Hard Terrier Get

The plot of the 1993 New Orleans shot Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle, Hard Target (1993) is kind of a "Most Dangerous Game" knock off.  A criminal organization sells "human hunting" trips to wealthy scumbags.  They select a homeless person as the quarry whose goal is to make across town alive for a $10,000 prize. The film is purposefully trashy but the artfully shot John Woo action sequences and 1990s New Orleans settings make for solid entertainment.  Varg and I talked about it on Catch Basin Cinema a couple of years ago! Check that out if you like.

Anyway, like I said, there are some memorable stunts and set pieces in the movie.  Van Damme dodges bullets, leaps from great heights, and evades capture by a motorcycle gang in a cemetery. Something tells me, this is ripe for a reboot.  Just one slight casting change..

Scrim, New Orleans' legendary runaway dog, eluded capture once again on Thursday, slipping out of an Uptown cemetery just as his pursuers closed in.

Based on multiple sightings, Scrim was traveling through the Freret neighborhood early Thursday afternoon, not far from the site of his most recent and most daring escape, according to Michelle Cheramie, owner of Zeus' Rescues. She spent months earlier this year tracking the dog, and had been keeping him in her home since he was captured in October.

At roughly 2 p.m. on Thursday, Cheramie texted The Times-Picayune to report that she and her team of dog trackers were closing in on the Crescent City’s favorite fugitive dog.

But the speedy pup eluded capture once again.

"We had him in the cemetery at the corner of Lasalle and Soniat. I had trailed him there from Napoleon. He was three blocks from my house, and it kind of felt like he was coming home," Cheramie said by phone.

Maybe an older, wiser, Valerio in the Wilford Brimley role?  We'll have our people make some calls.

Scrim Update

By now everyone probably knows he got out again.  MacCash certainly knows, anyway.  As usual, though, Doug is not thinking his clever bits all the way through. 

With the ground floor of Cheramie’s house locked down as tight as Alcatraz, Scrim made his way to the second story, where he found an open window, gnawed through the screen, and recklessly launched himself into space like Wile E. Coyote, plunging to the ground below.

I know it's passe to bemoan the death of the copy editor in professional news gathering organizations. But someone really should tell Doug that 1) You can't use an Alcatraz image in the same sentence as a Wile E. Coyote reference. Wile E. Coyote is not known for escaping from prison. Stick to one metaphor at a time. Also 2) Scrim is not Wile E. Coyote in this analogy anyway. He is the Road Runner. Individual attempts to apprehend him can only result in causing one to appear foolish. 

Cheramie pleaded with the public to abandon any hope of catching the fleet dog and instead asked them to text her and her team immediately with the location of the Scrim sighting and the direction he is traveling (the number is 504-231-7865).

Cheramie is also quoted in that article issuing a corrective to the (hopefully toungue-in-cheek) popular sentiment that Scrim simply be allowed to roam free from now on.  Even if he is having difficulty adjusting, it should be obvious that a comfortable home life is much safer and healthier than what he will find out on the streets. (The two bullets he took during his last adventure should be plenty enough evidence there.) 

On the other hand, it's always possible we don't have all the information.  To hear Entergy tell it, it is the stray animals themselves that pose the danger to everyone else. 

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of Entergy customers in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish are without power. Entergy confirmed to WDSU that an animal caused an electrical short and damaged equipment. The utility did not say what type of animal caused the outage that's impacting more than 12,000 customers on the Westbank.

Now I'm not suggesting that Scrim swam all the way across the river and took out a piece of Entergy infrastructure on his own.  That would be downright nutty.  But consider that he wouldn't actually have to act on his own. Not entirely. 

Local news is so important, yall.

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— Jeff Asher (@jeffasher.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 7:06 PM

Consider that we may only be aware of a mere fraction of Scrim's capabilities. We already know he's an escape artist. What hasn't been discussed publicly is the possibility that, once free, he has quickly reestablished himself in the underground. He's got contacts in the squirrel, rat, possum, raccoon and crow communities with connections beyond that. He speaks all the languages, knows all the customs. He can hide and operate from anywhere. 

 

Now that he's at large, his network has reactivated.  And Entergy's could go down at any moment.  

On the other hand, that's not too different from the every status quo anyway, is it?

Animals in the news

Congratulations to Scrim. Far and away the number one local hero of 2024. 

Zoning, code enforcement, permitting and other prosaic municipal matters could wait. The first order of business at Thursday’s City Council meeting was to acknowledge the civic contributions of a runaway dog named Scrim, who became a furry New Orleans folk hero.

As Council Vice President JP Morrell put it, Scrim “really did exemplify the resilience that is New Orleans.”

The good feelings didn't last too long, though, as councilmembers almost immediately broke into a territorial dispute over bragging rights. 

Lesli Harris laughingly said that “this is like one of my most exciting council days ever,” before she laid claim to Scrim as “the official mascot of District B.”

District A Council Member Joe Giarrusso, however, immediately contended that Scrim’s territory had extended into his jurisdiction as well.

We're gonna have to see his voter ID. Or, failing that, maybe his "municipal ID."

This article also says the dog was presented with, " a framed proclamation and a sack of dog goodies."  When I bust out of jail and take two bullets while out on the lam for 6 months, City Council better give me a dang medal.

Anyway, everybody loves Scrim. We even dedicated our Jack-O-Lantern this year in his honor. Look at this good boy.

 

Meanwhile, turning our attention the wild animal kingdom, the New Orleans menagerie of oligarchs has been (slightly) rearranged.

Michael Sawaya, the president of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, will succeed Ron Forman as president and CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute, New Orleans’ cherished collection of parks, museums and environmental attractions.

A 40-year-veteran of the hospitality industry, Sawaya, 64, was chosen as Audubon’s new leader on Wednesday by the Audubon Nature Institute board of directors. His selection follows a six-month search that attracted nearly 500 candidates from around the country.

They went on a nationwide safari to find the heir to Ron Forman's grift. What are the odds that the guy they were looking for was here all along!

And, hey, look at the price they got.  

In his new role, which begins Jan. 1, Sawaya will earn $525,000 a year in salary and benefits, according to Audubon officials. That’s far less than Forman’s $800,000 annual compensation package but more than the nearly $433,000 Sawaya made at the Convention Center in 2023, according to a legislative audit.

The "non-profit" zoo that is heavily subsidized with public funds will now be paying its CEO only half a million dollars instead of nearly a million.  Personally, I still hope they feed them all to Valerio.

Finally,  speaking of big cats ,in order to get around being shitty to one tiger, Governor Landry is forcing LSU to go out and get a whole burner tiger. Unsurprisingly the source is disreputable.

The owner of a live Bengal tiger slated to appear at the LSU-Alabama game Saturday has a history of having his big cats escape as the result of employee errors. 

The university and Gov. Jeff Landry’s office won’t say who would be responsible for any accidents involving Omar Bradley, a 1.5-year-old tiger that’s being transported from Florida for the game. Landry and Surgeon General Ralph Abraham have pushed to return a live mascot to the sidelines of Tiger Stadium.    

After the Illuminator confirmed that a live tiger will appear in Baton Rouge at the LSU-Alabama game on Saturday, WBRZ reported that the tiger is being supplied by Mitchel Kalmanson, who has a long history of federal citations for mistreating animals.

Sounds pretty exciting. Can't wait to see how that goes. It's good of Governor Landry to take time away from his busy work throwing more children in jail and making poor people pay higher taxes to focus on this. Are we sure he knows what he's doing, though?  

Landry’s initial request was for LSU to bring its own live tiger mascot, Mike VII, to games. Previous tigers have attended LSU football games, most recently Mike VI in 2015. LSU announced it was discontinuing this tradition when it adopted Mike VII in 2017 out of humane concerns. 

Landry did not attend LSU but claims to be a lifelong LSU football fan. 

“Our hope is that maybe we can get this tiger to roar a couple of times, and that’ll indicate how many touchdowns we’ll have, and it’ll be more than Alabama,” Landry said Friday in an interview with Fox News. 

Previous Mikes have been provoked to roaring by beating on his cage and taunting from the costumed Mike the Tiger mascot, a practice LSU discontinued.

Who is this for? Which piece of shit Landry donor is pushing this hard to bring back an animal cruelty ritual we all finally moved past a decade ago? Even if you buy into this far enough to be all, "yay the tradition is back!" and are totally cool with the cruelty of it, how do you not still see it as a slap in the face to our beautiful boy Mike VII?

We'll see if the cheer squad wants to be involved in all that this time around.  If not, maybe the Governor could get in the cage and try poking the tiger with a stick or something. 

That's a pit?

That's my friend Daisy's dog. When she was a puppy about 7 years ago she wandered into the East New Orleans Library where we both worked. SPCA was pretty sure she had escaped from a pit bull breeder so Daisy adopted her.

During her first two years, I spent a great deal of time with Susie. I used to go on walks with them around their LGD neighborhood where the local kids were always impressed striking up numerous conversations by asking us "That's a pit?" Daisy and Susie both moved to California after the flood.

We were never sure what Susie's exact lineage was but she was pit enough for our purposes anyway. Susie was very friendly and loved to bite things affectionately... although also quite painfully. She loved people, cats, sticks, ice cubes, tennis balls... if it was a thing in the world, Susie loved it and wanted to demonstrate her love by crushing that thing in her enthusiastic jaws. Once she tore up the wooden floorboards in Daisy's apartment just out of boredom. I still own articles of clothing frayed by her teeth.

Today I learned she has cancer. I've been looking around the remnants of Daisy's old NOLA era blog for Susie stories. Daisy wrote something about Susie almost every day back then. This was a pretty good day.