Friday night, my so-called wife took me to see Sade at the New Orleans Arena. She spoiled me rotten (as usual) with awesome seats on the floor for a show I can only describe as mind-blowing. Sade has hardly aged at all and still sounds absolutely amazing. To be sure, her voice has matured to some degree but she still hits every note and has such magnificent control over her voice that it is truly not to be believed. In this day and age of expensive shows by cheap artists, Sade is a marvel. The show itself was beautifully lit and produced but never overwhelmed the artist's presence onstage. The minimalist stage set & superb use of visual FX like scrims & back projected images were simply entrancing without being obtrusive.
The concert was a welcome distraction from my current situation which is: still seeking work and rapidly coming to the end of my savings as the bills keep coming in.
Another welcome distraction came earlier this evening in the form of a phone call from my dear friend & ex-classmate, Mad Martha. Just as I was about to put a frozen pizza in the oven she called with an invitation to dinner with a little Escrabble (Spanish Scrabble) afterwards. We went over to Juicy Lucy's on N. Carrollton, where we enjoyed cheese stuffed burgers (mine had bacon too--YUM).
We went over to Z'otz Coffeeshop on Oak St, and we were playing at one of the tables on the sidewalk outside, talking crazy when I heard a crash from behind me and as I turned around to look, I saw this big red dooly (sp?) truck swerving straight towards us, out of control, with its rear end lifting up off the street. Mercifully there was a car parked in between it & us and the truck hit the car in front of us & then drove off. Plenty of people (including the girl who was working at the coffee shop) ran behind the fleeing truck, calling for people to take down the license plate number. Within a couple of minutes, we saw the truck come around the corner and then keep driving. All this time there are loads of people milling around, talking about what had just happened. This truck had hit not one but two parked cars. The owner of the first car (i.e. not the one that blocked us from certain death) came down from a bar a block away to give someone the license plate number of the truck when she realized that her car was one of the ones that had been hit.
She called 911 and gave the police all the info she had & right after she got off the phone, the truck's driver came up, wanting to give her his information. This guy was talking crazy and was clearly high or drunk but gave her his driver's license and address and everything & even left a note on the other car he'd hit but then he took off. Everyone was telling him he needed to stay there until the police came or face Hit & Run charges but he wasn't hearing it. When someone pointed out how much damage he had done, he just sort of shook his head and chuckled. Then he proceeded to walk off. Short of actually tying him up, there was no way to keep him there (plus I don't think anyone wanted to fight with some drunk) so he just carried on.
About an hour later we managed to wave down a passing policeman and tell him the situation, and he took the info that Miss Woman had and took off & a bit later an officer showed up in response to the 911 call to take everyone's statements. He gave all of us witnesses report forms to fill out and we did that.
Mad Martha & I continued our game of Escrabble, but as the adrenaline wore off we started to really think about how much worse it could have been. We were both pretty paralyzed with shock when that truck was hurtling towards us and I'm not sure we could have gotten out of the way in time. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that I have some kind of PTSD from this or anything but DAMN that was a close one.
This little incident makes me want to work harder at being grateful for my blessings and not focus so hard on my shortcomings, because it all could have been taken away in an instant with no warning , or even any active participation on my part.
So thank you, first and foremost to Elisha & Mad Martha but also to all of my friends, family & just plain folks who think kindly of me from time to time!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Tot Mom: The Movie Casting
So in this media induced feeding frenzy, there has been a lot of talk about books that Casey Anthony might write or TV movies or what have you. My friend Matty & I came up with our dream cast for a Tot Mom film:
Casey Anthony--Jennifer Love Hewitt in her latest comeback. Jose Baez, defense attorney--Marc Anthony
Cheney Mason, his co-counsel--Malcolm McDowell
Caylee Anthony--Suri Cruise in her debut role.
George Anthony--an aged-up Sean Penn or Philip Seymour Hoffman out of makeup & in a grey wig.
Cindy Anthony--Allison Janney, I'm already feeling an Oscar buzz here.
Lee Anthony--James Franco
Judge Belvin Perry--Robert Guillaume. Yes, Benson.
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton--Josh Taylor AKA Roman Brady on Days of Our Lives.
Asst. Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick--Camryn Manheim
Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, the imaginary nanny--Rosie Perez
Amy Huizenga, Casey's friend whose checks she stole--Drew Barrymore
Dr Jan Garavaglia, Medical Examiner--Herself
With a cameo appearance by Jack Black as the guy who shot the bird at Jeff Ashton from the courtroom audience and got 6 days in jail & about $700 in fines for it.
And RuPaul as the Bailiff!!
Of course, no film about tot mom can ignore the media aspect so we've decided on Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, & Lisa Lisa to play HLN talking heads Nancy Grace, Jean Casarez & Jane Velez-Mitchell!!
Casey Anthony--Jennifer Love Hewitt in her latest comeback. Jose Baez, defense attorney--Marc Anthony
Cheney Mason, his co-counsel--Malcolm McDowell
Caylee Anthony--Suri Cruise in her debut role.
George Anthony--an aged-up Sean Penn or Philip Seymour Hoffman out of makeup & in a grey wig.
Cindy Anthony--Allison Janney, I'm already feeling an Oscar buzz here.
Lee Anthony--James Franco
Judge Belvin Perry--Robert Guillaume. Yes, Benson.
Prosecutor Jeff Ashton--Josh Taylor AKA Roman Brady on Days of Our Lives.
Asst. Prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick--Camryn Manheim
Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, the imaginary nanny--Rosie Perez
Amy Huizenga, Casey's friend whose checks she stole--Drew Barrymore
Dr Jan Garavaglia, Medical Examiner--Herself
With a cameo appearance by Jack Black as the guy who shot the bird at Jeff Ashton from the courtroom audience and got 6 days in jail & about $700 in fines for it.
And RuPaul as the Bailiff!!
Of course, no film about tot mom can ignore the media aspect so we've decided on Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, & Lisa Lisa to play HLN talking heads Nancy Grace, Jean Casarez & Jane Velez-Mitchell!!
Trial By Twitter
I know it's been a long time since I've written but I have been so wrapped up in the Casey Anthony you wouldn't believe it. Now that my jobs at Tulane & UNO have both ended, I have had lots of free time (when not working on translation and job-seeking) to watch the trial on HLN. And post about it on Facebook. And read other ppl's tweets about it (although I haven't gotten a Twitter acct just yet). And watch videos of it on CNN.com. And read what the Orlando Sentinel's website has to say about it. I even became FB friends with Richelle Carey from HLN just so I could read her posts about the trial while I was working on my translation project.
Casey Anthony was accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
The trial itself lasted just over a month but Casey Anthony has been on trial in the court of public opinion for about 3 years now, mostly thanks to Nancy Grace's continous harping on "Tot Mom". Miss Anthony was just declared not guilty of all the charges except for providing false information to police officers. Needless to say, my cell phone BLEW UP when this news came in. Naturally I was watching HLN's coverage of the verdict at the time. I see that loads of folks on FB are outraged & I'm sure Nancy Grace is having a fit of apoplexy right about now but my DVR has been on pause since the verdict was announced.
Nancy Grace's show gives her an opportunity to do what she couldn't do when she was a prosecutor: present inflammatory, skewed information to an apathetic public, whom she whips into a frenzy via the repetition of key phrases: "Justice for Caylee" "Tot Mom Went out PARTYING while the baby was missing" "Caylee's body was wrapped up like trash" "Caylee's body was found only 15 houses from the Anthony home!!" "The baby was tested for Ketamine--a DATE RAPE drug!!!!" Never mind that Caylee was tested for EVERY drug, Nancy Grace has to make it out as if Ketamine was the only thing the baby's body was tested for, and it just HAD to be because the police had evidence of the baby being drugged. The fact was & is that they NEVER had solid evidence of Casey Anthony's guilt, only a strange, sad set of circumstances.
I can't claim not to have been affected by all of this media coverage on the case. Based on HLN's night time lineup--Jane Velez-Mitchell, Nancy Grace, & Dr Drew--there was never any doubt that despite our "innocent until proven guilty" principle, HLN believed this woman was as guilty as hell & never really gave much airtime to the Defense's case, except the most outlandish aspects of it. There was plenty of coverage about searches on Casey Anthony's computer (84 I believe) for "chloroform" that were found by some IT expert. However, the fact that these searches didn't show up until a SECOND scan was done on the computer (which took this expert over 12 hours to make work). If I hadn't watched the entire closing arguments (the only time that HLN didn't incessantly break in with commercials, btw) I might have missed that on the 1st search on Casey's computer, the experts found NO mention of chloroform and 84 accesses to Myspace. Now this makes more sense to me. Once you look up how to make chloroform, why would you need to go back 40 times? It is more reasonable to me to expect someone to use myspace 40 times. Never mind that it is not 100% clear whether it was Casey who was actually using the computer at that time. HLN also never mentioned that the original State's Medical Examiner found no evidence of homicide & ONLY focussed on what celebrity Medical Examiner, Dr G (Jan Garavaglia) had to say about Caylee's remains, which had been gnawed on by animals.
But this is not really the point I was trying to make in the first place. Casey Anthony was arrested & accused of murdering her child because Casey Anthony lies. (She made up this whole elaborate fantasy about her Caylee being with a nanny, not to mention some story about a non-existent boyfriend & his children, and plenty more besides). She also steals (from her own grandfather's retirement home fund! Her best friend, Amy's checkbook!). And she ran around acting like a party girl for the 1st 31 days after her daughter went missing!!
But does the fact that someone behave abhorrently make it OK for us to lynch her? Jane Velez-Mitchell made a great point recently when she mentioned that this is the 1st trial to take place via social media. People receive sensationalistic information and then react on FB, Twitter, etc without knowing the whole story. People hate this Casey Anthony woman because she didn't act like we wanted her to. Never mind that she didn't "act" the way we expect a murderer to act--for example, by leaving town, hiding out, or trying to change her identity. At the end of the day though, the state's case really just boiled down to "Don't you just hate her? She was the last person to be seen with the baby, therefore she must have killed the baby, therefore we should put her to death!!"
I thought Casey Anthony's lawyer, Jose Baez, made a lot of mis-steps during this trial--not the least of which being to accuse Casey's dad of molesting her since age 8 in his opening statement--but his closing arguments were little short of genius. He easily poked holes in the State's flimsy case and pointed out how much reasonable doubt there really is where this case is concerned. Once you go beyond the sound bites and really look at the "evidence," there really isn't very much there.
Casey Anthony was accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
The trial itself lasted just over a month but Casey Anthony has been on trial in the court of public opinion for about 3 years now, mostly thanks to Nancy Grace's continous harping on "Tot Mom". Miss Anthony was just declared not guilty of all the charges except for providing false information to police officers. Needless to say, my cell phone BLEW UP when this news came in. Naturally I was watching HLN's coverage of the verdict at the time. I see that loads of folks on FB are outraged & I'm sure Nancy Grace is having a fit of apoplexy right about now but my DVR has been on pause since the verdict was announced.
Nancy Grace's show gives her an opportunity to do what she couldn't do when she was a prosecutor: present inflammatory, skewed information to an apathetic public, whom she whips into a frenzy via the repetition of key phrases: "Justice for Caylee" "Tot Mom Went out PARTYING while the baby was missing" "Caylee's body was wrapped up like trash" "Caylee's body was found only 15 houses from the Anthony home!!" "The baby was tested for Ketamine--a DATE RAPE drug!!!!" Never mind that Caylee was tested for EVERY drug, Nancy Grace has to make it out as if Ketamine was the only thing the baby's body was tested for, and it just HAD to be because the police had evidence of the baby being drugged. The fact was & is that they NEVER had solid evidence of Casey Anthony's guilt, only a strange, sad set of circumstances.
I can't claim not to have been affected by all of this media coverage on the case. Based on HLN's night time lineup--Jane Velez-Mitchell, Nancy Grace, & Dr Drew--there was never any doubt that despite our "innocent until proven guilty" principle, HLN believed this woman was as guilty as hell & never really gave much airtime to the Defense's case, except the most outlandish aspects of it. There was plenty of coverage about searches on Casey Anthony's computer (84 I believe) for "chloroform" that were found by some IT expert. However, the fact that these searches didn't show up until a SECOND scan was done on the computer (which took this expert over 12 hours to make work). If I hadn't watched the entire closing arguments (the only time that HLN didn't incessantly break in with commercials, btw) I might have missed that on the 1st search on Casey's computer, the experts found NO mention of chloroform and 84 accesses to Myspace. Now this makes more sense to me. Once you look up how to make chloroform, why would you need to go back 40 times? It is more reasonable to me to expect someone to use myspace 40 times. Never mind that it is not 100% clear whether it was Casey who was actually using the computer at that time. HLN also never mentioned that the original State's Medical Examiner found no evidence of homicide & ONLY focussed on what celebrity Medical Examiner, Dr G (Jan Garavaglia) had to say about Caylee's remains, which had been gnawed on by animals.
But this is not really the point I was trying to make in the first place. Casey Anthony was arrested & accused of murdering her child because Casey Anthony lies. (She made up this whole elaborate fantasy about her Caylee being with a nanny, not to mention some story about a non-existent boyfriend & his children, and plenty more besides). She also steals (from her own grandfather's retirement home fund! Her best friend, Amy's checkbook!). And she ran around acting like a party girl for the 1st 31 days after her daughter went missing!!
But does the fact that someone behave abhorrently make it OK for us to lynch her? Jane Velez-Mitchell made a great point recently when she mentioned that this is the 1st trial to take place via social media. People receive sensationalistic information and then react on FB, Twitter, etc without knowing the whole story. People hate this Casey Anthony woman because she didn't act like we wanted her to. Never mind that she didn't "act" the way we expect a murderer to act--for example, by leaving town, hiding out, or trying to change her identity. At the end of the day though, the state's case really just boiled down to "Don't you just hate her? She was the last person to be seen with the baby, therefore she must have killed the baby, therefore we should put her to death!!"
I thought Casey Anthony's lawyer, Jose Baez, made a lot of mis-steps during this trial--not the least of which being to accuse Casey's dad of molesting her since age 8 in his opening statement--but his closing arguments were little short of genius. He easily poked holes in the State's flimsy case and pointed out how much reasonable doubt there really is where this case is concerned. Once you go beyond the sound bites and really look at the "evidence," there really isn't very much there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)