Gerald Cannon

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared August 1, 2011.

It was the last day of jury duty for this particular cattle call. No one wanted to be chosen – especially for the murder case requiring a voir dire that day. Maybe an additional month! Maybe sequestered in an Airline Highway motel! Oh, god, how bad could this semiannual nightmare get?

One hundred and fifty people were called for voir dire on the Big Murder Case. He was one. Almost the entire pool had their immediate futures on the line. The courtroom seated the whole group. A sub-set of fourteen was called in each round for questioning in the jury box. The usual. “Do you know the defendant?” “Have you been a victim of crime?” and – wait a minute! “Would you be reluctant to return a verdict of guilty knowing that several witness feel too intimidated to testify in court?” Why is everyone saying no to what seems to me a pretty important little question? A small window opened.

Derek Bridges

Note: This post originally appeared August 29, 2010. I thought it might be relevant to run again in light of the encroaching demise of the Times-Picayune.

We were supposed to have a garage sale on Sunday, August 28, 2005.   We had recently moved into a house we bought in Central City and had cleaned out our old Broadmoor apartment and planned to sell the odds and ends that didn’t make it to our new home.  It was to be the final hurrah of our move.  Suffice to say we evacuated the night before and the garage sale never happened.  I didn’t get back into town for another three weeks, but there on the second floor of our old apartment’s stoop was our last Times-Picayune, still in the plastic and dry.  I tossed the paper in the car and drove back to Houston.  I finally pulled that newspaper out of its plastic bag this weekend.

G Bitch

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared July 1, 2011.

cross-posted at The G Bitch Spot

Bear attacks. Shootings. Stabbings. Airplane crashes. Rapes. A lot of rapes. Kidnappings and hostage situations. Random violence and planned lunacy or evil. Horrific child abductions. Serial killers. Leftist guerillas. I am addicted to “I Survived…” on Biography, sneaking in bits and chunks and back-to-back episodes when no one else is home. I call attackers “animals” outloud and curse them and cheer survivors and marvel that the man who survives a bear attack mourns the bear being killed “for safety reasons.” I cringe as women, in various states of physical distress and injury, do anything to save their children or quietly acquiesce to evil to stall for time, think a way out, or just not die right away. The common threads—I survived because I didn’t want my parents to have to bury meI survived because God had a different plan for me/knew my work on earth wasn’t doneI survived because I stayed calm and alertI survived because I didn’t want to die thereI survived because I didn’t want him/them/to winI survived…I don’t know why, I just did.

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Tom Long

I love the smell inside my helmet. A lingering mixture of exhaust, lubricant, Simple Green, Nivea aftershave, blooming trees and asphalt awakens my senses every time I hit the starter button, put on my lid and secure the chin strap.

I don’t drive much. Haven’t had the need to in the past 15 years since I commute to work via the L. My 2002 VW Beetle only just turned 36,000 last week. Driving in these parts is for suckers. Relegated to a grinding task, usually in the worst times of the day, nobody gets pleasure out of driving anymore. Sure, you can have a Maserati, but there’s nowhere you can’t drive 185. So, what’s the point? But riding is almost nothing but pleasure — especially once you get outside the city boundaries.

Seeing as how I am generally antisocial and such, I usually don’t go riding with other people very often. I got into riding long after all my friends outgrew it, broke body parts or had families, so I’ve always felt a bit at a disadvantage hanging with tuners and thus kept my distance. But every now and then I get together with my buddy Kevin in Geneva and we hit the road from there. Scooter rides a BMW RS1100 and I keep pace on my Ducati Monster 620.

Traffic was light Sunday morning as I headed south down Western Avenue to I-290 on my way out to Geneva. I pulled up to the light at the six corners of Elston, Diversey and Western as a flash mob — I think that’s what the kids call them  —  of about a dozen hipster nerds in unitards performed a dance with water bottles. And me without my camera. I said to myself, “Lou, it’s the beginning of a great adventure.”

B2L2