50 Percent More Fun in Section 635

The third Dillyberto brother will join Berto and me for the Saints-Patriots game on Monday Night Football.

And he will be properly attired. See below for my order today.

Time for Payback

Look, revenge is a very unattractive thing, but I just gotta get this out.

I spent three terrible, horrible, no good years in the state of Missouri. Those were the three worst years of my life.

Then I returned to New Orleans, and a few years later had to endure the Rams winning the Super Bowl, followed by some very disappointing losses by the Saints to them (although that playoff win by the Saints was a beauty).

Then two years ago we were subjected to the humiliation of losing to a winless Rams team whose defense was coached by Jim Haslett and Rick Venturi.

Look, I'm human. I want payback this week. I need to see a little Ahab/Picard out of the Black and Gold:

Pregame Grilled Oysters at Lee Circle

This is what it looked like at Lee Circle (Tivoli Circle) yesterday at around 2:15 p.m.

Saints vs. Falcons = Parasol's vs. Appleby's

Do it, Drew. Crank it up.

Charles Grant, show your homeboys what you've become in New Orleans.

What I Did During the Saints Win Over the Dolphin

Daneeta showed me the link to the Josephnils blog, which documents the way we watched the Saints beat the Dolphins--on the porch, while shucking, eating, or grilling and eating, oysters.

Are raw oysters a bigger threat to health than McDonald's fries?

According to this excellently placed (front-page) story from the T-P, 15 people--many of them already sick from something else--die from eating raw oysters each year.

This occurs in a country with over 300 million people, many of whom are overweight. Tens of thousands of us die each year because we are fat and get fat-related diseases.

The FDA's way of dealing with the oyster "menace," we learn now, will be to require processing of raw oysters 7 months out of the year.

Step back: so what we now know is that the federal government refuses to protect the homeland in Louisiana by doing little to restore wetlands and by trying to implement a flood protection system on the cheap. Now the federal government wants to ruin a key industry in Louisiana and one of life's pleasures here that many of us enjoy.

Fat-related diseases that kill millions of Americans are often caused by foods (made poisonous by bad agriculture and then heavy processing) in areas of the country that are more "American" and more palatable than we "exotics" are in south Louisiana. Midwestern corn, for example, is fine, even though it is used to make products that kill many of us.

All-natural oysters, however, kill 15 people a year, but they must be heavily regulated.

Inadequate levees, disappearing wetlands, and screwed-up oysters. This is what the American federal government is doing for us through a combination of inaction and willful stupidity.

UPDATE: Here's a nice link from Jeffrey. While the feds fret about oysters, the Army Corps' head is waving the white flag.

Best Op-Ed Page in America Today; Thanks, Times-Picayune

Although the overarching purpose of this blog is to point to a positive vision of what New Orleans can and should be, sometimes I use that vision to criticize our city's newspaper titan, the Times-Picayune. (It's a "titan" because it's the only one.)

After the storm, the Times-Picayune and its reporters and photographers were heroic, at least for me. Their work kept New Orleans on the informational map; they helped to remind us that we remained a community despite the chaos and destruction. They kept the idea of New Orleans alive even when the reality was that we were dispersed and sometimes despairing.

More recently, however, I have expressed disappointment that the T-P has reverted back to being a "normal" newspaper with silly headline stories. I just want the publisher, Mr. Ashton Phelps, and the editors to know that they don't need to lead with the Saints and kitty cats and naked burglars to get me to buy the paper.

Today, though, I am really proud of the Times-Picayune. What a great op-ed section!

An editorial summarizing where we are on flood protection and wetlands loss and restoration (and the news is not good).

A from-the-neighborhood essay from Dennis Persica about what it's like to use gritty determination and faith to return to a neighborhood in Ray Nagin and George W. Bush's free-market world of rebuilding (and the news is inspiring at the individual level but pathetic at the communal level). Persica talks about jack-o-lanterns, and not because it's Halloween time.

And then a James Gill essay (I love that guy) in which he pointblank calls Nagin a fool.

It feels especially good to be a New Orleanian today.

Of course, it helps that I'll be eating home-shucked oysters while watching the Saints play the Dolphins.