やった! (yatta!)

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an article about the Animal Legal Defense Fund's lawsuit to free Tony the Tiger, a Siberian-Bengal tiger, being held in a cage at a Louisiana truck stop. Today, victory for Tony was announced when a East Baton Rouge District Court judge granted ALDF's request for a permanent injunction against the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries. The Department is enjoined from renewing the annual permit required to allow Grosse Tete Tiger Truck Stop to exhibit the big cat under Louisiana law.

True Blood's Kristin Bauer recorded a video urging support for ALDF's campaign to free Tony. The star power behind the campaign went supernova when Leonardo DiCaprio encouraged his facebook and twitter followers to help end the inhumane conditions of Tony's captivity. Thanks to these celebrities and others (hopefully a few of this blog's readers), ALDF went into court with 31,000 signatures petitioning the state of Louisiana to deny the permit to Michael Sandlin, owner of the truck stop.

I have a personal connection to this story through one of my closest friends, Matthew Liebman, who is a staff attorney for ALDF and was in court today in Louisiana advocating on behalf of the law (former Louisiana Representative Warren Triche, a co-plaintiff in the case, had authored the bill banning the private ownership if big cats), animal welfare, and general decency. Every time I doubt my reasons for going to law school, Matt always pulls off something amazing like this to remind me that lawyers can make a difference. Thank you Matt, the ALDF, Warren Triche, and the law offices of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell, & Berkowitz, P.C., who provided pro bono assistance on this case.

The ruling only enjoins the Department from renewing the permit which means that Tony will remain on exhibit at the truck stop until the current permit expires in December of this year (2011). ALDF is working with the Department to help find Tony an appropriate sanctuary. Stephen Wells, Executive Director of ALDF, had this to say.

Today, the law was upheld in the state of Louisiana, which has explicit regulations designed to protect tigers like Tony... It is an incredible victory for ALDF, the tens of thousands around the world who have supported this campaign, and most of all, for Tony. We eagerly look forward to the day that he leaves behind the noise and fumes of the Tiger Truck Stop for a new life of freedom that he has never known.

You can read the press release or find out about other campaigns and ways to get involved with animal welfare at the www.aldf.org.

UPDATE: Yay! Matthew's in the New York Times.

some mixed media to mediate your monday melancholy

Frank Ocean, the lead singer of L.A. based R&B group Odd Future has just put out a new mixtape called "Nostalgia, Ultra" for your digital consumption. It's available HERE.

And here's a video that True Blood's Kristin Bauer recorded for the Animal Legal Defense Fund to help free Tony the tiger. Keep your Frosted Flakes in the bowl. Tony is a Siberian-Bengal tiger who has been kept in a cage at a truck stop in Gross Tete, Louisiana for the past decade as a "tourist attraction."



The ALDF is currently litigating in the state to set Tony free. For more information and to sign a petition letting Louisiana know you think it's wrong to keep Tony locked up at a gas station, please visit www.aldf.org/tony.

And finally, to leave you on an up beat, here's some comments Orson Scott Card recently made in praise of Cowboy Bebop and Firely, two of my favorite cowboys in space sci-fi properties and tv series in general. He was writing in the 6 April 2011 issue of the Greensboro Rhino Times.

What can I say, except that to my vast surprise, I found this series brilliant. It's often funny, sexy in a mostly chaste kind of way – these are drawings, after all – and the action is gripping.

But what held me was a combination of strong relationship-based storytelling, a moody visual style that never got old and really smart dialogue.

I'd compare this to the great TV series Firefly, except that since Firefly came out in 2002, and resembles Cowboy Bebop in many ways (including quality), I can't guess whether Firefly creator Joss Whedon was influenced by Cowboy Bebop, was deliberately doing an hommage, or created such a similar series by sheer coincidence.

You can read the full text here.

Hmmmm... maybe I should do a review of Cowboy Bebop one day. It would be an excuse to watch the series all the way through. Again. I've literally seen it through at least a dozen times and the first 5 episodes probably 30 or 40 times. It's a property I always recommend to friends with good taste.

Here's a teaser, the actual pitch that was used to sell the show.

Once upon a time, in New York City in 1941... at this club open to all comers to play, night after night, at a club named "Minston's Play House" in Harlem, they play jazz sessions competing with each other. Young jazz men with a new sense are gathering. At last they created a new genre itself. They are sick and tired of the conventional fixed style jazz. They're eager to play jazz more freely as they wish then... in 2071 in the universe...

The bounty hunters, who are gathering in the spaceship "BEBOP," will play freely without fear of risky things, they must create new dreams and films by breaking traditional styles. The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called... "COWBOY BEBOP."

See you space cowboy...

the second best thing that's happened this week

Do you love muppets? Sad to see LCD Soundsystem calling it quits after the 2 April show at MSG? Let Jim Henson's creations cheer you up.

P.S. Thank you James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem for taking a stand against ticket scalpers and playing a series of shows all ages at Terminal 5 before the big send off.
P.P.S. <3 Animal and Cookie Monster chilling with the beers.
P.P.S. If you haven't seen the Robot Chicken parody of Behind the Music: Electric Mayhem, you're missing out.

30 Days of Write, 7 April

When I was a youngster growing up in Oklahoma, my family lived in a log house built from the foundation up by my father on a spacious twenty acre lot in the middle of nowehere. One winter afternoon many years ago, my younger brother and I, bundled up tightly in our snowsuits, waddled out the front door to play in the bitter cold. We bounded awkwardly down the hill in too many layers of warmth for comfort and across the little stream towards the flat expanse of long, wild grasses we knew lay up the other slope. Winter's arctic charm had embraced each blade with ice over night, leaving behind a great glimmering field of fragile spires pointing skyward like the spear tips of a tiny pixie army.

We mounted the narrow path upwards through the trees, the boyish joy of razing winter's troop already ringing loud in our ears with its promise of crunch, crunch. The ground frozen solid and hard made the climb all the more treacherous for the smooth soles of our little shoes so we clung to each other for support. And then we heard a whimper.

Winter in Oklahoma sends all signs of life on wing to the warmer south or deep into burrows to wait out the brutality. Several feet of snow fall every year without fail, sometimes leaving six inches or more behind from a single night's passing. The long denuded branches of shedding trees hang heavy with ice for much of the season. Electric lines weigh heavy under the burden, too, and power outages during the winter are not uncommon because cables simply snap from carrying too much load. This time of year is far from hospitable to life and yet here we were, clearly detecting vulnerable signs of it.

My brother and I scrambled a little further up the hill, our stomachs churning that intoxicaing elixir of curiousity and fear which spurs so many wild adventures in the life of a young boy. What we found surprised both of us.

Normally a dog pups during the warmer spring or summer months, Mother Nature having deigned it milder and more conducive to bringing new life gently into the world. But lo, standing before us, gaunt from starvation and trembling from weakness and cold, was a dog with a patchwork coat that looked like a ratty, discarded quilt. Her clutch of half-frozen puppies, newborn and still blind, lay in a little cavity of bare earth, shaking violently and crying out of hunger. Their mother didn't growl or bark but simply moved between us and her babies. I could see it in her big brown eyes. She knew she didn't have the strength to fight us and continue to nurse her young. She waited to see what we would do; I swear by the way she bowed her head, she was begging us two bipeds for help.

I approached this pathetic beast slowly, holding out my mittened hand for her to smell. She approached, sniffed. I rubbed her as best I could with penguin flippers and whispered softly to her. Once she was comfortable around us, my brother and I returned up the hill to our house, a warm wisp of smoke curling from the chimney, to fetch our parents for help.

My mother dragged out the dog house and stuffed it with sheets and rags and an electric blanket whilst my father followed us back to the dog with a cardboard box. Carefully we placed the entire litter in the box for transport . Bounding along side us, Sheba (as I would come to call her) with the triangles of her ears puffed up panted happily back to our house.

None of the pups survived through the spring. Many died during the coldest months either from malnutrition or illness or the effects of long exposure. But my dog Sheba stayed around to become one of my most loyal and protective companions over the years. She may have been nothing but a mutt, but she was my mutt.