Kevin Allman

The Onion, brilliant as ever

Overjoyed Fans Tear Roof Off Remodeled Superdome

NEW ORLEANS—Over 70,000 elated New Orleans Saints fans celebrated the first professional football game to take place in the newly renovated Superdome since Hurricane Katrina Monday night by joyously rushing from their seats onto the field, ripping down the goal posts, destroying the playing surface, and trampling three people to death after the Saints' 23-3 win over the Atlanta Falcons....

Long after the game ended, the jubilant, hungry fans showed no signs of stopping the festivities, finding themselves stealing food and alcohol from stadium venders who were bludgeoned with any metal object that could be extracted from the dome's infrastructure. In addition, fans were too busy rioting to notice that the loss of electricity and the absence of air-conditioning had created oppressive conditions with temperatures easily exceeding 100 degrees.

"This is a symbol of our cultural pride and heritage," said Nagin, speaking from the newly dilapidated Superdome with throngs of dirty, hungry, disease-ridden Saints fans, some holding babies, standing in line for Red Cross aid packages behind him. "With the Saints back here where they belong, things are finally starting to return to normal in New Orleans."

Permissions

So I got an email from a publishing conglomerate that wanted to use something I'd written nine years ago as part of a reference anthology and online database.

We'd made the same arrangement for a different article a while back, and they sent me a smallish check for the non-exclusive rights, which was fine. Not much, but found money and all that. Groceries. Maybe a winter coat.

This time the contract arrived with no mention of money at all.

I'm assuming the permissions director just forgot to enter it at the appropriate place in the contract (there's a line that says " ___ GRATIS  $___ FEE", with neither box checked).

Or have we reached the point where large companies expect writers to give away their secondary rights for free?

Thoughts?

The return of the Superdome, and Irma Thomas

Just watched the pregame show before the Saints/Falcons matchup.

Normally I think too much is made of the Saints in New Orleans (and of professional sports in America in general), but this is important on a variety of levels, not the least of which is the exorcism of some of the most horrible images after Hurricane Katrina. The Superdome looks great, even if I can't help but wonder what the city would be like if all those hundreds of millions of dollars and such concerted rebuilding had been put to use in the Ninth Ward and on the lakefront.

U2 and Green Day were fine, but what really made the preshow were the New Orleans musicians: the New Birth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty, and most especially Irma Thomas and Allen Touissant performing the national anthem. Miss Irma did it beautifully and simply, without trying to put five octaves into it or add that screechy melisma that passes for performance these days.

I interviewed Irma a couple of months ago when she was appearing at the Waterfront Blues Festival in Portland. At the time I was feeling homesick and just hearing her voice on the phone lifted my spirits. When the interview was over, we just chatted for a while and I mentioned that I was having trouble finding Tony Chachere's spices here in town. "They don't have Tony's?" she said. "Oh, honey. Email me your address and I'll get you fixed up."

The lady is a class act. (You can read the interview here.)

Great Titles, Part II

More titles, this time from F to L:

- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- From Here to Eternity
- Geek Love
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Heart of Darkness
- I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots
- Imitation of Life
- The Importance of Being Ernest
- The Jew in the Lotus
- Lady Slings the Booze
- Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women

Native Tongues at Steppenwolf

Today's Times-Picayune had a story by David Cuthbert on Native Tongues playing in Chicago:

'Tongues' at Steppenwolf

A performance of eight monologues from the local "Native Tongues" evenings will be performed Oct. 9 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago under the title "Native Tongues in Exile" as a benefit for City Park. A previous "Tongues" at Northwestern University benefited the CAC Performing Artists' Fund. The pieces were selected by "Tongues" original director Carl Walker, Linda Gates, a member of the Northwestern theater faculty, who is directing the evening and her co-producer, New Orleans native Melissa Perret Cook.

"Since all of the monologues were written before Katrina," Gates said, " 'Native Tongues in Exile' provides a kaleidoscopic view of life in New Orleans before the storm."

The monologues being performed are: "Garden of Memories" by Frank Gagnard; "One or Two Things I Know About New Orleans," by Eric Overmyer; "Him," by Vernel Bagneris; "Levee Man," by Mindy Mayer; "Boo and the Shreveport Baby," by Kevin Allman; "Responsible Parental Design," by Jim Fitzmorris, "O2," by Louis Edwards and "Serious Neon" by this writer.

"Native Tongues in Exile" will be Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. at Steppenwolf's Upstairs Theatre at 1650 N. Halstead Ave. Tickets are $20 and can be reserved by calling (847) 491-7282.

On nicknames in print

Journalists love to use forced-coined nicknames for people and things. Sometimes they're funny; I liked the New York Post's revival of the word "canoodling" to refer to anything from making out to sex, and their dubbing of Monica Lewinsky as "The Portly Pepperpot" was cruel but amusing.

Not so funny are all the "Brangelina" and "TomKat" and "Bennifer" constructions. Now it seems that whenever two celebrities hook up, there's a race to be the outlet that coins a nickname for them. (Although "Filliam H. Muffman" is funny, mostly because it's making fun of the stupidity.)

"Mani-pedi" belongs between the pages of bad chick-lit with a pink cover and illustrations of high heels and tubes of lipstick on the cover.

But this morning I came across an article with one of the worst offenders I've ever seen: it referred to pizza as "'za."

Dude, that's just wrong.

Great Titles, Part I

What makes a great title? Something memorable, catchy, profound, lurid, or just perfect for the project? For me, it's something that makes me want to pick up the book, the CD, or go see the play.

Years ago I started compiling a list of memorable titles. Here's an even dozen from the beginning of the alphabet:

- And the Ass Saw the Angel
- As I Lay Dying
- Bad Girls Go To Hell
- Bastard Out of Carolina
- The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Brave New World
- A Clockwork Orange
- Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
- Diary of a Mad Housewife
- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
- Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages!
- Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Additions? Suggestions?

More on Steppenwolf

Native Tongues in Exile, the theatrical piece by New Orleans writers, will have its Chicago debut Oct. 9 at the Upstairs Theater at Steppenwolf. It's a benefit for New Orleans City Park, which was denuded and poisoned by Hurricane Katrina's winds and water. One of my monologues, Boo and the Shreveport Baby, will be performed by Lashawn Banks.

One of the reasons I really wish I could see this is that Boo is finally going to be performed by a black actor. The character was written as one of the many people in New Orleans whose race isn't entirely clear, and the first performance was done by Ashley Bradley, who was white. So I'd love to see how Lashawn's interpretation differs, and doesn't differ, from Ashley's.

The lineup:

Serious Neon by David Cuthbert
A retired stripper remembers the old Bourbon Street days. (Performed by Laura Wells)

O2 by Louis Edwards
A white coed has a brief, intense gas-station encounter with a large African-American man wearing the uniform of the Orleans Parish Prison. (Performed by Kelly O’Sullivan)

Responsible Parental Design by Jim Fitzmorris
Days before her valedictorian daughter's high school graduation, a single Central City mother learns firsthand the harsh realities of the New Orleans public school system.  (Performed by Celeste Williams)

Garden of Memories by Frank Gagnard
A very proper Uptown lady on social and familial connections that reach down low.  (Performed by Linda Gates)

Him by Vernel Bagneris
As an elderly African-American waiter prepares to retire from one of New Orleans’ finest restaurants, he encounters one final customer.  (Performed by John Stephen Crowley)

Levee Man by Mindy Mayer
An engineer relives his past in the face of the Big One.  (Performed by Craig Spidle)

One or Two Things I Know About New Orleans by Eric Overmyer
A police detective at a murder scene muses on the past, present and future of the Crescent City. (Performed by John Stephen Crowley)

It's my hope that this is only the first of some major stagings...besides earning some cash for the Gigantic Worthy Cause at the Foot of the Mississippi, it might remind people why New Orleans is worth saving in the first place.

Cuts at the L.A. Times?

The Los Angeles Times has sliced nearly 1/6 of its editorial department in the last few years since being taken over by the Tribune Co. in Chicago:

The editorial staff currently numbers about 940. Since 1999, The Times' photo department has shrunk by about one-third. The graphics and design department has lost more than 40% of its employees. Large daily operations in Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley, scaled back before Tribune's purchase, have been reduced to just a handful of reporters. The debate about The Times comes roughly a year after John S. Carroll resigned as the newspaper's editor, saying the pressure to slash newsroom staff played a role in his decision to leave an operation that he led to 13 Pulitzer Prizes in five years.

It's still not enough for the Chicago people. But the new editor of the Times, Dean Baquet, has told them enough is enough:

The Tribune leaders received the letter a little more than two weeks after a budget meeting at the Times' offices. In that meeting, Editor Dean Baquet told Smith that the paper had cut enough jobs in recent years. If anything, he said, The Times needed to add positions to thoroughly cover local, national and international news, people familiar with the event said.

Is it because the Times is losing money? Of course not:

Other executives inside The Times complain that the push to downsize comes despite the fact that the paper is still a substantial moneymaker. Operating cash flow has dropped from its 2004 level of about $280 million, sources at the paper said, but its operating profit margins of about 20% still rank ahead of most big metropolitan papers.

The disagreement between The Times and its corporate parent has arisen at a difficult time for the Chicago media giant. Its stock price has fallen sharply since it acquired the paper in 2000 and revenue is declining.

So: rather than examine and correct corporate mismanagement and an acquisitional philosophy that has led the corp into some money-losing purchases, the solution is to further gut one of the properties that's actually making money and doing good work?

There's been talk that a consortium of L.A. moguls that includes Eli Broad and David Geffen might have an interest in buying the Times and bringing the management back to the city. Hard to see how they could do a worse job.

"Writer Beware"

Writer Beware is an interesting site about various publishing scams, unethical agencies, and assorted True-Life Horror Tales from the less-than-genteel side of the book trade...a sort of Consumer Reports for aspiring writers, complete with a "20 Worst Literary Agencies" list.

From the website:

We maintain an extensive archive of documentation on literary agents, independent editors/book doctors, vanity publishers, POD self-publishing services, and others that engage in the questionable practices we warn about in these pages.

Lots of interesting stuff there. The "20 Worst Literary Agencies" list is probably a good reference for anyone looking to enter into an agreement with a new agent.