Three years gone, but still here.

I initially wrote the following a couple of days after a very good friend's death 3 years ago.  When Craig had his accident we were about two weeks out from my wedding, which he was catering.  I never had the chance to properly grieve for him.  I have also never had the chance to properly and publicly thank the crew of Parlor Market, and specifically Ryan Bell and Jesse Houston for showing up at my wedding and executing the dinner along with Gloria Mejia and Jessie Richardson.  I couldn't even get within ten feet of the kitchen without nearly bursting into tears and to this day what you guys did is still just about the nicest thing anyone has done for me. 

This feels like the first anniversary of that horrible event that I finally feel like I have any kind of perspective or distance on his death. 

Photo credit Mississippi Weekly possibly?  I don't own this image

Craig Ashton Noone 8/12/79-10/14/11

I met Craig in 2004, straight out of culinary school.  He came to the Palace Casino to do his externship training and Chef Jeremy and Chef Josh decided to start him with me on the steakhouse broiler.   Craig was as fresh faced and naïve a kitchen n00b as you will ever find, and many a steak found its way in the bin.  Craig didn’t just get in the weeds, he went on safari.  He was pretty terrible, however his personality and drive to get better won us all over pretty quickly and everyone took a personal interest in breaking his balls as hard as we could, pushing him constantly to get better.  As anyone that has worked in professional kitchens for long enough will tell you, externs are usually abused for long hours of thankless prep until their couple of months is up and they never become part of the family.  This was not the case with Craig. 

We became extremely good friends in a very short period of time.  As we talked, I told him about how much I felt my time as a musician and my time out west had broadened me as a culinarian.  He told me his dream was not to be a chef, but to own his own restaurant and be knowledgeable enough to hire his own chef and not get bent over by some of the more unsavory elements of our business.  I advised him that this was a terrible idea, and told him that it was incredibly risky to open a restaurant, and that it was better to be the chef than the owner.   Craig smiled and nodded as if to say “you silly man, of COURSE it’s going to work.”  Even then, weeks out of culinary school, he was already driven and knew exactly what he wanted, and it was just a matter of figuring out how to get there.

Craig and I got the chance to work together again for a while at the W New Orleans.  Craig had been struggling through a terribly lonely, poor, and exhausting year with a very well known chef who I will not name here.   I ran into Craig for the first time in a couple months and he had gotten so thin I thought he was sick.  I asked him what his plans were and he told me he was thinking of going to Texas, but wasn’t ready to move.  I suggested he come apply at W so he could get insurance and all and get paid better and not have to work the insane hours he was pulling until he made his choice.  He agreed and Chef Roberto had him do a tasting and hired him on the spot.  It was very plain from the minute Craig’s dishes started coming out that he had completely transcended the food that he was doing just a year earlier.  Every single plate was beautifully presented and I was so proud of him I almost couldn’t stand it.  It was that moment when someone you used to teach leaves you so far in the dirt that realize that you have nothing more to teach them.

As I said earlier, I told Craig years ago, “you are too talented to leave the kitchen, don’t do it man!”  I am not vain enough to think that I influenced that choice, but I’m glad that he chose to stay with his culinary roots. As to that other part about not owning the restaurant… well, As anyone that has eaten at Parlor Market can tell you, I was just about as wrong as you can be and still show your face in public. 

Just before he finished up at the Palace, I took on a new position at the Hard Rock Casino, and as a thank you gift for spending so much time with him, Craig bought me a hardcover copy of the Larousse Gastronomique which I had never gotten around to buying for myself.  Inside the front cover, he signed it:

I know one day we will work together again, I will be the owner, and you can be the rock star chef.

                                Cook with passion,

                                                Craig Noone

I am proud to have been one of your teachers, and proud of having been your student later.  I would have been proud to call you my boss.  And I am most grateful of all that I got the opportunity to be your friend.

Special Feature: Interview with Lucas Overby, Libertarian candidate for Florida's 13th Congressional District

Libertarians and other third party candidates often consider it a win if they can poll between 5-10% of the vote, generally with the goal of securing either permanent ballot access or growing their brand with the hopes of someday gathering enough steam to win national elections.  One-time Republican Robert Sarvis's performance in last year's Virginia gubernatorial campaign is a good example of what was considered a very successful campaign for a Libertarian in a major state office.   He eventually secured 6.5% of the vote, third best ever by a Libertarian  gubernatorial candidate, but fell short of the 10% required by Virginia law to gain permanent party recognition and ballot access.  Various neoconservative and Republican pundits blamed Sarvis for the Democrat win rather than their running of a poor campaign with a not-widely liked candidate, however, post-election polling analysis showed Sarvis siphoning votes from both liberals and conservatives, indicating the strength and wide  appeal of the core party message.

If Sarvis's 2013 run is considered a better than average type performance, Lucas Overby is poised to completely shatter the perception of what a liberty candidate can do in a major office election.  Due to drop out by the Democratic candidate, Overby faces special election first term incumbent Republican David Jolly in a two horse race for Florida's 13th congressional district and is currently polling at a relatively massive (by LP standards) 31% and growing with four and a half months still to go. 

I was lucky enough to have the chance to have a 45 minute or so Facebook conversation with Mr. Overby and found him articulate, intelligent, and extremely quick with non-scripted answers. 

Photo:  www.lucasoverby.com

Locke's Left Hand: First things first, who is Lucas Overby, and why should someone vote for you?
Lucas Overby:  I'm a born and raised Florida native, grew up in the county I'm running in, so I've developed substantial local ties to the community. Like the majority of my district I come from a lower middle class family and work in industry. I'm a commercial diver by trade, which has afforded me the opportunity to work with just about every industry and governing body my constituents would ever deal with. My activist and working background give me a very divergent point of view from my opponent, a point of view I feel we are severely lacking in this country's leadership.  On the really generic stuff, I am married with a 4 year old daughter.
LLH: Now THAT is a full time job! 

LLH:  For people who aren't familiar with FL13, can you briefly tell us a little about your district?
LO:  FL13 is located entirely inside of Pinellas county which is home to Clearwater and St. Petersburg across the bridge from Tampa. We are in west central Florida.
LLH:  I grew up on the southern Atlantic coast of Florida.  If I remember correctly, Pinellas is a pretty blue collar county compared to across the bridge
LO:  The trades have really made their way over to the port, but a lot of the working groups still live in the Clearwater area, off of the beaches, and we also still have a very large service industry base here.

LLH:  If elected, what is your immediate priority as the rep for FL13?
LO:  Our first big target is tax reform. We have specifically targeted income tax reduction and code simplification. It is not only the best way to give immediate relief to working class families and jump start the small business and start up sectors, it affords us the opportunity to deal a substantial blow to the income tax itself. I also believe that social issues will be of very high importance over the next two years, with the rapid expansion of marijuana legalization and the overturning of laws banning (same sex) marriage, we will be looking for ways to decrease the drug war and increase equal protections under the law.
LLH:  Are the social issues where you see the biggest opportunity to siphon conservative voters from the incumbent?
LO:  Fiscal issues will be the best place to do that. The incumbent is a Republican who campaigned as a fiscal conservative and has done anything but deliver on that. Social issues will certainly help to secure the progressives and Democrats we need to continue close the gap
LLH: FL13 has been solidly red for a long time, yet went for Obama in the 2012 presidential election. Do you think that apparent trend of centrism gives you a better chance at picking up votes? 
LO:  In short, yes. This is a fully purple district, though I would also suggest that (former) Congressman Young was well loved by both sides and that really is what has kept the seat red. David Jolly is certainly no Bill Young.

 Photo credit:  Reason Magazine

LLH:  Polling at 31% (and growing) is a whopping number for an LP candidate in any race for a national office. To what do you attribute your high poll numbers? Do you think it's simply a case of the Dems bowing out, or do you think its more a case of the message of Libertarianism resonating with your district?
LO:  This is certainly not the first time the LP has been in a one on one race with an incumbent and 33% is the best finish with 18% being the best debut. I attribute a large amount of our early success to name recognition. We were in three major debates earlier this year and enjoyed the most media coverage a Libertarian has ever had in the state on FL.  I also think that our platform is one that can be brought to a broader voting bloc and we have had a lot of success doing that
LLH:  Florida's LP seems to be making big strides in that area with gubernatorial candidate Adrian Wyllie also gaining access to debate Rick Scott (R) and Charlie Crist (Ed. note: D/R/D/R/D).  The lack of a democratic challenger in your race definitely seems to have given you a much louder voice, but I don't think you'd be polling at those numbers if the message wasn't gaining traction as well.
LO:  I agree. Adrian and I campaign very differently and come from very different backgrounds, but I think it works extremely well on showing the diversity of the message. He and I have also both been on the campaign trail for well over a year and our special election was able to really push myself and Bill and Adrian to a much higher visibility.  Also, once they let one (more debater) in, its much easier to get more and it seems we may have broken that barrier as far as the debates go

LLH:  Just a brief touch on foreign policy, Do you have an opinion on the Bowe Bergdahl situation?
LO:  I am still developing one. To the dismay of some of my more aggressive detractors I still feel that there is far too much that we in the general public do not know as far as getting the soldier back is concerned. However, I do have a very strong level of concern with not appropriately notifying Congress, but again we are still looking into previous precedents, situational issues, among other nuances before immediately jumping on the band wagon of outright and aggressive condemnation.. I tend to not speak on issues I do not have a full grasp on, so as more information becomes available and as we can move away from the the strong rhetoric and get to the bottom of things I will make a more complete statement. Honestly, I think the very important question we are not asking is, why did we have prisoners at Gitmo to exchange in the first place?
LLH:  I think you hit it on the head, the rush to condemnation is appalling considering the lack of facts we have right now.  And aren't going to have to let them all go at the conclusion of this war anyway, due to the Geneva Conventions?
LO:  Technically no. we are not actually at war, and they technically aren't protected by Geneva, etc.  That is entirely different can of human rights violation worms
LLH:  Good point.

LLH:  The big shocker today was Eric Cantor's primary loss to a Tea Party Republican (David Brat). Do you think that is a good sign for liberty candidates or further evidence of Republican strife as the media is playing it?
LO:  I honestly don't know if it's a win for liberty per se.  I don't know the candidate that won. Simply beating Cantor I don't think ensures that liberty won the day. I will say that is could be a very big boost to opposition candidates for 2014. Either that or the Republicans just lost a seat in the house.  It really all depends on what kind of 'tea party' candidate he is.  More and more we have seen that title used to define aggressively statist to aggressively theist candidates
LLH:  I think the clock is definitely ticking on that seat for the Republicans with VA's recent voting records. I can't say I know a ton about him either, but outward appearances are that he's a much smaller government kind of guy than Cantor, and the loss was by something like 11%. It wasn't even close...
LO:  I just hope he supports liberty for all and not just the new tea party brand of liberty for me. That could just be a Florida thing though.
LLH:  I know exactly what you mean.  The, "liberty for everyone unless you choose to live different than me" type.
LO:  Exactly.  I feel that is extremely dangerous.  Economics can be debated on a reasonable and pragmatic level, religion, not so much
LLH:  Yes, and trading a bureaucrat for a theocrat is almost a zero sum game.
LO:  We actually have had a great deal of success integrating Libertarian economic concepts into progressive talking points, but still can't get the conservatives to not hate gay people!
LLH:  I get the feeling that a lot more Republican candidates would come over on at least some of the LGBT issues if they weren't terrified of losing their evangelicals, particularly in the south. The issue is hamstringing them at the national level.
LO:  Strong possibility, but on women's rights, minority issues, border issues, my hope (for the Republicans) is light.

LLH:  I very much appreciate your time tonight, do you have anything you want to say on the way out?
LO:  I'm always available for questions, this (Facebook) is the best way to reach me, but there's also my email lucas@lucasoverby.com. If anyone would like to get involved and help us close the gap on this race, we really need all the boots on the ground and right now all the donor support we can get. All of that information can be found at www.LucasOverby.com and people can donate at rally.org/lucasoverbyforcongress

An annoying side effect of modern atheism

You fancy yourself a free thinker, and you feel like you don't need religion. You read a few books and BAM!  You feel qualified to be a constant public speaker on anything even tangentially applicable to religious studies.

One of the problems with modern atheism is that people replace worshiping a god with worshiping Richard Dawkins, who, while bright and good at being sardonic and constructing arguments, is not a deity to be paid tribute to.  "Converts" then go around beating people about the face and neck with Dawkins, Hitchens, and McAfee while never having bothered to form an original opinion of their own. 

By falling into this trap, you're still a sheep, you've just exchanged shepherds.

By all means, read Dawkins and Hitchens.  But also read the Bible, the Qu'ran, and/or the Baghavad Ghita while you're at it.  Take a breath, relax, and think about what you've taken in. 

Almost no one wants to be proselytized in the laundromat, bro.

Well...

This thing has been sitting idle for too long.  Time to knock the dust off.  I'll have some things to say over the next few days...

The Pressure of Perfection

Currently watching Bones Brigade: an Autobiography and just got completely ambushed with a profound thought from revolutionary skater Rodney Mullen.  He's speaking about a period when Tony Hawk was having kind of an existential crisis as it pertains to constantly winning.  Mullen at one point won 34 out of 35 competitions in a year, so he knows what he is talking about here:

"He'd won everything, or close to it.  That creates this ...so much more pressure, because there's no more gratification in winning. There's only upholding something so that you don't lose it and it is staggering.  It usurps the joy of it.  It, its like a Kafka short story.  You build something but you can't live in the house because you sit around guarding it."

 Later on, talking about leaving competitions:

 "...My sister had gotten anorexic, and I had started down a path that way and uh, I was just mad.  Mad.  And so (my father) just said, "this is it."  And he goes "you're going nowhere in this life, and I'm doing this to save you. Stop. I think skateboarding is making you crazy."  And so I just couldn't focus.  Thats the only contest that I lost.  My mind was gone.  I just...when I came back he goes "you now, I want to see how you bounce back from this.  How you handle this is what will define you."  I remember I was super thin.  And I was falling apart in school because I just really didn't care anymore.  I remember he couldn't do anything about it.  It wasn't acting out...it was...I withered in a way that you could not control.  And I was spinning...

...When I found skateboarding, it was the first thing I loved.  I mean truly loved.  And that being pulled away from me  hardened something inside of me, where nothing mattered.  (months later) He came to me in the garage and he said, "you know, I think that this is been hard on you.  You can skate, because I think you need that, but I think that in a sense whats wrong with you is the pressure of contests, so you can't compete."

Contests gave me the ability to do what defined me, but what they came to represent was "Don't Fail.""

This just blew the top of my head off.  Not that I ever even got in the same zip code of the accomplishments of their skating careers, but this is exactly the pressure that drove me out of graduate school and music performance.  I got so obsessed with refining my technical abilities and the constant addictive need to progress that I forgot what I loved so much about it in the first place. 

I just wish that, at the time, I had been able to recapture that feeling you get when you lock in on a part and you're so happy it feels like your heart is just going to explode and be able to pair it up with the ability that I had gained.  Looking back it just seems such a waste that that internal, almost authoritarian, pressure dragged my joy out in the back yard, murdered it and buried it. 

I think the definition of true greatness is the ability to devote the kind of selfish martial determination to completely master a pursuit and yet be able to sustain the kind of enjoyment that prevents your own obsessive pressure from consuming you.

Five things you might believe if you trust the media

As an exercise in critical thought, here are five items you might believe if you take the media at face value.

1.  Foreign aid actually helps foreign citizens. 
   
   The overwhelming majority of US foreign aid is distributed to the military and economic interests of despots and dictators.  To compare:  in 2011, the US gave out a smidge over $7 billion for "State Department Global Health and Child Survival."  During the same period, military aid expenditures totalled $1.78 trillion (this figure is only straight military aid, not "security and terrorism prevention," or money used to further the drug war).
   
   Overlooking the fact that these non-military funds would be overseen by the henchmen of the very same despots and dictators that are black bagging citizens in the middle of the night, here's a little perspective: that's like having $178,000 in your pocket and feeding your kid on 7 bucks a year.  Oh, and the $7 has to go through the school bully on its way to the kid.
2. George Zimmerman was freed by Stand Your Ground  laws.
   
   George Zimmerman was acquitted by standard self defense laws that are applicable (with slightly differing conditions) in all 50 states.  SYG played no part in his arrest and trial. 
   
   Just as an added bonus, in Florida blacks and Hispanics have claimed  SYG at a higher rate than whites, with a higher rate of successfully averting prison terms and therefore benefit more from the protection those laws provide.  A little further reading on statistics...
3. Sandy Hook/Newtown was the worst school massacre in the US.
   
   Sandy Hook wasn't even the worst modern school killing, that dubious honor goes to Seung-Hui Cho and VA Tech.
   
   The actual worst in terms of casualties, deaths AND property damage goes to the events of May 18, 1927 in the township of Bath, Michigan when a deranged school board member wired the town elementary school, his house, and his truck with more than a thousand pounds of dynamite and then proceeded to shoot his wife and detonate his bombs, killing himself and 44 other people, including 38 children.  Life and property loss could have been even worse but about half his stash of dynamite failed to detonate.  Bath school massacre
   
    
4.  Rand Paul is a Libertarian.
   
   Rand stands with the following items that disqualify the "libertarian" tag:  enforcement and expansion of the drug war, opposition to same sex marriage, border fences and repealing birthright citizenship, voting for NeoCon Republicans over Libertarian candidates, economic sanctions, and enforcing his view of abortion on society at large, among other things.
   
   Rand Paul is a Tea Party Republican that shares a few views with libertarian principles, notably his stances on the Fed, civil liberties (as long as you're straight and not seeking an abortion), and foreign interventionism...but make no mistake, he is NOT a Libertarian.
5. Shark attacks are increasing, the MMR vaccine causes autism, Tim Tebow is an NFL quarterback, Satanic daycare child abusers, Y2K, poisoned Halloween candy, etc...
   
   Any item that drives ratings, page views, and clicks that does not have either basis in easily repeated or checkable FACT, should be approached with a wary eye.  For example, in the summer of 2001 the US was subjected to the "Summer of the Shark."  From June until 9am September 11th, the US news and entertainment was obsessed with a supposed increase in attacks, massive schools of sharks off the coast in the Gulf threatening to take over the world, the dangers of dipping your feet in the 6 inch deep brook behind your house in Kentucky, and just generally driving as much terror as possible.  Discovery Network and others rushed badly produced and inaccurate shark attack documentaries into production, and Discovery began an increasingly hard push on the attack angle during its annual Shark Week promotion that continues to this day.   9/11 happened and knocked the shark out of the news that year, but the damage was done:  thanks to tabloid journalists and poor ethics by nature channels people are terrified of the ocean and thinks sharks exist only to murder and mutilate beachgoers and must be killed on sight.
   
   The truth of the matter is that there were statistically less attacks and less deaths that year than average.  No word on whether media hysteria kept enough people out of the water to prevent Sharkmageddon™ or if it was simply natural statistical variation. 

A more accurate depiction of shark activity than US television...

What makes a home HOME?

I posted a link from buzzfeed on my Facebook earlier and it got me thinking about home, and what it means for a place to be home. 

Facebook says my hometown is Grand Forks, ND because I was born on the Air Force base there, but we lived in anonymously drab base housing, and went to base schools.  I don't remember much of it besides having a blast in the snow and playing hockey on any scrap of ice we could find.  Oh, and my older brother got his picture in the paper once for winning a speed skating competition.

My parents are both from the south, and we got a pretty thoroughly southern upbringing both before and after they split.  We were probably the only family on base eating homemade boiled peanuts thanks to my dad's GA upbringing.

You could make the case that either Atlantic coastal Florida or Biloxi, MS could be my hometown because I split time between the two during my school years.  I guess if you put a gun to my head I'd say I "grew up" in Florida, since I went to elementary and finished high school there.

There was my detour out to Los Angeles, which was a lot of fun, and a great experience, but is not home...no matter how much I want to hijack a plane and hit Hop Louie for Chinese or grab a Tommy's chiliburger from time to time.

And then there's New Orleans.   I came over here to visit and party more times than I can count when I lived in Biloxi.  I wasn't born here.  I didn't go to school here.  I don't have a yat accent, although I have since learned to speak it (dont pahk ya car up on the neutral ground dawlin, they writin tickets for dat this yeah!).  I had to hammer the NOLA slang out of my vocabulary when I moved from LA to L.A. rather than keep explaining what I meant when I said I wanted my sandwich dressed or my coffee regular, but I make no claim to being a native.  For the record, it took about six minutes for all that NOLA slang and then some to come back when I got back to the area.  I will also confess that when I first moved to the gulf coast (in Biloxi) that I absolutely hated the Saints with a passion.  It was the pre-internet/sunday ticket/sports bar/every game on TV days.  I didn't hate them for being the Saints-I hated them because I was lucky to get two Dolphins games a season out of market back then.  Eventually, around 1999 or 2000, thanks to Buddy D and a thoroughly likeable bunch of players, I finally admitted that I had become a Saints fan.  They promptly went 3-13 and I got a small taste of the then-30 year heartbreak. 

At this point, I have lived in New Orleans longer than any other place.  This city makes me completely insane.  Its dirty, crime-ridden, corrupt, the roads/schools/drainage are terrible, and full of some of the most ignorant bastards you could ever meet in your life.  At the same time its welcoming, culturally relevant, vibrant, accepting, colorful, booming, and full of some of the most wonderfully awesome warm, loving people (including some of those same ignorant bastards) you could ever even begin to hope to meet.  I've been around long enough to join in with Benny Grunch on some, though not that many, of the verses of "Ain't there no mo!"  I was here for K&B and Schwegman's.  I remember the Maison Blanche.  I remember the wave of places that never came back from Katrina.  I'll never be a native, but we've done some time, this city and I.

In the wake of That Bitch Katrina, I took a job in inland South Carolina, up by the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Two weeks after I got there the trees turned for the fall and it was all sweeping vistas exploding with color.  It was clean, quiet, people were super nice, the streets were smooth, you didn't get panhandled at every intersection by batshit crazy homeless people in tights and shrimp boots...and I was absolutely miserable.  I was so homesick I would have happily accepted a short stint in prison for a hot sausage poboy and a pineapple Big Shot or to have someone ask me "Where y'at behb?"  I don't know if it says more about me or New Orleans that when I was in a situation where I landed in a good job in a "normal" city that all I could think about was getting back down here.

In the end though, I think your hometown has a lot more to do with where you feel like you, rather than geographics or demographics.  I love the time I get to spend with branches of my family in different places, but there's always something that clicks into place when I come back across the twin spans and I see the skyline off in the distance.  THIS is home.