Last week the polical wizard Barack Obama actually spoke the words “do you smell what Barack is cooking?”
Holy shit, why not just hand the keys to the kingdom to the Republican attack squad? How long does Obama think it will take the GOP to plaster the hinterlands with speculation concerning chicken recipes.?
If nominated, Obama will be eaten alive. Extra crispy.
www.myspace.com/michael_jahn
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
-- Dr. Who Goes Toon
The long-running and once-respected British sci fi series Dr. Who has become a cartoon, with acting out of 60s comic action TV and music out of 50s drama.
The time-travelling Doctor, now played by David Tennant, would be better played by Jackie Chan. Tennant's Doctor is always terrified and in a panic. The villains are comic and the plots are preposterous.
Nearly all the nine previous actors to play the Doctor played him with a certain British savoir-faire, not quite James Bond but always with a certain cocky elegance. The previous Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, was second only to the classic Doctor, played by Tom Baker in the late 60s. Baker's Doctor was a kind of Edwardian fop, but he instilled confidence.
With him you sensed that the good guys would survive the episode. With Tennant the feeling is that only a visit from Jackie Chan, in a jokey furor as he busted up a hotel lobby, would save the day.
Rumor is that Tennant will quit soon to make his way to Hollywood. This is good. Chris Tucker could use a like spirit to play off. Time for an 11th Doctor. I suggest the producers hire Kim Possible.
The time-travelling Doctor, now played by David Tennant, would be better played by Jackie Chan. Tennant's Doctor is always terrified and in a panic. The villains are comic and the plots are preposterous.
Nearly all the nine previous actors to play the Doctor played him with a certain British savoir-faire, not quite James Bond but always with a certain cocky elegance. The previous Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, was second only to the classic Doctor, played by Tom Baker in the late 60s. Baker's Doctor was a kind of Edwardian fop, but he instilled confidence.
With him you sensed that the good guys would survive the episode. With Tennant the feeling is that only a visit from Jackie Chan, in a jokey furor as he busted up a hotel lobby, would save the day.
Rumor is that Tennant will quit soon to make his way to Hollywood. This is good. Chris Tucker could use a like spirit to play off. Time for an 11th Doctor. I suggest the producers hire Kim Possible.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
-- Battlestar Galactica and Diving Through the Old Sphincter
This is about Battlestar Galactica and taking the intergalactic plunging through the old sphincter
It’s really cheap-shit producing when you have murderous aliens who look just like their human victims. It’s saving money. No more expensive costumes. No more time and money spent on rubber masks and fake limbs. Other examples of cheap-shit producing:
—Gene Roddenberry saving heaps of money by inventing the transporter beam (no need for shuttle models and concommitant expense).
—The producers of Stargate SG1 saving even more money by inventing what Richard Dean Anderson called “the old sphincter,” thereby eliminating spacecraft entirely.
If BSG gets more soapoperish the show will be 100% backstory with no need for space hardware at all.
My Tumblr page
It’s really cheap-shit producing when you have murderous aliens who look just like their human victims. It’s saving money. No more expensive costumes. No more time and money spent on rubber masks and fake limbs. Other examples of cheap-shit producing:
—Gene Roddenberry saving heaps of money by inventing the transporter beam (no need for shuttle models and concommitant expense).
—The producers of Stargate SG1 saving even more money by inventing what Richard Dean Anderson called “the old sphincter,” thereby eliminating spacecraft entirely.
If BSG gets more soapoperish the show will be 100% backstory with no need for space hardware at all.
My Tumblr page
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
--Munchausen by Payday
Munchausen by Payday
by Michael Jahn
Britney Spear's parents are cashing in on her head scramblings.
Lindsay Lohan's parents are going to the bank based on her rehabitual collapses.
And now Dannielynn Smith is embarking upon eye surgery unaware that her father is selling the rights to the story, say gossip sites.
Celebrities selling pix of their kids is nothing new. It seems impossible for a celebrity to spawn lately without tapping one of the tabs or supermarket rags for a few mil. Supposedly Christina Aguilera is upset that her kid pics are fetching a fraction of J. Lo's kids pics.
So there's nothing new about that. I'm sure that J Lo needs the money.
What IS new is celebrity parents cashing in on their kids illnesses. Even more, celebrity parents driving their kids so hard they wind up in rehab and then the folks sell the story to the highest bidder.
You know the history. First came Munchausen Syndrome. A person makes herself - it's usually a woman - to get attention from doctors. Then came Munchausen by Proxy. Mom makes her KID sick so she can get attention from doctors, but without enduring the actual pain herself. But now we have something new. You can call it Munchausen by Payday. A double payback - attention from the psychiatrists AND a big payday.
Baron Munchausen would be jealous. He only told tall tales about himself and no one paid him.
-30-
by Michael Jahn
Britney Spear's parents are cashing in on her head scramblings.
Lindsay Lohan's parents are going to the bank based on her rehabitual collapses.
And now Dannielynn Smith is embarking upon eye surgery unaware that her father is selling the rights to the story, say gossip sites.
Celebrities selling pix of their kids is nothing new. It seems impossible for a celebrity to spawn lately without tapping one of the tabs or supermarket rags for a few mil. Supposedly Christina Aguilera is upset that her kid pics are fetching a fraction of J. Lo's kids pics.
So there's nothing new about that. I'm sure that J Lo needs the money.
What IS new is celebrity parents cashing in on their kids illnesses. Even more, celebrity parents driving their kids so hard they wind up in rehab and then the folks sell the story to the highest bidder.
You know the history. First came Munchausen Syndrome. A person makes herself - it's usually a woman - to get attention from doctors. Then came Munchausen by Proxy. Mom makes her KID sick so she can get attention from doctors, but without enduring the actual pain herself. But now we have something new. You can call it Munchausen by Payday. A double payback - attention from the psychiatrists AND a big payday.
Baron Munchausen would be jealous. He only told tall tales about himself and no one paid him.
-30-
Sunday, January 6, 2008
-- My Dead Rock Stars
My Dead Rock Stars
by Mike Jahn
This year marks the 40th anniversay of my becoming the first rock critic of The New York Times and, as such, the first full-time rock critic of any major American newspaper or other form of major media. It was a dirty job -- forget Mike Rowe's septic tanks and oil spills -- but someone had to do it. Why was it dirty and depressing? Because I've known a lot of rock stars who have become deceased, rung down the curtain, ceased to be, kicked the bucket, croaked, shuffled off this mortal coil, or in one way or another joined the choir eternal. The number stands at 24.
It's tempting to think that drugs were behind most of these abrupt departures. However, in many cases death came via unrelated medical problems -- heart attacks or cancer, mainly. A number DID die of overdoses of either drugs or alcohol, sometimes both. Others succumbed to crashes by planes, cars, and skiing into trees. There also were murders and one suicide, possibly to avoid death by any of the aforementioned.
If you are adding up and tracking deaths per band, that would be three-fifths of Canned Heat, half of the Who, two-fifths of MC5, one-third of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and a quarter each of the Beatles and Doors.
Here's the list.
SPIRITS OF ROCK STARS PASSED [sic]
Harry Chapin -- died July 16, 1981, in a car accident.
Jim Croce -- died in a plane crash September 20, 1973.
John Denver -- died in a plane crash October 12, 1997.
John Entwistle -- bassist for the Who, died June 28, 2002 of a heart attack also involving cocaine
and a prostitute. In Vegas, naturally.
Rory Gallagher -- Irish blues rocker, died June 1995, of complications of a liver transplant.
Jerry Garcia -- died August 9, 1995 of a heroin-related heart attack doubtlessly aggravated by his lifelong taste for junk food.
Jimi Hendrix -- died September 18, 1970, of a drug overdose. He would be humiliated by his surviving family's messy fight over his estate.
Bob Hite: six-foot, 300-poind singer for Canned Heat, died of a heart attack April 5, 1981.
Janis Joplin -- died of a heroin overdose October 4, 1970.
Ronnie Lane -- of the Faces and Rod Stewart and Faces; died June 5, 1997, of multiple sclerosis.
John Lennon -- murdered on December 8, 1980, outside his apartment building, New York's 19th century landmark the Dakota, which also was the setting for "Rosemary's Baby." He would have enjoyed the postmortem idolatry.
Linda McCartney -- one-time photographer and part-time, sort-of backup singer; died April 17, 1998, of breast cancer.
Keith Moon -- the Who's wild man drummer; drowned in his own vomit following a drug overdose on September 7, 1978, surprising no one.
Jim Morrison - died July 3, 1971, by one account of a heroin overdose, surprising even fewer than were surprised by Keith Moon. He would have enjoyed the postmortem idolatry even more than John Lennon.
Felix Pappalardi, of Mountain, April 17, 1983, murdered in the building where my dentist worked.
Elvis Presley, August 16, 1977, drug overdose aggravated by too many fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches. He would have enjoyed the deification.
Billy Preston - R&B keyboardman who became famous for his work with the Beatles, died June 5, 2006, of kidney failure.
Fred "Sonic" Smith -- of MC5, later husband of Patti Smith (no blood relation). died November 5, 1994, of heart disease.
Henry Vestine -- guitarist with Canned Heat; died October 20, 1997, of a heart attack.
Rob Tyner -- singer for MC5, died September 17, 1991 of heart failure while driving home from the grocery store.
Dave Van Ronk - "the Mayor of Macdougal Street" and early nurturer of many folksingers; died February 10, 2002, of colon cancer.
Alan Wilson -- guitarist with Canned Heat. He killed himself in Bob Hite's backyard September 3, 1970.
Frank Zappa -- rock's cranky innovator and first-amendment advocate who clashed famously with anti-rock activist Tipper Gore over censorship of rock lyrics; died of prostate cancer on December 4, 1993. He would have loved that it was her husband who got the Nobel.
by Mike Jahn
This year marks the 40th anniversay of my becoming the first rock critic of The New York Times and, as such, the first full-time rock critic of any major American newspaper or other form of major media. It was a dirty job -- forget Mike Rowe's septic tanks and oil spills -- but someone had to do it. Why was it dirty and depressing? Because I've known a lot of rock stars who have become deceased, rung down the curtain, ceased to be, kicked the bucket, croaked, shuffled off this mortal coil, or in one way or another joined the choir eternal. The number stands at 24.
It's tempting to think that drugs were behind most of these abrupt departures. However, in many cases death came via unrelated medical problems -- heart attacks or cancer, mainly. A number DID die of overdoses of either drugs or alcohol, sometimes both. Others succumbed to crashes by planes, cars, and skiing into trees. There also were murders and one suicide, possibly to avoid death by any of the aforementioned.
If you are adding up and tracking deaths per band, that would be three-fifths of Canned Heat, half of the Who, two-fifths of MC5, one-third of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and a quarter each of the Beatles and Doors.
Here's the list.
SPIRITS OF ROCK STARS PASSED [sic]
Harry Chapin -- died July 16, 1981, in a car accident.
Jim Croce -- died in a plane crash September 20, 1973.
John Denver -- died in a plane crash October 12, 1997.
John Entwistle -- bassist for the Who, died June 28, 2002 of a heart attack also involving cocaine
and a prostitute. In Vegas, naturally.
Rory Gallagher -- Irish blues rocker, died June 1995, of complications of a liver transplant.
Jerry Garcia -- died August 9, 1995 of a heroin-related heart attack doubtlessly aggravated by his lifelong taste for junk food.
Jimi Hendrix -- died September 18, 1970, of a drug overdose. He would be humiliated by his surviving family's messy fight over his estate.
Bob Hite: six-foot, 300-poind singer for Canned Heat, died of a heart attack April 5, 1981.
Janis Joplin -- died of a heroin overdose October 4, 1970.
Ronnie Lane -- of the Faces and Rod Stewart and Faces; died June 5, 1997, of multiple sclerosis.
John Lennon -- murdered on December 8, 1980, outside his apartment building, New York's 19th century landmark the Dakota, which also was the setting for "Rosemary's Baby." He would have enjoyed the postmortem idolatry.
Linda McCartney -- one-time photographer and part-time, sort-of backup singer; died April 17, 1998, of breast cancer.
Keith Moon -- the Who's wild man drummer; drowned in his own vomit following a drug overdose on September 7, 1978, surprising no one.
Jim Morrison - died July 3, 1971, by one account of a heroin overdose, surprising even fewer than were surprised by Keith Moon. He would have enjoyed the postmortem idolatry even more than John Lennon.
Felix Pappalardi, of Mountain, April 17, 1983, murdered in the building where my dentist worked.
Elvis Presley, August 16, 1977, drug overdose aggravated by too many fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches. He would have enjoyed the deification.
Billy Preston - R&B keyboardman who became famous for his work with the Beatles, died June 5, 2006, of kidney failure.
Fred "Sonic" Smith -- of MC5, later husband of Patti Smith (no blood relation). died November 5, 1994, of heart disease.
Henry Vestine -- guitarist with Canned Heat; died October 20, 1997, of a heart attack.
Rob Tyner -- singer for MC5, died September 17, 1991 of heart failure while driving home from the grocery store.
Dave Van Ronk - "the Mayor of Macdougal Street" and early nurturer of many folksingers; died February 10, 2002, of colon cancer.
Alan Wilson -- guitarist with Canned Heat. He killed himself in Bob Hite's backyard September 3, 1970.
Frank Zappa -- rock's cranky innovator and first-amendment advocate who clashed famously with anti-rock activist Tipper Gore over censorship of rock lyrics; died of prostate cancer on December 4, 1993. He would have loved that it was her husband who got the Nobel.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
-- A New Yorker's Love Song for NOLA
by Michael Jahn
I've lived in New York City for over 30 years, most of that in Manhattan, and like many Big Apple lifers thought that it was the center of the universe and that I could live nowhere else. I felt that despite the ravages of Wall Street, wealth, and 1,000-percent rent increases, the outward exile of musicians and artists to the point where they can't even afford to live in Brooklyn anymore, that there was nowhere else for me. New York, specifically the jagged Cambrian boulder known as Manhattan, was my forever love.
And then I set foot in NOLA, an acronym that if you haven't heard it stands for New Orleans, Louisiana. Its other names are more familiar - the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the City that Care Forgot, and I might add "the city that can't decide if it's in the southern United States or northern Costa Rica."
I set one foot in the town and said "oh yeah, I can do this." It was the same way I felt on climbing up on the Cambrian boulder in 1966. You know about the music and the voodoo and the jazz funerals and the food and the booze and Dr. John and all that, and you can throw in Coco Robicheaux, who I only missed a few week ago because I couldn't afford to get across the Lake Ponchartrain bridge to Covington to catch his gig. You know all that or can look it up.
Did I mention that annual spring party that instills in so many permanent residents the fervent desire to spend a few days with the relatives in Baton Rouge? You know about that one, too.
I want to talk about NOLA's groove and what's in the air and how people feel about life and their city.
If New York is the capitol of the known universe, as it thinks of itself, New Orleans is capitol of a parallel, antimatter universive that floats just to the left of Andromeda.
Listen to me. New Orleans is the Greenwich Village that I recall from the mid-sixties. It's hip and musical and artistic and friendly and supportive - more like demanding - of eccentricity. There's a mellow groove that anyone possessed of an artistic sensibility will find irresistable. It's friendly and possessed of a terrific civic pride. No one loves their town the way NOLA people love theirs and they're out there every day promoting it, especially now that it was nearly taken away.
You want an emblem that's more to the point than the fleur-de-lis that's so ubiquitous it's on their professional football team's uniforms? (There ain't no apple on the New York Giants' helmets.) Take the streetcar, and I'm thinking here of the Canal Street Streetcar, and if you want to be even more specific, the Red Line.
The streetcar tells you why the town is called "the Big Easy." That title implies that the pace of life is slower in New Orleans than elsewhere, and let's think for the moment of New York. This is true enough. But nearly everywhere is slower than in New York. Even in L.A. it's slower, even in Washington, DC, and even in Chicago, which comes the closest to Manhattan in terms of testosterone frenzy.
I haven't been to Key West, but I imagine that it's slower there than in anyplace where Jimmy Buffett doesn't reside. Resort towns don't count.
The words "the Big Easy" don't mean slow so much as they mean family and caring. And the streetcar is emblematic, far better than the fleur-de-lis or the silhouetted black guy leaning against a lamppost playing the sax. It ambles along slower than any vehicle save for any vehicle save those cruising for parking spots at the mall. It moves along a wide strip of flat concrete in the middle of the street. The tracks are set into the concrete. Police cars sometimes amble down the same path. So do people with shopping carts and baby carriages. The streetcars, built prominently in 1923 and open to the elements, amble along at something like three miles an hour, slow enough that you can cross in front of it on foot, like ten feet in front of it, and not get run over because the streetcar will stop.
There are official stops every few blocks, but you just might get picked up anywhere.
If you cross in front you might get yelled at, but what do you expect? However the yelling will come from the operator, who is sitting in the front looking out a big open window, and he or she will say "what's the matter with you today? What are you doing out here at ten in the morning. What did you, lose your job again. How's your brother?" And the tourists in the car are slack-jawed at the fact that the driver has not only stopped for you but has lapsed into conversation and soon might add "get on and sit down and I'll drive you to work."
Last week the driver of a car I was on stopped to ask a woman pushing a baby carriage how her kid was. And none of the passengers minded, nor would they mind, because they live in the Big Easy where cooing at a baby is more important than getting to work on time.
This don't happen on the avenue, Fifth Avenue, people. Or on Sunset Boulevard or on South Wabash.
Okay, the hurricane. Yes, the hurricane. They survived it and, being entrepreneurs in the traditional art of substance abuse, promote a drink named the Hurricane. There are various recipes, but the one I saw most recently mixed four ounces of dark rum with an equivalent amount of orange and pineapple juice and some grenadine. You don't want to have more than one unless you can take the next day off.
You also don't want to be a young woman flashing her breasts on Bourbon Street in exchange for a string of cheap beads unless you don't mind it being on the Internet forever. Not everything that happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans, though a goodly amount does.
What survived the hurricane (the storm, not the drink)? If you are a tourist, businessman, or casual visitor, just about everything. As an older white man said, uncharitably, "everything that matters survived." Which is to say that many of the poorer neighborhoods did not. But just walking around the Central Business District, the French Quarter, the waterfront (ironically enough), and the Garden District you might say "what hurricane?"
But in the pages of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, every third story is about picking up debris or rebuilding, and it's been over two years. And if you wander away from "the Quarter" and over to the Warehouse Arts District and look at some of the warehouses that really are warehouses, you might notice that many of them have been painted up to about five or six feet off the ground. This is a bit creepy once you have figured out the owners are covering up high water marks.
And the hurricane remains in the form of tee shirts, the inevitable tee shirts - "FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass," "NOPD: Not Our Problem, Dude," "I was in New Orleans During Katrina and all I Got was a Plasma TV," and, more elegantly, "Make Levees, Not War."
And the word "rebuild" is everywhere.
This is necessary, of course. A lot remains to be done. The poor are hurting. The musicians are hurting. The real estate market is way constricted and getting uncomfortably New Yorkish. A year before the hurricane someone told me about a two-bedroom apartment in the French Quarter that rented for $600 a month. Telling this to a cabbie on the way to the airport, my discovery was scoffed at and I was told that I could get one for $250 in a different neighborhood, one that doubtless has since washed out into the Gulf of Mexico.
As for the one in the Quarter, as of last week it was $1800 a month, the shortage of housing is so acute. And in October I dropped in on an outdoor party/street fair and a developer showed me fancy color brochures for a condo he is putting up in the middle of the Warehouse Arts District. He showed me the floor plan of a two-bedroom apartment for $350,000. "You might want to pick up one of these," he said, as if suggesting I buy a beignet at Café du Monde.
Go ahead and do it, buy a condo. Get something on the second floor or higher. The levees are still a question mark.
By the way, and the reputation notwithstanding, beignets are overrated. They are heavy plain donuts with confectioner's sugar thrown on them.
There is no snappy ending to this story except to say that NOLA is a gem among world cities, proof that you can have artistry, imagination, family, friendliness, and pride in the middle of a major American city. Or northern Costa Rican city. Go there. Throw a couple of bucks at a street musician (better than at one of the horrid rock bands you will hear on Bourbon Street), get sick on beignets and hurricanes oh, and, what the hell, flash your boobs and get immortalized on YouTube. Buy one of the really classy tourist tee shirts, like the one that reads "I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street." Maybe don't.
Go to the Market Café at Decatur and St. Philip and nab a catfish po'boy for $10 and listen to the free music. Volunteer to build houses and clean up. Try out the streaming audio at the Rajun' Cajun (http://www.klrzfm.com), and get a room at the Day's Inn French Quarter, which may stay at $59 a night six blocks from Bourbon Street at least until it is renovated following Katrina, renamed the Canal Street Hotel, at which point I presume the room rate will at least double. So what if the phones don't work and there's plaster dust in the room and nowhere to hang your clothes and, like me, you may have to scavenge a wastebasket out of an even-more-unfinished room.
You're on the streetcar line, the Red Line, and the car ambles by every fifteen minutes and the conductor will stop for you and take you for a ride, stop and coo at babies, and point out the restaurant where Bill Clinton eats (second floor, last table on the right by the window).
And you'll understand what they mean by "the Big Easy."
I've lived in New York City for over 30 years, most of that in Manhattan, and like many Big Apple lifers thought that it was the center of the universe and that I could live nowhere else. I felt that despite the ravages of Wall Street, wealth, and 1,000-percent rent increases, the outward exile of musicians and artists to the point where they can't even afford to live in Brooklyn anymore, that there was nowhere else for me. New York, specifically the jagged Cambrian boulder known as Manhattan, was my forever love.
And then I set foot in NOLA, an acronym that if you haven't heard it stands for New Orleans, Louisiana. Its other names are more familiar - the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the City that Care Forgot, and I might add "the city that can't decide if it's in the southern United States or northern Costa Rica."
I set one foot in the town and said "oh yeah, I can do this." It was the same way I felt on climbing up on the Cambrian boulder in 1966. You know about the music and the voodoo and the jazz funerals and the food and the booze and Dr. John and all that, and you can throw in Coco Robicheaux, who I only missed a few week ago because I couldn't afford to get across the Lake Ponchartrain bridge to Covington to catch his gig. You know all that or can look it up.
Did I mention that annual spring party that instills in so many permanent residents the fervent desire to spend a few days with the relatives in Baton Rouge? You know about that one, too.
I want to talk about NOLA's groove and what's in the air and how people feel about life and their city.
If New York is the capitol of the known universe, as it thinks of itself, New Orleans is capitol of a parallel, antimatter universive that floats just to the left of Andromeda.
Listen to me. New Orleans is the Greenwich Village that I recall from the mid-sixties. It's hip and musical and artistic and friendly and supportive - more like demanding - of eccentricity. There's a mellow groove that anyone possessed of an artistic sensibility will find irresistable. It's friendly and possessed of a terrific civic pride. No one loves their town the way NOLA people love theirs and they're out there every day promoting it, especially now that it was nearly taken away.
You want an emblem that's more to the point than the fleur-de-lis that's so ubiquitous it's on their professional football team's uniforms? (There ain't no apple on the New York Giants' helmets.) Take the streetcar, and I'm thinking here of the Canal Street Streetcar, and if you want to be even more specific, the Red Line.
The streetcar tells you why the town is called "the Big Easy." That title implies that the pace of life is slower in New Orleans than elsewhere, and let's think for the moment of New York. This is true enough. But nearly everywhere is slower than in New York. Even in L.A. it's slower, even in Washington, DC, and even in Chicago, which comes the closest to Manhattan in terms of testosterone frenzy.
I haven't been to Key West, but I imagine that it's slower there than in anyplace where Jimmy Buffett doesn't reside. Resort towns don't count.
The words "the Big Easy" don't mean slow so much as they mean family and caring. And the streetcar is emblematic, far better than the fleur-de-lis or the silhouetted black guy leaning against a lamppost playing the sax. It ambles along slower than any vehicle save for any vehicle save those cruising for parking spots at the mall. It moves along a wide strip of flat concrete in the middle of the street. The tracks are set into the concrete. Police cars sometimes amble down the same path. So do people with shopping carts and baby carriages. The streetcars, built prominently in 1923 and open to the elements, amble along at something like three miles an hour, slow enough that you can cross in front of it on foot, like ten feet in front of it, and not get run over because the streetcar will stop.
There are official stops every few blocks, but you just might get picked up anywhere.
If you cross in front you might get yelled at, but what do you expect? However the yelling will come from the operator, who is sitting in the front looking out a big open window, and he or she will say "what's the matter with you today? What are you doing out here at ten in the morning. What did you, lose your job again. How's your brother?" And the tourists in the car are slack-jawed at the fact that the driver has not only stopped for you but has lapsed into conversation and soon might add "get on and sit down and I'll drive you to work."
Last week the driver of a car I was on stopped to ask a woman pushing a baby carriage how her kid was. And none of the passengers minded, nor would they mind, because they live in the Big Easy where cooing at a baby is more important than getting to work on time.
This don't happen on the avenue, Fifth Avenue, people. Or on Sunset Boulevard or on South Wabash.
Okay, the hurricane. Yes, the hurricane. They survived it and, being entrepreneurs in the traditional art of substance abuse, promote a drink named the Hurricane. There are various recipes, but the one I saw most recently mixed four ounces of dark rum with an equivalent amount of orange and pineapple juice and some grenadine. You don't want to have more than one unless you can take the next day off.
You also don't want to be a young woman flashing her breasts on Bourbon Street in exchange for a string of cheap beads unless you don't mind it being on the Internet forever. Not everything that happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans, though a goodly amount does.
What survived the hurricane (the storm, not the drink)? If you are a tourist, businessman, or casual visitor, just about everything. As an older white man said, uncharitably, "everything that matters survived." Which is to say that many of the poorer neighborhoods did not. But just walking around the Central Business District, the French Quarter, the waterfront (ironically enough), and the Garden District you might say "what hurricane?"
But in the pages of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, every third story is about picking up debris or rebuilding, and it's been over two years. And if you wander away from "the Quarter" and over to the Warehouse Arts District and look at some of the warehouses that really are warehouses, you might notice that many of them have been painted up to about five or six feet off the ground. This is a bit creepy once you have figured out the owners are covering up high water marks.
And the hurricane remains in the form of tee shirts, the inevitable tee shirts - "FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass," "NOPD: Not Our Problem, Dude," "I was in New Orleans During Katrina and all I Got was a Plasma TV," and, more elegantly, "Make Levees, Not War."
And the word "rebuild" is everywhere.
This is necessary, of course. A lot remains to be done. The poor are hurting. The musicians are hurting. The real estate market is way constricted and getting uncomfortably New Yorkish. A year before the hurricane someone told me about a two-bedroom apartment in the French Quarter that rented for $600 a month. Telling this to a cabbie on the way to the airport, my discovery was scoffed at and I was told that I could get one for $250 in a different neighborhood, one that doubtless has since washed out into the Gulf of Mexico.
As for the one in the Quarter, as of last week it was $1800 a month, the shortage of housing is so acute. And in October I dropped in on an outdoor party/street fair and a developer showed me fancy color brochures for a condo he is putting up in the middle of the Warehouse Arts District. He showed me the floor plan of a two-bedroom apartment for $350,000. "You might want to pick up one of these," he said, as if suggesting I buy a beignet at Café du Monde.
Go ahead and do it, buy a condo. Get something on the second floor or higher. The levees are still a question mark.
By the way, and the reputation notwithstanding, beignets are overrated. They are heavy plain donuts with confectioner's sugar thrown on them.
There is no snappy ending to this story except to say that NOLA is a gem among world cities, proof that you can have artistry, imagination, family, friendliness, and pride in the middle of a major American city. Or northern Costa Rican city. Go there. Throw a couple of bucks at a street musician (better than at one of the horrid rock bands you will hear on Bourbon Street), get sick on beignets and hurricanes oh, and, what the hell, flash your boobs and get immortalized on YouTube. Buy one of the really classy tourist tee shirts, like the one that reads "I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street." Maybe don't.
Go to the Market Café at Decatur and St. Philip and nab a catfish po'boy for $10 and listen to the free music. Volunteer to build houses and clean up. Try out the streaming audio at the Rajun' Cajun (http://www.klrzfm.com), and get a room at the Day's Inn French Quarter, which may stay at $59 a night six blocks from Bourbon Street at least until it is renovated following Katrina, renamed the Canal Street Hotel, at which point I presume the room rate will at least double. So what if the phones don't work and there's plaster dust in the room and nowhere to hang your clothes and, like me, you may have to scavenge a wastebasket out of an even-more-unfinished room.
You're on the streetcar line, the Red Line, and the car ambles by every fifteen minutes and the conductor will stop for you and take you for a ride, stop and coo at babies, and point out the restaurant where Bill Clinton eats (second floor, last table on the right by the window).
And you'll understand what they mean by "the Big Easy."
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
--'Wait a second, Honey, while I put Putin on hold'
by Michael Jahn
Those who were paying attention during Rudy Giuliani's 1994 inauguration as New York's mayor will recall his then-seven-year-old son Andrew running wild onstage, imitating his father, mugging for the cameras and stealing Dad's thunder.
If a man can't control his children, some wondered, how can he control a city?
Well, he sure can't control them now, for both Andrew and his sister Caroline appear to hate their Dad. But that's not the point.
Last month Giuliani interrupted a speech to take a cell phone call from his current wife.
If a man can't convince his wife not to call him while he's giving a presidential campaign speech, some wonder, how can he convince Iran to give up developing that Death Ray?
For once, the old standby "I told you never to call me here" makes sense.
Imagine, if you will, President Giuliani talking to the Russian President on the Hotline, when the wife calls from Rodeo Drive.
"Wait a second, Honey, while I put Putin on hold."
Those who were paying attention during Rudy Giuliani's 1994 inauguration as New York's mayor will recall his then-seven-year-old son Andrew running wild onstage, imitating his father, mugging for the cameras and stealing Dad's thunder.
If a man can't control his children, some wondered, how can he control a city?
Well, he sure can't control them now, for both Andrew and his sister Caroline appear to hate their Dad. But that's not the point.
Last month Giuliani interrupted a speech to take a cell phone call from his current wife.
If a man can't convince his wife not to call him while he's giving a presidential campaign speech, some wonder, how can he convince Iran to give up developing that Death Ray?
For once, the old standby "I told you never to call me here" makes sense.
Imagine, if you will, President Giuliani talking to the Russian President on the Hotline, when the wife calls from Rodeo Drive.
"Wait a second, Honey, while I put Putin on hold."
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