Lagniappe Mobile Blog

Nostalgia is a disease affecting millions of Americans, and leading experts say there may be a correlation between trips down memory lane and age. What this has to do with a hustler named Bobby and the old Mobile Greyhound Bus Station is inconclusive, but this exclusive Lagniappe column may unlock clues local historians have long sought in their efforts to pinpoint the exact location of twenty-seven mile bluff and dissect a published slight against persons residing in West Mobile.

Coming up in the Boston music scene can be tough if you’re not into the hardcore or Celtic punk sounds, but Bang Camaro (comprised of 30+ members) has exploded out of this fickle scene with an old school metal sound that has been burning up the ears of listeners nationwide. Check out my conversation with founding members Alex Necochea and Bryn Bennet in the latest issue of the Nappie.

OK, maybe it wasn’t very moving in the usual way this week. No hostility and no kicking around the local politicos. But it’s what’s going on in my life right now. And after all, moving sucks! Hope you enjoy the column, either way.

Frankly, the moving experience is about as much fun as losing a major limb in a wheat thresher.

Feel sorry for me.

People often wonder why many of us believe the arts as integral to education, joining the ranks of more traditional subject matter. Well, now research from a group of institutions has data that seems to indicate arts not only improve and “round out” our humanity but that one form may, in itself, improve the entire learning process for kids.

Check it out in this issue’s Artifice.

Here is a short slideshow I created concerning 15 Place, one of the Homeless Shelters in Mobile. Its about a minute long and worth your time.

For some reason our blog will not take the embed code, so you can view it here.

cheers -Dan Anderson

This week’s column makes a feeble attempt to shame Mobile County into beginning to think about a real stormwater management plan - like Baldwin County. But it’s also true that BC is throwing the baby out with the wash through unrrestrained development, both residential and commercial. The Bass Pro Shop is an awful example of the problems created - and this is an “outdoors” firm that profits directly from having clean water?

The 2007-2008 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, a program of the Southern Arts Federation, concludes with “Willow Garden and Other Short Films” by Jim Haverkamp.  The program is set for Tuesday, April 29 at 6:45 PM
in Bernheim Hall (Mobile Public Library, Ben May Main Library, 701
Government St) The screening will be followed by a discussion session with
Haverkamp and a reception. Admission is free.

It has been exciting to have this film series roll through town and I am delighted that it’s coming back next year. The last screening was very well-attended. Let me know if you check it out tonight, and what you thought about the film.

It was not shocking or surprising when I read Boozie’s coverage of the Widespread Panic show arrests (aka Christmas for Orange Beach PD). I did have some serious deja vu from 2002 with Birmingham law enforcement’s “Operation Don’t Panic” where 200 people were arrested. Orange Beach PD are infamous for being hard-nosed, merciless law dogs that live to bust for anything and everything. Once upon a time in the long long ago, I thought I was going to be a chef and spent the summer before my senior year in high school doing my apprenticeship at Zeke’s. One of my memories from that experience (besides meeting Boudoir Soirees CEO Donna Bryant) was a four-lane roadblock on Gulf Beach Highway on the Fourth of July after I had worked a 12-13 hour shift. After waiting in line for an hour, I was then taken out of my vehicle, interrogated, and given a DUI test. At the end of the DUI test, I was asked to say the ABC’s backwards to which I replied, “Look, I just got off work, I’m tired, and I have to get back up in a few hours to go back to work. I cannot say my ABC’s backwards. So, just call my father, and he’ll come over here and get me out.” They let me go after that. So, I reiterate that the widespread (yeah, it’s a pun) drug arrests were not surprising.

What is shocking and surprising to me is that this didn’t happen the first time the Spreadheads invaded Orange Beach. I assumed that they would let everybody enjoy the show and set up roadblocks immediately afterwards. Since I am a betting man, I would have bet some serious money on this, and I was dumbfounded when they didn’t. I thought, “Well, maybe they used their financial sense to realize that the revenue generated from the show, The Wharf, the restaurants, the hotels, etc. overshadows the money they made busting a couple of hundred NON-VIOLENT offenders on minor possession and paraphernalia charges.” I guess I was wrong.

It is also shocking that The Wharf is kowtowing in this situation by reports from the local news saying that they are asking Widespread Panic not to return. I know that they must cooperate with local officials, but didn’t this three-day show put some money in the Orange Beach pockets? They may be using their smarty brains, word of things like this get around Stonerdom pretty fast, and they might see a lackluster turn-out at the box office if the have them back. At least we know that the next time Widespread decides to play the area, then it will be in the Port City, and the drive will be shorter.

I don’t know if anyone saw Channel 10 tonight, but they ran a story prefaced with all the anger and disgust Bob and the new gal could muster. The story, about a guy in Florida who got his 85-year-old granny suffering from dementia to pretend to be a gangsta for a video he was doing, was run despite the anchor’s warnings that it was disturbing, or disgusting or some other such thing.

Number one, the story’s from Florida, so what the hell do we care about it? Number two, if it’s so damn disgusting and horrific, why run it? Number three, it’s not like the kid hurt granny, all he did was have her dress funny, wave a pistol and curse. My grandmother did that all the time. Elder abuse? Not quite. Stupid? Perhaps. Funny? Well, SOME people might think so.

But I get so tired of the local stations scouring the world for outrageous stories, then breathlessly telling us how awful what they’re about to show us is. Wouldn’t the space be better used for doing some more in-depth reporting? Letting the meteorologist develop a weather boner over light rain and humidity every night for 10 minutes, then hitting us with some supposedly disgusting video from WeeWaw, Wisconsin just doesn’t make sense to me.

We’ve got plenty of perverts right here in River City. Get out there and find them! Then the anchors can tsk, tsk our local pervs at least. Really, most of the time watching more than the first five minutes of the local news seems superfluous. WPMI often leads with this stuff, too, or features it as their second story. Certainly there’s a story on the guy who was walking down Spring Hill Ave. in a housecoat yesterday. I bet he’s abused someone recently, or been abused.

Get local and stay local, guys. And please cut back on the weather unless something’s actually happening.

The famous glint of fiscal determination returned to the eyes of Merceria Ludgood on April 14 in a stand-off with a city contractor who held her ground in a campaign to reverse Mobile’s eight year long technical brain drain. Bring the smarty boys back home to, as they pronounce it in Seattle, “Mo-bull.”

Engrained in our charming lexicon: TK, EADS,NG, Airbus. With tax-abated breath, with timid bank accounts we await our capitalist heroes. In anticipation, BPM’s “Come Back to Mobile” campaign has been soliciting resumes , but so has another group, Mobile Works, and Commissioner Ludgood squared off with Jane Birdwell of Birdwell Photography & Multimedia over proposed amendment to the BMP contract to add 200K. . .

Also showing: News about The Cimarron Club, irrate home owners re: two new subdivisions, Home insurance reform in south Mobile county, braying over a brood of mounted horses and awards to Lamar Advertising and Clear Channel Radio for you’ll never guess what . . .