Television Addiction

Too Much Time On My Hands
This Styx refrain was brought to mind by the departure from pop culture of two of the most addictive shows of all time. In my younger days I might have been a fan of both Lost and 24 but thankfully at this point in my life I no longer get quite addicted to the old Networks as I used to. Partly this is a function of having kids and an irregular work schedule and partly as a result of HBO and Showtime and DVR's.
It all started with The Night Stalker. The first truly spooky television show (though some will insist it was The Twilight Zone). My mom and I would eagerly await Saturday Night at 9 p.m. for the next installment chronicling the adventures of Darren McGavin's monster chasing Chicago reporter Carl Kohlchack. Vampires, Werewolves, Rakshasa's, Aliens and even a Spanish Moss Monster haunted my dreams each week for the show's short-lived two year run. Sure I can remember Bonanza and Leave It To Beaver and Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie and The Brady Bunch etc etc... but it was The Night Stalker that got me pumped and began my real addiction to television.
Happy Days was another of my all time favorites on Tuesday nights and what child of the 70's didn't go through their Star Trek phase. Somewhere in my mind I still fancy myself as a strange combination of James T Kirk and The Fonz.
In college I didn't have as much time for television as I was working and going to school full time for about 7 years yet I did always seem to sneak in a 10:30 MASH episode on channel 4 (WWL), where it resided for years or an episode of The Bob Newhart show which made for one of my favorite drinking games of all time High Bob. Everytime a character said the words hi bob everyone had to take a drink. You try it. There must have been 20 per show on average. Subsequently it became all about Thurday nights (as I had that night off often) and Cheers, Hill St. Blues and ER.
You know looking back I watched alot of freaking television. Lets not even get into the movie channels that my folks had at home with HBO, Cinema, Showtime, and The Movie Channel and all the VHS' I rented over the years.
It is kind of amazing how even now I can remember entire plot lines of shows like WKRP in Cincinatti, Taxi or Northern Exposure. My habits now consist of the news and a couple of shows my kids like (Idol and Glee) and Sunday nights on HBO. I have long been a fan of HBO's one hour dramas with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under having had a pretty strong effect on my free time and the way I think about television today.
Now that we have dvd's chronicling entire season's of series it becomes even more dangerous and having a couple of people I know who have been on TV hasn't helped. I recently finished like 3 seasons of Battlestar Galactica after spending some time with its heroine Starbuck in California. That and the fact that I used to watch it when I was a kid so now I am watching remakes of things that I have already watched.
Well that just gets back to my point. Thank god i never got mixed up in those 6 years of Lost or 24. I watched a half hour of the Lost wrap up show and I was totally lost. No wonder they called it that. As far as 24 is concerned I think it is just a little too close to reality with lots of nuclear subplots that disturb me.
Thank God Idol is done this week. I'll Cheer for the sox chick but obviously my first choice would be Lee. Glee will get my kids into Kiss and farther into GAGA and I'll just keep up my regular schedule of watching Treme 5 times a week and wait for Entourage and True Blood.

Dear Lil Wayne,

YO MR CARTER!

So this morning i got a facebook message from a friend who was passing on a lil wayne friend page. For those of you who have been living on the planet formerly known as pluto, Lil Wayne, aka lil weezy aka mr carter aka dwayne carter is a rapping hip hopper who basically rules the planet (which is why he had 4, 427, 227 likes on his facebook page.  Wayne is currently doing time (9mos) in New York on a gun charge when authorities found a weapon on his tour bus.  Wayne and I kinda grew up in the same part of town.  He grew up in a poor neighborhood named hollygrove (a block from where I live now) and I grew up near the park. He went to McMain, which was a magnet school and I went to Newman I thought the similarities ended there as I have no gunshot wounds and am not a multimillionaire with songs out there like pussymonster and lollipop ; after receieving a note he wrote to his fans from jail that was posted on facebook i found we do share one other quality.We both write well.  We have a solid grasp of the English language, know how to use a comma and can express ourselves in complex sentences.  I thought that since Mr. Carter had plenty of time on his hands I would mail him a letter and ask him a favor but first let me show you what I mean by saying that Dwayne Carter is a highly intellgent communicator.

Dear Fans, 
During my prison stint, I want my fans to know I love you. I want all of you to know that I appreciate all the mail I get, and this is my way of saying thank you. The F is for Family, Friends, and Fans.

Love. Live. Life. Proceed. Progress. That’s who I am and who I’ll always be. You see, we’re all living on borrowed time, so I’m not worried about this situation. Life happens quick. The more time you spend contemplating what you should have done…you lose valuable time planning what you can and will do. Trying to tear down the past prohibits you from building up your future. So for my time here, my physical will be confined to the yard. My love and my spirit, however, know no boundaries.

I’m in good spirits man, for real. My kids race through my mind all day. They know they were created with love, so love is how their life will be defined. I just hope my love and adoration for them provides a temporary bandage on a wound I unknowingly inflicted on them.


Real soon, you can catch me blogging for ESPN again thank you espn for not letting my passion for sports perish. I work out a lot because it helps pass the time. I read the Bible everyday. Jail didn’t make me find God, He’s always been there. They can lock me up, but my spirit and my love can never be confined to prison walls.

But this isn’t all about me, you are the reason for this letter. It’s because of you Rebirth went gold when critics aborted it. It’s because of you Young Money is and will always be a movement. If the weight of the world is on your shoulders, I beg of you, place it on mine. That’s the least I could do for you, after all you have sacrificed for me. If I could, I’d write each one of you back. Because of this, my team and I have created a website where you can view my letters. Each week I’ll answer as many questions as I possibly can.

Well Mr Carter here is my letter


Dear Mr. Carter,

I just wanted to drop you a note to pledge solidarity with you and others in your current predicament.  We could all go on and on about the inequalities in the judicial system in this country and bemoan the millions of non-violent offenders locked up as a result of the war on drugs but that is not why I am writing.  As you can see by my postmark I live just across Claiborne from Hollygrove. I know that you were a student at McMain and got a good education there in the 80’s while I graduated from Newman in 1981 and have never left New Orleans my entire life. When it comes to New Orleans we are both OG. While there are many things we don’t have in common there are also many things we do have in common, namely the love for our city.
Upon your nomination and receipt of the Grammy for III I became truly interested in what had been happening in the Urban music scene in New Orleans Not that I didn’t spend my share of days washing dishes in restaurants and listening to Q93 but I really didn’t know too much about the young money clan nor the bounce scene. However when I saw Terence and Efram and other musicians I know from the Dozen up on stage with you leading that second line through the theater and all of you representing New Orleans I realized that in order to really save this city we need to work together on all fronts.
Upon reading a note on facebook to your fans expressing many of your thoughts from prison I read some things that changed the way I viewed you and the world you live in.  What is represented through music and the media is mostly street. I wonder how many of your fans realize how incredibly intelligent and articulate you really are. Not that anyone would think you are stupid but the side that is presented to many of your fans, including myself, has not been that of an educated individual who can convey his message in well thought out complex sentences and the kind of elegant prose which you expressed in your message.This ability to communicate your intellect is, no doubt, one of the major factors in the success you have had in a rather difficult industry. Not that flash and street cred are not of primary importance when playing the game as y’all play it but how many of the young men and women out there who follow your work and career know how successfully you can express yourself using common English on the written page. These fans need to know that it just isn’t enough to be urban/baller savvy without having a firm grasp of intelligent discourse that so many of them disdain for fear of not appearing street enough. One of the reason the rhymes you spit are so tasty and juicy has to be that you have a command of a more reasoned discourse and it shows plain and simple in your lyrics. While you have time to contemplate the direction your career will take upon your return to society I hope that you will consider letting your fans see more of the formally educated Wayne so that they too can have the chance you have had.
As a semi-privileged (who still had to look up how to spell privilege) resident of the 70118 and 13^th ward all my life what the fuck do I know about this. Well I can say this. Things are changing in New Orleans. I proudly send my two girls to Lusher Elementary and my 12 year old goes to school on the former campus of Fortier with a class of kids that represent all ethnicities and in a non-token fashion. I see how the kids at Ronald J McNair have been transformed through the KIPP program which chartered that school. I see the difference that education is making in the new New Orleans and am hopeful that New Orleans is back on its way to being one of America’s greatest cities. I also see the return to the violent ways that had our city on the verge of extinction pre-Katrina and I think there is a danger that if our leaders don’t take the reigns we could slip back right into those old habits. It is gonna take a concerted effort by all concerned parties to keep that from happening. I lived on First and Tchopitoulas just blocks away from St. Thomas from 1992-1997 so I know what its like to be surrounded by AK-47 fire night in and night out. Hopefully we can keep the thugs and the gangsters at bay this time. We cannot let our city fall back into hopelessness. All children of New Orleans deserve a chance at a good life and a good education.I hope that you will help lead this rebuilding of our educational system and embrace your roots from Nashville and Claiborne as well as Eagle St.
Warmest regards to you Mr. Carter. I hope your next few months are comfortable and offer you much time for philosophical contemplation and that you emerge stronger than ever and ready to make the kind of difference in the world that only someone with your kind of celebrity and artistic, intellectual and financial credibility can make.
Lee Yates

BP New Orleans Response

Ok I have to admit that this pet peeve of mine has been sticking in my craw for sometime (since Katrina) so this may sound a little bitter but I am not a hater. I just don't get it.  Monday's announcement of Sunday's Gulf Benefit was no surprise.  I had overheard a couple of conversations Sunday nights from different people in the music business about a planned fundraiser for the Gulf of Mexico and once again I ask the same question.  Why hold a fund raiser where the funds are most desperately needed?  It is almost as if they held Live Aied in Africa or allowed only poor people to buy the "We are the World" single  After Katrina I evacutated, among other places, to Valparaiso Indiana, a stone's throw from Chicago to visit my sister and my evacuated parents.  I will never forget how excited I was to hear that Pearl Jam was going to do a show at the House of Blues in Chicago to benefit hurricane Katrina and the tickets were going for $1000 a piece.  Now that is a benefit.  Maybe $100,000 was raised in one night in one of the richest cities in America for us.  I must admit I tried every contact I had to get a ticket seeing as I was one of those displaced victims of the Corps of Engineers debacle and I was disappointed when I was shut out but I understood that they probably didn't need to give me a ticket when they could sell one for $1,000 and provide that much more relief.  I heard about benefits in New York and other places but for some reason the real plethora of Hurricane Katrina relief benefits were held in New Orleans.  
      Is it just me or does that just not make sense.  Isn't the idea to draw money into our struggling community from areas of the country that are well off and unaffected.  What good does holding a fundraiser here do for us?  The musicians won't get paid and the ticket holders will predominately come from the same place that has been affected by the tragedy.  I understand that this is a deep-south gulf coast issue but still wouldn't it be better to get a bunch of national acts to donate their services and pay a bunch of local acts to play somewhere that has the ability to have a financial impact on our community rather than to get our citizens to pony up another $50 to hear the musicians who just played French Quarter fest and Jazz Fest.  I just don't get it. 
   That being said, thank you  John Legend and Lenny Kravitz and all of you who are dedicating your time free of charge to help the Gulf Coast.  If you need me I will be in Gulf Shores at another festival that  has pledged to donate the proceeds to the recovery of the Gulf of Mexico.  Unfortunately I don't think there will actually be any proceeds seeing as it is the first time the festival has been held.  Peace,
                                                                                                                          Lee

Really BP?

    OK so now that we are coming to grips with the spew of toxic sludge jettisoning from the bottom of the sea floor into our jet ski lanes what is BP proposing to stem this black tide.   Well the most widely accepted solution to this tiny problem is to drill relief wells.  What this involves is drilling, on an angle, more holes from other locations surrounding the original hole,  so as to relieve pressure from the current hole and suck the oil out from a new hole that makes the current hole gush slower?  BP would have us believe that this is a tried and true long term solution and that as soon as those wells are finished (estimates vary from double digit weeks to several months all while the current spew continues) the problem will be solved.  Does anyone else see the Beverly Hillbillies analogy here.  Maybe Jed Clampett could just fire a second shotgun blast at a squirrel near the first one and stem the gusher he so easily created with the first shot gun blast.
     Really BP?
   Well it sounds plausible given that their first reaction was to weld together a really clunky box that would fit over the top of the well and by its shear weight contain the leak and allow the black gold to be pumped out and delivered to waiting refineries in a more orderly fashion.  That monstrosity got floated out fifty miles and summarily was lowered carefully to the floor of the gulf whereas, within minutes,  it became clogged at the tiny little hole up top that was, coincidentally, the size of a pipeline.  What clogged the hole?  Icy Sludge.  Who could have anticipated that coming from a sinister hole under more than a mile of water that hasn't seen the sun in some 200 million years. Especially given that the same hole had recently released a large methane burp that rapidly incinerated the twelve poor suckers who had been attracted by offshore wages and benefits like moths to a flame.  Perhaps the experts at BP have never had a snowball and the technology of trying to get a snowball into ones mouth using only a straw escaped them but it doesn't take a genius with a Phd in Geology to figure out that snowballs (even from Hansen's) will have a chunk or two of ice in them that will clog your straw.
     Really BP?
   But wait; it gets better.  Now they want to cut that large clunky box in half and use only the top half (which they have elegantly named the "top hat") to which they will attach some intake valves for warmer sea water from the surface and undoubtedly some type of industrial antifreeze which separates easily during the refining process and can be used again. What I haven't been able to glean from reports is whether we are going to get a brand spanking new "top hat' thus keeping local welders busy or whether we can (in keeping with the "green" practices at BP) use the old clunky box and a bunch of acetolene torches to fashion the top hat from the current monstrosity.  It is, after all, a little too deep to be an underwater reef unless we are trying to hatch giant squid.
    Really BP?
  But wait; it gets better.  If these carefully thought out plans still don't stop the spew of toxic petroleum rising up hundreds of barrels per second  from the depths of the paleolithic hell then they do have one other possible solution.  This is the one that I just love because it utilizes Nerf technology. If all else fails what BP plans to do is to build a giant Nerf gun and shoot a giant Nerf dart fashioned from recycled plastic bottles and tires and such into the hole to try and plug it that way.  Could a top Hollywood screenwiter even make this shit up?  They plan to plug the hole with playground material.  You know that stuff that keeps your kids safe when they fall off the monkey bars and is all squishy under your feet so that you feel that you are wearing a really expensive pair of sneakers when you walk on it. Unfortunately they don't really know if this is gonna work either but on the bright side, if it doesn't, and the dart gets shot right back out the hole and hits some poor grouper in the face at least it won't hurt
   Really BP?
  So what should these poor fools who work for British Petroleum do?  Two words (one hyphenated)
Water-Balloon Technology


tommorrow: the governmental response

Welcome To the New Disaster

Thanks BP for putting us on the map again. As if I don't get tired of looking at statistically graphic respresentations of our impending demise in the times picayune day after day now I get to watch the projected path of a gigantic oil slick as it sloshes around the coastline. Why is it that no one really seems to have any kind of accurate information about what we are in for here? How long before the Pulitzer nominated articles that can give us some direct insight into the impact of this latest man-made natural disaster. Are Exxon/Mobil and Shell now licking their lips at the opportunity to look like the good guys Thanks god it wasn't the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as presented by BP right! Is is light sweet corn syrup we are gonna have all over our beaches or is it molasses. If oil and water don't mix then why can't we fish. Today's newspaper said we have had two aviary victims both who have been put on i.v's, cleaned off and brought to Florida. What is this gonna do to the summer dead zone. I wish this had happened either well before or well after jazz fest because coming as it did no one really seemed to be paying too much attention. Even Eddie Vedder seemed to let mega oil off light. During lollapalooza a couple of years back he did a 4 minute rant and a special song for BP. All we got was a sprinkling of disdain about how executives kids might want to spend their summers. WTF