The Tumbleweed Umbrella
I got a call at 8 o'clock Saturday morning from a ten-year-old boy wanting to buy the N. Carolina house. Mr. Louis, he said, you probably don't remember me but...and then he explained who he was and ever since then I cannot get the image of this boy out of my head, as I remember him from 14 years ago. I am not imagining what he looks like as a 24-year-old.
I am at this sidewalk cafe in NYC called Le Jeep. It is a brisk, sunny morning in May. Le Jeep is on a corner. Me and this homeless guy nearby are watching a two man crew clean out the storm drain across the street. One man with a shovel doing the detail work and the other man operating the boom on the dump truck. The boom has cables and pulleys and at the end of the cables is a bullet shaped caliper device which lowers into the drain hole from which the grate has been removed. The caliper goes in closed and then opens and closes around muck and sludge which is lifted up dripping and then deposited into the back of the dump truck.
People keep tripping over the same mangled umbrella which has blown like a tumbleweed into the middle of the crosswalk. Shadows at the corner precede the people they are attached to but they fail to alert their owners to the mangled tumbleweed umbrella in the crosswalk.
Le Jeep is a cafe on wheels and will circle the block when the street sweeper arrives.
When the crew finishes cleaning out the drain a man comes out from the corner store and hooks up a garden hose and proceeds to wash the stray muck back into the drain. A police van pulls up and honks at the man with the garden hose. He waves happily. Two cops exit the vehicle and the one cop shakes the man's hand and pats him on the back and the other cop shakes his wrist because he may be suspicious of where the man's hand has been.
There are croissant crumbs littering the floor of Le Jeep. Two empty coffee cups with foam in the bottom sit in cup holders. Bernadette has gone off to Pilates so it's just me at the cafe now, and in the back seat the 10-year-old N. Carolina boy who stares quietly out the window without an idea in his head. He doesn't have any friends, except this grandmother. She will die soon and leave her house to the boy's older brother, who is a marine. The boy will wait 14 years and then call me at 8 o'clock in the morning. I will have the night before accepted an invitation to a concert of a band called The Cure. I will be groggy at 8 o'clock in the morning but carry on with a professional attitude. I will say I remember him and I do. He was a distinctly lonely-seeming boy back then, and now 14 years later he spends part of his day haunting me.
I came up to attend the funeral of Bernadette's mom.
Behind the cafe Le Jeep is another cafe run by three loud guys named Steve, Angelo and Tony. Tony jabs the air between him and Steve with his index finger and makes an argument that apparently Steve has heard before. Steve is following with his eyes a woman walking along the sidewalk behind Tony. The woman's dress blows up, Steve whistles, and Tony turns around. Tony shrugs like he's seen better and puffs on his cigarette. I look behind me to see if the boy has followed any of this but he is just staring off in the opposite direction at an empty playground surrounded by an 18 foot tall chain-link fence.
...more recent posts
It Turns Black
The bloodstain by the debris pile on the Dumaine sidewalk was by noon the next day turning black. The stain was large. More blood turning black than I think I was prepared to see. The 17 year old boy it belonged to was in the morgue. He was cooling off now about 14 hours. He wasn't alone. His friend was with him, also refrigerated. I had not seen the second boy's bloodstain. I think he bled out in the grass of a lawn two houses down. I was worried it was some boys I might know but it was not. These two boys were Lafitte project exiles, and had survived last week's drive-by attempt, but not this one.
I was on the block two days previous delivering some furniture I had taken possession of 2 years ago, after the last big hurricane.
The furniture I was returning was coming from my house six blocks away and the person to whom I rent my place had very graciously allowed me and my party to stay there during our four day visit for Jazzfest, while she escaped to a Florida beach.
The person to whom I was delivering the furniture has been mentoring kids on that block of Dumaine for the last 13 years. I participated briefly for a couple of years back in the mid to late nineties. Some of the boys I knew are still around, in their early twenties now, and I got to see three of them, just long enough to say hi and shake hands or in the case of G, who is on at least a temporary probation from entering the property, just a wave.
F looked good, has cut off his long hair, I think in an attempt to distance himself somewhat from the street culture. He was imprisoned last year for a couple of months on a false murder charge.
L got out of jail a few months ago and also looked very good, and was carrying one of his babies.
S is doing two to five so I did not see him in person but did finally get to see the documentary my Dumaine friend helped produce and S is in it briefly, projecting a thug-like personality, but admitting he does not want to die on the street. And not wanting to may be enough but some of us fear it may not be. He could survive though because not all these kids die on the street and the fact that two were murdered on Sunday and a few blocks away two more on Saturday (with a third in critical condition) and the previous week 8 more were killed around town, in a city of barely 300,000, does not change the fact that people are surviving, while all around them blood stains slowly fade.
On Monday I returned the DVD of the documentary to Dumaine. It was there that this mentor person, who after losing count at five the number of murders on this block in the last 18 months, had said, yeah, the blood is still out there from last night. So that's why I looked for it when I left. It wasn't hard to see. There was so much of it.
Of the five boys sitting on the stoop behind the debris pile in front of which is the blood stain, two of them have guns in their pockets. How do I know this? I am a good guesser.
I'm afraid the New Orleans police force may be suffering from the few bad apple syndrome and that the pressure of keeping law in a lawless and broken town is taking its toll on that small percentage of the NOPD, and they are cracking up. Unfortunately, the community relations damage some of these officers are creating by beating up suspects and planting drugs and projecting a kiss my ass aggressive attitude, is moving the city farther away from real solutions, and losing the police that tenuous thread of support they may have once come almost close to attaining.
Jazzfest was fine, I went one day with Bernadette and our friends from NY, Jesse and Sparkle (and their new baby, whom I haven't made up a name for yet), and my friend from college days, Malcolm Gates. We took off Saturday and I did some work on my house while they drove around exploring the city 2.5 years after the flood. That night we all went to Tipitina's with my nephew (who is not a chef but plays one in the Superdome), and his wife, and we saw the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama and it was pretty fine. They sang near the end a version of Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. I felt lifted by the Spirit.
The bloodstain by the debris pile on the Dumaine sidewalk was by noon the next day turning black. The stain was large. More blood turning black than I think I was prepared to see. The 17 year old boy it belonged to was in the morgue. He was cooling off now about 14 hours. He wasn't alone. His friend was with him, also refrigerated. I had not seen the second boy's bloodstain. I think he bled out in the grass of a lawn two houses down. I was worried it was some boys I might know but it was not. These two boys were Lafitte project exiles, and had survived last week's drive-by attempt, but not this one.
I was on the block two days previous delivering some furniture I had taken possession of 2 years ago, after the last big hurricane.
The furniture I was returning was coming from my house six blocks away and the person to whom I rent my place had very graciously allowed me and my party to stay there during our four day visit for Jazzfest, while she escaped to a Florida beach.
The person to whom I was delivering the furniture has been mentoring kids on that block of Dumaine for the last 13 years. I participated briefly for a couple of years back in the mid to late nineties. Some of the boys I knew are still around, in their early twenties now, and I got to see three of them, just long enough to say hi and shake hands or in the case of G, who is on at least a temporary probation from entering the property, just a wave.
F looked good, has cut off his long hair, I think in an attempt to distance himself somewhat from the street culture. He was imprisoned last year for a couple of months on a false murder charge.
L got out of jail a few months ago and also looked very good, and was carrying one of his babies.
S is doing two to five so I did not see him in person but did finally get to see the documentary my Dumaine friend helped produce and S is in it briefly, projecting a thug-like personality, but admitting he does not want to die on the street. And not wanting to may be enough but some of us fear it may not be. He could survive though because not all these kids die on the street and the fact that two were murdered on Sunday and a few blocks away two more on Saturday (with a third in critical condition) and the previous week 8 more were killed around town, in a city of barely 300,000, does not change the fact that people are surviving, while all around them blood stains slowly fade.
On Monday I returned the DVD of the documentary to Dumaine. It was there that this mentor person, who after losing count at five the number of murders on this block in the last 18 months, had said, yeah, the blood is still out there from last night. So that's why I looked for it when I left. It wasn't hard to see. There was so much of it.
Of the five boys sitting on the stoop behind the debris pile in front of which is the blood stain, two of them have guns in their pockets. How do I know this? I am a good guesser.
I'm afraid the New Orleans police force may be suffering from the few bad apple syndrome and that the pressure of keeping law in a lawless and broken town is taking its toll on that small percentage of the NOPD, and they are cracking up. Unfortunately, the community relations damage some of these officers are creating by beating up suspects and planting drugs and projecting a kiss my ass aggressive attitude, is moving the city farther away from real solutions, and losing the police that tenuous thread of support they may have once come almost close to attaining.
Jazzfest was fine, I went one day with Bernadette and our friends from NY, Jesse and Sparkle (and their new baby, whom I haven't made up a name for yet), and my friend from college days, Malcolm Gates. We took off Saturday and I did some work on my house while they drove around exploring the city 2.5 years after the flood. That night we all went to Tipitina's with my nephew (who is not a chef but plays one in the Superdome), and his wife, and we saw the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama and it was pretty fine. They sang near the end a version of Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. I felt lifted by the Spirit.
One Shoe Baby
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep parked in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of 10th St. and Second Avenue. I watched belly buttons pass by while Bernadette retrieved chicken soup from Veselka's. Some belly buttons were pierced and some were tattooed. Some were without marking at all but existed so far above the pant line that I had to reconsider the definition of clothing, and in this latter case, where the belly button seemed to be floating so impossibly high, the purpose of clothing was clearly to accentuate nakedness.
As eye catching as public nakedness may be, I was soon distracted from this spectacle of skin by a man with a baby in a backpack. The man was tall. The baby was not small. The man leaned forward against the weight. The baby leaned into the man. As they crossed Second Ave. heading west on 10th I noticed the baby was missing one shoe. I saw the man's future. I heard him getting yelled at because money doesn't grow on trees and neither do shoes. I exited the vehicle with the windows down and the engine running and started out after the man who carried his baby in a backpack. I had no clear intention. Was I going to cobble a shoe while in pursuit, say you dropped this sir, and risk bringing to attention the rare foot disorder which required the baby to only wear one shoe?
On 10th near the corner of 3rd Ave. I passed a vampire sitting on a stoop and he tipped towards me a cup filled with red liquid and said, cheers.
At Washington Square I caught site of the man as he weaved his way around a circle of white men with dreadlocks playing drums, but then I lost him again in the crowd.
The next time I saw him I was exiting the elevator onto the top floor of the Empire State Building, just as the man and baby were entering the down elevator.
Around 42nd St. I had to enter an office building, get a quick photo ID made at the security desk, insert the ID into a turnstile blocking the elevators, go up four floors, make three lefts and two rights, knock on a door, enter and explain myself, apologize for not being Bernadette, explain various lackings that would prevent me from ever being Bernadette, reach a hesitant agreement, pick up her taxes, and exit the way I came in. I offered up my ID but the security man said I could keep it.
At St. Patrick's Cathedral I was close enough to touch the man but when he entered a pew and sat down to pray I stepped back to reconsider my sin of pride which was believing that I could in any way positively affect this man's life.
While the man prayed I crossed the street and entered Sak's Fifth Avenue in search of a bathroom. I had the beginnings of a mild panic attack amidst the eight floors of high end consumer goods as I kept exiting elevators onto floors that only offered women's restrooms.
Back on the street I saw the man loading his baby into a cab and I flagged the next one passing, thinking, is there any way around all this predictable derivation? I mean, I'm going to chase this guy around the landmarks of the city, just narrowly missing him each time, my goals vague, barely even passing muster as narrator, and for what? Just to return with an unlikely timing to a Jeep that has not been towed away or stolen or inhabited by a homeless family who are tapping their toes on the dash while listening to XM 101, the sounds of Jamaica?
I should just go back now. I mean come on, people. The guy is going to circle all the way back to the corner where the Jeep is parked and he's going to find the shoe. Get it? No? Exactly, neither do I.
I did stop first in the bowels of Grand Central for a dozen oysters. Unfortunately though, one of the dozen was apparently grown in the bowels of a dying sea monster and here I just seem to be going down the list of deadly sins because it was gluttony that caused me to eat the damn stinky oyster, even after smelling it I knew I shouldn't. I didn't die though. I just went on living.
I entered the Jeep through the sun roof, installed just seconds earlier for this purpose, so that I could throw you a curve, ha, no, he's not waking from a dream at the end, he's returning from an astral projection, which I guess doesn't really require a sun roof, so I can save on that.
Bernadette returned carrying soup and blintzes. As she pulled away from the curb she pointed and said look at that guy with the baby in a backpack. No thank you, I said.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep parked in front of a fire hydrant at the corner of 10th St. and Second Avenue. I watched belly buttons pass by while Bernadette retrieved chicken soup from Veselka's. Some belly buttons were pierced and some were tattooed. Some were without marking at all but existed so far above the pant line that I had to reconsider the definition of clothing, and in this latter case, where the belly button seemed to be floating so impossibly high, the purpose of clothing was clearly to accentuate nakedness.
As eye catching as public nakedness may be, I was soon distracted from this spectacle of skin by a man with a baby in a backpack. The man was tall. The baby was not small. The man leaned forward against the weight. The baby leaned into the man. As they crossed Second Ave. heading west on 10th I noticed the baby was missing one shoe. I saw the man's future. I heard him getting yelled at because money doesn't grow on trees and neither do shoes. I exited the vehicle with the windows down and the engine running and started out after the man who carried his baby in a backpack. I had no clear intention. Was I going to cobble a shoe while in pursuit, say you dropped this sir, and risk bringing to attention the rare foot disorder which required the baby to only wear one shoe?
On 10th near the corner of 3rd Ave. I passed a vampire sitting on a stoop and he tipped towards me a cup filled with red liquid and said, cheers.
At Washington Square I caught site of the man as he weaved his way around a circle of white men with dreadlocks playing drums, but then I lost him again in the crowd.
The next time I saw him I was exiting the elevator onto the top floor of the Empire State Building, just as the man and baby were entering the down elevator.
Around 42nd St. I had to enter an office building, get a quick photo ID made at the security desk, insert the ID into a turnstile blocking the elevators, go up four floors, make three lefts and two rights, knock on a door, enter and explain myself, apologize for not being Bernadette, explain various lackings that would prevent me from ever being Bernadette, reach a hesitant agreement, pick up her taxes, and exit the way I came in. I offered up my ID but the security man said I could keep it.
At St. Patrick's Cathedral I was close enough to touch the man but when he entered a pew and sat down to pray I stepped back to reconsider my sin of pride which was believing that I could in any way positively affect this man's life.
While the man prayed I crossed the street and entered Sak's Fifth Avenue in search of a bathroom. I had the beginnings of a mild panic attack amidst the eight floors of high end consumer goods as I kept exiting elevators onto floors that only offered women's restrooms.
Back on the street I saw the man loading his baby into a cab and I flagged the next one passing, thinking, is there any way around all this predictable derivation? I mean, I'm going to chase this guy around the landmarks of the city, just narrowly missing him each time, my goals vague, barely even passing muster as narrator, and for what? Just to return with an unlikely timing to a Jeep that has not been towed away or stolen or inhabited by a homeless family who are tapping their toes on the dash while listening to XM 101, the sounds of Jamaica?
I should just go back now. I mean come on, people. The guy is going to circle all the way back to the corner where the Jeep is parked and he's going to find the shoe. Get it? No? Exactly, neither do I.
I did stop first in the bowels of Grand Central for a dozen oysters. Unfortunately though, one of the dozen was apparently grown in the bowels of a dying sea monster and here I just seem to be going down the list of deadly sins because it was gluttony that caused me to eat the damn stinky oyster, even after smelling it I knew I shouldn't. I didn't die though. I just went on living.
I entered the Jeep through the sun roof, installed just seconds earlier for this purpose, so that I could throw you a curve, ha, no, he's not waking from a dream at the end, he's returning from an astral projection, which I guess doesn't really require a sun roof, so I can save on that.
Bernadette returned carrying soup and blintzes. As she pulled away from the curb she pointed and said look at that guy with the baby in a backpack. No thank you, I said.
Faulkner Nobel Speech
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. William Faulkner, 1949
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. William Faulkner, 1949
Chicken Feet Vignette
It's time to move the car. Hit the snooze button once more. I was parked for two days on Stanton under a light pole on top of which was precariously perched a baby elephant with uncertain fecal continence. The windshield was encrusted. I would need to glue razors to my wiper blades to get this crap off. Bernadette was down in Chinatown picking up chicken feet for breakfast. We were going to eat feet in the car while waiting for the street sweepers to pass. I was not hung over but I wasn't far from it. Chicken feet and elephant poop for breakfast. My lust for life was ebbing at this precise moment. I felt the weight of the world crushing down on me. It was as if a large mammal was hovering in the airspace above. If I left this parking space Bernadette might not be able to find me and while looking around could herself be crushed by the tottering Proboscidea Mammalia. I moved anyway, and parked at a meter where I hoped to intercept her before the befalling danger. As engrossed as I'm sure you all are in this taut, ill conceived, poorly delivered and unlikely tale, in the end nothing happened that would warrant you reading any further.
It's time to move the car. Hit the snooze button once more. I was parked for two days on Stanton under a light pole on top of which was precariously perched a baby elephant with uncertain fecal continence. The windshield was encrusted. I would need to glue razors to my wiper blades to get this crap off. Bernadette was down in Chinatown picking up chicken feet for breakfast. We were going to eat feet in the car while waiting for the street sweepers to pass. I was not hung over but I wasn't far from it. Chicken feet and elephant poop for breakfast. My lust for life was ebbing at this precise moment. I felt the weight of the world crushing down on me. It was as if a large mammal was hovering in the airspace above. If I left this parking space Bernadette might not be able to find me and while looking around could herself be crushed by the tottering Proboscidea Mammalia. I moved anyway, and parked at a meter where I hoped to intercept her before the befalling danger. As engrossed as I'm sure you all are in this taut, ill conceived, poorly delivered and unlikely tale, in the end nothing happened that would warrant you reading any further.
Critique Before Pancakes
Bernadette walking down 1st Ave. just above Houston began foot-tapping her niece, Sofia, and me on the other side, in the ass, with an alternating back kick while still moving forward, and in doing so resembled a member of the ministry of funny walks. Bernadette earlier in a lapse of cognitive prowess had asked the cashier at the movie house how old one had be to qualify for a child's ticket. Sofia, a few years shy of being old enough to vote, suffered this patiently. After the third kick in the ass Sofia asked Bernadette--"and how old are you?" Bill Macy walked a few strides ahead, easily pretending he did not know us.
We had seen Persepolis, an animated recent history of Iran over the last 35 years as seen through the eyes of a child progressing towards adulthood.
A central theme in the movie is pride in one's heritage, under adverse conditions.
This morning, after picking up a paper on Clinton I walked a couple of blocks west to a diner on Houston and just as I approached the restaurant, coming from the opposite direction were three mean ass looking, wife-beater wearing, Puerto-Rican restaurant critics. They all looked to be in foul spirit but the middle critic was the most vocal about it. "Don't ever eat here," he said to his buddies while motioning to the door handle I was ten seconds away from grabbing. I am not one to ignore the opinions of others so I paused and waited for more, but hoping they would quickly pass so I would not seem to be a direct threat to this man's contention that the restaurant was unworthy. I did not want him up in my face saying, "you calling me a liar?" and me thinking, hopefully not out loud, "certainly not my good man; puffed up, aggressive, a foul-mouthed belligerent asshole, perhaps, but liar? No, really, I haven't a shred of evidence to support the idea of you as single-parent prevaricator, a lying bastard, if you will."
The apoplectic critic spewed on as I looked for an imaginary something in my coat pocket, then feeling a likely prop, extracted my cell phone and checked for messages which were unlikely to exist nor in any case could I see, as my glasses were hanging around my neck.
I waited for his specific critique of this restaurant, although I already knew the place to be not really all that good. In the end he surprised me by saying, "it's...it's full of fucking white people." Lucky for me I was born with a chameleon-like speckled complexion, but still I hesitated to enter the restaurant, right in front of these guys now, because to be casually inspected I certainly do appear to be white. In the end though I manned up and entered, pretty much a straight up white guy, my dominant Arab blood hidden for better or worse behind a very successful assimilation into the world of white middle class America.
Bernadette walking down 1st Ave. just above Houston began foot-tapping her niece, Sofia, and me on the other side, in the ass, with an alternating back kick while still moving forward, and in doing so resembled a member of the ministry of funny walks. Bernadette earlier in a lapse of cognitive prowess had asked the cashier at the movie house how old one had be to qualify for a child's ticket. Sofia, a few years shy of being old enough to vote, suffered this patiently. After the third kick in the ass Sofia asked Bernadette--"and how old are you?" Bill Macy walked a few strides ahead, easily pretending he did not know us.
We had seen Persepolis, an animated recent history of Iran over the last 35 years as seen through the eyes of a child progressing towards adulthood.
A central theme in the movie is pride in one's heritage, under adverse conditions.
This morning, after picking up a paper on Clinton I walked a couple of blocks west to a diner on Houston and just as I approached the restaurant, coming from the opposite direction were three mean ass looking, wife-beater wearing, Puerto-Rican restaurant critics. They all looked to be in foul spirit but the middle critic was the most vocal about it. "Don't ever eat here," he said to his buddies while motioning to the door handle I was ten seconds away from grabbing. I am not one to ignore the opinions of others so I paused and waited for more, but hoping they would quickly pass so I would not seem to be a direct threat to this man's contention that the restaurant was unworthy. I did not want him up in my face saying, "you calling me a liar?" and me thinking, hopefully not out loud, "certainly not my good man; puffed up, aggressive, a foul-mouthed belligerent asshole, perhaps, but liar? No, really, I haven't a shred of evidence to support the idea of you as single-parent prevaricator, a lying bastard, if you will."
The apoplectic critic spewed on as I looked for an imaginary something in my coat pocket, then feeling a likely prop, extracted my cell phone and checked for messages which were unlikely to exist nor in any case could I see, as my glasses were hanging around my neck.
I waited for his specific critique of this restaurant, although I already knew the place to be not really all that good. In the end he surprised me by saying, "it's...it's full of fucking white people." Lucky for me I was born with a chameleon-like speckled complexion, but still I hesitated to enter the restaurant, right in front of these guys now, because to be casually inspected I certainly do appear to be white. In the end though I manned up and entered, pretty much a straight up white guy, my dominant Arab blood hidden for better or worse behind a very successful assimilation into the world of white middle class America.
Shooting Fish In A Frying Pan
In the mid nineties in New Orleans on the night of New Year's Eve the sound of celebratory gunfire in the ghettos was so astounding it defies description. People in war zones have certainly heard such noise but in an American city not at war (or maybe at war with itself), the range of weapon caliber and the stacatto of automatic machine guns combined with the methodic emptying of 9mm thirteen round clips and .38 caliber 6 shot revolvers, all overlapping each other and then reaching impossible crescendoes, is something I cannot seem to get out of my mind.
Some eighty years previous, the young Louis Armstrong had shot off a gun on New Years Eve, gotten arrested for it, and then was sent off to spend time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. There, a regularly visiting Professor Peter Davis taught him a few things about the trumpet, and discipline, and the story of one young delinquent's life turns out pretty well.
In the nineties a tourist fell dead in the French Quarter from one of the thousands of rounds flying through the air that night and in subsequent years a crackdown occurred in an effort to curtail the danger of falling bullets. The campaign was called Falling Bullets Kill.
Yesterday, beloved New Orleans chef, Paul Prudhomme, while sitting on a New Orleans golf course blackening fish for PGA golfers, became front man for a new campaign known as Falling Bullets Scratch. While his fish sizzled in a pan under the noonday sun, Prudhomme felt a sting on his arm and when he lifted it to see what had stung him, a piece of .22 caliber lead fell from his shirt. It is not known who fired the gun but investigators surmise that it could have come from as far as a mile away. We are probably to be left in the dark as to whether or not the shooter is a prodigy of music, or just some guy in his backyard shooting at a squirrel in a tree.
In the mid nineties in New Orleans on the night of New Year's Eve the sound of celebratory gunfire in the ghettos was so astounding it defies description. People in war zones have certainly heard such noise but in an American city not at war (or maybe at war with itself), the range of weapon caliber and the stacatto of automatic machine guns combined with the methodic emptying of 9mm thirteen round clips and .38 caliber 6 shot revolvers, all overlapping each other and then reaching impossible crescendoes, is something I cannot seem to get out of my mind.
Some eighty years previous, the young Louis Armstrong had shot off a gun on New Years Eve, gotten arrested for it, and then was sent off to spend time at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. There, a regularly visiting Professor Peter Davis taught him a few things about the trumpet, and discipline, and the story of one young delinquent's life turns out pretty well.
In the nineties a tourist fell dead in the French Quarter from one of the thousands of rounds flying through the air that night and in subsequent years a crackdown occurred in an effort to curtail the danger of falling bullets. The campaign was called Falling Bullets Kill.
Yesterday, beloved New Orleans chef, Paul Prudhomme, while sitting on a New Orleans golf course blackening fish for PGA golfers, became front man for a new campaign known as Falling Bullets Scratch. While his fish sizzled in a pan under the noonday sun, Prudhomme felt a sting on his arm and when he lifted it to see what had stung him, a piece of .22 caliber lead fell from his shirt. It is not known who fired the gun but investigators surmise that it could have come from as far as a mile away. We are probably to be left in the dark as to whether or not the shooter is a prodigy of music, or just some guy in his backyard shooting at a squirrel in a tree.