It could have been worse

Yes of course it is a highly dubious thing to invite large crowds to gather for a public viewing during a pandemic.  Especially when the police have been breaking up funeral processions for months now.  Extra-especially when the spiking numbers of cases has just prompted the city to once again plead with people to avoid large gatherings ahead of the holiday weekend.

But imagine how much worse the Kern funeral would have been if there were no restrictions. I've got a vision of a Mickey Easterling style tableau except in this case Blaine is mounted atop the Smokey Mary and paraded through the streets, limbs animated so he can wave at us, probably.

Actually, now I'm upset that we didn't get to see this.

Self made tyrants

From the Advocate's obit of Blaine Kern this morning.

What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern was to Carnival: a brash, shameless character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional Big Easy empire, and lived unapologetically large and loud as a result.

Ah yes the myth of the "self-made" man. 

Carnival was traditionally the province of the city's Uptown elite. Kern, of German and Italian descent, had been born on the wrong side of the Mississippi River. But his artistic and sales skills afforded him access to Carnival's inner circle. Once there, he aimed to make a difference.

"When I started out, if you were Jewish, black, Irish, Italian, you couldn’t get in these clubs,” he said in 2018. “You had to be a WASP. It was crazy. It was a different world.”

"Once there, he aimed to make a difference."  Did he really, though?  Or was he just in the right place to be useful to an expanding class of business elites at just the right time and make a lot of money in the process?  The Carnival club hierarchy may be more complex, diverse, even, than it once was, but its royalty, so to speak, is still very much a manifestation of wealth and status. Kern may have "come from nothing" but it was only so he and his heirs could arrive in the company of the same owners, bosses, and real estate speculators who profit from the very poverty from which Kern was fortunate enough to emerge. What is the good in that? What difference is made?

It's interesting how often figures like Copeland and Kern, having grown up among poverty and racial exclusion, resolve not to take down these systems of oppression but instead to weasel their way into the oppressing class. 

Tom Benson was another example. There's also some news today about one of his several late in life local brand rescue projects.  

New Orleans has been hoisting Dixie beer for more than a century. Soon, that beer and the company behind it will have a new name.

In a statement released today, Gayle Benson, owner of Dixie Brewery and the city’s Saints and Pelicans franchises said her company will change the Dixie name. The new name for Dixie has not yet been decided, but it will be chosen with feedback from the local community, Benson said.

Poor Gayle. Saddled with this nostalgia product that she now has to reinvent.  Guess the new beer will have to be a "self-made" brand.

Showing off all the locally sourced handicrafts

Blaine Kern's monstrous Halloween parade thingy boasts all sorts of unusual throws.

Costume designer, environmentalist, Bearded Oysters Dance Troupe and Krewe of Kolossos founder and all-around Carnival juggernaut Katrina Brees has a new mission: convince krewes to use locally made throws. In 2012, she founded I Heart Louisiana, an organization that provides krewes with eco-friendly, locally made throws, props, costumes and entertainment. This Saturday, Krewe of Boo will use I Heart Lousiana’s throws in its annual Halloween parade, which rolls at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26 through the perimeter of the French Quarter and into the CBD. Here’s an interview with Brees for more about the throws and I Heart Louisiana’s mission.

Let's not concern ourselves too too much with the term, "all-around Carnival juggernaut" or even the question of whether or not "Katrina Brees" is just about the most lame and cloyingly cliche stage name this side of "Gumbo Party  Robicheaux" or even "Blake Pontchartrain."   Encouraging the use of locally produced throws is a good idea.

Someone will have to explain to me how these throws are more "eco-friendly" than the regular thing, though. Besides the fact that there are likely to be fewer of these, I don't see the big difference. I suppose if it's your purpose to just have less throwing altogether, this works. Maybe if you didn't grow up chasing Carnival throws as a kid, such an idea would be appealing. I wouldn't know.

Anyway, what's most amusing about this is the "eco-friendly" and meticulously local-sourced Halloween parade is quite clearly an event staged with tourists and only tourists in mind.



The route doesn't touch a single neighborhood where you'd find many locals.  But it does hit all the hot spots of the booming hotel scene.

"We are a good, robust market for investors to come in and buy real estate," ( developer Pres)  Kabacoff said.

He said, to investors, New Orleans beats out other cities by topping the list for things such as the high number of entrepreneurs, the most-improved public school system, and one of the highest increases of gross domestic product.

"That encourages an investor to say, 'its okay to invest here,'" Kabacoff said.

However, he warns that if the city is to continue the sharp investment trend, it needs to get a better handle on protecting the coast and eliminating poverty.

"We have to work on both of those, but it's much better to have a robust economy to deal with those issues," Kabacoff said.

More businesses and more hotels means more room for visitors.

Kabacoff says the city tourist commission is working to increase the number of visitors from eight or nine million to 13 or 14 million a year, which will keep the robust economy growing.

I'm tempted to say something about that "most-improved public school system" canard but let's not get bogged down in every lie a callous liar tells when he's in the middle of a good pitch.  I'm more interested in that "robust" target of an additional 5 million annual visitors the tourist commission wants to fly in and let loose all over the adult Disneyland they're building downtown. I wonder how "eco-friendly" that whole thing is.

Update: I've been informed that Katrina Brees is actually Katrina Brees's real name.  And that pretty much eliminates any angle I have to razz her.  I really do support the idea of promoting locally sourced Carnival throws, for what it's worth.

Upperdate: And so now... actual fact checking occurs. Well, okay, more like casual Googling but here we are.

The spanking new Krewe of Kolossos is seeking to “create a new breed of parade,” utilizing tradition while drawing on ideas of environmental sustainability and reuse, art director Steven Donnelly said.

The idea for the krewe came from a partnership with grand marshal-elect Karina Nathan, the artist a.k.a. Katrina Brees. Donnelly’s drum cart creation, a mobile performance art drum show and Nathan’s Bearded Oysters, an all female marching and social group. Both share a love of a good party, and Kolossos was formed with this in mind.

 So there.  "Katrina Brees" Why?

Some day, if I become a very ineffective artist, I may change my name to Karen Ingram.

QOTD 2

"Mardi Gras belongs to me more than anybody else on planet earth."

Blaine Kern being crazy. Besides, doesn't he know Mardi Gras belongs to Rex's trademark lawyers?

Another Hollywood South bomb

Sooner or later everyone who's anyone in Louisiana is going to be involved in a film tax credit scandal of some sort. Today, it's Blaine Kern's turn.

BATON ROUGE - Nearly $1 million in tax credits designed to spur on Louisiana's film industry instead offset the construction costs of Mardi Gras floats built in 2006 by Blaine Kern Artists, according to a report from the legislative auditor's office. The studio claimed the construction of the floats was part of the production cost for "Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras: Building of the Greatest Free Show on Earth," a documentary that was never released for distribution.

Just in case you're interested in ever becoming somebody who is somebody and taking advantage of this program yourself, here's how it works.

1) Figure a way to define whatever it is that you do as being somehow crucial to the "creative cultural character of Louisiana" or some such nonsense. This descriptor can be stretched to apply to just about any activity you can think of such as riding a bike, for example.

2) Take out your mobile phone or your flip cam, or your light remote controlled aircraft and film this culturally significant activity of yours.

3) Say your footage is a "documentary." Call it, "Louisiana Lickin': An In Depth Look At How A New Orleanian Seals His Envelopes" or maybe even "Mr. Ghetto Goes to Wal-Mart" Anything that sounds even remotely saleable.

4) *Poof* Right then and there, you're probably eligible for Louisiana Film Tax Credits. Feel free to hire ex-Saints long snapper Kevin Houser as your sales agent.

Maybe some day an auditor will come knocking at your door asking questions, but hey, "everyone is doing it", so who can complain?

In a voluminous response to the report, attorneys for the company argued that the report singles out Blaine Kern Artists for practices that were widespread among live entertainment documentaries that applied for the tax credit during the same time period. Those productions include Jazz Fest, Voodoo Fest and Essence Fest.

The Hollywood South program is a boondoggle that has cost Louisiana taxpayers billions of dollars but remains untouchable even as the Legislature convenes to consider Governor Jindal's plan to gut public education, mental health (see this week's Gambit not yet online), and state employees' pensions to make up the gap in the budget. But at least, in the process, it has afforded us an opportunity to watch some of our most flamboyant clowns and scoundrels get caught up in hilarious public legal squabbles. Maybe some day someone will turn it into a documentary...

Horse race update

So bored with this. I know there's a Republican debate tonight and I admit that I've been entertained by the ones I've seen so far but I'm probably not gonna watch this one. I decided a few months ago that Romney was always going to be the nominee and today more or less confirms that for me. Wake me up when the actual primaries start... whichever one of them decides to go first.

Meanwhile Bobby Jindal, despite having very quickly endorsed Rick Perry once he became a candidate, has been careful to keep sucking up to all potential Republican power brokers just in case there ends up being an opening in the Romeny Administration's Department of Something Called Volcano Monitoring or whatever.

Despite Jindal's protestations to the contrary, he's as likely to jump on up the ladder now as he ever was. Which means, then, that the increasingly bitter race for Lieutenant Governor could end up being a de facto race for Governor. In which case Jindal wants you to know that he is not trying to hand pick his successor here. No sir, no way. Or maybe he just doesn't want to look like he's doing what David Vitter wants.

Either way it's unfortunate since it basically leaves Kevin Costner, Sammy Kershaw, and Blaine Kern to do the anointing in his stead. As a system of government, that's not exactly strange women lying in ponds distributing swords but it's perhaps uncomfortably close.

I, for one, am pleased

Aside from the pseudo-celebrity spectacle, I'm very interested in seeing what happens when the Kerns' and their elite clients' finances and business relationships are scrutinized in court. Call it a fishing expedition.