There was a party. Liquor was served. Mistakes were made. No one puked.
One of the phrases above is a lie. Can you guess which one?
And now, some pics, in case you weren’t at Leopalooza III…
Author: Richard
On the walk to breakfast this afternoon (yes, debauchery reared its ugly head hier soir) a well-dressed and apparently well-heeled woman passed me on the sidewalk, hissing angrily into her cellphone: “I tried to tell you about her, Anthony, but you wouldn’t listen!” Unlike the one-sided bits of conversation I usually overhear, this one made me want to hear more. The hack writer in me said “Now that’s an opening line for a film, a novella, an epic poem–hell, it’s already haiku….” But what’s the rest of the plot?
Short story: Eugenie Leblanc married Anthony de Varville two weeks after her graduation from Sacred Heart Academy. The timing seemed right: Anthony was four years older and was graduating from college, preparing to move back to New Orleans with his business degree from LSU, starting work at the family business (shipping, mostly imports from the far east) that summer. After a month-long honeymoon in Paris, they began what would become a stereotypical Uptown marriage: Anthony went to work and to meetings with his Mardi Gras krewe–Comus, of course–and Eugenie passed her days chairing gala committees and attending Sunday tea at the Windsor Court. After five years, Anthony had his first clumsy affair–so clumsy that Eugenie learned of it less than an hour after its comsummation. She gradually learned to tolerate his dalliances–even his most recent, with their bottom-of-the-barrel babysitter, Rhonda. Unfortunately, Rhonda turned out to be a handful of trouble: you see, Anthony didn’t care much for condoms, and his careless, self-serving rutting eventually resulted in the impregnation of the surprisingly fertile Rhonda. Now Rhonda’s brother, Ronnie, was making threatening calls to Anthony at work, vowing to destroy Anthony’s home and business unless he “made things right.” As the story begins, Anthony has shared his burden with Eugenie, who is, as it turns out, somewhat less than sympathetic. Thirty pages later, Anthony has set Rhonda’s house on fire, killing both her and Ronnie. Eugenie learns of Anthony’s cruel and criminal acts over breakfast, but chooses to continue eating the omelette her housekeeper, Jeanette, has made for her rather than file for divorce.
Indie film: Same story as above, but set in an anonymous Midwestern town. Eugenie is now Mary (Joan Allen), Anthony becomes Tony (William H. Macy), de Varville is changed to White. Tony is a lawyer and his Mardi Gras krewe becomes a hunting club. The film ends with upper-crust Mary falling for a wise, handsome, penniless drifter (Johnathan Schaech or, in a pinch, Luke Wilson) and riding away with him on his motorcycle after she tells off Anthony and her grubby, ungrateful children over breakfast one Saturday morning.
Summer blockbuster film Anna (Angelina Jolie) was a bad girl. By the time she reached 9th grade, she was a chain smoker, an accomplished pickpocket, and addicted to 14 narcotic substances. During a bank robbery that her boyfriend planned as a treat for her 16th birthday, things go terribly wrong, and Anna is left alone to fend off a 30-member SWAT team. Wounded in the attack, she awakens to find that–a la La Femme Nikita and XXX–she’s been drafted into a top-secret government espionage unit. Her handlers, Bud Silvers (Keanu Reeves) and Daria Finnochio (Parker Posey), are a mismatched bungling duo, assigned to train Anna and keep her out of trouble. Their complete incompetence provides the film’s comic relief. The film concludes with an all-night car chase/shoot-out in which Anna proves her loyalty and mettle. Exhausted and scuffed-up, all three go to Denny’s (product placement) for a breakfast celebration.
A strange thing just happened.
There’s a man who rides up and down the streets of the Bywater neighborhood in a beat-up F-150 bulging with produce. On the roof of the truck cab, he’s bolted a low-rent PA system, which he uses to broadcast his wares. From blocks away you can hear him coming, his call thin and nasal and droning: “I got banaaaaanaaaaas, I got lettuuuuuce, I got okraaaaa….” Like the hum of window unit air-conditioners and the aerosol whoosh of mosquito trucks, the call of the Vegetable Man says “summer.”
But a minute ago, while I was walking the dogs, I got confused. Maybe it’s because the Vegetable Man was really far away–a good five blocks or so, scraps of his tinny voice carried on a rare breeze. Or maybe I was thinking about the news, or Midnight Express, or how much I’ve always wanted to visit the Hagia Sophia. Whatever the reason, from where I stood, the Vegetable Man’s voice sounded like the Muslim call to prayer. You know the sound–you’ve heard it in countless movies and documentaries, echoing down arid streets, above the heads of vendors in souks, filling the corners of locations fantastic and mundane. And I thought to myself: “Wow. I know New Orleans is, like, exotic and all, but I had no idea….”
Half a second later, the realization hit, and I was back in New Orleans, watching my dogs chase one another on an empty lot that one of the neighbors is kind enough to keep mowed. And I said out loud, “Well, that was a nice vacation.”
In other news, I really don’t know how the doctor and his wife keep reeling ’em in. I guess there are some people out there who still don’t believe there’s an entry for “gullible” in the dictionary.
—– Original Message —–
From: XXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
To: eek@sturtle.com
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 8:35 PM
Subject: new friends
hi, i happened upon your web page and found it very
interesting. i was just wondering if, as you say on
your page, you’re still looking for new friends? i
would certainly be interested in joining the
stables(so to speak), it does sound fun to be
sandwhiched between the two of you . i am a m/w/m here
in terre haute and i am bisexual. although the wife
and i are swingers i thought i would enjoy this for
myself then if everyone were interested get her
involved. i’d love to hear back from you and hear what
you think. i tried looking in the hair care isle at
walgreens for mrs.eek but had no luck(lol). have your
selves a good evening.
I was watching something last night–I don’t know what it was–and it suddenly occurred to me:
People on TV have the best bed linens ever.
Like, even the lower middle class folks, or the working class couples, or the struggling artists–the ones living in apartments five times the size they could actually afford in Manhattan–have foot-thick duvets with matching pillow shams and dust ruffles and throwpillows and crap crappity crap crap. To those of us sleeping under Wal-Mart comforters and resting our heads on pillows we’ve had since we were bed-wetting age, it’s a bizarre logic to follow.
Someone went to go see the Breeders last night. He’ll probably mention it himself, but his email to me is too good not to post here…
breeders had a surprise last night. they didn’t play the buffy tune, but kelly said “you will be pleased”.
kim asked “did you guys see hedwig?”
they started playing ‘angry inch’. cool.
then, this skinny guy jumps onstage to the middle mic. it was john cameron mitchell!! the song lasted like 15 minutes, and he made out with
kim and kelly during it. it was hot.he did a stage dive, the crowd parted. he hit the floor. it was very sad. as jorge said “wrong year, wrong crowd”.
but it was still gorgeous.
I’m driving to work this morning, and I’m crossing Elysian Fields, and off to my left there’s this team of guys mowing the neutral ground. And as I pass, I shut my left eye, and I don’t even notice I’ve done it until I’m past them and I open it again.
I guess my dad, with all his doom-and-gloom stories of lawnmowers mangling limbs and tossing rocks into children’s eyes, scared the living crap out of me. He’s inspired my involuntary reflexes.
In other news…
- The show‘s a success. (This is the last weekend, fyi.)
- We’re selling the other house. (Neither of us want to be landlords right now.)
- I’m finally taking a vacation. (Only for three days, but that’s more than I’ve had in several years, so what the hey.)
Last night, as I was walking the dogs, I wandered down a block of Spain Street I don’t usually hit. It’s very pretty, though stereotypical, lined with crepe myrtles, poplar trees, and a dozen brightly colored shotgun houses.
In the middle of the block, I smelled it: perfectly done fried chicken. But struck me wasn’t just the scent of the chicken; it was the smell of the kitchen, too, saturated with grease, and knowing that the woman making it–almost surely a woman–had probably done so hundreds of times before, standing in the same spot, looking out the same window at a cityscape that doesn’t change–that hasn’t changed because of poverty and neglect and now can’t change because of historic value. The night air was warm and humid, and I felt like I might have been back at my grandparents’ house 20 years ago, in the middle of Nowhere, Mississippi, rolling in the grass with their dogs, Ramses and Sheba (black labs, of course) and waiting for my grandmother to call us in to dinner.
But then, the smell could have been coming from the newly renovated the house on the corner, bought by a young couple and turned into a tony little bakery with living quarters up top. In which case, my nostalgic fantasy seems even more…well, fantastic and stupid.
When I was younger–much younger–“alternative” music was an obsession. Scouring the French Quarter’s decrepit indie music shops to find copies of albums from flashes-in-the-pan like Strawberry Switchblade, Foetus, and all-time fave Haysi Fantayzee was enough to make me swoon. I can’t really describe the sensation–I’ve never been able to–but it was kind of like what I imagine people must feel when they see Jesus in a tortilla or in the whorls of a goat’s fur. It was as though I had in some way discovered those delicious freaks; it was rare and special and thrilling.
But now there’s a store on Magazine Street called Pink Opaque and I listen to Missy Elliot on ClearChannel radio. Go figure.
…In other news, either I’ve gotten a glitch on my hard drive, or a pesky virus has disabled my entire email Inbox. To paraphrase the craptacular, non-ecstasy-inspiring, one-hit-wonder of the 1990s, Miss Paula Cole, where has all my email gone?
Yippie-yi, yippie-yi…
