Summertime Blues in New Orleans

Po-boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
There Ain’t No Cure
Or
The Summertime Blues
Now, is it just me or is there an ongoing epidemic of men with diarrhea of the brain that are made to apologize for mouthing off without thinking, sent to a talk show to apologize and then be counseled by a shrink whose first name is the same as mine. It’s like the rock stars of old, after they’re busted for drugs: go into rehab, find Jesus and cut a new album. Sheesh!
All this is compounded by young female wasps and princesses who act out in public like the spoiled brats that they are; while Hip Hop and Rap artists (and I use that term loosely) vacation in Dubai and blow a million dollars a week that they made selling trash music to underprivileged fashion victims.
On top of that, the number one song on Billboard this week has the astounding lyrics “hey, hey… you, you…I don’t like your girlfriend!”
Bitter, bitter; let’s try again.
A report from the orphanage that New Orleans has become says it’s only logical that new Mom and Pop stores aren’t opening. Think about it.
On that subject: have we not all had Mom and Pop role models, good and bad? Hell, there were a skazillion TV shows based on American family life. Well, that was then and this is now. The poor Beaver is reduced to playing in Hairspray on Broadway.
So, if we don’t have Mom and Pop role models—what do we have? Sport figures in steroid scandals? Politicians in bribery and sex scandals? We need a ‘Mom and Pop’ movement. “War…huuh! (Good God, y’all) What is it good for?”
What I’d call for is a return to basics. Throw out your paper, blow up your TV. Get in that kitchen, make some homemade pasta and that killer tomato sauce that you were once known for. Be your own Mom or Pop.
This just in: Yes, we can save the planet… by taking that cell phone and very quietly putting it in your sock drawer before it gets any smarter.
In other news, it was reported that children are having sex at 14.9 years of age. With who? Why, hopefully with other children who are 14.9 years old. This apparently is their reaction to sex education programs in school that focus on abstinence as birth control. “Hey, hey…you, you…”
Does anyone out there have a Mardi Gras Indian dictionary and can you tell me what "Jockimo findo hondo hondo (in the morning)” means? Or better yet: “Ooom-ma-lay cootie fiyo”?
Will we ever find out why, if breakfast is the most important meal of the day, we don’t eat it more often? Think about it, of the one meal in three a day, which one takes it for the team? Yep, Cheerios is the first one to take it in the shorts. Mom and Pop are not happy.
What do you make of the weather channel and that storm approaching? Should this issue of Where Y’at be more about evacuation? Here’s some tips: evacuate early and often because if this one hits and you’re in town, you can kiss your sweet butt goodbye. Keep a wad of cash handy, the gas tank full and stay in touch with your out of town friends; you’ll need all three. Are we safe yet? Praise the Lord and pass the bottled water. Also, make sure that all your critters are ready as well. As Noah said when it started to rain “this ain’t no time to miss the boat!”
This being the evacuation issue: page five can be folded into a drinking cup, page twelve can be used (it’s softer) in case you have to pull over to relieve yourself. Also, page thirty is imbedded with wax so you can use it as a candle, and this page can be rolled up and smoked. The rumor is, that if you lick the apostrophe on the cover…
Onward. With all the stuff that we buy that is made in China, do they also make our plastic bottles? You know, the ones that we drink water, soft drinks etc from and haven’t been able to recycle yet? (ever again) I can see it now, a vast flotilla of gallon jugs and Dasani bottles floating here from Shantung or some such named place. Why do we want to drink water from a plastic bottle unless our water is really not good for us? And why would we then throw that bottle away, into a landfill that is not good for our planet and then go buy another bottle of someone else’s water and do it all over again? Is that the ‘Get A Clue Phone’ that I hear ringing?
Has Paris been pardoned yet? I admit that when the petition was being signed urging the Governor to release her on the grounds that she provided “beauty and excitement” to “our otherwise mundane lives”, I was tempted to sign it!!
Then I pictured her at Alcatraz. Perhaps with Brit and Lindsay. Rockin’ The Rock, so to speak. Singing “Hey, hey. You, you: I don’t like your cellmate…” in a rock musical adaptation of Shawshank Redemption, maybe tweaking the title a bit… don’t ask.
Are there really tee shirt trees? How did we get on this subject? Oh, yeah; evacuation: mayhem, chaos, billions of gallons of water. Failing levees, inept leadership, police on bridges with drawn guns turning back refugees.
Call me an escapist; but, I don’t want to think about it any more than I have to. I’ve decided that those of us that went through it are not going to get anything but nuts over rehashing it, so why not think about the human comedy instead of the inhuman tragedies. Emotional evacuation for our trying times.
I think that maybe something went terribly wrong in the twentieth century that nobody paid attention to at the time. Now we’re paying for it with calves that are born with two noses, squirrels that commit suicide, global warming and Brittany giving beaver shots to the press. There’s only one of those things we can do anything about. The others? We’ll just have to wonder.