People ask me all the time, what is it like to live in New Orleans after the hurricane? Has New Orleans comes back? etc., etc.  I can give them a pat answer of, oh, the tourist areas are fine, the hotels are up and running, you'd never know there was a storm....unless you live here.  It is hard to quantify the level of government ineptitude, the ineptitude of the service industries, and to explain to people when you lose 200,000 people in your city, those businesses that remain open, generally have horrific employees. 

Tonight I decided to take the deputies to the Monster Truck jam at the Superdome.  They love monster trucks.  They love monster trucks, like I like beer.  Except, I don't nearly wet my pants from excitement when I see beer, but, I might when I have too many, but I digress.  Anyway, we went to the monster truck rally.  I live 25 minutes from the Superdome. The monster truck jam started at 7:30. We left the house at 6:30, which left us plenty of time to park the car, walk to the dome, get our tickets, a box of popcorn and settle in our seats.  Or, so I thought.

In order for me to get to the Superdome, I must go through a toll-booth, which is the bain of my existence.  Mainly, because I spend 5 hours a week sitting in line to go through this toll booth. Time I will never get back.  I sincerely wish some terrorist would declare jihad on the toll booth, so I can get that time back from my life.  Anyway, for some UNKNOWN reason, the fine people of the city of New Orleans decided to close half of the toll booth lanes tonight.  So, instead of wizzing through the toll booth, which I should have been able to do at this time on a Saturday night, I instead, got to sit in line for 45 minutes, because, the wizards at the highway department decided they didn't want to do their jobs.  So, instead of getting to the parking lot at 7, like I planned, I got there at 7:45.  Oh, I forgot to mention, while waiting in line to go through the toll booth, the little deputy announced he had to pee really bad, so, I literally pulled the car over on the side of the road, and had him pee out the door. 

So, we arrive at the Superdome at 8:00.  I have to go to will call to get the tickets.  Keep in mind, this is a sold out event. There are 70,000 people at the Superdome.  There are, without exaggeration, 1000 people in line in the will call line.  There was EXACTLY ONE will call booth open. We got to our seats at 8:39 p.m.  When we got to our seats, there were three future felons sitting in our seats.  I said to them, "I think you are in our seats".  They replied, "SO?"  I looked at my tickets, and I said, "these are our seats".  The gold tooth leader of the felons, said, and I'm quoting, "whatever man, you trippin'".  I said, can you please leave, these are our seats.  The gang-banging thugs, with pants around their knees just sat there, and did not move.  Now, I could have been mean, and said something really crude, but, I am in New Orleans, and when in New Orleans, it is important to note, it is the murder capital of the world, and there isn't a three block radius from any point in the city where a murder hasn't been committed.  So, I went to find an usher to remove the felons, and they were eventually removed from our seats.  AS SOON AS WE SAT DOWN, they announced it was intermission.  The deputies then announced they wanted popcorn.  I said, no, we are sitting there.  Then there was crying.  Eventually, we wound up in line for 15 minutes for popcorn.  The ONE person working at the concession line, was in no hurry to serve anyone. She served 3 people in 15 minutes. I counted.  With no popcorn, we went back to our seats.  Guess who was there?  The same gang-banging thugs.  THANKFULLY, there was a former David Duke supporter sitting about 3 rows behind our future felons, who saw the entire first go round with the thugs, and  he and his sleeveless, confederate flag tattooed friends suggested our felons leave the seats.  We then sat through exactly 18 minutes of monster truck jamming, when the little deputy stated he wanted to go home, which was immediately after the Grave Digger and Maximum Destruction crushed a school bus, which apparently, was all he wanted to see.

So, we left, walked back to the car, drove home, then sat in line at McDonalds for THIRTY minutes to get one six piece chicken nugget and two chocolate milks.  I walked in the door and blogged this. Now I'm going to bed.