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Just Another Night Out
The coals on the barbecue grill were too hot so I burned a bunch of fat leg quarters to begin my duties as Night Out Against Crime chef on 2600 Dumaine. With sideways glances I caught a lot of skeptical looks from the guests who were seated in chairs and on stoops. Smoke billowed profusely. I sweated. I was failing miserably at a pretty simple task. Good thing for everyone the majority of the food had been pre-arranged and sat safely inside Phillis' house.
Evelyn arrived from the 7th Ward and said, "it's not barbecue if it's not burnt."
"Thank you, Evelyn."
"You know I got your back, baby."
"Oh baby, its you and only you."
"I got your back, Jim, I got your back."
The cops buried one of their own earlier in the morning. A few days ago a senior cop with a trainee were responding to an armed robbery of a bar on St. Roch. When they pulled up to the bar four recidivists came out and were in no way blocked from escaping but when the trainee yelled "gun" and ducked in the front passenger seat one of the four shot into her window, hitting the senior cop in the head, causing his instantaneous death. Three of the four were apprehended soon thereafter, one slightly mauled by the police dog, and the fourth was caught the next day. Three will dime out the fourth and he will rot in hell. The implications of a society in which we allow our cops to be murdered are too severe to calmly consider. The cop's pregnant wife and five-year old son have a folded flag and a bunch of kind, laudatory words as consolation.
As I took Evelyn to her home near St. Anthony and Claiborne we became momentarily sidetracked down some of the surrounding streets, Derbigny, Elysian Fields, N. Robertson, saw dealers and derelicts and prostitutes and unattended children slinking through the ill-lit night, and a young man on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance, and I said I don't think I'll be coming around here sightseeing at night. Oh no baby, you don't wanna do that. Evelyn complained that she had tried to get her neighbors interested in a party but they afraid to have an anti-crime party what with so many criminals in their families. I had to admit that the idea struck me a little strange the first time the idea came up on Dumaine. Evelyn agreed. I said I guess they would just have to try it one time to see that you can have criminals and cops and judges on one street on one night and that everything can work out most copacetically. Even with a lame chef.
It sometimes seems like its more fun, more popular, to see the cop as the videotapes show him--as the bad guy beating up the innocent or not so innocent citizen, or just in general being an unnecessarily intimidating presence in a society that, sure, needs him, but not if he can't behave properly. Me, I'm willing to forgive all but the most heinous cop behaviour in exchange for his and her protecting me from what I feel would be an even worse scenario than the one we see when the occassional bad cop hits the news--a world without cops. Christopher Russell, NOPD, RIP.
Premieres Cotes De Bordeaux
First let me state that I am quite obviously not French. I don't even know the meaning of the above title. I copied it off a bottle. I am a Budweiser drinking American, an admission that carries with it the essence of the idea--the ugly American. But alas, we all must live as well as we can within the limitations of who we are.
You really can't blame the French for their famed snobbery. Americans have the same class attitudes. Its like we who shop at WalMart look down on those who shop at The Dollar Store. That was the Budweiser of analogies. What I mean is--besides nothing--is that you really can't blame French people for their well developed attitudes which may or may not be based on two thousand years of remarkable culture. They, like the rest of us, are doing the best they can. I think we Americans may be allowed to judge the French only after we have shopped at WalMart for two thousand years, and not before.
So my joke at work for the last month--and let me tell you the joke works (as well as lame jokes are allowed to work) because I have set it up with months and months of candor regarding my almost monk-like celibacy--has been that I am expecting a visit from a French girlfriend. And today I worked with some old mates I haven't been around for awhile so I hit them with a fresher version of the same joke like this--I said I spent all day yesterday with a French girlfriend. They said oo la la and I said--and her husband and two kids. To further debunk this very mild attempt at humor I tell that the girlfriend is really just a friend who happens to be a girl-woman (although I do admit to a rather serious fourth-grade crush) and she is not really French but an American married to a Frenchman (although she has lived outside of America--in Bordeaux and French Guiana and Northern Africa and Laos and back to Bordeaux--for more than half her life). So not only do I not have a sex life but my jokes don't have a sex life. Also I did not spend all day with the husband and kids. I only spent it with the friend, talking like there was no tomorrow. We did talk about sex though. In six hours of conversation how could you not talk about it?
I'm drinking the straight outta Bordeaux '98 Enclos De La Ronde, one of many wines not sold at WalMart. I'm happy with it.