For a Good Time

try Chickie Wah Wah.

There's nothing like the rush of that first suckerpunch followed by hands around your neck and a beer bottle breaking over your head at this mid-city hotspot, where the owner and bartender will do nothing to help you and, as an added bonus, throw your bleeding ass to the curb.

Now that we're alone, just me and you, tell me Chickie Wah Wah, whatcha gonna do?

Dress Code

Don't.

I think we are on the tip of a trend of business armed robberies, Police Chief Riley said yesterday, several months after the rebirth of this "trend" of robbing bartenders and citizen patrons, prodding them with multiple gunpoints in very public locations, while these same handful of robbers are repeatedly caught on videotape - yet unapprehended by NOPD.

Don't Panic.

The priority for the New Orleans criminal justice system is not bolstering its limited supply of pro-bono attorneys, but abusing those few that remain: Letting such lawyers have a private practice on the side was harmful to their public clients, critics of the system have argued. The move prompted six public defenders to quit so they could actually earn an income leaving some judges with trials and motions scheduled on their dockets, but no attorneys for the accused.

Don't Panic.

When we refer to said criminal court system as "revolving door," we are not merely employing sarcasm: A manhunt for a convicted drug dealer who was wanted in St. John the Baptist Parish after fleeing from authorities has been reignited after he was released from the Jefferson Parish jail Sunday because of overcrowding.

Don't Panic.

New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. By mid-August of this year, 192 murders had been committed in New Orleans,"nearly 10 times the national average," reported the Associated Press. Gunfire is so common in New Orleans -- and criminals so fierce -- that when university researchers conducted an experiment last year in which they had cops fire 700 blank rounds in a neighborhood on a random afternoon "no one called to report the gunfire," reported AP.

Don't Panic.

When writer William Embley, who resides on the cusp of Central City, called to report the sound of shots fired, the 911 dispatcher told him to go outside and see what was occurring.

Don't

Panic.

Smoke and Fuselage

Watching a re-broadcast of the planes smashing through the World Trade Center three hours after the fact in California

Listening to Jean shell-shocked and an alien, vulnerable Manhattan: the sounds of screaming, sirens and an explosion that turned out to be the second tower collapsing before her cell went dead

Forgetting my parents' phone number

My mother crying when I finally remembered it

My father watching with his coworkers as planes detonated several skyscrapers over

Cubby Selby crying at the podium several days later, reading a tribute to his firefighter friend

A woman in my playwriting workshop deciding to begin a play about the plight of Afghanistan women that same week

Tony saving me seats away from her and the constant television replay of plane approaching, plane smashing, plane approaching, plane smashing at the bar after class that entire semester

My father and brother walking the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of others in defiance of Al Qaeda

Arguing with people who felt it was fashionable to hate on men and women who simply got up and went to work one day for being part of "the imperalist conspiracy"

Arguing with people who felt it was fashionable to invade Muslim nations and kill civilians for no clear reason and with no clear strategy

Watching on television via sanitized, Space Invader-like graphics, when they actually did it

A thin trail of smoke.

Mos Def Arrested for No Reason at the VMAs

I mean, "Mos Def Arrested for Exercising his Right to Free Speech at the VMAS" - yes, with the proper permit, you "law and order" assholes. Seems to me that if these allegedly "by the book" types were so interested in enforcing the law, they'd stop trampling all over our Constitutional rights.

I plan on calling NYPD and inquiring further.

Like the NOPD flunkies, I have a feeling they'll refuse me an interview - if not blatantly, than perhaps by repeatedly failing to return my phone calls and/or agreeing to an interview but refusing to set a date for said interview, making it a tad difficult to conduct.