Former La. governor's talk, the unedited version

I covered a Baton Rouge Press Club talk today with a former Louisiana governor, but space constraints on the piece whittled it to a teeny version. Here's the full text of what I reported on:

Former governor Roemer blames both political parties for economic sloth

A self-proclaimed proud Republican and conservative, former governor Charles “Buddy” Roemer nonetheless blames both major political parties for leading the nation to an economic identity crisis, torn between socialist Europe and “free market” China. And Louisiana, despite its business successes, cannot coast above the union’s challenges forever. “It’s not an island in the economy,” Roemer told the Baton Rouge Press Club today. “We are connected to the larger American economy. We’re losing our competitiveness. We’re losing our economic leadership and an empire that has taken the better part of 150 years” to build after the Civil War.

Roemer, president and CEO of Business First Bank in Baton Rouge, says rapid government expansion and slowed growth nationally mean the “the global economy will be running us, not we it.” Although he championed Civil Rights advances that helped Barrack Obama and Sarah Palin vie for top leadership roles in the nation, he found plenty that has gone wrong in recent decades, including banking deregulation under President Clinton and flagrant spending under President Bush that have led to debt that could “throttle” growth.

Recalling a trip to Paris a few years ago, he says he stood on the Arc de Triomphe and tried to count construction cranes in view, finding none. Months later during a trip to Shanghai, he says he stood on the Deutsche Bank building tried the same thing, giving up after counting 300. While the Chinese government is “very heavy handed” in its political interference, he says the country embraces America’s free market ideas, as does India, where the number of millionaires is on a stark rise. Meantime, he says federal agencies let “the big boys” in Wall Street banking rely on as little as 2 percent capitalization, while his bank imposes a 9 percent capitalization rule to protect against failing.

Such homegrown conservatism could keep the Gulf South a top-performing region for the next 25 years, he says, regardless of whether one can trust T. Boone Pickens. Roemer says he asked the energy industry magnate what natural gas, now priced at “$4 and some change” per 1,000 cubic feet, would trade at in a year; the reply was $8. “I just wish T. Boone knew what he was talking about,” Roemer says.

Latest dispatches from bayou country

Recently I've been exploring innovative education ideas in Baton Rouge. Among them is a planned charter school dubbed the Capitol Education Center, which would provide vocational training to youths who likely would have to leave Louisiana in search of work if they earned less specialized four-year degrees.

The initiative is spearheaded by William Jenkins, president emeritus of LSU and a South African emigre. He told me in an interview that his passion for providing practical schooling stems from his first-hand experience seeing apartheid:

“I was born into and grew up in apartheid South Africa,” he says. “A large number in that country were excluded from participating in a trained workforce. That was in many ways the Achilles’ heel of the country. South Africa still has a long way to go [to train nonwhites] to be able to fully engage in industry and commerce, and to have careers.

“I have a deep concern about, as a society, how we advance and how we compete nationally and internationally, absent a fully trained workforce."

My article on the school concept is out now here.

I also wrote about independent pharmacist Claud Derbes (prounounced "derby"), who found some clever ways to trump big-box competition:

Derbes vies with chains such as Walgreens and CVS by offering flu shots, shingles and pneumonia vaccinations, and a quick customer response despite being a compound-prescription pharmacy, meaning his technicians mix medicines by hand.

He says customers drop off orders and then zip down to shop at Walmart, where they chide friends who wait an hour for medication that takes 15 to 20 minutes to get at Derbes’ store, despite the old-fashioned preparation method.

“They see friends and say: ‘Well, you’re a fool. What are you doing that for?’” Derbes says with a laugh. “We’ve been very fortunate. Business has grown very well.”

That article is here.

And, I wrote about a stimulus bill plan that provides discounts for companies that want to buy buildings, land and related assets in order to expand locally, rather than relocate in order to grow. That article on the Small Business Administration's 504 loans is here.

The Baton Rouge Business Report and I appreciate your clicks.

'You have to face things like, “One day I’m going to die" '

For a refreshing change, I've had some time to work on articles and story ideas this cycle for the Baton Rouge Business Report.

Last in print was my 10 questions interview with a local estate planner, who noted that the concept of "usufruct" in Louisiana law means a wife can use assets of her late husband that ultimately will go to their children, regardless of whether she remarries and has more children, then tries to will those assets to her new family.

The notion stems from French law or the Napoleonic Code, as opposed to English common law; sounds like a sensible concept for all 50 of our great states. Read Paul Rabalais' thoughts on why it is so easy to put off planning your estate -- after all, he says, "You have to face things like, 'One day I’m going to die' " -- and other matters here.

I also recently wrote about the city's massive bond measure that officials hoped would allow them to build an educational theme park along the Mississippi River on bayou country ecology; the vote on the Alive project and other infrastructure funding was Saturday. That brief article is here; apparently the initiative, which officials never could succinctly explain to voters (what we in journalism call an "elevator pitch") died a miserable death at the polls.

More articles should magically appear online sometime Tuesday right here. Hope to count your clicks from this site, dear readers.

Bayou gone country next Memorial Day weekend

I met Quint Davis today; he's the man behind the New Orleans Jazz Fest, and he's turned his networking prowess to bear on Baton Rouge, which will host a first-ever music festival at LSU's mammoth Tiger Stadium next Memorial Day weekend.

Read about the debut of the Bayou Country Superfest via the Baton Rouge Business Report. The biz community in bayou country sure is excited about the projected $23 million local economic impact of the superfest. Personally, I'd rather tune into rootsy alt-country a la Hank Wiliams III or Ryan Adams than the pop stars on the upcoming bill, but c'est la vie.

A flurry of business journalism for autumn

Sometimes journalism is a grind, sometimes it's a surprisingly rewarding pastime, and often it's both. My latest articles for the Baton Rouge Business Report run the gamut of topics from dry to personal to straight-forward information sharing.

Here's the line-up:

A barge cruises on the Mississippi River in Ascension
Parish, La. Image by Geo Swan via Wikimedia Commons.

• Fill 'er up gives local reaction to the FDIC's plan to replenish its shot insurance fund for lenders by charging three years' of fees up front. Don Ayres of American Gateway Bank said of the problem, caused by all those bank failures of late: "If you participated in the booming real-estate market, that’s where the majority of your loans are. I don’t care how good of a banker you are, you’re in trouble."
• A river runs through it is about the two sides of Ascension Parish (county), one that benefitted from big-time growth along an interstate, and the other that lags because of old infrastructure such as above-ground phone and power lines. "If we had an interstate, it would be just the opposite," said Becky Katz, executive director of the Donaldsonville Area Chamber of Commerce. "It’s location, location, location." Guess which side she's on.
• 'Welcome to the boomtown' discusses the suburban sprawl to the east of Baton Rouge, where a new "subdivision carves out a swath of land along La. Highway 447 across the road from a rustic scene of corrugated-metal-roofed shacks and black-and-white cows grazing in the grass," as I wrote. "It isn’t quite smart growth, but in this economy, most planners would be happy with the growth part."

Thanks for reading, folks. See you in a couple weeks.

First cover story in Louisiana: 'Baton Rouge's melting pot'

My slog through the depressing downward spiral of daily news reporting in California, followed by a layoff and a lengthy unemployment stint, ended last summer when I found gainful reporting work once more in Louisiana.

Things have hit a new high thanks to my first cover story for the Baton Rouge Business Report, Baton Rouge's melting pot, about the touchy topic of historic segregation and contemporary social mixing in the born-again downtown.

People here talk about an "invisible line" that divides the black-north and white-south/east areas of town, but while everyone knows about this stratification, few really talk openly about it. Perhaps the article will encourage a little conversation.

In the piece, Civil Rights icon and local businesswoman Maxine Crump, who helped break the color barrier at LSU, had this to say:

“Baton Rouge has tried to hide its history. It’s not talked about openly very often,” Crump says. “And when it is, people smile about it uncomfortably. Who has conversations about it? It shouldn’t silence a room when it’s mentioned if we’re really owning our history. And it does.”

Folks 'round here are trés polite with door-holding and "where ya from?" greetings and such. Yet as one source told me, people love to ask you to lunch, but they won't invite you to dinner. A colleague even told me that around here, "If you're gay, you keep it to yourself."

People can seem awful friendly thanks to that famous Southern hospitality, but there's a wall separating the in-crowd from the outside world that defines the region, and makes change infamously tough.

As one angry tourist insinuated while jabbing a stick into a South Carolina hornets nest, is Dixie's neighborly charm sometimes a veil masking ancient intolerance?

Read the full article on Baton Rouge's downtown meeting ground here.

Speaking of outsiders, I hear a cynical local group is looking for someone to lead the charge in gathering fringe dwellers in the Capital Area, consider joining.

Carville's secrets to a happy marriage: 'Retreat, capitulation and surrender'

James Carville was a real hoot at an annual business and industry leaders lunch on Friday in Baton Rouge.

The Iberville Parish-bred campaign strategist for Bill Clinton had all of his outsize, "ragin' Cajun" personality on display for a roomful of suits and dresses at the downtown Hilton hotel by the Mississippi River.



After rambling a bit, he clicked into a story about being pulled over by the highway patrol somewhere in Virginia, supposedly going 85 in a 65 MPH zone. To paraphrase, he told the cop, come on, every redneck in the state drives a black pickup truck, you just pointed the radar gun out there and happened to pull me over.

To complicate things, Carville's wife, Mary Matalin, was mad at him at the time and wasn't in the mood to jump to his defense; instead, she told the officer, oh he worked for Clinton, they lie about everything.

When the cop then told Carville he was going to add a ticket for not wearing a seat belt, Carville complained, oh get out, I took off my seat belt to get my wallet out of my pocket after I stopped. Matalin added, oh no, he never wears a seat belt.

That was the last straw for Carver, who "snapped" and turned to Matalin, saying, "Shut up!" The officer asked her, does he always talk to you like that? And she of course replied, only when he's been drinking.

By the way, although Carville is a Democrat, Matalin is a Republican pundit; perhaps that clarifies things.

Asked during a lunch Q&A session if the couple argue over politics at home, Carville said: "I don't argue with my wife. It's not a winning proposition." Instead, he said his three secrets to a happy marriage are "retreat, capitulation and surrender."

Carville went to Louisiana State University and joked that when he served as a legislative page in the capital city, the worst part of the job was delivering an envelope with four hundred-dollar bills in it because "you never knew if the middle man took out a hundred or six hundred."

At LSU, he said he enjoyed his four years as a sophomore. He swore he eventually graduated with a 4.0 -- his blood alcohol level, that is.

He praised the sophisticated culture of New Orleans, his recently adopted home, with its alluring music, food, architecture, even its unique funerals, saying he has lived all over but was drawn back after 22 years to the people and heritage of the Gulf. Nowhere compares to the fabled jewel that is New Orleans, he said, noting by contrast, "When's the last time someone went to Ohio and listened to organ music?"



Commenting on the bitter divisiveness in right-versus-left politics today, he pointed to a truly non-partisan time in American history: 1862, at the hopeless heart of the Civil War. Since he got involved in elections in 1988, he said, every contest has been a battle for the future of civilization as we stare down the abyss -- and the next one will be even more dire. Back off all the heated rhetoric, he advised, from right-wing attacks on every decision made by Barack Obama, to left-wing promises that if the other guy wins, "I'm going to Canada."

"Well you just go on and freeze," he said.

Asked what he foresees in terms of terrorist threats to come, he speculated that "Islamic fundamentalist" attacks on America will be viewed in a few decades as an unfortunate fad given their dependence on suicide bombers and other self-dooming martyrs.

"At some point, killing yourself is not an attractive way to go through life," he said to a round of applause. "The world changes, and sometimes it changes for the better."

Besides warning that the international bond market threatens to doom the U.S. economy like nothing we've seen yet when treasuries are auctioned off in a few years and "go up a gazillion basis points," his toughest criticism was aimed at Fox News (and to a lesser extent, mirror image MSNBC News).

"I wish I had stock in it," he said of Fox. "It's not news. Opinion is cheap."

Journalism, on the other hand, is expensive, from staffing Afghan or Gulf Coast news bureaus to employing reporters to cover city council meetings across the nation. TV news is veering toward sheer commentary, he said, reinforcing what viewers already think instead of educating them on the subtle mosaic of issues.

He likened Fox News to a drunk leaning on a lamp post, noting that the network uses news "for support, not illumination."

Despite the conservative bent of the room, Carville had the audience in the palm of his hand with his witty standup act and good ol' boy charm. Yet the impolitic way he was introduced was puzzling. Both in publicity for the event and to the man's face, he was feted as someone to listen to "whether you agree with everything or disagree with some things" he says.

Surely a book deal is just the beginning of the Palin marketing
machine. Go on, have a taste. It's surely full of mavericky flavor.

Talk about a back-handed welcome: Here's some liberal loon from way down South, enjoy; we couldn't get Palin.

Speaking of whom, Carville mentioned that Sarah Palin's memoir "Going Rogue" is due out soon, while Joe Biden is still working on his autobiography -- "Going Rogaine."

Carville teaches political science at Tulane University. The lunch was sponsored by the Istrouma Area Council Boy Scouts.

Mainstream media did not give ACORN a pass

You don't have to be a raving Republican to question the antics of ACORN organizers and recruits, as has been in the news of late.

A couple years ago, I reported on efforts by the activists to ramp up support on the San Francisco peninsula. Something seemed a little off about the group to several reporters at the San Mateo County Times, where I worked, so I took a look at who the group was and what it sought to accomplish. Here's a snippet:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now makes a big noise when it pops into new cities, vowing to help low-income residents get better traffic safety, cleaner streets and more overall attention from local governments.

Sometimes the group is welcomed as a refreshing voice of the people, many of whom wouldn't otherwise join the public debate. Other times, ACORN stirs the pot so much that it becomes the center of attention instead of the problems it highlights.

In Daly City, the group is being checked into by police after some residents complained to the City Council about door-to-door soliciting for new members. Mayor Maggie Gomez said she worried about the group signing up members to have a minimum $10 a month deducted automatically from their accounts.

"Seniors easily give their credit cards over and what have you," she said. "We're concerned about our citizens, you know, we just have to make sure our citizens aren't taken to the cleaners."

David Sharples, an organizer for the San Francisco-based nonprofit that is looking for office space in South City, likened the membership fees to union dues or church-group donations.

"We're not committing elder abuse," Sharples said. "We're bringing people together in the community to get power in numbers in order to win real improvements in their neighborhoods."

Gomez said some of the issues ACORN has raised are already on the radar of local homeowner associations. A push by the group for a new Bayshore supermarket is beside the point because the city has been planning to build exactly that near the Cow Palace for years, she said.

"They're reinventing the wheel is what they're doing," Gomez said, adding that she plans to meet with Sharples soon to clarify the group's mission. "Why would citizens have to pay dues to voice something they can come to the City Council and speak freely about?"

An earlier article I wrote focused on ACORN's effort to clean up the Crocker neighborhood in Daly City and a futile effort to address supposed speeding in San Bruno:

One recent ACORN push that didn't work out was a campaign in San Bruno for a new traffic light at Sixth and San Bruno avenues. City staffers said a pricey new light is not warranted three blocks from an existing light at Third Avenue and two blocks from the Highway 101 interchange.

City Manager Connie Jackson said allegations by residents of cars going 90 mph on San Bruno Avenue and claims of high accident rates there were unsubstantiated. But she said the city will consider other traffic-safety measures besides a new light in the vicinity.

ACORN garnered criticism last year from local officials who felt ambushed by the group, known for collecting $10-a-month fees from members and charging ahead with protests instead of exploring all the options with local governments.

"I feel that if you are an activist, you learn the rules first, and then you respect them," said longtime San Bruno activist and ACORN member Alice Barnes. "I feel that ACORN is learning how to move into City Hall and deal face-to-face with officials rather than bushwhacking them on the street."

By the way, my favorite moment on a recent edition of Sean Hannity's angry white man program was when contributor Juan Williams chastized him for attacking lil ol' ACORN with such vehemence instead of going after Blackwater, the military contractor, for ripping off the government at a far vaster financial magnitude.

Because they protect the country, Hannity replied. Yes, and they rip off the country at the same time -- kind of a patriotic/anti-patriotic two-fer, I guess.

Latest missives for the Baton Rouge Business Report

I am up and running in Louisiana as a full-time, bona fide journalist (health benefits still TK, but god forbid I want some bureaucrat telling me what to do). This go-round, here's what I concocted:

• A report on hiring trends in the Capital Region titled Hitting the bricks, in which one homecoming job transplant says: "I was ready to get back. To tell you the truth, I missed the heat."
  
• A survey of social networking in the real estate biz titled Not the hard sell, in which one agent describes the ebbs and flows of selling online, saying she gets 1,000 hits or more for a Youtube video of her broken elbow, but "then I post a nice real estate tip and get 50 hits."
• A look at the "cultural economy" initiative in Louisiana from a dollars-and-cents perspective (I didn't even mention music!) titled Planting the seeds, in which a gallery owner and arts booster says: "We really aren’t a secondary sector. We see ourselves as an economic engine for the state of Louisiana."

I worked hard on all this -- so if you find a typo, my editor did it.

And seriously, what is up with this asinine GOP ranting about "bureaucrats in Washington" telling me what health care I can get? Don't they know the bureaucrats who tell me what health care I can get now are incorporated outside of D.C.? To wit.

Few takers at anti-union card check press conference

I wrote a brief article on a press conference on the Employee Free Choice Act for the Baton Rouge Business Report, but the longer version didn't make it to the BRBR Web site, so here it is; the original blurb is here.

-----

Few takers at anti-union card check press conference

By Todd R. Brown

A few local business leaders decided to rally Wednesday against a possible revised Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize and would mandate a government arbitration process.

“It will devastate small business as we know it,” says Patricia Felder, co-owner with her husband of Felder’s Collision Parts and a Baton Rouge Area Chamber board member. “I’m certainly not anti-union. I’m very anti-forced union.”

The event, attended by the Business Report and a local TV news crew, attacked the card-check provision of a federal bill to let organizers gather a majority of signatures from a company’s employees in order to declare a union.

“Everyone is going to know how you voted,” says Jim Patterson with the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, calling the free choice act “a coercion of workers into the union fold.”

Alvin Bargas, president of Associated Builders and Contractors’ Pelican Chapter, agreed, saying, “A person’s vote is his private business. People tend not to put their private business in the public. They may not ‘vote’ their true conscience.”

Julie Cherry, secretary treasurer of the Louisiana AFL-CIO, counters that National Labor Relations Board data shows “there’s been far, far more employer coercion than union intimidation … in all reports and in those deemed to be credible. The person who has the money usually has the most power and the most ability to coerce.”

She says workers already have the right to conduct a majority signup campaign with their employer’s blessing; otherwise they are compelled to do a secret ballot after 30 percent of employees show support for a vote.

Felder says if a federal bureaucrat gets to handle the arbitration in a dispute with workers, then “he makes the decisions. I’ve lost control of my company.”

Further, Patterson says the act would fast-track the process for agreeing to an initial contract between workers and management, giving both sides less time to bargain before arbitrators take over and make a binding agreement that would last two years.

“There’s a lot of fear out there about what that means to the employer,” Cherry says. “We see it as an incentive to sit at the table and bargain reasonably.”

She pointed to the example of Avondale Shipyard near Westwego, where workers won a union vote in the early ’90s but had to “jump through hoops and over hurdles” while the employer allegedly stalled the contract process, appealing the election for six years and taking another year to agree to terms.

Patterson said several times at the rally, which was moved unexpectedly from the Holiday Inn to the Crowne Plaza hotel next door, apparently without notice, that “there will be those out there decrying how business treats workers” during the Labor Day weekend.

Yet Cherry says she only knows of one relevant pro-labor event, a parade Monday from the Piggly Wiggly in Baker, La., to the civic center for a picnic, sponsored by the Baton Rouge Central Labor Council.

She says there are several revisions to the free choice act pending but that there likely will be no timetable on the bill until the health care debate is settled.

Union members canvassed and campaigned for Barack Obama in the fall based on his support for the act at the time.

'Dear California, I'm dumping you' by the L.A. Times, an instant classic -- EXCERPTED

So bittersweet, this lament that affects me in a gut-shot way.

Thanks, Candice Reed, fired journalist:

----
Dear California, I'm dumping you.

I've been thinking about this for a very long time, and I've come to the conclusion that we should go our separate ways. I thought I loved you and it would last forever, but I was so very wrong.

When we first met I was young and rather naive, and I loved you unconditionally. I spent years running with abandon across your sandy beaches in the bright sunshine, playing in your beautiful parks and attending your top-rated schools, which were a national model for the other states. For 18 years or so, I can honestly say that I was truly in love with you, but then came your first major transgression: Proposition 13.

(Insiders will get this. Outsiders can skip ahead from the beginning of the end, and enjoy the end per se. Suffice it to say that the seeds of our destruction apparently were sown in the '70s, from property tax collection to music, movies and cultural implosion.)

There's no doubt that I still have feelings for you, but since I lost my job in the newspaper industry and my house is being sold under duress, I want out. I'm leaving you, California, and you might as well know the truth; there's another state, and I'm falling for it hard.

Oh, and my new state still has jobs in the newspaper business, which I will admit makes my heart go pitter-pat, and I find myself daydreaming about healthcare benefits again. I know my new state isn't perfect. Oh sure, the weather isn't as nice as yours, and it's got its own budget shortfall, but it's coping, and I can dress in layers. Nothing is perfect.

So that's it, California, it's over. You've cost me too much. I'm starting over, but I can see happy times ahead. Like we once had.

----
Read the whole enchilada here.

And my own version? Dat took me to Cajun land, the Gulf South, way down Lou-siana way, ya heard?

Tab Benoit - Heart Of Stone - Live Swampland Jam

I got dem swampland blues this evening, yezzir. Welcome to humid, woozy 'Ouisiana.

North Beach Jazz Fest is off, Rebirth Brass Band is on, and I'm South-bound

North Beach will be without a jazz fest this year, according to financially
strapped organizers. Image by Khaosaming via Wikimedia Commons.

According to the folks who put on the annual North Beach Jazz Fest, which features a weekend of free outdoor music in the San Francisco 'hood, the event won't take place this summer. Here's part of this week's announcement:

This annual tradition, which has been enjoyed by thousands of music fans from around the world for 14 years, will be taking a one-year hiatus for financial reasons.

The one-year pause will give festival organizers Sunset Promotions the necessary time to reorganize and re-launch the event on a more sustainable model.

The festival has become increasingly more costly since 2005, when the producers changed the configuration in Washington Square Park to appease a minority who opposed alcohol sales.

The new configuration cost an average of 40 percent more to produce, while revenues have not kept pace. In addition, the Recreation and Park Commission has recently increased their fee requirements to meet massive budget deficits.

"It's really heartbreaking that we couldn't find a way to make it happen, especially because this event means so much to so many," said co-director Robert Kowal. "But it's one thing to work for six months to break even, and another to know you are going to get hurt. Last year the balance tipped too far to the negative."

Organizers plan to relaunch the event next summer. In the meantime, they will host fundraiser concerts with festival mainstay the Rebirth Brass Band on July 24 and 25 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, to offset losses last year. Tickets are here.

This all is a shame, of course, and follows the failure of national magazine JazzTimes in today's economic climate, which I wrote about recently.

A few years back, I interviewed the man behind the North Beach festival, his love of New Orleans brass band music, and the financial challenges facing the fest:

"New Orleans is a perfect storm of culture," said Robbie Kowal, 33, of Sunset Promotions, which puts on the annual celebration of North Beach's Beat-era jazz legacy. "You have this absolutely unique and vibrant jazz-funk scene. Before Katrina, there were 50 brass bands."

Kowal lived in New Orleans for six years, studying at Tulane University and soaking up local culture. He'd catch up to four or five brass band shows a week and eventually helped produce the city's Jazz and Heritage Festival.

"You're talking about bands that were playing in little clubs, little bars on a Sunday afternoon -- neighborhood bands," he said. "It was a very precious and fragile culture. Now that those neighborhoods are destroyed, it's even more precious."

Although they don't compare in scale, problems that North Beach festival organizers dealt with this year threatened the local institution as well.

Facing a budget crunch, San Francisco ratcheted up fees for outdoor events, Kowal said, including a $20,000 jump for police services. The city's Recreation and Park Department also threatened to cut off the sale of alcohol at the free-admission shows, which Kowal said would have ended them.

But an outpouring of support helped sway officials to work with Sunset to make the fest happen. No outside booze is allowed this year, and no hard liquor will be sold -- but the show goes on.

Baton Rouge's downtown skyline clings to the Mississippi mud.
With the Golden State's economy in turmoil, this writer will depart
for Louisiana's capital city for crawfish, zydeco and employment.

Well, that was then. Hard times got harder, and good times now seem fewer and farther between. The so-called Golden State's unstoppable deflating economy has driven this writer, coincidentally, to the fertile earth that spawned jazz in the first place, Louisiana.

Having been laid off by the Oakland Tribune company a full year ago (they're ready to fire even more reporters, by the way) and relying on sporadic freelance gigs since, I'll be working for the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report to chronicle far better fiscal circumstances, such as a mere $1 billion budget deficit compared with California's $24 billion black hole, and actual job growth. Per the daily paper in Baton Rouge:

In May, Louisiana lost 3,700 jobs -- the third time in five months the state has seen employment losses this year -- and the state now rests 15,700 jobs below a year ago, a further sign that the national recession is affecting the state.

Baton Rouge bucked the downward trend, gaining 300 jobs from April to May, with total employment up 1,300 jobs from a year ago to 376,000. That makes it the only metropolitan area in Louisiana to post both monthly and annual jobs gains.

Or, as my new employer set the scene in a recent column:

While much of the rest of the nation continues to struggle with a tough economy and job losses, Louisiana and its capital city seem blessed. We are bucking the trend seen across the country.

Gov. Bobby Jindal and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret have laid the foundation, reduced taxes, assembled a team, put training programs in place, used the megafund wisely, negotiated with integrity and worked relentlessly to get the job done. And Louisiana and its people are the winners.

That kind of news should make Jindal's likely bid to oust Obama from the White House a sweet story to be in town for. I bet the Republican's recent speaking hiccup will be all but forgot by then.

By the way, if you want to come and visit, there should be plenty to do besides read about business in the land of Louis, including eating delectable crawfish dishes and swinging out to Cajun and zydeco music.

If you don't want to make the trek, though, there's plenty of that to be found in the Bay Area. A calendar of local Cajun-zydeco dances is here, and you can't go wrong with my favorite Louisiana-themed local eateries, Angeline's in Berkeley and CreoLa in San Carlos. Bon temps, y'all.

Further cementing the Louisiana-Bay Area connection is a nonprofit called For the Bayou, which raises awareness of coastal destruction along the Gulf. The group partnered with Sunset Promotions for an event July 19 in North Beach, featuring Swedish expat and New Orleans musician Anders Osborne. Get the lowdown here.

For more info: Read more on the plight of the North Beach Jazz Fest. Get amped for those Rebirth Brass Band concerts. Check out my post-Katrina feature story on Rebirth and the band's recurring role at the North Beach fest, and check out my profile of CreoLa's chef and owner, Edwin Caba.

My other blog on Examiner.com has stuff to read as well. Some of it is even different from this blog's goodies.

Pizzas are like opinions, everyone has a favorite pie

The perfect food? A homemade pepperoni pizza. PDPhoto.org.

Everybody who sees a "best pizzas" list immediately decries when their favorite pizza place isn't on the menu. Even when the list in question plainly says something like, "Your favorite pizzeria inevitably will not be on the list, sorry."

As with music, one's favorite pizza joint tends to be the one he or she remembers fondly from youth. Such heartfelt allegiance doesn't make a pie automatically great cuisine or even universally tasty, though -- it just means we all love recalling those carefree days of scarfing down 'za and buzzing to pop tones of yesteryear.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. A commenter had this to say about a blog review of Pizzeria Bianco, a Chicago-style place in Phoenix (I'll bring this around to Bay Area pies in a minute.):

You are absolutely right when you say, "This is not my favorite style of pizza," but the fact that no other pizza on earth has ingredients of comparable quality should be enough to say that IT IS the very best in the world. If it failed short in that very important factor of reminding you of the pizzas you ate as a child, it's only a reflection of the poor pizzas you used to eat.

Face it, children do not have refined taste in food or instinctively critical palates. They will eat any processed fast-food garbage you put in front of them with enough hot oil, butter, salt and/or sugar to saturate the chow with addictive chemical flavors. Common sense.

That much I'll say in defense of writer Alan Richman's recent GQ article American Pie, ostensibly on the 25 best pizza places in the country.

While Richman visited more than 100 ristorantes and sampled more than 300 pizzas, he could not partake in everyone's favorite local pizza-pasta spot, of course. Instead, with an eye (tongue?) toward nouveau cooking in keeping with the magazine's style-bible mission, he investigated both age-old traditions and provocative trends in the cuisine.

Earning a place on the list were three San Francisco pizza places, likely none of them your favorite local pie maker (perhaps Zachary's in Berkeley or Oakland, or Little Star in the Mission District or Western Addition -- both thriving, Chicago-themed joints).

Richman put Pizzeria Delfina at No. 3 for its "panna pie," a frugal purchase that includes heavy cream in the recipe. As he wrote:

If you think about the Italian evolution of cheese for pizza -- mozzarella becoming fresh mozzarella and then becoming fresh buffalo-milk mozzarella, each one richer and milkier than the one before -- heavy cream is the natural expression of where Italians intend to go.

He put Gialina at No. 14 for its "wild-nettle pie," made with pancetta (unsmoked bacon) and provolone. "My friend said the wild nettles reminded her of newly mown artichokes, a lovely if implausible image," Richman wrote.

He put A16 at No. 17 for its "romana pie," which he seemed conflicted about for its anchovies (chopped are OK, whole are not, apparently) and olives (big ones are bad, French Nicoise are fine).

Of the general pizza trajectory in The City, he said:

In San Francisco, the heartland of innovative toppings, I found fresh thyme instead of dried oregano, Taleggio and Fontina cheeses instead of mozzarella (it’s my belief that getting beyond mozzarella sets a pizzamaker free), and a basil chiffonade instead of basil leaves. A pause here to reflect on the misuse of fresh basil by Italians. They seem to think of it as decorative rather than flavorful, and they spread not nearly enough of it on their fabled-but-flawed Margherita pies.

Also, he noted the phenomenon of "Indian pizza in San Francisco (pretty good, although reheated chicken dries out badly, despite the tikka masala sauce)."

Without fail, people immediately sliced at Richman through various online venues with a metaphoric pizza cutter for, yes, not including their favorite pizza places. I have a feeling many of them didn't even finish the article, instead scanning through the list and quickly firing off angry counter-opinions.

In my hometown of Chicago, where pizza is king (please don't tell me how great East Coast greasy cardboard is compared with Windy City deep-dish), a newspaper blog celebrated North Side spot Great Lake pizzeria's topping the list, opening the door for commenters to complain about mediocre Chicago places such as Gino's being left out.

Among the more colorful and incisive comments:

'Cuse me? Vito & Nicks? Hey? Don't be afraid, Mr. GQ guy, of da South Side! Vito & Nick's ain't pretty -- not GQ pretty-- but their pie is.
Posted by: Jake Braekes

The very best pizza..... wait for it.................. Are the ones you MAKE AT HOME!!! We've been perfecting our recipe for 4 years now. We can make a whole pie for about $5.00. you use that thing in your kitchen that gets hot when you turn the knobs on the front. (Plus no 10% stroger/daley tax)
Posted by: ryan greene

Gabio's owner Andy Sidell's better half, Griselda,
shows off a trademark Chicago-style deep dish.

Being a native Chicagoan, I have a warm place in my heart for Lou Malnati's deep-dish pizza, which I get shipped frozen to my door in California but that honestly isn't that fantastic, and Wayne's Pizza, a truly typical takeout spot that simply was close to home and became a tradition out of convenience.

Gotta love those stubby corner pieces, though (a sprawling pie is cut in a grid pattern rather than in long, triangular slices, so you wind up with four crispy edge-bits and a lot of gooey squares).

My dad preferred Jake's Pizza in the next town over, but that's just more of the same cookie-cutter, thin-crust stuff.

By the way, Richman had some ambivalence about Arizona pizza, where coincidentally a high school acquaintance of mine set up a Chicago-style pizza/Italian beef/etc. emporium called Gabio's.

As the GQ article said, regarding the so-called seven types of U.S. pizza:

Finally and most wonderfully comes the American pie, actually a recent phenomenon, probably invented by and certainly popularized by Chris Bianco, the godfather of American pizza, who opened Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix in 1994. The pie he prepares and that others emulate is as much about bread-baking as it is about crust-making ... identified by two vital, distinct, and non-Italian elements: a golden glow and a chewy yet velvety interior.

On the other hand, Richman wrote:

Pizza has become the gourmet food of the recession, and the men who create these pies consider themselves artists -- narcissistic, reclusive artists, at that. These guys find multiple ways of being annoying. At Pizzeria Bianco, a friend and I ordered four pies that we shared with the people who had stood in line with us for more than an hour. Still hungry, I tried to order a fifth, but I was cut off like a roaring drunk in an American Legion hall, told that I had reached my limit.

Most brutally, he said:

I traveled to 10 American cities, the ones I knew had a lot of pizzerias or a lot of Italians. They seem to go together, although less so anymore. Phoenix was easy -- there's precisely one pizzeria, Bianco, that anybody recognizes as worth visiting. I would happily have broken my rule and gone to any other personal favorite -- but nobody had one.

Technically, my high school bud Andy Sidell set up pizza shop in Scottsdale, but that's a harsh indictment of Arizona 'za, right? Here's Sidell's response to the smackdown, summarizing many East Coast pizza fans' feelings:

As Pizzeria Bianco is concerned, it isn't "real" pizza. I call it "foo foo" pizza. More closely related to a California Pizza Kitchen-type pizza or pie.

Pizza in my mind, and I think I can vouch for a lot of Chicagoans and New Yorkers, should be loaded with cheese, meats, some veggies or any combination of the three. Pizzas with goat cheese or "Buffalo cheese," as in the article, would be shunned by people from the two big pizza "empires" (Chicago and N.Y.).

Arizona offers a wide variety of pizzerias that produce an incredible pizza that makes people feel like they are back home. I have had several customers tell me that my pizza is better than some of the pizzerias in Chicago.

The way you make the product, and the ingredients you use, help to create an "authentic" Chicago-style or N.Y.-style pizza.

Oh, snap, so-called style magazine. Take dat dere.

For more info: Savor the entire GQ article here, and hurl epithets in honor of your local pizza place's exclusion on the writer's blog. Locate a South Bay pizza place on Yelp (good luck with that). Check out a genuine Chicago-bred lunch menu here. For a completely different take on Chicago-style pizza in Arizona, if that's your thing, check this out.

_________

My blog on Examiner.com is another fount of wisdom.

UPDATED -- Walking on water with the Jesus Lizard, risen once more

In trying to integrate my punk rock past with my culture warrior blogging present, I've chatted here a bit about bygone alt-rock geniuses such as Smashing Pumpkins and the Replacements.

Next on my list is the legendary Jesus Lizard, whom I enjoyed or endured not just in 1993 in Austin, Texas, as I first thought but -- according to ticket-stub evidence in my CD insert for Lash -- late in 1994 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Back then, I would have recently broken up with a motorcycle mama whom I met after moving to the Bay from Chicago, where the Lizard hatched, shed its drum-machine scales and rose to fearsome foursome infamy.

Extant from '89 to '99, the Lizard recently reunited and will set siege to the Bay Area in October at the Fillmore. Tour details are on LiveDaily.com. And lo and behold, opening for the band in a super-hip double bill is fellow travelers Killdozer. More on dem guys later.

To be very unhip in retrospect, I would opine that one of Jesus Lizard's best albums was their latter-day major label disc Blue, although it's their early indie records that gave them cool cachet. The song that most sticks in my head is "Puss" from the disc Liar:

The band's success didn't just hinge on the Lizard's sombre, Sabbath-y groove and scalding, metallic guitar work. What gave another dimension to the group's hype was singer Dave Yow's NSFW stage maneuver dubbed the tight and shiny. But that's really a gimmicky aside to the potent brew of sonic angst the band spewed at audiences.

Yow has a pretty out-of-control reputation, although from what I know, it comes mostly from slurring words and performing without a shirt. He seems to be pretty incisive guy after all, as exemplified by his words of wisdom in Magnet magazine on leading a band:

The worst thing a frontman can do is be Dullsville. Sometimes, you get the toe-tappers. On the other hand, there are people who try too hard.

I remember one band from Tennessee called the Diarrhea Of Anne Frank. I was impressed with the name, but they were just trying so hard to be as wacky and offensive as they could—wearing diapers or whatever—that they just came off like dumb clowns.

I think there has to be a fair degree of honesty in it. It’s got to come from inside you instead of coming from an idea you act out.

Before I heard that the Jesus Lizard was going on tour, I had thought about flying to Chicago to catch one of their recent singular reunion shows. I'm reminded of when I almost got on a plane to see the last Pussy Galore show in the late '80s in New York City, but didn't.

Now I'm thinking of a special trip next month to the Windy City to catch my all-time fave indie group, Eleventh Dream Day, although you likely haven't heard of them.

(Pussy Galore, by the way, begat John Spencer's bands Boss Hog and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, which performs Anthony Bourdain's TV show theme and did other notable stuff with blues dudes.)

Maybe Screeching Weasel rings a bell for you; that Chicago-land band opened for Berkeley's Green Day on tour in Europe years ago, and Green Day's bassist has played with them. The Weasel plans to reunite for a show in October in their hometown, although original guitar player John Jughead (whom I went to high school with waaaaay back in the mid-'80s) apparently wasn't invited.

But back to the Lizard. As memory crystallizes from the fog of the '90s, I realize I saw the band again in Mountain View when they were on the Lollapalooza bill, a then-mind-numbing coup of coolness for a supremely alt-rock band. Looking back, we can only wonder, what the f*** happened to the scene after it finally achieved world domination? (I like to think I played a small role in all that as a college radio DJ, by the way.)

In retrospect, Palo Alto's ingenius Ramones-meet-Runaways replica The Donnas were pretty much an also-ran in rock history, instead of the biggest thing to emerge from the Bay Area since the aforementioned Green Day. The San Francisco-based Melvins never reached escape velocity from cult status, either, while local yokels Painless Martha and Mother Hips are likely just memories to aging hipsters rather than household words among today's emo kids.

In a nutshell, it seems that alt-rock morphed into Limp Bizkit, which begat System of a Down which, somehow, begat the Jonas Brothers. So much for all that Pavement that '90s record-buyers laid in order for "math rock" to steal the spotlight from the Motley Crues and Poisons of the world -- who of course are now back on top like grunge never happened.

That budding, hopeful '90s San Francisco scene seems as far away now as the fabled Barbary Coast, a limitless world where rapscallion art was bursting at the edges of everyday culture. Where we saw posters on light poles for hot upcoming gigs, now you would look for blogs and tweets promoting concerts, I guess.

There is a brilliant passage In Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that I bet resonates with every generation, about the rise of underground culture up to a popular, almost transcendant point, and then the slow, inelegant backslide to zero:

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Start over, next wave. Remake the wheel again.

In the end, I'm sure it's I who changed, not the world. We all grow older, get tired, leave the muck of rock rebellion to younger, faster cats to give it their own inspired spin. I hope too many don't succumb to the horrors of running naked in the streets, howling for a fix, this time around.

For more info: Exactly what "genre" of rock does Jesus Lizard belong to? Post-punk, math rock, noise rock, grunge? Here's a relevant, lively and informative discussion for those with too damn much time on their hands trying to figure out who Killdozer was. Here's a nice review of Liar by Jesus Lizard.

_________

Visit my other blog on Examiner.com for more dis-and-dat commentaries an' such.

_________

UPDATE 1 p.m. 6/22:

Make one wisecrack about a randomly referenced band, and this is what happens. A commenter on my identical post on Examiner.com complained that I had no clue the briefly mentioned band Killdozer is still a driving force in music (yuk).

I see Killdozer did perform some reunion shows last year, as evidenced by this blog post. So yeah, they too transcended the faded glory of pre-Nirvana underground scene. (Both Killdozer and Kurt Cobain's band were recorded by Madison, Wisc., producer Butch Vig, of course.)

I'm glad to learn the ur-grungy Killdozer are back. Most of those turn-of-the-decade '80s/'90s bands seem to fit in the "where are they now?" category, so the conversation typically takes a retro direction, hence my ignorance of their comeback.

It also seems that Killdozer will be playing a high-profile, hometown show in September -- and with legendary So-Cal punks The Urinals at that!

Grab your hardhats and plungers. Thanks for the awakening comment, Dan.

Merced College copes with historic budget crunch

Along the very contemporary theme of financial turmoil, my latest article on community college funding is out on the Merced County Times Web site. Here's a snippet:

Things are fairly quiet at Merced College, with classes out until summer session starts June 22.

When students do return en masse, though, they will have almost 50 fewer class options than they did a year ago because of California's dire budget straits. Fall courses stand to be cut as well.

The college is in the double bind of having its funding slashed just as it is registering a jump in enrollees who have nowhere else to turn.

"We're basically trying to keep programs intact, trying to keep staff here," said Robin Shepard, director of the college's public relations office. "Unfortunately it's going to fall on the students. They may have to wait another semester or two to get the classes they need."

With jobs eroding, people are going back to school for a career 2.0 transition, a decision all the more meaningful in Merced County, with its 20 percent unemployment.

In a much-quoted commencement speech in the Midwest, President Barack Obama recently celebrated community colleges as "increasingly important centers of learning where Americans can prepare for the jobs of the future."

First lady Michelle Obama, however, gave her commencement speech at the upstart UC Merced campus, where she noted the region's "record high unemployment and foreclosure rates" even as she cheered some graduates for being the first in their families to earn a degree.

Many Merced College alumni have achieved that same feat in the past four decades, but how doable that will be in coming years is questionable while the country struggles financially.

You can read the rest here; believe it or not, there's a hopeful side to things, too.

Despite downturn, a ray of hope from community colleges

The good folks at the Merced County Times weekly newspaper have asked me to do some scribbling for them. Among other assignments, I recently interviewed departing students and others at Merced College's 2009 graduation ceremony, including this tidbit tucked into Jonathan Whitaker's comprehensive article:

"I'm going to be the first in my family to get a degree," said Maria Ceja before the ceremony began. "It took a long time, but I feel proud of myself. I'm halfway there, I still need a step up."

The 29-year-old from Planada was getting her Associate's degree in child development, although she said she still needs some transfer classes before she can head to San Joaquin Delta College for a B.A. in the same field.

The working mom is a teaching assistant at a daycare center in Merced, and her husband, 11-year-old daughter, 7-year-old son and her own parents were in the stands to celebrate Ceja's achievement.

Her younger sister, Daisy Murillo, also was there to watch Ceja graduate. She said she was impressed with her older sister's dedication to get a degree.

"I didn't think she was ever going to do it," Murillo said. "A few units here and there. She has to take night classes. It takes hard work to juggle between school and work and kids."

The college, by the way, is not to be confused with UC Merced, where Michelle Obama gave the inaugural commencement speech, an event that inspired much media fanfare.

Eight-legged freaks of California and beyond

Here's the bold jumping spider in action, © Peter J. Bryant.

One thing I didn't see much of in the Bay Area that I do now that I've relocated to the Central Valley is lots of interesting-looking spiders.

At the doorway of my house in Merced is a frisky little fellow of genus and species Phidippus audax (family Salticidae), a.k.a. the bold jumper or bold jumping spider.

He's a furry, black and white arachnid that I noticed on closer inspection has two large, matte metallic, jade-colored spots on his face called chelicerae, actually part of his fangs.

The critter, about the size of a dime, is described as common to North America, but this was the first one I've ever seen. 

As I approached him and tried to steer him toward me with my baseball cap for a better look, he reared up on his hind legs to ward off the rude observer with his airborne front paws.

A fine image of this pose and other close-up shots of the bold jumper are on a site hosted by UC Irvine, as sampled here.

For more on this biting subject, visit my relevant San Jose Culture Examiner post.

I know, I know, this isn't really a fit for San Jose journalistic terrain, but that's what happens when you up and move to a place without an Examiner edition -- yet. Stay tuned for a Fresno site, y'all!

So I just moved to the Central Valley, where your delicious plums, apricots and other orchard edibles come from.

This weekend here in ag-ville, Michelle Obama is set to give the commencement speech to the first graduating class of UC Merced. The youngest campus in the University of California system scored a major coup in luring the first lady to the area, slammed by 20 percent unemployment and stalled development thanks to the recession.

Hopes were sky-high not long ago that the university would inspire an economic rebirth for the community, which didn't quite work out the way the powers that be had hoped.

For instance, I'm sitting in a spacious tract house with fruit trees in my backyard next to a field that had been slated for yet more sprawl homes that, thankfully, appear on hold while local construction is at a standstill. Between me and the school is about four miles of spotty housing development and lots of open fields awaiting the roar of bulldozers.

Merced is popularly known in the media as ground zero for the housing boom turned bust. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble .... 

CLICK HERE for more housing-downturn details in my expanded San Jose Culture Examiner post on this topic.

Culturally speaking, the local kiddies refer to their 'hood as Mer-dead. Still, I like the mood here a lot; must remind me of the rural outskirts of Chicago, near where I grew up. 

It's peaceful in Merced compared with the frantic, freaked-out Bay Area I just left. The wind rustles through the trees, and time don't matter to me. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, but there's no place I'd rather be:

Brisbane officials get bootylicious for art

We all gloat when politicians make asses of themselves, but officials in the small city of Brisbane took things to another level when they agreed to let an artist imprint their derrieres on seat cushions for an exhibit.

May is the last month to assess "Seats of Power" at Brisbane's City Hall, an installation by Beth Grossman. She persuaded the mayor, the fire chief and a bunch more bun broadcasters to pose their posteriors for images she emblazoned on cushions that were then, ah, mounted on the wall.

For the full story on my San Jose Culture Examiner page, CLICK HERE. 

Go on, get off your seat.

Cinco de Mayo fest is off in Fruitvale district, on in San Jose

Curse the local economy, whose latest cultural victim is Oakland's Fruitvale district bash for Cinco de Mayo. On the other hand, San Jose's Cinco de Mayo fiesta is still on for Sunday.

What this really gets me thinking about, though, is Carnaval. San Francisco's usual blowout is set for May 23 and 24 in my beloved former home base, the Mission District.

To whet your appetite, enjoy these pics I shot of the proceedings from a couple years back. Dare I say, they stand the test of time.

For more on Cinco de Mayo and Carnaval, check out my San Jose Culture Examiner post.

And speaking of hip hop, here comes the Chemo Kid

Giovanni Goodman, a.k.a. the Chemo Kid, is about to get mad props from the media, I bet. The Vacaville rapper popped up in my "hyphy" Google alert as an up-and-comer who's been battling cancer for about a half-decade.

The 20-something rhymer, who grew up in Queens listening to such old-school flavors as Public Enemy and De La Soul, is set to drop his debut disc, "The Chemical Chronicles," next month.

For the full story on my San Jose Culture Examiner page, CLICK HERE.

Silk Road festival set for May 2 in San Jose

Celebrate alluring Asian traditions that predate ascetic Muslim extremism at the upcoming Festival of the Silk Road, set May 2 in San Jose at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater, multiculturally enough.

For the full story on my San Jose Culture Examiner page, CLICK HERE.

Three pirates killed, U.S. captain tastes freedom, yo ho!

As you know by now, Navy SEALs cut down three seafaring rogues who kidnapped a U.S. freighter captain, ending a five-day standoff along the Somali coast between pirates and America's armed forces. Reports say the snipers busted just three caps.

I'm a pirate lore fan and found a way to explore the fascinating bygone era of anarchist seafaring societies thanks to a dearly departed East Bay pirate wares seller.

A few times, I wrote about the shop and interviewed owner Don Hatcher for the Oakland Tribune:

Despite their fierce reputation, pirates created one of the first true democracies aboard their ships, where Don said "every man got an equal say and an equal vote," and crew members were guaranteed their freedom after a certain time or a certain amount of loot had been pillaged.

The annual NorCal Pirate Festival is coming up in June at the Vallejo waterfront; get details here.

For more tidbits about pirates, the now shuttered store named SeaWolf Trading Co. and so on, CLICK HERE.

It's Hitler's world, we just live in it. Yes we do.

Google is a lot of fun for many things, but searching for rants about Obama being like Hitler has to be the greatest query of all.

Watching foam-at-the-mouth Fox News man Glenn Beck compare America's president with the scourge of 20th century Europe, obliquely, inspired me to see just how popular the rhetorical scare tactic is, now that we know Obama -- thanks to his early missteps -- is not quite Jesus.

What I learned is that he apparently has more in common with the Antichrist, according to some "critics" on the interwebz.

For all that, CLICK HERE.

If this stuff makes your head spin, try some Daily Show comic relief on the topic:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Unusual Suspect
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Chew on that, Billy Goat: Early homer for Cubs in opener

Whether you love the Giants, the A's or even the Cubs,
share your disdain for the Yankees through this classic
T-shirt or poster by BustedTees. Sorry, Matt Artz.

No sooner had the season begun than leadoff Cubs hitter Alfonso Soriano clobbered the second pitch he saw into the Astros' stands.

Whether you're an expat Chicago fan like me or just a root-root-rooter for the underdog, you gotta have faith that the early homer is a good omen for the all-time also-rans of Major League Baseball.

The Giants and A's have nothing on the lovable losers, stadium controversies notwithstanding. More on that later.

Just in case you haven't the faintest interest in non-Bay Area hardball lore, the Cubbies have failed to make it to World Series since 1945 and haven't won it all since 1908.

That's two years after the great San Francisco earthquake and six years before the start of World War I.

Legend has it that the curse of the Billy Goat is responsible for the Cubs' continuing slide into ignominy. Even the Boston Red Sox have a less pathetic losing streak.

Completely Used up By September, indeed.

Here's one telling of the curse and subsequent setbacks such as a black cat in the dugout and, of course, that unsavory Steve Bartman incident, courtesy of writer James Lincoln Ray.

In my fantasy, poetic justice holds that when the Cubs finally do return to glory and win the World Series, it will be at the disgrace of the Yankees, the most unlovable team in all of baseball.

So what if they have a fancy new stadium? Nothing tops the heart and soul of the time-honored bricks and ivy of Wrigley Field -- even if that blabbermouth pitcher Zambrano recently gave comfort to the enemy:

“You come into a ballpark like this and you see great things,” the Cubs ace told The Associated Press on Saturday before his team’s 10-1 exhibition loss at the sparkling ballpark in the Bronx. “You wish that Chicago’d build a new stadium for the Cubs."

Cub fans are used to getting smacked around, but by their own pitcher? Sigh.

Speaking of building new stadiums, it looks like Fremont is out for a new A's home, while San Jose is picking up steam as the hot spot for the team to relocate to, even if it currently is Giants territory.

Meanwhile, although it's been in the 70s and clear around the Bay, it snowed in the Windy City yesterday. Talk about tough breaks.

Go Northsiders. Next year is here.

For more info: Check out Examiner.com domination of opening day. Make sure if you ever visit Chicago, you pay respects at the Billy Goat Tavern. Cheezborger!

Adios, E.R., thanks for the literary TV in a sea of 'reality' swill

The most sinister and one of the most enjoyable
chracters on E.R. was brought to life by Paul McCrane,
who also directed some episodes. Photo by NBC.

Did you get excited about the finale of E.R., or are you one of those "I stopped watching long ago" naysayers?

Regardless of whether the show jumped the shark with the helicopter-crash killing of brilliant bad guy Dr. Romano, it was always about character development and emotional resonance first, not just slam-bang rating grabs.

It took me a while to get into E.R., but when this Chicago native caught the bug, he fell hard.

It was while I was living alone in a chilly, remote locale to work a so-so job and feeling utterly unsure of the future that I saw some back-to-back reruns late at night.

That let me follow the evolution of the characters and their myriad subplots in a way I likely never would have if I just happened to see occasional weekly episodes.

On the other hand, that first helicopter accident involving Romano -- really a secret weapon for the show, someone the audience could root against in a satisfying way and thereby sympathize with everyone else, his victims -- that fixed my attention on the series for good.

Parminder Nagra helped bring alive the stories on
E.R. with her cerebral portrayal of Dr. Neela Rasgotra,
who wasn't shy about workplace love. Photo by NBC.

After I discovered the minor miracle of the DVR, I managed to catch up on the entire series and really became a devotee.

Nevermind that the reruns appeared on a women's lifestyle-marketed network. Lots of Joy dishwashing liquid commercials and such, for sure.

If I had to pick a character I empathize with the most, I'd say it was Neela (played by Parminder Nagra), whose ambivalence about her life -- and love -- choices and "stuck in her head" struggle felt very familiar.

We even both were exiled to Michigan for a while. And we're drawn to Louisiana, for different reasons.

If I had to pick one episode that encapsulated the believable subtlety of the actors in a wildly entertaining storyline that showed the range of the writers and producers, I'd say it was when Drs. Carter and Kovac worked in Africa:

If I had to pick one weakness of the series, it was the patients. Their portrayal never was up to par with the regular cast's ability, and it was the hospital staffers who carried the emotional weight of the show anyway. How distracting they had to heal all those complaining sickies.

I had the pleasure of interviewing a local actress who landed a minor role on the show several years ago, although I never got around to interviewing Redwood City native Linda Cardellini, who played nurse Samantha Taggart for a surprising run, given how the chicas seemed to come and go in a revolving-door fashion.

Anyway, the one I did get on the phone, Giovannie Espiritu (a.k.a. Pico), was a blip on the radar of E.R. in the long run, but she lent her brief starpower to the cause of domestic-violence prevention, as recorded in this snippet of a San Mateo County Times article about a 2007 relationship seminar at a South City church:

Giovannie Pico, a TV actor who lives in San Bruno with her 6-year-old son and other relatives, will host Saturday's event. The Filipina said the religious setting is important to her because of her own experience dealing with an abusive partner.

"I was told by church members that I needed to pray harder," she said, "or that I was supposed to submit to my husband. It's really like a change in tide in the way that the church is talking about domestic violence."

Pico, 28, has appeared on "ER" and "Bones" and has an upcoming role in "Gilmore Girls," is directing a Tagalog version of "The Vagina Monologues" on March 24 at the Herbst Theatre. The 28-year- old said focusing on the Filipino community is part of a broader effort to educate people about abuse.

"There's a lot of shame that's surrounding it," Pico said. "I was in a relationship that was domestically violent, and I didn't even know. I didn't know what a healthy relationship looked like."

It may not be a healthy relationship to fall in love with a TV show either. E.R. eventually led to crushes on The Shield and Lost and Mad Men, and so it goes. Yet I will always have a soft spot for County General Hospital and its nuanced, lifelike, downright literary cast of characters.

Thanks for that respite from the worries of real life, if only for an hour a week.

For more info: Finally, the official NBC site for E.R. has full episodes you can watch online and avoid the Joy dishwashing liquid interruptions. Chuck Barney at the Contra Costa Times wrote a nice send-off to the series, noting the litany of character hookups that kept us wondering whom Neela would neck with next.

Check out my other blog as the intrepid San Jose Culture Examiner.