On the subject of stereotypes, there’s another one that’s starting to piss me off: the idea that Southern families are all a bunch of wacky, wild, irreverent, outspoken, good-time guys and gals. I mean, I’ve spent nearly all my life south of the Mason-Dixon, and I’m here to tell you, I’ve never met a Southern family remotely like the ones depicted on the small screen, the big screen, or in print.

Now, that’s not to say we don’t have our fair share of “characters” (I promise, we do), nor to say that the South doesn’t have a unique set of social customs (hello? monster trucks?). It’s just that…well, I’m starting to feel guilty. Folks come to visit, and they’re expecting everyone to be all Greater Tuna and crap, and I have to break it to them that we’re just as dull and boring as, say, anyone from Vancouver.

So for any of you planning to travel down this way, I suggest you spend your time flipping through the generic, inoffensive pages of Southern Living and avoid anything that reeks of ya-ya (with two very notable exceptions).

Just to be different, I’ll take Furio over Ralphie.

Name That Film

“The children are having sex, Beth is pregnant, and I narrowly escaped an assassination attempt: will you please do something?”

“Delicious, delicious…oh, how boring.”

“I could never take lightly the idea that people were making love without me.”

In some ways, I hate to write about New Orleans. I mean, yes, it’s a beautiful city with its own unique vibe, and I love it. It’s just that, when you start discussing New Orleans, and you’re writing for people who don’t live here, you invariably end up perpetuating the city’s stereotypes: vampires, Mardi Gras, shabby gentility, pervasive decadence. Sure, there’s a shred of truth to each of those, but to tout them as gospel…well, that requires some serious fabrication.

There is, however, one cliche of the city that I can’t begin to deny: the idea of New Orleans as an underdeveloped city-state, a piece of the Third World plucked from thousands of miles away and set down at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Last night, for example, I was walking the dogs, and I heard a hum–a loud, electric hum, like fifty households going simultaneously dark. It’s a distinctive sound, one I barely knew before I moved here. Over the past decade or so, I’ve become accustomed to it, and last night my involuntary response was to look up, off to the horizon in the direction of the noise, and as expected, I saw the blue-green glow of a second transformer shorting out. Five or ten seconds later, its own hum sounded.

There was no storm last night. It wasn’t particularly hot. Unless a cat with a deathwish found its way into a substation (which has happened before), I can’t imagine why the power might have gone out. But honestly, I didn’t even ponder the question. Like so many people in so many places around the world with spotty utilities and corrupt politicians, I’ve learned to just accept things as they happen and to be happy when they return to normal.

Sometimes it bothers Jonno, the way things are here. And I see his point: you can’t depend on much in New Orleans. Sometimes even the bars close during high-category hurricanes. It is not a city for the impatient.

Okay, I admit it: I’m officially a bore. The only revelations I have these days come when I’m walking the dogs.

He’s back.

. . .

So, Southern Decadence is officially over–and I don’t mean “over” as in, “Whew, I’m so glad that exam is over, I’m gonna smoke crack for a solid week!” Nor do I mean “over” as in NYC drag lingo “ovah,” as in “over the top,” as in “Darling, your face may look like Christina Aguilera dragged you from her bumper for miles and miles, stopped, hurled you into one of her Puerto Rican ravines, smeared bacon on your face and threw you to the alligators, then took out her own personal ugly stick and beat you with it, but that gown, lady, is fucking OVAH! I must have it….” No, dears, I mean “over” as in Valley Girl lingo, as in “This party is so totally over that I think someone must have, like, spiked the punch with Demerol.”

On behalf of New Orleans’ glbt community, I’d like to thank the sprawling metropolis of Houstonatlantadallas for sending every single shirt-phobic, ghb-philic fudgepacker within its city limits to the Crescent City this Labor Day weekend. Each of these pansies has worked diligently to ensure that the party is truly unbearable. If any of these nancy boys would like to rent a house for Decadences yet to come, I’m happy to offer mine for an exorbitant fee.

Just so you know up front, I’m not criticizing anyone, and I’m not being condescending. At least I don’t mean to be. I’m just, well, mystified. Or maybe “intrigued” is a better word. Let me explain.

Over at CNN.com, they have this thing, an online gallery of plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site. Most of you have probably already seen it.

Anyway, these plans aren’t generally the work of bona fide architects or engineers, they’re the creations of Average Joes and Janes. Some have obviously been done with drafting software, but most were created using simpler means: Illustrator, Microsoft Paint, or hand drawn with crayons.

What’s interesting to me is the element of fantasy that runs through so many of the drawings. Me, if I’d submitted anything, I’d probably be hauling out the scientific calculator and calling up certain pals to make sure my angles were correct. But many, many people have treated this project the same way a sixth grader might handle the task of designing an biosphere colony on Mars–or the way someone imagined Earth life in 2274 in Logan’s Run.

I guess it’s the power and significance of the space that have led to these visceral designs–designs that would likely prove structural impossibilities, or in other cases, designs so full of cavalier patriotism they’d be embarrassing ten years from now. Designs by adults who have somehow forgotten to be practical. Design as catharsis.

I’m sorry if I’m stating the obvious. It just struck me, the emotional content. It’s wouldn’t even occur to me to work that way.

As the book opens, Burroughs is nearing 13, the son of an increasingly withdrawn, alcoholic father and a psychotic mother who fancies herself a modern-day Emily Dickinson, believing that her awful poetry will win her certain celebrity. After the marriage shatters, Burroughs’ mother Deirdre steps up her therapy sessions with the mercurial Dr. Finch, a psychiatrist who maintains questionable intimacy with his patients and has a special masturbation room adjoining his office, where he gets off on pictures of Golda Meir.

—Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

Now that’s a plot line.

In other news, the Dr. and the Mrs. are getting flooded with email–like, bukake style. Is there perhaps a swingers convention in Terre Haute?

Omigod.

Le bitch is coming back–this time, to House of Blues, opening for these guys and these guys. Not nearly as interesting as seeing her perform in someone’s un-air-conditioned ghetto-ass basement on St. Claude Avenue in the middle of August following a more thoroughly costumed version of Leopalooza last year, but still…anyone wanna go?

Now if only that other funny foreign female would pay us a visit….