So there I was, driving around town--which wasn't especially pleasant, given the rain and the cold and the weird pain I get in my ass when I sit on my wallet for too long--and a song came on the radio, and for the first time in, I dunno, 20-some-odd years I heard the lyrics. And what I heard for the first time was:
She had a pocket full of horses--Trojans, some of them used.
And of course I know the line, I can sing it in my sleep. I even remember the video and how very "video" it looked. But unlike the rest of America--nay, the world--I'd never processed what Mr. Minneapolis was saying. And when I finally did, today at 2:15pm, after finishing a rare meal of fast food--not rare because I hate fast food, but rare because stupid, corporate, stinko fast food restaurants have been the last to open here in still-ravaged New Orleans--I blanched and laughed and belched all at the same time. Because, really, what kind of girl carries around used condoms? In her pocket? And shows them off? To dates?
Psycho bitches?
Amateur geneticists?
Lesbians too poor to visit the sperm bank?
Beauty-obsessed women looking for the Next Big Thing in skincare?
Finicky prostitutes?
Recycling enthusiasts?
Atkins fanatics who sometimes need a snack in the middle of the afternoon?
Drag queens?
So today, when I at last saw Prince's date in my mind's eye--some girl with a Toni Home Perm pulling over to the side of the road, thrusting her ass in the air so she can squeeze a hand into the front pocket of her tight, acid-washed jeans and pull out a handful of foil-wrapped contraceptives and a few disheveled, lint-flaked latex receptacles with semen-filled reservoir tips--I kinda swerved and almost ran a Chrysler Pacifica off the road. Which would've been okay because those cars give me the creeps anyway.
I never got the chance to meet Liz Renay. I am not terribly familiar with her oeuvre. I have never been able to finish My First 2,000 Men (you know what I mean), much less her other monographs. Most of the world will probably remember her--if they remember her at all--as an actress who screwed her way to the middle.
However, for me and many of my boy-kissing brethren, Liz Renay will always be known as Muffy St. Jacques--the most glamorous woman in Mortville!--from John Waters' masterpiece Desperate Living. I don't know if Liz accepted that role because of actor-driven egomania, Waters' considerable persuasive abilities, or her own desperate living situation, but who cares? Armed with a few dozen lines and a stupendous, spotlit rack, she strutted and shimmied her way into the celluloid heavens.
I was surprised and saddened (surprisingly so) to hear of her death this past Monday, and I feel some sort of tribute is in order. I've thought long and hard about my Mardi Gras costume, debating geisha vs. Ganesh, skirt vs. leggings, purse vs. pockets, parasol vs. nothing at all--but now I'm leaning toward something much, much simpler, in Liz's honor. I'm not committing to anything yet, but don't be surprised if on Fat Tuesday you see someone who looks a lot like me stumbling down Royal Street in a platinum wig, patent leather pumps, and hose pulled up to my armpits--belted at the waist--screaming "I sleep in the room next to you! Naked!"
State Farm, the nation�s largest home insurer, reached an agreement today with Mississippi officials to pay hundreds of millions dollars to thousands of homeowners in the state who have been unable to rebuild in the nearly 17 months since Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast....
Under the agreement, State Farm would pay an initial $130 million and perhaps several hundred million more by the end of the year, depending upon how many policyholders request that their claims be reopened. About 35,000 homeowners along the Mississippi coast are eligible.
Today�s agreement does not apply to Louisiana, where the destruction was even greater, and where lawyers and insurers say no settlement talks have taken place.
I don't make a habit of reading The National Review. I get plenty of far-right rhetoric from my father, our Commander-in-Chief, and Bill O'Reilly (when that schmuck with the bad dye-job is on the treadmill at the gym); I don't need to search the shit out on my own.
Luckily former neighbor and ex-pat New Orleanian Kevin Allman is not so uppity. A voracious reader and supremely talented writer, Kevin was (un)fortunate enough to stumble across John Derbyshire's nerdy, whiny, mean-spirited disparagement of New Orleans and has, quite rightly, taken the man to task.
Of course, as I've said a bezillion times before, I don't wanna imply that there's not room for plenty of critiques of Our Fair City--goddess knows she ain't what she should be these days--but anyone who starts his review of New Orleans with a thinly veiled attack on blacks and queers has clearly landed at the wrong airport. Give the man a swift kick to the 'nads and leave him at the doorstep of some gated cracker-topia in Colo-freaking-rado....
I don't care much for Guy Trebay's writing (although I'm sure he's a lovely person). His passion for long, winding sentences and circuitous trains of thought makes my own prose look as spare and straightforward as Ernest goddamn Hemingway. Drives me nuts.
That said, his review of the men's shows in Milan is capped off with three of the best paragraphs I've read all week--which I appreciate not only because I remember Andy Williams, but also because, sadly, I was once a Judith Butler devotee. Didn't understand but every other word the bitch said, but still: worshipped her. Today, I feel somehow vindicated...
Unlike McQueen or Prada, Frida Giannini, the stylist (�designer� is probably not the right word) at Gucci has an operative relationship to sexual presentation that is so uncomplicated and kittenlike that she makes her predecessor Tom Ford seem like some tortured soul at a Judith Butler seminar. Ms. Giannini�s show was as sexually transparent as the others were freighted or obscure.
In a way, it was not a fashion show at all. With its fur benches and fieldstone fireplace, the show resembled the set for an Andy Williams special in Aspen, circa the days when the magnesia-voiced crooner was still married to Claudine Longet.
Life was an innocent romp when the world and Gucci were young. People wore fur boots, as they did on Ms. Giannini�s runway. They wore fur parkas and carried fur totes (to keep their fur wallets warm) and if, as it actually happened, the Williams marriage would turn out to have been a mess; and Ms. Longet and Mr. Williams would eventually divorce; and Ms. Longet would take as her lover the skiing star Spider Sabich, whom she would shoot and kill in a tabloid-tale incident for which she was sentenced to 30 days (she performed community service), these small details should not detract from what is of true significance here. Everybody really does look sort of groovy in zillionaire ski bum clothes.
FYI, I think "freighted" is a misspelling or misprint or something. Second one in that article--the first being a weird, non-poetic fragment strewn across the eleventh paragraph. Does the Times even have an online editrix? Sheesh. Hire me, already....
In significantly less self-pitying news, my sister's radio show has been fantastic the last few weeks. Check her set from January 8, featuring a ditty about wigs by New Orleans' own Fats Domino:
I'm turning into someone I don't like very much--someone that scares me a little, someone I don't think I want to be. I'm turning into Little Edie.
I don't mean I dislike Little Edie, per se. I do. Or did. I totally appreciate the pantyhose-headdress revolutionary-costume. And the raccoons in the wall? Charming. But the fact that Edie stayed at home--and I know she was doing so in part because of her mother, but still--the fact that she stayed home, that's what bothers me. That's what I see in myself--this kind of illness or paranoia or fixation about sticking to what you know. It's the "Wow, I coulda had a V8" way of life. Wow, I coulda done something interesting, I coulda traveled, I coulda, coulda, coulda. Instead, I'm happy to sit on the sofa.
I don't like that one bit. Drastic measures are warranted.
If I were normal, I'd be 36,000 feet above Virginia right now. If I were normal, I'd be knocked up on sedatives and drooling on the shoulder of a complete stranger--who, also being normal, would be too timid to shove me across the aisle, even though it would be pretty obvious that he or she was being slobbered on by a fag. Ewww.
But like I said: "if".
I arrived at the airport late thanks to some poor planning (by me) and some sloppy driving (by a guy whose car slammed sideways into a guardrail and skidded to a stop across three lanes of I-10). I rushed through security, not at all sure I'd make it, but when I arrived at the gate, the waiting area was still full of bored, listless, and occasionally irate travelers. Hooray.
That's when the problems began. That's when I had time to sit and think about my trip to New York--how pointless it was, really. How I could accomplish most of the things I wanted to accomplish from the comfort of my desk in New Orleans. How the conference in question always seems like a great idea, but inevitably devolves into a semi-vacation, only instead of bringing back cute sale sweaters for Jonno, I bring back press kits and business cards for my lateral filing cabinet.
The weather wasn't helping matters. It's miserable here, and even more miserable there: wet and rainy and cold. And of course, there are the memories of last year, which saw an eerily similar storm pattern and a life-flashing-before-eyes flight in to JFK. I'm creeping toward the Grecian Formula fast enough, thank you very much.
The big factor, though, was work--namely, the abundance of it sitting on my desk and all around my house. I really don't have time to waste on something so...well, frivolous.
So, I'm standing there with my Diet Coke (bought on the concourse for a small fortune) pondering all this, and Jonno texts me to say that our eldest hound has been howling inconsolably since I walked out the door an hour before, and that was it. Decision made, no turning back: I snapped my phone closed and headed home.
Some people are travelers. For me, it's never a good time to go.
(FYI, I do not read US Weekly, except when stuck on line at Sav-A-Center behind customers--generally women of a certain age--who insist on writing checks. One of whom sent me the link. So there.)
First, the bad news: Johnathan Safran Foer's novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close occasionally goes so far over the top that jaded people (myself included) will want to roll their eyes. It revels in the sort of cloying sentimentalism that can only come from child savants investigating the death of a parent, or immigrants sharing stories of young love crushed by the Holocaust. The cast of eccentric characters and flashes of magic realism are often used to drive the author's points home, when in fact, he's already made himself perfectly clear. Like a filmmaker using Albinoni's Adagio as background music for a funeral, it can all seem a bit much. (Odd side note: that piece of music has a direct connection to Dresden, which figures prominently in the novel.)
Now, the good news: beneath the schmaltz lies an engrossing, heartbreaking story that's impossible to put down. Like a younger Tony Kushner, Foer juggles a multitude of themes and symbols, all of which converge in beautiful, sometimes breathtaking ways. In the end, we're left with a magnificent, hopeful fairy tale about love, loss, New York, and September 11. And I suppose given all that, and given the subject matter, the sentimentalism is probably more than justified.
While everyone else was in the Quarter celebrating the Saints' win Saturday night, I was peeping through my neighbor's screen door at her nonstop non-erotic holiday cabaret of twinkly lights and wonderment:
I've taken about a bejillion trillion photos of it over the years, but none of them ever do it justice. Particularly difficult to convey: the sublime beauty of Miss Beatrice's Santa/television diorama on the far side of the room.
Yesterday, someone asked me what I've got against Common Ground. From what he's read in the news, they've been here since right after the storm, doing a lot of work that no one else has wanted to do. And yes, I have to admit that although I think their effectiveness has been slightly overrated, and although they haven't always been equally polite to the citizens of New Orleans since descending on our city in great unwashed hordes, I suppose Common Ground has done some good.
The problem is that beyond the social services they attempt to provide, they're a bunch of activists--and not the smart kind of activists, either. They're strident, humorless, and self-important; they talk to people, not with them; they're unwilling to meet anyone halfway or to speak of compromise. But worst of all, they're guilty of the most heinous sin I know, one that we in New Orleans can ill-afford to tolerate at the moment:
They refuse to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
Common Ground's rhetoric is oddly similar to that of our president: either you're with us, or you're against us. If anyone disagrees, or if anyone wants to offer a suggestion, it's greeted with hostility. There is no room for discussion. Everyone else is the enemy.
But of course, Common Ground folks aren't the only ones with bluster on their hands. Many people and groups in New Orleans are riled up just as easily at the faintest suggestion of conflict. In fact, I think much of the racial strife that exists here (and elsewhere) is grounded in this kind of knee-jerk defensiveness. On occasion, that may be justified, but more often than not, it stems from people not trusting one another.
So, not to be all touchy-feely and shit, but you should give it a try. I'm not just talking to Common Ground, I mean everybody. Give someone the benefit of the doubt. Assume that you're from the same planet. Assume you're on the same side. Lighten up. Laugh at yourself. Or I'll be forced to smack you around.
I'm no Confucius, but every so often I'm compelled to share a little bit of wisdom that was passed down from my paternal grandmother. (Sadly, my maternal grandmother--a half-crazy, half-German lady who always smelled like two-day-old coffee--had few words, wise or otherwise, for anyone.) On the shores of a beautiful lake on an even more beautiful fall afternoon, as she was pulling another worm from the bait bucket and shoving it onto the business end of her fish hook, my grandmama leaned over to me and said:
Richard, people are stupid.
Today, I know she was right. I see evidence of her wisdom every time I visit Walgreens, as the checkout girl takes five minutes to ring up my DC and corn nuts because she's in rapt conversation with her third cousin two aisles over. I see it on Bourbon Street, as grown men and women drink rotgut liquor from novelty plastic cups, puke it all into the gutter, then start the process over. But most of all, I see it splashed across the pages of the Picayune, in stories about the city we call home and the people we sometimes begrudgingly call neighbors.
Take, for example, an article from yesterday's paper, which documented a meeting held Sunday by worldfamousauthor Ken Foster and others to organize a march on City Hall in protest of the current crime wave gripping New Orleans.
To loud applause, people called for the resignations of District Attorney Eddie Jordan and New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Warren Riley. They asked where Mayor Ray Nagin was, and why he wasn't providing the city with leadership at a time like this.... A high school teacher talked about how the drug dealers in her classroom had the lowest reading scores. A few people decried the city's criminal justice system and the lack of cooperation between the district attorney's office and the NOPD.
Um, does one of those sentences seem odd to you? Like it was just dropped there, without context? Like it probably merits further discussion? I mean, if we get those reading scores up, can we expect drug dealers to be more positive role models in their communities? ...I'm not sure who's at fault here--the reporter or the teacher--but for the sake of argument, let's call 'em both stupid.
A few paragraphs later, another Mensa member speaks up:
Eric Carter, an organizer for Common Ground, said he was heartened by the big turnout but discouraged that so many faces in the crowd were white.... "We've got all these people here," said Carter, who is African-American. "This isn't a sample of the community. We make up, what, 2 or 3 percent of this audience. It's all these white people in a room talking."
I hope the reporter's use of the word "discouraged" was another case of stupidity. Otherwise, we have to wonder:
Was Mr. Carter born dumb, or did the stinky hippies at Common Ground infect him with their idiot cooties?
Would Mr. Carter rather Whitey just stay home and let African Americans take care of the problem, since crime has no effect on white people at all?
Was Mr. Carter leveling a charge of racism at the post office, which had obviously misplaced all the engraved invitations Ken sent out to African American households but somehow managed to deliver them to white folks?
There's more stupidity afoot, but that's as far as I can go today and still keep myself from pummelling passersby.
Dear God or Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu or Bahamut or Huitzilopochitli or Richard Dawkins or Aloysius Snuffleupagus or Mary Hartman or whatever you want to call yourself:
We get it, okay? We get it.
We've screwed up the planet. Royally. It's getting hot in here, and taking off all our clothes won't help. The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, and metaphorically speaking, we don't have any water to put it out. I say "metaphorically" because really, we have tons of water, and if those Arctic ice sheets keep melting, we're gonna have plenty more.
For me personally, the parakeets were the first clue. A decade or so ago, I saw very few of them here in New Orleans. Now it seems like every palm tree is filled with dozens of the noisy little flying rats.
Then there was That Hurricane. And the Other One. And then a Third, in case we somehow managed to sleep through the first two--unlikely, since modern day wusses like myself find it impossible to sleep in 100-degree heat without the benefit of air-conditioning, which requires electricity, which the aforementioned storms eliminated.
Basically I'm saying we got it. We understand. Capisce.
So I ask you: was it really necessary to whip out the goddamn killer bees? That just seems gratuitous. Sadistic. In the PR world, we'd probably call it overkill. Leave yourself some room to grow for chrissakes! I mean, how are you gonna top killer freakin' bees? Pythons in City Park? Ebola in La Place? I don't wanna give you any ideas, so I'll stop there, but you know what I'm saying.
Sheesh. And I thought I was drama queen....
Bottom line: back off. We're working on it. Go unravel the threads of mortality or whatever you usually do after reading the pull-out section of the Sunday paper. We'll get back to you.
My name is Richard and I'm from New Orleans and I called your office 13 years ago to complain about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy you were peddling back then. Perhaps you remember me? I was the idealistic young faggotini who told your receptionist, "'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is hurtful and discriminatory! Just who does the general he think he is?!" I hope you've gotten some better help these days, because at the time, the dullard just mumbled, "Um, uh, he's the General...?"
Anyway, whether you remember me or not, I just wanted to write a little note to let you know I still think you're a douchebag. And what's more, time has proven you wrong. I hate to say I told you so, but I totally told you so, motherfucker.
I mean, look: I appreciate your op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times, where you talk about having a change of heart after chatting with today's troops and realizing, "OMG, like, fudgepacking is so not a BFD." However, if you'd bothered to pick up a newspaper or turn on a television in 1993 you might've noticed that gays were everywhere, that they'd already gone mainstream, that the kind of rhetoric you were spouting was as outdated and doomed as George goddamn Wallace screaming "segregation forever". But then, I suppose we shouldn't expect the nation's top military commanders to strategize or read the writing on the wall--which is why those who've followed in your footsteps are doing such a bang-up job of democratizing the Middle East.
See, back then you thought that acknowledging the rights of gays to enlist and expecting straight servicemen to be mature adults would result in a lot of:
But if you'd grown up homo yourself, you would've known that nothing could've been further from the truth. If anything, in traditional, heterosexual environments, homos do their best to blend in, often going the extra mile to out-straight our straight colleagues. Also you'd have known that we do a much better job with the face paint.
What you should've considered is that even if a little discreet cockgobbling action were to break out in the latrines at 02:00 hours, that's not necessarily a bad thing. As a student of history, perhaps you remember another army that not only allowed, but encouraged such canoodling?
I'm not saying that's a great thing or that it's entirely appropriate. Though you have to admit, it's kinda hot.
One other thing you never considered: lesbians. All your talk about morale and crap centered around the offensiveness of turdburgling, when in fact--and maybe I'm stereotyping here--I'm gonna guess that lesbians are far more likely to enlist in the service than gay men. Did you, as a straight man, forget about girl-on-girl action? That's curious. I know you can't see it, but my eyebrow is totally arched.
In conclusion, I'd like to point out that despite your superficial recantation of homophobia, it's probably all for naught. I mean, no one's been listening to official reports from active generals for ages, so a Times op-ed from a retired general...well, that carries about as much weight in the current administration as another phone call from little ol' me. If enrollment numbers were down, maybe you'd get some play, but apparently, that's not much of a problem anymore. Too little, too late. Now you know how the rest of us felt. And feel.
The problem with reading is that there is good stuff and bad stuff and in-between stuff. Correction: the in-between stuff is not so much a problem because you tend to forget about it. The bad stuff is more of a problem because it makes you angry; bad stuff makes you never want to read again and only watch movies for the rest of your life because movies may be bad, too, but at least they're only a couple of hours long.
The good stuff is worst of all because it makes people gooey and stirred, not unlike cocoa. Good stuff inspires people to write things of alleged beauty themselves--occasionally haiku, but more often epic poems, short stories, and novels. For example, someone writing during or prior to the middle of the 20th century is to blame for Anne Rice's exercises in free association, which certain people insist on calling literature. Personally, I'd point fingers at MikhailBulgakov and especially Charles Brockden Brown. They're both dead, but I'm sure someone somewhere is tormenting them for what they unleashed.
Dear Non-Denominational Pagan Gift Man (aka Santa):
Thank you so much for the lovely sweater you brought last week. The paisley pattern is very colorful, and the wool adds an exotic element to my wardrobe. When New Orleans is eventually picked up and moved whole-hog to its new, hurricane-proof location outside Indianapolis, I'll be sure to wear it proudly. (Just out of curiosity, did you know I have an Amazon wishlist?)
I saw on the evening news that you made it safely back to your industrial complex at the North Pole. I assume it's still on firm-ish ground--though given the recent environmental troubles in your neck o' the woods, I can't be sure. Global warming's a bitch, isn't it?
Anyway, the real reason I'm writing today is to chat about your Naughty/Nice List for 2007. You see, as a non-resident of Our Fair City, there are a number of things of which you're probably unaware--nuances and other small details which could prove crucial to your gift-bringing endeavors 51 weeks from now. Some might call it tattling, and others might call it poisoning the well, but I prefer to think of the following tidbits as morsels of heartfelt, unsolicited advice. For instance...
Ray Nagin doesn't actually live here. We think he's got a little place in Jamaica, but that's only conjecture. However, the smoky fragrances wafting from beneath his office door lend credence to the idea.
In 12 months, Entergy probably won't live here either. That's okay by us--they only provide half-assed service to half the city anyway. I tell you what: why don't you take the money you would've spent making new golf clubs for Dan Packer and buy everyone in Orleans Parish a solar panel kit and a wind turbine? We'll take it from there.
Nagin's publicist, Ceeon Quiett, may be a fictional character. I mean, c'mon, Santa: I know we've got some weird names around here, but that's beyond the pale. Plus, a drag queen with whom I used to work at Lucky Cheng's told me that the letters in Ceeon's name can be rearranged to spell "Screw y'all, I'm goin' to Vegas" in Tagalog. Maybe Nagin's trying to tell us something.
Given their impressive list of accomplishments in 2006, the Saints deserve a "Nice List" pass for 2007. In fact, Drew Brees and Reggie Bush been so superlatively good, I think you should give them a little bit of me next December 25. It will be a sacrifice on my part, true, but for you, Santa, I'll do it. I will not, however, offer the same service to Tom Benson. Yes, I cast a very wide net, as they say, but I've got to draw the line somewhere. People talk, you know.
The Times-Picayune, which looked as though it might become a bona fide newspaper after the storm, is backtracking. The hard-hitting items they began running on August 29, 2005, have turned into so many whimpy, smarmy editorials. I suppose after all those years of Uptown inbreeding, they've lost the ability to grow a permanent spine. You should probably skip Audubon Place entirely and deliver their lumps of coal directly to the cephalopod tank at the aquarium.
There are surely other people and entities I could mention here--but of course, I'm not the judgemental type. A word to the wise, though: keep your eyes on Kathleen Blanco, Eddie Jordan, David Vitter, and those math-challenged charlatans running the alleged Road Home Program. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin', you know?
Looking forward to future correspondence and thanking you in advance for your generous consideration of all I've said here, I remain,
