St. Bernard Parish, Day One

I’ll start this post with a little bit of background on St. Bernard Parish, where I am staying this week. In the wake of the catastrophes caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding, New Orleans got most of the press. This is perfectly understandable, given its position as one of America’s iconic cities. But communities like Meraux and Violet, Louisiana (where I’m staying) or Ocean Springs, Missisippi, were harder hit. The entire parish was covered in between 2 and 28 feet of water. There are a grand total, at most, of three structures in the entire parish that were not flooded. The eye of the hurricane passed over the eastern part of the parish, but meanwhile a black wall of clouds was pushing a 25 foot storm surge in which broke the parish levees. The water rose quickly. Some witnesses said it was less than fifteen minutes. Over two years later, much has been rebuilt, but there are still whole strip malls sitting there empty, the windows boarded up and the parking lots choked with weeds.

Habitat for Humanity’s weekly programs in St. Bernard Parish run Tuesday to Saturday, so on Mondays the volunteers here at Camp Hope do projects for the parish government. Today, I ended up at the spot that is going to be transformed into a park and playing fields. About 15 of us removed dead trees, whacked some weeds, and cleaned up a lot of garbage. The school itself was an odd sight. One whole wing had all of it’s walls gone. Inside, the seats were gone from the auditorium, so there was merely a stage with an incline in front of it. The windows were boarded up, or gone completely. There was graffiti on the walls, but much of it was along the lines of "I [heart] St. B," or "Archbishop Hannon was one of the best times of my life." The thing I found most unsettling was on the second floor. Whole rooms were strewn with the detritus of choir and band practice, but what got me was the proofs from yearbook photos strewn on the floor. These really conveyed the sense that the school had been abandoned suddenly, and the students had yet to return. Where are they now? Some have moved, no doubt, some managed to graduate from some other high school and have matriculated. Once this space was filled with the vibrant sounds of young people, chatting with their friends, discussing plans and crushes. Today it is cold and empty. The Diocese of New Orleans plans to reopen Archbishop Hannon High School elsewhere. But this spot, which is now owned by the parish government, will one day be a park.

We got to spend some time today with Roy and Perry, two employees of the parish government. Talk to the locals here, and you might hear some seriously f’ed up stories. During the flooding in 2005, people said that if you found a corpse, you should tie it to a post or a tree. Some people didn’t use a long enough rope, so when the waters receded, and the residents returned, they were confronted with the site of dead bodies hanging there. One of the bodies was only recognizable because he was still wearing his parish government uniform. Houses, beautiful houses, with lots of insulation were lifted clean off their foundations and came back down hundreds of feet away.

As depressing and macabre as all of that might be, there is definitely plenty of optimism here. Two years after the deluge, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done. But I understand it looks considerably better than it did last year. Local businesses have "now hiring" signs in front. Even if we didn’t do that much in tangible terms, merely showing up to help lets the locals know that they haven’t been forgotten. That just because it’s not in the news anymore, people in the rest of the country, in the rest of the world, still care about them. Today a woman at a grocery store hugged six of us. "Stay positive," I said to Roy as we departed. "You got to," he replied, "otherwise you’ll go crazy."

NFL Week 9 - Mixed Results

There were three games this week the outcome of which interested me. Two of them did not come out the way I would have liked. Happily, the game I was most interested in did get the desired result. That would be the Redskins taking on the Jets, or as ESPN.com columnist and possible anti-semite Greg Easterbrook likes to call them, Jersey B and the Potomac River Basin Indigenous Peoples. The ‘Skins, of course, just barely won. Against a shitty team, they trailed for much of the game and only managed to squeeze out a victory by a mere three points. And that was in overtime. Considering the decimation of their starting O-line and their apparent inability to form anything remotely resembling a killer instinct, I should probably be happy that the Redskins are even above .500. I didn’t see any of that game, as I was on a plane during most of it, but it’s probably a good thing. It must have been nerve-wracking.

Let’s move on to the second game of interest this Sunday. That would be the Chargers against the Vikings. I spent the morning in Minneapolis, only a few blocks from the Metrodome, and as I walked past some tailgaters, one of whom appeared to be spraying purple stuff on her hair, I neglected to tell them that I wished to see the Vikings lose. My interest in this game was purely personal, and fiscal as well. I had picked San Diego this week for my survival football pool, or as I prefer to call it, my football tontine. Granted, the Chargers have been rather disappointing this season, but it’s not like the Vikings are a great team. Damnit! I have been eliminated from the tontine. I felt pretty good about that pick. Part of the charm of this sort of tontine, though, is the unpredictably of professional football. Ah, well.

This brings us to the third game I cared about this week, which would be the brutal contest between the NFL’s two best teams, the Patriots & the Colts. And I really wanted to see the Pats lose. After what they did to the Redskins last week, I wanted to see them go down. Those dudes are getting arrogant. Really arrogant. And that pisses people off. It makes them dislike you. At least in America, anyway. We like underdogs. Matt Stone, co-creator of one of the greatest TV shows ever, once remarked that when South Park was just starting to blow up, everything written about him and Trey Parker seemed almost glowing and reverential. Whereas once they had created an enormous hit, and Comedy Central was throwing shitloads of ducats at them, the tone changed completely.

The main focus for my ire in New England is Bill Belichek. Not only is he the Sith Lord of the NFL, he’s a cheat. Everyone knows he’s a cheat. I hate when cheaters win. It sets a bad example. I would much prefer to see someone like Tony Dungy triumph, someone humble, upright and understanding. And I am rather fond of the Colts, and of Peyton Manning in particular. All season people have been talking about how great the Pats are, how they might go undefeated (they won’t) and not giving enough credit to the Colts. Peyton is endearing because despite being a complete bad-ass on the field, he appears to be a total doofus. He clearly doesn’t take himself very seriously, or else he wouldn’t appear in commercials wearing ridiculous wigs. Men want to dislike star quarterbacks. This is due to envy, obviously. But Peyton’s goofiness brings him back down to the level of the rest of us (except for his being a superstar and incredibly rich, of course). Tom Brady, on the other hand, is easy to dislike. At least if you’re a man. In addition to being a complete bad-ass on the field, he is also really good-looking and well-dressed (even though that newsboy cap he sported during last Sunday’s press conference was a definite sartorial misstep). I’m not quite ready to give him credit for his wardrobe. He might employ a stylist; I wouldn’t put it past him. Most dispiriting of all though, is the fact that Brady has (demonstrably) had sex with Bridget Moynihan and Gisele Bunchen. Whereas I have not.

Movie Review: "3:10 To Yuma"

Damn, that Christian Bale is a really really good actor. He is one of those cats who reviewers say "disappear" into roles. He is every bit as convincing as a 19th century Arizona rancher as he is as the privileged scion of Gotham City’s wealthy Waynes or as a deranged killer yuppie. And in 3:10 To Yuma he is on screen for almost the entire film, working with another great actor as his foil. Yes, Russell Crowe is a really really good actor too. It’s easy to forget this when he makes such a habit of getting in fights because he’s insecure. Few actors working today can do bad-ass like Russell Crowe. Or more to the point, likeable bad-ass. Crowe’s character Ben Wade (that’s a great Western name), may be the leader of a trigger-happy, bloodthirsty gang of deadly outlaws, but you’re not really supposed to dislike him. (His bad-assness is established at the end of the film’s first action piece when he calmly dispatches one of his own men as punishment for screwing up a stage robbery.) The real villain of the piece is Charley Prince, Wade’s sycophantic, psychopathic lieutenant. Speaking of good actors, Ben Foster plays Charley Prince and many people wouldn’t even realize it’s the same dude who played Russell, Claire Fisher’s whiny loser boyfriend on Six Feet Under. The two roles are polar opposites.

Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a down-trodden rancher who gets no respect from anyone. Predictably, someone wants his land to sell to the railroad and is trying to drive him off. Dan Evans is so desperate for ducats that for $200 he agrees to escort the recently-captured Ben Wade to the town of Contention, and put him on the train of the title. And that’s when things get interesting. With Wade’s deadly gang in hot pursuit, his captors go down one by one in a series of excellent fights and action sequences.

Meanwhile, the outlaw and the rancher engage in some good old-fashioned male bonding. In most stories, there is one relationship that is the most important to the narrative. In this film, obviously, it’s between Ben Wade and Dan Evans. One of the main themes of the story is redemption, and both men use the other as the instrument of their redemption. The rancher, tired of feeling like a coward and a failure, insists to the bitter end on doing the honorable thing and finishing the job. Wade, a stone killer who describes himself as "rotten as hell," decides to do the decent thing and help out a decent man. It’s almost like the relationship you’d see between the cop and the mobster in a John Woo movie.

The film is more than capably helmed by James Mangold, who appears to be what you could call an "actors’ director." Looking at his resume, he clearly likes to mix it up genre-wise, but he elicits great performances from actors whether it’s in a biopic (Walk The Line), a time-bending rom-com (Kate & Leopold), a gimmicky thriller (Identity), or a heavy-on-the-emotion drama (Heavy). In CopLand, he reminded a lot of people that Sylvester Stallone can hold his own around heavyweights with names like Keitel and DeNiro. Crowe and Bale have a good chemistry in 3:10 To Yuma, and of course the film wouldn’t work as well as it does if they didn’t. Crowe, as the likeable bad-ass, gets most of the best lines, but Christian Bale gets several juicy scenes where he really gets to show off his skills. He is extremely compelling in these scenes. They are the emotional high points of the film. I don’t often have the experience of watching an actor who is so good that I can’t look away. Especially memorable and affecting is an interlude right before the climax when he talks to his son and insists the kid take off before the shit hits the fan.

There are some people who might complain that there isn’t really anything terribly original in this film. That is actually pretty accurate, but it’s also largely irrelevant. Most of this stuff you’ve already seen in another Western. (In fact, you might have seen it in the original 3:10 To Yuma, a 1957 film with Glenn Ford as Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans.) There are Western stock shots, like swinging saloon doors, peppered throughout. Many of the characters are from Western central casting: there’s an amoral local magnate trying to run the protagonist’s family off their land, an overdressed, prissy railroad agent, a bespectacled doctor, and a grizzled old lawman. But so what? It’s a genre picture, and it’s a really good genre picture. (The Western is perhaps the most American of film genres, so it’s a little weird that the leads are played by an Australian and an Englishman.) It’s got great action sequences, great acting, and plenty of genuine emotion. So what if it’s not terribly original? It works!

Yet again, someone has pissed me off.

I like to think of myself as the picture of imperturbability; a model of calm whose placid demeanor is rarely ruffled by the vagaries and minor annoyances of daily life. But this is not wholly accurate. If I am to be honest with myself, I must admit that at some times and in certain contexts I have a pretty short fuse. To wit: men who jog with their shirts off, bicyclists wearing skintight clothing, and dudes wearing T-shirts emblazoned with images of Che Guevara routinely piss me off pretty much anytime I see them. But in their defense, these individuals are not intentionally trying to anger me. It’s not as if they woke up in the morning, and thought, “hmm, what I can do today to piss off Dalton?” They are just being dumb-asses.

But the cat who pissed me off last night cannot claim that defense. He was intentionally being an ass. Allow me to elucidate: last night I was at a rock and/or roll concert, and I was standing next to my friend Cheryl sharing an amusing anecdote about the time my homey Doug had a “moment” with Dave Matthews backstage at a Trey Anastasio show. But before I could finish the story, this dude tapped me on the shoulder and told me I was speaking too loudly and interfering with his ability to hear the band. Are you f’ing kidding me? This is a rock show. The volume is up so loud that many people are wearing earplugs. And this sucka is actually suggesting that my voice is loud enough that it is overwhelming the sound of many large amps? Seriously?

Generally, people draw on established social conventions to determine their behavior. If you are at the ballet or the opera, everyone tacitly accepts that everyone should remain quiet during the performance. People even suppress coughs until the end of a movement. But as far as I know, this is not the established social convention concerning rock concerts. (Please let me know if you believe otherwise.) In fact, I have been to scores, and perhaps hundreds, of rock concerts, and last night was the first and only time anyone has suggested that audience members should remain quiet during the performance.

I would like to draw a distinction between unintentionally rude behavior and intentionally rude behavior. Despite the fact that I think this dude’s request was patently absurd, I will concede that my behavior, at least in his mind, was negatively affecting his enjoyment of the show. However, this was completely unintentional on my part. Never did it occur to me than someone at a rock and/or roll show would have a problem with people talking during the performance. But the cat who spoke to me was being intentionally rude. He prefaced his request for me to be silent with “I don’t mean to be a dick.” Invariably, if you feel obliged to preface a statement with that phrase, you are almost certainly being a dick. The best response is the one I employed last night: “well you may not mean to be a dick, but you are being a dick.” Not only was he being a dick, but he was being whiny as well. And I hate whiners. I went on to tell him that I always try to be considerate and polite, so I would refrain from speaking unnecessarily for the rest of the show. But I did want to make clear that I thought his request was unreasonable and stupid. His friend then chimed in that he did not pay for a ticket to hear me speak. It occurred to me to tell him that it would be well worth it to pay to listen to me speak, since I am a gifted public speaker with the ability to be both insightful and amusing. Instead I simply informed the wanker that I had not solicited his opinion nor did I find it especially interesting. With that, I turned my back to them so that we could all get back to the show. Later, I looked about for them halfheartedly to see if they would be interested in having their asses beat. (True story: I was once arrested for carrying concealed weapons when I had my hands in my pockets.) I couldn’t really spot them, though. All those dudes with ironic Girl Scout T-shirts and black frame glasses look alike to me. Wankers.

Why I Hate Will Smith

Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve encountered metrobuses emblazoned with the phrase “Will Smith is going. Are you?” I don’t know what sort of event or activity these advertisements are advertising, and I don’t much care. In fact, Will Smith’s attendance or inclusion to just about anything would make me avoid it. I can’t stand Will Smith. I don’t care if he’s a huge box office draw (despite his limited range), the “most powerful actor on the planet,” or good-looking in a non-threatening way, or whatever. I can’t stand him.

I have no objections to the whole clean-cut and wholesome thing. There is nothing wrong with being either clean-cut or wholesome. I appear rather clean-cut myself. And I feel that modern American culture could probably use a little more wholesomeness. What causes me to detest Will Smith is his smugness about being clean-cut and wholesome. It’s great that his grandma told him not to cuss and to respect women. But dude, don’t brag about the fact that you don’t cuss in raps, as if that makes you better than other MCs. That’s obnoxious. In the words of the bard of Detroit, Mr. Marshall Mathers: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss to sell raps, well I do, so f**k him, and f**k you too.”

The other thing I dislike about him is his constant pursuit of the lowest common denominator, whether musically or on film. His desire to be as well-liked as possible by as many people as possible causes him to shy away from anything remotely controversial, and thus, artistically challenging. Musically, this trend became most apparent when he parted ways with DJ Jazzy Jeff, who really was keeping him real (with the exception of the unfortunate “Boom! Shake The Room!”). This is also about the same time he contributed to the unfortunate trend of rappers using their real name, rather than creating a witty sobriquet. (I only approve of rappers using their real names if they are going to repeatedly use a screwed & chopped sample of themselves saying their name throughout their songs. Mike Jones!) And speaking of the lowest common denominator, what sort of rapper puts out a love song to his son? How sentimental and maudlin can you possibly get? Gag me with a shovel. He insists upon using samples from well-known songs by Stevie Wonder, Chic or The Clash, rather than actually working with producers who will come up with something interesting and new.

The main reason this is such a shame is that the erstwhile Fresh Prince is actually a really good rapper. The dude can flow. “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” are deservedly ensconced in the pantheon of hip-hop classics. And “Summertime,” perhaps the duo’s greatest concoction, is one of the great jams of all time.

He has his defenders who will insist that he is a good actor. But that pursuit of the lowest common denominator is equally apparent when you examine his choice of movies. Let’s not forget that he has appeared in some truly God-awful films. He may have made Ali and Six Degrees of Separation, but he also made two Bad Boys movies. The first one was just piss-poor, but the second was so ludicrous and nonsensical that it actually crossed the line into camp. The only thing that saved these films was the comedic brilliance of the underrated Martin Lawrence. (Oh, and Gabrielle Union in the sequel. She’s got it going on.) Will Smith also appeared in Wild Wild West, which found two really talented actors (Kevin Kline & Kenneth Brannagh) slumming for a paycheck. He also was one of the leads in one of the worst blockbusters of all-time, Independence Day. In Enemy of the State his silly presence (combined with a bad script) created a mess that even Gene Hackman and Hollywood’s most underrated director couldn’t salvage. And the less said about “A Shark’s Tale” the better.

So, to sum up: I hate Will Smith.

It's a well-known fact that people named Dalton are awesome.

Yes, it's true, I am not the only person named Dalton who kicks ass. Obviously, there's the main character from Patrick Swayze's seminal film Road House, a Dalton who knows martial arts, has a degree in philosophy from NYU, and is considered by some to be the greatest "cooler" of all time. Also, apparently there was a "scholarly, bespectacled" vampire named Dalton on that Buffy TV show.

But today we're going to extol Dalton Carriker, the 12 year-old Georgian (the South seems to produce a disproportionate share of Daltons) whose 8th inning home run recently led the United States to victory over the Empire of Japan in the 2007 Little League World Series. This was actually the third year in a row the United States has won the L.L.W.S., which we damn sure should considering we invented the game. (This is in marked contrast to the U.S. National Baseball Team, which didn't even qualify for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Disgraceful.) Way to go, Dalton! You rock. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

The Miracle (Yes, That’s Right, I Said Miracle) of Air Travel

Quite often today you will hear cats voicing their grievances with the litany of hassles that have infected the process of air travel of late. Many of these objections are perfectly valid. True, the lines can be long. The forced removal of the footgear is annoying, but it is certainly not catastrophic. And the bagging of the gels and liquids is just one more nuisance that conspires to make the entire endeavor an enormous pain in the ass. These things are easy to focus on.

However, I prefer to focus on the sunnier side of the coin. And that merely requires remembering that air travel is a miracle. Yes, a miracle. Like all technologies, it quickly becomes so commonplace that we all-too-easily forget how amazing it truly is. This past Memorial Day, I winged my way across half of the continental United States to attend my brother’s nuptial festivities in Nebraska. I woke up in Washington, and went to sleep in Omaha, more than a thousand miles away. Distances that once took weeks or months to cover are now reduced to a few hours of travel time. A visit from New York to Richmond in the eighteenth century would have required weeks of time to be set aside, thus precluding the voyage for all but a handful.

Not only is this mind-bogglingly awesome technology available to us, but it is remarkably cheap as well. Not only can I go visit someone who lives a thousand miles away for the weekend, but I can do it for less than $200. Wow. Many of my friends, who could not be considered wealthy by the standards of an industrialized democracy, are fantastically well-traveled. Indonesia, Croatia, South Africa, Belize, Chile and dozens of other nations are a few hundred dollars and a few hours of time away. The world is open before us. And most of the time we take this for granted. We assume it has always been thus.

I cannot minimize the really unfortunate things involved in air travel, such as the enormous amount of gas burned by planes, or worse still, the efforts of intolerant old men to persuade impressionable young men that airplanes are an appropriate setting for indiscriminate mayhem. The many small irritants that collectively cause such trouble are real and irritating. But the next time you have to pay too much for long-term parking, or a flight gets delayed, or you have to get up at 6 AM to go stand in line for an hour before you even get to hear the whir of a jet engine, try and perk yourself up. You are utilizing an astonishing invention indeed. The fact that it is so prosaic that we forget this only makes it that much more miraculous.