Chickadees Steal Show With Bikini Number Sunday, Jul 23 2006

She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini. In fact, all the Chickadees did. The three year-old class of the first ever summer camp at the Academy of the Sacred Heart brought down the house at the end-of-camp talent show with Brian Hyland’s number one hit single from 1960.

Although the Flamingos, Bluebirds, and Cardinals followed with serviceble numbers, especially the Cardinals and their rendition of Surfin’ USA, the Chickadees definitely stole the show with their hip shakin’, elbow swingin’ high spirited performance.

The Weathers Report is proud to announce that it has partnered with YouTube.com to bring you regular video supplements of its stories, including the Chickadees’ final performance – simply click below:

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Time to March on St. Tammany Sunday, Jul 16 2006

A suburban New Orleans sheriff has refused to recant his endorsement of racial profiling in a recent television interview, in which he threatened that anyone walking the streets with dreadlocks and “chee wee” hairstyles would be stopped and interrogated by sheriff’s deputies.

Although the remarks not rise to the level of stupidity of Nagin’s Chocolate City speech, they were offensive, and Sheriff Rodney “Jack” “Boo Boo” Strain – the best Louisiana politicians even have nicknames for their nicknames – should retract them. True, the popular and competent sheriff of St. Tammany Parish made the statement after a quadruple homicide in which the two suspects were described as young black men, one having dreadlocks and the other a “chee wee” hairstyle. (It is unclear what a “chee wee” hairstyle is, or whether the term is offensive or not. A leading theory is that it refers to hair resembling Cheetos.)

But the thurst of the statement was that the “thugs” and “trash” of Orleans Parish, which “coddles its criminals,” need to watch their backs in wholesome lily-white St. Tammany. They don’t take kindly to, you know, them people.

Public shock and outrage has reached such a fever pitch, that the ACLU has stepped in – and issued a strongly worded letter! The NAACP has gone a step further, politely requesting a federal civil rights investigation.

But where is the action? It’s time to march on St. Tammany.

In 1987, thousands of civil rights activists marched in Forsyth County, Georgia, to protest similar racial intolerance. It was often repeated that Forsyth County was “a county that warned black visitors not to ‘let the sun go down on your head.’ The marches were relatively peaceful, despite a counter-demonstration by the Ku Klux Klan, and multi-racial, arguably demonstrating the success of the civil rights movement.

Alas, the organizer of the march, Hosea Williams, is dead, and these days Jesse Jackson can’t even organize a decent bus caravan. In New Orleans, city leaders were forced to turn in their Dodge Durangos, so they may not even be able to get across the causeway. Looks like we’ll have to settle for a lawsuit or two. Through the lawyers, “We Shall Overcome!”

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Seeking “That Special Girl” for The New Orleans Lover Sunday, Jul 9 2006

In the first few months after the hurricane, the dating scene in New Orleans, so I’m told, was comparable to that of a frontier town in Alaska. Contractors, guardsman, construction workers, telephone linemen, and other burly men flooded the city (pardon the pun), while single women were more likely to stay evacuated a bit longer. Sure, plenty of women returned quickly or even stayed through the entire ordeal. But no one can argue that the city’s male-female ratio was not out of whack for a while after the storm.

Until recently, I had assumed the situation had righted itself, and dating in New Orleans had returned to normal (or as normal as anything can be around here). That is, until I spotted this billboard on the side of Voodoo BBQ & Grill on St. Charles Avenue. The so-called friends of this poor sap have dubbed him the “New Orleans Lover” and taken out a billboard and website for him, seeking to find him “that special girl.” I know desperate times call for desperate measures, but surely it’s not that bad out there. Have his friends considered that their pal may not even be looking for that special girl? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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