JazzFest Daze Between: Tuesday’s Breaking News

Dateline New Orleans 04/27/10.

At some point, even on vacation in the Land o’ Kickin’ Out The Jams, you sit down in the morning and read the local paper. (Actually I do that wherever I go, but I’m going for the Hemingway dispatches from the war zone oeuvre here, so stick with me.)

In the Crescent City, there’s always lots of local news.

New mayor coming in next Monday. The citizens have high hopes that something might get done of substance in City Hall, unlike the administration of Ray Nagin, which devolved into the usual morass of ineptitude and corruption.

Sunday’s Times-Picayune ran a scathing assessment of his eight years in office. Which included this unbelievable photo of local ministers laying hands on Hizzoner in ’02:

Is that some kind of Last Supperish imagery or what? Where is Leonardo when we need him to capture the image for posterity in oil for the Louvre?

The folks in this neck of the woods are legitimately concerned about the oil blowout and spill in the Gulf that could ruin the local fishing and seafood harvest industry for decades.

But garnering a top headline on the Metro page was a matter of equal concern if not more. This is a city that takes its food seriously. So you can imagine the panic when reading this headline: “LaPlace fire damages andouille smokehouse.”

The two-alarm fire at Jacob’s World Famous Andouille and Sausage Smokehouse, thank the food Gods, was brought under control in about an hour. More important is the fact that — well, the sub-headline says it all — “Most of sausage moved to safety.”

More news as it breaks.