Randy Newman: Right on the Issues, Wrong for America

Live from Los Angeles, it's MY BLOG!

Yeah. Room 614 of the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo. Big Trouble in Little Tokyo.

L.A. is a giant fucking mess. Traffic. Traffic and more traffic. Remember, I lived in Atlanta so if I'm complaining about the fucking traffic then I promise you IT FUCKING SUCKS HERE.

You might like to think that Chicago or New York or Philly or DC is "the American city." That's cute. That's nice. It's laughable, too.

Los Angeles is America's gift to the world. New York is more like London than any part of America. But L.A.? Oh yeah, baby, that is America. Sprawl. Pollution. Corrupt cops. Excess. Gang wars. Ethnic conclaves. Stupidity as art. Violence instead of sex. Sex as violence. Television as culture. Self-awareness as self-knowledge. You want it? It's here. And it costs a fucking fortune.

I'm here to raise money and awareness and possibly educate folks about homelessness. The real story of homelessness. Because L.A. is THE American city, the homelessness here generally LOOKS like a bunch of people sleeping on sidewalks in Skid Row. These are people with mental health issues. So you see them so visible here and you say "Ah, you see, the poor crazy fuckers, let's create a more humane mental institution and throw them in it and then homelessness is gone!"

Sorry for that. Wouldn't you rather hear about me rubbing elbows with the stars? Bouncing from one trendy Hollywood party to the next? Well shit, you should because it's all true.

I think that Charlyne Yi might be a child genius. The DooDoo Christmas Show couldn't really be described as anything else.

I've read that there might be remains of some old L.A. drunk culture and that fascinates me to no end. Raymond Chandler haunts? Seriously? (Editor's note: Raymond Chandler was a pulp detective novelist, not the fat dude from "Friends." For more information: stuff about Raymond Chandler)

I'm talking about places where people who thought they were going to have something but found out they were actually going to have nothing end up. Apparently there are still thousands of idiots who come to Hollywood each year thinking they're "gonna make it." I say "idiots" in a loving way, mind you. Anyway, then they don't make it and they discover the healing power of drink. (Compare that to New Orleans: People come there because they don't give a shit if they make it or not and quite frankly that's the least of their worries so they just get hammered, joyously and happily.)

Why are we so different than all the nice Mexicans who come to Los Angeles every day? "Let's bust our culas, amigos y amigas!" I just don't get it. They actually come here and in a few months think they've made it. We go to L.A. and if we're working in the service industry or "compromising our principles" we decide that we're colossal fucking failures and we start drinking our way to oblivion. We suck.

In closing, I'd like to say "thank you" to the fine people at Lexus for choosing Sabine Ehrenfeld for their "I need to buy my rich, uninteresting husband a Christmas present" ad. Honestly, tell me THAT'S not range! From pimping the poor man's ebay to Lexus? Let's face it, America (or should I say Los Angeles, because they're one and the same), we LOVE Sabine. It's been proven. She could sell us the new fucked up Medicare plan and we'd buy it.

So there you have it. I don't love L.A., L.A. loves Sabine, and homelessness isn't fucking funny. Drink up, America.

Except colon cancer, maybe

First of all, I would like to do what people do when they win something or something fortuitous happens to them. So now, I am officially on record as thanking God for the fact that I found 23 bottles of Dixie Beer yesterday. Dixie Brewery isn't coming back to life. These might be the last 23 bottles in the city.

All praise to Jesus and hell, even Allah, who deserves all of the credit and without whose strength I wouldn't be here today.

Actually, I am proving that life is just one big happy accident. And it is. I had to get my hair cut yesterday. What led to me finding the Dixie Beer?

Before I moved here, I met Will Forte during Jazz Fest 2004. We stayed in touch. I guess now we're friends, whatever that means. We have a fundrasier on December 19 that he's hosting in Los Angeles. Accident one.

After Katrina, the only bar in my neighbourhood that is open is Pal's Lounge. It was there that I met Adrienne, who told me about Savannah, who cuts hair at Mickey Nolan's in the Quarter. That's where I went to get my hair cut yesterday. Accident two.

I had to go down there early yesterday because there's no parking and it takes a long time to find a space. I got there early and went into the little shop next door to Mickey Nolan's. And it turns out, yep, that this place had 17 Dixie beers. I bought them all. And the lady who worked there told me that there was another store close by that might have some. And they did. Accident three.

Life is an accident. Get over it.

One of the most INFURIATING things I hear on a regular basis is "Everything happens for a reason." My response? Uh, no. No it doesn't. Most of the time we just happened to make a random choice that led to something else.

My mother always derided me for watching television and for drinking. But if I didn't do those things, I would never have met Will Forte and he wouldn't be holding this fundraiser for us. Does that mean that God wanted me to watch TV and drink? I mean, after all, doesn't everything happen for a reason?

When a soldier kills an innocent person in Iraq, and then that soldier is killed by a roadside improvised explosive device, that happened for a reason, right? Except that the solider has a wife and kids back home. Oh well, tough luck bitch, everything happens for a reason. And by the way, to the survivors of the dead Iraqi, too fucking bad for you! Wrong place, wrong time? Oh no, because EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON!

Hey, that has to be what Barbara The Cunt Bush meant when she said that post-Katrina life was "working out really well" for the people living in the Astrodome in Houston. You lost everything, but look now, no crime! See, everything happens for a reason!

And all the racist bastards in New Orleans know it: Katrina got rid of all the black people in NOLA! Hooray, everything happens for a reason!

My mother, the Baptist Sunday school teacher, must know that her rheumatoid arthritis and double-mastectomy happened for a reason. I'm sure it's been working out really well for her.


I'm saving the Dixie Beer for New Year's Eve.

Bourbon Street is lame. It used to be interesting in a sociological/anthropological sort-of way. Now it's worse than downtown Calhoun on a Friday night. I've never been there but I don't need to go to know how lame that is. For my local friends, let's say, Bourbon Street sucks worse than Gretna. And Gretna fucking sucks fat whale shark cock. Do whale sharks have cocks? Who knows? I'm not going to the Georgia Aquarium and asking them about whale shark phalli.

I leave for Hollywood on Wednesday.

How did I get here?

Who cares! Everything happens for a reason!

I'm marching with Krewe du Vieux at Mardi Gras. Thank you God and Jesus and Allah.

Snoopy's Christmas with My Missing Darling

I have pretty much had it with Christmas songs that are laments that someone's "baby," "sweetie," "honey," or "darling" is not there, or celebrations of the fact that that honeybunny IS there.

That is simply not what Christmas is supposed to be about. Fuck off! You need to understand, if he or she wouldn't make the effort to be with you at Christmas, they probably hate your fucking guts anyway. Get over it, freak. What are you, a stalker?

Examples include that wretched "Please Come Home for Christmas" by the Eagles, "Christmas, Baby Please Come Home" by too many fucking people to count, "Merry Christmas Darling" by the Carpenters ("Logs on the fire fill me with desire?" Holy shit that is terrible!), and "All I want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey.

Next on the banning list: Anything that combines Christmas with "Rockin!" Christmas doesn't rock. End of. If you want to rock, wait 6 days and rock on New Year's eve, you idiots. Or better yet, rock at Easter. "Have a Rockin' Little Easter!" would be awesome: "Jesus woke up; Let's Rock!"

The two most egregious offenders of this idiotic genre are of course "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." WHO THE FUCK ROCKS AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE? If you're doing that, you need to be in fucking rehab. Toss in that "Little Saint Nick" tune by the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson may have been a genius, but that song makes me want to put him back in the asylum forever.

I'm very disturbed by songs about making out with Santa Claus. This is some seriously fucked up imagery: "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Great. It's bad enough the kid's mom is a slut and he sees it, but she happens to be swapping spit with Father Fucking Christmas! Also included is "Santa Baby."

Up next: Songs that have absolutely no connection to Christmas. "Baby It's Cold Outside?" "Walking in a Winter Wonderland?" Nope. Nothing at all. Who made the rule that you have to have songs about snow anyway? The whole fucking planet does NOT live in Vermont, assholes.

While I'm at it, all songs that end with a very slow playing of the first few notes of "Jingle Bells" must be banned. This is not cute or interesting, it's a fucking cliche. Please start with "Christmas in Dixie" by Alabama. In fact, please kill Alabama and destroy every copy of every one of their recordings.

All recordings of Christmas songs by Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand (yes, yes, I know), Whitney Houston, George Michael, and any other person who screams their fucking heads off should be dropped into a volcano.

Lastly, please never again let me hear a "Christmas Novelty Song." This would be that mind-numbing "Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer" and that dumbarsed song about Snoopy having Christmas dinner with a WWI German pilot. Take the people who made this dreck out back and beat them senseless with a snowshovel.

This leaves us with a nice, tidy, sensible catalog of Christmas songs. Either traditional carols or pop songs sung by the masters. Which reminds me: If you have a copy of Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole singing a Christmas tune, why the fuck are you playing the version recorded by some talentless contemporary hack? It's simple, really:
White Christmas = Bing Crosby
The Christmas Song = Nat King Cole

Follow that example and you'll be fine.

Progress: It's hard work

I have twice now experienced a particular post-Katrina phenomenon that caught me completely off guard.

I went away for a few days and wondered when I came back would everything be back to normal. It wasn't. I thought there would be progress. Not much.

I was in my home town for Thanksgiving and caught myself looking at a gas station, wondering if it were open or not. That's what being here has done.

What if you were stuck in an airport and there were two people near you having an intense conversation about camping equipment? And one of them was wearing a fanny pack? Would you slit your wrists?

I'll go one better--what if you were stuck on an Amtrak train for 14 hours and a curiously effeminate giant was sitting next to you saying things like "Whoo child!" and "Lawd have mercy?" Would you drink yourself into unconsciousness courtesy of the bar car?

It's almost December. Hurricane season 2005 is over. I'm still waiting for someone to stand up and declare NOLA safe for the next season. Tick tick tick. Hear that, Mayor Nagin? Why aren't we doing it ourselves? I'm not kidding. Call us out. Tell us to grab a shovel and a bucket and when to be there and we'll build up the levees ourselves. If you're in NOLA and you're waiting for the Feds to show up and do their job, you can fucking forget it, buddy. We're on our own, per the usual. Sitting down and waiting and bitching isn't going to help. And I don't know why we can't just start getting shit done. Let's go back in time and take care of this thing with our backs and our arms. I know plenty of engineers who live here and would love to supervise the work.

In other words, fuck the Feds, let's save NOLA together.

The other night when I was visiting Pal's Lounge, somebody accidentally knocked a bar stool over. My response? I jumped up and doubled up my fists in case it was another Invasion of the Rednecks. Thank you for the inspirational words, Shane Macgowan. I need to be in a fight at some point.

"Slammin' drinks with Shelly Duvall and Freak Boy." I think my friend T. Stacy should stage this unusual drama performance about me, alcohol, and the hallucinations brought on by breathing in refrigerator exhaust.

George W. Bush says that Iraq is the center of terrorist activity in the world. Really? I wonder if that has anything to do with 150,000 US troops being there. No really, do you think that has anything to do with it?

I had a bizarre Thanksgiving. I was thankful that I have friends and family who've supported me since the hurricane and that's what I said. But for the first time in a long time I would have preferred to be with strangers in New Orleans than with my family because I just don't think anybody outside of here understands the veil of longing I feel any time I'm away and the painful desire I have to get back. I don't even know if I'm doing anything productive or responsible by being here but even eating lunch at a local cafe makes me feel like a NOLA patriot.

Another post-Katrina moment of joy

Thought I'd drop 'round the pub last night. Pal's Lounge on N. Rendon is the only functioning bar close by, I think I mentioned that. The owners were kind enough to come back and if you ask me, they're doing Bayou St. John a tremendous service. We OWE them for coming back and restoring part of our neighbourhood's character.

So what happened last night?

5 contracted clean-up crew members who are living in City Park came to Pal's. They got wasted and started harassing the regulars. They started a fight, were told to leave, shoved Lindsay the bartender (she was the only one working there last night, and she's a petite little gal) and were thrown out by the regulars. Lindsay locked the doors.

So these fucking idiot carpetbagging motherfuckers proceeded to get their shovels out of their car and smash Pal's window and the glass in the doors.

Yeah, Pal's. The mellow dog bar.

Unfuckingbelievable. Thanks for nothing, assholes. Pal's survived Katrina and Rita but couldn't survive a storm of drunken white trash.

I got there as the NOPD were taking statements from everybody. Just like Katrina, I wasn't there to help. How depressing.

I was so angry I told people we should have gone and firebombed the tent/trailer town inside the Park. The city is awash with losers from every nook and cranny of America, Mexico, Honduras...shit, there are probably a few Nigerian e-mail scammers running around. "Dear Citizen of New Orleans, I am Prince Abogabobondobooboo..."

I really felt like someone must have during the Great Depression when Hoovervilles were routinely burned to the ground. Visions of me and my shotgun started popping up in my head. My shotgun? What the fuck is wrong with me?

So, to the racist Republican motherfucker from the Halloween party, I'd like to say, Gee, yeah, it REALLY is great that the bad element is out of the city. We're so lucky that all the black neighbourhoods have cleared out, we won't have any problems now!

Suck my balls.

A lack of nonsense hurts

Pre-Katrina, I was happily enjoying the strangeness and insanity of New Orleans. I also felt at liberty to post nonsense.

I don't feel like it now, though, and that's pissing me off.

Now the strangeness and insanity is due to things like what I just saw at Juan's Flying Burrito--a booth filled with 4 camo-clad, M16 toting soldiers. Dude just rested his rifle against the corner of the booth next to the door. Humvee parked out front.

The less technology-based you were before the storm, the better off you are now. Pal's Lounge was a primitive, dirty little hole of a bar before the storm. Now it's downright luxurious with it's ancient cash register (that's right, it ain't no "terminal") ringing up your one dollar PBRs. And food? I think Linda (?) puts stuff in a crock pot and leaves at the end of the bar for you if you want it.

The good folks at Entergy have given me back natural gas service. I flipped out the other night when I got home from the gym and absent-mindedly turned on the hot water and for the first time since August it came out hot. Not bad timing since it's 40-farking degrees in the morning for at least the next 7 days.

The Fairgrounds area and Bayou St. John remain shells of what they once were. No people. All the good times and weirdness are in some other city or town, slivers of them, anyway. Maybe pieces of them are in Baton Rouge, or Dallas, or Houston. But they can't be, don't you understand? It's not just the people. It's the people PLUS New Orleans.

It's cold today. When I drove away in August I had no idea what this would feel like. Last night there was wind and rain so my power went off for 4 hours. That's what happens now. The wires are held up with string and gum and paper clips so you just better get used to it.

That's why I'm a freak about keeping a bunch of shit in my fridge. I'll never "stock" the fridge ever again, ever. Vodka, beer, hot sauce, soy sauce, individual cans of V8...that's it. It's like how our grandparents were after living through the depression, only in reverse. A full larder and a full fridge meant safety. But for me, the thought is "what if I have to evacuate? Will I have or take the time to throw out everything that's gonna spoil?

I went out and saw music last weekend for the first time since Donna's my first Saturday back here. I went to d.b.a. and heard a cobbled-combo version of Hot Club of New Orleans. The owner of Coop's Place pulled up a pickup with a giant grill in the bed, parked it in a parking space across the street, and for his birthday started dishing out free barbecue, sausage, baked beans, cole slaw...just because, you know.

And I drove all the way to Maple Leaf to hear Shannon Powell. It was a funky, almost rockin' Shannon, though. It wasn't "Powell's Place" Shannon. And that was that.

New Orleans is a half-hearted ghost of itself now. I love the people and I love what remains but it's so sad. It's just so sad.

Don't even think about trying to turn NOLA into Charleston, motherfuckers!

Walgreens Can Suck It, Hard

So if you had the exclusive franchise on "Now Open" signs, you'd be making a killing.

A lot of shit is open. Most of it is still closed.

Dumbass Ray Nagin still has a meaningless 8PM curfew on my zip code. I've certainly made a practice of obeying that. Hey Ray, thanks for inviting me back. "Come on back, Antonio. Oh, but stay inside, okay?"

I don't want to go off on a rant about Nagin but the man is insane.

He wants a committee to "Bring Back New Orleans" when there's not even one public school open. Hey man, I'm no parent, but wtf is wrong with you? You're worried about "the culture?" How about this: You concentrate on public safety and education and leave that shit to the people who control it: EVERYBODY!

Entergy has not yet restored natural gas service to my neighbourhood. Last week it was 41 degrees in the morning. Cold shower? No thanks!

So I found that I had brought an ancient electric kettle/hotpot with me when I moved here. I have no idea why, but having it now makes me look like a genius, because I can boil some water, pour it in a big bowl, and at least improvise the feeling of a hot shower in the morning. I understand that throwing things away is a good idea--I'm for it. But see...?

People have "just shown up" from all over North America here, looking for work, or in the case of the black cowboy from West Louisiana, they're "just trying to figure it out." It used to be that people came here because they'd already figured it out, and it usually meant "drinking heavily." Now it's the guy who needs to "follow his heart." Oh dear. This is not a good sign.

Still waiting for somebody, anybody, to stand up and say "So Nagin has told y'all to come back. I think he forgot to mention that the schools are closed and that landlords are jacking up rents and as of today, we still can't promise you that NOLA won't flood next year if hit by a Category 3 hurricane." How would you like to be a business owner from an area that got flooded, just waiting for the whole thing to go under again? Madness.

I can't get a bbq shrimp Po'Boy from Liuzza's. There's no more Dixie beer. But that's not the worst of it.

Last weekend I made the horrible mistake of going to a party on the West Bank. Technically still in OP but the party was attended by...well, let's just say it was attended by people who felt comfortable telling a stranger "Hey, at least the niggers are finally gone."

Holy shit. I hope there really is a hell, because that fat Republican fuck belongs there TODAY. Who the fuck says shit like that? Is this 1962? Get your racist ass back to fucking Gretna and I promise you I'll stay on the other side of the bridge. That's a promise. I am never crossing that bridge again EVER.

I feel really bad about going over there in the first place, but I feel worse for just swallowing it and going on about my business. If I hadn't been seriously outnumbered and a complete stranger to most of the people there, I would have screamed "FUCK YOU!" and called a cab immediately.

Chalk that up as a "Post-Katrina moment."

Last Monday I dressed up as "Captain Communism" for Halloween. Go Big Red!

The Thin Black Line

New Orleans is...not real, and that's the only thing I can tell you that makes sense to me. I drove down from the heavily populated yet artificial Atlanta suburbs on October 9. South of Laurel, Mississippi, it began...acres of splintered pine trees that used to butt against the interstate but now giving an unobstructed view of the far horizon.

I have always hated driving to NOLA via that route because it seems so desolate, like the Virgina woods leading up to DC. I can imagine the Burton boys growing up in that environment and I know exactly why they became stock car drivers. Driving along those stretches of road where you can't see anything but the cars in front or behind, getting almost nothing on the radio but demented preachers and countrypolitan pop tunes, there's no better preparation for the one-man show of auto racing.

I saw steel signs along the interstate bent double as though made of tissue. I began to notice the dearth of billboards. And it slowly dawned on me that I had no conception of the scope of Katrina's devastation. No, really. I knew it intellectually but no matter the size of your tv's picture, you're still only going to perceive the destruction on the scale of a small box in your living room. When you're in the midst of it, it warps your sense of reality. It is everywhere and constant. There is nowhere to look where you can not see it. Your only recourse, if you don't want to be assaulted by the image of an entire region debased by a storm, is to close your eyes. It's that freaking big.

Interstate 10 was still closed that day. Great heaping sections of it that had snapped were being used to patch up all the holes in what would have been the eastbound side. We never had too many choices about how to get into or out of NOLA. You had the twin spans of 10, the two lanes of US 11, the Causeway, or you could pull a Cristo Colon and circumnavigate the whole damn thing by driving to Jackson, MS on 20, taking 55 down to La Place, and then taking Airline Drive/Hwy in from the west. It has always been easier to fly or sail into New Orleans than to go overland. Someone is trying to tell us something, non?

And so I chose to take US 11, which runs through Slidell. Or rather, runs through the space on the map where Slidell used to be. My god.

The closer one gets to the lake, the less there is of Slidell that could be called "civilisation." There is simply one pile of debris next to another next to another next to another next to another next to another...and so it goes. There is not one house. There is not one store. All aspects of human enterprise have been swept into piles of brokenness. You would not be able to differentiate between this and, let's say, post-Enola Gay Hiroshima. Unlike what I was going to find in NOLA, where entire city blocks came away relatively unscathed, Slidell simply looked as though it had really pissed off God, and God took the full measure of his revenge. It looked like William T. Sherman was trying to win a war against St. Tammany Parish. The only evidence that humans gave a shit about this place was that people had taken pieces of splintered homes, spray painted their addresses on them, and stuck them in front of the mounds of wreckage. "I used to live in this," it said to me. Really, does your "address" matter at that point? "Where do you live?" Nowhere, you idiot.

So I crossed the lake. Going the other way was an endless stream of cars, filled with people who had no reason to stay in Orleans Parish. Some of the cars and trucks were towing U-Haul trailers. They had taken whatever they could that still mattered (and wasn't coated in black moldy evil shit), and they were getting the fuck out of the city they had called home. I didn't blame them. I can't blame them. It is a motherfucking burden of immense proportion to have to live there.

All the familiarity I once felt when I would drive into NOLA after being away was gone. You come in from the east, you are no longer among the living. Entire apartment buildings along 10 were shredded. Not a roof intact. Katrina's anger had torn the homes of thousands of people into little pieces. "My god." I kept saying it. "My god. Oh my god." There had been people living there just 5 weeks before, working people, families, children, old people. And now they were gone. Even if they had wanted to come back...well, let's be honest, what in the hell would they want to do that for?

I surveyed New Orleans East from the high rise. Ghost town. A real ghost town, filled with the ghosts of the people who didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, leave. Dead people. Dead city.

It hasn't been that long since I decided that I NEEDED to live in NOLA. I will never forget the feeling of driving down Broad Street off the interstate in that ludicrously big U-Haul truck, seeing all those people on their front stoops, sitting on their steps, carrying bags of groceries from the corner store, many of them inert, but still, everywhere I looked there were people.

And as day gave over to dusk on October 9, there were no people. None. Mine was the only car on the road. No cops looking to bust heads. No crackheads. No mothers. No sons. No mechanics. No teachers. Just a filthy black line on the houses and nasty grey-brown dust on everything. I was alone in New Orleans.

I had conducted a "CSI" to the winds of Katrina up to that point, but now I was seeing the evil of men played out in the form of a broken levee. How did we manage to let this happen? What a question. I feel so stupid for even asking it. I should retract it.

I don't know what to say about the flood. All I know is that black line. You could go around the city and hang pictures as though it were a laser level. That horrible, filthy, disgusting black line, I hate it. I hate it. It turns my stomach. It makes me angry. It makes me cry. Fucking black line. Goddamned black line. Black line on cars. Black line on houses. Black line on the goddamned interstate. Black line. Have you seen the black line? Piles of rubble can be taken away but that black line remains. Everywhere I look I see that black line and I see another life ruined. A worker in a shelter. A family split up. A bar that was struggling to make it. We should all get a fucking tattoo of a black line across our chests.

In two weeks I have only seen the remains of true horror and suffering. New Orleans is Club Med now compared to what it was when that black line was being drawn across the city. I have electricity and MREs. I have a cooler and FEMA ice. I have survivor's guilt. I should not have left, why did I leave, I am weak. I can take a cold shower whenever I want. I can shit in my own toilet, in private. I've never had it so motherfucking good.

But when I see the abandoned boat at the gas station where I stopped at 5:30AM on Katrina Sunday, the gas station on Claiborne under 10, just off Esplanade, and the gas station has been looted because people were starving and dehydrated, I am jolted. Every day I drive past that boat and look at it, parked askew next to a gas pump as though it were filling up. Every day. Someone was trying to stay alive, I know it.



One of the sad things about my city is how so few people know about it beyond the Vieux Carre and St. Charles Avenue. For decades tourists have come to debauch themselves on Bourbon Street and marvel at the mansions of the Garden District. And now those places are intact and it looks like nothing happened. There's not a big tourist market for driving along West Esplanade from Kenner and seeing the complete desolation of Lakeview. There's no soul-stirring "Ground Zero" to elicit tears from people from Iowa. I have seen it and I don't want to see it again. I don't want to see lives blown up and washed away and piled into giant mountains of garbage and wood. I nearly vomited the first time. I don't want to feel that dust buring my throat. I don't want to see the remains of happiness stacked up like cordwood or tossed away like a child's mold-ridden teddy bear. It's not fun.

Please don't forget us, world. Please. Please help save New Orleans.

Share Our Wealth

(When I run for mayor of NOLA, I want somebody to remember what I'm about to post.)

Huey P. Long supported the presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. However, he was highly critical of some aspects of the New Deal. He disliked the Emergency Banking Act because it did little to help small, local banks. Long bitterly attacked the National Recovery Act for the system of wage and price codes it established. He correctly forecasted that the codes would be written by the leaders of the industries involved and would result in price-fixing. Long told the Senate: "Every fault of socialism is found is this bill, without one of its virtues."

Long claimed that Roosevelt had done little to redistribute wealth. When Roosevelt refused to introduce legislation to place ceilings on personal incomes, private fortunes and inheritances, Long launched his Share Our Wealth Society. In February 1934 Long announced a scheme to rectify the existing maldistribution of wealth in the United States. He told the Senate: "Unless we provide for redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed." He added the nation faced a choice, it could limit large fortunes and provide a decent standard of life for its citizens, or it could wait for the inevitable revolution.

Long quoted research that suggested "2% of the people owned 60% of the wealth". In one radio broadcast he told the listeners: "God called: 'Come to my feast.' But what had happened? Rockefeller, Morgan, and their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120,000,000 people and left only enough for 5,000,000 for all the other 125,000,000 to eat. And so many millions must go hungry."

Long's plan involved taxing all incomes over a million dollars. On the second million the capital levy tax would be one per cent. On the third, two per cent, on the fourth, four per cent; and so on. Once a personal fortune exceeded $8 million, the tax would become 100 per cent. Under his plan, the government would confiscate all inheritances of more than one million dollars.

This large fund would then enable the government to guarantee subsistence for everyone in America. Each family would receive a basic household estate of $5,000. There would also be a minimum annual income of $2,000 per year. Other aspects of his Share Our Wealth Plan involved government support for education, old-age pensions, benefits for war veterans and public-works projects.

Long employed Gerald L. K. Smith, a Louisiana preacher, to travel throughout the South to recruit members for the Share our Wealth Clubs. The campaign was a great success and by 1935 there was 27,000 clubs with a membership of 4,684,000 and a mailing list of over 7,500,000.

Some critics pointed out that all wealth was not in the form of money. Most of America's richest people had their wealth in land, buildings, stocks and bonds. It would be very difficult to evaluate and liquidate this wealth. When this was put to Long he replied: "I am going to have to call in some great minds to help me."

Leaders of the Communist Party and Socialist Party also attacked Long's plan. Alex Bittelman, a communist in New York wrote: "Long says he wants to do away with concentration of wealth without doing away with capitalism. This is humbug. This is fascist demagogy." Norman Thomas claimed that Long's Share Our Wealth scheme was an insufficient and dangerous delusion. He added that it was the "sort of talk that Hitler fed the Germans and in my opinion it is positively dangerous because it fools the people."

Huey P. Long admitted that certain aspects of his scheme was socialistic. He said to a reporter from The Nation: Will you please tell me what sense there is running on a socialist ticket in America today? What's the use of being right only to be defeated? On another occasion he argued: "We haven't a Communist or Socialist in Louisiana. Huey P. Long is the greatest enemy that the Communists and Socialists have to deal with."

Some economists claimed that if the Share Our Wealth plan was implemented it would bring and end to the Great Depression. They pointed out that one of the major causes of the economic downturn was the insufficient distribution of purchasing power among the population. If poor families had their incomes increased they would spend this extra money on goods being produced by American industry and agriculture and would therefore stimulate the economy and create more jobs.

In May 1935 Long began having talks with Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, Gerald L. K. Smith, Milo Reno and Floyd B. Olson about a joint campaign to take on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential elections. Two months later Long announced that his police had discovered a plot to kill him. He now surrounded himself with six armed bodyguards.

On the 8th September, 1935, Carl Weiss, a physician and the son-in-law of Benjamin Pavy, shot Huey P. Long while he was in the state senate. Long's bodyguards immediately killed Weiss. At first it was thought that Long was not seriously wounded and an operation was carried out to repair the wound. However, the surgeons had failed to detect a bullet had hit his kidney. By the time this was discovered Long was to weak to endure another operation. Huey Long died on 10th September, 1935. According to his sister, Lucille Long, his last words were: "Don't let me die, I have got so much to do."

(My note: We have just passed the 70th anniversary of the death of Huey P. Long. Louisiana needs the Kingfish more than ever.)

Hank Stram and Tootie Montana

They died.

Who were they?

Hank Stram coached the New Orleans Saints for two terrible seasons. Sure, they weren't seasons that were any more or less terrible than many of the Saints seasons, but Hank Stram was a championship coach who had great success with the Kansas City Chiefs. Over the course of his two years, the Saints won a total of 7 games and lost 22. He wore a bad hairpiece and clapped a lot. Archie Manning, Tony Galbreath, Chuck Muncie, and Henry Childs all played for Hank.

What in the world would make Hank Stram "beloved" in the minds of Saints fans? I think it's because he loved NOLA and he stayed there. He died in Covington, in St. Tammany Parish Hospital on the 4th of July, the day after I moved to New Orleans. Hank Stram, Super Bowl Winner, was just one of the thousands of folks who came to NOLA and couldn't leave.

Tootie Montana was something else altogether. He died on June 27, defending the Mardi Gras Indians at a City Council meeting.

The Indians are/were an expression of the black community in NOLA, an expression of pride and a celebration of an unbowed spirit. Tootie Montana was the King of the Indians, the "Chief of Chiefs." I don't know much about the Indians, all I know is really what I read after Tootie died and from what I saw in "Make it Funky." And what I know is that Tootie was speaking out against NOPD harassment of the Indians. Why? Who the hell knows. I don't know why the NOPD did 90% of the shit it did in NOLA. I don't know why a cop who was well known as a sensitive poet would refer to kids as "animals." The NOPD is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma.

All I really wanted to do was to mention that this summer, two people who were inexorably tied to the soul of New Orleans passed. And then the storms came, and New Orleans passed, too. Where is the produce man who continued the long tradition of singing about his goods as he drove through the Fairgrounds area? Has he gone the way of the New Orleans Pelicans?

With every passing second that we are kept from our city, more and more of the people who lived in New Orleans because it was old and beat up and full of fucked up drunks and it was slow, they won't be able to afford to return. That will mean the death of the city. We will face a New Orleans where Rue de la Course is replaced by Starbucks. And I for one cannot accept that. We CANNOT allow New Orleans to become Dallas or, God forbid, Atlanta.

That is why I am hereby announcing my candidacy for mayor of the City of New Orleans. My platform will be "Save New Orleans!"

Save New Orleans from the carpetbaggers and the speculators! Save New Orleans from the yuppies and Baptists! I tell you here and now that the first things to go when "the respectable people" move in will be our liberty to do what we want, when we want. These yuppie trash will take away our freedom to drink, our "to go" cups, our Mardi Gras, our gambling; they will say that "decent" people don't need such things. And I say to them: GO BACK TO ATLANTA, YUPPIE BAPTIST TRASH!

Vote for me, and Save New Orleans!

(I am not joking.)

There is a hole in my heart...

and it is shaped like New Orleans.

Before it happened, I mean, before IT happened, I was at Vaughn's on Thursday night standing amazed in the presence of Troy Andrews. They call him Trombone Shorty because he started playing with his brother James at such a young age. He just might have been the youngest second line player ever, I don't know.

And there were so many "New Orleans Moments" that night (and New Orleans moments can be great or they can be terrible, it just depends) that it seems silly to pick out just one as the thing that demonstrates just WHY NOLA is "special."

Let me go back to a week or so before when I went to hear Soul Rebels at Le Bon Temps--you cannot possibly name me another city in America where hip young cool things showed up to dance to a BRASS BAND. You just can't. They were dancing like the kids in Atlanta dance to hip hop, but it was to trombone, trumpet, sousaphone...yeah. I am not making that up. And they got it, too. It wasn't cute, it wasn't trendy, it was NEW ORLEANS, baby, it was COOL. It would be there before the kids were born and it would be there long after they were gone (assuming IT hasn't killed that spirit).

So move ahead, back to Vaughn's on Thursday night. Vaughn's is (was?) legendary for its Thursday night sessions where, so I'm told, Kermit Ruffins would show up late, play all night, and somebody would bring in barbeque to feed the faithful.


This is Kermit. He is cooler than the top of Mt. Washington.


And Vaughn's itself is tiny. When I first went there on a Sunday afternoon, before I had moved to NOLA, it was at the moment that I was walking into Vaughn's that I knew, "This city will be my home."

Someone was putting out a bunch of junk on the sidewalk outside a home; a sink with a hole in it, a tarnished copper kettle with no lid, a dollhouse that looked like it had (prophetically) been hit by a hurricane, some old quilts...and the woman hung a sign that said, "FREE STUFF."

Free stuff, indeed.

I needed some cash so I went to the corner grocery (and you better know it, if there's one great thing about NOLA it is [was] the corner grocery, because every neighbourhood has them, and a lot of them serve hot food and PoBoys) because they had a sign that said "ATM" outside. I went in and wandered around, but I saw no machine. I asked the man at the register where was the machine and he said, "No machine." I had to do some finagling and then he gave me money from the register. THAT is an ATM in New Orleans.

So now, having turned down free stuff and used the invisible ATM, I walked to the door of Vaughn's and...couldn't get in. I had to be buzzed in. That was a first. You know, I had NEVER been buzzed in to a bar before. Yeah, that was a New Orleans moment.

So Vaughn's on this last Thursday night before IT happened had a good crowd, like Le Bon Temps, young hipsters who were dancing and grooving to Troy's band. I mentioned it before but Troy is a genius. Troy Andrews is Spiderman. Troy is just a brilliant musician who knows everything. The music was the best I've ever heard, energy, art, and technique married together, Troy playing trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, singing, conducting...Troy was Louis Prima, Troy was Satchmo, Troy was every genius wonderkind who ever lived. At this tiny club. On a Thursday. That was a New Orleans moment, people. You can always, always hear the best musicianship on earth for 10 bucks in my city. Or you could, I guess.

I was drinking my blessed Dixie. Whatever anybody says about Dixie, and shit probably most of the criticisms are valid, I would never refuse one. Dixie is New Orleans, the run-down brewery, the lack of care, the uniqueness...

And at some point, between sets, the door to Vaughn's opened and two men walked in carrying giant steel pots, one filled with red beans, one filled with rice. You don't pay for this. They're just feeding you, you know, cause you might be hungry. It wasn't the barbeque I had heard about, but this was better. This was NOLA. I don't need barbeque when I have red beans.

At last my time came to go. I had been in heaven from the moment I walked in and I will cherish the brilliance I was treated to for the rest of my life. James Andrews put in a cameo for good measure, showing his brother that there's more than one horn player in the family--and that too was a New Orleans moment. You simply never know when someone will just appear, his horn under his arm, and start playing. There is no other city like that on earth.

Troy was still playing when I made my way to the door--and for some reason he looked up and saw me. I looked at him and gave him my "prayer hands" in thanks for his brilliance, and he smiled and nodded.

I had two other New Orleans moments that will live with me forever before this. Both were at Donna's on separate Sunday nights. The first was when I ended up talking trumpet with Kermit, as if I had any business doing that, and the second was talking with Shannon Powell when there was almost nobody else in the club, and then when I left he threw his arm around me and thanked me for coming. Shannon Powell--you probably don't know that he was Harry Connick's drummer on some of Connick's biggest selling albums. He is a freaking legend, as gifted a drummer as you will ever hear anywhere, and he was thanking ME. As if.

And as if for any reason Troy Andrews should note me leaving Vaughn's, but he did, and it hit me so hard: My God, I cannot even tell anyone how much I love New Orleans.


Trombone Shorty. Troy. ET. The Brother from Another Planet.

So I had pretty much kept it together

Until now.

The lovely people from Cork & Bottle http://www.corknola.com/ posted on their site that WWOZ is webcasting, "WWOZ in Exile."

I'm sorry, when I heard the music of my city, the music that makes me happy when everything else fails, I just cried. I am crying now and I keep saying to myself "Just stop it!" but I can't. I can't.

My father is a Georgia Cracker, a redneck who grew up in Resaca. He never went to college and he never lived more than 20 miles from the place he was born. He grew up in a segregated South where black folk were treated horribly.

Yet my earliest memories include my father bringing a black co-worker and his sons to the First Baptist Church in Dalton in the early 1970s and us sitting on the closest row the to the front of the church as we could, at a time when they would have been as inconspicuous as a fly in a sugar bowl. Sometimes I don't even know how my father became the person he is, he is almost supernatural

Well, anyway, this same father of mine has always loved New Orleans jazz. Among the old vinyl collection were records by Sweet Emma and Kid Thomas. He tells stories of going to Chattanooga to hear them play and he got Kid Thomas and his band's autographs on one of the album jackets. (Side note: This is one of the things I stupidly left behind when I left NOLA.)

I don't know if my father's love of this music infected me or not. I do VIVIDLY remember watching Satchmo on TV as a child and loving the music too.

And of course, as soon as I got to NOLA I discovered the music. I could go on for days about Troy Andrews, Shannon Powell, Kermit Ruffins, Detroit Brooks, Dr. Michael White, Maurice Brown, Nicholas Payton...

I can't tell you how much I miss New Orleans. I can't. My words would fail. If NOLA were a woman, I would marry her and never stray.

Please, everyone, help save my city. Save New Orleans. Nothing else has ever been this important to me.

What's in a name?

The good people of Bangladesh (you may know them from "massive floods every other day") have offered us a million bucks in aid.

How about that?

Some people are taking offense at the term "refugee."

My thoughts: WHAT THE FUCK???

Here's the first definition of refugee from google: "an exile who flees for safety."

HELLO PEOPLE OF EARTH!

I CANNOT GO HOME!

I HAVE FLED FOR MY SAFETY!

DUH!

Got that?

I am PROUD to call myself a refugee. We are refugees, in every sense of the word. Who could be offended by that? We are a people, from a place, and we cannot live in our homes.

I am a refugee, bitches. I cannot be called anything else. I was NOT evacuated. NOBODY knows that I am gone. I left because Mayor Nagin told me to go.

No soldiers showed up at my door telling me that I should leave. Nobody from the government even cares that I am not in NOLA.

No sir. I am a refugee. I have fled. I did so for my safety.

If you call me a refugee, I know that you understand my situation. I did not want to leave. I have no where to go. My greatest desire is to return home.

Sitting in your own crap

Yeah, that' s the title of this entry, because that is what's going on among the poor in NOLA.

Read this and weep:

2 September 2005(AP): The stench from backed-up toilets inside the Superdome is unbearable and people are afraid to go into the unlighted bathrooms.

Sandra Jones says she and her family use a box to relieve themselves instead of using restrooms because "The stink is so bad you can't go in there anyway."

Even though she's hungry, one hurricane refugee in the dome says she's not eating. Michele Boyle says eating would mean she'd have to use the dark, dangerous and filthy restrooms in the dome. So she's going without.

Boyle has been spending some of her time trying to keep a small area of the dome as clean as she can until help arrives. Boyle and other refugees found some brooms and swept up the mess.

She says they're simply "trying not to let it get any worse."

________________________________________________

Welcome to Hell, Day 5.

How in the name of decency can we allow this to go on? Tell me. Tell me that these poor people don't even deserve to take a shit with decency. I am listening to our dear governor tell me that today was a milestone and a turning point, but for the people camped out at the I10 overpass, the convention center, and the Superdome, IT IS NOT!!!!

Not one of these people asked to be in this position. The time for judging them is long, long gone. They need your compassion and love. PLEASE.

The 17th street canal broke Monday night. It is all but repaired. NOW. How long has it been? An eternity? Why was this not a priority?

Or better yet, when the budget for raising the levees was rejected for 3 consecutive years (presumably because tax cuts and wars against phantom stockpiles of WMDs had to be conducted), why did decent people not stand up and say "If we're gonna superheat the Gulf waters, can we at least pour some motherfucking dirt down here?"

Whatever you think about this, just understand one thing: IT WAS ALL PREVENTABLE.

From the failure to restore the levees and wetlands, to the failure to have a plan in place to evacuate the poor, to the failure to have a plan in place to plug breeched canals, to the failure to have adequate security for our neighbourhoods, to the failure to have adequate food, water, and shelter after the fact, IT WAS ALL PREVENTABLE.

It will cost 500 million dollars just to rebuild the HOUSING in the lower 9th ward. Just the housing. Not including the infrastructure. These people need your love and compassion.

My sweet Colleen tells me that she has to move back to Chicago, that there is nothing left for her in NOLA. The great Acadian Diaspora has begun.

My city is on life support, people. The city that gave America its one true art form, the city that spawned a cuisine treasured around the world, the city that gave you Lee Harvey Oswald (okay, bad example) IS DYING. Please, help SAVE NEW ORLEANS.

New Orleans: Year Zero

I cannot tell you how I feel.

Beyond losing everything I own, losing a rare picture of a grandfather who died before I was born, losing all my clothes, is the loss of a way of life in a city that was one of the best on earth.

New Orleans was so very far from being "perfect," but its informality and ease brought with it the troubles that one had to endure in order to discover its gifts. And its gifts were infinite:

The taste of a hot cup of Community Coffee's New Orleans Blend, flavoured with chickory--I could cross the street from my apartment in the morning and start my day with that. And a very pretty, smiling girl named Ty would hand it to me and that would set the tone for the rest of my day.

Donna's Lounge on a Sunday Night--Shannon Powell would play the drums and sing, musicians from around the city (and sometimes the world) would drop in. It was informal, communal, full of joy.

Anything from Liuzza's by the Track--The gumbo, the Garlic Oyster PoBoys and the incomparable BBQ Shrimp PoBoy just begin to tell the story. The cast of characters (a woman in a purple mumu wearing a mask and on top of her head a crown made of pot leaves would often drop by; S. Gary Wainwright, Attorney at Law would regale you with the story of how he ran for District Attorney on the platform of decriminalising drug posession; the leader of the Storyville Stompers brass band was there; Bird the one-man taxi company worked there; Roadrunner, the chef/carpenter worked there...) made every Saturday morning hangover session more bearable.

Jhelisa at Hookah Cafe--her voice is indescribable.

Cheap food from Country Flame when you're high--It was really the bucket of Coronitas we loved, but cramming a plate of nachos down your cramhole and watching Mexican novelas was the perfect complement.

Alligator sausage at Cooter Brown's--wash it down with some 11% Abita Andy Gator beer. Repeat as needed.

13 Monaghan--The proper launching pad for a night of debauchery. Start off with a frozen irish coffee, eat the good food, drink a few beers, then hike over to the Quarter where pretty blondes named Lindsay with an "A" will kiss you.

The "Barmuda Triangle" on Magazine at Sophie Wright--Half Moon, Moonlight, and Sharon's bar all within 200 feet of each other, each forming a point on a triangle. This is supplemented by $1 cans of PBR at Juan's Flying Burrito. Sharon's was like "Trees Lounge" + "Barfly" but maybe not as uplifting.

Sitting on the steps of the levee by the Mississippi, sipping a cold beverage, watching massive ships moving up and down the river--the first time this happened, I was in awe of the scale of what I was seeing.

Pizza at Sugar Park Tavern--the best mf'in pie on earth.

Watching Troy Andrews play every instrument in his band--Vaughn's on a Thursday night. Troy, the genius wonderchild that only NOLA could produce, I would just stand amazed as he conducted the band and communicated telepathically with his sax player.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Two nights ago, as a refugee in a small sports bar in Tunica, MS, I sat down at the bar and thought, "There's nothing in here I'd want more than a Dixie Beer." A Dixie. Something small, something simple from my city. I miss my city. I love my city.

Damn it!

Friday night in New Orleans. I went to 13 Monaghan for dinner and a few beverages. 13 is a great place, and by that I mean it's filled with "characters," amply-endowed female bartenders who keep the drinks coming, frozen irish coffee, and like most places in this town a great jukebox.

Well, I met one of the characters--"Pete." Pete is 68 years old and has an outlandish personality. He loves jazz and loves to talk. He and I hit it off, but I think he hits it off with everybody. He calls the well-tattooed bartender Tara his wife. (Tara is famous. She wears her hair like Betty Page.)

Pete suggested we go to Fritzel's in the Quarter. There was some good old-fashioned NOLA jazz being played there. So we went. Pete is old and had a hard time walking there but he made it. They served me cheap drinks and I drank them.

Two girls came in and I was drunk and I somehow ended up talking to them. One was one of those pretty blondes that looked like she would like pretty blonde boys. The other was a short-ish brown-haired girl that looked like she would like me.

Here is where it gets sketchy, obviously because I was drunk. I talked to them both and the blonde said her name was "Lindsay with an 'a'" and she was from Tucson and her friend was from Virginia. I forgot that part. So she told me again. Then another swarthy-type dude sat down next to the brunette. And at some point they weren't sitting next to us, and I was talking and Lindsay with an "a" leaned over and kissed me. What? The pretty blondes don't like me. They never like me.

We kissed a lot and at some point they left and that was that. We went to dance and then they left. I didn't get her phone number. I didn't find out anything. I was stupid drunk. STUPID.

I am 38 years old and this was a pretty, young, nice blonde. And she kissed me. I mean, I am 38 years old and I could probably count on one hand the times in my entire life that a pretty blonde, with no coercing from me, leaned over and kissed me unexpectedly. I was literally in mid-sentence.

I don't even really know if her name was Lindsay, but the "with an 'a'" stands out distinctly.

So if you know Lindsay with an "a" from Tucson, and she was in New Orleans this past weekend, would you tell her to e-mail me? I'm not desperate (don't ask) for female companionship but I'd like to have a picture of her as evidence that she exists.

"Who sold you the drugs? TALK!"

Last night Erika said something to me that fucked everything up.

Er, not in a bad way.

"Do you wanna know a secret?"

Yeah.

"I really wanted to be with you."

Christmas 2001 I gave her a present, a gift card from a trendy clothing place. I was driving away from her house and she called me on my cell. She was crying.

Nothing worked out. Nothing. I went to London and Amsterdam. She got pregnant and married the guy.

Well, I'll always have cartwheels on the beach at Tybee Island. Yeah, I'll always have that.

The funniest thing happened

Dear Val,

I cannot believe it, but I'm actually typing this letter from TIJUANA, MEXICO! Yes, don't ask me how I wound up here, but suffice it to say I was drugged in a sleazy bar by a pushy broad and next thing I know, I'm in the back of a pig farmer's truck somewhere in Baja California.

Hmm…

It all started several months ago when I was approached by the National Security Agency. They had apparently heard of how incredibly dashing I am, of my power to speak several sentences from almost any language, and of my amazing track record with women of foreign origin. "Antonio," they said, "we've been watching you, and quite frankly, you frighten us. We know you're a dirty commie, and we know you’re irresistible to many women we consider dangerous. This is a combination we're not willing to ignore any longer." And with that, I was hit on the head by someone who had snuck up from behind me and given me a brutal bash with a billyclub.

I woke up in what I would later find out is a top-secret (as opposed to bottom secret, which is what Bill Clinton often experiences) government training center in Gaffney, South Carolina. I found out a lot of things those three days that have since terrified me…the most important-that Generic Baby Diapers Confederated Nappies, Inc. is a front company for the U.S. Government to export terrorism, sabotage, and leaky diapers!

I felt like such a fool for being sucked into this tawdry web of torture and excess baby poop! How could I ever go back, knowing that thanks to my efforts there had been a dramatic rise in the disease rate among Chinese peasants, due in no small part to the defective defecation collection of our Chinese product "Super Dump n' Leak, You Bet!" It was the intention of the government to slowly reduce the population of our enemies by flooding the world diaper market with Generic Baby Diapers Confederated Nappies, Inc. diapers, which would foster the spread of disease. And what a perfect front company to do it! A company which had no website, a company whose name never even appeared on the packaging! DIABOLICAL!

My friend (at least I thought he was my friend) Chuck Medicine had long been a member of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton so cleverly uncovered while her husband was testing the ability of the human body to restore moisture to dried-up cigars. Yes, THAT vast right wing conspiracy! I know you're shocked. You should be. I too was shocked when I found out that Mrs. Clinton was right about something!

But I digress...It was my so-called friend Chuck who talked me into coming to work for Generic Baby Diapers Confederated Nappies, Inc. in the first place. It never occurred to me that there was anything unusual about a multi-billion dollar company that no one had ever heard of! My god, was I naïve! Yes, I was. It was explained to me that Chuck had willingly volunteered to join the vast right wing conspiracy, and was handsomely compensated every time he brought in a new member. Even though he knew I was a dirty commie, he thought that our friendship would somehow take precedence over my bizarre adherence to a failed socio-economic philosophy that had enslaved over half the world's population. Sucker!

It was also explained to me that the ridiculous amount of traveling I did during my first month or two at Generic Baby Diapers Confederated Nappies, Inc. was a time which the NSA would be evaluating my ability to deal with adverse conditions…you know, things like no cappuccino in the hotel room, no HBO, not getting upgraded to first class when I fly Delta…but most of all, how smarmy and Sinatra-esque I could be when slinking about the North American Continent. Well, you know me…I passed with flying colours! Every woman I met, every flight attendant I schmoozed with to get free drinks, every Olive Garden hostess I called "gorgeous" in order to get seated first…they were all planted by the NSA, and my every action was monitored via a host of miniature cameras, powerful microphones, and satellite uplinks.

While I was trapped in Gaffney, I was shown a video compiled of the highlights of these endeavors…and I was GOOD, BABY, I WAS AWESOME!!! I watched that video 11 times, I would sneak into the interrogation/conditioning room when nobody was around and munch on some popcorn while admiring my incredibly smooth techniques. I would like this video entered in next year's Cannes Film Festival, and I would like Special Agent Randolph Mantooth to be nominated for best director.

After three days in Gaffney, I was ready to be released back into society with a new mission. I would no longer be just a sleazy wannabe lounge singer who served only himself. No, I would be a sleazy wannabe lounge singer who would serve a disgusting and corrupt government. Why, you ask? Why would I betray my principles? Two reasons, Val: One, they threatened to pour acid "where the sun don't shine," and two, I figured I could get closer to the top people behind the scam, expose them, or get lots of chicks while trying.

And so it happened…two days ago, in some dive in the greater Atlanta area, I met Lisbeth De Ruyter…rich, painfully beautiful, and (seemingly) very, very stupid. I found her irresistible, I found her charming…hell, I found her willing, and that's a good 75% of the equation right there! Oh she played it perfectly, all right. Breathless, giggling, constantly touching me, cleaning my back teeth with her tongue…Those were all her subtle tricks, and I fell for them! What a fool she played me for! You should see her, Val…all hair, wiggles, and teeth. It's so obvious now! Chuck was talking about her for weeks before I actually met her, going so far as to arrange our meeting.

And it was all a trap sprung by the vast right wing conspiracy to expose me as a traitor to their cause. Oh, I talked, yes, I blabbed my whole plan to her, all about the way I was going to track them down and tell the world about their crazy schemes. And she was wearing a wire! Well, it was an underwire…heh heh! Oh, but I make a poor joke at such a terrible time. Please forgive me.

So now I'm on the lamb again, which the lamb abhors but it was the only means of transport I could steal without notice.

So how are things with you? Well, I hope.

It was a hobby, not a lifestyle

I once starred in a series of porn videos aimed at the avid golfer. The title of the series was “The In-The-Hole” series. My screen name was “Woody Driver.” Some of our titles included:

“First, Second, and Third Holes”

“69, One Under”

“Gripping The Shaft”

“Picking Up A Stroke”

“Long and Straight”

It was extremely popular, to the point that I couldn’t get a tee time anywhere because my very appearance at the clubhouse would cause such a distraction that guys were shanking balls all over the place.

Imagine my chagrin.

Lang-u-age

I so hate interweb communication. What is with "dudes" calling grown women "girl?"

You know, "Aw girl, it's gon be aright."

To them, I say, "Aw, dude, go fuck yourself. You're not Donnie Wahlberg are you?"

Or how about "Hit me up?" "Hit me up wit sumpin."

Yeah. You're really a rap genius, there, Tupac. I've got an idea. How about I "hit you up" with a brick upside yo head an' shiz?

I'm old, I guess. It just doesn't seem cool.
_________________________________________

I sort-of shaved my head yesterday in preparation for the big move to New Orleans. It gets hot there, I don't know if you heard that. Oh, and I like to perspire. It's one of my hobbies. My hair was looking like crap over the last week when I was there searching for my apartment, and since I'm so vain, I had to compensate. Think the Mekong delta, the rainy season, charlie in the bushes, getting stronger.


Summer in the Crescent City--
Is it the heat, or the humidity?


That's it. If I had moved to Minnesota, it would be "The Shining." But now it's "Apocalypse Now." The original version--the one that doesn't suck.

I'm pleased with my lodging choice. The digs themselves are basic, not that enticing, but the surroundings...wow. It's the former carriage house of a mansion built around the turn of the century, out Esplanade way, two blocks from the track. I have a gazebo. Who can resist a gazebo? And a fountain. And a racetrack. I have a coffee shop across the road for Sunday morning decompression. I have a feeling that my life there is going to be Spartan. Stay out of the Quarter and I'll be fine.

I'm weak, you know. If confronted with a crisis, I'm usually pretty good. Pretty calculating. It's the inability to master the common tasks that gets me down.
__________________________________________________

Speaking of the track, I'd like to say that the only sports worth discussing are horseracing, boxing, futbol, and college basketball. On occasion, you can throw golf in there. I used to include baseball but, uh, it's like boring and stuff.

I don't mean it's boring compared to the NFL or the NBA or that ice sport, I mean, wtf happened to the game I grew up playing? Remember that? Speed is fun.

I just had a crisis

Holy fucking hell.

I never used to floss, but I finally found a dentist's office that I respected enough to start heeding their guilt trips about it. Nowdays I just do it. It's what I do. I'm like a sailor or an inventor. I MUST floss.

So this weekend I realised that I'd lost my floss. You got no idea what evil that did to me. No floss, no peace. I had some goofy spare floss from 1983, kiddie floss, bubble-gum flavoured (because kids will floss automatically given bubble-gum flavoured floss). It sucked. It broke. I bled.

Today I was having a wee snack, some lovely prosciutto, and a bit of it got stuck up on the top left and I tried to floss the bitch out with the substitute floss and it broke. And then more broke. And then I tried various combinations of thread, fingernails, kitchen utensils, pig tendons, and violence.

Nothing worked and in fact I think I just got more crap jammed in there, not at the gumline but just between the teeth. PAIN, motherfucker!!!!

(side note: Those dorkologists on the Verizon commercial, the ones that call each other just to make fart noises or send pictures of themselves dressed as "Banana Insertion Man," well, they must die.)

I just had to drive to the goddamn pharmacy on an emergency floss run. And once there, I actually broke open a box and sampled the shit right there and it broke just like the crap I had at home. So I sprang for the expensive stuff and ran to the car. (I did run.)

And I sat in the car listening to "All Things Considered," furiously trying to floss the hell out from beneath my teeth, and the shit kept breaking and kept breaking and kept breaking and kept breaking and I threw out a pile of broken floss on the ground like a littering bastard, madly, insanely, cursing all the while, my teeth unnaturally spread by the various flotsam jammed in there like a WWI trench.

I don't think I've felt that insane in a long, long, time. But...eventually, one of the strips of floss worked its way in between and I was FREE!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, sweet release.

On one side of the moment I was a rabid, mad beast gone off the edge. Having crossed over, I felt positively beatific.

And there you have the story of the crisis in my mouth. And you weren't invited.

All the bad things

I like to drink. Catch that? I said I LIKE to drink. I enjoy it. I don't feel that I must drink. It's just what I do.

I used to drink to avoid thinking. Then I read "Drinking: A Love Story" by Caroline Knapp and it hit me hard in the face and stomach that I was not growing as a person. I won't preach. I do think that drinking to avoid thinking is not advisable if that's all one does. You gotta think sometime, boy.

Also, and this will probably cause Attorney General Sanchez great consternation, I like to smoke the ganja every now and again. I'm no pothead. Just sometimes I like to visit cartoon land.

I like to fondle women--con permiso, of course. I won't expand on this.

I like to watch and talk sports wif me mates. This is a very typical man thing, isn't it? Crude and stupid. Just like me! Huzzah!

I'm terribly, terribly vain. Sean called me a "dandy" in his brogue. "Lookit ya, wi' yer Guess Jeans an' yer J. Crew shirt and yer Aveda hair products! That shite's 'spensive, ya know!" I do know, Sean. I do. And I'm sorry.

I waste time watching television. Now, I've never seen an episode of "Friends" (thank Christ), and I do actively seek out public broadcasting, but every now and then I need a little cotton candy and thus I turn to Jennifer Garner, or Caliente. That's "Caliente!" of course.

In the words of George Best, "I've spent a fortune on drink and women. The rest of my money I just squandered."

Confession. See, I told you it feels good to unburden yourself. And according to Newsweek, I am tall, handsome, and wealthy.