Happy Holidays

Sorry for the blogging silence, everyone. Next year will be different, I promise.

Have a safe and happy new year.

Tip

If you walk into a salon and the owner is the person who cuts your hair, do you tip him/her?

The "What Is This?" Contest

Winner receives a prize still yet to be determined.


Kiss
Ozzie Osborne
Monster Trucks (several)
Barney's Big Surprise
Disney on Ice
Wedding expo
MLKing celebration (2)
Motorcross (several)
Bull riding
Kaiwondo
Globetrotters
Christian concerts (several)
Bruce Springsteen (2)
Tina Turner
Confederate Railroad/Eddie Money
Mexican Mothers Day (2)
Dixie Chicks
'N Sync
Erik Towes benefit
C of C Expo
Popeye's Comedy Show
Anger Manangement Tour (Eminem et al) (2)
Billy Joel/Elton John
Backstreet Boys
AT&T Broadband Comedy Show
Benny Hinn
WWF Smackdown (3)
RV Show (2)
Promise Keepers
Festival of Trees (2)
Blink 182/Green Day (Heavy Metal)
Eddie Money
Brittany Spears
Heartthrobs (India)
Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey
Gem Faire (2)
Arrowsmith
Korn/Disturbed
Acquire the Fire (Christian rock)
Los Patita de Perro (Mexican rock)
Bob the Builder
Cinderella (Metro ballet)
Lipizzaner Stallions
Card/Coin/Doll Show (many)
Marshall Tucker Band (ugh!)
Vicente Fernandez
Mark Chesnutt
Korn et al
The Wiggles (2)
Dome of Destruction (Cage Fighting)
Army Soldier Show (!)
Green Day
Martin Nievera (Phillipino Concert)
Pepe Aguilar

Camo

I recently made my first and only purchase of camouflage clothes. I've always been fundamentally against the idea of using camo in contemporary fashion. These are war clothes. American war clothes.

The purchase was made sight unseen from 800-OLD-NAVY because their primitive website can't handle Safari and I couldn't actually select what I wanted. Since I wear cargo shorts to work year-round but they don't stock them in their stores in fall and winter, I had to make the purchase over the phone. The friendly customer service rep listed all of the colors and styles available in my size, including green and blue camouflage.

"Sure," I said, without thinking. "Give me the camo. Why not?"

About a year ago I read an article in an arts and culture magazine about some fashion company that specialized in creative camo. There was this whole line of rhetoric about reclaiming camo from its warmongering associations. About how the more we wear camo in the streets the more diluted its military link becomes. I thought this was a lot of bullshit, too.

There is a lot of bullshit.

So do they look good or what?

Eye Contact

I've always been lousy at eye contact. It's terrible. It makes me look sneaky, or dishonest, or bored, or disinterested, or that I'm leering at women in the background. I'm conscious of it, though, and I recognize that I'm looking away when its happening. But I can't help myself. I just don't like staring at people's faces for long periods of time.

Perhaps this is why my Celebrity Sightings sidebar is so lame. I go through life with my head down, largely, in a book or otherwise. I'm not going to make that celebrity sighting because I'm not so into the idea of looking at people in general. Z, of course, has had tons of recent celebrity sightings--including waiting at the valet with Dan Rather and sitting next to comedienne Judy Tenuda on the plane--but usually I only have sightings when I'm with someone else who puts their identity together. Then I confirm it or deny it. This is my role in life. To say, yes, you're right, but they look a little OLDER. Or to say, no, i don't think so, nice try, though.

So today I'm trying to start the Eyecontact Performance and Maintenance Directive (EPMD). I will look at people until it's uncomfortable for both of us and then I'll continue to stare into their eyeballs. This morning I went up to the Coffee Bean and felt something happening in my periphery...and instead of ignoring it I turned my head and flicked my eyes over instantly and caught a cute book-reading woman checking me out. She immediately looked down into her book, embarrassed--humilated really! It could have been my vintage green Lucky Charms shirt. Or my charming bedhead. Or perhaps she wasn't even looking at me. But by seizing the moment and not looking away, I reclaimed control of the situation. She feels like she was caught staring, even if she wasn't. Ha ha! Look at all of this fine entertainment one can have by looking people right in the face! My god, who knew?

When the Proactive Measure You're Taking To Avoid the Awful Thing in the Distant Future Instead Causes the Awful Event To Occur In the Miserable Prese

First of all, I'd like to say that Blogger could not accommodate my lengthy title by a margin of two letters. This is bullshit. The last word of the title is "present."

Secondly, I'd like to say that I went down to the hardware store to copy my house keys and car keys, of which I only have one set of each. So far things haven't been a problem but I can easily see that day when I lose a set of keys and have to resort to the others to gain entry to my life again. If there are others...

So I marched down to the local hardware store (Laurel Hardware, not Home Depot, support the little guy) and the old man (it has to be good, an ancient man runs the place!) goes into the back and I hear furious metallic grinding noises and then a couple of minutes later he returns with my originals and the copies on separate little rings and I pay the trifle and then go home and when I stick my key into the lock nothing happens but I think I've just used the wrong key perhaps that's it but no none of the other keys work neither nothing works on either key ring, old and new.

So I march back down to the hardware store, feeling enraged, feeling like I'm the verge of a problem here and that I need to make a serious effort or I'm going to blow up at the old man and that just isn't admirable behavior. The small problem is that I've been sold a product that doesn't work. The big problem is that this has undone something that did work, that is, getting into my house. So one of three things has transpired.

1. The old man set my keys on a surface next to some other keys, made an involuntary switcheroo, then copied the wrong key and returned the two impostors to me (old and new).

2. Putting the original key into the "Play" component of the key thing somehow damages it so that when the "record" side does its thing it records the newly damaged lines of the original.

3. Someone knows I'm going to get my keys copied and quickly changes the locks on my door as an elaborate practical joke.

I tell the old man what has happened. "F***" he says. He goes into the back for awhile then comes back, empty handed. I make some comment and he disappears again. This time when he returns he's holding a new lock in his hand. "S***," he says, "call a locksmith and send me the bill." He hands me the lock and I return home.

I don't want to call a locksmith so I force entry through my small kitchen window, scale the wall, and jump in over my dirty dishes. Then I change the lock.

Now my landlord (who lives elsewhere and wouldn't answer my calls after 5pm) is angry b/c I've changed the locks and is demanding something. What is he demanding again? Who are these people?

Sheesh.

The right thing to do would have been not to plan and not be organize and not think about preventing the bad thing from happening.

The right thing to do is to be lazy and forgetful.

And today I locked myself out of my car when a woman driving an SUV was so far up my ass that when I signalled and slowed to parallel park she couldn't get around me and just honked and yelled and gestured while I did the same thing. After about a minute she finally got around me and I could back into my spot but I was so enraged that I shut the car off but got out with the key forward in the ignition and the car in reverse.

The engine was off but making that humming clicking "I am receptive, please start me now" noise for well over 30 minutes until the vato in the molester van with the giant key on the side took a coat hanger to my door and set me free.

Listing

When you move house you find some old things and lose some new things. I moved over 6 months ago but I'm still coming across stuff that has been buried for years.

Yesterday I found this:



It's a list of books read and movies seen for the first five or six months of 2005. Because of this list I remember the period vividly: moving from Middlebrow's place in Bellingham to the U-District in Seattle, working at a software publisher in Kent, feeling very alone and isolated.

I'd say that 80% of these books and movies I had totally forgotten about. But seeing them now brings them back vividly.

I'm kind of amazed that I was able to crank through this many books while working full-time and enduring a long commute. And since I didn't have a TV or a VCR all of the movies were seen in the theater (up to Ed Wood and below, which were seen while housesitting).

Every two or three years I'll get inspired and try to start a current list of reads and watches...but it always peters out. Finding the list makes me think about all of the other books and films and experiences that have been lost forever. Listing these things prevents them from disappearing...and keeps those periods of my life and all of their nuances from slipping into nonexistence as well.

Seeing "Jefferson in Paris" with my aunt at the Egyptian, the awkward Hal Hartley date "Amateur" at the same theater, the TS Eliot biopic "Tom & Viv" at the Metro, "Miss Parker & the Vicious Circle," Albert Finney in the forgotten Oscar Wilde thang "A Man of No Importance."

I haven't thought about these things in over 10 years...but boy it all seems crystal clear right now.

I suppose Lisa B. knows this which is why she lists her movies (and reviews) in this fashion....

BTW, am I insane, or wasn't there a single-screen theater on 45th in the U-District that was east of the Metro and the Neptune but west of the Ave and the Varsity? I feel like I saw a 70mm print of The Wild Bunch there as well as the original Parker Posey vehicle Party Girl... Hm.

Anyone remember this theater?

When Things Fix Themselves

Can a broken thing really fix itself? I like to think so. That weird shimmying alignment thing that happened on sharp left turns? Gone. That unnerving clicking noise my computer used to make? Gone. My leaky showerhead? Huh, it's fine now for some reason.

I want to believe in this because a belief that things can fix themselves is a vote against entropy, a vote against science and logic and loud shout for the idea of "good luck" or something. This naive hopefulness is probably a diirect result of my lack of mastery over the technical workings of these things...a return to superstition...where I need to make sacrifices to appease the Water Pump God and pray to the Microwave Oven Elves because bad things just happen for no reason in this world so why can't good things too?

Ultimately there is probably some confusion between the symptom of the broken thing and the broken thing itself. The shimmying thing has abated and the shower isn't as drippy but does that mean the problem is fixed?

I hate to admit it, but probably not.

The Fuzzy Logic of Credit

Recently I went to the bank to open a checking account for my company, Creative Ape. The guy setting me up said I had excellent credit and that I could qualify easily for a small business loan or home loan.

"Really?" I said. "No kidding."

I had always thought my credit was kind of mediocre. There were some big scabs from the college years and a lot of late payments, followed by the last ten years of what has been essentially non-usage. Debit and debit only has been my purchasing strategy.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to take concrete steps toward the organization of my sloppy life and one of my tasks was to cancel all dormant credit cards and open just one card with a better frequent flier mile scheme. I discovered there were still a lot of cards which were still active (although there was never any activity on them and they never sent statements and I never called that 800 number on the sticker on the back when the new ones came in the mail). I get a lot of mail from the different companies and often it was difficult to determine if it was a new card coming for an old account or if it was just a promotional thing or what. And who wants to read all of that fine print?

So in the end I cancelled about seven cards that had been dormant for 3 to 10 years. And each customer service representative stuck to the script and asked why I was leaving, especially when I had such excellent credit?

Because this is the data: I've had all of these cards for a significant amount of time and I'm not carrying a balance on any of them and I have no late payments on them.

Well duh. I haven't been using them.

But does the credit bureau know this?

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like my lazy, totally irresponsible behavior has sculpted my scabby credit into something smooth and firm and toned and reliable.

Maybe this fuzzy logic can work in my favor for a change.

Go figure.

Here Comes the Past

In the June of 1993 my girlfriend and I finished up spring quarter, quit our jobs, and moved to New Orleans. She had family friends there with whom we stayed for about four days while finding our apartment on 2nd and Carondolet. After that we were pretty much on our own. I had difficulty getting a job and eventually lied about my experience and got a job waiting tables in the French Quarter. She got a job doing photo processing all the way down St. Charles at the Riverbend. We had no money.

But it was a great time, and great fun. A great adventure, if you will, and one of the only memorable periods of my lame-duck college years. It was my first time to live away from Washington state and it felt so foreign. More foreign than going to foreign countries now. I crave this foreignness often but you can only go away for the first time once, and after that, well, everything pales.

It was a totally irrational decision to take off for a new place with no plan and no money, but had we actutally had a goal of scrimping and saving then we never would have left. And I can say that the adventure shaped me in some way, that it made me a better person, and more worldly, and much happier than I was, and I think about this period often, and about how even the humidity seemed foreign.

A couple of weeks ago an extremely flaky old friend showed up at my door. A and his wife were moving from Seattle down to Los Angeles. He was 34 and bored utterly with Seattle where he was never able to make headway doing artistic things there. He worked mainly in hi-tech and software development but near the end I think most of their savings got eaten up around the move and the transition out of working in Seattle.

They don't have a lot of money. And they don't have jobs. And now they are here. There might be a plan, or a loose goal, or something like that, but it all seems quite off the cuff.

Insane, kind of.

But exactly what my girlfriend and I did when we were in college.

So what has happened in the last 13 years of my life to make me change my opinion about this kind of behavior? I mean, it's always been irresponsible, sure, but isn't it worth it? Surely, it's worth it. Funny enough, I was one of the loudest proponents for them moving down and even gave some kind of "you have to seize life by the balls" motivational speech...but never in a million years did I think that they would actually get it together, say goodbye, and make the physical move down to LA.

Am I turning into a pussy? Is this what "adulthood" is about? Responsibility?

The whole thing is very weird...and it's very weird too to be one of two people that this couple knows in LA. So now there is pressure to hang out and have this whole chapter of my past reopened. I don't know that there is room for him, exactly. He burned me multiple times in our history. I don't know that there is space for new friends, or new old friends, or whatever. I have my life and I am satisfied with it and now there's this whole weird new awkward component coming in and knocking on my door.

But I am more concerned about what I am becoming, which is someone who acts out of a fear of losing what he has...instead going after what he really wants, which often entails risk...

Even more disturbing is that there is a motivational book about this called "Who Stole My Cheese?" and I have read it!

If I were still 22 and met my 35-year-old self, I'd spend a few days laughing my head off. Then I'd throw up. Then I'd laugh some more.

Eighteen Dollar Burger

The gf bought me an eighteen dollar burger last night (okay, so it was $15.50 w. tax and tip).

Remarkable!

Cinema of the Relevant

1. Jonathan Glazer
2. Alfonso Cuaron
3. David Fincher
4. Christopher Nolan
5. PT Anderson
6. Noah Baumbach
7. David O. Russell
8. Sofia Coppola
9. Richard Linklater (barely hangin' on)
10. Spike Jonze
11. Alejandro Inarrito
12. Ang Lee

Poseurs
1. Doug Liman
2. Guy Ritchie
3. Luc Besson
4. Robert Rodriguez

Noveling

I've decided to revisit the novel for another month, starting today. It's already been 9 months since the first draft petered out back on November 30. I can't seem to make any progress at all these days so I think I need to try the speedwriting thing once again. The goal will be to increase the scope of the book by about 50 percent while trimming by a third and dividing all action into 18 discrete chapters. This will be fairly hard because the things are still very poopy at this point. Alas, poop in, poop out.

Will post from time to time at the Noveling blog.

Anyone up for this? Anyone?

Cinema of the No-Longer-Relevant

1. Martin Scorsese
2. Wes Anderson
3. Atom Egoyan
4. Hal Hartley
5. Brian DePalma
6. Ridley Scott
7. Mike Leigh
8. Woody Allen
9. Oliver Stone
10. Spike Lee (oh wait, Spike is suddenly relevant again)
11. Quentin Tarantino
12. Francis Ford Coppola
13. John Woo
14. Anything with Al Pacino in it
15. The Coen Brothers

Joel Schumacher isn't on the list because he was never relevant

Meteor

There was this crate in the back, see, this unmarked crate in the back of the Bonham's and Butterfield's, that auction house on Sunset. This was six years ago and I was working on something called "Ginger's Rise," a low-budget movie, and non-pornographic too, although you might not be able to tell from the title. We were shooting some uninspired and talky scene in the auction house and ordered not to touch anything and there were paintings everywhere and antiques and they normally peddled fine furniture and wines and jewelery and even antique cars and things like that, but I am not a part of that subculture so it's hard to say for certain what exactly goes down at B & B amongst the auctioneering set. But I found this crate in the back and and lifted the lid off and inside was a dark gray stone, about two feet wide and a foot high and not spheroid or elliptical in any sense but like an enlarged version of the rock you might pull out of the ground, just kind of rocky overall, but smoothed out, very smoothed out, creamy almost although if you shrunk it down to the size of your palms the edges might get sharp again. I reached out and touched it and it was then that an employee happened by, because in stories like these employees wander by just at the moment when one is compromising his ethics and law-abidingness in general and spinal well-being too by leaning over and trying to heft a very heavy space object with poor lifting technique. He told me that it was, in fact, a meteor or rather a meteorite, technically because it was no longer not-of-this-earth and rather now-on-this-earth but not from it, if you know what I mean. I bent my knees and prepared to deadlift this medium-small stone and found that I could not, it was heavier than anything I had ever experienced, heavier than something designed for heaviness, like weights, for example. I could not lift it. It was dense and smooth and ridiculously weighty, like goddamn no wonder it made it here to earth where it probably crushed a football-field-sized hole in the desert before B&B found out and sent out an appraiser to hoodwink the white trash meteorite discoverer and buy the thing for a song and then smuggle it back to Hollywood to peddle to old Beverly Hills ladies with toy dogs and Bono glasses. I am telling this story because I drive by Bonham and Butterfields every day that my car is not in the body shop, and every time I drive by I think of the meteor and how fantastic it was that it was just sitting there, this object from outer space, amongst a bunch of vases and gilt-framed oil paintings in an unmarked crate where no one would ever see it except for me and my friend Luke who happened by with some scripts and when I showed him the 'roid he laughed long and loud and said he couldn't believe it either.

Unnecessary Risk

So we're hired to do seven days of second-unit reshoots on a poor man's "Fast and the Furious" racing movie called "Redline." My guys and I are on a commercial for the first two days so I bring in a whole new crew to replace us for those days and then we come in on "Redline" on Day 3 after the machine is already up and running.

The stage is up by Magic Mountain Parkway but us lowly second-uniters have other things to do this morning--that is, launching the producer's $250,000 Porsche off a cliff and filming it. Five cameras. Two crash cameras at various stages up the cliff, two cameras at the top filming the launch, and one camera below, my camera, right below, far below, but right in the line of fire. A wheel is rigged to pop off during the crash; who knows where that will end up?

The second-unit director is a short Italian stuntman named Johnny with a slicked-back pompadour. The second-unit DP is also short and Italian, and though there is far less back-slapping machismo coming from the DP, he seems willing to go along with Johnny's persistent need to push the boundaries of safety.

I turn around and gesture at the assistant director, who (with the neophyte key grip) is supposed to be in charge of safety on set. The AD makes a feeble comment to the director, who glares defensively. The DP looks at me directly and asks if I'm willing to do the shot from the bottom of the cliff. It seems clear that he is telegraphing me to be the bad guy here and say no for all of us, so, having nothing to lose, I do. "I'll be more than happy to roll the camera and then walk away and have the camera get crushed, but I'm not manning that camera."

The director storms off, cursing me under his breath (this is about 3 minutes after I've met him for the first time). The DP glares at me, as if to say, "What are you doing? Why are you jeopardizing my relationship with this director?"

And so it goes for the next five days, with the stuntman/director putting us in jeopardy. We're out in the middle of the street, where three cars drift around a corner, fishtail, then split the camera on either side. Or they strap the DP to the hood of a car with a ratchet strap around his waist and no helmet. The DP is excited to have this job; it is a giant step up from the low-low-low budget movies he is used to doing. He is going to do whatever the director asks him to do, and the director, since (as a stuntman) he is used to taking unnecessary risks, expects everyone to do the same.

So everyone thinks I'm a pussy. But whatever. I hate this environment where speaking out and standing up for one's personal safety is seen as the most treasonous thing in the world. Take the job. Do the shot even if it's unsafe. If you say anything, you'll never be hired again. Terrible. I'll probably never work with these people again. But that's okay...it's not really too big of a deal.

But the whole situation reminds me of Haskell Wexler's documentary, Who Needs Sleep? which takes on Hollywood and its abusive 80 hour workweeks that cause people to fall asleep on freeways. There are an infinite number of people who are willing to work these hours, hazardous as they may be, and if you try to change anything then you're gonna be canned and someone will fill your spot. It's medieval.

On the last day of the shoot I rear-ended this guy while driving to work. It's been really busy and we've been working long long days out in the sun every day and I was spacy but awake and looked away for a second..enough time for traffic to stop so I could crush the guy in front of me. My car had been out of the body shop for less than a week. My hood is all pushed up and my grill and bumper are demolished, but the car was still drivable. I made it to work and we worked all night and when we finished at 5AM, I couldn't make the 20-minute drive from downtown to my place in west Hollywood. I kept falling asleep and running off the freeway on the 101 and no amount of windows-down, radio-up, face-slapping, singing-as-loud-as-I-could would keep me awake. I exited on Sunset and pulled into a gas station and slept for a few hours.

So I actually feel lucky that I rear-ended that guy, when the alternative is much much worse.

This is a picture of two of the ridiculous cars in "Redline." The orange car in the foreground is a Saleen and gets 3 mpg.



This is a picture of the 2nd Unit DP, strapped to the hood of the car with a handheld Eyemo. No helmet.



This is a picture of the set medic, treating the DPs wounds after completing the hood-strapped, car-to-car shot.



This is a picture of the stunt coordinator mapping out a motorcycle stunt with leaves, twigs, rocks, and little squares of black tape.



This is a picture of Surly E.



This is a picture of the Corvette that got trashed in the course of shooting.



This is a picture of my newly scarred car after the last day of shooting.

Chess Boxing!

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1348

My Ridiculous Rental Car

Last week my Subaru was crushed in the parking lot of the Camera House. The offending vehicle, I am happy to report, was the camera truck for the commercial I was working on at the time (Kay Jewelers, eww). It seems so fitting that it was the camera truck (our camera truck) was the very thing that wrecked my parked car. Something about my personal life getting the smackdown from my work life, an "unrewarding" work life, something like that. The production assistant driver punched the side of the truck to show how upset he was by this.

This is a picture of my poor Subaru, which was hit sideways in the rear-end area and shoved three feet sideways.



This is a closer-up version of the damage.



Now the Subaru is in the body shop and I'm driving a ridiculous rental car, the Chrysler Pacifica, a pimped-out SUV in Chrysler's newish "luxury" line (PT Cruiser, etc). The thing is so large I can barely wedge it into my parking space at home.

This is a picture of the monster.



This is a picture of my record-setting gasoline purchase.



The gf's Prius is at least ten times more efficient. But not as fun! No, not as fun! Besides, I will survive any accident now, yes I will...

The Big Boycott -or- Say No To AVP2

I've decided to boycott all remakes and sequels coming out of Hollywood for the next two years. These people need to be punished, really punished. It used to be that remakes and sequels were done only to megablockbusters, but these days if a movie turns a profit at all then it's going to get a sequel. Big Momma's House 2? Alien V. Predator 2? Remake of the Hitcher? Remake of Adventures in Babysitting? Love Boat's coming soon, you can count on it.

The gf insists I'm missing out on a complete life by not watching Superman Returns, but I have to take a pricipled stand on this one. I won't reward these executives for their complete lack of balls. Every year there are fewer and fewer films that don't come from some prexisting source material, be it a former version, a prequel, a famous novel, a Broadway musical, whatever.

The exception to this is Jackass 2, b/c it was shot on mini-DV for about 5 dollars...

I notice that Neil La Bute has remade the Wicker Man, BTW, and I fear the worst...

Big Muddy

Portland
Detroit
Long Island
NYC
Dyersberg, Tennessee
Oneata, Alabama
Pascagoula, Mississippi
New Orleans

Back in New Orleans again to finish up this State Farm commercial I've been working on. Because the French Quarter was settled on some of the highest ground in the city, there is an inverse relationship between the age of the buildings and how they weathered the storm. The 1800 buildings were fairly unscathed. Further afield the 1900 buildings did almost as well (the Garden District, etc). The areas furthest away, settled on the lowest ground, got their asses kicked.

Almost a year after Katrina and some of these areas still look like they got hit by a bomb. Gas stations with caved in roofs, Demolished strip malls, vacant streets, water marks on buildings 10-15 feet in the air, FEMA trailers everywhere. Each residence had a spray painted x on it with numbers filling in the quadrants of that x: number of residents, number of bodies found, number of dead animals, etc.

The French Quarter and financial districts are up and running but some of the suburbs still don't have electricity. Outside of the city center it's hard to see this "renewal" that's supposed to be happening. They are poor areas and they were ignored before and they are still being ignored and they will be ignored in the future.

Former population of Orleans parish and its environs: 1.1 mil
Current population: 200k

It kills me to see New Orleans like this. The place is f***ed up good.

It makes one want to have a drink or three and hey, New Orleans can still accomodate this urge.

This is a picture of the crew outside of Larry Flint's Barely Legal strip club at 4 in the morning. I have never felt so exploited in all my life. I return to a hotel room and pull out crumpled one-dollar bills from all pockets. Strippers, weird...



This is a picture of Sleepy E at the controls of a helicopter after the all-night debauch and one hour of sleep. Helicopters are always more squirrelly than you realize. He does not vomit.



This is a picture of some demolished homes. FEMA trailers in effect.



This is a picture of what I was looking at when my door flew open in midflight and wouldn't lock shut again. "Don't worry," said the pilot. "Not a big deal."



This is a picture of downtown. We were the first people to photograph the rebuilt Superdome in 35mm, which was completed the night before.



This is a picture of Cafe du Monde at 1 in the morning the next night. Being here again fills me with wist.



This is a picture of cafe au lait, 3 beignets, and ice water. Three dollars and fifty cents.



This is a picture of Sleepy E after his two-week beatdown. Note the classic Spud/Dominique era Hawks shirt and puffy-eyed optimism of the sleep deprived. You cannot hear the chirp of cicadas or see the winged cockroaches scuttling across the floor or feel the grimy press of humidity against your bare skin but you know these things are still there, of course they are.