps). I love the history, the weird little things, the shape, the architectural details... and I love the work I've put into it, and the additions (hello, I SUPER LOVE my back porch/deck).

Then there are other times when that love is not so strong. I have walls to patch and paint -- ones that cracked during Katrina and the usual settling of New Orleans homes in land that likes to sink. I've been putting it off because... well, I've been way overworked for the last three years. And now that work is settling down a bit, I've been psyching myself up for some home improvement. Got a new bathroom (which is FINALLY getting painted next month, thanks to a visit from my mom -- I bribed her with a trip to the Prison Rodeo), and I'm focusing next on filling in some gaps in my really old hardwood floors. (I can see outside through my living room floor!)

Well... I WAS going to focus next on my hardwood floors. But instead, I got treated to this wake up message from my tenants:
"The chimney in the third room partially collpased last night, bringing the mantle down with it."

Fan-fucking-tastic.

I don't even know who to call about shit like this. And I certainly can't imagine where I find the money to pay for it, if it's gonna cost me as much as I'm afraid it will.

Whee!
But I am going to NYC next week for about 5 days, so if the rest of the house is gonna come tumbling down with the chimney, I hope it does it while I'm gone.

11:44 pm: Decadent
My brother is suprisingly good at getting me to stay out ridiculously late these days. Two weeks ago he kept me out til ... um... 4:30? I think?

Then he came in for Southern Decadence, and not only did I end up at '80s Night for the first time in forever, and had FUN!!!, he also -- with the help of two of my lovely ladies -- kept me out til... I've been told 6 am... on Saturday night (Sunday morning, whatever).

It appears I have passed the torch, but am keeping one hand firmly grasped on it as it drags me along.

(Although I, unlike him, managed to keep my clothes on [well, most of the time, at least] at the Abbey that night.)

I will start stealing photos soon and post them. And by soon I probably mean in like 3 weeks.

xo,
I've been watching too much Gossip Girl!

Also, I am going to NYC in like 3 weeks and I am really excited. But that has nothing to do with GG.

02:23 pm: Come see my boyfriend thrash some "retardo grind" metal....
Mobile Deathcamp | Brotherhood | Serpentis | Oroku Saki and the Foot

Tuesday, September 1. Dragon's Den. 10PM. Noxious Noize

Mobile Deathcamp is a thrash metal band featuring "Beefcake the Mighty" of GWAR. Brotherhood are a metal/HC band from San Antonio, TX & should please fans of HATEBREED, SHADOWS FALL & PANTERA. Serpentis is a new NOLA black metal band that rose from the ashes of Liber Diurnus. Oroku Saki and the Foot are local & play some really goofy ass grind/death/black metal.