Tuesday, July 30, 2002
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.)
Thursday, July 11, 2002
HEY!
Our new show opens this weekend.
Tha's all I'm sayin', yo.
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
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.
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
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...
