New Orleans: An Update

<![CDATA[I may not be as artsy as some of my neighbors, but I’m not averse to snapping a few phonecam pics now and then. Here’s a few shots of New Orleans quietly getting her groove back:

One of the worst things about living in New Orleans these days is that our usually green city is now various shades of brown: brown from the water-level lines that stretch across distinctly un-level house fronts; brown from dust and caked-on mud; and brown from dead/dying plants that couldn’t handle the flood’s standing water or that perished in the subsequent drought with no one around to water them.

The upside of that last part is that all those needy, whiny, pansy-ass plants I’ve spent years struggling to keep alive: they’re all dead now. The only stuff that’s still around is the hardy crap you just can’t kill: ferns, philodendron, nandina, crape myrtle, buttloads of irises, and my personal favorite, sweet olive. In fact, some plants seems to have thrived: the angel’s trumpet pictured above has grown from a few spindly twigs to take over most of my patio. (Don’t worry, Jackie: I’m not makin’ any cocktails with it.) If I just dig up the dead stuff, I’ll be well on my way to a garden I can totally ignore.

She’s been here for years, this lady. I don’t remember her name. She’s a performer on Royal Street, and she’s remarkably untalented. She’s got a gimmick, though: she dresses up like a 19th century floosie, sets up a Casio, and hammers out what sounds to be barrelhouse blues. She sings a little, too, in a growling kinda music hall way, but she only knows about every third word to any given song–not that they’re real songs she sings, mind you. She’s kinda mental, so she’s probably just playing what she hears in her head…. Anyway, the point is that she’s got the look and the sound down, even if she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. There’s a blind clarinettist on Royal who pulls the same schtick: he can’t play a real jazz tune to save his life, but he can squeal the high notes like Pete Fountain, so he gets a good sympathy tip from tourists. Anyway, I guess it’s working for the pianolady, ’cause she’s still here and still fat.

On my way to grab some coffee the other day, I looked up and saw an almost completely intact One Shell Square–not too shabby for a building that’s rumored to be cased in highly unstable shalestone that allegedly erodes in heavy rain and is allegedly prone to come tumbling to earth during high winds….

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Three photos having little or nothing to do with recent events

This is the general store my grandfather ran in Paulding, Mississippi–population 150 (saaaaa-lut!)–until the day he died. Like most childhood things, I remember it being much bigger and grander and not so run-down. I used to ride my tricycle up and down the main aisle, weigh myself on the public scale, sneak Cokes from the cooler. My brother and I would play in the cotton gin that used to stand behind it, then wander up the hill to visit my grandmother at the courthouse.

As you might guess from the first pic, I come from pretty humble origins. Our family cemetery is situated halfway between Paulding and Vossburg (i.e. truly in the middle of nowhere), about 20 yards off a poorly paved country road. A couple of times a year, my dad and I drive up to clean out the underbrush, and when I went home for my brother’s wedding in October, we did just that.

This gravestone used to be hidden behind a pine tree, but Katrina fixed that. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons–not least of all, its age. For a stone carved in 1862, it’s remarkably well preserved, especially in comparison to the more recent ones around it. I also liked the inscription: “Sonnie Boy and Sweetie died in Jasper county, Miss, November 1862.”

The only troublesome thing is those names: I mean, maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that “Sonnie Boy” and “Sweetie” weren’t white folks. That, in turn, gives rise to about a billion questions, including, did they die together? How? Assuming they were black, could they have been lynched? Or, since 1862 was mid-Civil War, could they have been slaves who tried to escape northward? And what are they doing buried in my family’s cemetery, when I’ve always been told that our family didn’t own slaves?

On a much lighter note, this is my solution to the age-old dilemma of how to stuff a duvet back in its cover: I hold the duvet by its corners, burrow into the cover, stand up to make sure it’s straight, then flop onto the bed and slink out. Last week, my boyfriend found it amusing enough to photograph.

December 1st is a pretty important date in my book. Unfortunately, between my day job–where things have become insanely busy, post-Katrina–and the show we’re opening tonight–which is a different kind of insanity altogether–I was just too busy to post anything. Luckily, that hasn’t always been the case.

For Frank Evans, designer of Lakeside Shopping Center’s holiday display, getting into the spirit of the season this year meant building a Christmas village that riffed on the post-Katrina landscape.

He created a winter wonderland replete not only with churchgoers and trains, but also abandoned refrigerators, houses covered in blue tarpaulins and a storm victim suspended from a helicopter.

Shoppers paused to enjoy the tongue-in-cheek cheer. Some of them did, anyway.

Evans, a landscape architect who has crafted the display for 13 years, removed some of the 2005 features Tuesday on orders from mall management, which said some patrons failed to see the joke. Tricia Thriffiley, Lakeside’s marketing director, issued a statement saying that the mall did not “conceive or install” the decorations and did not intend to “hurt anyone’s feelings.”

—NOLA.com

Yes, New Orleanians have been through a lot in the past few months: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Despite that, we’d be well advised to rediscover our collective sense of humor–and fast–unless we wanna spend our remaining years downing wee fistfuls of Prozac, Paxil, and Wellbutrin.

Luckily, a friend of the Minx managed to snap a few pics at Lakeside before the priggish powers-that-be took down the aforementioned display:

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I’m officially old.

Back in my clove-smoking days, sticking it to The Man was part of my daily routine. Whether the issue was queer rights, animal rights, or abortion rights, a day wasn’t complete without a heaping helping of good old fashioned activism.

Not so much anymore. Maybe I’ve gotten smarter (doubtful) or more jaded (probable) or maybe I’ve just morphed into The Man myself (though I still have lots of baby fat). Whatever the case, I’m way more skeptical of fresh-faced idealism these days and far more prone toward pragmatism–so much so that I’ve come very near to slicing the throats of more than a few Zendik Farm hippies hawking their crummy magazine in Jackson Square.

The most recent case in point: last week’s mildly infamous Buy Nothing Day and the upcoming Buy Nothing Christmas. Both were conceived by the folks over at AdBusters.org as a way to stem the tide of conspicuous consumerism–which is fine, I guess, except that (a) that consumerism fuels our ailing economy, and (b) while such consumerism does have some ill effects on the environment, its worst offense is that it’s tacky, which is hardly a cause to get behind. I mean, Elsa Klensch might start a campaign to stomp out white shoes after Labor Day, but how many people are gonna stand with her?

Anyway, several weeks ago I wrote a letter to the folks at AdBusters. Basically, I said, “Hey, I get what you’re trying to do here, but what if, just for this one year, you changed things up? What if this year you made the events into ‘Buy New Orleans Day’ and ‘Buy New Orleans for Christmas’? Not only would it generate some kickin’ press for you, but there are plenty of local businesses who could use the help. Most of the places that have re-opened are the small places, not the big, national chains, so you’d be directly supporting our economy–and, in turn, our schools, our police and fire departments, and the city’s recovery in general. C’mon, how about it?”

You know, of course, what I got from them.

Bupkus. Not a form letter, not an “undeliverable email” notification, nothing.

While that’s probably typical for activist sites, where you’ve got jillions of nutjobs like moi writing in every day, part of me likes to think AdBusters hasn’t responded because they don’t have anything to say, no viable counter-argument. I mean, how could you argue against helping one of America’s most beloved cities get back on its feet?

If you’re listening, AdBusters–and I seriously doubt you are, but what the hey?–wake up and smell the coffee (which was probably routed through, roasted in, and shipped from New Orleans). If you’re really committed to improving life on Planet Earth, maybe you should spend a little less time pushing anti-capitalist merchandise in your online shop (I’m not the only one who sees the irony in that, right?) and do something that stands at least a slim chance of making a difference.

Shortly after the earth cooled, I graduated from college with a degree in English literature, which, as everyone knows, is about all you need to work in a French Quarter clothing shop. I landed at French Connection, a then-hip, now-passe boutique that aims squarely for the post-Benetton, pre-Lerner demographic. While selling stretch-velvet stirrup-pants to overweight hausfraus from Nebraska didn’t allow many opportunities to employ my appallingly vast knowledge of surrealism in the writings of American expatriates from 1910 to 1948, it did allow me to work with a hangover, which, at 22 years old, was a good thing.

The only thing I really hated about working at FC was hauling the garbage to the dumpster, which sat outside our back door, in the Jax Brewery parking lot abutting the Mississippi River. First, my stomach would churn from the stench of the trash bin, then my head would split as the calliope on the Steamboat Natchez roared to life with a rousing rendition of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal” or, if it was overcast, “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” I’d look up, across the levee wall, and see Debbie Fagnano perched atop the boat, her head bouncing in time to the music, and I’d think to myself, “I’ve got a clear shot. I could end my own pain and that of thousands of others. It would be a good deed for humanity!” Alas, despite dad’s repeated offers to load me up with guns–“You gonna need these one day, down in that city of sin!”–I never took him up on it, and Debbie lived to torment me for the remainder of my tenure in retail purgatory.

It’s a good thing, too. ‘Cause, honestly, of all the tiny, creeping signs of revival and regeneration I’ve seen in the past few weeks, none has affected me more deeply than hearing that very same calliope blasting out a ham-fisted version of “Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do” yesterday afternoon. I don’t know if it was Debbie up there–my vision ain’t what it used to be–but it nearly brought a tear to my jaundiced eye. Oh, how a decade or so and an unprecedented natural disaster can change one’s opinion about things.

Knowing the way I feel about Andrei Codrescu, a friend and neighbor just sent me the dust-jacket copy for his new book, New Orleans, Mon Amour. Not only is it thoroughly tedious and hackneyed (did you expect anything less?), but it’s completely put me off breakfast, and I was really looking forward to breakfast, ’cause there’s still a sandwich-sized chunk of holiday ham in the fridge.

Anyway, I’m not in the mood to suffer alone on this gloomy Saturday morning–which will certainly get gloomier before long, when it starts raining and my power goes out for the umpteenth time this month–so I’m sharing the dreck with you:

For two decades NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps…. Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.

New Orleans, Mon Amour is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

—from Amazon.com

All of which begs a few questions for Mr. Codrescu, who’s probably enjoying a similarly gloomy morning 80-some-odd miles from here at his home in Baton Rouge, where he’s reading the New York Times or the Bucharest Times or any number of things besides this website:

1. This book: was it your idea or your publisher’s? I mean, it’s an allegedly free country, so you can publish whatever you like whenever you like, but don’t you think–and don’t take this the wrong way–don’t you think it’s a little soon? From where I sit, it reeks just a teeny, tiny bit of opportunism, like all those Time-Life books about September 11 that were on the bookshelves by October. But then, I’m sure you’re planning to do something charitable with the proceeds, aren’t you? …Aren’t you?

2. The hint of rushed opportunism is exacerbated by the book’s title. Did you spend much time on it at all? Was New Orleans, Mon Amour the best you could do? A slovenly reference to Walker Percy, who was himself making a half-hearted, pun-ish homage to Alain Resnais? At the very least, egomaniac that you are, I would’ve thought you could come up with something like, Apres le Deluge, Moi.

3. I don’t know if you penned the dust-jacket copy yourself or if it was done by some intern just out of Bryn Mawr, but from the way it’s written, it sounds like New Orleans was experiencing some kind of Golden Age immediately before Katrina made landfall. Um, not so. I mean, don’t get me wrong: things were fine–good, even–but “Golden Age”? The last time we had one of those was 30 years ago, when we were flush with oil money and folks were clamoring to get into the Superdome. Or possibly 100 years ago, when jazz was just getting started and Storyville was America’s first experiment with legalized prostitution. …New Orleans under Mayor Nagin? Brass, maybe. Possibly even bronze. But hardly gold.

Sky: clear

Temperature: 70 degrees

Relative humidity: 70%

Gumbo: chicken and sausage

Turkey: brined and basted (courtesy of Nigella)

Stuffing: gingerbread (courtesy of same)

Expected attendance: between 20 and 30

Kick-off time: 4:00pm

Thankfulness rating: 10+

All things considered, this may damn well be the best Thanksgiving ever. Drop by if you can….

I made out better than many did. I still have my partner, my pets (though as some of you might remember, one of those was a close call). I still have my house, my things. I still have my job (though we all took pay cuts for the time-being). Apart from inhabiting a scarred and battered city that’s staggering back toward normalcy, my life continues apace, more or less.

Among the few things I did lose, the most damaging losses, the ones that have most affected me, have been the friends who have moved on–people I saw that Friday, people I talked to about the approaching storm, people I tried to keep calm, all the while, thinking in the back of my head, “Man, I better go move my stuff to the second floor.”

I’d only worked with Jackson for a year or so. She was young, but very savvy, very efficient, and completely, utterly adorable. Her interests, energy, and aesthetics were a perfect match for mine: we got along like gangbusters.

Jackson was to be married in early October, one week before my brother tied the knot. The wedding was all the way up in Nashville, but I was hoping to find a way to sneak up and surprise her.

Of course, that didn’t happen.

Her wedding did go on as planned, though. As luck would have it, one of my other co-workers had also evacuated to Nashville, and she went. It was great, apparently.

I bring all this up because yesterday that co-worker brought in a copy of the wedding program, which Jackson had spent so much time fiddling with in the months before. And amongst all the thank yous and the list of bridesmaids and groomsmen was a poem by Billy Collins that perfectly described the happy couple. Being the literary connoisseurs that you are, I’m sure you already know it by heart, but for me it was new and funny and sweet. What can I say? I’m a wuss when it comes to that kinda schmaltzy pomo poetry crap…

Litany

You are the bread and the knife,

The crystal goblet and the wine…

-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker,

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman’s tea cup.

But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife,

not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.

— Billy Collins

It should come as no surprise that in the theatre world, you run into a lot of drama queens. You know, folks who get worked up into a tizzy at the drop of a hat. “Ooh, my black shirt and black pants don’t match! Where’s the nearest funeral pyre?!” Or, “If Craig doesn’t talk to me at the cast party, I’ll just…I’ll just throw myself on a funeral pyre!” And occasionally, “Great mother of Maude Adams, I specifically asked that barista for a decaf mochasippi with half soy, half skim! I’m marching right back there and tossing her onto a funeral pyre!”

(Funeral pyres, FYI, are often invoked among my kind as the most dramatic type of death imaginable. Personally, I think Isadora Duncan did it better in the pouring rain with a long chenille scarf and the axle of a convertible Bugatti, but then, what do I know?)

Unfortunately, despite their overtly theatrical demeanors, drama queens often possess the least amounts of talent and acumen when it comes to producing real, live plays. In an attempt to shock-and-awe their nearest and dearest, drama queens invariably do ridiculous things to otherwise respectable shows: “Okay, so, are you ready for this? In the final scene of Death of a Salesman, I’m envisioning a ring of fire, from which Willy will rise, dressed in rags, wearing angel’s wings, to have a final graveside chat with his wife!” That kind of crap would be fine and dandy for an “Obsession by Calvin Klein” loop playing on a fritzed-out monitor at a run-down department store in Terre Haute, but it does little to further a freaking storyline.

It was recently brought to my attention that this empress among drama queens is on a rampage, casting aspersions about the future of theatre in New Orleans and speaking on behalf of New Orleans’ theatre community when he himself was only nominally a member. During his brief tenure in the city, the only plays I heard of Lane producing were Swerve, a new work by local playwright R. J. Tsarov, and The Maids, Genet’s work about…well, who knows what the hell it’s about.

I didn’t see the former, but it received uniformly hideous reviews, even from folks who usually find a couple of nice words to say about everything. The latter was so center-less, so completely ungrounded, so unengaged in telling the story of the play that I felt embarrassed for the actresses, all of whom were doing their damnedest to get through it with straight faces. If you’ve never been trapped in a room for nearly two hours with 30 other people who’d rather be shoving needles in their eyes, I can’t say I recommend it.

Luckily, Mr. Savadove doesn’t really know what he’s talking about–mostly because he’s never really bothered to speak to anyone in the city’s theatre community. If he had, he’d know that Le Chat has already put up two shows, one with Bryan Batt, the other with the incomparable Ricky Graham. He might also know that our company opens its annual holiday extravaganza in a mere two weeks. And of course, there are shows running in Metairie, Kenner, and on the Northshore, not to mention a bevy of shows opening right after the start of the new year.

So, bottom line: between Nagin and Blanco and Landrieu and everyone else in the city screaming about this that and the other for the last three months, I think we’ve had enough drama queens. Some people just ought to stay away.