But we'll always have the Superdome

I have GOT to stop reading the gossip columns. Abstinence would be better for my blood pressure and my digestion.

For example, I never ought to have clicked on Courtney Hazlett's "The Scoop" on MSNBC just now. Alas, I was suckered in by the headline highlighting Paula Abdul's latest alleged histrionics in an airport terminal.

That was entertaining enough -- and who the hell is Michael, Sidney and Leslie? -- but, ultimately, all it did was lead me to the next item which, of course, had to do with la famille Spears.

HERE I WAS, listening to some very tasty Etta James on the stereo and still basking in the glow of LSU's dismantling of The O-H I-O State University on the way to becoming college football's undisputed national champs. Life was sweet, and I had slipped comfortably into my "God, I wish I was sitting on a front porch back home in Baton Rouge right now, playing 'Hey, Fightin' Tigers' over and over and over" reverie side of the love-hate relationship I got going with my home state.

And then I open up the gossip column and get visions of double-wides -- Louisiana double-wides -- dancing in my head.

Thank you, Courtney Freakin' Hazlett, and thank you to the enlightened citizenry of Kentwood, by God, La.:

Residents of Jamie Lynn Spears’ hometown of Kentwood, La., just don’t know what all the fuss is about when it comes to the current state of the youngest Spears’ uterus.

“No one can understand why the media is making such a big deal over Jamie’s pregnancy,” local Mandy Knight told OK! Magazine. “That’s normal for people around here … her pregnancy really isn’t so shocking.”

Tell that to the rest of America. Or Nickelodeon. Regardless, the town has rallied around their celebrity and celebrity baby-daddy, Casey Aldridge. “We’re all so proud of him for doing the right thing,” said Cheryl Rape, the town librarian at the Liberty Library in Liberty, Miss., to the mag. “We all do wish him well.”

ACTUALLY, "normal" historically has involved matrimony before pregnancy, and that even used to be more or less true in many Louisiana towns that aren't Kentwood. That carnal knowledge of a juvenile and the resulting unwed motherhood is viewed as "normal" in Kentwood is only further proof of Favog's Law -- the Bud Light empties don't fall far from the double-wide.

And while -- like the unfortunately named Mississippi librarian (in what, I suspect, just might be one of the more-unused libraries in these United States) -- I am gratified that the Redneck Romeo and Juliet chose to let their child be born, I don't know that meets any sane threshold for being "proud" of the baby-daddy.

Oy. So many brain cells, so little Pabst Blue Ribbon to kill 'em dead, so's I kin fergit.

But at least we'll always have the Superdome, all us Louisiana expats will. That and the memory of one hell of a Tiger football team.