Its Better To Give Than To Recieve: Child's Play

Very rarely do so many of my passions intersect in such a beautiful way. Child's Play is an non-profit organization sponsored by companies in the gaming world. The money raised by Child's Play through donations and various events, go towards children's hospitals, particularly helping to improve their patients stay. For the holidays, each participating hospital posts a wish list via Amazon.com of items the hospital would like to have for the children. For example, kids movies and DVDs such as High School Musical and Happy Feet, or gaming systems such as a PS2 or a Nintendo DS and some popular friendly titles. These items may not directly cause a child to get better, but anyone who has ever had a loved one in the hospital before knows, overall happiness is very important.

As we all know by now, Katrina and its resulting aftermath devastated New Orleans, including its medical facilities. While the majority of such facilities are no back open, many less medically important things, such as forms of entertainment, were passed on when the money to rebuild was budgeted out. New Orleans currently has two participating hospitals. The Tulane Hospital Center for Children and the New Orleans Children's' Hospital, both of which are in need of these types of items.

I cant express how excited I was to find out that an organization berthed out of the Video game culture that garners so much negative press, was raising money (over $1million in 2006) for such a noble cause, and that my city could directly benefit from it! So when your making your Christmas lists for the holiday season, if you have room for an extra gift, or even just a few extra dollars, consider donating to Child's Play. You won't regret it.

K-Ville Is a Tv Show, and So Much More

Right behind the slump that our Saints have found themselves in, the hot topic in alot of mouths is FOX's latest series, "K-Ville". I remember hearing the concept and cringing at the thought of another half ass representation of the city I and so many others like me love, so the little firestorm that has come about isn't surprising in the least. What is surprising though, is that I haven't missed an episode, and anxiously await next Mon evening. For the uniformed, K-Ville is a cop drama set in post Katrina New Orleans, and for those that haven't seen an episode, is full of action and stereotypes and I'll be damned if I don't love a=every second of it! The cry is that in a times such as these, the last thing New Orleans needs is a series that shows rampant crime and wild shoot outs in some of the most recognizable locales of the city. I write this little to piece to emphasize an obvious yet overlooked fact.

K-Ville is a television show set in New Orleans, not a documentary. The show itself is a cop drama, meaning that every episode there will be a crime (if not more) and then the cops will do cop stuff, dramatic cop stuff, in their efforts to catch the baddies by the end of the hour.
Cop dramas take place in a number of cities and all of them always have a crime at the beginning. Hell, CSI has three cities (Vegas, NY, and Miami) full of crime if you mistake what you see on prime time TV series for the evening news. But the reality is its all fiction, in other words, it isn't real!!!! Well not all of it.


As a local, I understand that our city is not all about crime, and there are no shootouts in Jackson square, nor any car chases that spend any even small amount of time on Bourbon Street, but I also understand that a non-local cant distinguish the upper 9th Ward from Uptown simply by the style of house, nor do they know that the Convention Center isn't the best place to look for the airport. They needed some recognizable landmarks and traditions to give the show its New Orleans setting to the casual consumer.

On another side though, with the exception of "Gumbo parties", which don't at all sound like a bad idea to me, Anderson's character is probably at least a small part of all of us that call the Crescent City home. He loves his city with all his heart, and logically doesn't even know why. In these real life post Katrina years, its tough being a fan of New Orleans. "There is too much crime, too little elevation, too much water, too little money," and so on. It takes every bit of strength in me not to reply that there are too many people too busy sitting high and mighty to pick up a damn shovel or hammer and go to work! Boulet embodies that pissed of resident that will bring the city back if he has to do it himself, and honestly I cant name one character I can relate to more.


For me personally K-Ville has been serving a double purpose. I love the action, the craziness, and the quirky feel the show has and all its cop drama characteristics. But I am also loving seeing my city on TV . In America's ADD culture, it is truely out of sight out of mind. "The water is gone, FEMA has came and left, so everything is ok." If it takes a FOX series for people to see even a glimpse of what the reality is down home, then do it. Houses are still collapsed, grass is high, buildings abandoned, families separated, neighborhoods emptied, yet there is something about it all its own that cant be recreated anywhere else. Any resident knows, and fortunately I think K-Ville knows it too.