So to get it out of the way, yes, I know I haven’t updated in almost three weeks, but after I watched this clip this morning about Paris Hilton’s Campaign Ad (as a response to John McCain talking about her in his campaign ad), I had to post this. Normally, I hate Paris Hilton, but this made me really like her to see that she can poke fun at politicians and herself (”I approved this message because its hot.”).
Then again, if she can’t poke fun at herself, who could she poke fun at? I think a Hilton/Rhianna 2008 ticket would definitely make the debates more interesting.
Not too much time to update lately. Took some time off to go to Martha’s Vineyard with Jen at the beginning of the month and been pretty busy ever since. Had a four day weekend last weekend (Friday-Monday), and went out Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and night. And it really caught up with me this week, as I made the bad decision of staying up on Tuesday night to watch the all-star game and have felt exhausted ever since. But between taking some naps and sleeping a lot, I think I’m good now.
I did go see Wall-E Sunday night with Jen, and it was actually really good. Now I’ve got to get to Batman shortly. This movie is going to be incredible. In a nerdy way, I kind of want to go this weekend, just so I can say I was part of the biggest movie opening ever. Heath Ledger is supposed to be INCREDIBLE in his final role.
Just woke up and need to get to the office early. It’s going to be another long day today before a two-day (aaaahhh!) weekend. My normal three-day (or more) weekend is gone since I took Friday off last week and Monday off this week. I know, I’m getting absolutely no sympathy from anyone.
As Dan Rydell put it in Sports Night, “I’m down here with the rest of you.”
I was watching the Red Sox game earlier tonight on NESN (New England Sports Network), and I noticed an advertisement for the US Border Patrol.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d guess there’s going to be an opening for a new director of Marketing & Advertising posted on their website pretty soon if they continue to advertise in New England. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a lot about Border Patrol, but I figure there’s probably a ton more jobs on the country’s southern border than its northern one.
I’d post a picture or a map or something proving me correct, but both times I’ve gone to their site after seeing the ad on TV, and hey — can’t get past the main page. Seriously, way to go on that one.
It might be a better idea not to advertise Border Patrol jobs as far away from the Mexican border as you can get? I don’t know, just a thought.
Just got back from Martha’s Vineyard after a few days away with Jen late Thursday night. We were in the Vineyard for four days, and we had a great time with wonderful weather.
Came back to go to a cookout at her parents place in Wilmington on Friday followed by a cookout at Sue’s house in Wilmington on Saturday. Then the Wilmington fireworks were Saturday night, and it was a pretty good time overall. Other than that, I’ve insanely loved my vacation, and I’m heading back to work tomorrow. More frequent blogging will be sure to resume this week, as I’ll be coming back into a more regular schedule.
In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks from Wilmington. Sure, the smoke sucked and blocked many of the fireworks after the first 30 seconds or so, but hey — that’s what you get for not staggering heights. Either way, still pretty good for a small town fireworks display.
I got my web statistics for the past month today. Apparently, five people went to google, searched for “Get me them socks!” and came to my website. I figured they must have dug pretty deep to get to my site to find this post.
Nope. It’s the number two result on Google when you search “get me them sox” without quotes, behind only YouTube. If you search the same with quotes, there’s two YouTube hits, then mine.
I’m second to YouTube with people who have questions about the Charles Barkley/Dwayne Wade T-Mobile commercial.
Also, this site has finally passed my Daily Free Press writer biography page as the number one hit for Bill Yelenak. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.
I shouldn’t do it because it will cement its place as the number one hit, but hell — here you go.
Thursday was another hell of a night in New Orleans, where we went to the House of Blues Voodoo Lounge for dinner and I ate a Po’ Boy Shrimp Sandwich, because if I’m not eating a Po’ Boy in New Orleans, it’s “not worth eating, according to the one New Orleans native in our midst. After dinner, I hit the casino to play some poker at Harrah’s in New Orleans, and then met up with everyone else at some jazz club on Frenchman Street.
After a while, some of us left and went back to Bourbon Street to spend the rest of the evening there, a little closer to the hotel. Had a great time, got to bed around 2 a.m. and made it back downstairs by 9:30 Friday morning in time for our session. We finished up, had some lunch, and around 2 p.m., we left for the airport. I got there in plenty of time, made it to the JetBlue ticketing counter and found out my 5:45 flight to New York had already been delayed until 6:15. Any more of a delay, and I was going to miss my connection to Logan in Boston. The plane didn’t take off until almost 7 p.m., and I thought I was pretty screwed.
But somehow, we made up time in the air, we got to New York in just over two and a half hours. I spent the flight watching The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler, and I was pleasantly surprised (I’d never seen it before). I made my connection at JFK too, with about 10 minutes to spare. Although then, we taxied at JFK for well over an hour before taking off, making me almost an hour late into Boston. What’s the deal, JFK? That airport is just way too damn busy.
Anyway, I made it home to Somerville just before 2 a.m. Basically 12 hours of traveling door-to-door from the hotel to the airport to the airport to the airport to my house, but I definitely had a good time, and I’d consider heading back to New Orleans again. That place is a lot of fun.
Now I’m going to catch up on sleep this weekend, read some e-mails, do some laundry and head back to work on Monday. Ah, good times.
I pulled a little video that I shot from the Katrina bus tour we went on yesterday and decided to upload it. I don’t have anything else to add about the situation, but wanted to share some more images from the Lower Ninth Ward.
As both a newspaper reporter for a good number of years and a writer for all of my life, I’ve usually been able to describe what I’ve seen through my writing enough to paint a picture for the reader.
But after returning from seeing the devastation in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward earlier today, I’m not sure what to write. I’m not sure how to properly illustrate the grave poverty and destruction of an entire city and an entire culture, but I was stunned and floored by what I saw in certain sections of New Orleans almost three years after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, destroying New Orleans, especially the Lower Ninth Ward.
I’ll start on a more simple level before I talk about the sights and the pictures. There’s a federally built levee system that protects New Orleans in the event of flooding. During Katrina, a category five storm, there were 53 separate levee breaches in the federally build system. If you want to learn more about it, there’s a ton of information out there, but Wikipedia has the easiest site to understand. The damage done by the system failing was catastrophic, as much of the city flooded in August and into September 2005. The American Society of Civil Engineers called the breakdown “the worst engineering catastrophe in U.S. History.”
It really was. This pictures aren’t mine, but they illustrated what the Lower Ninth Ward looked like both before and after Katrina.
Before:
After:
The difference is stunning — and very sad. Here are my pictures, that I took during our bus tour of the affected areas.
Fats Domino’s house. He lost most of what he had, and it was even rumored for a while that he was deceased. He is not and is dedicated to returning to New Orleans
Here are some houses that are destroyed:
The pumping system that’s supposed to keep New Orleans safe.
Here’s an iconic image from pretty much every structure throughout the affected areas. The x’s on the side that indicate the situation inside the residence or building.
It’s an X drawn by people who went in the homes when waters dropped back down. None dead in this home, but we saw a lot of homes with a box with an x inside it, which indicates a death… one home had three boxes, three x’s. This one indicates people went in on Sept. 21 and found 0 dead. Not sure what the other markings indicate… Many people to this day continue to leave their x’s on the side of their homes as a badge of honor.
I don’t know how this can be part of America and cannot receive more support for federal rebuilding assistance. As we drove around, I was stunned at the level of poverty and destruction that remains three years later. Someone else on the trip with us remarked to me that they were stunned too by the reconstruction efforts moving slowly, but also by the incredible level of poverty that must have been there even before Katrina. It’s definitely a sad sight to see, but people are moving forward. Anyone we saw outside by their house waved at our bus. One woman sat on her front porch in a swing as it was clear she was still rebuilding. But she smiled and — of course — she waved. The people are resilient and they are dedicated to living in the Ninth Ward once again.
While it’s depressing to see this situation can exist in our country, I’m encouraged by the attitude of the people who live there. Brad Pitt recently purchased land and is building 100 low-income houses for needy residents. Other construction projects continue and good samaritans visit the area to try and clean it and get the brush under control. The empty lots are being rebuilt on and New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward shall rise again. I hope the people living throughout the city who were affected by Katrina receive the help they need and they are able to continue living in the area that they will forever call home.
I finally decided (after two years) that it was time to figure out how my YouTube account actually worked.
So today, I bring you the video of last night on Bourbon Street. I was talking about the guys playing jazz on Bourbon at Canal, and here they are. Lets hope this works and it means I can figure out how to upload many more videos in the future.
Heading out to see the Lower Ninth Ward later today. More tomorrow, and then heading back to Massachusetts.
