blacksundae

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Originally uploaded by brundlefly.

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Originally uploaded by brundlefly.

Hung out with extended Texas family for Labor Day. They had horses, tons of kids running around, and two Chevy Bell Airs rusting away in the grass. Very cool.

Forwarded to me by Brandi, who appears to be having a sleepless night, just like me.

Mornings are bad, to be sure: that first minute after you wake up, and you remember all over again that you’re broke and everything is gone and your poor old cat is dead; but there, too, is your wife’s warm haunch, right where you left it, and there’s the gaping baby between you. And there on TV‚Äîin that weird, ragged, computerized footage that seems itself a sign of the Apocalypse‚Äîare the people left behind, raging and dying in the ruins. Thank God we’re gone.

Read on.

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Originally uploaded by brundlefly.

One of the upshots of the evacuation is that I have developed more of a rapport with my mother’s gold-crowned conure, Bubba, an animal I haven’t been too fond of in the past.

One of my best friends, Brandi, called me just now. She’s in Utah, working at one of her company’s other offices. We talked for a long time, trying to wrap our minds around what’s going on and failing miserably. I mentioned the possibility of my moving to the Bay Area, at least for a while, and she might join me out there. We’ll see. Part of me wants to move back to NOLA to rebuild, but another part of me thinks that the city is dead permanently.

New Orleans in the hands of urban planners is not New Orleans. It’s some cartoon approximation. I don’t know if I can deal with that.

While talking with Brandi, I cried for the first time since all this started. That’s a good sign, right? I don’t know. I’m lost.

Since evacuating early Sunday morning, I’ve been pulling my hair out worrying about a variety of different people. The center of my concerns has been a group of friends and filmmaking partners who decided to weather the storm in New Orleans. One of them is a manager of a hotel down town, and they decided as a group to evacuate vertically. After the phones went out, I heard nothing.

Finally, this afternoon I got a call.

They’re still in the hotel and not really leaving it for obvious reasons. They made the call through a Visa credit card line in the lobby, the only line in the building still working. They have a gas generator, but they’re running low on food and there’s no running water. They have four kids with them.

There is good news. They are sharing the building with a wide array of news media. Ariel, who is production manager on our project, is also a professional photographer, and is arranging paying work with various news services.

The really good news is Gabriel. Gabriel is our stunt man, and a total bad ass. He worked security for the Dream Team in the Atlanta Olympics. He’s a weapons expert, experienced with various fighting techniques and… well… yeah: a total bad ass. He’s heavily armed and has fended off several attempts to break into the building.

They’re okay for now, and I think they will be okay for a while. It’s horrible what they’ve seen, though. Robbery. Rape. Murder. Murders over bottles of water. Bodies lying in the streets, floating in the water. Police leaving people to die simply because they have no access to emergency medical services. In one of their few sorties into the outside world to secure supplies (I’d call it looting, but they’re white), they fended off three carjack attempts. As horrible as what they’ve seen is, I get the feeling their reporter roommates have seen worse. One of them described it as “Baghdad, but flooded.”

Anyway, my friends are under siege, and haven’t bathed for a while, but they’re alive and unharmed. We have to be thankful for the barest of things, don’t we? Thus, this post is being filed under “Encouraging.”

Just got this email from my friend Travis, who’s in Lafayette right now:

Last night, some fellow N.O. refugees and I passed around a napkin, taking turns adding two line.
This is the result.
I encourage you to add your own, playa…

Get up, we gots to go
Katrina gots ta get her due
I say: Katrina, FUCK YOU
Cuz I diss you I dismiss you

*spastic MC screams*
I hope you choke and cough
As you smile eat my pooooo!

*Chorus*
Katrina yous a ho!
Why so much wit da blow?
Ragging all up in the N.O.

When it rains, it pours,
Fuck you, go hang wit da whores!
Most tricks see playas, they rip they drawers
You see us, you breach our shores!
“Bros before hoes” is what I’ll say to cope
I’ve still gots my friends, you mean ass ho!

Pretty goofy, but it brought a much-needed smile to my face.

We’re really seeing the dark side of humanity with this whole Katrina thing. No, not the looters. Who the fuck cares about looting? Loot away. Steal a TV. You deserve it.

The whole “evacuation plan” was bullshit: “Drive away.” What if you’re poor? What if you don’t have a car? The bottom rung of the New Orleans economic ladder was completely written off. Abandoned.

And they’re mostly black, of course. So we leave them behind to drown, then get our panties in a bunch when they fuck up our Wal-Mart. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Frankly, I should have been left behind too. I’m dirt poor. No car. I was written off by the folks in charge, but my mother thought I was worth saving so I’m alive right now. I’m lucky.

It sucks being in limbo. I don’t know what condition my apartment is in; my job status; the condition of my family’s homes. More than anything, I don’t know where a huge chunk of my friends are.

Not a post of substance. Just worried. If anyone hears anything about the status of Uptown, around Claiborne and Carrollton, give me a heads up. Algiers as well, so I can set my mother’s mind at ease.

It was only a matter of time before we got slammed by a big honkin’ storm. I’m in Katy, Texas with my mother right now. I hope all you New Orleans readers are reading this from someplace not New Orleans.

I spent last night alternating between watching storm coverage and The Terminal on HBO. They complemented each other nicely. The Terminal is not a great movie — mildly cute, but not great — but there’s an appropriate feeling of helpless limbo and homelessness.

I left with the only two possessions I care about (my computer and my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary), abandoning my pack rat den of books and movies and trinkets. I have no idea what will be left of that. I also have no idea what will be left of the New Orleans film industry. Even if New Orleans comes out of this okay, will anyone want to shoot here again?

Eh.

Shit.

What was kind of nice was seeing that walking parade go down Oak St. a few hours before I fled. I remember thinking that, even if New Orleans is wiped off the map completely — even if it’s reduced to a lake of toxic sludge — it went out with a bunch of scantily-clad locals playing music in the street. Fucking A.