FBC Member in the news!!!!

Hey All,
Just thought I'd give props to Brittany Barrient who has been working tirelessly for the Tulane law clinic on a case against the NOPD. Here's a link to an article about it:
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/03/videotaping_of_police_activity.html

She's actually quoted in the article, which is more fame and notoriaty than I EVER had.  Here's the quote "In the New Orleans Police Department, it is a widely accepted and established custom for police officers to arrest and threaten people who film them," said Brittany Barrient, one of the students. You tell them Brittany!

Already she's been told she's an aggressive objector in the court room...you go grrrrrl...show those good ol' boys how it's done!
I hope we get to hear all about it in the coming weeks.  Let's wish her luck in fighting for civil rights...yay Brittany!

Softly Spoken Word

This weekend marked the opening of the 7th annual Patois Film Fest in New Orleans. I was lucky enough to attend last night's closing event, an evening of spoken word. The headlining poet, Suheir Hammad, fulfilled the expectations of her longtime fans and rocked the core of first-time listeners, like myself.

She read from two collections, soliciting numbers from the audience and turning to those pages. Her collection Break, in which all poems' titles start with the word "break," featured pieces in which a Palestinian woman born in Jordan and raised in New York attempts to find herself, her body, her place and her identify in a fractured world.

The last piece she read, an unpublished and unfinished poem she dedicated simply to "women," left me staggering, wheeling, breathless, tearful, angry and thrilled. Before she read, she asked the cameraman to stop filming. She pulled white sheets of copy paper from a folder and let each page fall to the floor as she read its final lines. The audience didn't move once during the reading of the last poem... The host, Asia Rainey (a fierce New Orleans poet), visibly struggled to decide whether to leave the pages or pick them up.... I wish she'd left them there, as Suheir had invited the audience to come, speak, interact with the mic.

The Best Show on Earth!!

Hey All,

So last night I went to "Love in the Time of Swine Flu" at La Nuit Theater and I discovered the funniest live show I've seen in New Orleans.  This was my first time going to La Nuit, and hopefully I will start to go more regularly.  The group that works out of there are awesome and hilarious.  Please, please, please go see a show there...you won't regret it.   Also, for any of you who have an inclination towards performing they do improv classes.  The owner trained at Chicago's Second City and judging by the performers last night, she is really able to draw out hilarity in her students.  Every Thursday there is an improv show and the people who come with the biggest group get a bucket of beer...I think FBC can accomplish this!



UPDATE: the group I saw here, Stupid Time Machine, has gone rogue and left La Nuit.  Keep up with them at http://stupidtimemachine.wordpress.com/