We need to kill the term "culture bearer"

I cringe every time I see it used. A "culture bearer" is not some separate class of person.  We're all culture bearers. All of us here participating in society together, whether we like it or not, are creating a culture together. Right now it's not a particularly healthy culture. In part this is because of our failure to understand what is happening and to whom. What's happening in Treme is a crime. But it's not just something happening to "culture bearers." It's happening to all of us.

Like the second lines that pass through the neighborhood, those who used to call Tremé home say the culture has become transient. Leaving it with no sense of community.

“All the juice, or the oxygen rather, has been sucked out of the room,” says Al Jackson, owner of the Tremé Petit Jazz Museum. “The culture, oxygen, the children, the raison d’etre that we once woke up in the morning and lived for. It’s gone.”

Jazz Vocalist John Boutté says the community was effervescent. You could hear kids playing and laughing, you’d see people talking on the steps and everyone said hello.
Today, Boutté believes he’ll never see that part of Tremé again.

“The folks aren’t there anymore and unless you bring those people back, you’ll never have that part of Tremé again,” Boutté said.

What's happened to Treme is a crime of capitalism. It is the same crime that is happening to every neighborhood to some degree. It is the same crime that is happening to most cities.  Land is hoarded by real estate speculators. Housing prices and rents are artificially inflated. Wages and benefits are stagnant for most working class people so they can no longer keep up with the escalating cost of living. People take on second jobs or part time jobs or jobs where schedules are unpredictable so their time for leisure (or "creative labor" if you prefer the more commodified term) is limited. 

Meanwhile, the aforesaid real estate speculation encourages the city to crack down on institutions and mores that might disrupt profits such as substandard lawn maintenance, corner bars, and outdoor musical performance. So not only is time for creative leisure reduced but so are the physical spaces where it formerly flourished are also taken away. Those that remain are under increasingly intrusive police surveillance which further intrudes on our social space to think and act creatively.  These are sinister processes meant to commodify basic human freedom.  Everyone has the right to be creative. Everyone has the right to spend their leisure time appreciating or conversing with, the fruits of that creativity. It is our collective creative leisure, the act of creating but also just enjoying what others create that generates authentic "creative culture." 

Despite what the oligarchs who control the extractive tourism economy would have us believe, that isn't something they can put that in a bottle and sell in a shop. They can't manufacture it at New Orleans & Co. no matter how much public money the city dumps into their hands. "Culture bearer" is a term they encourage, though, because it conjures a specific product they're already primed to profit from. It isolates a bland branded and frozen version of New Orleans Culture and limits it to something they can control.

We all bear the culture. It is ours to share, to replicate, to elaborate on, and, most crucially, to evolve. But we can't do that when the marketers, hoteliers, land speculators and the homeowners association product who is currently our mayor conspire to steal what we've already created and deny our right to continue as before.  That's what's happened to Treme. And it's going to keep happening until we recognize that a threat against a "culture bearer" is a threat against us all.  A good way to start is to dispense with using that term at all anymore. 

The "show about New Orleans for New Orleanians" that isn't actually for New Orleanians

Some of you, for whatever reason, may still actually think about the show Treme from time to time.  It's almost over now.  This means people will be slightly more likely to talk about it for a while.

Here's a short post by Brian Moore which touches on the, by now, familiar criticisms of the show; its slow pacing, its lack of a compelling narrative arc, its overwrought NOLAier-than-thou scenesterism. But this passage, I think, contains the most important point.

The final line of defense is it’s a show about New Orleans, for New Orleanians. There are all sorts of problems with that – since when is parochialism a virtue? – but based on the anecdotal evidence I see on New Orleans social media, it’s my guess Treme‘s not as popular in The Big Easy as some assume it to be. Stack it up against a Saints game and its local ratings would plummet to zero. Around 29 million households in the United States pay for HBO; with disposable income being limited in New Orleans and with all the complaints about a local “digital divide,” here’s doubting many of them are clustered in Orleans Parish. If the show is Simon’s gift to the city, then there’s a certain lack of gratitude.

Treme is not a show "for New Orleanians." It is a show for a very specific upper middle class slice of premium cable subscribers who harbor a romanticized fetish for non-threateningly exotic American vacation spots. 

Anyway Moore's post sparked a long-ish Twitter discussion the other day which caused me to go back and dig up my review of the pilot.  When I posted that a bunch of pissed off people told me to "trust the storyteller" and give the genius time to unravel his narrative or whatever.  But looking back, there's nothing in that post that isn't still true today. 

Treme's audience is the 1%

This isn't a mistake. It's a deliberate pander to the target audience.

After losing her restaurant, Desautel then exiles herself to New York. She throws a drink at Alan Richman, works for David Chang, and eventually feels the tug back to New Orleans. Make no mistake what the implication is here. It is not that she wanted to leave New Orleans; or start over. That happened and still happens with chefs, lawyers, plumbers, teachers, you name it. What Treme implies, with a heavy hand, is that Janette had to go to New York to be a better chef and businesswomen. That a chef in New Orleans just isn't skilled enough to be successful at running a "real" restaurant.

You see, she was just a hayseed. Just a Cajun-Creole girl who gosh darn it could cook well enough for New Orleans before Katrina, but not after. The Richman drink throwing scene was completely undone, by proving his point throughout the rest of Treme: that New Orleans isn't a good town for chefs or food. According to Treme, in order to be legitimized, Desautel needed the blessing of the New York Chef Mafia. She needed to learn about hydrocolloids or cooking with pork fat under the tutelage of the chefs Treme's writers think are important. This is such utter horseshit.

Of course it's horseshit but it's horseshit designed specifically to be pleasing horseshit for its target audience.   Treme was never a show for New Orleanians. It was for the wealthy self-styled intellectuals who like to visit New Orleans for their fix of charming dysfunction stories to tell their friends and to purchase a little "cultural authenticity" along the way.

When I was ensnared within the deepening curse of our omnipotent hospitality industry I encountered these people often. I may have even thrown a drink or two at them. The memories are fuzzy now.  It has been my observation that they don't care about us or our problems as they actually are.  Rather they find it pleasing to believe that, in their self-indulgnet travels, they help to bring enlightenment and civilization to the natives whose rituals they co-opt.


Because if it doesn't cost at least $50, it ain't worth doing


In a recent interview with Bill Moyers, Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freeland described (with a little sympathy, even) how the deluded American Plutocracy convinces itself that it keeps society afloat.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think they think they're really defending honest capitalism?

MATT TAIBBI: Oh, absolutely. I, you know, the one thing that's consistent in my exposure to the financial services industry is that the people who work within it, and particularly the people you know, at the very, very top, sincerely believe that they have not done anything wrong. And, you know, when you bring up things like the mass sale of fraudulent mortgage backed securities, it's just like you say.
It's always somebody else who made that mistake. You know, "We didn't know at the time that we were selling billions and billions of dollars of junk and we were dumping this on pension funds and foreign trade unions." It was always somebody else who was doing that. And they also have built up this very, very powerful insulating psychological justification for their lifestyles. They've adopted this sort of Randian point of view, where--

BILL MOYERS: Ayn Rand.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah exactly, you know, they genuinely believe that they are the wealth creators and that they should get every advantage and break whereas everybody else is a parasite and they're living off of them. So when you bring up to them, for instance, how is it that nobody, despite this mass epidemic of fraud that appears to have happened before the 2008 crash, how come nobody of consequence has gone to jail after that?

They always, you know, they always argue against more regulation and more enforcement because they say, "We need room to, we need air to breathe, we need room to create jobs. And this is just counterproductive to put people in jail. It'll cast a pall over society.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: If I may say so Bill, this very sincere, absolutely, absolutely sincere self-justification, I think, is one of the most dangerous things that's happening because in our society, and I would say this is particularly powerful in America. Really since the Reagan era, there has been this vision of the successful businessperson as really a leader for the whole society. And there has been a view that the businessperson, what he thinks, and, by the way, all of my plutocrats are men.

But, you know, what he thinks about how society should be ordered, we should all listen to because he, after all, is the hero of our time, is the hero of capitalist narrative. And I think it's so important for us to really understand that what is good for an individual business, particularly in this age of very high income inequality and the ways of thinking, the ideas that are no doubt absolutely the right ones for this particular business, may very well not be good for society as a whole.

I have no doubt the Treme audience believes it's doing something truly noble by consuming and internalizing the message of this premium cable TV product.  It's a vicious circle of self-justifying wealth that will continue as long as there's still enough hip cache associated with New Orleans among the people who count... and, of course, as long as there are local writers, musicians, politicians, and consultants of various stripes willing to continue supplicating themselves and by extension the rest of us to the false narrative that pleases this audience.

To build a private zone

It's possible that the Mayor means this ironically, which I am told is the hip way to sell out but, frankly, I have no idea how one keeps up with such things.

Landrieu, who served as the state's top tourism official during his seven-year tenure as lieutenant governor, pointed to New Orleans' authentic culture as a major draw for visitors.

"What you saw here today is empirical evidence that this is creating jobs, creating tax revenue," he said, adding that tourism officials have set as a goal of attracting 13.7 million visitors -- with an $11 billion economic impact -- by the city's 300th anniversary in 2018.

"That's our big World Cup," he said. "That's our Olympics."

I don't mean to come down too hard on the value of a healthy tourism industry. It's probably better overall that more people want to visit our city than don't. But it's this notion that our city exists solely for the purpose of drawing and catering to these visitors that has done us more damage than our leaders seem to be aware of or care about.

We frequently hear them talk about the "economic impact" of tourism in terms of overall dollars and number of "jobs" created. But such numbers are meaningless when divorced from the questions of how those dollars are distributed, what kinds of jobs are created, and what any of that means for the quality of life most of us enjoy. What good does "$11 billion in economic impact" do given that the bulk of it is experienced by low wage, low benefit, and often part-time or seasonal employers? How proud should our elected representatives be of their accomplishments "creating jobs" that have reduced a generation of New Orleanians to a life of transient hustling?

Like Mayor Landrieu, I'm looking forward to celebrating the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city I grew up in... provided I manage to hang on here long enough to see it. I wonder, though, if we're approaching the point where it ceases to be our city anymore.




I wonder what those of us who call this place home will have left to celebrate once our city fathers have managed convert the most famous and beloved portions of our civic space to a commercially governed theme park.

Senate Bill 573 proposes the New Orleans Hospitality and Entertainment District and gives its loose physical description as "all territories within the boundaries" of Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter, the Central Business District, the Warehouse District, Convention Center District, Louisiana Sports and Entertainment District and any areas connecting them to one another. It also gives the mayor the right to designate an area of town as part of the zone.

The district is proposed as a taxing body with the authority to issue and sell bonds.

The bill calls for the district to have its own board of governors that includes the chairs of the Greater New Orleans Hotel and Lodging Association, the New Orleans Chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center-New Orleans, the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corporation and the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The mayor will also be allowed to appoint four Orleans Parish residents to the Hospitality and Entertainment District. Those appointees must have "substantial business interests" in the established zones either as "owners or operates of hotels or other tourism or hospitality businesses."

That board would be permitted to levy taxes on hotel rooms, the sale of food and beverages and on in-premises hotel parking at establishments within the district. The proceeds from the hotel tax would be split evenly between the Marketing Corp. and the CVB, according to the legislation.

This legislation proposes to cut out a slice of the city and hand it over to an unelected board of "substantial business interests" who have purview over such basic services as sanitation and security and, quite likely, the authority to tax and borrow on the city's behalf. Earlier this week, we read about, admittedly eccentric, School Board President Thomas Robichaux's characterization of Governor Jindal's school privatization initiatives as "modern day fascism." Robichaux was widely ridiculed for his sensational word choice. But the substantive part of his argument that our public resources are being hoarded away from us by "substantial business interests" and their political cronies went largely untouched. Whatever label one chooses to apply to it, the practice of carving out a sector of the city to be privately managed by unelected elites is concerning. At the very least, it puts the citizenry at an uncomfortable degree of remove from public governance.

The designation of so-called "Hospitality Zones" implies that there are parts of the city where some of us aren't really welcome. Earlier this year, City Council was criticized for imposing a curfew law critics believed was designed to keep black teenagers safely out of sight of visitors. Council's imperfect response to this criticism was to propose extending the curfew city-wide ensuring that no one felt left out. Council has yet to take up the matter of extending the curfew, however. Perhaps, in light of recent events, they're trying to figure out whether or not they should add a dress code. The appearance of this "Hospitality Zone" proposal should make intentions clear, however.

To some degree, this partition already exists in practice. On a somewhat recent early morning visit to Jackson Square... during what Varg likes to call the ecotone... I witnessed a policeman attempt to move a homeless person sleeping slumped over on one of the benches near the Cabildo. "This is a tourist area," the cop said to the man, repeatedly, "You have to move out of here or be arrested." I know Jackson Square is a favorite spot for tourists to visit. But I, like a lot of New Orleanians, like to go there too. This was the first time I'd heard it referred to specifically as a "tourist area" in the sense that non-tourists might be less welcome or even subject to arrest for simply being in a public place. But, lately, the city has made this a matter of unofficial policy.

During the 2008 NBA All Star Game, a minor controversy was ignited by the city's acquiescence to the NBA's request to shut down the public square for use as an invitation-only corporate event. A similar clash ensued during preparations for the horrific Dave Mathews concert accompanying the NFL's 2010 Kickoff Extravaganza. Because we are told a primary impetus behind the creation of the Hospitality Zone is preparing the city to host more major sporting events, we can assume we'll be seeing more episodes like these in the future. This can end up affecting our ability to use our public spaces for civic as well as recreational purposes too. Remember the Mayor was particularly eager to evict the largely peaceful Occupy NOLA demonstrations last year in preparation for the college football bowl season.

Is it too much of a stretch to conclude that declaring whole sectors of the community special Hospitality Zones and restricting the activities of locals within those zones might put a bit of a drag on that "authentic culture" the Mayor is hoping to sell there? Inevitably, the more discerning authenticity connoisseurs are going to catch on to this. Luckily, there's already a fallback in place. We can always sell them air-conditioned bus tours of what this New York Times reporter actually termed the "Jungleland" beyond their Zone.

Harris spit out his sunflower shells in disgust. A luxury motor coach, filled with tourists behind tinted windows, trundled down Florida Street toward the Make It Right houses. Seventeen expletives have been edited out of the following paragraph:

“Every day 20 tour buses come down this street to look at this neighborhood and take pictures,” Harris said. “Don’t tell me they’re just touring the city. If you’re trying to tour the city, then you’re in the wrong neighborhood. They just ride around in the part that’s been devastated. Lower Ninth Ward ain’t receiving a single penny for that. Why can’t I get something? Why does the man driving the bus get all the money? I ain’t a guinea pig. I don’t want to be put under a microscope. We’re the ones that suffered down here, who lost everything. There are still dead people that they haven’t accounted for. It’s frustrating. It took almost seven years for the Ninth Ward to look like what it looks like now, and it still don’t look like [anything].”

Reading through that reminded me of this "authenticity" inspired moment from the HBO fantasy series Treme

That bit is authentic New Orleans—there is nothing New Orleans loves so much as New Orleans—but the show can't get past the desire to be authentic. It feels like a hell of a vacation in New Orleans. Granted, it's a well-informed, nuanced vacation, and Simon has clearly made an effort to ask the locals where to go, but it is a vacation nonetheless. In the first season, a Katrina tour bus rolls up on a Mardi Gras Indian funeral, and we balk at the voyeurism (of course, after being scolded the driver says: "you're right, you're right," and drives off. Everyone must get along!). But the show functions with the same impulse to uncover the "real" New Orleans.

There isn't anything in the Hospitality Zone bill that relates specifically to filming productions like Treme. Of course that doesn't seem necessary anyway as film crews regularly range throughout the city appropriating blocks of parking and sidewalk access at a time. Often they're on the hunt for some of that authentic culture the Mayor tells us is such a great draw for visitors. But, more than anything, they're drawn here by a corrupt wrinkle written into Louisiana tax law. So although the Hospitality Zone ground hasn't officially been carved out yet, the ground has already been broken on its "economic impact" model.

This week in Carnival stuff

• The Royal Sonesta Hotel engages in a famous ritual each year where they prepare for the final weekend of Carnival by greasing the poles supporting their Bourbon Steet balcony. The idea.. or really the joke.. behind the ceremony is that this prevents drunken revelers from shimmying up onto the balcony should the spirit direct them to attempt such a thing. But really, the whole thing is done for laughs.
  
  Meanwhile, our tradition of applying fresh signage each year to the library bookdrop just before the first parade crowds gather may be more practical in its purpose, but it has become a similar ritual by which we welcome the season ourselves.
  
  



• Spent Sunday afternoon at the Thoth den party. Thoth's theme this year is "Streets of New Orleans" Expect to see a lot of this logo next weekend.
  
  



• Meanwhile, Menckles had an opportunity to help decorate a few of this year's Zulu coconuts. This one, she says, is an homage to Varg's work.
  
  



• If you're looking for an alternative to Saturday night's Uptown parades, you might check out the shoebox Krewe of 'tit Rex because, if you're pissing off the Rex organization, you're obviously doing something right.
  
  

  In fall 2011, members of the Rex organization contacted the microkrewe about the use of its registered trade name.
  
    "I was shocked and bemused," Yuslum says. "I almost thought I was being punked."
  
    Some of the 'tit Rex founders met with a lawyer from the Rex organization.
  
    "We tried to amicably resolve our concerns with regards to the copyright issue and their use of the name Rex," says King Logan, a spokesman for Rex.
  
    Both sides describe the meetings and correspondence as friendly, and both say they want to find a mutually agreeable solution, but it is unlikely one will be reached before the tiny krewe parades Saturday. Rex offered to license the use of its name to 'tit Rex, but the krewe rejected the offer. Yaslum says the proposal included an admission of copyright infringement and went on to define the small krewe in ways members deemed restrictive. Logan says the offer proposed various points but a legal agreement was not drafted. The group altered its name by replacing the e with a schwa and offered that to Rex officers as a solution.
  
    "We tried to honor what they wanted and maintain the identity of our parade," Schrenk says.
  
    The proposal has not yet been considered by Rex and won't be until after Mardi Gras, Logan says.
  
    In the meantime, the issue has spilled over into the parade. The 2012 theme is "Napoleon Avenue Complex."
  




• Earlier in the week, NOPD met with representatives of Mardi Gras Indian gangs in an effort to reach a better understanding about how the tribes will be treated on Fat Tuesday.

  Chiefs from both sides left the meeting hopeful but circumspect.
  
  “A seed was dropped. And hopefully we can cultivate that seed and watch it grow,” said Big Chief Tyrone Casby of the Mohawk Hunters tribe. Big Chief Darryl Montana from the Yellow Pocahontas nodded. “I feel like we’re getting there. But only time will tell,” he said.
  
  “I think this awareness will pay dividends,” said NOPD 1st District Commander Bobby Norton. “The task is to get every officer to understand the Indian tradition.”
  
  Norton — whose district includes Indian hubs such as St. Bernard, Claiborne and Orleans avenues — is convinced this year will be a good one for Indians, who travel the streets chanting and drumming while visiting places of honor and engaging in elaborate games of hide-and-seek.
  
  Indians have for years complained that police squad cars often vex them by blaring sirens without reason. “We’ve totally said no to that,” Norton said. “No to lights and sirens. No to pushing Indians off the street.”
  
  And if there’s an issue with a tribe, it won’t be resolved by an officer yelling over his intercom. “Officers will get out of the car and go directly to the chief,” Norton said.

  All of this, we've heard before, of course.



• If you're going to the parades this week, keep an eye out for the O.P. Walker Marching Band. Odds are, they're in whatever parade you're watching.
  
  

  O. Perry Walker is taking on a demanding schedule this year. Six of their nine parades will be back to back, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. In spite of all the physical stress inherent in the activity, one student dreads a decidedly different aspect of marching. “It’s tough not stepping in horsepoop because you can’t really see at night. Then your whole night’s messed up until you find some grass.”




• I'm still not in a... um... festive enough mood to blow $27 on a bottle of novelty flavored vodka. But I'm working on ways to make my own in the meantime.
  
  



• Finally, it's starting to look like the weather is clearing up before Oshun gets set to roll. Driving around today, though, I noticed several trucks and scattered equipment which I am told is the Treme crew filming in front of The Columns hotel on St. Charles. If it's not gone by 5:00, I'm calling Parks and Parkways to see if they'll come haul all that shit to the landfill.

You say the TV looks like your life*

I notice a frequent go-to excuse for Treme heads regarding the show's improbable, masturbatory, self-referential dialogue is to tell us that what we may think is just crappy writing is, in fact, "gritty realism" or "not normal TV." Not only is this clearly a cop-out it's also just false. "Normal TV" is actually littered with crappy dialogue. Tooth grinding awfulness is one of television drama's defining characteristics. Treme is no exception. It's bad in the same way most of everything else on TV is bad.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about from a recent Offbeat interview with some of our favorite Treme bloggers.

Shea: If you’re watching a program where the topic and characters are something that you’re involved in in real life, you know too much and you can see the moving parts in the dialogue, and that makes it hard to suspend disbelief. Some people from New Orleans have this thing where if someone makes reference to red-beans-and-rice-and-it’s-not-even-a-Monday, people laugh because it’s obvious, but, people talk like that all the damn time here. You hear it coming out of an actor’s mouth, it sounds like a cliché because you know it’s a cliché.

Being the "some people" in question here, I should say that the problem is not simply that this is a cliche' (although it is that). It's that it's over-hip unnecessary exposition which natives like me feel a bit exploited by and outsiders talked down to by. It's almost the very definition of poseurism. Also it's crappy dialogue. And it's crap dialogue even if "people talk like that all the time down here." Which they do not. Well, okay, my Dad has been known to say stupid and morose shit like, "You know the last float in my Mardi Gras parade is gonna be passing real soon now" but he's kind of an asshole anyway.

By the way, if you'd like to complain about any of this to Treme creator David Simon in person, you might like to register for this year's Rising Tide Conference where he'll be a featured speaker.


*

Everything you need to know about what's wrong with Treme

Read this.

But the real problem is that when Treme's musician characters aren't playing music, they're talking about it. I like to think of myself as somebody who likes music a lot, and clearly the people writing Treme do, too. But whenever anybody on Treme talks about music, they make it sound like something I would hate. They use words like "chops" and refer to the guy who wrote "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as "Bobby Z," and say things like "Modern jazz is a lonely road" and "Did you read that Down Beat review? Right as rain!" and describe music in which disparate genres mix and mingle by comparing the results to "gumbo," all without even a smidge of irony. They talk like people reading liner notes out loud. During Season 2, whenever the show cut to Steve Earle Yoda-ing the earnest fiddle player Annie T. about the craft of songwriting — turns out some songs that seem to be about the weather are actually about love and being sad! — I wanted to beat myself deaf with a rolled-up back issue of Paste magazine.

And that's it in a nutshell. I like music. I like New Orleans. But I can't stand this slow motion mess of David Simon and his fanboy nation's pseudo-intellectual superiority complex being puked all over us like this. It's probable that much of New Orleans laps up this puke is yet another manifestation of its chronic inferiority complex but that's a whole other discussion.

Actual real life events vs pretentious nostalgia-fanstasy

If you're watching Treme tonight instead of the Hornets, you are precisely what is wrong with New Orleans right now

My only regret is that no artists were asked to "creatively demolish" them

Central City houses featured by HBO's 'Treme' meet the wrecking ball

Update: This is interesting. David Simon tells us the Treme producers, at the behest of local "active preservationists" (unnamed in Simon's letter), wrote to the Mayor two weeks ago about these buildings. The implication is that both the Mayor's office AND the "active preservationists" sat on the letter until it was released in the press this morning. Does that make any sense to anybody?

Rain

Despite the optimistic tone of the local weatherfolk, I get the feeling most of this weekend's (and possibly Thursday's) parades are going to be washed out big time.

This can either be bad or very very bad. The worst scenario I can think of would postpone Endymion probably to Sunday and, although they haven"t announced this, probably also to the Uptown route behind Bacchus. Which will be a stupid mess. As we all know, the Endymion crowd is the most poorly mannered when it comes to observing city ordinances and generally respecting people's space. NOPD says they're cracking down on that shit this year, but something tells me they'll be looking less for ladder violations and more for stuff they think they can collect heavy fees for. If I were you, I'd be careful where I park my car this weekend.

On the plus side, I'm hearing that they're planning to do some Treme filming on lower St. Charles during Muses which strikes me as a far greater obstacle to citizens enjoying their public festival than any ladder phalanx could ever be. The good news is maybe that will get rained out too.

Happy New Year

2010 Ashley Morris award winner Clifton Harris wrote a short post for August 29 which he titled "Today is Not a Holiday"

To my New Orleans friends and family,
It's okay if you don't want to watch, read, or participate in any of the Katrina events. It's also okay if you want to go to the second line then call up a public official and cuss their ass out. Whatever you decide to do today is the right decision. You went through the struggle so the choice is yours. After a long emotional week I think I am going to sit this one out.

So maybe holiday still isn't the word to describe what happens during the days surrounding 8/29. Maybe not yet. On the other hand, for five years now, it has been a time for city-wide recognition of the most significant historic event of our lifetimes. It has become a time most New Orleanians are becoming accustomed to marking with reflection, family, service, and, yes increasingly, celebration. I expect that, as years pass, the celebratory nature of the event will continue to grow. August 29 is and will continue to be a time to remember tragedy but also to count blessings, reconnect with family and neighbors, and, if the previous five years are any indication, engage in civic dialog and service in remembrance of an event that reminded us how important our community is to us. At times during the week of innumerable gatherings, parties, symposiums, parades, concerts, readings, and so forth that sprung up around 8/29, I found myself referring to it as "Bizzaro Mardi Gras" in conversation. But I'm beginning to see it as a kind of Thanksgiving.

On 8/29, Varg wrote a post that I thought captured this perfectly. There's much more to it but here's the part that left the biggest impression.

Today is a day of remembrance and those neighbors we lost will be honored. The voids they are leaving are a chaos all their own. Along with the “other victims,” those unclassifiable friends we lost from cancers, heart attacks, drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide in the years following.

I’m just one person and not some symbol of New Orleans but I have seen improvements in my life since the Flood. I am earning more income, have a better quality of life and live by many of my own terms. I have been married. I have finished working on my home and added value to it. I have developed and continue to develop a circle of friends and social contacts – these are New Orleans artists, builders, mothers, business people. I have a deeper empathy, sympathy for my neighbors. So, for me, things have recovered. We’ll see.

I, and I'm sure many of us, could write something along similar lines. It made me think, anyway.

A lot of horrible shit has happened as a result of the flood and during the five years following upon it. Most of this horrible shit, the public stuff, the stuff that affected everyone, we've spent a lot of time kvetching about in public places; I have on this blog for one thing. I could also make a list of personal traumas I have accrued during this time and they would be familiar to most; lost family, friends relocated who haven't returned, workplace upheaval, general drama with friends, neighbors, acquaintances, that whole chaos thing Varg was talking about. And yet while all that was going on, I also got married. I went to Paris. Mac McClelland signed my book. Like Varg, I've also "developed and continue to develop a circle of friends and social contacts". Frankly, in the past five years, I have learned a great deal more about the city I live in and the people I share it with than I expected I could and I thought I'd had a pretty good handle on that to start with. I'm less lonely now than I've ever been. And I can't help but feel a little guilty about that. But then guilt is a common element during holidays, particularly the more somber commemorative ones. As a confirmed atheist, I hesitate to use the word blessings to describe what I've gotten away with personally during this time, but if you've got a better word for profound ethereal good luck, I'd love to hear it.

So how does one observe a holiday like this? How does one celebrate the survival of some of the things, places and people we love while also confronting our losses and the fragility of what remains? Editor B writes,

Be revolutionary.

That’s it. That’s my wish for the people of New Orleans. Come to think of it, that’s also my wish for the people of this nation and this world. But somehow it seems especially apropos at this place, at this time. We’ve been having to rebuild and rethink everything, and five years on there is still much to do. So, as we continue to work at building it back better, we need to be bold. We need to be daring. We need courage and compassion and creativity.

I'm cutting out an example B presents from his personal experience, but he continues.

Not all revolutions are good. Not all revolutions are just. I don’t endorse change for the sake of change. For a community that has lost so much, in fact, more change may be difficult to face. But that’s our challenge, to preserve the good while revolutionizing the bad.

And actually, I think a lot of New Orleanians are doing this already. But it seems that it’s never enough. We need to constantly be supporting one another to be stronger and go further.

And this is why I've spent the weekend around 8/29 at Rising Tide each of these past few years. It's what I think B would would call "good" revolutionary. It isn't organized around any political orthodoxy or narrow social grievance. Rather, it is, or tries to be, a conference about the state of New Orleans organized for and by New Orleanians looking for ways to support one another. Mostly they do that through watching, reading, talking and sharing information in a raucous and open forum. New Orleanians have always been free with their opinions, but now more than ever they've come to understand the importance of countering banal happy bullshit even if that gets a little sloppy at times. Maitri puts this more eloquently than I could ever hope to.

It has been five years since Hurricane Katrina, The Flood and the information flood it brought with it. My hope for five years from now is increased information flow, but more than that, that we consider the source and its intent. That we build a more accurate picture, and not a sparklingly precise one. For the future we make comes from what and why we remember.

By now you've probably read about the overwhelming success of Rising Tide V from various outlets and websites. Of course, I have a few things to throw on the pile before we set it on fire.

• This Year's Winner: Sure, Cliff took home the Ashley Award and that was well deserved. But the person who won the day at Rising Tide V was Clay by a long shot. Scoring Mac McClelland's autograph on a copy of the Halliburton cementing manual was inspired. Hats off.
  
  


• Who can keep up witha da chief?: Ronal Serpas participated in the opening public safety panel and pretty much dominated it. (Video here and here) On the one hand it's encouraging to see that the new chief of police is interested enough in engaging with the public that he shows up to events like this. On the other hand, the ease and polish with which he functions in this capacity is downright suspicious. He's not afraid to tell pretty little lies and make them sound good. Serpas told the room that he believes the state of the NOPD he's taking over now is worse than its previous nadir in 1994 because, according to the chief, the problems now are indicative of systemic accountability failure while the unfortunate actions of individual bad actors in the 1990s somehow weren't. He didn't say why he thinks this. But it is convenient for him to believe so given his history with the department and his desire to play savior now. It's good politics. It's also bullshit.
  
  But Serpas is a practiced bullshitter who tells tight stories and deflects difficult questions with ease. DSB, who lives in the same neighborhood I do, asked Serpas why our nights bring regular patrols of police cruisers riding around with their blue lights flashing. The question wasn't meant as a compliment. Those lights are an ominous and unpleasant presence. Serpas took it the other way and went on for a few minutes about the value of riding around with blue lights and how much everybody loves them and thank you very much for asking.
  
  Of course nobody's perfect and the chief did make two gaffes during his appearance. While delivering a canned line he must have used on numerous occasions back in Nashville about being second-guessed by the public the same way football coaches are, he confused Sean Payton with Tennessee Titans head coach Jeff Fisher. Also, he parked illegally.
  
  



• My Schoolgirl Crush on Mac McClelland: For some reason this became a running joke around the conference. I have no idea where it came from and I can't account for the general lack of maturity frequently displayed by my colleagues. But look. Mac McClelland is an outstanding and outspoken young reporter whose work during the Summer of Spill challenged the BP-Federal spin machine and the various media outlets not working hard enough to keep it in check. She was undoubtedly THE person to speak to this conference this year. I was pleased and honored that she accepted our invitation. Plus, she exhibits a certain Gonzo sensibility that fit the Rising Tide bill as well as or better than anyone else who has appeared there. If brandishing a Bloody Mary and calling the Governor of Louisiana a "fucking douchebag" on stage doesn't keep our brand out there, I have no idea what does.
  
  Appropriately, the NOLA blogoshere's very own original Gonzo journalist, Lance "Varg" Vargas delivered a stone cold introduction to McClelland's speech which makes all of these points far better than I can here although I can't believe he went on for five goddamn minutes. On the other hand, Varg did take home the Kimberly Marshall It’s All About Me Award at the Friday night party so maybe it isn't that surprising after all. Here's the video.
  
  

  Rising Tide V: Keynote by Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland (28 Aug 2010 NOLA) from Sophielab on Vimeo.

  
  
  Varg goes further beyond the call of duty by annotating McClelland's remarks here with links to her work and numerous other notes on topics she referenced. Mac knocked it out the park at RT 5 and did so with even more substance than style. This is not to say that I wasn't utterly intimidated and frozen in my tracks every time she spoke to me. You can draw whatever conclusions you like, but I will continue to insist that my fanboyhood is strictly related to Mac's professional work. I'm sure, for example, that the year we figure out a way to get Matt Taibbi to Rising Tide, I'll behave much the same way. Until he throws a drink on me and storms out of the room, that is.
  
  CORRECTION: The strange man rambling on before Mac in the video, we are told, may not, in fact, be Lance Vargas. We aren't sure but photographic evidence suggests he is actually Tim Ruppert.


• Speaking of Tim Ruppert, Tim delivered an excellent presentation on a crucial flaw in the legal design standard for levees where effectiveness is measured in terms of property put at risk as opposed to the standard for dams which are judged in terms of lives. The presentation was cleverly titled When Can We Get Some Dam Safety In New Orleans? and was accompanied by carefully timed informative tweets which I thought was a neat touch. Tim has compiled his supplemental material here.



• I already said what I want to say about the politics panel: It's in this post here. Adding only, I love Pistolette (I have a soft spot for Parish people), but when she says stuff like Clancy Dubos is a "big old liberal" I gotta laugh a little bit. I can't think of a more singular example of down-the-line conventional moderate than Clancy Dubos. Of course, Clancy himself commented that Rising Tide is the only conference where he's considered "mainstream media". I guess it's all a matter of perspective. Or maybe it's the gig as go-to political commentator for the city's top circulating weekly paper as well as its highest rated TV news broadcast. Maybe.



• Ray called me wuss: Everybody knows I hate Treme. But I was glad to see the panel happen at Rising Tide because 1) It drew a big crowd. 2) It gave Maitri an excuse to fly in to host it. 3) While the show is in season, I like to read Back of Town as much as anyone. Still, I don't care for the show and I know a lot of people know this so when it came time for Q & A I didn't feel like getting involved because I knew a lot of people wanted to see me be a dick and I just didn't think that was an appropriate time. But for some reason I was standing near the stage when Ray came over and kind of smirked as he asked me if I had anything to say. I started to tell him I didn't want to make a stupid scene but he just grunted, "Wuss," and ambled away before I could protest further.
  
  Well okay then, I'll just ask my damn question. I tried to ask it in a polite way so that the panelists would answer honestly and not defensively. I think I accomplished that. I can't remember what I said, exactly. I think it was something about how the show, in its effort to present HBO viewers with a version of what it calls "authentic" New Orleans culture, is creating a sort of newly fake yet neatly packaged set of images and expectations about New Orleans to be further exploited by an ever hipper brand of tourism. I wasn't too surprised, although I was a little saddened, to hear Eric Overmeyer and Lolis Elie both embrace this very concept. One of them, I can't remember who, even said, "Well I know they appreciate all the new business over at Bullet's" And I'm sure they do and good for them. But I wasn't asking how Bullet's is doing. I was asking a question about what really is ours anymore and what do we do for ourselves as opposed to what we do for the benefit of an audience and I wasn't satisfied with the response to that at all.
  
  But at least I wasn't a dick. I had a follow up question in mind where I would ask the panelists to help me design a Treme bus tour (like a Katrina bus tour but faker because it's about a TV show) which might help fans of the show reach places like Bullet's where they appreciate all the business and whatnot. But I didn't ask that. I already had the answer I expected anyway.



• Not for burning this weekend: As in years past, Octavia books was on hand with an amazing selection of NOLA-centric reading material to sell.
  
  


The blury one in the lower right corner there is a photo project by Dave Anderson called One Block
NY Times:

Mr. Anderson focused on a block in the Lower Ninth Ward, the largely poor neighborhood that suffered some of the most catastrophic flooding in the city. At first, he said, he resisted shooting in that area “because it was so overexposed.”

But he found himself falling in love with a block bounded by Chartres Street, Douglas Street, Caffin Avenue and — yes — Flood Street. It was a racially mixed neighborhood with lovely homes and not-so-lovely ones. “It seemed to represent ethnically what New Orleans was like, to a degree,” Mr. Anderson said. “And they hadn’t gotten so much water that they had absolutely no chance of making it back. There was a chance the neighborhood could recover — but it certainly wasn’t a sure thing.”


Yes I know how hokey that sounds. And, yes, Chris Rose wrote the foreword so you kind of know what you're getting here. But I mention it because I'm close to the family of one of Mr. Anderson's subjects. I was at her funeral just two months ago. On August 28, the book launch was celebrated with a block party in the neighborhood where these photos were taken. Rebirth was there. Because I was at Rising Tide that day I couldn't be there for the party but I am told it was a good time. Sort of like a holiday really.

It is often said that there are four seasons in New Orleans and that those seasons are Carnival, Festival, Hurricane, and Football. Isn't it only fitting, then, that this newest holiday on the NOLA calendar sits almost exactly on the emotional cusp of two of those seasons? This line of demarcation between segments of the year also marks the end and beginning of yet another year since the disaster. Falling as near as it does to Rosh Hashana, it's tempting to think of 8/29 as the NOLA New Year. This fifth New Year, not surprisingly, has a certain fin de siecle aspect to it as well. I won't go into the numerous personal reasons I have for saying this. You can cite your own, I'm sure.

But because it's Football season, I'll note, for everyone's benefit, one blessing I left off of my list way way back at the top of this post. I got to see the New Orleans Saints become Super Bowl Champions. Okay wait. I got to sit in the Superdome for four seasons and watch this particular Saints team go through the long hard slog toward becoming a Super Bowl Champion. Wait. That doesn't quite get it either. I sat through the most harrowing, frightening, intense football game I've ever watched as this Saints team exorcised a long time bogeyman opponent in the NFC Championship game, in the Superdome, with my wife and my best friend there with me to see it happen. And then I saw them win the Super Bowl. All told, I am one lucky son of a bitch.

On the day of the 29th, Menckles and I decided to take Cliff's advice. Working upon the assumption that "whatever you decide to do today is the right decision" we walked down to Parasol's to catch a glimpse at another remarkable transition as the longtime operators of that bar celebrated their eviction from the building and subsequent occupation of the bar down the street. There are details but we've already hashed them out here. The move was marked by, what else, but a party and second line from Parasol's, around the block, and down to the new space, Tracey's, where participants were greeted by more music and a priest on hand to bless the building and throw holy water at people.



I caught these thirty seconds of video with my phone. It's not much but I think it captures the spirit of the day pretty well.



Happy New Year.

"Employers sense in me a denial of their values"

I suppose that could be an autobiographical line but, in truth, it's just one of many of my favorite quotes from A Confederacy of Dunces whose 30th anniversary is being celebrated in spectacular fashion by Loyola University this year.

The observance began during the summer, when every freshman received a copy of the novel as part of background reading to prepare for the move to New Orleans.

On Friday, there will be bus tours to some of the sites in the novel, including the statue of Reilly that stands in front of the Canal Street building that used to house D.H. Holmes department store, marking the spot where Reilly is waiting for his mother as the book begins. Faculty members will lead discussion groups all over the Uptown campus, and the Monroe Library will feature an exhibit of “Dunces” covers representing the 35 languages into which the book has been published.

More information about the Loyola program can be found here. As a long time advocate of the idea of a C.O.D. driving tour, I am pleased to see them running with this.

The genius of A Confederacy of Dunces is that it does for New Orleans what The Simpsons does for the rest of America. Each is an exploration of the general absurd incompetence of just about everything and everyone. And neither can be fully appreciated unless one sees this essential truth as a sort of reassuring discomfort. New Orleans is a place that magnifies and rewards that sensibility. On any given day one finds oneself saying "goddammit nobody knows what the hell they're doing" only slightly less often than one says, "Oh thank god they don't actually know what they're doing". Dunces is such a singular work of literature for its success in capturing that.

By contrast, it's the utter absence of anything like this satirical perspective in a pretentious TV melodrama like Treme that makes it such a miserable failure. Or maybe it just lacks the proper theology and geometry or something. This is just a thought but this may help explain why no one has succeeded adapting Dunces for film yet. They don't know how to properly render the realism in the humor. Maybe it needs to be animated.

Update: Following the Loyola links a bit, we get to this Blogger site which meticulously photographs and describes settings from the book. I'm not sure if these locations comprise the Loyola bus tour but it's certainly worth a look anyway.

Morning Question

People really like to watch Spillcam. It's certainly more compelling TV than Treme anyway. Which one do you think they'll figure out how to cancel first?

Authenticity tourism

When is a hot sausage po boy not really a hot sausage po boy?

The breadth and depth of food offerings at Jazz Fest is explained no better than by the grand dame of Creole cooking, Leah Chase: “You go to other festivals and they have rinky-dink foods like corndogs and hamburgers. Jazz Fest is unique because it serves food-food.”

For Ms. Leah, that means the absinthe-flavored oyster Rockefeller bisque or a hot sausage po-boy from Vance Vaucresson. Be mindful, though, that calling it a hot sausage po-boy will brand you as an outsider. To Chase, the proper nomenclature for any self-respecting Creole is a chaurice po-boy.

Here's something you won't read most places. Leah Chase, please STFU. Yes we all know the word chaurice. You still see it on grocery packaging every now and then. But when New Orleanians (yes, real, authentic, born and raised New Orleanians) go to order a po boy we all say hot sausage. The item is listed as hot sausage on every menu on which it appears or has appeared for as long as anyone currently alive can remember. Rest assured, ordering a "hot sausage po boy" will not "brand you as an outsider"

There are plenty of peculiar phrases New Orleanians do use on a daily basis without affectation. Neutral ground would be one. A lot of people still "make groceries" although I think that one is dying out a little bit. Some words and phrases like banquette, for example, are more or less arcane and out of currency. Use of such words is more likely to "brand you as an outsider" or at least a hyper self-conscious local than their more common synonyms.

But now we live in a time when outsiders, hyper self-conscious locals, and most importantly, people in the business of selling our image to visitors and to Hollywood are asserting more and more ownership over how we live our lives in New Orleans. And the local lexicon is being subtly redefined to meet those purposes. One particularly grating example of this I've noticed as of late is the new enthusiasm for referring to what locals call the CBD and Warehouse District by the vestigial 19th Century term "American Sector" in order to facilitate a clever branding effort by a locally-based national celebrity.

The Jazzfest, which opens next weekend, has for many years been the primary engine behind this kind of hip re-branding of New Orleans for the benefit of the smug segment of the tourist market. Like most of post-industrial America this city doesn't produce and sell things anymore as much as it sells services and experiences. In a tourism-based setting, this means we basically sell ourselves... or at least some idealized version of ourselves.

And that's demeaning for two reasons. First, by reducing your cultural touchstones to marketable commodities you allow your customers to redefine you and your traditions in ways that suit their understanding. Second, the traditions themselves become less of a celebration and more of a performance or worse a job. In a way we are really selling ourselves and in the process making the fact of being ourselves less enjoyable.

And this, ultimately, is what I think Treme will end up doing as well. Sometime soon, maybe a year from now, I'm expecting some outfit to start offering a "Treme tour" or some such thing. People will visit and want to see things as they were on HBO. And those things, although they are based on more realistic concepts than much of what Hollywood has produced on New Orleans, still distort things in irksome ways. But eventually the distortion becomes the consensus reality.

Here's a sort-of trivial example of what I'm talking about. Just last week, on the Back of Town blog, Treme was praised for its attention to detail in rendering the "first second line since Katrina" The impressive detail was the fact that some of the marchers at the parade in the show were carrying torn down street signs from the flooded 7th 8th and 9th Wards. The street names were poignant words for the moment like "Desire" "Benefit" "Humanity" and "Pleasure" Because I was at the event being replicated, I can tell you that this really happened. I took this picture of the signs as they were carried in front of me.

That's pretty neat but here's the funny thing. This actual parade, which was a big big deal "All Star" parade on Martin Luther King Day weekend and staged to help raise money for flood-affected musicians, happened in January of 2006. Treme presents the "first second line after katrina" in November of 2005. Maybe this doesn't matter much but I think it's likely that over the long term the lasting influence of Treme history can supplant the actual history in people's minds which leads to a fictionalized version of events gaining a place in the official record.

The punch line, of course, is that the real parade wasn't even the "first second line" The actual first second line I saw after Katrina happened in December 2005 and it happened Uptown, not in or anywhere near the Treme. If you read down in the BoT thread you'll find commenters cite other examples of earlier forgotten second lines as well. But because Treme depicts something like the January 2006 parade, people are now calling that event the "first second line after Katrina" So now we have a fictional history which causes people, in the process of attempting to reassert the actual history, to then misremember a crucial fact about the actual history itself. And so now not only do our cultural idioms become altered for the sake of someone else's product but our memories do as well.

Maybe the next time the Treme producers decide to film a second line scene, they'll remember to add the guy with the chaurice cart. I'm sure Leah would appreciate that kind of attention to detail.

That ain't right

Okay so I didn't like Treme. I know nobody is surprised to hear that so I'll add that my wife, and my friends who watched it with me last night at the Milan lounge didn't like it either. I talked about it with some other people during the day today who weren't happy with it. So I'm a little relieved to report that this is not just me being a grouch. And, yes, I worry about being taken that way so I'll try to be as little of an asshole as possible.

After much discussion this morning, the "hater" contingent has two fundamental concerns. The first is kind of aesthetic and a little picky, I guess. The second is a bit more serious. On both counts we were more or less horrified.

First, the picky stuff. Even if your New Orleans references are a step more accurate than "I need Gumbo to think" beating your audience over the head with them in ways that distract from the story produces the exact same effect. (It would also be helpful to have an actual story from which to distract people but we'll hold back on that for a second) The characters in Treme say things like "Red Beans and rice? It ain't even Monday!" or "You know how I love your etouffee" or "(some character) will be back before Carnival season" In all seriousness, people, who walks around talking like that? It's as if the entire script were saying, "Hello, we're in New Orleans" over and over. We know that already, characters. Now please go do something and try to act like real people in the process. The four of us were laughing out loud at how ridiculous this sounded last night. The rest of the bar was cheering.

This morning, Ros and I decided we're going to write our own medical drama and set it in New Orleans. The doctors will say things like "Little Billy, I'm afraid you have cancer... here in the birthplace of jazz. The treatment will begin next week... which is also incidentally the beginning of Carnival Season. It won't be easy but if all goes well hopefully you'll live to enjoy more delicious chicory coffee and red beans and rice on every Monday for a very long time."

And even that would be preferable to what we watched last night because at least then the characters would be doctors and not the collection of cliched ideas of what Treme's creators imagine "uniquely" New Orleans people to be. I'm not excited about the project in the first place, but if you told me we just absolutely had to write a TV drama about the aftermath of Kartina I would at the very least request that the characters be more realistic representations of the sort of people who lived through it. Why not a show about a nurse, a school teacher, a cop, a veterinarian, and a plumber all trying to rebuild their lives after the flood? Are they somehow less New Orleanian than a DJ, a trombone player, a chef, and a "Tulane professor"? Did something less important happen to them?

I think Treme is telling us yes. And there's our second problem with the show. Treme isn't for us. It isn't even about us, really. It's for a certain intellectual, image conscious stripe of visitor and/or recent transplant and about those persons' cartoonish expectations about what life is like in New Orleans. It's for Ned Sublette and Tom Piazza and Chris Rose and about the imaginary people they wish they were or their Platonic ideal of what a New Orleanian is or something.

I'm a little taken aback at how happy everyone seems to be with the Indian scene as I think this is a perfect example of what I'm getting at here. This was also the point of greatest separation between our party and the rest of the Milan lounge. I had my head in my hands, Hope was giggling uncontrollably, Ros had to leave the room. Menckles, as is often the case, was trying to keep me from randomly punching people. Meanwhile, the kids in the bar actually cheered out loud. You would have thought Tracy Porter had appeared on the screen to intercept the lapsed Indian's reluctance to practice and return it for a touchdown. What the hell is going on here?

Would this scene have been even remotely possible in real life? Think about it. What actual chief would actually go over and carry on that way just for the benefit of one guy. How would that one guy have actually reacted? The scene we were presented with was so ridiculous, such an affectation, such a lame excuse to just show us an indian that everyone should have been insulted. We were. But the enthused reaction from among the young kids in the Milan wasn't related to the believability of the situation. Instead the shriek communicated only, "Yay! I know what a Mardi Gras Indian is!"

I think this is what's actually driving the positive reaction. It can't be the plot because there wasn't one. It can't be the characters because they are calculated archetypal jerk-offs. It must be this banal hipsterism. And, again, I know I sound like I'm being mean and I know I'm oversensitive to that sort of thing so let me try and explain to you why I think this is important.

As we were leaving the bar last night, I asked Menckles what the hell is wrong with these people. What makes them this content with an empty stream of forced inappropriate references in place of any actual story. "Some people just want to see themselves on TV" she said. I guess. Sort of. But I didn't see myself on TV. I didn't see any of the people I grew up with. I didn't see any of the people I work and play with either. I saw a parade of hipster psuedo-New Orleans douchenozzling. And I think that's what the crappy people in the bar wanted to see on TV. Not themselves so much as a validation of the pose they've assumed.

I talk with people around me a lot about our friends and neighbors who moved away after Katrina and the contrast between them and the people we deal with who have moved in since. In our experience, the newcomers have a knack for rather boldly instructing us in the art of how to be ourselves. As if being a New Orleanian means constantly talking about when Mardi Gras is coming or how much you like jazz music or whatever. And look, those things are all great. I just went to French Quarter Fest on Sunday and had a wonderful time. Everybody who knows me knows I do every damn parade during Mardi Gras. I chase after indians. I follow second lines. I'm a pretty decent cook too if I do say so myself. I love that stuff but it doesn't actually define the parameters of my life in any meaningful way. And the real people who grew up and live in work in New Orleans don't live their lives around those things either. They are ours, certainly. But they are not us. A better show about Katrina would tell us about people coming back to New Orleans, not because of the food, not because of the music, not because some guy in feathers is shaking a tambourine at them, but just because it's where they fucking live. Isn't that enough?

When David Simon appeared on The Colbert Report the other day, he showed a clip of John Goodman's Ashley Morris-like character ranting about Federal culpability for the flood. Afterward, Simon and Colbert both kind of sheepishly dismissed that as one of the "opinions" of the outraged people down there... or something like that anyway. I think if they really took that point of view seriously, they would have presented us with a show that argues in favor of saving this American city and not the unnecessary "Why New Orleans Matters" vehicle they've created. The case they're making isn't save New Orleans because people lived there and were fucked by the crappy flood protection system. It's save New Orleans because look at these cool things that we're interested in about it. I think that's a significantly weaker argument to make on our behalf. But, as I think I've made clear, these people really aren't speaking on behalf of us as much as they are their fantasies.

I think that's pretty damaging. It validates these misapprehensions about what it's really like to live here. It commodifies them in new and annoying ways. It encourages the slumming fetish of the "Cajun Expats" (Please click that link. Really. It's an enlightening little item.) It also belittles the experience of anyone who doesn't conform to this fetishized idea of what makes a New Orleanian. It, in fact, allows the perpetrators of these fetishes to judge your fitness to occupy your home on the basis of your willingness to play their phony roles. This, in fact, opens the door for all sorts of mischief. It facilitates the conversion of your neighborhood into Condo-Disney-Jazzland. It permits the not-so-subtle subjugation of everything to the tourism-based paradigm to such a degree that the recently revised mission statement of your civic institutions actually say things like this,

Like jazz music, the New Orleans Public Library is authentic to New Orleans. We embrace and utilize the fundamentals of jazz and the healing spirit of New Orleans through

* Improvisation: individual investigation and life-long learning
* Blues: the sound of American optimism
* Swing: quality and style with participation
* the Three C's of the authentic New Orleans experience: ceremony, celebration, and competition.

What does that mean? Who knows? I've pondered over this passage on many occasions and cannot say that I've fully penetrated its mysteries. What it suggests to me, though, is that substance has taken a back seat to coolness and that certain favored creative products of free artists are now the boundaries of a bizarre kind of conformity enforced upon the rest of us.

But does it matter? Not to Simon, apparently. Here's another favorite recent interview of mine in which he says,

"The culture of the city was its own weapon in the rebuilding of the city." Simon adds, "It was a war we won."

I am eagerly awaiting Simon's hosting of the next Excellence in Recovery Awards Banquet. The mere suggestion that the struggle of the past five years constitutes some sort of victory is downright disturbing. Who won this war, exactly? If Simon is saying "we" as in the culture vultures looking to sell off the last bits of the carcass, he's got a point. Five years after the flood, what is being trumpeted as a "recovery" is really just an acceleration of the same gentrification that was already underway. We are being swallowed up by Jazzfest. What we're left with is a stage where the festivals, music, food, folkways that that most of us rightfully took as sort of for-granted elements of life here, are now props arranged for mostly someone else's entertainment. And those of us who don't fit on that stage... well it isn't clear that we're really needed anymore. Spoils of war, I guess.

And maybe none of this is important. Maybe I'm overreacting to a goofy and obscure TV show. But I'm certainly not the only person reacting. Treme has been front page news and the main topic of all sorts of media including two very well written blogs dedicated solely to its discussion. (Seriously, the same thing I said when I found Back of Town still applies. Read it even if you're done with Treme) So if I'm making a big deal out it, I'm only following along behind the parade. In overblown Treme-speak you might say I'm in the second line of.. uh.. big deal makers here. And so to everyone worrying themselves over this business, here is my wish for you and for all of us. I wish that New Orleanians both new and old weren't so hyper-conscious about what the rest of the world thought that we give these occasional Hollywood representations of us the power we do. I wish we spent more time just being ourselves than trying to meet these romanticized and limiting expectations. I wish we thought a little bit better of ourselves overall.

In order to end the requisite gloominess here on a high note, I'll reproduce for you my favorite moment from his year's Carnival season. It happened immediately after the Endymion parade. I described it here.

We watched the people scatter and then stayed while the crews cleaned up around us. Then we stayed and watched the traffic. We saw some guys almost get arrested for trying to drive through police barricades. We gave directions to fellow stragglers trying to get down to the Quarter. People riding in the back of pickup trucks hooted and hollered at us. Other motorists honked and waved. Mostly we just stood around drinking while the world moved around us.

This is what Mardi Gras is all about to me. It's not about rushing to some specific place to see any can't-miss event. There's no ridiculous admission fee. You don't have to get dressed up and perform for anybody. It's just an opportunity to stand around in the street talking to people doing nothing in particular while random absurdities happen around you. Every year there comes at least one moment in the Carnival season where I'm fully aware that this is exactly what I'm doing and this year, this was that moment.

What I'm trying to say here is that being New Orleans at its best isn't about a beat or a taste or "the three Cs" of any specific recognizable product or brand you can dream up. For me, it's about living as freely and unpretentiously as can be managed in whatever way best suits. It's a simple thing but it's the one thing that belongs to everybody. And it's not something that Treme, for all its odd attempts at poetic representation, ever really hits upon.

Update: Jesus a lot of people are very serious about this matter. I take back what I said about maybe overreacting to a TV show because, if the general chatter is any gauge, this is very important stuff we're dealing with here. Anyway two things real quick. Last night, when I asked everyone to imagine a realistic reaction to the indian scene, I neglected to note that Cliff had already supplied the dialogue for us.

If I had written that scene it would have went a little different. The brother would have came outside after hearing that noise, saw his boy dressed in full yellow Indian gear and said something like this….

“ Man…what the F#$k are you doing walking around looking like Big Bird on this dark ass street? …. <<>> ….Get your crazy ass inside before the National Guard come by and shoots all our asses. You done loss your rabbit ass mind out here acting like a one man parade. Hey Bay, I’ll be back. I’m going around here with Albert crazy ass and help him with the bar before we all get locked up.”

Also at Back of Town, Alli is slapping me upside the noggin right now.

I’ve heard Jeffrey say how he didn’t like The Wire, either, and I suppose that’s fine, but that means he probably went into the viewing experience with a different opinion of David Simon.

That’s my first problem with his review – he doesn’t trust the storyteller.

Trust the storyteller? Are you nuts? That is always the first and worst mistake. (Imagine a smiley or something here)

Give them access to parking spaces

Fun facts about filming in New Orleans:

In New Orleans, filmmakers have it made when it comes to setting up shop.

No permit is needed, just a request by City Hall to check in. The city’s film office, with three employees, fields complaints, calls and questions, and acts as a liaison for disgruntled residents wondering when street parking will be available.

Crews must abide by parking regulations, said Jennifer Day, director of the city’s Office of Film and Video. They must also abide by the rules of any agency that oversees the location. Filming in Jackson Square, for example, requires strict compliance with the parks department.

“They call it ‘film-friendly,’” said Day. “One of the reasons we are attracting the business from California is that they have come up with such strict guidelines. Because of the unprecedented success we have had, there are some issues.”

In last week's Gambit, Chris Rose summarized the most recent round of controversy between New Orleans Police and Mardi Gras Indian tribes over their use of the public streets.

The cops and other public critics of the Indians ­— and there are more than a few ­— have come to resent the Indians' casual flouting of city permit laws, particularly when it comes to providing parade route maps and details. But that's just the thing: There is no route.

And there are no rules. And this is why a unique accord needs to be crafted by a forward-thinker from City Hall ­— which doesn't seem in the offing; Ray Nagin's administration has chosen its usual course of indifference to deal with this controversy.

The thing is, the whole mystique behind the Indians' elaborate street theater is that observers who want to get near the action don't actually know when and where the tribes will be gathering. For instance, this Friday, March 19, is St. Joseph's Day, the biggest nighttime event of the year for the Indian Nation. Some 20 to 30 gangs will dress and prep all over town in the same fashion as float riders in a Mardi Gras parade.

The entire premise of the unfolding drama is based on assorted spy boys, flag boys and wild men to prance and sneak up and down streets, communicating by whistle and flag, literally playing an advanced-form adult version of hide-and-seek. Eventually, the Big Chiefs are led to each other by their underlings and the dance is on, accompanied by flurries of insults and challenges that might make even the saltiest of rappers blush. The Big Chiefs argue over who's prettiest like bantams strutting the barnyard. Then the steely veneers of the Chief and his underlings melt away, hugs and handshakes are exchanged, and the tribes wander off in different directions, looking for more tribes to throw down against.

So, the map thing? Yeah, it doesn't really work. So, what's the solution? To lock it all down with rules and designated parade areas would wind up making Indian culture a museum piece rather a vibrant, living organism. The whole pageantry and ritual would disappear. The point of it all would die.

Rose is right to wonder why no "forward-thinkers" at City Hall have come up with a "unique accord" to accommodate our city's authentic celebrants since obviously they've managed just such an arrangement for the fake ones.

You know I hate that drama thing*

Not to spend too much time on this subject but what I'm saying essentially is that I just don't make much distinction between David Simon's dramatic reenactment of events sold as some sort of documentary truth and... say... this.

Before shooting began on the current New Orleans season of "Real World," pre-production announcements by Bunim-Murray Productions, the Los Angeles company that pioneered the series, seemed targeted at reversing that reputation by promising its cast would participate in recovery activities.

"Hurricane Katrina threw New Orleans for a punch, but the city is coming back, and we're hoping our cast members and the series can play a small role in the city's rebirth," said Jon Murray, co-creator and executive producer, in a news release.

At the same time MTV heralded "Real World's" high-minded return to New Orleans, however, the network was striking pop-culture gold with "Jersey Shore," a "Real World" clone that celebrates less-than-altruistic values.

The "Real World" episodes in production here now are expected to air later this year.

Flot, the police spokesman, wondered whether the toothbrush episode might have been contrived to get attention for the upcoming New Orleans season.

"This is a reality show," he said, "so who's to say this wasn't done just for some publicity?"

The details of the "toothbrush episode" are covered earlier in this story.

It started as a routine stop for New Orleans police: On March 1, officers were dispatched to look into a disturbance Uptown in the 1600 block of Dufossat Street.

What unfolded from that point was the stuff of reality TV -- literally.

The call came because a cast member of MTV's "Real World," now filming in New Orleans, had accused another of urinating on his toothbrush and then using it to scrub the toilet. The aggrieved housemate, Ryan Leslie, blamed the tainted toothbrush for a subsequent illness and summoned police. Though police conducted interviews and confiscated evidence, no one was arrested.

Whatever they say about their intentions, all of this pretty much amounts to peeing on our collective toothbrush and selling that for someone else's amusement.

And that's the last I'll have to say about this for a while, I hope. EDIT: It's the last I'll have to say until I actually watch Treme which I obviously pretty much have to do now.

*

I'm not gonna watch Treme

My wife is from Baltimore and, the way she tells it, everyone there seemed to think of The Wire as a nuisance more than anything else. I've already had enough of my attempts at parking/walking/driving around town disrupted by the Treme crews to be sort of pissed myself. And besides, I don't get HBO and won't order it just for one show.

I like David Simon. From what I've seen and read, he appears to have a lot of important things to say about journalism, crime, and urban America. (For a taste, here is on the Bill Moyers show last year) But, and this is a personal take, I also think preachy TV melodrama is a horrible medium for communicating anything of worth to anyone. For me, the treatment of real-life problems as fodder for non-satirical serial tele-fiction only trivializes those issues to their own detriment. If I read a story in the paper about murder or flood victims, I feel sympathy for them and outrage at the conditions responsible for their plight. If I have to watch a contrived after-school special about whiny fictional approximations of those victims, I am rooting for the malevolent conditions. The bits of The Wire I've seen have generated no exception to this phenomenon.

At the same time, I know that other people, for whatever reason, aren't as sensitive to these issues as I am and will be watching and discussing the show as it airs. I will be interested in reading what they have to say about it.

Update: First of all, Ugh! If you feel like picking through that sprawling mess of a New York Times Magazine piece be my guest. Better to just take a look at the synopsis provided here by the Gambit blog. I know it's a TV series and thus designed to spin out indefinitely, but could someone at least begin to describe the plotline here?

More importantly, the characters are pretty much another assemblage of NOLA cliches designed to please tourists, transplants, and Jazzfest assholes. And that's no surprise. The show is written for a relatively affluent national audience (HBO subscribers). Under ordinary circumstances, I'd just write it off as more of the same bullshit packaging of NOLA-Disney for the Yuppie Intellectual we've been rotting with for most of our lives. But this is different. Here is Treme's primary pitch according to its HBO pub,

TREME begins in fall 2005, three months after Hurricane Katrina and the massive engineering failure in which flood control failed throughout New Orleans, flooding 80 percent of the city and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. Fictional events depicted in the series will honor the actual chronology of political, economic and cultural events following the storm.

This isn't just a cheap trip to New Orleans. Instead, we are asked to see it as a dissertation on the effects of the Flood on the people of the city brought to us by critically acclaimed "auteur" (NYT's word) David Simon. In other words, a national audience is asked to believe it will be seeing something of authoritative substance regarding a catastrophic event. But Treme purports to "honor" New Orleans's experience of the Federal Flood through a palate of characters who represent the most cartoonish image of the city as seen from the outside.

Ordinarily I'd be irked. But because Treme baldly sells itself as a bid for the sympathies of the nation, I am actually pissed off. Not everyone in New Orleans is a musician or a chef... or a musical chef... or a guy who writes about musical chefs. We're a more complicated place than all of that. Frankly, I think we're a much better place than what that caricature suggests. But the underlying message conveyed by Treme is that flood victims don't merit concern on the basis of their humanity alone. It's telling us what's really important is that we (well some of us anyway) can sing and dance.

I don't do either very well and yet I want my city preserved anyway. We all should want it preserved, rebuilt, protected, not because it contains some talented people but because all of its people are Americans whose home was broken by the Corps. Allowing that case to be diluted by interloping "auteurs" attuned to the sensibilities of middle-American intellectuals is ultimately more belittling than it is useful.