Greg Meffert has always been a big talker. When he was New Orleans' chief technology officer, he bragged to anyone who would listen at City Hall that he was taking Mayor Ray Nagin on vacation to Hawaii. He bragged about owning a yacht where he held parties for the mayor.
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Then he contended [in court] that in his day job -- for which taxpayers paid him $150,000 a year -- he wasn't as involved in the crime-camera deal as the plaintiffs allege because he was essentially Nagin's right-hand man, overseeing several major city departments.
During his City Hall days, he would call himself "deputy mayor," a title that didn't exist. In court Tuesday, he repeatedly called himself the city's "recovery czar" after Hurricane Katrina, long before Nagin created the position by bringing in Ed Blakely.
...Meffert even laid claim to being Nagin's first choice for the czar position.
"I didn't even get home for six months after Katrina," he said. "I worked all the time. That's why I almost quit twice. I voluntarily resigned two days before the mayor was going to announce me as the recovery czar. I was burned out... precisely because of that schedule."
If we are to believe Muppet, then that means Nagin's top two choices for Recovery Czar were Meffert and Ed Blakely. Some quinella, huh? Who was third on the list, Godzilla?
In a splendid and delightful column Clancy Dubos at The Gambit writes:
To hear former City Hall technology guru Greg Meffert tell it, it’s hard out here for a pimp. A pimp for the city, that is.
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Poor Meffert. He took a 50 percent pay cut to take a job that enabled him to help his friend and former business associate, Mark St. Pierre, score a multi-million dollar crime camera contract from the city-- but, like aspiring rapper DJay in the film Hustle and Flow, he’s still gotta get money for his Cadillacs — not to mention his yacht, strippers, and some first-class vacations for himself and Mayor Ray Nagin.
Muppet as aspiring rapper... I never really thought of it that way. But it resonates. So let me take this opportunity to "pimp" Calliope Var, a rapper with whom I've had sporadic contact over the summer. When I told Levar (as I know him) about my bus story from the summer, he was terribly unimpressed. "How do you get stuck on a bus like that?" he chided. Then he handed me a few promotional cards for his new album. Because I'm a white geek, I gave him this weird nod/salute with the cards, as if to thank him for giving me more than one, and saying: "These are in good hands, Mr. Calliope! I'll be sure to only distribute them to my most trusted rap aficionado friends, who can truly appreciate your collaborations with C-Murder... etc.".
Anyway, here's Calliope Var, the biggest Uptown Gangsta this side of Meffert, performing "Like Yeah". There's lots of talk of "ice" in this song and I think that has to do with summertime beverages or restocking the neighborhood snowball machine:
