3 Chords & the Truth: Bad clothes. Fun music.

This episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is for the Class of '79.

Heck, the Class of '78, for that matter. Or even '76 or '80.

That's right, we goin' old school for a big chunk of the Big Show this week. And it will be good. And you will dance.

Well . . . at least as much as your bad back and aging knees will allow.

ALL YOU NEED to join in the fun -- no matter whether you're 15 or 50 -- is to drag something double-knit (triple-knit is even better) out of the closet, find yourself a pair of ridiculous shoes and shake shake shake (shake shake shake) shake your booty.

Heh, I said "booty." (Snicker.)

If your closet or attic is tragically bare of embarrassing attire, I can wait for you to get back from a quick Goodwill run.

But hurry, it's gonna be fun.

SO, THAT'S the deal on 3 Chords & the Truth this week -- horrifying clothes, dance-o-licious tunes. Among other stuff, being that we're nothing if not diverse on your Internet headquarters for freeform goodness.

It's the Big Show. Be there. Aloha.

Panic like it's 1986. . . .

I remember what 1986 and 1987 were like in Louisiana, when oil prices collapsed and the bottom fell out of the petroleum bidness.

Unemployment surpassed 13 percent, businesses failed left and right, tax revenues fell through the floor, more than 100,000 Louisianians said goodbye to all that . . . and we had a saying. Perhaps you remember it:

"Will the last person leaving Louisiana please turn out the lights?"

RECALL THIS ALL took place in the Gret Stet when the rest of America was enjoying the Reagan economic boom. But now, says Bloomberg, commodities analysts predict we're on the way to a $25 barrel of oil, thanks to global recession and the resulting collapse in demand for black gold:

U.S. stocks fell for the first time in three days, pushed down by concern General Motors Corp. may file for bankruptcy and a plunge in energy shares following Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prediction that oil will hit $25 a barrel.

GM lost 16 percent after a person familiar with the matter said the largest U.S. automaker is exploring a reorganization with workers, creditors and lenders. Southwestern Energy Co., EOG Resources Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. slumped, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Energy Index to a 6.2 percent decline. Apple Inc. slipped 4.7 percent as Nokia Oyj said the global mobile-phone market will shrink 5 percent or more next year.

The S&P 500 lost 2.9 percent to 845.22. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 215.45 points, or 2.5 percent, to 8,376.24. Indexes also dropped after the Labor Department said more Americans are collecting jobless benefits than at any time since 1982. Economists estimate a report tomorrow will show the unemployment rate increased to 6.8 percent, a 15-year high.

“As bad as you think it is, it’s worse,” said Diane Garnick, who helps oversee about $500 billion as an investment strategist at Invesco Ltd. in New York. “The chances of the economy turning around in the first half of 2009 are declining rapidly because unemployed people can’t spur economic growth.”

(snip)

Southwestern Energy, an oil and natural gas producer, fell 15 percent to $26.34 as all 40 energy companies in the S&P 500 retreated. EOG Resources, the former oil and gas unit of Enron Corp., slid 14 percent to $68.79. Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, lost 3.4 percent to $76.27.

Crude oil tumbled 6.8 percent to $43.59 a barrel in New York, the lowest price since January 2005. It has plunged 70 percent since the closing record of $145.29 set in July and may fall below $25 next year if the recession that’s slashing fuel demand around the world spreads to China, Francisco Blanch, commodity strategist at Merrill Lynch, wrote in a report today.

YES, EXPERTS say Louisiana's budget is less dependent on oil now. Then again, the 2009 state budget is predicated on tax revenues from oil at $84.23 a barrel.

That's a lot higher than $25. What do you figure is going to happen in that case?

And what do you figure is going to happen to that woebegone state when, constitutionally, leaders -- more or less -- can't cut any big-ticket items other than health care and education? It's not like Louisiana can afford to get dumber and sicker.

The '80s almost killed off the Gret Stet during an time of plenty elsewhere in the United States. Amid the nation's worst economic climate in 70 years, the '00s (read as "Uh-Ohs") could finish the job.

Requiem for the go-go '00s

Even in relatively well-off Omaha, the go-go '00s are slowly but surely turning into the hardscrabble Uh-Ohs.

Here's a case in point: The planned 12-story 80Dodge condo project in our neighborhood has just turned into the generic Extended-Stay Hotel and Strip-Center Extension project. The developers ran into the double-whammy of the New Economy -- ain't many people shelling out for luxury condos, and ain't many banks lending money to build them.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, you can pre-sell more units than developers can pre-sell today. So, the developers are doing what they can, as the Omaha World-Herald reports today:

Developers who had planned a high-rise condominium project at 80th Street and West Dodge Road instead plan to build a four-story, extended-stay hotel and two single-story retail buildings.

"It's just too hard in this climate to do a condominium," said Jerry Slusky, attorney for the development team and part owner of the project.

A hotel franchise approached the developers about three months ago, Slusky said. He declined to name the hotel because the parties have not signed a licensing agreement but characterized it as "one of the top two brand names in the country."

The hotel's demographic studies showed a need for an extended-stay hotel in the Dodge Street corridor from 72nd to 102nd Street to accommodate nearby employers and hospitals, Slusky said.

That need, combined with slow condo sales and the changing financial environment, led the developers to conclude that a hotel was a wiser choice, Slusky said.

"First of all, the construction financing for a large high-rise building with a substantial condominium component is very difficult, if not impossible, because you need at least 50 percent with binding contracts."

Only 14 of 56 condos had been reserved. Reservations are not the same as signed sales contracts.

A typical financing arrangement requires the developer to sell a certain percentage of units — measured in revenue — before the bank will release money for construction. Some lenders are requiring a higher percentage of pre-sales.

Slower sales of the condos — which were priced from $260,000 to $3.7 million — delayed construction start dates, leaving developers in a lurch with people who put money down or who considered buying into a new project.

"People want to be assured of a delivery date. You run into a bit of a Catch-22 there," Slusky said.

"There was uncertainty of so many people about their lives and their situation.

"You have to think about the wisdom in these times of developing a condo project in light of people's ability to buy and own them, financing, etc."

THE 80DODGE developers are the savvy -- and lucky -- ones. Just up Dodge lays the fallow vision of one of the unlucky -- and dead -- ones:

Another multiuse project in the area, which included condos, remains in limbo after the death of developer Ed Boesen of Des Moines. Boesen, who had planned the $6 million Piccolo's Pointe at 77th and Dodge Streets, committed suicide, according to official records.

Since Boesen's death July 15, banks, private lenders and other businesses have sued his estate for more than $50 million.

THIS MAY NOT BE the postmodern sequel of the Great Depression. But just like in the original series, our dreams and illusions are sputtering, stalling and then crashing to earth.

What we need is a new dream. A workaround dream . . . a make-lemonade-out-of-lemons dream.

What we need is a "let's pull together, love one another and trust in God" dream. Do you reckon that would be harder to pull off than building a high-rise condo development?

It's not the Brooklyn Bridge but, hey. . . .

The New York Daily News didn't sell some petrorube the Brooklyn Bridge. But the tabloid's reporters and editors did something almost as good -- they stole the Empire State Building.

COME TO FIND OUT, it wasn't that tough. After all, it was paper-pushing bureaucrats they were dealing with. The only challenge there would be accomplishing something legit.

The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property.

Some of the information was laughable: Original "King Kong" star Fay Wray is listed as a witness and the notary shared a name with bank robber Willie Sutton.

The massive ripoff illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions.

The loophole: The system - run by the office of the city register - doesn't require clerks to verify the information.

Less than 90 minutes after the bogus documents were submitted on Monday, the agency rubber-stamped the transfer from Empire State Land Associates to Nelots Properties LLC. Nelots is "stolen" spelled backward. (The News returned the property Tuesday.)

"Crooks go where the money is. That's why Willie Sutton robbed banks, and this is the new bank robbery," said Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Richard Farrell, who is prosecuting several deed fraud cases.

Of course, stealing the Empire State Building wouldn't go unnoticed for long, but it shows how easy it is for con artists to swipe more modest buildings right out from under their owners. Armed with a fraudulent deed, they can take out big mortgages and disappear, leaving a mess for property owners, banks and bureaucrats.

GEE, MAYBE HARD TIMES have brought back "undercover" journalism, which had fallen into disrepute among a generation of journalists -- flush with the gravitas that goes with bringing down a president and all -- who had come to take themselves waaaaaaay too seriously.

Fittingly enough, it was a tabloid like the Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, that pulled off the last grand "undercover" investigative series. It opened a bar and named it the Mirage. Get it?

I think you know the purpose:

The Mirage was the event that changed everything. The Sun-Times "opened a tavern, staffed it with reporters and photographers, and waited for the city inspectors to come and shake them down. They sardonically called the bar the Mirage, and it drew petty crooks like drought victims to a vision of water."

Series of this magnitude -- the Mirage was 25 days of stories that began on January 8, 1978, preceded by four months in late 1977 of running the bar and many more months of planning -- aren't measured by the good they do. They succeed if they collect the biggest prizes. Mirage was a Pulitzer finalist, but Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and Eugene Patterson of the St. Petersburg Times argued for its defeat. "The Pulitzer Prize Board decided not to award the Sun-Times the prize because the series was based on deception," Fuller related. "The board concluded that truth-telling enterprises should not engage in such tactics."

This judgment reflected the uneasiness seeping into a business that, after the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, was taking itself especially seriously. "We would not allow reporters to misrepresent themselves in any way, and I don't think we would be the hidden owners of anything," Bradlee told me at the time. Patterson said, "Some felt the Mirage story could have been reported in another way," and he compared the Sun-Times to an undercover policewoman enticing a john.

The Mirage's champion when the Pulitzer board met had been Clayton Kirkpatrick, then the editor of the Tribune. Kirkpatrick argued not merely for the opposition's big story but for a way of journalistic life in Chicago. It was his own paper, in fact, that won three Pulitzers earlier in the 70s for undercover projects. The Sun-Times didn't get into that business until Pam Zekman came over from the Tribune in 1975, bringing the tavern idea with her. The Tribune had said no to it for liability reasons -- the editors imagined the horrible spot they'd be in if someone staggered drunk out of their bar, climbed into his car, and drove into a school bus. Sun-Times editor Jim Hoge said yes.

IT'S MY firm conviction that God not only "don't like ugly," He also don't like snooty. Three years after Ben Bradlee helped to scuttle a Pulitzer for the Sun Times' "Mirage" series, his Washington Post had to give back its Pulitzer.

Perhaps "Jimmy's World" rings a bell. How about Janet Cooke?

Talk about your series "based on deception". . . .

My city . . . in ruins

Baby, if you ever wondered -- wondered whatever became of me -- I've been livin' in the past amid papers and stuff in Baton Rouge . . . back in better days.

Kind of.

So, what's kept me busy -- and away from this here blog -- is wading through old newspapers and through old yearbooks, and through new pictures, too. All this to make my first homegrown Revolution 21 video.

IF YOU'RE FROM my hometown, this likely will hit you where you live. That goes double if you're also a Louisiana expatriate like myself.

I did this video because, it seems to me, I can express through music and pictures what normally eludes words. Even good, well-chosen words.

Thus, I make no claim that this is anything other than a most subjective document. It represents my feelings.

My grief.

My loss.

My wistfulness.

My anger.

My memory.

My love.

IT'S MY VIEW of my hometown . . . from a distance that gives one perspective. My city: in ruins.

The concept -- and a good bit of the material for this look at Baton Rouge -- comes from Colleen Kane's excellent Abandoned Baton Rouge blog -- I owe Colleen a great debt of gratitude for doing that blog and thereby giving me the inspiration for this. Pay ABR a visit soon.

Colleen came to Baton Rouge -- and her new blog -- from Brooklyn. And when one is thrown into an alien land, and an alien culture, anthropology happens. In this case, it's the anthropology of thrown-away swaths of a middling-sized Southern city.

Abandoned Baton Rouge is still working on the "why" of a city that finds so much of itself (and its people) expendable. For that matter, so is this correspondent . . . who was born, raised and educated in Louisiana's capital city.

THE THING IS, every time I find a new ABR post, it's not just anthropology to me. Neither is it to a lot of folks like me, I'll wager.

To me, what it is, is a punch in the gut. To me, it is a document of loss. A document of dysfunction. A document of things and places I lived, knew or knew of that are dead or dying.

Of things once nice but now disgraceful.

ABR tells the story of a city that throws itself away on a regular basis. It shows the world a city that wastes itself daily and defiles itself daily. It shows God and everybody a city that seemingly lacks pride . . . self-respect.

SOMETIMES, little blogs stumble onto big stories. ABR shows us what happens to the folks -- and places -- left behind when the upper middle class moves on to something newer, more generic and farther out.

What it can't show, however, is the context behind whole swaths of a city going from ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Likewise, it can't show the holes in the souls of those who love it. Who remember it and the faded glory of all the now-broken -- and abandoned -- places.

There were -- there are -- lives entangled in the decay. There are feelings in there, too.

And souls.

I guess that's what I'm trying to give a voice with this little video. I'm trying to give a voice to the soul. It's seen happier days.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

1969 newspaper "house ad"

Same . . . 2008.

More 'idiodic' stuff from the alternative press

Control Alt Delete is no defense from the dead-tree version of the Omaha City Weekly.

Nor from some of the "idiodic" things therein.

DO WE REALLY need to learn about some staffer's idiod (the root of "idiodic," one presumes?) friend "Jorge" who ran out of gas returning home from an overnight "booty call"? Really?

If the City Weekly's editors think so, what's more frightening? That that's what the alternative rag's poobahs think of their readers, or that they might be absolutely correct in gauging the readership's fascination with "booty calls" gone wrong?

Apparently, we have drifted into the realm of "anticulture," which is defined as a society collectively thinking with organs other than the brain. I believe Rene Descartes first described this when he famously said, "I climax, therefore I am."

Or something like that.

Flunking News Writing 101 in Omaha

I look at the above crime brief from the Omaha City Weekly, and I wonder what Bob Sheldon would have done if I had turned that in for Journalism 2151, Beginning Newswriting.

I mean, apart from giving me an "F" for the assignment and strongly suggesting I find a new field of interest. And apart from suggesting, perhaps, that I find something else to do with my time than hang out on the LSU campus -- or that of any other college or university.

SHELDON WAS an old-time newspaperman. Did some time at the National Enquirer. Loved snappy ledes and colorful headlines.

Didn't think much of calling homicide suspects "dumb f***s" in your copy. He was funny that way. Made a friend of mine cry once in class over far less of a journalistic sin.

God knows what might have happened had I been stupid enough to hand in something like this:

It's no surprise that the one-night shooting spree that took place on Nov. 12 in the midtown Omaha Dundee area was the work of three mentally disabled dumb f***s with ties to local gangs.

OR . . . AS PERRY WHITE might have said, "Great Caesar's ghost! Get me a libel lawyer . . . now!"

It could be, though, that our Nov. 26 item from one of Omaha's "alternative" weeklies just might have rendered my old professor speechless. Back in the day, journalism schools expected more of teen-age reporter wannabes than some publications demand of alleged adult "professionals" in 2008.

Also, it seems to me that in far too many cases -- especially in cities the size of Omaha -- arrested-development types manage to grab hold of the green eyeshades, leading the "alternative press" into a high-school hell concocted by Jeff Spicoli, just emerged through a cloud of smoke from a VW microbus. What you end up with is gratuitous sludge like the City Weekly story above, where rank incompetence conflates itself with simple-minded notions of "narrative" and Anglo-Saxon expletives sprinkled through ill-written copy passes for "edgy."


EVERY PARAGRAPH of crap contained in half-baked rags, whether they be "mainstream" or "alternative," is a compounding tragedy for an industry with one foot in the grave already, as well as for the society that industry purports to inform.

And on a smaller scale, these journalistic Jeff Spicolis -- pretentious, poseur rubes turning out their "tasty" stories in their "gnarly" mags -- make it look like their brand of half-baked, foul-mouthed, faux-edgy dreck is about the best one might expect out of somewhere like Omaha.

Maybe it is, but I sure could have taken this city for a far smarter place than that.

The most ironic website comment ever

Remember this video?

My old college newspaper, The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State, has just captured first-place in the ongoing race for the most ironic comment-box posting ever.

IT COMES amid the feedback to lsureveille.com's story on the Tigers' crushing 31-30, last-minute loss to Arkansas on Friday:

Les needs to issue IQ tests before he signs players to a scholarship. The moronic penalties from stupid, undisciplined players is what cost LSU this game. LSU players have made dumb choices all year. If they can't play under control maybe we need a coaching change. I've backed Miles ever since he came to LSU, but consoling a player who makes a personal foul when the next down would have been 4th from deep in their territory shows me there are no consequences for their actions. Players don't have respect for Miles any longer and fans are quickly losing their respect for players who can't control their emotions.

AN LSU FAN left that comment. An. LSU. Fan. Left. That. Comment.

LSU fans "are quickly losing their respect for players who can't control their emotions." I cannot adequately express to you how rich that is.

Oh, Lordy. That is so rich that one bite of that baloney sandwich would give an anorexic a real lard-ass problem.

I wonder how Tiger fans might express that disappointment and lack of respect? By tumping over the team bus?

Lord God Almighty!

Of course, at this writing, the lead comment on that Reveille story goes like this:

This comes down to the pure moral difference between white and black people. These blacks on the football team have no discipline and no moral compass. They're a bunch of ghetto thugs who don't know how to behave. I'd rather have an LSU team with great character that loses games with integrity than even having this gang of thugs winning a title.

SOMEWHERE IN LOUISIANA, it's always 1959.

Or, as my wife said after I told her about that comment, "I'm never going down there again." Frankly, I'm half inclined to follow her lead.

The 'Axis of Evil' begins here

These are the faces of killers.

They are not like the Muslim-fanatic killers and terrorists reaping the whirlwind, for example, in Mumbai this week. Those misguided and evil souls think they kill for the sake of Allah . . . to uphold the dignity and law of the Almighty.

These homegrown, all-American killers do so because stupidity and greed is a deadly combination.

OUR TERRORISTS and killers are, instead, shoppers of mass destruction. They destroy, pillage and kill at Wal-Mart for the sake of cheap manufactured goods and Black Friday bargains. Most of it, stuff they don't even need.

Third World "primitives" riot over flour, wheat and rice, because they and their children are hungry. We Americans are much more advanced. We kill for stuff we can't even eat.

By the hundreds, we trample defenseless pregnant women and employees of big-box stores for the Holy Trinity of digital TVs, Tickle Me Elmos and George Foreman grills. As the New York Daily News recounts on its website today, we should be so fuggin' proud to be American:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

(snip)

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was knocked to the floor during the mad rush. She was hospitalized for observation, police said. Early witness accounts that the woman suffered a miscarriage were unfounded, police said.

Three other shoppers suffered minor injuries, cops said.

ALL THIS. For stuff. Not food, not God . . . stuff.

Cheap stuff.

The Daily News further reported shoppers blithely streamed past emergency medical crews as they tried to save the trampled Wal-Mart worker. Priorities, you know.

One shopper summed it up pretty well for the newspaper, and for the demented, barbaric society we have become:

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

UPDATE: Houston, we really, really have a problem. And we can't blame this one on the Religious Right. In fact, the Religious Right might hold a big part of the answer.

3 Chords & the Truth: Real. Good. Real good.

This is the Sex Pistols, back in the glory days. Only on 3 Chords & the Truth could the Sex Pistols somehow coexist with Ernest Tubb.

BOTH ARE REAL. Both are good. As far as we're concerned on 3 Chords & the Truth, both are real good.

I think that tells you all you need to know about this week's episode of the Big Show. In fact, I think that tells you all you need to know about any episode of our little program.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

It's not Thanksgiving unless. . . .

Happy Thanksgiving

You know this is the cold-sweat-inducing truth. It just is.

Happy Thanksgiving. And remember the five-second rule.

I'm thankful for. . . .

I could be thankful for world peace, financial prosperity, complete joy and happiness and an assured kick-ass future.

But I don't got none of that.

Apart from the usual suspects of what I ought to be thankful for -- which I am -- you have to grab a hold of what you can in the thankfulness department.

So I did.

I'm thankful for WD-40 and its new flip-up "Smart Straw" nozzle.

DO YOU HAVE any idea how many of those damned unattached "dumb straws" I've lost over the past quarter century or so?

Or how many times I've sprayed myself -- and everything else -- trying to insert the little unattached straw into the spray nozzle of a can of WD-40?

So I'm thankful for something as simple as not having to futz with that crap ever again. At least in the WD-40 lubrication universe.

GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!!!

Like I said, you grab a hold of what you can in this age of uncertainty and suckiness.

Dat bitch & the railroad in Prairieville

If it was Monday, it must have been another phone call from Mama down in Louisiana.

Today's topic was the shiftlessness and basic evil of Cousin (Deleted) and her no-account grandchillins. And it was time for this middle-aged, bearded Alice -- stuck, alas, up here in the Great White Nawth -- to telephonically step through the looking glass into a surreal land called the Gret Stet.

Now, note please that I'm just repeating what I was told, which is entirely subject to the funhouse mirror of Mama. That said, here we go.

WE WERE OFF AND RUNNING on the subject of "dat lyin' bitch (Deleted)" the second Mama mentioned that Deleted's brother-in-law -- who also is my cousin on the other side of the family . . . roll wid me here, it's Louisiana -- had called to ask if she had gotten an invitation.

"What invitation is that?" I foolishly asked.

"Oh, (Deleted Granddaughter) is gettin' married when her boyfriend get back from I-raq. She ain't send me no invitation. I bet (Deleted) takin' over the whole weddin' like she did dat other one," Mama fumed. "She take over everthing, and she lie on people. She a lyin' bitch is what she is."

(From Omaha, silence.)

From Baton Rouge, Mama is just getting warmed up:

"You know he been sendin' (Deleted Grandddaughter of Cousin Deleted) money every month from I-raq. Now what he do dat for? When I was comin' up, dey call dat a kep' woman.

"You know what a kep' woman is?"

I do think I've heard that phrase, yes.

"All I know is when I die, I don' want dat lyin' bitch anywhere near dat funeral home. I'm gonna call David [pronounced DAH-veed in the Gret Stet -- R21] over at Rabenhorst an' tell him dat if she show up, dey need to throw her ass out of there.

"She try to take over if you let her. She try to take over the funeral."

I HAD a question. That's because I am not a smart man.

"Why are you even worrying about (Cousin Deleted)?" I ask.

"I AIN'T WORRIED ABOUT HER!" Mama says, and we're off to the races for another 10 minutes. Now it's about (Cousin Deleted's) grandson, who shall remain Nameless.

Cousin (Deleted's) brother-in-law's oldest daughter's husband, who works for the railroad in Prairieville, apparently had gotten Nameless hired on there.

"Which railroad is that," I ask.

"The one in Prairieville," says Mama.

"The Union Pacific . . . ?"

"I don't know if it the Illinois Central or what. It's the railroad in Prairieville."

PERSONALLY, I prefer to think it might have been the Cannonball, running daily between Hooterville, Pixley . . . and Prairieville. But I digress.

Nameless' employment by the Prairieville Railroad came, in fact, despite Nameless being shiftless, and a high-school dropout to boot. But (Cousin Deleted's) brother-in-law's oldest daughter's husband (etc., etc., yadda yadda, so on . . . Prairieville) got Nameless the job, and the railroad helped him get his GED.

Apparently -- and this is where Mama's funhouse mirror starts doing some really weird s*** -- the railroad, the one in Prairieville, supposedly let Nameless use a company truck to get back and forth to work. Until, one day, the truck disappeared.

"He tol' 'em dat the truck broke down one night, and he left it on the side a the road," says Mama, recounting Nameless' Excellent Adventure. "Dey ask him where he left it, and he tol' 'em he didn't know.

"Den the truck show up on that fella's lot, and he SOLD it! Dat's when they found it."

How could he sell it without a title? And why weren't both Nameless and the "fence" in . . . uh . . . jail?

Who knows? I guess that's just not how the railroad in Prairieville handles stuff. Needless to say, Nameless no longer is employed by the railroad in Prairieville.

"Oh, he quit that job," says Mama. "He just uses people. He used 'em, and then he quit."

I SUPPOSE by now you wouldn't be surprised that Louisiana isn't exactly a businessman's paradise. Forbes isn't either.

Louisiana ranks as the second worst state for business. It has been ranked in the bottom two each year in our Best States list. Louisiana is still reeling from the devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but it also struggles with two major problems that existed long before the storms: an uneducated labor force and an unhealthy reputation for corruption.

Louisiana boasts a high-school graduation rate of only 80%; only Texas has a lower rate. This is a long-term problem that Governor Bobby Jindal, who took office in January, will need to address. In the meantime, Jindal, a rising star in the Republican Party, has made rooting out corruption in Louisiana one of his chief priorities.

"We adopted comprehensive governmental ethics reforms that have made Louisiana a national leader in accountability and transparency," says Stephen Moret, head of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development. Moret also cites the elimination of several unconventional business taxes and the adoption of the largest personal-income tax cut in state history as ways that the state has improved its economic competitiveness.

Louisiana and West Virginia both feature low labor costs, 11% and 7% below the national average, but that is not enough. "These states are lower cost areas, but their labor forces are not competitive and therefore are not going to attract venture capital money or big outside investments," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

MY FAMILY is a stone-cold economic wrecking crew. I ga-ron-tee.

Please come home! I'm a changed city!

Come January, Baton Rouge chamber-of-commerce types will start searching far and wide across the South for prodigal sons (and daughters) to lure back home. They're promising to slaughter fatted calves and everything.

OR SO SAYS The Advocate, the city's daily. The next two photos, meanwhile, represent what Abandoned Baton Rouge says. Which truth, do you reckon, is closer to THE truth?

A $100,000 campaign, funded by businesses and possibly the state, will carry the “Welcome Back to Baton Rouge” theme through outdoor advertising and targeted business and specialty magazines.

It’s not associated formally with the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s Creative Corridor campaign for branding the Interstate 10 and Interstate 12 corridor. But the chamber campaign does seek a similar result, BRAC’s Adam Knapp said: bringing back young but seasoned workers to a Baton Rouge region that’s changed much for the better in the past decade.

“We have envisioned a program for marketing our available jobs in these areas where our college graduates are most dense, which is Houston, Dallas and Atlanta, and we’ll be launching a program along those lines,” said Knapp, the chamber’s chief executive officer.

(snip)

Beginning in January, the chamber will seek to interest people with seven to 12 years of work, including management backgrounds, people who already have started families and people who may not have been considering taking their careers and families to Baton Rouge but who’ll listen to that possibility.

The campaign will drive those candidates to a Web site that taps them into the current state of Baton Rouge possibilities, including job opportunities and resources for trailing spouses making a move.

The second phase of the campaign would organize social events in each of the cities beginning in mid-2009 to tell expatriates “This isn’t the same Baton Rouge you left 10 years ago,” Odom said.

ON THE OTHER HAND. . . .

Baton Rouge Magnet High . . . and why most of it is slated to be rebuilt.

3 Chords & the Truth: Chasing the blues away

Kermit might not think it's easy being green, but these days, it's all too easy to be blue.

Me, I'll take green. Or the music on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. OK, definitely the uber-cool music on the Big Show.

SO, THIS GO 'ROUND on the program, I guess you could say we're chasing away the blues via really good tunes. Performed by great artists. Like John Lennon.

WE'VE GOT Mose Allison, too.

NOT TO MENTION Dr. John. How do you spell "funk"? D-R (period) J-O-H-N. Period.

OH, YEAH. And Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band. Are you ready for Captain Beefheart? I don't think you're ready for Captain Beefheart.

Oh, yeah? Prove it.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth: Tune in, mellow out . . . freak out. We don't care, just as long as you're OK with it.

Be there. Aloha.

THIS IS AN EX-TURKEY!!!

Sarah Palin thought "this was neat."

"You need a little bit of levity in this job," she said, after "pardoning" an Alaska turkey before Thanksgiving. "This was fun."

I thought it was fun, too . . . snort, guffaw. Really, do watch the video.

In a dissenting note, all but one of the turkeys saw nothing fun about any of it. And that bird probably now has a hell of a case of "survivor's guilt."

Note well, some Republicans think this woman ought to lead their party and, someday, be president. If that were to happen, also note she would be surrounding herself with staffers just as smart as the one who OK'd her doing a "fun" interview, with gobblers meeting their mechanized end as a backdrop.

In a battle of wits with the governor and her posse, my money's on the expired turkey.

I'm with Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con. If Sarah Palin didn't exist, the Monty Python gang would have had to conjure her up. Better yet, the real one writes her own material.

Maybe this guy will pop up on the Big Show

And if Tony Bennett can't make it, maybe we'll get that Anthony Benedetto cat.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

It's not about the paper. It's about the news.

Michael Rosenblum talks common sense to some British newspaper editors. Are they listening? Who knows?

Meanwhile, back on this side of the Atlantic. . . .

Let's just say if we're looking at an "innovate or die" scenario for American newspapers, "die" is entering the final straightaway ahead by three lengths. Let's hope people like Rosenblum can spur "innovate" before it's too late.

(Note: Rosenblum's language gets, uh, colorful in a couple of spots.)

HAT TIP: The Journalism Iconoclast.

The Unifying Theory of Louisiana

The truth pops up in the damnedest places sometimes.

Like in the mouth of a Louisiana legislator.

IN THIS CASE, it was state Rep. Austin Badon Jr., D-New Orleans, who accidentally stumbled upon the Unifying Theory of Louisiana. That's the theory, heretofore little discussed in the Gret Stet, that explains why things are so bad there . . . and getting worse.

Let's see if you can spot where the Unifying Theory of Louisiana pops up in this excerpt from a Baton Rouge Advocate story about high-school graduation standards:

Roughly four in 10 ninth-graders fail to earn a high school diploma in four years in Louisiana. About 190,000 students attend public high schools.

Fannin said traditional math, English and science classes have failed to keep many students in school.

But Badon said students with no plans to attend college already have high school options.

Most students enroll in a college-prep curriculum.

However, those who finish the 10th grade, with the permission of parents or guardians, can opt to follow a different curriculum that helps train them for careers.

Badon said there are other ways to tackle the high school dropout problem without making major changes for a “select few.”

“One of the main things that we need to do is to educate parents that it is not acceptable for your children to drop out,” he said.

IF YOU PICKED Badon's uttering “One of the main things that we need to do is to educate parents that it is not acceptable for your children to drop out,” you win a 35-year-old can of Pop Rouge. I don't know if Badon realizes what he said, but the important thing is that he said it.

That's the problem of Louisiana -- it's a state where legislators find a pressing need to convince parents their kids really ought to stay in school.

Everything boils down to culture, not politics. Culture precedes politics . . . precedes all issues of governance. If you have a culture where you really have to work hard to convince Mama and Daddy it's really best that Junior not go through life uneducated, you start out behind the eight ball.

It's a vicious cycle. Because Louisianians never have found it that important for Tee Dummy to know his ass from his elbow -- academically, at least -- they never, for 300 years, have realized they're behind the eight ball because they don't consider education important.

Sometimes, the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results this time) intersects with the definition of stupidity.

IT'S THE CULTURE, STUPID. But because the culture is stupid, the culture doesn't recognize its stupidity, which keeps the culture stupid, which means the culture never recognizes its stupidity, which keeps the culture stupid, which means. . . .

Rinse, repeat, and get the hell out of Louisiana while you still can.

Snopes is as Snopes tries to justify

From the comments on the white riot preceding Louisiana State home football games:

At least we dont [sic] riot and kill people like Euro-trash soccer fans. Everything that goes on is in good fun. No one is forced to come out and experiance [sic] SEC football.

OH, WELL . . . that's different, then. Assault, sexual assault, indecent exposure, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct all "in good fun" is so much better than your run-of-the-mill assault, sexual assault, indecent exposure, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Tonight, I think I'll call Mrs. Favog a c*** and a bitch -- all in good fun, of course. Then, I expect her to respond -- in equally good fun -- by smashing a cast-iron skillet into my cranium. That would precede her channeling the Ginsu-y spirit of Lorena Bobbitt.

All, once again, "in good fun." Just like at LSU.

IF ONLY Adolf Hitler had had more LSU football fans on his general staff, perhaps the world could have seen the Holocaust in a much more benevolent light. Because, frankly, there isn't any foolishness -- or worse -- these folks can't justify.

Or, at least, whose justification they won't give the ol' college try.

Dear LSU: Take out the (white) trash

Click on the frat boy's butt for video.

I wonder what Noël Coward -- famous for noting "Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun" -- would have made of Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium?

If he had happened upon the LSU gridiron scene today (or, really, any time in the last 40 years), bon mots about how "white trash and drunken men come out on a football night" would have been flowing from his pen.

It's come to this. A state known for feeding on the bottom of every index of societal success manages to find world-class acclaim in the field of loutish behavior by sports fans.

Even the English football hooligans are starting to get nervous.

THE LATEST DOCUMENTATION of some very, very bad behavior on the part of Tiger fans comes from . . . Louisiana State's student newspaper (and my old stomping grounds), The Daily Reveille. The student paper did quite an ingenious thing -- two female staffers went tailgating Nov. 8 for the Alabama game in Baton Rouge.

With a video camera.

Dressed as Crimson Tide fans.

What they could show on a website not run by Larry Flynt, Al Goldstein or Hugh Hefner is not a pretty sight. What they couldn't show was exponentially worse.

But one of the brave -- and calling her "brave" isn't just whistlin' "Dixie" here -- student journalists who posed as 'Bama fans did write about it in a Reveille editorial Nov. 11. Editorial board member Gerri Sax didn't shy away from recounting some of the language she was subjected to, either.

I shall. When you see asterisks in this excerpt, assume the worst:

The final video of our experiences on lsureveille.com is an accurate depiction of what we encountered, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. Here are a few things we couldn’t fit in the video.

Vulgar language has never really bothered me, and the incessant “Tiger-baiting” and “Around the bowl and down the hole, Roll Tide, Roll” mocking were the least of my worries.

Almost every tailgate spot we visited greeted us with the same expressions. The women called us “bitches,” and the men called us “c***s” followed by the traditional “Rip. Rip. Rip. Rap. Rap. Rap. You ‘Bama girls got the clap, clap, clap!” cheer.

And if that wasn’t enough, the amount of times we were spit on also struck a nerve.

Spitting on someone is one of the most degrading things a human being can do to another.

Verbal abuse is powerful, but when things get physical, that’s a little more effective.

The most significant physical encounters were from male Tiger fans. And they all involved some kind of inappropriate gestures. We were groped and squeezed by just about every guy we interviewed.

Not only did things get physical for us personally, our camera equipment also has some bruises as well. I can’t even count the number of times a Tiger fan ran up to the camera and shouted expletives or just yelled at the lens.

LET'S SEE. In a pregame afternoon and evening of seeing "how the other half lives," the two young ladies from the Reveille were witness to -- or victim of -- disturbing the peace, assault, public drunkenness, drunk and disorderly conduct, terroristic threats, lewd conduct and sexual assault. And I may have missed a few.

That's entertainment.

That's also the kind of behavior Louisiana's "flagship" university puts up with -- on its property, in its name, by its students and football fans. It's particularly disheartening to see a state's "best and brightest" reveling in acting like anything but.

Note to LSU's Greek community: Dressing like preppies for the big game is no prophylactic against "common" if you get drunk, become even more obnoxious than usual, then proceed to act like . . . white trash. Snopes is as Snopes does.

And if "family night at the Snopeses" is what visitors to a major state university can expect amid its "stately oaks and broad magnolias," the scene inside the halls they shade must be something less than inspiring these days. You are what you tolerate. Six or seven Saturdays every autumn, the top university in Louisiana tolerates behavior that will land you in jail in Nebraska.

Or in Louisiana, if you do it at the mall, instead of on the LSU campus.

THIS KIND of loutish, criminal foolishness not only is met with grudging acceptance in Louisiana -- in the shadow of what passes for an ivory tower in the Gret Stet -- it's become a perverse source of pride. It's the pride of the ignorant redneck who knows he's doomed to lose at schoolin', and at work, and pretty much at life, but is satisfied if he can win the fistfight.

It's likewise the pride of the 'hood, where hopelessness and death is to be accepted, and even embraced . . . but never, ever "disrespect."

But respect cannot be gained at the point of a gun. Or by a right cross to the eye.

Or by a bunch of foul-mouthed drunks who think a good time on a Saturday night is to go out in public and let their Id hang out. Among other things.

And woe unto the school -- or the state -- of which this is the best that can be expected when company comes calling, because you're making a horrible first (second, third and fourth) impression. That, people don't easily forget.

Bad kid? Don't get stuck. Act now!

I told you so.

I told you there'd be the biggest land rush to Nebraska since the Homestead Act -- this one by parents with dysfunctional teens and tykes in tow -- once the governor announced a special session to fix the state's latest foray into the jungle of unintended consequences, otherwise known as the state's "safe haven" law.

AND NOW look at what the Omaha World-Herald has found. I'm so surprised:

The pace of safe haven drop-offs nearly doubled after the announcement of the special legislative session to limit the law to infants, a World-Herald analysis shows.

Nebraska's unique safe haven law was intended to let mothers leave babies at hospitals without being prosecuted for child abandonment, but the law did not specify an age limit for children.

In the last two months, 25 parents and guardians have dropped off 34 children at hospitals - none of them newborns. Most were ages 11 to 17, many with psychiatric and behavioral disorders.

Since the law was used for the first time Sept. 13, parents and guardians dropped off children once nearly every three days.

The number of children - including several brought from other states - prompted Gov. Dave Heineman on Oct. 29 to announce an emergency session of the Legislature specifically to set an age limit.

Since Oct. 29, the pace has jumped to one new case every day and a half.

No children have been dropped off since the Legislature went into session Friday, even though the law remains in effect until revisions are passed when the session ends this Friday.

A proposal introduced at Heineman's request would limit the safe haven provision to babies no older than 72 hours.

Another proposal to create a system for older children gets a public hearing today, even though the Nebraska attorney general issued an opinion Sunday that the bill falls outside the limited purpose designated for the special session.

I WONDER WHAT will turn out to have been worse -- overmatched or neglectful parents dumping their broken kids on the state of Nebraska . . . or their no longer dumping their broken kids on the state of Nebraska?

You suin' me? YOU . . . suin' . . . ME???

At long last!

The joyous news is carried unto us by The Associated Press:

The music industry's courtroom campaign against people who share songs online is coming under counterattack.

A Harvard Law School professor has launched a constitutional assault against a federal copyright law at the heart of the industry's aggressive strategy, which has wrung payments from thousands of song-swappers since 2003.

The professor, Charles Nesson, has come to the defense of a Boston University graduate student targeted in one of the music industry's lawsuits. By taking on the case, Nesson hopes to challenge the basis for the suit, and all others like it.

Nesson argues that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group - the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA - carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. He also says the music industry group abused the legal process by brandishing the prospects of lengthy and costly lawsuits in an effort to intimidate people into settling cases out of court.

Nesson, the founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said in an interview that his goal is to "turn the courts away from allowing themselves to be used like a low-grade collection agency."

Nesson is best known for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and for consulting on the case against chemical companies that was depicted in the film "A Civil Action." His challenge against the music labels, made in U.S. District Court in Boston, is one of the most determined attempts to derail the industry's flurry of litigation.

The initiative has generated more than 30,000 complaints against people accused of sharing songs online. Only one case has gone to trial; nearly everyone else settled out of court to avoid damages and limit the attorney fees and legal costs that escalate over time.

Nesson intervened after a federal judge in Boston asked his office to represent Joel Tenenbaum, who was among dozens of people who appeared in court in RIAA cases without legal help.

The 24-year-old Tenenbaum is a graduate student accused by the RIAA of downloading at least seven songs and making 816 music files available for distribution on the Kazaa file-sharing network in 2004. He offered to settle the case for $500, but music companies rejected that, demanding $12,000.

The Digital Theft Deterrence Act, the law at issue in the case, sets damages of $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, and as much as $150,000 for a willful violation. That means Tenenbaum could be forced to pay $1 million if it is determined that his alleged actions were willful.