Bible Study

A homeless shelter gathers for Bible Study.











(photos copyright Melanie Burford)

Southern States

WITHOUT A DOUBT:

LOUISIANA
GEORGIA*
Alabama
Arkansas
Mississippi
Tennessee
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia


DEBATABLE:
Maryland
Kentucky
West Virginia

"PEOPLE FROM TEXAS AREN'T SOUTHERNERS, PEOPLE FROM TEXAS ARE TEXANS" -- metz
Texas

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT A YANKEE DON'T MEAN YOU CAN WHISTLE DIXIE, SON
Florida
Missouri
Oklahoma
Delaware

*Metz's home state reaps the benefits of her being the lone Bulldog on an otherwise all Bengal Tiger blog...

K-VILLE (PILOT, EPISODE 2)

Pilots suck. All of them, with the exception of My So-Called Life's (and that show went for 19 episodes), are the weakest outings of a show’s freshman season. The writer has to introduce all of the characters, the world, the rules of the world, and oh, yeah, there has to be some kind of plot.
So I waited until there were two episodes of K-Ville recorded in sweet Moxie, then watched both so I could see the show’s take on post Katrina New Orleans. If he's got any real insight into the situation I will forgive a number of Voodoo plotlines. ‘Cause we all know how the Yankees like some Voodoo in their Bayou.

I’m going to type as I watch, to give you guys the experience of sitting next to me in the couch as I gripe at the screen.

…You’re welcome.
Here it goes…

PILOT

New Orleans. Everything’s flooded. Cops in motorboats, rescuing people. They’ve intercut archival footage with close-ups of the cast on the bridge, masking it pretty well with overlaps in sound and one composite shot. They’re probably a little shakier on hand held than they’d like to be because of it, but the imagery of the wides is priceless, so it’s more than a fair trade. Impressive opening sequence – especially because though television writing is in a golden age, visually it is oftentimes unimaginative. Most TV directors are afraid of the wide shot, and that’s a shame, because it’s only in the wides that the audience can get a true sense of the geography of the world of the show. (And their relationship to it.) If you’re only going to shoot mediums and close-ups, you might as well be on a set.

**Since my interest in K-Ville is only in its interaction with New Orleans, I’ve decided not to recap the procedural elements of the show unless they are relevant to the depiction of the city or are really really funny.**
Title card : Two years later. No more skip bleach. There’s some graffiti on a wall which reads “Welcome to K-Ville.” Okay, has anyone ever heard of people calling N.O. “K-Ville”? Because I haven’t, and while I can see some dude writing it on a wall as a joke, I have a hard time believing it’s the new “Big Easy”.
We’re at main cop’s house, which is of course in the 9th Ward. Before Katrina, Hollywood thought there were only two neighborhoods in New Orleans: the French Quarter and the Garden District. Now there are three. The cop’s name is Marlin. Interesting choice, Marlin’s mom.
A singer drives up in a fly ride she blew two FEMA checks on. Marlin gives her a lecture on money management because Marlin is all up in everyone else’s business. Incidentally I wonder what Marlin would think of my little brother’s choice of spending his FEMA checks (which, WRITERS, were FEMA debit cards, do your research!!) on alcohol. He was in law school at the time and spent all his money on booze, but I’m certain Marlin would not approve. He’d probably want my little brother to give it to the poor or something. But then who would pay his bar tab, Marlin? WHO?!!

Anyway, frivolous singer informs Marlin that more people from the neighborhood are moving out of the city, a fact which we know all too well. He’s pissed.

Cut to some weirdo white dude we’ve all seen in a million movies like Sweet Home Alabama and Tigerland so dubious Southern accent alert starts sounding in our collective conscious. Turns out in this world he’s from Cincinnati. Take that, Midwesterners. He’s also a war vet with Issues.

It’s around this point that the writing sort of gets to me. Steph warned that the dialog sounds as though the writer was guessing how the locals spoke rather than actually getting the dialect right. So I was prepared for the bad. But wow, is it bad. It’s incredibly clunky, and that’s frustrating because it doesn’t have to be that way. They shoot in New Orleans. The actors must know what they’re saying doesn’t sound right. I understand that the room (the Writer’s Room) isn’t in the city, and that probably none of the writers are from New Orleans or even from the South at all, but hell, buy a record, buy a book, ask someone from the South to read your dialog out loud. Be responsible, for Christ’s sake. Friday Night Lights shows us that it’s possible to get regional dialect exactly right, and it’s not like every single FNL writer is rocking an East Texas driver’s license. (Of course the accents on that show are Beaumont by way of Burbank, but that’s to be expected.)

Okay, back to our show. Looks like Cincinnati is a recovering alcoholic. There’s some plot involving a shooting in the French Quarter. Hey, the Casino! Remember when it was going to revitalize the city’s economy? Good times…
Later that night, we meet the fam and learn that Marlin’s wife and daughter live in Atlanta. Sad. His daughter is still afraid of storms. The idea of this is sadder than the execution, but...I'm really sorry anyway, Marlin. His wife is very pretty and his daughter is cute. Good casting there.

Jackson Square, night. More shots fired.
Tourists.
Okay, crime sucks in the city right now but it’s not like this. What I mean to say is this is not the character of the situation as we know it. I think a more interesting drama could have been constructed using the facts on the ground. Instead they’ve made a mid-nineties cop show w/ better pyro in a post Katrina setting.
…and I bet that’s exactly how they sold it…

Here’s a good scene from the show:
It’s night. Marlin and his wife are at home. Kid’s asleep upstairs. Suddenly the little girl is screaming from her bedroom. Water streams down the staircase. Marlin runs up, bursting into her room. It’s filling with water. Everything’s chaos. He scoops her up, runs down the stairs, and they all flee into the night. I thought this was a dream sequence until they got outside. But then we see a hose going up to the little girl’s bedroom window and an address scrawled in spray paint on the house’s outer wall. It’s their address in Atlanta. Damn, that’s good. Just when you think there’s no reason for these people to have jobs they pull this out. Nice one, guys. That’s scary as all hell.

I appreciate all the Louisiana themed commercials playing during the breaks as well as the product placement of local businesses during the show. Unfortunately they probably won’t be able to enjoy the exposure much longer. Oh, at the end of the episode, we discover that Cincinnati used to be a criminal and is actually from New Orleans. Dammit. I guess we’re gonna hear that accent after all.

Pilot Breakdown:
# of Strong Black Women:1
# of Hep Jazzcats: 3
# of Voodoo Hexes 1
# of White Men in White Suits: 0
# of Southern Belles: 1
# of appearances or references to Gumbo (or other regionally specific dishes): 3
# of unnecessary trips on a swamp: 1
# of times a non-tourist neighborhood was depicted, still in shambles: 2
#times we learn Interesting Facts About K-Ville: 6

EPISODE 2

Forget the plot. What’s the point?
Previously on K-Ville: Cincinnati used to be a criminal. This may hamper his copliness. Now : In the station. He has flashbacks of his Life of Crime. I wonder if we’ll see anyone we know in the background as a featured extra? That would be cool. Great stunt work in this episode.
This show has very long first acts – it’s almost ten minutes before we get to the credits. But hey, Tim Minear is a consulting producer on this show now. I’m going to start holding it to a much higher standard.

Featured in this episode:
-- Prison Guard with Cool Hand Luke Guard’s Sunglasses.
-- Corrupt prison owner named “Deville” (The process in the Room on that one:
A: We need a name.
B: He’s evil, right?
A: Totally evil. Like, the evilest.
B: What’s evil?...
-- Symbolic push in two shot of our heroes with the American flag in the background, transitioning to a slow fade out. Funnier than The Patriot, if you can believe it.
-- The episode ends with a slo-mo medium two shot of our guys walking toward camera. The last frame…
…is a freeze frame.

Episode 2 Breakdown:
# of Strong Black Women:1
# of Hep Jazzcats:1
# of Voodoo Hexes: 0
# of White Men in White Suits: 0
# of Southern Belles: 3
# of appearances or references to Gumbo (or other regionally specific food): 1
# of unnecessary trips on a swamp: 0
# of times a non-tourist neighborhood was depicted, still in shambles: 1


OVERALL ANALYSIS OF K-VILLE:
Best stuff – exterior location shooting. Our home state is something else.
Worst stuff – The actual show is pretty awful.

Summer (A Eulogy)

Of course I was a total badass when I was a kid. I mean, look at me now. When I was in kindergarten, I rounded my friends up into this gang, and we would have really wreaked havoc on the playground if we hadn’t gotten sidelined by a debate on the pros and cons of using formal parliamentary procedure to conduct our meetings.
Come to think of it, it was more of a club than a gang. But I was president and the dues were only a nickel.
Anyway, summer was awesome ‘cause me and the posse could really let loose (in an orderly fashion.) And summer meant softball and sno-cones.To get to the game, you have to take the Ballpark Road. It’s narrow, and potholed, and navigating oncoming traffic is tricky. One of you has to stop and let the other scoot past. It’s courtly driving. At night, it is nearly impossible to do without getting into a wreck or a fight. I’ve had a lot of people curse me out on that street because they thought I was being a jerk, and most of the time they were wrong.
At the end of the road is the Park. And it is a Beaut. (Next time I go home, I’ll take pictures of all these things.) It was built by my little brother’s best friend’s uncle, so I cannot in all fairness be called an unbiased reviewer, but you can tell that it’s been lived in, y’know?
Anyway, I played softball (slow pitch AND fast pitch) there, and I also watched my little brother go from tee-ball* to baseball at the same field. The park also has a gigantic swing set on which I Very Bravely swung standing up for the first time and for several times afterward (I do not remember the exact number but it was a lot.)
I should point out that when a person undertakes that particular swinging position, she picks up a great deal of air speed velocity, and can go very high, thus risking the Fabled Ballpark Flip (wherein the swing flips completely over the swing set and the person standing in the swing, I don’t know, probably DIES or something) AND, it’s also really really hard to stop swinging when you’re stand-swinging.
You should have all the facts before you attempt this daring maneuver.

On the way back from the park, we stopped at the Sno-Cone Stand. Our stand was in front of the Superette. It’s a little shack made of wood, boarded up most of the year. It opens the day after school lets out and shuts down the day classes start. The good cones are the kinds with the soft ice. The bad ones are blocky. If your straw meets too much resistance, you’ve got a bad one.
If you had a blind date in the summer, it wasn’t a bad idea to swing by the sno-cone stand to get a read on him. You can tell a person’s character by his sno-cone flavor, and can reveal your own by what you order at the stand. I have provided a key to some of the more popular orders below:




Sour Apple – Easy Going
Wedding Cake – Cheerleader
Watermelon, Cherry – Acceptable
Tutti Frutti – Why are you dating your mother, pervert?
Pineapple – Frank Gehry Lover

Extra Juice goes without saying.


*The “pretend pitch” in tee-ball is probably one of the most devastating moments in a father’s life. Like realizing you’re in love and being powerless to stop it.

(baby in sno-cone stand photo copyright John Stevenson)

Jena

I played basketball against Jena Elementary. They weren't very good, but they were better than us. The news says that the town has a little less than 3, 000 people (same as ours) but only 15% African-American population. That seems much smaller than my hometown, and far smaller than their athletics department would have us believe. This is an outrage! This and that other thing going on there. We could have totally kicked their butts had they fielded a team more representative of their town's racial makeup.

Of course, if our team had done the same, I wouldn't have been on it at all, seeing as how my family was the only non-white, non-black family in our whole parish.

As for that other thing -- clearly these kids have been overcharged, but six of them still beat up one other kid. Seems like there are only two sane choices: the nitpicky option, which is for some fair-minded person to count up every incident that occured (the shotgun, the party, the fight, etc.) and to charge each person accordingly; and the better, more neighborly, let's just everybody shake hands, say we're sorry and for the love of God try and be better people option where they do, well, just that.

And I know that sounds naive, but hear me out. A lot of the black community's anger is directed at the DA himself because of the sense of inequity in the justice system; that is, it's not about the crimes, it's about the punishment (or lack thereof) of the crimes. The noose incident, which started this whole mess, was deplorable. What if those kids agreed to a suspension equivalent to a suspension for starting a fight? The same with the "Jena 6" (who did in fact send a kid to a hospital.) I would say recall the DA but knowing Louisiana politics it's likely he'd be re-elected or replaced by something worse. Maybe even Satan, if his new show gets cancelled.

The funniest part about this whole thing is the media coverage. The tv news journalists are as surprised as we are that they're addressing an issue of substance, and twice as congratulatory. Plus they don't have wear flak jackets (it's not Afghanistan or New Orleans) and they get to broadcast a clear, uncontroversial message -- "Racism is Wrong."

And it's the best lesson ever, because we learned it forty years ago.
It's the best remote ever, because we're used to feeling superior to those people.
It's the best story ever, because it's not Iraq.

And this is why I think Soledad and company are so psyched. This one's a gimme. How long has it been since we've had a gimme?

Don't get me wrong. I do think the national attention, now that it's FINALLY come -- my parents told me about this more than half a year ago -- will make the powers that be extra careful in the handling of this case, and that's a boon to ALL the parties involved. I just wish the media would be a little less ostentatious in its chivalry.

And for the people of Jena, something similar happened in my hometown, a little more than ten years ago. A boy died, but no one knew exactly how. For a long time, everyone was angry. There were fights, and then the funeral, boys got jumped, girls were threatened, every grownup who'd ever read a Bible would quote it at us given the slightest provocation...
And then one day it stopped. People couldn't go on being angry. It was exhausting.