whither New Orleans?

Over at Slate this week, an economist visits New Orleans and writes about the future of the city. He suggests building extremely low-cost housing in the most devastated parts of town in hopes of bringing people back to the city. It seems a pragmatic idea, after all, it's kind of do or die for the future of New Orleans, and there will be no doing without people. But there's another aspect to this suggestion that's much more interesting: he imagines these low-cost communities as, uh, cultural compost heaps you might say, that would serve to help the city blossom creatively.

To be sure, the shantytowns could bring socioeconomic costs. Yet crime, lack of safety, and racial tension were all features of New Orleans ex ante. The city has long thrived as more dangerous than average, more multicultural than average, and more precarious than average for the United States. And people who decide the cheap housing isn't safe enough will be free to look elsewhere—or remain in Utah with their insurance checks.

Shantytowns might well be more creative than a dead city core. Some of the best Brazilian music came from the favelas of Salvador and Rio. The slums of Kingston, Jamaica, bred reggae. New Orleans experienced its greatest cultural blossoming in the early 20^th century, when it was full of shanties. Low rents make it possible to live on a shoestring, while the population density blends cultural influences. Cheap real estate could make the city a desirable place for struggling artists to live. The cultural heyday of New Orleans lies in the past. Katrina rebuilding gives the city a chance to become an innovator once again.

The plan requires little or nothing in the way of government grants or planning commissions. It will be an experiment with parts of the city that otherwise will never recover. It can be applied selectively to particular wards and allowed to spread if it works. It is probably the last chance for New Orleans to regain its position as an American cultural innovator. Just imagine the chant: Shantytowns for New Orleans now.

I think he's right in that, culturally--musically, artistically, linguistically, innovation often comes from economically depressed areas. Which isn't to romanticize poverty but simply to acknowledge a reality that the history of New Orleans testifies to. However, he fails to acknowledge that this is almost certainly not what corporate interests, real-estate developers and others with capital would like to see happen in New Orleans. Therefore it probably won't.

What made New Orleans great was that there was still amazing music being made every weekend in sweaty, shitty little dives in bad neighborhoods. Music that you could only hear in New Orleans. It drew on the city's rich musical heritage and it was truly local. And that's hard to find these days. I shudder to think that New Orleans will become a developer's dream, a mockery of itself, a mere simulation of its history and culture photoshopped and nailed together to sell houses in a new city free of crime and poverty yes, but also free of unique music, cuisine, language and lagniappe.

There were never any good old days in New Orleans. The city survived nearly three centuries of war, pestilience, political instability, poverty, the elements, crime, corruption, and woeful mismanagment almost purely on the strength of local character and tradition. I hope it sees them through this time too. Shantytowns for New Orleans now? Sure. What the hell.

Happy Mardi Gras

I'm back from vacation in London and back into the swing of work. The trip was great and I shall be posting some pics soon. In the meantime here's something good for you on Fat Tuesday, I'll betcha know it:

My grandma and your grandma
Were sittin' by the fire.
My grandma told your grandma:
"I'm gonna set your flag on fire."

Chorus:
Talkin' 'bout: Hey now! Hey now!
Iko, Iko, unday
Jockamo feeno ai nané.
Jockamo fee nané.

Look at my king all dressed in red.
Iko, Iko, unday.
I betcha five dollars he'll kill you dead.
Jockamo fee nané

Talkin' 'bout: Hey now! Hey now!
Iko, Iko, unday
Jockamo feeno ai nané.
Jockamo fee nané.

My flag boy and your flag boy
Were sittin' by the fire.
My flag boy told your flag boy:
"I'm gonna set your flag on fire."

Talkin' 'bout: Hey now! Hey now!
Iko, Iko, unday
Jockamo feeno ai nané.
Jockamo fee nané.

See that guy all dressed in green ?
Iko, Iko, unday. He's not a man;
He's a lovin' machine.
Jockamo fee nané.

Talkin' 'bout: Hey now! Hey now!
Iko, Iko, unday
Jockamo feeno ai nané.
Jockamo fee nané.

underway

First, I want to express my congrats to a certain Fugitive on his recent successes--the first quite a surprise, the other a much deserved confirmation. I am lucky to know such brilliant folks, folks with smarts and creativity to spare and who are also damn fine human beings. I plan on hanging around long enough for one of them to obtain a position of real power and give me a job. That's a joke. I think. I like my job. It's relaxing...something I suspect could not be said of working for the Fugitive, however rewarding it might otherwise be!

In other news, I am headed to London next month to see my friend in London and enjoy some time with my sweetie--not to be confused with my friend in London, who, though certainly capable of sweetness, is a little too butch for my tastes. She's never been, and I haven't been in more than five years, so I bought us some tickets for a Christmas present. Good times will be had.

The Year of the Dog starts in 11 days. I believe this means good things are in store for Tricky. If it doesn't it ought to. The reading in 2006 is off to a fast start:

Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer--Fiction
Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis--Drama
In Arabia, We'd All be Kings by Stephen Adly Guirgis--Drama
The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips--fiction

The Egyptologist starts off with the trappings of the historical mystery genre but eventually becomes a dark comedy. An enjoyable read. Guirgis is also dark, though more in that 90's smart guy kind of way, and his plays display a great ear for the vernacular and a mastery of subtle comic timing. Our lady of 121st Street was especially good. Chasing the Devil's Tail is a first mystery novel by a local Atlanta writer. I gave it a go mostly because the setting is the Storyville district of New Orleans in the early 20th century. Historical figures come and go: Jelly Roll Morton, Buddy Bolden, the photographer Bellocq. It's a decent start for a series (there have been two more since) but one can clearly feel Fulmer working to master the chops of the mystery narrative. I'll probably check out a later entry in the series at some point because his characters are intriguing and he keeps the pages turning without relying on too many cliches.

Right now I'm working on A.S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale. Good stuff.

Zizek and the global wall

The article that my friend in London refers to in his comments to one of my posts is worth your taking a look at. It's by that Euro-smartypants Slavoj Zizek, and it touches on a subject that I've thought about in the wake of Katrina: the vicious lies about blacks raping and murdering with wanton glee that were reported as facts by the national media.

We all remember the reports on the disintegration of public order, the explosion of black violence, rape and looting. However, later inquiries demonstrated that, in the large majority of cases, these alleged orgies of violence did not occur: Non-verified rumors were simply reported as facts by the media. For example, on September 3, the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department told the New York Times about conditions at the Convention Center: “The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these individuals see them, they ‘re being preyed upon. They are beating, they are raping them in the streets.” In an interview just weeks later, he conceded that some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue: “We have no official reports to document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault.”

The reality of poor blacks, abandoned and left without means to survive, was thus transformed into the specter of blacks exploding violently, of tourists robbed and killed on streets that had slid into anarchy, of the Superdome ruled by gangs that were raping women and children. These reports were not merely words, they were words that had precise material effects: They generated fears that caused some police officers to quit and led the authorities to change troop deployments, delay medical evacuations and ground helicopters. Acadian Ambulance Company, for example, locked down its cars after word came that armed robbers had looted all of the water from a firehouse in Covington—a report that proved totally untrue.

Zizek alludes to New Orleans to make a larger point about the nature of segregation in the age of globalization: it's much, much worse.

We are thus not dealing with “globalization as an unfinished project,” but with a true “dialectics of globalization.” The segregation of the people is the reality of economic globalization. This new racism of the developed world is in a way much more brutal than the previous one: Its implicit legitimization is neither naturalist (the “natural” superiority of the developed West) nor culturalist (we in the West also want to preserve our cultural identity). Rather, it ‘s an unabashed economic egotism—the fundamental divide is the one between those included into the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it.

The excluded other, according to Zizek, then becomes the canvas onto which we project our fear and desire, ala New Orleans post-Katrina. I know a few of the Tgnosis regulars are familiar with Zizek and I'd like to hear what you make of this. I think his "solution" as he puts it forth here sounds nice enough, but is awfully vague. (I'm sure he expounds upon this at length elsewhere but it probably involves reading about Lacan.)

...the real solution is to tear down the true wall, not the police one, but the social-economic one: To change society so that people will no longer desperately try to escape their own world.

whither...

I'm beginning to succumb to narratives of decline. I resist this. I really do. Granted, I am of Philadelphia stock, a certain sort anyway, so I know in my soul, have always known, that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. But get up and go to work anyway. And damn that hoagie was good. Narratives of decline are easy. Too easy. So I try my best not to slip into that mindset. But damn. Some shit ain't right. I am not a liberal. My view of the world, of human beings, of history, is simply too bleak. But if I am no liberal, well, the Bushies are no conservatives. Their inexplicable mix of arrogance and incompetence is hurting America. And you'll forgive me if I cannot express confidence that the democrats have anything better to offer. This sudden liberal isolationism, this idea that we should pull up stakes and get the hell out of Iraq, baffles me. Not only is it wrong, it is deeply immoral. It is one thing to say we should never have been there in the first place, quite another to say that we should simply wash our hands of the whole thing and leave the Iraqi people to deal with the mess we created. It's too late for that now. Like it or not we must finish what we've started even if it means waiting until Bush and Rumsfeld are gone. My dismay extends well beyond Iraq and Katrina however. I worry about where we as a people are headed. The signs and portents look grim my friends. Please provide evidence to the contrary if possible.

Toward that end, at least one thing is still right in the world: In New Orleans, Molly's is open.

Molly's at the Market, on Decatur Street, is open daily from 11 a.m. to the city's 6 p.m. curfew rather than its usual 6 a.m. last call, and the owner, Jim Monahan, makes change from a metal lockbox. There are no lights - the beer is on ice that friends mysteriously manage to muster each day - but there are regulars on the stools.

"The place has been closed 29 hours in 31 years - it's a tradition," said Mr. Monahan, who inherited the bar four years ago from his father. "It's just what my father taught me. You come to work every day. We're hard-working Irish people."

where the Bible Belt came unbuckled...

Oh, wondrous city of music that floats from the horn and poems drowned in drink! Oh, cheesy clip-clop metropolis of phony coach-and-fours hauling drunken Dodge salesmen, of gaunt-eyed transvestite hookers, of Baptist girls suddenly inspired to show their breasts on Chartres Street in return for a string of beads flung from the balcony of the Soniat House — will we lose even these dubious glories of the only American city that's never been psychoanalyzed?

An interesting opinion piece in the L.A. Times today lamenting New Orleans and the Bush administration. It is an idealized, nostalgic, slightly maudlin depiction of the city, but it is part of the truth, and this is what makes New Orleans a wonderful place and not just a poor, violent shithole on the Mississippi. Though that is also part of the truth--as David Brooks points out today in the NYTimes, the hurricane has revealed the underlying social problems in New Orleans in shocking fashion. One wonders if, when they rebuild the city, any of these sytemic problems will be addressed. You will forgive me if I am skeptical. It is important to note, however, that much of the culture, both past and present, that New Orleans is justly famous for often came from those parts of the city where the poverty and inequity were worst.

bowl of toxic soup

So some experts are concerned now that New Orleans will be turned into a giant cesspool of sewage from burst lines, toxic chemicals from the industrial plants that line the Mississippi, and human remains from all the cemeteries. The fear is that the system of levees designed to protect the city from the river flooding will essentially trap all the water in the city turning it into Lake New Orleans--watery death and disaster. I really really really hope this does not happen.

good luck NOLA

Pray for New Orleans my friends. Cross your fingers, get out your rabbit foot, cast a spell, or just hope, cause it looks like it could be real bad.

New Orleans, Iraq and Hogwart's

Finished a couple of good reads the last couple of weeks. The first was Rob Walker's Letters From New Orleans. Walker writes the "Consumed" column in the NYTimes Magazine and used to write for Slate. I've been reading his stuff for a while and I really enjoyed this. It reads like a good blog but with more substance and research. He covers many of the standard New Orleans topics with insight and also delves into some lesser known, but just as interesting, stuff like Ernie K-Doe and his Mother in Law Lounge and the history of the song "St. James Infirmary." Made me wish that I too could just decide to pack up and move to New Orleans for a while. Someday maybe.



After reading a chapter or two at a time for a few months, I finally finished Rick Atkinson's In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat in Iraq. Atkinson was an embedded journalist with the 101st Airborne and follows them, focusing mostly on their leadership and General David Petraeus in particular, from the buildup to the war through the fall of Baghdad. It makes for an ironic read knowing what has come to pass in the time since--they had no idea the worst was yet to come. One realizes just how much George and Donald and the boys got wrong. Did I miss the repercussions? No, I didn't think so. We don't seem to give a damn really.

I also read the first Harry Potter book. I had determined that I would give the whole thing a pass a long time ago, but it was given to me as a gift so I read it. It was an entertaining children's book. The self-perpetuating marketing monstrosity that it has become is something else entirely I think.

I lie about my past...

took me a while, but I'm finally responding to the tagging I received from the She-Creature. I'm not sure I've understood entirely, but it was something to the effect of-- which TomWaits song do I most identify myself with? I could go with any number of choices but I'll stick with a classic: Tango til they're sore. By the way, this is the song to play at my "life appreciation service," oh that's still funny, while you're eating the cake containing my ashes.

Make sure they play my theme song
I guess daisies will have to do
Just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pews
Turn the spit on that pig and kick the drum and let me down
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'til I get back in town

Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or Better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
So send me off to bed for evermore

House of the Rising Sun

A interesting article in the L.A. Times today: Archeologists think they may have found the original "House of the Rising Sun," the infamous New Orleans whorehouse, buried beneath a parking garage on Conti Street in the French Quarter. Others are skeptical, and frankly, it's probably best that it remain a folk legend of song and story. My favorite part of the story is Eric Burdon, who recorded the song with the Animals in the sixties, describing New Orleans :

"I like to call New Orleans the cradle of the best of the worst," Burdon said. "The place is reeking of death. It is as dark a town as it is light."

That's why I love it.

Shitsville

Happy St. Patrick's day. Old St. Pat converted the Irish to Christianity and it's been a long history of glorious triumph for the Emerald Isle ever since. My grandfather's name was McManus--I can poke fun.

To the point: It is getting to be the end of March, but in perusing weather.com, I cannot help but notice that Atlanta is one of the coldest spots on the East coast. Colder than Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, even colder than Bangor Maine. It is cold.

This is stupid.

I must say it's stupid because otherwise it seems more insidious...nefarious even.

I've made it the entire winter without complaining about the weather, but New Orleans ruined it. It was so beautiful there and it was so crappy upon returning here that all my old weather resentments were stirred to life. The truth is it was a rather mild winter here. But it's been shitty lately. Now I know those of you in cold places are laughing at me, but you know what, you don't have to live there. If you live in Boston or Bangor, or some other miserable town, well, the weather is your punishment for living in such a place. This is the south. The weather is supposed to be one of our rewards for living here. And I know spring will probably be beautiful, and I don't even mind the boiling summers we endure, but right now it's shitsville pal. Shitsville.

p.s. If I ever begin to seem truly schizophrenic...please tell me.

Pissing on the Parade

this is from the LA Times today. Anyone who's been to New Orleans can appreciate it. As can any drunk who's ever had to duck into an alley.

DISPATCH FROM NEW ORLEANS

A Big Stink Over Revelers' Carefree Ways
In a city where almost anything goes, public urination is causing headaches. Officials hope a 'potty ordinance' will lessen the stench.
By Scott Gold
Times Staff Writer

July 12, 2004

NEW ORLEANS — It is Saturday night on Bourbon Street, and the witching hour is near. A calliope of sound — swing, zydeco, bad cover bands — bounces off the brick facades. Couples are making out. Revelers are massing in the street, almost all holding an adult beverage, and often two.

Civic activist Leo Watermeier stands alone, one eyebrow arched in anticipation, an island of sobriety in a sea of inebriation. He watches a young man approach a bar the size of a closet — a to-go-only operation, with no interior, big enough only for a lone bartender hawking booze to pedestrians.

The man toddles down the block carrying a green concoction. Drinking in public is legal here. It's what happens next that isn't. Eventually, nature will call, and the man will have trouble finding a restroom. He will go, Watermeier fears, where many seem to be going these days: outside, in the street or in an alley.

Lately, a surge in public urination, and an accompanying morning-after stench, has created headaches for cities and communities that market themselves as adult playgrounds.

The problem appears most acute in New Orleans and Las Vegas, two cities that sell themselves, more than any others, as anything-goes destinations.

In Las Vegas, workers descend on downtown alleys once a week to spray odor-eating bacteria. In New Orleans, a similar steam-cleaning mechanism is used to combat the stench. And last month, the City Council approved a law dubbed the "potty ordinance," designed to stop public urination by increasing the number of restrooms available to drinkers.

The Big Easy ordinance was passed after Watermeier, a New Orleans native and a real estate agent, began taking regular counts of bathrooms along the Bourbon Street corridor. His work showed that the French Quarter has a plethora of bars and a dearth of restrooms.

Watermeier said there were nearly 60 Bourbon Street-area businesses on busy weekends that either did not have restrooms or denied the public use of their facilities.

The number fluctuates here more than in most cities, because when larger crowds arrive, additional bars open and more restaurants open side windows to peddle beers and alcoholic drinks to pedestrians.

Each year, about 15 million people visit the French Quarter, the six- by 13-block neighborhood that includes Bourbon Street. The few public restrooms in the Quarter are mostly on its southern edge, near Jackson Square.

"A friend of mine told me that she sees people just walking down the street peeing," Watermeier said. "I told her, 'Get out of here.' And then last night I saw it myself. A guy just unzipped his pants and went while he was walking down the street."

As many as a dozen metropolitan areas have banned public urination in recent months or years. It was something that seemed so obvious that they hadn't bothered before.

In Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood, officials cracked down in 2002 on Cub fans after a homeowner videotaped men and women who routinely used his backyard as a urinal. The city backed the ban with a $500 fine for those convicted of illegal urination.

In Newport, R.I., city officials became so fed up that they threatened to publish in newspapers the names of those convicted of urinating in public.

In downtown Minneapolis, a neighborhood association introduced an awareness campaign in January aimed at fun lovers who emerge from bars with a full bladder. Campaign slogans included "Go Before You Go."

Problems associated with public urination are typically ascribed to the homeless. The recent increase is different. Many offenders, civic leaders said, appear to be well-off people who have no particular reason to go in the street, except that they have simply lost sight of the boundaries of fun.

"We even have a problem around St. Louis Cathedral, which is a national landmark," said Jane Jurik, a legislative aide to New Orleans City Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson. The cathedral is in the heart of the French Quarter.

"Things are just getting more and more out of hand," Jurik said. "Why? Why are people more apt to do it now? I don't know. I think that's a question for the sociologists. People just seem to take more and more license."

Some observers blame the problem on a lack of public facilities. Others contend that many tourists today get so engaged that they forget to stop for restroom breaks.

Sociologists say the root of the problem is not terribly complicated.

"Why do people do this? Because they drink," said David Allen, chairman of the sociology department at the University of New Orleans.

Clarkson, whose district includes the French Quarter, teamed with another member of the City Council last month to push through the potty ordinance, which requires any business that sells alcoholic beverages — including grocery stores and tiny bars — to provide restrooms for customers.

City officials said most of the to-go bars would likely stay within the law by handing out restroom tokens that could be used at nearby restaurants or clubs run by the same owners.

Aware that some think the campaign to clean up the Bourbon Street area is threatening its bacchanalian spirit, Watermeier, 54, insisted he was working merely to protect his beloved city.

"We love this live-and-let-live attitude here. There is room here for naughty behavior, and there always will be," he said. "But this is one of the most famous and important streets in New Orleans — one of the most famous streets, probably, in the world. I'm not trying to kill it. I'm trying to nourish it."

A similar campaign is underway to combat the stench that emanates from some streets and alleys in downtown Las Vegas, away from the glitzy Strip. There, officials hope to twin public and private investments to reverse years of physical and economic decline. Public urination stands in their way.

Las Vegas' downtown district has long been a haven for the homeless and the destitute. And the area's oppressive heat does not help; food and other garbage that restaurants place in alleys rots quickly, compounding the stench.

But Vegas is also experiencing problems with people urinating wherever they see fit, said David Semenza, the city's neighborhood response manager.

"We're a 24-hour town," he said. "There are clubs that are open all night. The alleys have become a convenient place for people to relieve themselves."

Since April, a crew dubbed the Rapid Response Team has descended on downtown Las Vegas every Thursday night. By 4 the next morning, team members have blanketed alleys and streets with an odor-eating bacterial spray.

"We've taken it under control," said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman.

City leaders across the nation said their campaigns were working, but not everyone appreciated the effort. In New Orleans, for instance, owners of small grocery stores or to-go-only bars in the French Quarter said they could go out of business if forced to allow all customers to use existing restrooms or to add public facilities.

At the Royal Street Grocery, a block southeast of Bourbon Street, Robert Buras winced when asked about the ordinance. The grocery, which also contains a small deli that sells po' boy sandwiches, opened in 1938.

Buras said he had always allowed customers who eat at the deli to use his restroom. But the facility was off-limits to everyone else, he said. That's no longer true because of the new ordinance.

One problem in the restroom, he said, such as a stopped-up toilet late on a busy weekend night, could push him over an already perilous financial edge.

Buras is fighting to recover the money he spends maintaining his now-overused restroom. He is charging customers $1 to use the facilities. Like many merchants, Buras said the city should build more public restrooms. City officials, acknowledging a lack of public facilities, said they were working to resolve the issue.

But the ordinance is a start, said Clarkson, the city councilwoman.

"It was getting disgusting," she said. "We are the biggest party in America. We are very bohemian and proud of it. But our bohemian charm is our architecture, history, food, music and artists. It is not urine."

new orleans memories: those homo sapiens

I was in New Orleans, it must have been about fifteen years ago, maybe a little less.

It’s a beautiful day and I am standing in Jackson square. There are people everywhere. Street performers of all sorts. Musicians, jugglers, clowns, and mimes. There are caricaturists and portrait painters. There are pan handlers, Goths and gutter punks. There are palm readers, tarot card readers, maybe there are even mimes who read your tarot cards then silently act out your fate for you.

I am watching a clown, an old fashioned Emmett Kelly style clown with a three day shadow, make balloon animals while keeping up a steady barrage of vaudeville style patter. He occasionally makes a crack or directs a question at the tourists passing by, trying to get their attention. All the while he maintains a running commentary on what’s going on around him, offering asides about the curiosities of human behavior. He’s quite a clown. At one point, he says something about homo sapiens. A couple are walking by at just this moment: the guy looks like he may have just stepped off the set of a frat boy keg party. Thick set, no neck to speak of, a flat top hair cut. His lady friend looks like the mousy sorority sister along for the ride. Spying them, the clown asks him loudly if he is a homo sapien. This stops the meathead in his tracks. What did you say, he asks the clown with at least a hint of menace in his voice. The clown effortlessly kicks into a new gear. I say young fella, he says, I asked if you are a homo sapien. Meathead, revealing the limits of his vocabulary, says what’d you call me? He is turning red and the atmospheric pressure in Jackson square has increased noticeably. The clown turns up the heat, saying I don’t understand your confusion, you sure look like a homo sapien to me. If you ain’t a homo sapien then I ain’t never seen one before and accents this last bit by shooting a sly look at the little crowd gathered around and continues making his balloon animal.

Meathead quickly closes the distance between him and the clown: I’m gonna kick your ass. His girlfriend is chasing after him, trying to pull him back into the anonymity of the crowd. She is now rather red herself and I begin to suspect that her vocabulary is not as challenged as that of her boyfriend. The clown never misses a beat. He feigns bewilderment, going on about what an angry young lad this is to decide so arbitrarily to pick on a poor clown just trying to make people happy. What must have happened to make you such an embittered fellow? Meathead is clearly not quite sure what’s going on, but he knows that somehow it is at his expense. His girlfriend is still trying to pull him away, but he has had enough. He pushes the girlfriend aside and makes for the clown. I am wondering if I’ve ever seen a clown in a street brawl.

But the clown is way ahead of me. He hands his balloon animal to the girlfriend with a flourish and yanks a fake rubber chicken from his belt as though he were unsheathing Excalibur to slay a mighty dragon. He leaps into an absurdly exaggerated fighting stance and then begins circling the meathead, bobbing and weaving as he goes, all the while swinging his chicken around like a Billy club. His patter is now going a mile a minute. We’ve got a tough guy here ladies and gentlemen, likes to pick on little old clowns. He’s not a nice homo sapien this one. Well, my friend I wasn’t always a clown you know. No sir. I was a marine; fought in two wars. Bobbing and weaving, swinging the chicken. This is all too much for poor meathead, he has begun to realize that somehow he has already lost. His girlfriend, now on the verge of tears with embarrassment, is pulling on him again and he allows himself to be led away, looking angry and disoriented. The clown continues for a few seconds then resheaths his chicken victoriously, saying, you never know about those homo sapiens.