Mid-City Poet’s Suicide Attempt Obvious Plea for Attention

When Brobson Lecroix returned home Wednesday night to his Fauborg St. John home to find his poet wife asleep with her head rested on the open oven door, he knew she was in one of those moods.

“I’m good about telling her just what time I’ll be home, so she’ll time it just right,” Lecroix said.

This time, however, Beverly Lecroix’s cry for help was uniquely pathetic.

“She knows full well, and she knows I know, that we don’t have gas service yet,” said Lecroix, a tenured professor of political science who has opted for early retirement.

Beverly Lecroix, a fixture on the open mike poetry circuit, “is good for a stunt like this every few months,” according to her husband. “She’ll start claiming that I don’t truly understand her, that no one does, and on and on like that. But I thought the real problems of the city would snap her out of that nonsense. Guess I was wrong.”

Still, Mr. Lecroix conceded that the last few weeks have been lonely. “She used to have her ‘support network,’ as she called it, of people down at the Fair Grinds Coffee Shop. And now that I’m playing a lot of golf, and driving long distances to do so, she spends quite a bit of time alone.”

Remaining neighbors in the relatively unscathed Esplanade Ridge area of Mid-City were horrified at the narcissism of Mrs. Lecroix’s gesture. But Uptowner Rhoda Perry, a good friend at co-founder of the Chicory Chicks Poetry group with Mrs. Lecroix, was more sympathetic.

“With so many suicides on tap for the holiday season all over this ravaged city,” Perry said. “Beverly didn’t want to be ignored. Who can’t understand that?”

Mrs. Lecroix misses her 'support network' at Fairgrinds, on Ponce de Leon.

In a surprise move,Toastmasters International, Dyan 'Mama D' French Cole was nominated for the 2006 "World Champion of Public Speaking" competition.

"The leading movement devoted to making effective oral communication a worldwide reality," Toastmasters International sponsors public speaking group, seminars, and competitions to foster verbal skills, most often for the business community.

In a press release, Johnny Uy of Cebu City, Philippines, Senior Vice President of Toastmasters International, wrote that "Mama D has opened up the whole field of verbal forensics. Her ability to articulate abstract conspiracy theories while "keeping it real." She's become an inspiration to us."

Beaming, Uy continued. "We'd been keeping an eye on her since she first made national news during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but her performance last week before the House Select Bipartisan Committee was impressive. That bit about 'Ba-boom!' Did you see the look on[Rep. Christopher] Shays' face? Now that's persuasion"

Regarding the competition, Uy remarked "it is tough. Our organization is world-wide. Toastmasters International, son! Chapters come from all over the world, similar to Bloodsport. It's the kumite of elocution. But New Orleanians has nothing to worry about, with Mama D representing them. The Toastmasters have no time for haters."

Electricity, Elitism Return to Offbeat’s Headquarters

We read with a heavy heart the wildly unprescient pre-Apocalyptic “Dis n’ Dat” column filed by former Where Y’at brain and current Offbeat writer Michael Jastroch on their website:

“If for some strange reason you happen to pick this up on or before the release date of August 29, please saunter over to the Blue Nile for free pizza by Rotolo’s and a free concert by this month’s cover subject, talented country-rocker Shannnon McNally. If it’s after August 29 or you missed our fete for some stupid reason, then you missed a rip roaring good time and everyone was gossiping about you.”

Ah, to be scolded before the fact for not knowing where to be and what to listen to!! Those were the days when we could on the fact that, as Jastroch wrote with failed irony, “we here at OffBeat magazine are so enamored with our vastly superior music coverage.”

Concern grew over whether Offbeat could return to its former glory. Who could replace it? In a review of a Mingus Big Band release, Michael Dominici might as well have been talking about Offbeat when he wrote:

“There are those that leave a legacy so gigantic that not only is it nearly impossible to fill their shoes, but, even to walk in their footsteps. Inevitably, their imitators follow and most fail miserably. The main reason for this is that the complexities of the originator tend to be a unique meld of historical, personal, political, and geographical situations that simply cannot be duplicated without seeming trite and ridiculous.”

But our eyes dried when we clicked over to the current record reviews and read that the old Offbeat superiority was intact. And we remember, once again, why we don’t have to seem “trite and ridiculous,” not when as long as we have Offbeat:

>>From Michael Dominici

“Fans of Norah Jones, Diana Krall, and Madeleine Peyroux owe it to themselves to discover Susie Arioli.”

>>From Dan Willging:

“Initially, Ronnie Mathews and Throwdown sound like the next posers to the worshipped throne of zydecajun king Wayne
Toups.”

>>From Robert Fontenot:

"Unless you hung out on Chicago’s Maxwell Street sometime after
World War II and sometime before the Iranian hostage crisis,
you probably don’t know who Blind Arvella Gray is."

>>Again, from Robert Fontenot:

"Buy this one now before your Grammy-watching dilettante
friends get it."


>>From John Swenson:

"Now that everyone’s all of a sudden an expert on New Orleans
music, violent distortions of the city’s sonic history are being
promulgated by pundits in faraway cities."

Now that Offbeat is back in action, will they be able to maintain their pre-eminence, along with their prescience?