C’EST BON
Call us nerds, but given our druthers, UL Lafayette having a successful eponymous publishing imprint is infinitely cooler than beating UL Monroe on the gridiron. Little known to most of Lafayette, that’s exactly the case. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press has now released two full-length titles: Last Days of Last Island, a page-turning historical account of the 1856 hurricane that wiped out Isle Derniere on the Louisiana coast (see this week’s LivingIND cover), and Old South Baton Rouge. Both books are selling well — Last Days is set for a second printing — and, according to ULL Press Marketing Director Greg Mouton, our university publishing operation, unlike many kindred publishers across the country, is in the black. The university has actually been publishing since the mid-1970s through the Center for Louisiana Studies, but having ULL’s name on the jacket just makes sense. And we’d still love to trounce the ULM Battle Chickens or whatever they’re calling themselves these days.
PAS BON
Boring Bobby — he can’t make nothing sexy. Time will tell whether Gov. Bobby Jindal really harbors presidential aspirations, but he’s not doing himself any favors with his hard-lacquered oratory and yawn-inspiring attention to detail-detail-detail. The governor’s appearance last week at the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce’s legislative luncheon was, according to our sources, a major snoozefest. Jindal’s a genius, no denying, but spewing data with nary a rhetorical flourish will get you only so far — not that he isn’t trying. As if channeling the late Justin Wilson, Bobby Too Bland dropped a “This here is a fine pot of gumbo” into a recent column on health care reform he penned for Politico. The phrase was as forced as his cowboy boots. Say what you will about his policies, President Barack Obama — a constitutional law scholar — can parse the document’s minutia and still make it sound like something you want to read in a thong while sipping absinthe. Jindal? Eh, not so much.
COUILLON
Talk about biting the hand that needs you. After hearing a pitch from Faith House Executive Director Billie Lacombe last week during public comment on the NGO funding ordinance, Councilmen William Theriot and Keith Patin proceeded to treat Lacombe like the poster girl for bad government policy and wasteful spending — galling and ironic because Faith House is listed among Patin’s civic activities on his council bio page and his wife Lou was recently honored as Faith House’s Woman of the Year. Theriot and Patin are solid citizens, no doubt, and serving on the council has to be more pain than gain, but making the director of a shelter for battered women an ideological whipping girl is not a bouillon cube; it’s couillon, dude.