Me and Q enjoying a Zydepunks show at DBA.

I started to write part 2 of my last post on Hurricane Katrina, but then I realized I had zero interest in rehashing that bullshit yet again.

I’m over it.

Now this doesn’t mean I’m going to forget what happened, or that the scars I have and fears I carry will ever disappear. But I’ve learned to live with it, and I’ve moved on, just as the vast majority of New Orleans has. All the morbid documentaries on TV this week are not for us, they are for the rest of America or the world, that wants to wallow in gratuitous disaster porn. I tried watching one, and so many painful memories resurfaced that I refused to watch another one that only recapped the storm itself. I want to hear about now and the future. Unlike most other stations, CNN has been doing excellent and abundant non-disaster coverage on Nola including stories about the rebuilding status in neighborhoods, the new education system, the new mayor, the cleanup of our institutions of corruption, and the defiant spirit of locals after Katrina *and* the BP oil spill. This, coupled with their live coverage of the Saints Superbowl victory parade has them far on my good side. Anyway…

Mini Q hanging out at a family backyard BBQ.

We’ve rehashed and over-analyzed the past five years to the point of exhaustion. We know what happened, and we know what we as New Orleanians, Louisianians, Americans… as humans, did wrong. We have learned from it, and rebuilt a better city, one that held on to the best of our culture (a warm Franco-Afro-Caribbean passion for living like we mean it – through harder work in less hours complemented by decadent traditions) while discarding or disavowing the worst (corruption in government and education, both black and white racism, and poor economic development). We’ve crafted an island of energy and enthusiasm in a time when the rest of the country is in the economic dumps. Sure, we’re not immune to it, but we’re taking it very well, especially considering we had oil hemorrhaging all over us for three months.

Personally, I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime since Katrina. No five year period in my life has ever felt so long, so filled. When Katrina hit I was a broadcast news assignment editor interviewing to become a federal agent. If you’d told me then that in five years I’d endure the worst man-made disaster in US history and watch my entire hometown get wiped off the map, move cross-country and back, career change to publicist and writer, have two babies, and then watch the worst oil spill in US history dump all over my home state – I’d have thought you were drunk. And I think it’s this way for many people. The memories of Katrina are so painful and harsh they are still recalled like yesterday, yet so much has happened to us since then it also feels like decades ago.

Me and 21 month-old Zuzu dancing at Mirliton Fest in Bywater.

I know not everyone feels they are better off since the storm, but I do. Now I can barely recall the restless and unfulfilled person I used to be. Five years ago I spent my time obsessing about my career and ambitions, now I spend it enjoying my family and friends via backyard BBQs, music or food festivals, cooking with my windows open, or just lounging on my porch with a beer while the babies play at my feet. Sure, I still have ambitions, but I don’t lose sleep over them. And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.

New Orleans is a powerful example of what resilience, energy, love, and passion can accomplish. I think in many ways we took New Orleans for granted before Katrina, and now we’re finally treating her like we really love her. Sometimes it does take the worst to bring out the best in people… and places. I feel very fortunate to be here in a time of such renaissance for the place I was born. So no, I don’t want to talk about Katrina any more than is necessary, I want to talk about now.

Now, is really heartening.

For the people who went through Katrina, the memories of the week before the storm seem to be burned in our brains. We remember every tiny detail. It’s probably because even in the chaotic days after, it was already obvious that everything we did before, everything we knew before, would never be the same. I know people who remember what they were wearing three days before the storm, who they ran into in the grocery store, the last neighbor they talked to, last restaurant they ate at, or what they were watching on TV the night before they woke up to Cat 5 headed straight for us.

Personally, when I think of the week before Katrina, I often think of the FBI.

It’s not really that random. For two years prior I was working part-time on a master’s degree in political science, and had just finished it up in December 2004. On the side, I was practicing martial arts, studying foreign languages, reading up on terrorist strategies, international events, and criminal psychology, and happily perfecting my aim at paper targets with my handguns. This was my career path – federal law enforcement. And I was in prep mode. During the entire spring and summer of 2005 I was in the application and interview process with several government agencies ranging from the US Secret Service, FBI, ATF, DEA, CIA, US Foreign Service, and others. I’d ruled a few out early on, and knew who my top choices were. The FBI was one of my least favorites, but I didn’t rule it out completely even though I was almost finished the interview process with my favorite agencies. I decided to take the entrance exam anyway, and walked into the FBI headquarters on the Lakefront at 8am on Wednesday, August 24, 2005. Five years ago, tomorrow morning. And I remember what I was wearing.

I had to juggle my work schedule a bit to take off. I was working as an assignment editor at a local New Orleans TV news station to pass the time while enduring the federal application process. Not much was going on. The night before, I knew that there was a tropical depression just east of the Bahamas, and it was expected to become a tropical storm to be named “Katrina” by the next morning. But I didn’t even check to see when I woke up. It wasn’t a threat to us. It was going to southern Florida. And I was busy with more important things… and I’d be leaving New Orleans soon.

I knew the moment I walked in the FBI building that I didn’t belong there. No room for bending the rules or having a sense of humor. Definitely not me. Some of the other agencies I interviewed with had a wonderful camaraderie, surprisingly, and I was sure I wanted to work for those instead. But I took the FBI test anyway. I was already there; why not. A walk through some cold concrete hallways, a few hours in a sterile windowless room, a few disinterested pencil strokes later, and I was out of there. And I couldn’t remember ever being happier to feel the brutal August sun, heat and humidity punch me when I walked out the front door.

After the test I went to to the TV station and scheduled assignments for the reporters/photographers for the next two days. It was a mostly normal batch of news stories for Thursday and Friday, outside of the Well, this seems to be a busy tropical year. We’re almost on letter K! sentiment. That tropical depression wound up becoming a small hurricane and clipping Florida, but it still wasn’t a threat to anyone else in particular yet. We knew it was drifting towards the Gulf though, so I checked in to see what the radar looked like when I left to go bar hopping downtown that Friday night. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to get up early and go to the newsroom! But it was still a Cat 1 hovering off southern Florida. So I was off to celebrate the end of those awful federal tests, and the likelihood of an incredible new career.

I still don’t know how I scored on the FBI test. If they sent me the scores in the mail then they were likely another Katrina casualty. I didn’t bother calling them either. Because by then I didn’t care anymore. Two days after Katrina (exactly one week after I took the test) I was watching TV in a relative’s living room in Houston, and saw aerial video of the New Orleans Lakefront – and there was the intimidating FBI headquarters, humbled beneath the water like everything else.

About three weeks later I was gutting my parents’ home in Arabi. I got a call on my cell phone from a Virginia area code. I had rubber gloves on covered in black sludge so I let it go to voicemail. When I broke for my MRE lunch later on, I checked the message. It was from a certain clandestine agency that I’d already done a few interviews with, and they were my first choice. Were. They asked me if I was still interested in the job, and left me some contact info.

I never called them back.

Image: A military C-130 plane passes by the Lakefront Airport as it sprays pesticide September 13, 2005 over parts of New Orleans, LA. -LIFE Magazine

This month is the 5 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. So the ‘reflecting’ posts are to be expected. I’ll be moving on to other happier subjects in September.

This week the Times Picayune is running a four part series about Delacroix, a small town in eastern St Bernard that is almost extinct. When I was a kid growing up in western St Bernard (which is right next to the Lower 9th) we referred to all the swamp villages like Shell Beach, Hopedale, Yscloskey, Delacroix, and even parts of Violet as “dow’na road”; a kind of coonass “here be dragons” on the map. While us kids in Chalmette were playing football and Nintendo around our suburban brick homes, kids dow’na road ran around half naked, shot wild pigs, and lived in ‘camps’ on stilts. Two totally different civilizations, only 20 miles apart.

Still, I’m melancholy about the loss of any culture, especially since globalization has turned out to be a massive bore. Although I joke, the place was not that foreign to me. There was better fishing dow’na road, and we had friends in the area, so I did spend some of my childhood there. So where am I going with this?

Inevitability, I guess. Some places are meant to take a beating and come back, but for others the end is near. Their moment in time has passed. Extinction and evolution and all. And yet even accepting this, it still hurts. I never thought I’d be the last generation to grow up “dow’nehr” when it was at its peak at a population over 70k, not the 20k it is now (most of whom are close to the city end, not the swampy end).

I left St Bernard and moved into Orleans Parish after college, but I visited a lot because my family was still there and they owned a restaurant where many friends and family regularly met up. It was like a big party whenever you walked through the door. After the storm I stopped going dow’nehr and to the cafe that never reopened. My parents rebuilt and live in Arabi today, right past the parish line, but when I visit them I go no further than the border. It’s been three years since I’ve ventured down to Meraux where I was raised. I thought for a while it meant that I just didn’t miss it, but now I know that it really just hurts me to look at it. The last time I was there, the only thing remaining was a slab (and now even that is gone too, they tell me). In 2007 I remember looking at the spot where my house used to stand, and suddenly all I could see was 25 years ago exactly the way I remember it from childhood. Remember that sappy final scene in Titanic where Rose is asleep and dreaming about the present-day sunken ship and then it morphs into the past, the way she remembered it – lively, happy, with people she knew and loved greeting her? Yeah, that’s why I hate going back. Because that’s kind of what it feels like (only I hear crickets instead of Celine Dion music). All I can see is my little brother climbing trees, my dad washing his boat, or my mom calling from the door for us to come inside. I see myself playing ball in the street, and running two houses away to swing on the back porch with my grandmother, or running two houses the other way to ask my aunt if I could swim in her pool. When I finally did see the present day slab again, I looked around for evidence that I existed there, wondering how so many years spent in one place with so many wonderful memories can mean absolutely nothing to the marshlands.

And so, I avoid it. And try to enjoy where I live in New Orleans right now, for however long it lasts.

Here’s to a miserable-ass 5 year Katrina anniversary.

Photo: St Bernard Katrina victims memorial in Shell Beach, LA

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.” -Peter Pan

Every now and then I grow restless and panicky about living here. I usually brush it off as normal for living in a place that’s a crime ridden, hurricane attracting, oil soaked roller-coaster of drama. But last night the real reason struck me.

There is a piece of me that can’t quite commit to living here. A rebellious fragment of my heart that is holding out and refusing to give all I’ve got and really nest here. And the reason is that I keep waiting for it to be taken away from me.

I guess Katrina left us all feeling a bit like that, but I am curious to know if anyone who left after the storm feels that way too? If you move away, does that feeling go away too? Or are you damaged for life, always assuming one day everything you know and love will wash away again? I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to feel this way forever, no matter where I am. Constantly denying I’m… traumatized.

And it’s not all the storm’s fault that I feel this way. Last year we almost left because of employment issues. Even though that is not an issue now, it always could be again in this unstable economy. My husband is in engineering, and now that Avondale is closing and the oil industry is seeking out people who whine less when you gush oil on their shores, if Q has to look for another engineering job it won’t likely be found here. And so I keep looking at my home like it’s an apartment, never really finishing the renovations, or keeping it up properly. I’m just gonna have to leave eventually, the broken fragment of me claims.

I suppose this sounds foreign to anyone not born here (or smitten with the place). I know most Americans leave the place they were born and wander eternally. They pitch tents wherever they find jobs. The new gypsy America. Why don’t you just get out of there? It’s just a place, I can hear my non-local friends claim. But I like the idea of community, and running into people I know, and having my history all around me. I love this city’s libertine nature and respect for joie de vivre over work. But it comes at a steep price. Sometimes too steep.

My one attempt at not living here for a year failed miserably. Granted, I chose a bad year, the one right after Katrina. So I was homesick, and felt like I should have been here getting dirty and not sitting in Seattle coffeehouses with a bunch of clueless scenesters. And so I came back, and got dirty. But still, there’s that floating, lost piece of me. Telling me that any moment it’s all over for me here, and that I’m only postponing the inevitable and should have stayed where I was. My plan is to stay here as long as possible. To take it all in as long as I can. But I do wonder if that’s the right choice sometimes. That maybe those who left had it right, no matter how much it hurt/hurts.

So I guess as we lead up to the fifth anniversary of Katrina, I’m less curious how the people here are doing, and more curious how the people who left are doing. Did you leave right after the storm, or did you leave last month? Doesn’t matter. Did you leave because you had to, or because you wanted to and now had an excuse? Did you leave and come back again? And then leave and come back AGAIN? I know a few who have. Do you prefer where you live now? Or do you just stay there because it’s easier than fighting the bullshit to return to Nola? Do you miss ‘home’, or did you never look back? Send me stories, blogs, articles, or just leave a comment… I want to know.

Photo: Back of the old Jackson Barracks from the Arabi side, less than a month after Katrina. The water in the street is actually from Hurricane Rita, which passed two days before this photo was taken.

I remember it percolating in the back of my mind. But it wasn’t until last autumn… I was snuggled on the sofa on a Monday night with a glass of red wine, watching the last few minutes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations show (one of my favorites of all time), and then it hit me like a cartoon anvil.

First though, Bourdain has this aging intellectual rock star image, and became famous for writing comedic tales of the gritty underworld of NYC chefs. But his celebrity was earned with his TV show No Reservations where he threads together world travel and local food adventures with his sarcastic wit… and motorcycle fashions. He became a hero to anyone who wanted to be a traveler (not a tourist), and when he wasn’t snobbishly mocking, he often spoke in reflective Kerouac-ian monologues. He has probably inspired more over-educated self-annointed elites in America than anyone, and made it cool to eat red meat and smoke cigarettes again. But then, at around age 50, he shook his fan base by not only quitting smoking and getting married, but also having a baby.

So what was the anvil hitting my head? Well, the Sardinia episode is the first one where he includes his wife and child on the show. Even though his having a family was public knowledge, the show mostly pretended like they didn’t exist before then. This was fine by me until the family episode, where he decides to bring them out… and then apologizes for it. This was the first time Bourdain ever pissed me off. What a weak-ass pussy thing to do. He should just rename the show Reservations. If he ever comes back to New Orleans, I’m going to stand on a chair and bite his nose.

“Now, not to worry. I’m not going all Jamie Oliver on you. I’m not going to be dragging my family around in future episodes. This isn’t some new family friendly Cosby-esque me.” -Anthony Bourdain

Really? At least Jamie Oliver is keeping it real and not trying to hide how happy he is. Bourdain says shit like this, and then at the end of the very same episode says: “I’m a pretty sickeningly happy guy these days.” Talk about a man in transition. Blissfully happy as a dad, and so loathe to admit it he has to immaturely pick on Jamie to reaffirm his coolness. This is just like being in the damn closet. I’m not gay, but HE is! Weak.

I’m a parent of two children that are similar in age to Bourdain’s child. And even though I’m not a celebrity, I know what it’s like to live a non-mainstream lifestyle for 15+ years of adult life and then abruptly decide to change course. Your family almost drops dead with joy because they’d given up on you, and your scenester friends think you’re a fucking traitor. You’re constantly trying to remember who it’s okay to talk about ‘baby’ stuff with. If I talk about it too little people think I’m a detached bitch, and if I talk about it too much they swear I’m trying to convince them to have kids too. Can’t win. But at some point you make peace with it and say, you know what, this is the path I’ve chosen and I’m fucking happy. You either accept my evolution or get out of the way because I will shove it up your ass. Bourdain seems to have lost his rock star bollocks somewhere and needs to find them fast. Dude, you don’t see freakshow Perry Farrell whining like that. He is working it real, doing interviews for parenting magazines, and writing kids albums. Will he always do this? Is his ‘real’ career over? Fuck no. He’s just enjoying the phase – the early years of parenting. You can do one of two things at this point: Have an identity crisis and a nervous breakdown over your ‘cool’ status, or temporarily immerse yourself in the kiddie culture, confidently knowing it doesn’t last long at all, and you should absorb these few years before they go off to school and start lives that don’t revolve around you. I’m still new at this too, but other parents have told me that kids these days hand your life back to you so fast you find yourself wondering if it was all a dream, desperate to fall back asleep and savor it slower.

I remember when I first got pregnant I planned on blogging about it, but after a few weeks I nixed the idea. Pouring out the experience, no matter how well considered and intended, suddenly felt too much like drunk posting (hormone posting?). I felt it wise to let the wave wash over me first, and contemplate the rush afterwards, not during. While dads don’t have the hormone thing they definitely undergo philosophical and emotional changes that alter their perspective. But I guess what I’m getting at is, I’m really sick of parents apologizing to non-parents for acting like parents – for taking on a bold and amazing adventure, for jumping at the controls of the busted rocketship of life and saying fuck it, let’s see where I land this bitch. You don’t need to make excuses to other people for why you chose to change, much less apologize to people who want an impossibly static and sterile world. In my experience anyway, no amount of re-arranging your vinyl collection or rotating your wine cellar will make you as happy as the messes in life – eating boiled crawfish or buffalo wings, sticky baby hands cupping your face, walking barefoot in the dirt, sloppy kisses, or filthy sweaty sex…

Anyway, I notice Bourdain’s already regrouping and finding himself again this season. In the Ecuador episode, as he began to eat a guinea pig, he let a verse of a toddler song come out. If you sneezed, you’d miss it. Any new parent would instantly notice it, but I giggled thinking how many indie music snobs probably googled the line “Linny, Tuck, and Ming Ming too” thinking it was an obscure reference to a tune that predated them. Keep up the good work, man.

Shops on Magazine St, boarded up before Hurricane Gustav, August 2008.

I’ve had a few people ask me what happened to my old blog posts. Basically, I wrote on Blogger here from 2006 – 2009. When I decided to transfer all of my data to WordPress last year, I closed all of the content on Blogger and exported everything to WordPress. I was pissed to discover that all of my comments did not migrate over along with the posts, and my tags/categories were a mess. I worked on it a bit, but never figured it out and temporarily gave up. So all the posts from that period are locked in the archives for now (Just some side advice: If you’re on Blogger – unless you’re absolutely miserable with the platform, don’t transfer to WordPress. It was more trouble than it was worth to import. However, if you’re starting a NEW blog, then by all means go for the WordPress if you like).

Anyway, I went back to read my Hurricane Gustav dispatches yesterday and was interested in seeing how I reacted to the first major hurricane threat after Katrina. It also made me wary of doing what I did again. It’s amazing how much you can change in two years.

Another thing worth noting is, very few people stayed for Gustav, and after the botched re-entry plan, I seriously doubt as many people will leave during the next major threat. I think this is both good and bad, and I covered this topic when I was most passionate about it (right after Gustav) so give it a look.

Maybe I’ll try to organize a few of my old posts every week so I can eventually get my whole archive open again. But here’s what I’ve got so far…

Sadly, all of the comments and discussions on these posts are lost.

My Hurricane Gustav Dispatches:

August 28, 2008

Gustav #1

August 30, 2008

Gustav #2

Gustav #3

Gustav #4

August 31, 2008

Gustav #5

Gustav #6

Gustav #7

September 1, 2008

Gustav #8

Gustav #9

Gustav #10

Gustav #11

September 2, 2008

Gustav #12

Gustav #13

Gustav #14

September 3, 2008

Gustav #15

Gustav #16

September 4, 2008

Gustav #17

September 7, 2008

Gustav #18

BP station on the beach, Gulfport, Mississippi.

Last weekend we drove out to Mississippi’s coast with the kids to play on the beach. Yes, I’m aware there was a big oil rig that blew up, sank in the gulf, and has been gushing oil all over the southern shore of the United States for 2+ months severely damaging the ecosystem and economy. But I’m starting to feel that if I folded up in a ball of depression every time something happened to drama magnet Louisiana I’d have been in the loony bin ages ago.

Anyway, I grew up in Cancer Alley, and as sad as it sounds, I’m used to foul smells in the air, explosions that shake the windows in the house, unidentifiable bits and pieces mysteriously appearing in the backyard and the water, and signs around town telling you where it isn’t safe to tread at the moment.

So we drove to the beach and threw out our towels and spf 666. It was a sunny Sunday, the weekend before the Fourth of July, and there were like six people on the beach – and NO ONE in the water. I looked around for danger postings but there weren’t any, and I’d checked the news before I left (both on TV and online) and I couldn’t find anything saying “stay off the beaches” or “beaches closed”. So I figured, how bad could it be?

Ok, I don’t know what oil tar balls look like, but I definitely stepped on some kinda gummy black globs, and this was two days before the big headlines came out screaming “Oil Reaches MS Beaches“. But I even ignored the goo. Touching oil can’t kill you, and I didn’t plan on eating the crap. I just wanted to lay on the damn beach with my kids. But the moment my 2 year old saw water she wanted IN. So we walked up to it, and it was repulsive. Whatever was floating in the water… it did not look healthy. It was kind of foamy in spots, and there were sharp pieces of what looked like fractured bone shards (crushed shells?) scattered all over. There were small decomposing fish and birds, and all kinds of debris, mostly unidentifiable to me. Some even looked human made. For all I know, Mississippi beaches look like this normally. I’m hardly a beach bunny, and usually avoid the sun and sand thing. But the refuse even made my alarm bells go off, and I wanted to get my babies away before they turned into the mutant spawn from Geek Love.

It was like some abandoned apocalyptic beach in a horror movie. Screw the red flag. They should’ve had the fucking jolly roger flying on that beach.

We didn’t stay but maybe 10 minutes, and I took a few photos. It was too hard trying to keep the kids away from the water, and my 13 month old son puts everything in his mouth so I was afraid he’d eat a petrol patty. I never did get shots of the worst stuff because I was scared to let go of the kids’ hands.

This was one of the cleaner sections of the beach.

I put his pacifier in so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat any toxic treats on the beach. Quite apropos that he wore his “Skull Crew” shirt that day.

Oil barriers floated on the water nearby.

And there was some strange, enormous wreckage on the beach that had no sign nearby declaring what the hell it might be or if you should stay away from it. I kept the kids in the car for this excursion and sent Q out with the Nikon for these shots… Anyone know what the hell that is?

Happy Fourth of July.

Warning: This post contains spoilers.

I trudged through Treme.

The first episode made me crawl and squirm inside so badly I wanted to rip open my old leather sofa and get inside with the decomposing cheerios and wine stains. At first I thought it was the forced dialogue – overt references to red beans on Mondays, second lines, carnival, hell… there was even a voodoo scene. But things got better, and minor faults aside, it was infinitely superior to any film or show I’d ever seen about New Orleans. But it was still falling flat for me, desperately screaming from the start, Hey, I’m a New Orleans show! I’m full of New Orleans-y stuff that will make you midwesterners want to sell everything and join the steamy bacchanal down here.

But I stuck it out. I kept watching out of obligation, like when your kid makes you a crappy finger painting and you stick it on the fridge like a budding fucking Picasso made it. It was “our” show so we had to watch it. But as things progressed I began to discover why it really made me uncomfortable.

I felt like I was watching one of my home movies; not in quality, but in content. It was unnerving to watch people, places, and events I was so familiar with on a daily basis. Intimate details of my life were now being exposed on television. Conversations I’d had in bars and cafe’s with friends, backyard parties I’d had with family – the camaraderie eerily accurate. I spent most of my adult life reveling in the ‘bohemian’ ideal portrayed on the show. Now I felt reduced to a script. Intellectually violated for entertainment value. But I was taking it all too personally. You never want to admit when someone has you pegged. I wanted to punch the snot out of David Simon. And I wanted to kiss him stupefied for getting it so damned right.

This is the best film depiction of New Orleans ever made. And likely the best that ever will be made. The attention to detail is so brutally authentic in some scenes that I just sat there whispering inside “please don’t do this to me“. And yet I find myself so grateful that this city was finally put into the hands of brilliantly capable filmmakers. Professional artists with a rebellious streak to match our own. The way every episode hangs onto a music scene just too long – it’s a homage to a city that never really gets credit for what it gives to the world, and definitely a ‘fuck off’ to people who want formulaic television.

As the episodes went on I kept waiting for the show to fail. I’m particularly sensitive to political grandstanding on TV. After its wobbly start I knew at any moment Treme was going careen to its death with the complex social issues of Nola strapped to its back. And I almost thought I had them. I was convinced that when Albert took on public housing, that this would be the divisive move that drove off half the audience. But after barreling around with the topic, they landed abruptly, but safely and gracefully with it, like Capt Sully on the fucking Hudson.

Overall, this is how Treme handled many of Nola’s sensitive social and political problems. Instead of trying to solve them, or get on a sappy liberal soapbox, they just floated above them with zen mastery. This is just the way it is. Life is a big fucking gray area. Deal, you twitchy absolutists.

While I related strongly to many aspects of the show, I also thought it conveyed a romanticized, and even fetishized, version of Nola – the one all the outsiders want to gawk at and fondle. For instance, I was born here in the 70s and lived here all but one year of my 35 so far. I did not grow up listening to local music except carnival music, which I considered ‘holiday’ music. Perhaps the 70s were a dark age for all culture in America. But when I think of music during my early years, I don’t think of funky local tunes, I think of the same shitty arena rock and disco that everyone else does. The pretentious preservationists love to pretend that they grew up dancing in the street with Mardi Gras Indians, but I can promise you, while a handful may have, most did not. To this day, I have never seen an Indian in person, and I’d never even HEARD of them until I was in graduate school. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a second line in my life either, and don’t know anyone pre-Katrina who wanted one. It wasn’t until post-storm cultural revival became chic that a bunch of middle class white people wanted second lines all of a sudden – or to attend MG Indian parades, or go to music clubs/see bands that could barely make the bills pre-K. I don’t think my ignorance of these things is a poor reflection on me, I think it just means I live naturally in my own city and don’t seek out “cultural”, or worse, “ethnic” things to do. That is just too fucking superficial to live with.

I also eat red beans and rice when I damn well feel like it.

I don’t mean to insult the revival – in fact I’m thrilled about it. Better late than never. Plus, I’m enjoying learning all these things about old Nola that I never knew about. But I’m sick of both local (and imported) hypocrites pretending like they were always on board with preserving Our Unique Culture™. Just be honest with yourselves for fuck’s sake. And please spare us your shallow condescending hipster fantasies about being the cool white guy the black folks tolerate. These parts of Treme make me squirm the worst. The immigrant street musician, Sonny, epitomizes the cultural freeloader here – the guy who thinks he “gets it”, but so doesn’t.

What it comes down to is that people who do NOT live here will determine if Treme is successful, and this show is for their entertainment. And I’m okay with that. For us locals, or for me personally anyway, this show is more like therapy. It’s forcing me to look at things I shelved away in the abandoned storage closet of my mind so I’d have the strength to move on. So I wouldn’t selfishly indulge in the pain and jump in the river like Creigh. Treme feels too much like my real life. Why would I want to watch my everyday shit, or past drama, when I could do the escapist thing and watch sexy vampires fuck on HBO’s other Louisiana show?

But not all things on film are for entertainment. You don’t go to the movies to see Harry Potter for the same reasons you go see Schindler’s List. Some films are complex art inspired by gritty realities that are constructed to make you think. Some are just fun roller coaster rides designed to make you squeal with excitement. Treme is more the former. I like both experiences in film, but Treme is just so personal. If you’re local, you won’t likely have ‘fun’ watching it, or even enjoy it. But you’ll feel better, albeit exhausted when it’s over, like you just got something heavy off your chest.

There’s a thread in the final episode where Davis (the typical Nola cheerleader) is trying to convince his friend with benefits, Janette (who has been defeated by the city in every way imaginable) to stay in New Orleans by taking her on a tour of the city. I’ve done this more times than I can count, playing the roles of both Davis and Janette depending on where I was in life. I’ve begged some people to stay, while I’ve advised others to escape while they could. This depended on where they were in life. Other times it was I who was about to run, and being swayed by others. I know what it is to love this place, and I know what it is to hate it. It’s not for everyone. And Treme is just like that. If you’re a local, I can only recommend the show if I know you well enough to convince you to stay… or go.

Cleaning my fridge parts in the recently chlorine-shocked pool, September 2005.

In 2004 we finished renovating our house. Mostly.

Part of that was buying new appliances, and I had the coolest new stainless steel mega fridge available. But…

One year later I stared at it in horror. No, it wasn’t out of style.

It was full of maggots.

Hurricane Katrina came and went, and spared our home on ‘the sliver by the river’ any wind or water damage. However, being away from home for 2+ weeks with no utilities tends to do weird things to a place boarded and sealed in the dark in 100+ degree temperatures. Candles melted into the tables, art and photos slid and crumpled out of the frames, and critters happily munched on decomposing food. It was like one of those episodes of Life After People. I suppose you’re wondering why we didn’t empty the fridge before we evacuated. Well, that’s because we thought we were going to be gone for 2 days.

When I first saw the fridge I was so disgusted I gagged. But I quickly became determined to rescue it. It was new after all, but I think somewhere in there I was acting out – wanting to save something. I’d already driven past hundreds of houses where the refrigerators were taped shut on the curbs with something obscene or obnoxious written on it. Most people didn’t even bother to look inside. Too much to bear, I guess. But I prefer my pain to have a face, so I opened it.

Q had just thrown a 5-gallon bucket of chlorine into our swimming pool, which had looked like it was filled with black oil when we first saw it. Now it was a murky greenish-blue and reeked of bleach. He began emptying the fridge of its contents, and I threw all the drawers, shelves, seals and other parts into the pool. I remember coughing a lot. Flies swarmed around the room like a horror film. The stench of rotting organisms filled the air. Maggots were embedded in every fridge nook possible. But I took complete satisfaction in watching them float to their chlorinated deaths. Finally, after 3 DAYS of cleaning, scrubbing, and inspecting several times over, our fridge looked and smelled new again.

I’d rescued something.

Most people tell me they threw out their fridges because they assumed they were damaged beyond repair. Others said the idea of eating food from a fridge that formerly housed maggots made them sick. Great diet plan though, eh? Mmm, I want some chocolate cake… *opens fridge* Aaaack! Maggot memories! *vomit*. Anyway, none of that bothered me. I slayed the demons murdered the maggots so I feel at peace when opening that door.

I still have that fridge today. But in the 5 years since K, living the hard life has caught up with it, and Q and I agreed it was time to get a new one. This coincided with the “cash for clunkers” program for appliances going on this past weekend. We could trade in Katrina fridge for a brand new energy efficient one! (she is a power guzzler, fo’sho). So we finally bought a sexy new stainless steel refrigerator, which will be delivered in a few weeks. And while I’m ready, I’m also sad. Katrina fridge has served me well. When the power was finally restored a month after K, it was fridge to a house full of refugees for a year, and then it still kept chugging through multiple carnival caliber parties, and frequent openings/slammings from 3 years of pregnancy/baby/toddler. Even today it keeps going with broken shelves, sticky seals, flickering light, noisy jamming ice maker, scratched plastic… a history.

But we all know the drill – life, change, moving on, necessary. You can’t patch things up forever. Eventually there is birth, replacement. It’s amusing though to think my mere 6 year-old fridge is among the oldest 10% in the city, and that I’m throwing out my “Katrina fridge” ridiculously later than everyone else. Anyway…

Goodbye old fridge. I’ll miss you. And I’ll tell new fridge stories about what a post-apocalyptic warrior you were.

Recently we had a “we might have to leave New Orleans” scare. This is a well-known fright among the populous. It’s when you have to depart the city for things like work, education, your family, or other responsibilities. We shudder at the prospect. What do you mean, leave? Can you imagine living your whole life in the Land of Oz and then being told you have to move to Kansas? No more midgets singing and dancing in the streets? No more technicolor and flying monkeys? No more lounging about in poppy fields? Only a life of flat sepia farm drudgery to look forward to?!

Our scare was due to employment, but things worked out at the last minute, and for now we get to stay. I respect that some people are cool with waiting tables or driving cabs with their PhDs in order to live here, but it’s not for me. As much as I love it, I would leave it in order to provide a certain standard of living for myself and my family. I’m happy being middle class, and living at the poverty level when I don’t have to (just so I can stay in Nola) is not acceptable to me.

It’s difficult to explain the agony of this decision to our fellow Americans too. They’re not as attached to their hometowns as New Orleanians are. I have several friends who’ve wandered here over the years telling tales of soulless places, devoid of humor, passion and life. Humanoids with robotic ambitions, ambivalent to the pleasures and pace of a fulfilling existence. Well, I for one am glad we were founded by the laid back French Catholics because clearly having uptight Protestants for founding fathers is a self-flagellating misery you never overcome. Of course that doesn’t explain everything. But when it comes to experiencing life, Nola feels more like the Caribbean than the States. And I think that’s why we’re so damned attached to it. When you’re raised to think life is to be savored, not conquered, it’s hard to jump into the rat race with vicious competitors. I mean, half the people I know in New Orleans don’t go back to work after lunch on a Friday because they ran into a friend at the restaurant’s bar and… just kinda stayed there.

There is something to be said for feeling “at home” and participating in a community. Settling, putting down roots for the duration. Being a part of something smaller, and thereby making a bigger difference. Not only was I born here, but I have more roots here than the oak tree busting through my sidewalk. To leave would be very hard, but I would do it (I’ve done it before when I had to, but that’s another story). I could live in sepia again, but I know there would always be that nagging feeling. And I’d spend the rest of my life clicking my confining black boots together, hoping to find a way back home… and into my comfy ruby slippers.