The Great Big Story

Tony Perkins, President of the conservative Family Research Council, ordered security guards in July to drape the entire State Capitol building under a huge curtain, declaring it was time to “finally obscure one of the country’s largest and worst-hidden phallic symbols.”

Dubbed the “Jesus Robe,” the giant, multicolor veil was sewn together from over 117,000 minister and choir robes donated from Protestant churches around the world. Perkins credited the Jesus Robe’s construction to round-the-clock efforts from thousands of unemployed Christian garment workers and Chinese sweatshops.

“Our children and our families are finally free of this disgusting blight on the Baton Rouge skyline,” Perkins, a Baker native and former state lawmaker, told a crowd of seven applauding Republicans on the Capitol steps.

Erected in the 1930s, Baton Rouge’s 450-foot-tall facsimile of the male sex organ is perhaps the most enduring legacy of Huey Long, Louisiana’s irascible governor, U.S. Senator, and lovable tyrant assassinated in the building in 1935 and interred on the Capitol grounds.

After the shrouding ceremony, Perkins announced he planned a similar project for LSU’s Tiger Stadium and nearby Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

“Have you ever seen an aerial view? It’s obviously hidden imagery of a huge, gaping vagina with the PMAC as the clitoris,” he said.

N.O. Theme Park Could Reopen

Faced with the prospect of Six Flags walking away from its destroyed New Orleans theme park, state tourism officials are considering remarketing the site as “Flop Town, USA,” based on Louisiana’s film industry.

In late June, Six Flags offered New Orleans $10 million and the park’s 66 flood-damaged acres in exchange for terminating its 75-year lease.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said that, if the state accepts Six Flags’ offer, the revamped Flop Town could open by early 2007 with rides and other attractions based on movies filmed in Louisiana, like The Dukes of Hazzard, The Skeleton Key, Glory Road, and The Big Easy.

Landrieu predicted the state could get licensing for the new attractions for little or no charge, considering how poorly the movies performed at the box office.

“We wouldn’t have to do much, maybe sweep a little bit and install the new rides,” he said. “A park like that has a lot of possibilities in a state like this.”

Several state lawmakers tentatively expressed their approval of the idea, saying they can’t wait to get their hands on the $10 million.

Tiger Athletic Program Going Public

In a move that analysts say will generate millions of dollars and complete the university’s total whoring to corporate sponsorship, LSU’s athletic department will hold an initial public offering in the first quarter of 2007.

According to LSU Sports Properties’ filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the athletic program will offer five million shares for $35 each. Shares will be traded under the symbol “HOR” on the New York Stock Exchange.

LSU made headlines in late 2004 when it signed a 10-year, $75-million deal that gave media giant Viacom sole marketing rights for the athletics program. “But this is about as slutty as it gets for college athletics,” said Walter Reed, an equity analyst with Fisch Sumner in New York. “We’re talking sticky sheets and crabs here.”

The IPO could fetch about $175 bazillion, according to many estimates. Taking the program public made sense, Reed said, considering the revenue would help LSU update its dilapidated, languishing athletic facilities and grant the Tiger Athletic Foundation even tighter control over tickets to LSU sporting events.

“If TAF doesn’t like you, or if you don’t drive a big enough SUV, you don’t get bowl tickets,” Reed said. “There won’t be any need to feign fairness with lotteries.”

Whiff!

Others Who Passed on the LSU Baseball Coaching Job:

• Bo Rein

• Stephen Hawking

• Gene Hackman

• Miss Cleo

• Terry Robiskie

• Marlon Perkins

• Alfred E. Neuman

• Aquaman

• Sirhan Sirhan

Blanco Hardly Ever Uses Badass PC

Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s state-of-the-art computer is practically gathering dust from lack of use, state government computer technicians lamented in July.

Richard Shelton, an MCSE tech, said even though Blanco’s office computer is an off-the-shelf Dell laptop, the Precision™ M90 is tweaked out to hell. Shelton beefed it up with 4 gigs of DDR2-667 SDRAM and a totally hardcore GeForce® 7900 video card. It has one of AMD’s bitchin’ new reverse hyper-thread processors and a sweet-ass docking station with a ginormous, 30-inch, flat screen and 7.1-channel sound.

“Dude, my nipples get hard just looking at it,” Shelton confided to friends over a chicken BLT at the downtown Subway. “I’m dying to rape that machine on some Splinter Cell, but all she ever uses it for is checking her schedule and Channel 9’s website.”

A few weeks ago Blanco let her grandson use it to play Minesweeper – friggin’ Minesweeper – all day long, Shelton complained.

“Well, she’s never in her office,” Vicki Berg, an MCSA and Shelton’s coworker, said of the state’s chief executive. “And when she is, she’s, like, always on the phone and meeting with people.”

Sherman’s Ghost Declares from Beyond:
“I Don’t Need Your Crappy LSU Building”

He kicked the South’s ass like a bad habit a century and a half ago, so why would Gen. William T. Sherman need a crappy LSU building named after him, Sherman’s ghost declared through a spirit medium.

“Carving my name into the side of a classroom full of spoiled little Abercrombie & Fitch-wearing brats will not change the fact that I smoked what was left of the Confederacy like a backyard brisket on a Sunday afternoon,” Sherman said during a séance through Madam Shasta LeVoe, a New Orleans fortune teller, notary public, and taxidermist who claims to communicate with the dead.

Through Madam Shasta, Sherman added that, while somewhat flattered by the gesture, “it won’t change the fact that I busted them Rebs worse than a greenhorn dealer at a blackjack table.”

State lawmakers sparked controversy in this year’s session after proposing to name a building on the LSU campus after Sherman, the university’s first president, who later led Union troops during the Civil War on a murderous campaign from Atlanta to Savannah that crushed the entire South’s dream of secession harder than Lucy Ricardo in a tub of grapes.

Sherman’s specter concluded his otherworldly communiqué by spelling “eat me” on a Ouija board and issuing a warning to “that boy who keeps writing letters to the local paper that, if I were alive and I could stay sober long enough, I’d march all over his pompous, Southern ass, too.”

Pssst!

FEMA has released its list of official rumors for the 2006 hurricane season. If a storm strikes South Louisiana, Baton Rouge residents should spread these statements to increase anxiety levels:

• LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe woke up at the downtown Sheraton in a bathtub that was filled with ice and a note instructing him to call 911 because one of his kidneys had been taken.

• A white lady was yanked from her car on Coursey Boulevard and sodomized with a cuculoupe.

• If a guy knocks on your door wearing a “SPENTERGY” uniform, don’t answer. It’s really Buddy Songy peddling knock-off fragrances.

• Armed, drunken gangs from Sorrento knocked over the Gonzales K-Mart and are headed north on riding lawnmowers.

“W” Sticker No Escape from Speeding Ticket

Baton Rouge resident Donald Kepplinger was shocked and outraged in July when a State Police officer blatantly ignored the goddamn “W” sticker prominently displayed on the rear windshield of Kepplinger’s Mercedes ML500 and cited him for speeding.

In addition, Kepplinger’s Tiger Athletic Foundation sticker, also on the back windshield, was right in that trooper’s goddamn face, but he wrote the ticket anyway, Kepplinger told friends before dinner at Galatoire’s Bistro. Kepplinger was even wearing his goddamn University Club golf shirt when he was pulled over.

Kepplinger, owner of an environmental consulting firm, was cited for doing 84 mph on Interstate 10 near the Essen Lane exit, where the posted speed limit is 60. But that’s a goddamn lie, he insisted. “I wasn’t going that fast – I’d already started slowing down.”

Kepplinger knows everybody in this town, and a few well-placed phone calls would teach that trooper a thing or two about doing his goddamn job, he assured his dinner guests.

He then led the table in Grace and told an off-color joke about Muslims during the salad course.

“Off the Wire” Corrections

Shirley Jackson, a cashier at the Government Street Albertson’s, did not punch out early on July 7, as we reported. Day-shift manager Trev Richard said Jackson had not taken a lunch that day.

“Off the Wire” regrets the error.

Don Kelly, spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department, was incorrectly identified with the rank of corporal. We should have said Kabuki warrior.

“Off the Wire” regrets the error.

The LSU Department of History pointed out that we incorrectly attributed the formation of the university’s lakes to a meteor strike in 1997. The lakes were, in fact, manmade in the 1930s. While we regret the error, “Off the Wire” stands by our claim that the History Department is nothing but a bunch of nitpicking eggheads with nothing better to do.

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