UPDATE: 8:04pm CDT Hope this helps.
Jesus. I hope they get those people off the streets. Call the American Red Cross: (866) 438-4636. Donate what you can, and use this number to look for any friends or relatives who stayed behind with whom you can't get in touch. NOLA.com posts that "there is a database being developed for people who are missing and may need to be rescued from New Orleans. Call 225-925-6626 to give officials their names. They may also have information about people already rescued. We attempted to check this number and were unable to get through (busy signal)." Call FEMA to begin the assistance process: 1-800-621-FEMA or http://www.fema.gov. (Call FEMA while you can, before Bush finishes his appalling process of dismantling it.) Hopeful news. I just found out that my sister Marie's neighborhood in Marrero is probably okay, very little wind damage and no flooding in pretty much the whole neighborhood. I'm still trying to find out about Mike, Rhonda and Mia's house in Tall Timbers, but from what I've been hearing that might be okay as well. The West Bank seems to have fared relatively well, far better than the East Bank. Polimom's blog reports that Algiers Point took some damage but is mostly okay. If that's the case, that close to the river, then I'm hoping Tall Timbers did well too. Unfortunately, according to some televised aerial footage my sister saw, our parents' house in New Orleans East is not visible, completely submerged. I'm ... numb. When I'm not numb I'm a sobbing wreck. Fortunately, everyone's keeping me busy; my family, spread out between Lafayette, Shreveport and Birmingham, have difficulty contacting each other but seem to have a relatively easy time contacting me, so I'm a messaging hub and Internet looker-upper. It's good to be busy, and I've taken leave from work until next week, 'cause I have to confess that I really couldn't give a crap about a single thing going on there right now, and that's not fair to them. 2:07am. I should probably get to bed. Thoughts from N.O. musician Jack Fine. (Thanks to Mary for contributing to this post.) When I was home three weeks ago, we met Jack Fine, a longtime trumpet player in New Orleans, 78 years of age, and the leader of the Palmetto Bug Stompers, who play every Sunday at the Old Point Bar in Algiers Point. We talked for a while; he seems like a great, great guy. I was just watching CNN, and there was his voice; he had apparently stayed behind and ridden the storm and floods out in his home in Algiers. He's alive and well, and called in to Paula Zahn's show to describe what he was seeing and feeling. Thanking Gawd for TiVo and its ability to rewind live television because of its buffer, I transcribed these comments from Jack:
God bless him. That's so New Orleans. Long may he blow. And New Orleans too. Can and will New Orleans be rebuilt? Governor Blanco and the director of FEMA: "Absolutely. Absolutely." This was before the breach in the 17th Street Canal got worse, but the city's already 80% flooded anyway. This is what he need to hear, and what we need to believe, to make it happen. We're going to need every ounce of effort from everyone who loves New Orleans, and we're going to have to take it one day at a time. Vermin. (Updated 11:34am) There's a plague in New Orleans right now -- alligators and poisonous snakes are everywhere, as are the most vile form of vermin I can think of at the moment -- looters. It's one thing for desperately hungry and thirsty people to go into stores and take food and water. It's another thing entirely when human scum, taking callous advantage of a catastrophic, desperate situation are looting stores for everything from big screen TVs to basketball goals. My friend Matt called to see how I was doing, and said his mom watched news footage of the looters and wondered, incredulously, "Where are they going to put that stuff?" From the T-P story: "Watching the sordid display and shaking his head in disgust, one firefighter said of the scene: 'It's a fucking hurricane, what are you [going to] do with a basketball goal?'" There have also been robberies and carjackings, and some of the looters are going house to house, breaking in or going in through smashed windows.
Children's Hospital. With a hundred terrified, sick kids inside. Jesus Christ. (UPDATE: This is apparently not true. See comments for story.) Many police are either unable or unwilling to do anything about it, and in fact some police are actually joining in on the looting. Here's a picture of a New Orleans police officer looting DVDs from a Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District.
Kevin, another New Orleans refugee who wrote in last night, wrote in and told me about this picture in the online paper, saying, "This might be a good picture to put out on the blogosphere; it's as clear as a passport photo. Someone has to know his name. I'd love to see it broadcast far and wide so it can follow him for the rest of his life." Other police officials said that even if they arrest them, there's no place to put them. How about in a body bag, after putting a round through their heads? Just an idea. [ Link to today's entries ]
UPDATE, 4pm N.O. time: "East New Orleans underwater" From the WDSU Katrina blog:
Shit. I wish they'd be more specific. East New Orleans is big. Some areas are bound to be worse than others. Down but not out. Jon Donley's weblog at the Times-Picayune makes me feel good:
Kermit Ruffins asks, "What is New Orleans? New Orleans is ... red beans and rice on a Monday night." Even right after it just had its ass kicked by a hurricane. Yeah you rite. We're getting flooded, but apparently not to the doomsday levels that they had been talking about. I just saw a live camera shot of the Quarter, and there's hardly any water there at all. (Lots of wind damage, though.) Unfortunately, I'm hearing about people cowering in their attics in N.O. East, six feet of water in the Ninth Ward, and flooding and a diesel spill on the West Bank, all places where I've got family and friends. I wish they'd be more specific about where the localized flooding is happening. I'm still digging around trying to find out what's going on. I'm glad Poppy decided to bug out. They were going to try to ride it out at first, and that worried me. My uncle on the North Shore also was going to try to ride it out, in a hotel in Covington, but I'm glad he changed his mind too. His house is right on the shore of the lake, too ... yeesh. I hope it's still there. UPDATE: Ugh. Chalmette and Arabi are under up to 12 feet of water, and it's probably the same in the Lower Ninth. (Residents reported that Rocky and Carlo's is underwater.) I just saw footage from CNN with chest-deep water on the I-10 near the Florida Ave. / West End Blvd. exit, and some dimwit trying to drive through it and having to be rescued. If anyone hears anything flooding-wise about New Orleans East around Read Blvd., or in Marrero, Algiers or Faubourg Marigny, please drop in a comment. Quotes of the day. Just so that I won't be all doom and gloom drama queeny here, I present a couple of my favorite local hurricane-related quotes:
To be fair, Schiro was "highly visible" during Betsy, according to a N.O. Public Library article, and is "unfairly remembered" for that remark. It's still funny, though. Hope? 6am. The alcohol is the only thing that got me any sleep; fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV and the live net feed from WWL. It looks like the eye missed us by at least 40 miles, but it's still going to be bad. It's weakened to a Category 4, but of course, several of the worst-case scenarios described a Category 3. We had a slight turn to the east, with the eye coming ashore between Gulfport and Biloxi, so the Mississippi Gulf Coast is going to get it worse, but we're not out of the woods yet by any means. There's several more hours of this to go. Shit, the roof of the Superdome is leaking, with rain pouring in. Bill Capo on WWL was debunking reports that 1/12 of the roof had "peeled away" and was gone, but the latest is that there are currently two nine-foot holes in the roof. Just saw the picture ... Jesus.
[ Link to today's entries ]
Pray for New Orleans. My family's out, they're all okay. They might be homeless by Tuesday, though.
WWL-TV live coverage (while it lasts). Here's what the National Weather Service is saying as of this afternoon:
I'm pretty much in a state of disbelief at the moment. The damage from this hurricane is likely to be "apocalyptic", as terrified experts keep saying. By this time on Tuesday, the New Orleans I love might not exist, and will almost certainly never be the same. I can't even begin to think of how many casualties we might have. I'll be drinking heavily as of now. [ Link to today's entries ]
Food art. Via GreggO, here's an amazing online exhibition of photographs by Douglas Gayeton entitled "My Shoes Are Caked With Mud: A Tuscan Photo Exhibition". They depict people he's met in Italy (where he lives part-time) who make olive oil, wine, sausage, and the like. The photographs are hand-annotated with observations, definitions, recipes, and are wonderful. My only quibble is that I wish they were larger on the site, as it's often hard to read the handwriting on the images, but well worth the effort. Bravo! Glorious geekery. Via The Brad, here's a set of business cards that Kevin Trotman bought back in the 1980s. Big deal, right? Well, he bought them at a SF convention, and they're the "business cards" of a bunch of "Star Trek" characters. They're all done with completely generic business card clip art, and they work perfectly. "Kang, Klingon Command. Wars Arranged, Planets Conquered. No War Too Small." Hee hee. John Cleese and the semicolon. Poor John Cleese. He's got a bout of diverticulitis (eek, that's nasty, my grandma has that), "the main reason for [which] is rooted in his gluttony." Turns out he has to have a few bits of his colon removed, by a surgeon "whose Parkinson's is only in an early stage." (Well, fair play to him.) Always kind to his fans, Mr. Cleese says that "The infected bit which has been cut out by the s urgeon will be offered for sale on the website in the next few days. Proceeds from the sale will be divided between J.C. and the very nice surgeon." I don't know, do I want a semi-colon? That's kind of half-assed, isn't it? (All blame for the puns go to Steve and Dave. Not me. I swear to God I didn't do it.) Apparently Mr. Cleese's surgery went well, but he seems to have made the news in its aftermath:
(Mmmmmmmmmmmm, sushi.) Get well soon, John! That's a lot of traitors. Oooo, bad numbers for BushCo. A new AP/Ipsos poll shows that the disapproval of the way the war in Iraq is being conducted is 58%, approval 36%. Furthermore, when asked if it's okay for people who oppose the war in Iraq to express their opinion publicly, 87% of the pollees responded in the affirmitive. Gee, then that number represents about 258,385,731 traitors, doesn't it? (Actually, it means something more like 35,639,415 wingnuts.) Gobshite: "I'm soooo, soooo sorry!" Pat Robertson, apparently befuddled at the wide scorn and disbelief that greeted his claims that he never called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez mere hours after he went on television to call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, has decided to apologize for having called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. I'm sure not even Jesus believes him. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We had this one on Tuesday night, while I was taking too long in the kitchen making stuffed mirlitons. It's a really, really lovely variation on the classic Pink Gin, switching bitters halfway and adding a tiny bit of sweetening. Wes was looking for soemthing flavorful and dry yet simple, and this really did the trick. I'm not sure of its history or origins; it's listed in CocktailDB, and Wes got this version out of the book Vintage Cocktails, by Susan Waggoner and Robert Markel.
To make the classic Pink Gin, add 6 dashes Angostura bitters to 2 ounces of gin, stir and strain, up or on the rocks. Revisiting sake. The Los Angeles Times Food section had a fascinating article about sake yesterday. There are some apparently excellent artisanal sakes out there, a whole world that I know nothing about. The only sake I've ever really had is the mass-produced stuff, and I have ... a bad history with sake. The last time I had any was in 1985, and the hideous, monstrous, near-fatal hangover I had afterwards was enough to keep me off the stuff for 20 years. It's time for a revisit, I think. It's a bit of a daunting prospect, as there are lots of styles and sub-styles, and lots of new terms and definitions to learn: jizaki, junmai, daiginjo, ginjo, honjozo ... oy vey. I'll start with a couple of the specific brands mentioned in the article and see if I can keep any of it down, much less actually enjoy it with my food. (I can't begin to tell you how atrocious that sake hangover was. As my friend Hiroki said at the time, "Just be glad you got drunk on sake while eating fish; if you eat red meat and get drunk on sake, you wake up the next morning and wish you were dead." Yeah, good thing. *moan* And that crawfish-uni story begs to be rewritten.) Quote of the day. Libby Gelman-Waxner, reviewing the new "House of Wax" movie in Premiere magazine, via Wes:
"Hee hee", says he. "'Confidently terrible' ... I'm going to use that one myself." So will I, probably. [ Link to today's entries ]
The chocolate Borg assimilates another species. San Francisco's Scharffen Berger, one of the finest makers of chocolate in the United States, has been bought out by what is perhaps the worst maker of chocolate in the United States, Hershey's. I heard this a week or so ago and refused to believe it, but got a poke in the eye with a sharp stick regarding this topic via email this morning, and was forced to confront reality (unlike certain high-ranking politicans who run the country at the moment). They say that Scharffen Berger will make their chocolate the same as ever, but will have more resources and growth opportunities, which could be a good thing if they don't screw around with it. And yes, I know, Hershey's chocolate has its fans, and it's what we all grew up on here in the States, and I know that Certain People will leap into the comments to take up for it. But as for me ... well, since I tasted the good stuff, I just can't go back to Hershey's. Some can, I can't. It's like growing up on thin, tasteless gruel and suddenly being introduced to gumbo. I don't want the gruel anymore, even if there's a touch of nostalgia associated with it. Hershey's chocolate is industrial chocolate, made in Gargantuan quantities on the cheap, with none of the high quality of ingredients, time or care that's put into the making of artisanal chocolate, and it shows in the flavor and texture. My chocolate epiphany came in my Intermediate Pastry class several years ago, where we had an hours-long chocolate tasting; 17 or 18 different brands of chocolate in a blind tasting. Valrhona and Callebaut came in first. Hershey's came in dead last; most of us opined that it was like eating a piece of chocolate-flavored paraffin. Yeah, if I'm desperate for a fix, I'll have a Hershey's Kiss. But I just don't want them anymore. My worry, shared by some of my fellow chocoholics, is that once Hershey's has their claws in Scharffen Berger they'll start cheaping out on the ingredients and methods, and that'll ruin it. They say they won't do that; in fact, they're starting an Artisinal Chocolate division that started with the Scharffen Berger acquisition and continues with last week's Joseph Schmidt Chocolate, my favorite chocolatier in San Francisco. They say they won't change things, and we must believe them, because huge megalithic corporations never lie, do they? They only care about quality and not profit, don't they? I feel about as depressed as Marvin the Paranoid Android about this. The vilest alcoholic beverage ever concocted? Up until now, I thought the vilest hooch ever concocted was something called kvass, a beverage from Russia and Ukraine made from fermented stale rye bread. (Well, some people like it, but it wasn't for me.) Apparently there's one that's about seventeen million times worse. I've never heard of this beverage before, which is probably a good thing because it means I've never been to prison or known anyone who's been to prison. It's apparently well-known and notorious among that set, and it's called "pruno", which is prison-made hooch made from oranges, fruit cocktail, sugar cubes and ketchup. The closest description of its flavor, apparently, is that it's like "bile-flavored wine cooler". Sounds lovely. Why don't we try making a batch of our own? (Or maybe, since I'm not actually in prison, I'll just open up a bottle of that 23-year-old Ron Zacapa rum from Guatemala instead ...) Pat Robertson lies about his Chavez comments, claiming that he didn't say "assassination". Actually, not only did he say "assassination", he said "assassinate" too. He said, and I quote, "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." Here's the video, in living color. Pat Robertson is a lying scumbag. Letter-to-the-editor of the day. Mike points us to this gem in the Times-Picayune and asks, "Sincere letter or satire? You be the judge."
Wow. Now that's an art project! (Surely nobody could be this much of a Brobdingnagian idiot for real.) [ Link to today's entries ]
Radical cleric calls for Presidential assassination. Pretty dramatic headline, no? You've got visions of a bearded mullah issuing a fatwa against The Vacant Smirk, don't you? Well, you're a bit off this time. The radical cleric is an extremist Christian by the name of Pat Robertson, head of the so-called Christian Broadcasting Network; astonishingly, he's called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, to keep that country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." (The AP have picked this up, as have media throughout the world.) Here is a partial transcript of his remarks on "The 700 Club", via Media Matters for America (the link includes video of Robertson's remarks):
Evil, or merely batshit crazy? WWJD? WTFWJD? This Modern World. Tom Tomorrow's latest cartoon, dedicated to a couple of guys in yesterday's comments section. 
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Quote of the day. Picking only one was hard. I spent my whole life being scared: of not being ready, of not being right, of not being who I should be. And where did it get me? Sigh ... what a wonderful, wonderful show that was. I still can't talk about the ending at work without getting choked up. There's a lot of interesting stuff at HBO's "Six Feet Under" website today. DO NOT FOLLOW OR READ THIS LINK if you haven't seen the series finale yet! Sourdough snuffed out. One of the two names, perhaps the biggest name, in sourdough bread in San Francisco is gone.
I've enjoyed Parisian sourdough on many occasions in the City By the Bay. I get a pang of sadness when I hear about things like this, because it reminds me of the places and brands that made New Orleans more unique, and are now gone ... K&B (there's a whole generation of kids who now have no idea what you mean when you describe a certain color as being "K&B purple"), D.H. Holmes, Maison Blanche, Seafood City. I'm glad Binder's and Leidenheimer's is still baking our signature French bread, but I miss the old commercials about "the wonderfully stubborn Reising family", who were bought out by Leidenheimer's. Speaking of old commercials, there was a wonderful special on WYES, the local PBS affiliate in New Orleans, called "Stay Tuned: New Orleans' Classic TV Commercials". (There's a nice review in Da Papuh from a couple of weeks ago.) Everybody's there, from the old animated spots for Jax Beer that were written and voiced by Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the 1950s, to Al Scramuzza to Wild Bill Watson to Annamae and Rosemary to "Da Special Man" ... whoo. It's a wonderful slice of New Orleans cultcha that I can't wait to see; Mom's got it on their TiVo (don't delete it, turn it green!). I'm hoping that WYES will make it available on tape or DVD at some point. Speaking of bread ... Have you ever had the simple pleasure of eating Indian Fry Bread? It's great stuff, born out of necessity, as was the thing of which it reminded me the most when I first had it. There used to be a terrific little breakfast/lunch place on Haight and Fillmore in San Francisco called Delta's Depression Dough. Back in the Depression Delta's mom couldn't afford a proper oven for baking bread, and would fry rounds of her bread dough in bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet. Later on she used that technique as the centerpiece dish of her restaurant, serving "depression dough" with myriad toppings, savory and sweet. I loved that little place, loved depression dough, and would go there every time I visited San Francisco. Delta passed away and left the restaurant on to her son, who himself passed away several years ago (as I understand it); the restaurant was then sold and the space's current incarnation was at last visit called Kate's Kitchen. It was pretty good, but there was no goddamn depression dough, and eventually I stopped going. Indian fry bread had similar beginnings to depression dough:
The bad thing about fry bread, depression dough, or whatever you'd like to call it -- it's really bad for you. It starts at about 700 calories per piece, with at least 27 grams of fat. There's been some controversy of late, as fry bread is being attacked as a health hazard in Native American culture, with obesity and diabetes being rampant among Native Americans. Thing is, it's become so synonymous with the culture that many Native Americans have rebelled, and refuse to give up their beloved fry bread. Others dispute that it's the sole cause of health problems among Natives:
I can relate. Fried shrimp and oyster poor boys, dressed with lots of mynez (and a little cheese and crisp bacon added if you want to make it into a Peacemaker, a.k.a. "Pacemaker") are synonymous with my culture too, and ain't exactly health food. Maybe cutting down to fry bread once a week instead of once a day, and in smaller portions, might be getting off to a good start ... The right begins to splinter. The "noble cause" that two thousand American soldiers have died for looks like it'll be called something along the lines of the Islamic Republic of Iraq:
I don't think this is what they had in mind. In fact, instead of a constitution to unite the people under an umbrella of freedom, it appears more likely to be a constitution that's likely to lead to civil war. It now seems that conservative pundits are beginning to punt. Here's Andy McCarthy of the National Review:
We now see the beginning of serious dissent from congressional Republicans, if Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) comments are any indication:
Incidentally, Dubya's approval ratings are hitting record lows, currenetly at 36% approval in his handling of the presidency, and 33% approval for his handling of the economy. Think Progress points out that Richard Nixon's approval ratings in the summer of 1973, when the Watergate scandal was in full swing, was 39%. At this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton's approval rating was 59% and Ronald Reagan's was 60%. In a separate poll about 2-1/2 weeks ago, Bush's approval rating with regards to Iraq fell to 38% and continues to fall.
If he continues to plummet like this he'll start redshifting soon. [ Link to today's entries ]
Frank Rich: The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan" Via Atrios, an op-ed from today's New York Times:
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