my building yesterday

Gunman bursts into store on Magazine, kills grocer
He fired one shot, didn't take money
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
By Walt Philbin and Trymaine D. LeeStaff writers

A 46-year-old Magazine Street grocer was shot to death Tuesday afternoon by a man who entered the store cursing and then fired a single shot at her as she ran to the back of the business to warn her husband, police and family said.

Chieu Ha Do of Gretna didn't reach the kitchen where her husband, Nghia Huu Do, was working. Just seconds after hearing his wife's words of warning, he found her collapsed on the floor near the back of Jennie's Grocery in the 3700 block of Magazine Street on Tuesday shortly after 1:30 p.m.

With the gunman at large and nothing taken from the store, her death left police and family with more questions than answers.

Police said they hadn't determined whether robbery was the killer's motive, but that the gunman didn't make any demands for money as Do ran from the counter. After shooting the woman, the man left the store empty-handed, police said.

Late Tuesday, Nghia Huu Do, clad in a rumpled, half-buttoned shirt and bloodstained jeans, repeated his wife's last words as a relative translated for him.
"He has a gun! He has a gun!" Do said his wife screamed, moments before the bullet pierced the shop's plexiglass and killed his wife.

"We're still in a state of disbelief," said a daughter-in-law, translating for Do.
The grocery was the realization of a lifelong dream for the Dos. The couple came to the States from Vietnam in 1980.

Three years ago, they opened Jennie's. Nghia Huu Do said he always worked in the kitchen, while his wife worked the cash register. Their children helped when they could, he said.

"At times we were afraid," Do said about the possibility that they might be robbed. "But this was our business. This is how we made our money," he said.
There were no customers in the store when Chieu Ha Do was shot to death. With no warning, the gunman entered and "shouted some type of obscenities," New Orleans Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Accardo said. He then fired a single gunshot, police said.

A witness provided police with a clothing description, and a surveillance camera at a Magazine Street service station a block away captured a man police believe to be the killer walking up the street. The tape didn't capture the man's face, police said.

Tina Owen, a friend of the victim's, said she was helping the woman apply for a small-business loan from the federal government. Chieu Ha Do wanted to buy more equipment and inventory for her business, Owen said, adding that the victim was "a shy, hard-working person."

Owen said she knew something was wrong Tuesday when her phone calls to the woman went unanswered. Chieu Ha Do had just sent over the paperwork needed to apply to the Loyola Small Business Development Center for the loan.

"I called the store around 4 p.m. to tell her I had received the paperwork," Owen said Tuesday. But she didn't get an answer.

Residents and business owners alike were shaken after the slaying on the popular strip of Magazine.

"This is scary for all of the neighboring businesses," said Lyn Anderson, who works at Pastiche, a business a few doors down from Jennie's. "They were just trying to make a living. . . . It's just weird, we were never really afraid. And usually there would be 10 to 15 people hanging outside of the store, but yesterday there was nobody out there."

Michael Cartwright, an Uptown resident who frequents the store, said Chieu Ha Do will be missed. "I don't think there is a person around who can't identify with the grief that family must feel right now," Cartwright said. "You start out thinking it's going to be just another day, things are going to be normal and fine, and now they've lost their mother, their wife. What a tragedy."

. . . . . . .
Walt Philbin can be reached at wphilbin@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3302.
Trymaine D. Lee can be reached at tlee@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3301.

so to go, getting over it all.

Hurricane Dennis passed without incident, well for New Orleans at least. I feel as if I've been engulfed with too much information in days late. Congestion and paranoia. I feel very uncomforted by the behavior of the news media. I've been subjected to it... I don't think that one should watch televised new. I think that there is an unhealthy strain of fear and tension peretuated in it.

Leila, long haired girl confidante, and I went for lunch at Benechin, meanwhile CNN was blasting in the background. It could have been a jackhammer, but it was silent. How is that news, when there is so much of it but only on the most superficial level; I'm referring of course to the new tickertape that scrolls at the bottom of the screen. It's as if the illusion of information is enough to satiate rather than actual articles and incidents being explained and clarified. I talked to Leila about crime and modern life and various other topics.

She is going to take the civil service test. I think she may have already taken it today, or will take it in the very near future. She has ambition to become a conservator, which was oddly something I considered briefly. Paper and manuscripts conservation and preservation being something I was introduced to in my custom framing fiascos/scams. I respect it, but solvents and paste pH's aren't up my alley. Archivist archivist archivist. We agreed to apply together though she has her eye on UT Austin and I want to go the cheap and less fantastical route at LSU, the combo MA History and MLS degree. I hope that I'll still be a rabble rouser after it all. You know, living in Baton Rouge. It is the terminal degree. TERMINAL. (commitment anxiety).

...

I was in the Women's Center at Tulane University, scoping out articles, a private place to work, etc. I had the opportunity to have a look at Bust and Bitch, two periodicals for the younger, politically informed modern ladies set. I felt a little weird. I think that Bitch, though staffed with excellent writers and keen minds, is very quick to call out, umm, thoughtcrime and tends to perhaps be overdogmatic at times and not really consider alternative feminist models of explanation in their cultural criticism. There was an article about Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls, essentially three female backup dancers that serve to enhance the consumer/materialist spectacle that accompanies popular "pop music" performance in early 21st century America.

Some highlights from the article:

They shadow her wherever she goes. They're on the cover of the album, they appear behind her on the red carpet, she even dedicates a track, "Harajuku Girls," to them. In interviews, they silently vogue in the background like living props; she, meanwhile, likes to pretend that they're not real but only a figment of her imagination. They're ever present in her videos and performances -- swabbing the deck aboard the pirate ship, squatting gangsta style in a high school gym while pumping their butts up and down, simpering behind fluttering hands or bowing to Stefani. That's right, bowing. Not even from the waist, but on the ground in a "we're not worthy, we're not worthy" pose. She's taken Tokyo hipsters, sucked them dry of all their street cred, and turned them into China dolls.


Note 1, from Ms. Lucifer Morningstar: Tokyo fashion culture has nothing to do with street cred in any Western understanding of it. The whole gothic/Lolita Harajuku scene is about high capitalist commodity fetish and costume play. There's no scrounging in thrift stores and wearing clothes you made last night out of pieces of carpet and safety pins. The larger part of Tokyo street fashion involves going to a boutique and throwing down a lot of money for flaboyant fashion.

Note 2: There's this thing called performance art. When people perform sometimes the roles they play are different from real life.

I guess what upset me most is that there wasn't very much consideration for these women as artists and performers. Yeah, they're totally tools of Warner Brother's or whatever bullshit marketing mega-conglomeration record label they're on, but first and foremost they're performers. Professional dancers and actresses performing roles. I think what's more interesting and worth scrutiny is not the performance but the reception of the performance and how the audience responds.

Um, okay now for the personal note. I'm Asian-American. I'm a performer. I'm a feminist. I'm a radical. My opinion... um, is it disgusting? Yes, but I feel like that the thoughtless celebration of consumer goods and hypercapitalism woven into every single No Doubt song is more offensive than some very pretty dancing girls. They're really a fabulous gimmick, the entire act is. And as I am learning it takes skill and patience to model/pose and prance around in videos. Is it overvalued? Hell yeah. But it's not the easiest thing in the world.

Whoa to the day that we consult pop stars as philosophers. When did rock and rollers get intellectual cred? It must be from all the bars and cocaine, and those long nights reading Sartre on the tour bus.

Here's nice Bjork quotes from an interview I read


Bust: Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Bjork: Umm...no.
Bust: Why not?
Bjork: Because I think it would isolate me. I think it's important to do positive stuff. It's more important to be asking than to be complaining.
Bust: So you feel the term "feminist" is equated with complaining?
Bjork: A lot, yes. You could probably call my mom a feminist, and I watched her isolate herself all her life from men, and therefore from society.
Bust: You believe she isolated herself from men because of feminism?
Bjork: Obviously I can't take her as an example of all feminists, but I find that for my generation, it's important to do things instead of just sitting there complaining that things are not right. It's important to collaborate with both males and females and to be positive.

Hurray for Bjork! Boo to those no good complaining feminists. Let's all just write popsongs! Maybe if I write enough popsongs about how pretty I feel today with boys writing very nice beats... and wear Prada in my next video then, yes, women in the regional South will have the same reproductive rights as men there. Wow maybe if Oval remixes this track then civil society will return to wartorn regions of the Africa! Super!

There is a lot to complain about Bjork. And sometimes you have to make a big ruckus for anyone to pay attention. Not to knock art, but self-expression is not the end all and be all of mankind. There are a lot of people in the world and sometimes we can lose track of that, especially if we're millionaire popstars, and sometimes people have to sit there and complain because there are a lot of people suffering.

hmm...
too long atom bomb.

Next up... Why I am a Feminist.