Saints

Ain’ts no more!!

4 March 2010 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

This is a post so long overdue, a non-fan put up his own thoughts about watching the Saints in Phnom Penh. Thanks John!

My interest in the Saints was piqued because after 43 years of solid mismanagement and dysfunction, this team is a study in how to lead a disparate group of “rejects” to success.

Drew Brees was cast off from San Diego. Reggie Bush was passed over by Houston. Jonathan Vilma was expendable as a Jet. Pierre Thomas wasn’t considered a draftable NFL prospect. Marques Colston was drafted… in the seventh round. Only so many bad breaks can happen to a group of young men. Right?

I also found that unlike many sports where the sheer simplicity of a game is pure agony to watch for its lack of mental stimulation, American football is like business strategy speeded up. There’s a lot to learn from the sheer amount of coordination and strategy in these games.

Plus I’d never been to a game before, nor was much of a fan, until this year’s trip back home. But friends scored us some great seats at the Superdome, and man was that over the top and a LOT OF FUN!

And then finally I was sold after reading about the civic and charitable work the players and coaches do in the New Orleans area, becoming an integral part of the region’s recovery after Katrina. I even follow Drew Brees’ twitter feed now! (I don’t normally go gaga for athletes but he’s so articulate, smart and civic-minded I can’t help but drool over this guy!)

“I never had followed football but became an instant Saints fanatic because there was no single organization that was holding together the spirit of the people in this community like the Saints,” said Natalie Jayroe, president and CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans.

(For anyone who ever lived in or loves New Orleans, this piece by Wright Thompson in ESPN, Saints the Soul of America’s City, is beautiful and really quite touching.)

And what a moving season it was, for those of you who watch football and saw the Superbowl. No objective stats supported this team’s ability to make it this far, much less take the title. Hardly any pundit or gambler put their money on the Saints. The only things behind their momentum was a lot of desire, an intensely loyal fan base (win or lose New Orleans was going to throw this team a party!), and a singular belief by both the team and its city that this was the year.

It didn’t make any sense, and that is the brilliance of it. So in keeping with a great American tradition, I need to own that game! I wish I could’ve been in New Orleans for all of it, but glad to have a great crowd in Phnom Penh to watch it with!

Celebration of New Orleans Saints win over Indianapolis Colts in — HELL!! IS!! FREEEEEZZZZZZIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!!

21840_1331594763980_1054325159_1027477_3671019_n — 3pm and they iz crunk!!

21840_1331598164065_1054325159_1027490_1981410_n — Our entire crew was even decked out in the black and gold!! ;-)

Saints the Soul of America’s City by Wright Thompson

4 February 2010 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

Because I need to preserve this beautiful piece by Wright Thompson, Saints the Soul of America’s City, for later reading, in its entirety:

NEW ORLEANS — The soul of New Orleans is in a trumpet and a low-ceilinged bar. It’s in the free red beans in the back. It’s in the art hanging near the food that has two dogs howling at a New Orleans Saints moon. It’s in the voice of Kermit Ruffins, two hours into his standing Thursday night gig at a packed club hidden in the neighborhood behind the French Quarter, the place weathered and peeling like the side of a workingman’s boat.
He plays a song he wrote, “All I Want for Christmas Is the Saints in the Super Bowl,” and the crowd dances and sings all the words. When he takes a break, he calls me in closer. There’s something he wants to show me. He undoes his thin black tie, and the top two buttons, then pulls both his collared shirt and T-shirt down just enough so I can see. I notice the top point first, and slowly, the entire tattoo comes into view, a month old, enormous, covering his entire chest. I start laughing, and so does he. A symbol of the city adorned with a symbol of the city. Kermit Ruffins has gotten an enormous fleur-de-lis, the Saints’ helmet logo, tattooed on his chest.
“Only in New Orleans,” he says, winking. “I’m killing ’em when I take off my shirt at the beach. Especially at the Super Bowl.”
Hello, madness
These are strange and beautiful days in New Orleans, and they must be seen to be believed. I’ve visited the city dozens of times since I was a boy, lived and worked there for a spell and last week, when I went down to experience the mania over the Saints’ undefeated season firsthand, I found myself not sure whether every street was a dream. Some moments made me laugh, and others were so full of a desperate love that I had tears in my eyes. [Read more…] about Saints the Soul of America’s City by Wright Thompson

Kermit Ruffins’ A Saints Christmas

20 December 2009 by Nathalie Abejero 1 Comment

Here’s a great piece by jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. All I want for Christmas is the Saints in the Superbowl! Who dat wear that Black and Gold! Geaux Saints!! Here’s a list of other Saints-inspired covers, including an awesome number by Hunter McGregor from MySpace, Here We Go, Soldiers of the Black and Gold.

New Orleans Saints at the Superdome

20 December 2009 by Nathalie Abejero Leave a Comment

It’ll be almost five years that I’ve been working in Phnom Penh. Like other nomads there is no “home” for me. I miss the familiar comforts of family and friends and a community built around a settled life. I miss the food, the law and order, and the extensive range of entertainment and options. But while memories of my time in New Orleans is not as extensive as those of my husband’s who grew up on its outskirts, of all places I’ve lived it is this much maligned, recently battered and often misunderstood city that inspired most my imagination. Here in this city was one of the more waking periods of my life – my greatest risks and biggest mistakes, and some very big decisions. Photos by Keith Kelly.

This year on our visit back we were treated to a surprise by some very good friends – tickets to a Saints game at the Superdome, where they beat their biggest rival the Atlanta Falcons. It’s a side of the city I never partook in, not normally being a sports fan, but it’s a subculture as part of the essence of New Orleans as jazz itself.

Here is an excerpt from an excellent piece on the Saints and the Soul of America’s City, by Wright Thompson. It’s a long piece worth reading, for anyone who has ever lived and loved this amazing city.

Where do you even begin? Maybe you describe the couture shops that have replaced the latest fashions on the storefront mannequins with Saints T-shirts? Maybe you tell how vampire novelist and native New Orleanian Anne Rice, never much of a football fan and now living on the West Coast, recently ordered a Drew Brees jersey with “Anne” on the back. Maybe you use numbers: 84 percent of the televisions in town were tuned to the recent Monday night game against the Patriots. Maybe you use bizarre trends, such as an NOPD cop telling me the 911 calls almost stop when the Saints play and there’s been only one murder during a game this year…
All of them — Besh, LeBlanc, Brees, Payton, Bush — they are all part of this first generation of post-Katrina successful New Orleanians. They are building a city from scratch, and people see them every day, working, adopting charities, enjoying life, sitting at the next table or listening to the same band. Katrina almost destroyed the city but, if you look closely, you’ll find that it did something else: It strengthened it, made the people who loved it love it even more. Everyone left the city, so no one is here because of inertia. They chose to come back…
.. the drive out of New Orleans, through a city still battered, past the exits for the Vieux Carre and Uptown, past the Huey Long, which runs narrow and high out to the leaning oyster and chicken shack. ..It is decayed on the outside, but inside there is life. Here is a citizenry that believes in the power of the underdog. New Orleanians fell first and see something the rest of America is blind to right now: a way back into the light.