REAL ART GOES TO LOUISIANA
or
REAL ART GOES BACK TO COLLEGE

I have returned.

My wife and I are now in Baton Rouge, and life seems to be slowly reverting to some semblance of normalcy--I found my wedding ring, which was less than a foot away from where I thought I placed it; my computer is now repaired and the laptop is back in the closet (thanks to my buddy Kevin); I have a new high-speed internet provider (bye-bye AOL in a week or so). The dreary existence of teaching in Baytown and living on the stinky east side of Houston are now but a memory: the heaviness of living in Bush country, the depression coming from my work as a well paid prison guard in the soft-touch gulag known as Sterling High School are finally starting to lift. I'm already starting to feel like a new person.

Baton Rouge is a really cool city, and LSU has a beautiful campus. I haven't quite put my finger on it, but it simply feels like a different place, and I don't mean the weather, because it's virtually the same as in Houston. Perhaps it's the strange history of Louisiana; perhaps it's because I'm really living in the South for the first time. I don't know, but I'm sure as hell not in Texas anymore.

I made an advance scouting trip to campus Friday to drop off some papers and get a feel for the place. I'm much closer to school than I was in my UT days: it only took me fifteen minutes to walk to the drama building. And once I was there, I got a nice little rush of euphoria: I'm still having trouble believing that I actually made it into grad school. As I peeked into their lab theater space, I thought, "Wow, I'm going to be studying acting again; I'm going to be an actor!" This really is a major change of personal identity for me, a reinstatement of the person I once believed myself to be. Working in public education was the biggest mistake I've ever made; grad school is a gift I'm giving myself to make up for that. Time to get on with my life.

Forgive me if I sound gushy. I'm in the middle of a major transition here. For the better.

Anyway, here are some other observations about being in Baton Rouge. This is a college town, and I live in a college neighborhood: I was talking to my neighbors the other day, a couple of young grad students, and within two minutes we were discussing Noam Chomsky; in Houston, I didn't talk to my neighbors, let alone kick around leftist politics and news media analysis.

Speaking of the media, I've taken the brave step of downgrading my cable service. I figured that there wasn't much on to watch, anyway, so we're getting what our cable service calls "limited basic." It's twenty bucks cheaper, and it's bare bones in the way of channels: we've got two PBS stations, all the local broadcast stations, some shopping channels, a couple of fundamentalist-evangelical stations, a Catholic channel (welcome to Louisiana), and an all news station provided by the cable company, Cox. I'll miss South Park, I suppose, but downsizing my TV experience is a step in the right direction. TV's a damned drug. There's still nothing on to watch, but I figure it out much more quickly now, which is good given that I expect school to keep me busy--indeed, I worry about time to devote to Real Art, but I'll work it out somehow.

The fact that Cox has its own news channel here coupled with the fact that the local daily newspaper, the Advocate, is owned by the local ABC affiliate makes me wonder if Baton Rouge is one of those media consolidation hell-pits I've heard about. Of course the entire country is a media consolidation hell-pit, but I've read about cities where it's even worse--you know, places where Clear Channel owns, like, seven radio stations, and the cable company owns a couple of television stations, that sort of thing. I haven't really looked into it, but maybe I should. Thank god for the internet.

While I'm talking about media consolidation hell-pits, I'm in a bit of a quandary about news now that I've left Houston. The above mentioned local daily really sucks. Really sucks. As far as I can tell, it seems to be more of a companion piece to it's owner's news programming: lots of sensationalism paired with Associated Press wire reports. It's layout looks like crap, too. Not to mention the lame-o website. I never thought I'd say this, but I really miss the Houston Chronicle; at least it's a real newspaper. For now, I'm going to keep on using the Chronicle as my major mainstream news source until I settle on something else.

You know, Baton Rouge is the captiol of Louisiana. It seems like they'd have a better paper, like Austin does in Texas. But no, just crap. What a shame.

Just to drive the point home, the Advocate, along with it's brethren TV news shows, is pounding away at a bloody murder story. It's some alleged serial killer on trial for some bloody killing. It's like Scott Peterson out here, wall-to-wall coverage that ignores every other murder in town. The Advocate has even established a blog to track day-to-day events. Here's the kicker: the alleged murderer is an African-American man; the victim is a white woman. No one in the local media seems to note any racism implicit in sensationalizing the story. I guess I really am in the South now.

Also in the local news is this (which hit the Chronicle site well before it hit the Advocate's site):

Democratic Louisiana congressman switches to GOP

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Rep. Rodney Alexander switched his party affiliation to Republican on Friday -- making the surprise flip in the last minute of registration for the Nov. 2 ballot, virtually assuring the seat for the GOP.

Alexander, who ran as a Democrat to win his first congressional term but voted along conservative lines, had remained a Democrat Wednesday when he registered at the start of qualifying. At the time he said, "I'm not ashamed to be a Democrat, but I vote what I think the people of the 5th District want me to represent."

Alexander said Friday he had been struggling with his conservative votes for two years -- backing the Bush tax cuts as well as the war in Iraq -- and noted they had brought him criticism from Democrats.

"I just decided it would be best for me to switch parties, that I would be more effective in the 5th District in the state of Louisiana as a Republican," he said.

Click here for the rest.

Welcome to Louisiana. At first, I thought that this most recent turncoat Democrat was our representative, but I was wrong. Our guy is Richard Baker, already a Republican.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

At least Louisiana, unlike Texas, has two Democrat Senators, and one is a woman. On the flip side, John Breaux, in my humble opinion, barely qualifies as a Democrat. But, hey, Mary Landrieu is a real babe, that's for sure.

Man, this is one weird state. I'm gonna go eat some crawfish.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$