The other Jewish Elvis in Cajun country

The other day, the jailbook (the compilation of local law enforcement arrests I have to read every day) produced three gems. I am now firmly convinced there is a correlation between stupid names and criminal behavior (in depth investigative article to come). As my name is Heath, I, of course, am included in this, I just haven't been caught yet.

On one count each of aggravated assault and speeding is Egyptshia Denis Jarrow. In general, naming your kids after places is silly, but adding a -shia to it? I just don't know.

In the "who didn't see that one coming" category we have, on one count of molestation, Leper Lewis Jr. Yes, Leper, like the colony. His parents must have had a premonition.

Finally, still looking of the real killer, we have Orential James McClain.

Last night, a co-worker of mine was recounting a high school mishap that landed him and his buddies in an "alcohol awareness" program when he came up with this gem:

"Alcohol awareness? We were very aware of alcohol. We were alcoholics."

Let's talk about blue laws. Bottom line, they suck.

A little background:

Main Entry: blue law
Function: noun
Date: 1781
1 : one of numerous extremely rigorous laws designed to regulate morals and conduct in colonial New England
2 : a statute regulating work, commerce, and amusements on Sunday
3 : a cruel punishment sent by God to keep Heath away from drunken weekend entertainment and immersed in internet pornography instead.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Puritans? The worst part of the East Baton Rouge Parish (parish = county in Louisiana) blue laws is that no bar can operate on Sundays and liquor sales are restricted. Basically, the forefathers of this great parish wanted to make the Lord's day as shitty as possible.

For Christ's sake, Heath, you might say, can't you take a break from the evil brew for even one day? Ah, but you see, I work Wed - Sun, which means the bastards who flouted the separation of church and state to erect these fascist laws are costing me my Friday night.

The worst part about it? This isn't even a Puritan area. It's Catholic, and judging from the Catholic side of my family no day is meant to be alcohol-free. If the good Lord gave us alcohol he would certainly want us to rest on the seventh day with a refreshing adult beverage in hand.

Even Albertson's is in on this. They have cleverly detached their liquor store from the main grocery store so that the pariahs drinking themselves into a fiery afterlife can be easily separated from the churchgoing folks innocently buying Ho-Hos. Moreover, this allows the pupeteer at the top of the grocery chain cartel to restrict the hours in which they sell alcohol, doing their part to end all fun, install a strict theocracy and eventually blot out the sun entirely so that the world's landscape matches that of their own cold, dark hearts.

I have gotten several cards wishing me happy holidays recently and, while they did have the effect of making me feel like a bastard for not sending out any cards of my own, this lonely Baton Rouge Jew greatly appreciates the thought this Hannukah.

One card in particular brought me to a very happy conclusion: I still have not outgrown relatives sending money. OK, look, you were thinking the same thing so stop shaking your head at me.

Anyway, when I got this card from my aunt it occurred to me that now that I am nominally adult I may not get the annual handout meant not to be spent in one bar, er, place.

But I have promised myself to use the money wisely, which is why I plan to double it at the casino. Happy holidays.

I am poor. This is not a complaint, as I like to think the nobility of my profession outweighs any financial constraints (you can stop laughing now), it is simply an observation that became all too apparent yesterday.

At the scene of a fire there is water everywhere. Last night at an apartment fire I went to there were six different tankers leaking the stuff in all directions, a steady river flowing out of the parking lot.

And, as I stood there talking to the fire chief an awareness of my finances came seeping in through the growing hole in my year-old sneakers.

Well, I'm off to Payless and then the Waffle House for my $2.25 eggs, grits, toast and jelly breakfast, served with love of course.

Got off work at 11:30 p.m. tonight, beer and cigarette in my hand at 11:35 p.m. After two months as a cop reporter I'm already a caricature of myself.

The other day I dropped my car off at some God-forsaken strip-mall in Baton Rouge to rotate my tires (this is how cool and exciting people like me spend their days off). The service would take about an hour and a half, I was told, so I made a plan to walk down the street about half a mile to a bar/eatery that makes excellent pastrami po' boys (a good compromise between Jewish Heath and the burdgeoning Southerner welling up from within).

So I started my trek from in front of the WalMart Superstore heading towards the sidewalk I assumed would lead me to my destination. Except there was no sidewalk. Anywhere. In fact there wasn't even a crosswalk from any of the strip-mall's exits. In other words, one cannot legally leave Isle Suburbia without a car.

This would have been fine - a little jaywalking never hurt anybody - except that the no sidewalk rule appeared to extend as far as I could see and no pastrami po' boy is worth dodging traffic on a busy four-lane road for half a mile.

So I retreated to what looked like a promising plan B - a bookstore with an attached coffee shop. Kind of lame and yuppie, but also somewhat comforting to this Californian. I should have been tipped off by the name: Books A Million.

Shockingly enough, they didn't have any of the books I was looking for so I headed toward the history section, which was essentially broken up into two categories: "World History," which took up about three shelves, and American History which took up the next 15 or so.

You can imagine how big the Civil, er, War of Northern Aggression section was and, as I was perusing the titles there, I came across two historians the North doesn't want you to know about: James Ronald Kennedy and his twin brother Walter Donald Kennedy.

This tag-team of Southern "history enthusiasts" (lacking the proper degree, I guess, this is how they refer to themselves) set the record straight on the evil Union and it's illegal war.

Their books include "Why Not Freedom! America's Revolt Against Big Government" (shouldn't that be "Why Not Freedom?!"?) and the provocative "Myths of American Slavery."

These, however, pale in comparison to their daring defense of the Confederacy in "The South Was Right!" (with a Confederate flag displayed prominently on the cover) and "Was Jefferson Davis Right?" in which their impenetrable arguments for the South's moral high ground include, uh, well some Northerners were racist, too. Their enthusiasm for exclamation points is matched only by their zeal for the Confederacy, which seems to occassionaly impede their memory.

You see, "Was Jefferson Davis Right?" was published in 1998 but these brothers dim answered that question in 1994 when they published "The South Was Right!" But who can fault these lovable proponents of Southern Culture?

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land...

Went to drum n' bass night at Club Culture tonight. Culture is owned by Olu, a friendly Nigerian guy of mysterious origins who somehow ended up in Baton Rouge. The highlight of the night was watching the obese white DJ fervently spinning records under a poster of Malcolm X which was placed just to the right of a neon Bud Light sign. Too many ironies, too little time.

Those of you who have known me for a while are probably familiar with my well-traveled wallet. Duct-taped and faded I have carried that thing around since I got it for my bar-mitzvah and some of the stray pieces of paper and Giants tickets in there are probably as old as the wallet. Well, now that I have a "real job" which involves dealing with the public and convincing them to talk to me, I can't really look like, you know, a homeless person.

Sadly, every time I pull out my wallet at an interview (when I meet a source for lunch, give someone my card or simply bribe them) I get this puzzled look which is either pity or revulsion, neither of which is really conducive to a good interview.

So today, with a heavy heart, I bought a new wallet. Seriously, I nearly cried.

And it already feels unnatural against my right cheek.

This guy is up for attempted murder, armed robbery and being a homicidal robot from a bad sci-fi movie: DANTROID ARMEL COLLINS

File under "Why I love my job." One of the great things about being a reporter is the oddball people who become reliable sources. Here's a profile of someone: mildly retarded, somewhat hyperactive, dreams of being a firefighter. Not exactly Deep Throat, right? However, this guy, Barry the Scanner-nut, is awesome. All he does is listen to the police and fire scanner all day (we have received messages at 3 a.m. before) and every time he calls us about a fire or a shooting he is dead on. He has been right every single time he's called me, down to the details of the fire damage, and he's definitely picked up on some shit that I and my cohorts missed.

I won't lie to you, it's humbling getting scooped by a retard, but he sure is helpful.

I covered this yesterday and it's just too funny for words. Try to imagine this guy, wearing a ski mask, waddling away from police to freedom with wads of cash and probably stolen Big Macs under his arm:

400-pound man robs McDonald's

Police are looking for a 400-pound man who robbed a Florida Boulevard McDonald's late Friday.

Just before 11 p.m. a masked man armed with a handgun walked into the McDonald's at 9980 Florida Blvd. and ordered an employee to give him money from the cash register, Baton Rouge Police spokesman Capt. Sam Miceli said on Saturday.

The suspect, who is described as a white man between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall and 400 to 450 pounds, fled through a rear door and was seen leaving in a minivan, Miceli said.

The robber was wearing a ski mask, green army style coat, white tennis shoes, white batting gloves, white Polo style shirt and dark pants, Miceli said.

Police describe the getaway van as a dark blue or green older model Dodge Caravan.

And remember, it's OK to laugh at him because he's a criminal. And very fat.

For more fatty fun and a sure ticket straight to Hell check here's a link to Fat Chicks in Party Hats:

http://www.fatchicksinpartyhats.com/

Covered my second building implosion today and, being a jaded veteran implosion reporter now, my only goal for the story was to somehow reference German industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten ("Collapsing New Buildings"). I failed.

Instead I talked about the 200 odd people who showed up at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday to see a building collapse from a shitty vantage point just two weeks after two other buildings were imploded a couple blocks away. This may be the surest sign of the Baton Rouge area's desperation for entertainment.

Oh well, we all know what's going on the front page tomorrow, and it ain't Heath Druzin, that's for sure.

I forgot to mention a nervous laughter moment during my coverage of this overturned tanker truck yesterday. After speeding to the scene, parking on the interstate median and running across the rest of the interstate to get to the scene, I realized I had actually beaten the Hazardous Materials team to the scene, though I was still unsure what substance the truck was carrying. I also got there just in time to hear a sheriff's deputy, who was poking around the wrecked truck, say, "Yep, that's definitely a leak."

After a long and somewhat stressful day of work which included covering a big rig carrying liquid nitrogen which crashed and shut down the freeway connecting New Orleans to Baton Rouge and general bickering with the police, I sat down with a couple friends to a nice, cold Pabst (Peebo for those who know) at the Red Star bar.

As this lowly reporter sat there drinking cheap beer more from necessity than aversion to, say, Guinness, in walked Louisiana Sen. John Breaux's state director. A tall, big, supremely confident-looking black man, he was dressed in an expensive suit with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and two tall blondes dangling from each arm. Upon entering he was immediately surrounded and when the crowd died down he set to lounging in one of the Red Star's plush chairs with his blondes taking turns fawning all over him.

So why is this Political Science major in journalism? Did I mention I got to hang out at an ugly wreck for 2 1/2 hours and argue with cops today?

Yeah.

Well I suppose it was actually Thursday morning technically, but still Wednesday night in California.

What is the best/worst part of starting at 1:30 p.m. each day? Drunk on a Wednesday night.

I took in my first born-again Christian Sunday service yesterday and it was truly a cultural experience. I was at Resurrection Life Center to follow up on a story I wrote last week about the church's pastor, who drowned, along with his son, during a fishing trip.

For the first part of the service the lights were turned off except for a sort of flourescent spotlight on a congregant, backed by the soothing sounds of a synthesizer, who sang a sort of praise Jesus pop for 30 minutes straight.

For the next hour and a half there was a little bit of channeling the Lord, a smattering of divine premonitions and even a little speaking in tongues.

I then realized what a disgrace I am to my religion while I was sitting down to my ham lunch with the congregants after my first church service, though I escaped just before conversion.

Hallelujah!

Here's a link to the story if you're interested (I think this one makes up for my Christmas story):

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/120803/new_church001.shtml

There was a feature on an old LSU football coach, Paul Dietzel, who led the Tigers their last national championship in 1958. He also paints and he titled his painting of a game in the late 50s, when there were still no black players at LSU, "The Way We Were." What else can I say?

More to come tomorrow on born-again Christians and ham - life's been exciting recently and I feel I'm entering a bit of a manic phase, so stay tuned.

The entire 10 O'clock local news broadcast here, save five minutes for weather and the New Orleans Saints' score, was about the LSU football team playing for the national championship, no exaggeration.

Fortunately not much happened tonight. I only had to cover an 18-wheeler carrying a propane tanker sliding down an embankment and jack-knifing, killing the driver when the propane tank detached and crushed the cab of his truck, a train derailment involving 9 cars carrying "unknown substances" and at least four major house fires.

Tired, very tired.

I was sitting in Hymel's Seafood Restaurant (that's ee-mel's you Yankee scum) with a photographer from the paper in beautiful Convent, Louisiana yesterday, staring at my plate of deep-fried chicken, french fries, hushpuppies and toast dripping with butter and I couldn't stop thinking of that Simpsons episode where Moe opens the family restaurant and dips all meals - complete with tray and dishes - into the deep fat fryer.

But it was damn good and the only thing that upstaged my golden bounty was the funniest bread basket I have ever seen. I should say, there was a distinct lack of bread. In fact, our waitress brought us a basket full of saltines and packets of butter. Awesome.

Hymel's is a little rundown brick building next to Bayou Lafourche (that's La-foosh) next to, well, nowhere. And backwater in Louisiana is what backwater was named for. On the menu was an eclectic mix that included frog legs, turtle soup and chicken livers and there was a guy in an orange camoflouge hat with one of the top five best mullets I have ever seen.

The best part of my Hymel's experience, though, was seeing the proprieter of the joint. He looked like, stay with me here, an alligator. I know that sounds weird, but there is no other way to describe his face. He had the strangest, squintiest eyes and both sides of his face pointed diaganol and inwards and seemed to taper like an alligators face.

And living in Convent, Louisiana next to the Bayou as he does, he just may have some alligator in him.

LSU, SEC champs! Was that convincing? I have to get excited about Louisiana State University football becaue everybody else out here is, so I went to a bar with some co-workers tonight and rooted the purple and gold to a convincing win over conference rival Georgia (as if you cared).

A Louisiana health moment during the madness: I was sitting there, somewhat drunk, with a beer in one hand and a deep fried chicken wing and hand-rolled cigarette in the other. Welcome to my heart attack.

I'm going to church tomorrow, more to come when I sober up.

I'm so embarrassed, but here's my Festival of Lights story. Keep in mind, I do write better shit than this. Really.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/120603/new_lights001.shtml

Covering the downtown Nativity scene.

And Santa riding on top of a fire truck, and the Mayor turning on the city Christmas tree lights, and the lighting of the giant menorah - gotcha. Yes, it was the whatever annual downtown Festival of Lights (hmmm, that sounds familiar), a stab at holiday secularism sunk by the live Nativity (with real livestock!), blaring Christian pop and crusifiction reenaction (just kidding).

Anyway, it was cold, windy and beginning to feel a lot like a disgruntled reporter, but I slogged it out and resisted the urge to tell children Santa isn't real and let their parents explain.

So I finally finished and turned in the story. My editor's response? "Not bad for a Jewish kid." I like him.

Working a lot in the more downtrodden neighborhoods of Baton Rouge can certainly take its toll. Broken families, lack of education and high crime go hand in hand with crushing poverty to make for a depressing scene. However, it all becomes worth it when I come across names like this in the jailbook:

SHITREATHA MARIE PRINCE, 20, booked on prostitution

Yes, Shitreatha. Why would a young woman turn to prostitution? Was she abused, abandoned, destitute? I would hazard a guess: her name is Shitreatha. For the duration of her formal education she was accutely aware of her name every waking moment. Be thankful your parents weren't so cruel.

Last night I went with a couple of co-workers and their acid-casualty raver friends to a drum n' bass show at the House of Blues in New Orleans. I went in with next to no knowledge of the genre (other than that Goldie is a scary looking motherfucker). I still don't know much more than that, other than there seems to be no need for either drums or basses in drum n' bass and that white people can't dance in the South either.

Fortunately there were $1.50 drink specials and the entertainment value of watching a Noreweigan DJ in full b-boy outfit (like I know what that means) spinning records while the youth of New Orleans attempted to overcome the effects of their pre-party pills and breakdance. Needless to say, a good time.

Here is the Louisiana bumper sticker of the week, spotted near the State Capitol:

"Squirrel: It's not just for breaksfast anymore."

A clever and ironic take on Louisiana culture or a disturbingly accurate reflection of local cuisine? I'm honestly not sure.

This is so funny, I am going to let it stand on its own. Just for some quick background, Billy Tauzin is a very powerful congressman from Louisiana, you know, the state I live in. This from the Financial Times today:

"If Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, had his way, Louisiana would have another branch of Hooters - a chain of restaurants known more for scantily clad busty waitresses than its cuisine.

But congressional Democrats and renegade Republicans last week blocked a $31bn energy bill, which included a tax incentive that would have helped build another Hooters in his state.

The 'Hooters for Polluters' energy bill was the lates example of the increasing clout of corporate lobbyists on Capitol Hill..."