Frank Bruni: gustatory everyman, fighting for truth, justice, and moderately priced wine lists, or needlessly coy sybarite who’s really better suited to devise clever, double-entendre titles for porn flicks?

On the plus side, he does have the nice, rounded features of a frat boy gone to seed–and if the NNDB is to be believed, he bats for our team. All you pun-loving cakeboys, have at him….

UPDATE: Thanks to the educated guesswork of another New Orleans-based photographer, the mystery has been solved! The artist behind these lovely Mardi Gras pics is Victoria Ryan. (By weird coincidence, her photograph entitled “Peeping Cowboys” in the Fragile Legacy portfolio was taken in front of my house last Mardi Gras. Look closely and you can glimpse Drew, Don, and wee little Tania enjoying themselves on the stoop.) It’s a small world, ladies and gentlemen–and in New Orleans, it’s even smaller….

PREVIOUSLY: I found this roll of 120 B&W film in front of my house on Fat Tuesday afternoon. I’m pretty sure the pics were taken at Marcus’ house, prior to the start of the Ste. Anne parade. Anyone know the photographer?

I’m just gonna come right out and say it: I don’t like Sarah Silverman.

Sure, as a comedian, she’s fine. She’s moderately funny. She’s a tad raunchy. Her personality borders on borderline. Overall, a C-plus player, sometimes B-minus. She could hold her own in the Catskills or at the Jersey shore.

Her show on Comedy Central, though…I mean, is she paying royalties to Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert? ‘Cause with its canned outrageousness, its mildly off-kilter worldview, its cast of characters who are always and forever out to lunch, the whole thing is pretty much Strangers With Candy Goes to LA. And somehow, far less interesting.

What bugs me most? Bitch is always smiling at her own jokes–not laughing, which I suppose would be worse, just smiling. You know who else does that? The token non-white fat guy on Saturday Night Live. And you know who’s the least funny asshole on Saturday Night Live? That’s what I’m sayin’.

(Coincidentally, that other non-white fat guy also used to laugh at himself. So jolly they are, those non-white, overweight people. Not like some tragic, walking-heart-attack, cracked-out, fatass crackers I could name. John Goodman, you’re next.)

And on top of it all, Silverman’s a wimp. She’s afraid to really, truly offend; she wants to come out looking nice. Case in point: the AIDS episode where she gets pelted with tomatoes by the “good guys”, the sensible, sensitive folks (i.e. us). Silverman wants viewers to laugh at her character but to understand that she doesn’t really feel that way herself. She gives herself an out. Pussy.

Published over the weekend: an interview with Ken Foster, one of the most rational, thoughtful, and–above all–talented writers living in New Orleans today. His assessment of Our Fair City comes as close to my own as anyone’s–right down to the dog-philia….

Welcome to Ash Wednesday

Here’s a shocker: I’m not wealthy.

It took a while for that to sink in. For years I lived slightly beyond my means, enjoying weekends (and weeknights) at clubs, treating friends and strangers to dinner, downing rounds of drinks and other comsumables of dubious legal status. Frankly, I had a great time, and if I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe I’d skip those Fluevogs that made my feet hurt, but other than that….

For whatever reason–boredom, age, a growing list of watering holes from which I’d been forcibly removed–I gradually pulled myself together and began living like a responsible adult. Today, I pay my bills, taxes, yadda, yadda, yadda. Dullsville. Bring on the tapioca pudding. When do they replace my hip?

Yes, this is all going somewhere.

Due to the weird timing of certain financial obligations, I’m experiencing a bit of a cash crunch this month. Nothing too bad, but I need to watch my spending. The problem? It’s Carnival, and I’ve got three costumes to build–two for me, one for Jonno. I suppose I could just recycle bits from last year, but where’s the fun in that?

So although I’ve gotten out of the habit, I’m going to live in willful ignorance for the next few days. I’m going to pull an Edie Sedgwick:

When the bills would mount up
she’d stuff them all in a big envelope
and she’d take a dozen people
to the Ginger Man for drinks
—Edie: American Girl

And fyi, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the impending release of the film and everything to do with a youth spent reading the Stein/Plimpton oeuvre and poring over the pages of Interview magazine (shoulder-to-shoulder with our school’s own Edie, Missy/Parker Posey). What else was a kid from Mississippi to do?

So, my sister has been entering her animations in film festivals, and her video for “The Rebel” has been nominated for a People’s Choice award at one of them. Why don’t you drop in and give her a vote or two? (Note: “The Rebel” is video #12).

Given the less-than-encouraging events of the past month or so, I hesitate to post this New York Times article about brain-drain in New Orleans, but it’s a real problem–moreso now than before Katrina or even immediately after it. Not many of us want to talk about it, and I don’t know of much that’s been written on the phenomenon lately, at least not in any complex or meaningful way. It’s not for the faint of heart:

As a city in flux, New Orleans remains statistically murky, but demographers generally agree that the population replenishment after the storm, as measured by things like the amount of mail sent and employment in main economic sectors, has leveled off. While many poorer residents have moved back to the city, the “brain drain” of professionals that the city was experiencing before the storm appears to have accelerated.

. . .

In battered but proud New Orleans, abandonment is a highly emotional subject, in part because many have made sacrifices to stay and rebuild. To some, leaving now is tantamount to treason. When a report appeared a year ago that Emeril Lagasse, the famed chef, had said the city would “never come back,” reservations at his restaurants were canceled and strangers berated him. He insisted he had been misquoted.

And in response to an article in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about a woman who had decided to move on, Poppy Z. Brite, a New Orleans novelist, wrote: “This isn’t an easy place to be right now, and the decision to stay or go is deeply personal. But why must some people use the media to take a parting shot at the city?”

On another occasion, Ms. Brite said, “If a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.”

—New York Times

In the end it’s a little vague, a little ambiguous, a little “Here are the facts, now figure it out for yourself, reader”, but then, that’s how it is, right?

Let’s be honest: we all want to love Top Design. The concept’s clean and simple, the hosts are kinda hip, and its spot on Wednesday night fills a gaping hole in our entertainment calendars until Project Runway returns. (Or at least until the weather heats up enough to warrant leaving the goddamn house.) But perhaps most importantly, as homosexualists, Top Design really speaks to us. Or rather, it should….

If the Bravo execs were to ask me–and surely they will someday–I’d tell those fatcats in their big fancy Aeron chairs and their three-piece suits and their big cigars, which they have to smoke on the terrace of the skylobby because the building’s non-smoking, that there are two simple, fixable problems with the show: the writing and the casting. Allow me to elaborate.

The writing: Okay, so Top Design is produced in Los Angeles, a city of how many million people? And they hired writers who pen alleged catchphrases like “You can stay” (when designers are allowed to stay), “Goodbye” (when they aren’t), and “See you later, decorator” (as a final, unnecessary kick in the ass as the loser is leaving the studio)? Did they find those writers in a parking lot at the Galleria? Were they a gift-with-purchase at the Clinique counter? Or was the script drawn at random from entries submitted by third-graders across the country? (Congratulations, Susie Higginbotham of Dothan, Alabama!) The producers need to firebomb the writing pool and start from scratch with native English speakers. Like me, for example.

The casting: Let’s start by looking at casting that works–namely that of Project Runway. We’ve got a lovable mentor in Tim Gunn (everyone’s favorite gay high school teacher); a sassy, supersexy, opinionated host in Heidi Klum; and bitchyfunny sidekicks in Nina Garcia and Michael Kors. One big, happy, fashionably dysfunctional family.

Top Design‘s producers have tried to mimic this arrangement, but like Todd Oldham’s bronzer, they’re a little off. Todd is, of course, an accomplished designer, but he’s got a deeply disturbing teleprompter-of-the mind thing going on. Even when speaking off-the-cuff, he sounds like he was programmed by Stanley Kubrik. He’s more wooden than some of that crappy pressboard furniture they use on the show. (Case in point.) And I see the Botox fairy has come to visit. Repeatedly. He looks like a cute, talented, mahogany camel. Please call in Amy Sedaris for an intervention.

Then we have Jonathan Adler–another great designer who’s as stiff as brushed aluminum for most of the show. Occasionally he’ll revert to human form, but only when he’s dishing with the other judges. On the plus side however, those Windsor knots are ferocious.

As it stands, the only likeable people–nay, the only people–on Top Design‘s panel of experts are Kelly Wearstler (good-natured, friendly, stunning, hot socks) and Margaret Russell (patrician, catty, gorgeous, MILF). They bring originality and spunk to a show that’s obviously based on a formula where someone forgot to carry the two.

The solution? Fix the fags. Boot Todd altogether and move Jonathan into the teacher slot. Bring in someone with personality for the judging–someone likeable. Mizrahi comes to mind, though he’s not considered an interior designer. At least he’s got some range in his vocal cords. Alternately, the producers can hire me.

And the girls? They can, like, totally stay.

Courtesy of Slate, one of six great poems about sex:

BODY, REMEMBER

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,

not only the beds on which you lay,

but also those desires for you

that glowed plainly in the eyes,

and trembled in the voice—and some

chance obstacle made futile.

Now that all of them belong to the past,

it almost seems as if you had yielded

to those desires—how they glowed,

remember, in the eyes gazing at you;

how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body.

—Constantine Cavafy

And yes, I’m still busy, but very, very bored.