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New Orleans Saints fans can factor in even more noise this season

On September 8, 2010, In Saints, By admin

New Orleans Saints fans generally don’t need encouragement to make noise during a game.

Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune

But this season at the Superdome, thanks to a rule change approved in March by the NFL competition committee, the Saints will have more leeway to encourage fans to let loose with as much noise as they can produce.

Under a rule that took effect in 1989, a team was not allowed to use video boards to show anything that would promote more crowd noise. Under the previous rule on club-controlled sound, “The use of noise meters or such messages as ‘Noise!, ‘ ‘Let’s hear it!, ‘ ‘Raise the Roof, ‘ ‘Let’s go Crazy, ‘ ‘Pump it up, ‘ ‘12th Man’ are prohibited at any time during the game. These examples are not limited to the foregoing, but also would include similar messages that encourage crowds to make random noise in order to disrupt the opposition.”

But when Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings line up with the ball Thursday night against the Saints, those restrictions no longer will apply until the play clock reaches 15 seconds.

Under the new rules, until the play clock hits that point, the Saints will be allowed to show any messages that aren’t vulgar or derogatory on the video boards to encourage noise from the fans.

The Saints haven’t offered specifics about what the team might do to get the fans’ cheers in the Vikings’ ears.

“We will certainly do everything within the rules to encourage fan participation and enjoyment of the game, ” Saints vice president of communications Greg Bensel said in an e-mail.

The Atlanta Falcons have revealed a few of their ideas on how to promote fan noise.

Before key plays, the Falcons plan to show a decibel meter to encourage fans to push the indicator as high as possible.

There are restrictions under the new rules. For example, a team can’t pump in noise to disrupt the visitors.

Under the new rules, “Any noise that is under club control must cease when the play clock is running, and the visiting team is in possession of the ball, or after the ball is kicked by either team on a kickoff. As an example, if the play clock is not running, a drumbeat, accompanied by “Defense” or some other message on the video board, may be played, but the drumbeat and any other audio must stop when the play clock starts while the visiting team is on offense.”

Also under the new rules, videos of fans, cheerleaders and home-team players must stop when the play clock hits 15 seconds. Public-address announcements must stop when the huddle breaks or when the visiting team is ready to snap the ball in a no-huddle offense.

Also prohibited are videos of the visiting team’s huddle, conferences in the visitors’ bench area and the quarterback at the line of scrimmage.

The new noise policy stems from the NFL’s effort to make the game more exciting for fans at the stadiums.

Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke at the league’s annual meeting in March about how some fans might find it more comfortable to stay home and watch a game on television.

“The issue for us is we are our own competitor in that sense, ” Goodell said. “High-definition television and RedZone, all of those things do make it attractive to watch on television. It’s also exciting to be in the stadium.”

Bensel said the Saints are installing RedZone in the Superdome and will make the system available in club lounge. The Saints also intend to show NFL highlights, he said.

Bob Fortus, Times Pic.

Q&A With Harry Shearer: Voice of The Simpsons Speaking Up for New Orleans

On September 8, 2010, In People, Rebuilding, By admin

As Troy McClure would say, you might remember Harry Shearer from such Simpsons voices as Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Otto the Bus Driver, and Kang the Alien Octopus. You might also know him as the bassist from the heavy metal bandSpinal Tap, author of the novel Not Enough Indians, and host of the radio show ”Le Show,” a one-man vocal circus in which Shearer talks politics with angry callers, insane guests and top-tier celebrities, all of them played by Shearer himself.

This week Shearer shifts gears, with the release of his new documentary The Big Uneasy, a serious, scientific look at how New Orleans flooded. With an investigative reporter’s focus, Shearer hones in on the Army Corps of Engineers, the government agency that built the faulty levees that collapsed during Hurricane Katrina, flooding 80 percent of the city, killing more than 1,400 people.

The film features stunning internal memos, scientific reports and an interview with an Army Corps whistleblower to show that the Corps knew its levees were faulty and did virtually nothing to fix them. Instead of retrofitting the levee’s walls and drainage system, the Corps spent millions on a public relations campaign trumpeting its own competence. It went to court to force a private company to install faulty levee walls, though the company objected, saying the walls would collapse in a storm.

The film ends on a chilling note: with congressional testimony from a top Army Corps official who tells Louisiana’s senator, the Corps has no intention of fixing the long stretches of faulty levee walls that surround New Orleans today.

Shearer spoke with me about his movie, his radio wizardry, and the anger stirred by an American media that came to his new hometown but somehow overlooked the Army Corps’ role in flooding it.

Kors: You’re known for voicing goofballs, imitating celebrities, playing rock ‘n’ roll in a wig. This documentary, it’s a big departure for you.

Shearer: It is. I do comedy for living. This is very different. But I love this city. And when you see a loved one get mugged, you don’t walk away. Two teams of investigators spent a year doing forensic investigations on the flood, the levee collapse and I thought, “I have to get this out there.” People need to know that, despite what they may have heard, this was a man-made disaster.

Kors: Now, you’re originally from Los Angeles, then came to New Orleans in 1988. How did New Orleans come to be your hometown?

Shearer: Ah, they say, “You don’t adopt New Orleans — New Orleans adopts you.” There are few people who come because their boss transferred them here. This is a city of people who are here by choice, which makes the affection run that much deeper.

Kors: On your radio show, and now in this movie, you focus on the media, examining how the journalists erred so badly, reporting that this was a “once in a generation” storm when in reality, by the time Katrina hit New Orleans, the hurricane was relatively weak, between Category 2 and Category 1, the weakest of all hurricanes. How did the media get it so wrong?

Shearer: I think there are a few reasons. First, the final report with those findings came out much later, so it slipped past a lot of people’s radar. When the reporters were here, they interviewed a few officials, then went to air. They didn’t talk to the scientists, the experts who knew what really happened. The people here that were saying the Army Corps’ levees were weak, they were made to look like kooks, colorful local folk, which made it all sound like folklore. I wanted to talk to the scientists who knew what they were talking about, who could tell me exactly what happened.

Continue at Huffington

Drew Brees will lead fans in pregame ‘Who Dat’ chant

On September 8, 2010, In Saints, By admin

Drew Brees guided the New Orleans Saints to their greatest season in history, bringing a Super Bowl championship to New Orleans for the first time last season.

Now he wants to help start a new tradition in the Superdome that he hopes will live on for decades after he’s gone – a pregame “Who Dat!” chant, 70,000 strong.

“We as a team wanted to find a way to kind of engage our fans prior to the start of the game with some kind of interaction where we just get the Dome excited, electric,” said Brees, who invited the media for a hastily-arranged press conference Tuesday afternoon to explain the plan that he and his teammates came up with for the organized chant, which will take place following the opening coin toss.

He said the team will also try to spread the word through Twitter and Facebook and other social media outlets.

What they want is for all 70,000 fans in the Superdome to be ready to break into three rounds of their legendary “Who Dat! Who Dat! Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints!” chant following the coin toss.

Brees said he will personally get it started on Thursday night before the season opener against the Minnesota Vikings. He said he’ll raise his arm in the air, then when he drops his arm it’s time to chant.

For every other home game, the plan is for the Saints’ honorary guest captain to give the signal.

“That’ll obviously get us fired up as a team. I think that will just echo throughout the Dome. I mean, just imagine 70,000 people screaming that in unison right before the game,” Brees said. “I mean, it’s part of our identity. You go anywhere in the world, and you hear somebody say, ‘Who Dat,’ you know exactly where they’re from and what they’re all about. So I think it’s appropriate.”

Brees said he’s particularly excited about the idea of a player on the field getting the chant started, because, “We understand that we have a bond with our fans that a lot of other people don’t.”

Continue at the TP

Defend New Orleans Presents “Saints at the Saint”. NFL Season Kickoff Party with King Louie’s Missing Monuments

On September 7, 2010, In Event, Saints, By admin

Shrimp and oil are still king at this Louisiana festival

On September 5, 2010, In Defend the Coast, By admin

The unique event has gone on for 75 years. Organizers weren’t going to be stopped by an oil spill, even one that hurt the seafood industry. ‘We’re going to overcome this,’ says the festival king.

Reporting from Morgan City, La. —

After the BP oil spill, the organizers of one of America’s more unusual civic celebrations began fielding the phone calls, the ones that invariably asked: Are you really going to have it this year?

In response, they erected a big billboard on U.S. 90 as it winds west from New Orleans through the heart of Cajun country.

“YES,” the sign said. “We Are Having 75th Annual Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.”

Morgan City’s civic leaders never doubted they would green-light their paean to crustaceans and crude, even though one of the featured industries has been threatening, of late, to wipe the other one out.

“We still need both,” said Lee Darce, assistant director and vendor chairwoman of the festival, as she drove a golf cart on this muggy September Sunday among busy booths hawking boiled shrimp, shrimp on a stick, bacon-wrapped shrimp and shrimp etouffee. “That’s what makes our community. That’s our lifeblood.”

In Morgan City, a community of 12,700 on the banks of the Atchafalaya River, fishing and offshore oil-related industries are of paramount economic importance and are deeply intertwined. Many offshore oil workers fish for extra income on the side. Businessmen like Al Adams III — the owner of a boat transmission company and this year’s shrimp and petroleum king — serve fishermen and offshore companies.

Mayor Tim Matte is aware that the festival can seem pretty weird to outsiders. “But we’ve always thought it’s unusual that they think it’s unusual,” he said. “As far as the workers are concerned, there’s always been a kinship of working over the water.”

Matte and others say the oil spill, instead of smothering this year’s festivities, has infused them with a new intensity: a yearning for catharsis after a soul-crushing summer, a hope for a return to a lost harmony between the two industries, and a celebration of a culture that is resilient enough to withstand the worst.

“There’s a spirit here that we’re going to overcome this,” said Adams, carrying his king’s crown on the city docks Sunday morning.

Continue at the LA Times

Louisiana beach town laments the summer that never was

On September 5, 2010, In Defend the Coast, By admin

Those were Fred Marshall’s thoughts as he slumped behind his tiny desk at Gulfstream Marina, worry lines criss-crossing his face, redness framing his weary blue-green eyes in this picturesque beach town.

When BP’s oil started flowing into the Gulf of Mexico in April, beachgoers and money stopped flowing into town. By the time the company managed to cap the deep-water well in mid-July, the damage was done. Summer, when Grand Isle merchants earn the profits they rely on for the rest of the year, was gone, said Marshall, 48.

Grand Isle depends heavily on tourism, and its beach is a major draw in Louisiana. Residents often travel more than 100 miles to bathe there. As Labor Day weekend, the traditional end of summer, comes to a close, less than half of the seven-mile beach has been reopened by workers, who cleared away oil and tar balls. Business lifted slightly, but Marshall and other merchants were in no mood to celebrate. Louisianans turn their attention from fishing and the beach to other forms of recreation in September, namely football and hunting.

“We lost 90 percent of our business,” said Marshall, an assistant manager at the marina. Like the owners of souvenir shops, eateries and bars, and even the priest at the local Catholic church, Marshall said he filed a business loss claim against BP at the area community center and was preparing to file another.

“I’m extremely angry. I had to go into therapy. I got really depressed. It was terrible,” he said. “I was really expecting a good season. Now we’ll be barely able to pay our electric bill in the winter. I might be out of a job because they can’t have me here doing nothing.”

A boy wearing a fishing cap popped his head in the door. “Can I help you, son?” Marshall asked. The boy’s family was about to sail into the gulf for some recreational fishing, and he wondered if Marshall had fresh bait.

“No,” Marshall said, as if for the hundredth time. “The people who catch our fresh shrimp and other bait are working as oil spotters for BP.”

Continue at the WP

New Orleans Needs Scenic Canals, Not Grim Levees

On September 3, 2010, In Urban Planning, By admin

New Orleans still can’t handle everyday floods.

You can take a wrong turn during a downpour and find your car stalled in several feet of water. And that’s despite the $14 billion the Army Corps of Engineers is spending to fortify the city against the next Hurricane Katrina with upgraded levees, flood walls, pumping stations and massive gates.

Yet New Orleans doesn’t have to be blighted by these massive fortifications.

Architect Ramiro Diaz has taken me along the Bayou St. John, from its mouth at Lake Pontchartrain on the northern edge of the city, past the huge City Park.

Bridges arch across and trees overhang the serene waterway as it wends through several neighborhoods to its terminus in the Mid-City area.

Diaz and his boss, David Waggonner of the New Orleans firmWaggonner & Ball, would like to thread lushly landscaped waterways like Bayou St. John throughout the city to retain water during the city’s frequent deluges.

Delta Town

‘It’s time for New Orleans to act like a delta city, with water-sensitive design.’’ Waggonner told me.

For more than a century, sailing ships came into the city from Lake Pontchartrain, into the Bayou St. John, and then into a wide canal that ran along the culvert’s course for 1.5 miles to Basin Street, at the edge of the French Quarter, where they unloaded.

At the end of the bayou, a 15-foot-deep culvert with darkly glinting water is all that remains of the canal.

Waggoner wants to restore the canal, as a first link in the water-storage system. The idea makes sense economically as well as environmentally. The beauty of Bayou St. John is sought-after by home buyers; the Lafitte Corridor, as the space once occupied by the canal is now known, attracts no investment.

Living with water is a new idea in the U.S. We prefer to channel and bury it. Unglamorous drainage systems have become a hot topic in low-lying cities nationwide as flood severity worsens and sea levels rise.

Dutch Dialogues

In the Netherlands, water management has been a reality for centuries. Since 2007, Waggonner has led a series of conferences with both Dutch and U.S. experts called Dutch Dialogues to turn the Netherlanders’ expertise to New Orleans’s advantage.

Diaz’s tour included the wide, ugly concrete drainage canals that gash the city, topped by high, prisonlike concrete walls. Many of the streets facing them are dilapidated. We gaped at the massive pump systems that lift the water 15 or 20 feet, then fling it over the levees into the lake.

Augmented since Hurricane Katrina, they still can’t work fast enough. The Army Corps wants to fix the problem by putting more billions into higher floodwalls and deeper drainage canals.

Waggonner’s Dutch-American team offered a different approach: Use the city’s abundant empty land for landscaped water storage connected in a circulating system of canals and man-made bayous edged with greenery.

These would be sized to absorb and hold storm water while the drainage canals and pumping stations catch up.

More water-retaining basins could be built in the medians of the city’s many tree-shaded boulevards. Sidewalks and backyards could host rain gardens, which are shallow depressions seeded with plants that absorb water, as opposed to the acres of mosquito-breeding still water that linger after storms.

No More Concrete

The city has long hoped to turn the Lafitte Corridor into a parklike bike trail. Restoring the canal would add greater value, if it can be funded as an alternative to more pumps and concrete.

Corralling storm water for good use is immensely appealing in a city that’s still dubious about leaving its safety in the hands of the levee builders. Drainage structures designed to fit into neighborhoods could make the city infinitely more attractive. And the building could be in manageable chunks.

“I don’t see this as a 5-year plan,” said Waggonner, “but a 50-year one.”

Elements of Waggonner’s living-with-water proposal have been included in the city’s masterplan, which is close to adoption, and the idea has the backing of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu. Yet his vision could vaporize, as so many post-Katrina plans have.

Its unique power is the promise that New Orleanians need no longer cower in the shadows of their endless, dispiriting levee walls. They could begin living gracefully with their age-old aquatic enemy.

From Bloomberg

When it come to Juicy Fruit gum, Sean Payton wants it, needs it

On September 2, 2010, In Saints, By admin

When Saints Coach Sean Payton arrives at LP Field for tonight’s exhibition game against the Tennessee Titans, three things will be laid out neatly on the desk in his office:

The laminated play sheet with the catalogue of plays the coaching staff plans to use in the game.

The red flag he’ll use to challenge officials’ calls.

Two neat stacks of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum.

Each stack will contain five sticks, one for each drive of each half. Payton will not take the field until he has stashed the sticks into his pocket. He breaks out a new stick to start each offensive series. If the Saints enjoy more than five drives in a half or the game goes into overtime, the equipment staff keeps a reserve supply in a tray behind the bench.

The Juicy Fruit is Payton’s lone game-day superstition, and for him, it’s every bit as important as the play sheet.

Although he scoffed at the notion that the Saints might have been a team of destiny last season, he’s a devout believer in the juju of the Juicy Fruit.

And every Saints coach, player and staffer can attest, hell hath no fury like ‘Fruit’-less Payton on the sideline.

“It’s become a part of my game-day routine going back to Dallas,” Payton said.

Head equipment manager Dan “Chief” Simmons is responsible for setting up the pregame ration.

The in-game duty has fallen on the shoulders of assistant equipment manager John Baumgartner since he joined the club in 2007. “Bum” learned the hard way about Payton’s obsession in the NFC championship game last season.

The stakes, stage and stingy Minnesota Vikings defense caused Payton to go through gum at an alarming rate down the stretch. During one particularly intense series late in the fourth quarter, he barked a gum order to assistant strength and conditioning coach Adam Bailey, who just happened to be the unfortunate soul standing next to him at the time.

“I need a piece of Juicy Fruit!” Payton shouted after yet another punt by his stymied offense.

Unbeknownst to Bailey, the gum supply had been jumbled during pregame by a wayward ball. Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, Doublemint, Big Red and Winterfresh were all tossed together, causing Bailey to play a dangerous game of Wrigley’s Roulette.

With a berth in Super Bowl XLIV in the balance, the sideline exchange between Payton and Bailey has quickly become a part of Saints lore:

“Can you get me Juicy Fruit — not (expletive) Spearmint,” Payton barked at Bailey after spitting out the tainted chew. “Get me a piece of Juicy Fruit gum! Tell Bum I want (expletive) Juicy Fruit!”

The disaster was quickly averted as a fresh supply of Juicy Fruit was ferried back to Payton by Baumgartner.

Payton tore through two more sticks during the final nail-biting minutes of regulation.

“It was pretty intense,” said Baumgartner, whose father, Steve, played for the Saints from 1973 to 1977.

The scene is prominently featured in NFL Films’ “America’s Game” feature on the 2009 Saints. The NFL Network has used the scene extensively in commercials to promote the show’s debut Sept. 8. The network even interviewed Baumgartner about it.

“I’m just glad we won the NFC championship game,” Baumgartner said. “If we hadn’t, I’d have gotten blamed for giving Adam the wrong gum.”

Team consultant Cortez Kennedy can relate.

He made a similar Juicy Fruit faux pas during the Saints’ game at Atlanta last season. Worse, though, Kennedy took a piece of it after he stumbled upon Payton’s second-half stash while visiting the coach’s office at the Georgia Dome.

“My mouth was dry, and I didn’t know about Coach’s routine,” Kennedy said.

Fortunately for Kennedy, the Saints held off the Falcons down the stretch to extend their record to 13-0.

“He tore into me pretty good afterward,” Kennedy said. “He told me he would have banned me from the locker room if we would’ve lost that one, and he probably would have. He got me so scared I don’t even chew Juicy Fruit any more. I started chewing Big Red.”

Kennedy said he understands Payton’s passion. When he played, he employed the same pregame routine for every game, from driving the same route to the stadium to dressing in the exact same order.

“I understand it big-time,” said Kennedy, a star defensive tackle for the Seattle Seahawks for 11 seasons. “It’s his thing. I get it.”

Since Payton’s passion has gone public, he said he receives a fresh box of Juicy Fruit gum nearly every week from a fan or friend. Usually, he doesn’t even have to open it. He smells the sweet scent through the box and sends it down to Simmons.

And rest assured, the Saints never will run low on their supply. Simmons, Baumgartner, Kennedy, et al. will make sure of it.

After the Saints’ serendipitous Super Bowl run, no one in their right mind would mess with the mastication mojo.

(TP)

Susan Cowsill Band to Headline Euclid Records’ New Orleans Grand Opening This Weekend

On September 2, 2010, In Event, By admin

NEW ORLEANS: The Grand Opening Celebration for the brand new Euclid Records store in New Orleans will take place all day Labor Day weekend Sept. 4 & 5. The barbecue from the Pearl Kitchen will be delicious, and the music will be spectacular. In addition, the performances by the Susan Cowsill Band, who will be featuring a guest appearance by Brian Henneman of the Bottle Rockets, will be recorded for release on a 7” single next year. Euclid Records is located at 3401 Chartres Street in the Bywater Region.

Susan Cowsill, the youngest of the classic pop band the Cowsills, has adopted New Orleans as her hometown since 1993, and her song “Crescent City Snow” took on anthemic properties for the survivors of Katrina in 2004. Her latest album, “Lighthouse,” is a tour de force of songwriting craftsmanship, with lyrics devoted to the pain of loss and separation she felt after the storm not only took her belongings and home, but the life of her brother Barry. Cowsill’s band will be joined by Bottle Rockets lead singer and guitarist Brian Henneman, who sat in with her to rave reviews at a pair of St. Louis concerts last month.

The complete line-up of the two-day Grand Opening is:

Saturday 9/4
1 Tom McDermott
2 Blind Texas Marlin
3 Happy Talk Band
4 Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns
5 Susan Cowsill Band featuring Brian Henneman
6 Guitar Lightnin’ Lee

Sunday 9/5
1 Susan Cowsill Band featuring Brian Henneman
2 Kindest Lines
3 Felix
4 R. Scully & the Rough Seven
5 Mountain of Wizard
6 MC Trachiotomy

Euclid Records has recorded a number of live performances at the St. Louis store and released the best cuts from each on a series of limited edition 7” singles. $1 for each one pressed will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (NOMRF) to benefit musicians displaced or suffering loss of equipment in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Each record is accompanied by a beautiful silk screen cover created by some of the best artists working in the country today. The series so far can be viewed at www.euclidsessions.com. Needless to say, Euclid Records is excited at the prospect of recording the finest musicians who call New Orleans home, or who spend extra time visiting the city.

Euclid Records New Orleans is open Monday through Saturday, 11 am to 7 pm, and Sunday 12-6. The phone number is 504-947-7348.

Euclid Records

BP gets eviction notice for late rent at Louisiana command center

On September 2, 2010, In Defend the Coast, By admin

How does BP plan to make the Gulf Coast “whole,” as it’s reiterated throughout the course of the oil spill crisis, if the oil giant can’t even pay its own rent?

The owner of the property that houses BP’s St. Bernard Parish Oil Spill Command Center has issued an eviction notice because BP owes more than $3 million for rent, plus owner-fronted expenses such as security, fuel, cranes and physical plant upgrades.

“This afternoon, we received a 10 day notice to vacate from the landowner in Hopedale,” St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro said in a statement. “This was predicated on a lack of payment for several services. … While I don’t have an exact figure, I can tell you that it is several million dollars that the landowner is out and has had to front.”

Taffro noted that the job of cleaning up the Louisiana coast is “far from finished,” and announced that “we’re calling on BP to step forward and make these things right. We continue to hear commercial after commercial that says BP is here until everything is cleaned up. BP is here to make this right. Well this is an opportunity to make this right.” Taffaro said that BP is also delinquent in making payments in excess of $34 million to other local marinas and contractors.

BP spokesman Tom Mueller told the Times Picayune’s Chris Kirkham that the oil giant has yet to pay many invoices because they lack the detailed billing information BP has requested.

This isn’t the first time that area businesses have complained about BP’s handling of accounts. Just last month, a number of small-business owners that the company had contracted to mass-produce containment boom and other spill cleanup equipment told NBC that BP had stiffed them for millions in outstanding bills. And BP’s controversial handling of compensation claims, with out-of-work Louisiana fishermen awaiting timely payment for their losses, has been well documented here and in other places.

Meanwhile, BP is moving forward with plans to scale back the Gulf cleanup effort. Perhaps not paying the rent is just a means to an end?

From Yahoo

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