Hammers and Scales

"The best meal I've ever had"

2010-11-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

That was Jordo's reaction after we had dinner at Cava de Cano restaurant outside of Mendoza. And let me tell you: It was fabulous. If you're on Facebook, check out Jordo's photos to get an idea why.

We had a private room all to ourselves. We walked in to find a table covered -- literally every corner of it -- with a variety of appetizers. There were meats and cheeses and pickled vegetables and wine-cooked rice and five different kinds of beans and quinoa and roasted vegetables and bread and an unending flow of wine. That was the starting course, one they left on the table throughout the meal so you could pick as wanted. I can't even tell you how disappointed I am in us for not making nearly enough progress with the starters. You would have thought we were amateurs.

Then came four small courses set by the restaurant. The first was a beef stew with carrots, onions and potatos that had us soaking up the juices with bread. Then a pasta bolognese course, which was just meh, followed by a squash soup that was so delicious we cleaned our bowls. Dessert was ice cream with dolce de leche sauce served with a glass of Champagne.

Oh my God, it was awesome. We were there for more than 2 1/2 hours and we could have lingered even longer. Total cost: Something like $70.

Other Mendoza news: We went on what was billed as a winery tour but was actually a pretty lame excuse for one. We saw one bottling plant and one small winery. (Plus an olive oil factory and a candy/liqueur making place as bonuses.) The one thing that made things bearable while also making them unbearable? The woman from Atlanta who had to ask questions about EVERYTHING. Her questions were so random and out there that we'd just wait for the guide to stop talking so she could interject. We also started making up our own stupid questions for her: If zombies invaded your winery, do you think they'd go for the Malbec first or go straight for brains? How do you feel Obama's health care initiative has impacted Argentine wine sales?

Asado is another word for "delicious."

2010-10-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a friend, we were invited to a traditional Argentine cook out yesterday afternoon and it did not disappoint.

We had to hire a driver to take us the almost two hour trip into the country. Danny was funny and friendly, filling us in on all the Argentine news as we zoomed down near empty streets. (Not only was it the Census but also the President's husband, himself a former president, had died suddenly.) We stopped at a small, family-owned winery on the way out, one of the only things that was open. We got a personal tour of the vineyards and the wine making operation and then a tasting. Surprise, surprise, we ended up buying a few bottles of wine.

Then on the asado, hosted by the folks at the Vines of Mendoza, an operation that sells vineyards to people. They were entertaining one of their owner couples and a potential owner couple. What did these people do to be able to afford vineyards? Oh, this and that, "I invest in new technology companies," you know how it goes. I asked one of the women at the lunch if she'd fulfilled my dream: Seeing all seven continents. Many times over, she said. I guess I should have figured that since she's been to Antarctica three times alone.

So at the asado, you sit around a big family style table and as things come off the grill, they're brought around to you and you can either take some or not. And the food just kept coming: Steaks and chicken and sausages and on the table there were grilled vegetables and salads. And, because this is a wine making organization, there was wine galore. We ate, had interesting conversations with our hosts, and just spent a wonderful afternoon of slow eating and drinking. It ranks as one of my favorite days here.

(In a twist of odd, one of the guys there knew a friend of ours. It was a day of weird coincidences, as you'll see later.)

On the way back to the city, we took another route so we could go through the Andes. The skies had cleared and we could actually see the peaks, even the snow on some of them.

In short, it was just an amazing ride and an amazing day.

In the evening, we had a strange encounter with a couple who back in Philadelphia live about six blocks from us. (We didn't know them until we sat next to them at a restaurant.) More on that later as I must prepare for dinner in a cave.

Hotel Lobby

2010-10-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

After the expanse of our apartment in Buenos Aires, the smallness (what's the nice real estate term? cozy?) of our hotel is a big shock. Perhaps bigger, we are now forced to decamp from our tiny room to use the wifi or the computer downstairs. The manager is very sweet, has already helped us line up at some crazy winery (thanks megan for the tip!) and already warned us about the upcoming census.

The departure this morning from BA was a little weird, as the contact guy was supposed to come by at 8 but got there fifteen minutes early, which was about ten minutes after we woke up. A fair amount of scurrying around to get out on time but I think we got everything (we found our house keys in the bottom of a roller I must have thrown them into in a haste). The flight was pretty quick and we are pretty much settled in.

Sorry, I got nothing to write about. Will try and get more tomorrow.

Mendoza

2010-10-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

Safe in Mendoza, within yelling distance of the Andes. We could see them as we were flying in. I was taken with how pretty they looked --- and then I thought of the movie ¨Alive.¨

Mendoza is much smaller than Buenos Aires but with wider sidewalks and more of a cafe feel to it. Almost college town-like, as Jordo noted. It´s a town where the siesta is very much alive and well -- everything closes between 1 and 4 pm. And if we were getting hungry in Bs As, we´re in trouble here because no one in Mendoza eats before 9 p.m.

Our accomodations here are not as lux as they were in Bs As. We´re staying at a place called Le Petit Hotel and let me tell you that it lives up to its name. Our room has a bed and that´s about all that it can fit. Very NYC apartment. Still, the people are nice and we don´t require much beyond the bed.

Tomorrow should be interesting: apparently, it´s Census day here in Argentina and everything is closed. We were advised to buy food tonight for tomorrow as restaurants will be closed until late evening. We´ve hired a driver to take us into the country to an old fashioned asado, so we should be ok. I almost wish we were still in Bs As so we could see what it was like when it was all shut down.

- Natalie

Farewell (almost) to Bs. As.

2010-10-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we take off for Mendoza in the north. Seriously wine and steak country. Some thought, though, before we go

1) We notice we're not blogging as much this trip. In part, I think , it's because we have the Internet in our rented apartment so we have it all the time and we're like, "Eh, we'll just blog later." Then we go sit out on our deck and drink wine and read. In Vietnam and Thailand, blogging had to be a special thing, where we'd go to an Internet cafe for a few hours amongst the kids playing their video games

Also, we're doing and seeing a lot of things, but similar things. Historic sites, neighborhoods, etc. Like there's only so many street fairs I can describe. We've basically gone to a street fair a day since we've been here, on average. There are just so many and they're great -- but they don't make good copy. (They do make for some nice new jewelry, though. I'm going to need some extra fingers for all these rings.)

2) Our aforementioned deck is awesome and worth the cost of the apartment rental. It's covered in trees and flowers, giving it a private feel, and it has the comfiest chairs. We've loved renting an apartment. We've had a ritual most mornings: Wake up. I'll scramble some eggs or something while Jordo goes to the store for fresh bread. Breakfast on the deck. Lounging with coffee and Coca Light.

Then we figure out what one thing we want to make sure to do that day. One day it was going to La Boca, the tourist-heavy section of town where scantily-clad tango dancers kept coming up to Jordo and saying, "hooooolaa." (They want you to pay to pose for pictures with them. As one of our new buds here pointed out, "Like I want my souvenir of Argentina to be my husband with another woman.) Another day, it was going to the Slaughterhouse Festival, which was a really cool thing and we got to ride the bus like locals. (Which meant getting smooshed, like locals.) There was native dancing at the S'house Fest and some danged good slaughtered goods, which we happily indulged in.

3) In terms of indulging, it's true: We've been to more vegetarian restaurants than Parrilla -- tradition steak --- ones. But trust me, the one night we did have steak, we made up for not having it earlier. We were both left with serious cases of "beef belly" and had to walk home to try to settle our stomachs. We expect that Mendoza will force us into having more steak, too. We're already invited to a traditional asado, or barbecue, while we're up there, thanks to a connection here.

4) We've met some really nice people throughout the trip, tourists and locals. Shout out to Randy and Natalie of Reno, NV, who hosted us for appetizers and drinks one boozy night this week. Also to the ladies from San Diego, Kristy and Anna, who recommended we try the Thames restaurant. Good call. And to Ian, our local connection.

5) The 80s are alive and well in Argentina. I haven't heard so much Wang Chung and Corey Hart and Duran Duran since 1985. Also, the women here love, love ,love the droopy crotched pants that I had a few pairs of in middle school, the one shouldered t-shirt, and the messy up-do a la Madonna. Members Only jackets? Also in style. Ian, who lives here, said he sometimes thinks of Bs. As. as America in the late 1970s, with all the smoking and people not picking up after their dogs and the fashion choices. Other popular looks: Skin tight jeans that make you look like a blow-up doll and skirts so short you look like you're about to have a gyno exam.

6) And the PDA here? OOC. (Out of control.) Today, I saw this couple going at it like one of them was going off to war. Turns out, they weren't even parting company. They were just having a post lunch make out session in front of the restaurant where Jordo and I were dining before they started to walk down the street with their arms around each other. On the bus the other day, this woman, who was sitting, was examining the belly button of her boyfriend, who was standing, as if she'd discovered some new life form.

Maybe it's just that they're open about sex here. We've noticed condom machines in every restaurant bathroom, no matter how small the place. We were also told that for AIDS awareness month a few years ago, they put a big pink condom on the obelisk (the local Washington monument). That I would have loved to see. Imagine that in D.C.

--NXP

Slaugherthouse Fest

2010-10-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well it turns out that we were off by a day on the Slaughterhouse Festival, it 's Sunday not Saturday. Unfortunately we didn't learn that until we had already taken the 45 minute bus ride out there and learned the sad truth. Luckily we made it out the next day.

The bus system here is pretty amazing. They are running on what seems like almost every street, with stops not just on the corners but in the middle or the start of a block. About 300 lines, all of which weave back and forth through areas. The system, as chaotic as it seems, works pretty well. Fares are tiered depending on how far you travel (with the max being 1.75 pesos, or about 45 cents). If you want to find out how to get from point A to point B, you can call a number, tell them your address and where you want to get and they will direct you there. The only tough part are the drivers, which like all other drivers in Buenos Aires like to speed, turn fast and break hard. We survived.

The slaughterhouse festival was interesting. More random argentineans going to a market on the weekend than tourists and most of the stuff for sale was either leather or cowboy themed (the half spoke wheel wine holder was probably the most impressive item for sale). Most As far as food it certainly lived up to its billing, with a grill pit that was probably 12 feet by 12 feet full or various cuts of steak, sausage and chicken. Most of the meat was served on slightly warm bread. It was pretty amazing.

Despite ten days here we only ended up having one big steak meal, a platter combo at one of the more popular places, La Dorita. We thought it was about the most beef one could order for dinner until we saw some old couple having some platter twice the size. For lunch.

Clearly we are soft in our carnivore status. We have ended up eating at more vegetarian restaurants than steakhouses. Let's hope we fix that in Mendoza.

The Art of the Protest

2010-10-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

On our first day here, the guy from whom we're renting an apartment got all shady when telling us where to put out the trash.

"Just take it little by little and put it in the city bins," was his advice. Which we did, although we could just have easily just dumped it on any random corner, as many of them were 12-deep with trash bags that had been picked over for recyclables and extra food. Not exactly a beautiful site to welcome you to the city.

Turns out there'd been a trash strike. (It just ended.) The garbage men were protesting --- something. Doesn't matter what because as people have told us, protesting and striking is very Argentinian. On any given day, you'll find some group or another marching in front of the Presidential Palace where Evita once held center stage. One group recently called on citizens to occupy the Supreme Court. The other day, there was a Subte slow down, we assume because of another protest.

Yesterday, we went to the Plaza de Mayo where the Mothers of the Disappeared have been protesting the disappearance of their loved ones every Thursday for years. While they were marching, a rival Mothers group also protested and yet another random group showed up with placards.

(We appreciate protesters, having spent quality time on our honeymoon with protesters in Thailand.)

The Mothers were the only ones who really moved me. They wear white kerchiefs tied around their heads, and the image of just the kerchief is now seen painted on playgrounds and schools. The message: These mothers are watching you, because what happened to their children 30 years ago will not happen to yours.

But the protest now has become a tourist spectacle. Tourists --like us -- walked along with the mothers, snapping photos. (I justified this as I am writing about them when I get home so I was doing work.) And you have to wonder how many of these tourists know about the Dirty War and all the chaos it wreaked.

Then again, maybe the tourist-y nature isn't a bad thing, because it'll interest people in learning about the history of the country they're visiting and not just see it as a place for good steak. (And Malbec.)

--NXP

Photos, Naps and such

2010-10-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Day 7 of our time here and we have settled into a pretty good routine. Touring until about 2 or 3, home for nap/lazing around and then dinner at 8 or 9pm (the late eating is difficult as it has been conflicting with certain baseball interests).

Today we went to La Boca, the port area which is mostly working class except for the Caminito, a few blocks of brightly colored buildings and tons of tourist related merchandise (once again, Bob Marley seems to have special import for this area, as he did in Bangkok, Phuket and if I remember right from 1995, Kathmandu). Have been trying to do a better job of photographing, but picasa is giving me trouble so facebook is probably a better place to check.

We ate lunch today at Kentucky Pizza (slogan: the best pizza since 1942). We ordered their special, Gran Kentucky, sight unseen. I wondered what the Kentucky part of it meant. Slathered in a mint julep? Horsemeat? Sadly just cheese, ham and olives. I just hope the proud Kentuckians don't learn how their state is known here for mediocre pizza.

Tomorrow we are off to the Feria de Mataderos, which google translate tells me is the "Slaughterhouse Festival." Will report more then.

Late nights

2010-10-21T02:21:00.000-07:00

So the other night, we mosey out of our apartment and walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner. We get there and find the place is empty except for the staff. We're not open for another hour, the waitress tells us. Come back then.

It was 8 p.m.

The people of Bs As like their night life. Dinner before 8? Escandalo! It's the equivalent of the senior citizens' discount meals in the US. No one who is anyone dares eat before 8, and the preferred time is actually 9 pm. And it's not just the hipsters who are eating late. There are entire families, children in tow, sitting down for the start of their meals at 9:30.

It's quite an adjustment for hungry Americans, who start to feel peckish around 7pm.

Last night, though, we did really well: We didn't even leave the apartment until 9 pm. It was a Wednesday night so we figured we wouldn't have that much trouble getting a table at a recommended restaurant down the street. Who goes out on a Wednesday?

The lines were out the door every where we looked.

How does anyone get to work in the morning?

I think what I'm figuring out is they don't get to work early in the morning. Today, we tried to go to MALBA, one of the big museums there. We got there at 11 a.m. It didn't open until noon.

We eventually got into the museum and broke our own record for speed museum viewing: We were out in 30 minutes. Whole museum and a walk through the gift shop. We're just not the museum types.

Other things we've been doing:

1) Recoleta Cemetery: Love it! A city of the dead very much New Orleans style but even more elaborate. We got a guided tour so we heard charming stories of the bride who was killed on her honeymoon, the teenager who was buried alive and who allegedly haunts the city to this day, etc. We also saw Evita Peron's final resting place, which they say always has flowers on the gate.

2) Evita Peron Museum: Worth it to see the clothes. (Yes, I am shallow. I also went to see the traveling exhibit of Princess Diana's clothes in Philadelphia.)

3) Graffiti tour: Awesome! I'll have to write a longer post on the difference between public art here and in Philly. This wasn't just tagging. This was really beautiful art works done on buildings, usually unauthorized.

Some other observations:

1. The double L in words like “pollo” is pronounced as “sh” here, not as a ‘y’ sound. A 'y" as in Mayo is also a "sh." It’s weird. “J” is also pronounced “sh,” so “Shordan” has a new nickname.

2. The advantage of having a fractured foot: I only had to pack half as many shoes – left shoes only – and I didn’t have to worry about dress shoes or heels as it’s impossible to walk in anything other than flats with the surgical boot. Plus, some man gave up his seat for me on the Subte.

3. The disadvantage of having a fractured foot: It tends to swell up after a day of walking, resulting in J.K. Swellington III. It could wreak havoc on our tango lessons. Will advise.

----NXP

Shame of the City

2010-10-19T14:38:00.001-07:00

This lady, from somewhere near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, is the worst fellow traveler we have seen. We were on a tour of the Recoleta Cemetery (oldest in BA, famous people buried, etc. etc. blah blah, ). The guides there do the tour pretty much on tips alone. This is pretty obvious because it SAYS SO RIGHT WHERE YOU ASSEMBLE FOR THE TOUR.

Anyways, Pursed Lips McGillicutty decides to leave the tour halfway through. In front of the tour guide and everyone else she opens her wallet, looks through the bills that are clearly in her wallet (we can all see them) and then decides to leave without giving the guide any sort of gratuity. Listen lady, I saw the 5 dollar bill and the multiple pesos in there, you can afford 1/20th the cost of your bad hair dye job to help the tour guide eat.

FROM NATALIE

2010-10-19T11:32:00.001-07:00

I like the Argentinian way of dining: Slow. You order an appetizer, you sit for a while. Then you order dinner, then sit for a while. You think about coffee and dessert, then you sit for a while. Our first night’s meal lasted for more than two hours.

On our first night, we went to an Armenian restaurant called Sarkis. It’s a very local place, -- there were huge lines outside the door when the doors opened at 8pm -- and we’d been warned that the menu was neither in English or Spanish. I don’t know about you guys, but my Armenian is pretty rusty. There was a lot of, “That word has a ‘c’ in it. ‘Chicken’ starts with ‘c.’ Let’s try that. “ Then we’d end up getting some vegetarian dish.

But it was all delicious and cheap, considering we had three appetizers, two entrees and two bottles of wine for less than $50.

I also like the Argentinian way of preparing food. Yesterday we took a cooking class. And by “cooking,” I mean we did a bit of chopping, a little stirring and a lot of wine drinking and empanada eating.

Our lesson was in the art of empanada making, taught by the very sweet Teresita. Imagine us and about 8 other people crowded around a kitchen island depitting olives with this cool gun thing and measuring flour on this old fashioned weighted scale. Then we had to shape the dough into balls and roll it out into circles. Just a really good time, even if rolling dough into circles is easier said than done. (Some of our misshapen pieces resembled various continents.)

As Jordo noted, he’s not a natural when it comes to rolling dough. But as I so kindly pointed out, he has a lot of other skills. Like he can kill bugs without flinching. I’ll happily roll empanada circles if he slays cockroaches. Marriage is a give and take.

Then we stuffed the dough with either a meat mixture or a corn mixture that we’d made. That’s also not as easy as it sounds, and let’s just say there were some very special empanadas.

It was just a really good time. We met some nice people, who we plan to see again while we’re here and we got to slurp Mate, the national drink. (They really want you to slurp it. It’s good manners.) We ate and drank so much that we were pretty wiped out by night time. I even fell asleep during the Yankee game.

Speaking of the Yankees, during Sunday Mass, we stopped in for a visit at Iglesia de San Jorge (Posada, as I mentally added). We lit candles and I prayed for the Yankees to win the World Series. I think I looked suitably holy and somber when I did this, so I’m sure the lady who sold me the candles thought I was praying for my dying relative’s good health or world peace. She didn’t know that I routinely make baseball bets with the heavens in an attempt to prove or disprove God’s existence. (Thus far, “disprove” is winning. During Game 1 of the ALDS, I swore I would go to church every week for a year if CC Sabathia pitched a perfect game. The minute he gave up a run, Jordo was like, ‘You sure dodged a bullet there, friend.”)

Three days into our trip and we still haven’t had any steak. But lest you think we’re total failures, we’ve polished off 8 bottles of Malbec. Priorities.

Getting Settled In

2010-10-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

For someone who planned to eat a ton of steak while on vacation I am off to a pretty bad start. 50 hours and so far the closest I have gotten was some random milanesa that was an afterthought last night. I gotta get working on that.

So far the trip has been, if not exactly a whirlwind, at least pretty packed full of fun. We landed in BA on Saturday morning, took a pretty quick taxi in and spent the day wandering around a small street market near our apartment in Palermo (did I mention that we have an apartment? It’s a 300 square foot beaut with minimal storage space and a deck that serves as our baseball watching wine drinking HQ. From now on we are renting apartments whenever we travel. Cheaper and more space.) We found some rings and then wandered to dinner at an Armenian restaurant nearby, which was awesome. Apparently there was a big influx of Armenians and they have quite a few restaurants. As the Lebanese women we were making empanadas with noted, Armenians are good with their hands. Which is odd, because the only Armenians of notoriety that I know either dated or provided legal counsel to professional athletes (ok same family but still). Either way, great food, including a moussaka that seemed more like a slow cooked eggplant dish but was wonderful.

The next day we first stopped at a local Catholic church so Natalie could make sure and engage in her regular day of worship. Or alternatively, the Yankees are in the playoffs and someone needed to light a candle and ask God for his help in the playoffs. So Natalie lit a candle to ask God to shine down on the Yankees, I lit a candle to ask God to not smite us for only going to church to ask him to help a sports team and we got a third candle for tonight.

Trinity done we wandered down to the market which was, as far as mostly overpriced tourist markets go, pretty impressive. Ten to twelve blocks chock full of 70% tourist tchotckes, 20% fabrics and 10% jewelry. Nat snagged a nice ring and we found a random café where we learned of the “completa” sandwich. Apparently, no sandwich is complete without cheese, ham and egg, so if you get a hambuger completa, be prepared for one of those heart attack specials they seem to serve at various chain restaurants. Good, but a little much.

Anyway, after that we wandered home to sleep of the food and then for dinner went to Club Eros. I know I know you hear “Club Eros” and it must either be a swinger’s club or strip club. Oddly neither, it’s a social club with an indoor soccer field and a small dining area. Sort of like the snack area at a municipal golf course but with steak and salad and wine. Pretty great place, groups of old men yelling at the tv showing a soccer match and a couple of young couples grabbing food. The food (fries, salad, pork chop) was excellent and insanely cheap (with two botltles of wine the bill came to about $30 US).

Today we spent the day in a suburb learning how to make empanadas. Natalie can share more about the actual making but I learned (1) empanadas are insanely tasty with cumin and (2) if I ever want to make empanadas again I am going to get a bunch of suckers/friends to do the heavy lifting. Rolling dough is not my strong suit.

Argentina

2010-10-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

Testing...1...2...3...

We leave for our next adventure in a week! Stay tuned, loyal reader(s)! (Margee and B, this means you.)

Home!

2008-11-04T11:26:00.001-08:00

I added that exclamation point in the title so it seems like I'm excited to be here. (I was excited to vote today. We got in line before the polls opened.)

So we made it. The flight from Tokyo to JFK was long, as expected, but we managed to amuse ourselves with movies. Jordo chose the girliest movies he could find, including, "Made of Honor" and "Sex and the City." I refused to watch either on the grounds they would annoy me so I watched a depressing British film about a woman abusing illegal immigrant workers and a Discovery Channel special on the Great Plains of the Earth. (Odd choices, true, but still better than his movies.)

At the airport in Saigon, Jordo had noticed how a lot of people were spending extra money to have their bags wrapped in tape and plastic. Probably precautions in case someone stuck something illegal in there? We didn't know. We chose not to follow suit and take our chances with Tony Montana. Then, while we were waiting for our baggage at JFK, one of the drug/food sniffing dogs became obsessed with my bag. The handler asked what I had in there and, besides from some foreign peanuts, there was nothing in there to set off the dog's nose. The handler kept pushing: Had I had meat in there at some point? Fruit? No and no. I offered to let him search, but he declined. Since he kept asking about food, we imagined that he could go through my bag, pull out a few kilos of heroin, then put it back, and say, "OK, looks like there isn't any illegal produce in here. You can go."

(The whole incident sent me back to the early 90s, when Jaqui came back from France with cheese and was chased through the airport by security dogs.)

So Saigon flew by. On one of our last days, we went to the War Remnants Museum. (It was apparently once called "The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government (of South Vietnam)" but the name was changed to be more tourist-friendly.) It was a wow. One whole room was devoted to all of the journalists who died covering the war, including Errol Flynn's son. We got to see some of the last photos these journalists had taken before their deaths, as well as some of the shots that then became iconic of the war. Some of those who died did so in combat. A few were on helicopters that crashed. A few just disappeared and are presumed dead. One journalist, who had no wife or kids, left everything he had to a fund to help Vietnamese orphans.

Another room was about war atrocities, and so you can imagine it wasn't too "Go, USA!" It was just plain stressful. They had a lot of pictures and accounts from My Lai, which were chilling. There's a section of former Sen. Bob Kerrey, who in 2001 admitted to his involvement in killing civilians while a SEAL leader in Vietnam. More than one wall was devoted to pictures of people killed or disfigured by Agent Orange or Napalm or other chemicals, be it first hand or because they were the children of soldiers or villagers affected by this chemical warfare. (They included some American children, too, including a boy who was one of the first poster children for the March of Dimes, whose father had been a soldier.) They had deformed fetuses in jars to further show what damage the chemicals had brought to following generations.

They had replicas of tiger cages, where Viet Cong prisoners were held, and a guillotine used by the French. (And yes, weird tourists in front of us posed with their heads leaning towards it like it was Disney World. And I thought it was bad for us to take smiling pictures in the Cu Chi tunnels.)

There was a statue made of metal collected from bombs and ammo that was called "Mother." It purported to show a woman in agony during the war. It was fitting, as so many of the pictures we saw were of women trying to protect their children, women wailing before they were to be shot.

The guestbook was filled with anti-American sentiment, including things like, "Americans are the real war criminals." A tank was parked outside the museum, and "Fuck" had been written in the dust before "USA Army."

Oh, reputation in tatters. Here's hoping all that changes in the years to come.

Heading　home, Pt. 1: Note from Tokyo

2008-10-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

Not too long of an update as we are using Japanese keyboards and the keys are different enough that every time I think I am hitting the space bar with my right thumb, I am actually hitting the 'Switch to Japanese' key, so I get　cらpぃ毛ティsウェンI目案と差y染めティンg故mpぇ手lyぢっふぇ連t。 (Translation-- crap like this when I mean something completely different) And the punctuation keys are different. And just typing that, I hit the SWITCH key 3 times. だっみｔ！

So we've left Vietnam and are pretty sad about it. I have lots of thoughts on the last days. I'll share them later. (Aside:　Who moved the quotation marks? I could kill this ｺｵmﾌﾟﾃr｡）（And no, I did not do that change on purpose.)

Another aside: An older guy just came in and is freaking out about the keyboard. He has the wireless attendant by his side. 'Every time I hit the space bar, it goes bad,' he said, not noticing how what he thinks is the space bar is really the evil 'Switch to Japanese' key. He will not last long, friends. This is not a task for the old and weary. John McCain gets confused by the computer as it is now. This would be the final blow.

Anyway, we made it safely from Saigon to Tokyo and get on our next plane in about two hours. We hit JFK around noon, clear customs/get arrested for smuggling, then either take a car to my parents' house/get an attorney, get the car/see if we can post bond, and then head home/stay in jail once bail is denied.

Oh no. More oldsters just came in and are freaking out about the keyboard. I have to watch them now in case someone has a stroke/heart attack. This could add a whole new level of drama to this trip.

Later.　不c金g果てティsこｍぷてｒ！

Done and Done

2008-10-27T03:29:00.001-07:00

We're now sitting in an internet cafe down the street from the hotel we just checked out of, waiting to get a ride to the airport to start the Bataan Death March of flights home. Depressing indeed.

The last couple of days have flown by and we did our last bit of touring this morning, going to Reunification House (basically the old south vietnamese government house where they surrendered) and a museum that was built chronicling the american war. Umm, not a whole lot to feel good about our country there. The oddest part was watching the swiss tourists pose happily in front of a guillotine used by the southt to behead spies and guerillas during the war. I mean, they were smiling!! It's not Disneyland . . .

So not sure what else to say right now so let's hand out awards.

Nicest Guide - Sa, the guy who showed us the Cu Chi tunnels, talked about Ho Chi Minh sleeping around and despite his love for McCain said he thought Obama should win. Thanks.

Worst Guide - Hai from our little DMZ trip. Too many jokes that fell flat, fascist in her desire to keep it moving and then lied to us when she said it was only 90 minutes home. You stink Hai.

Best Restaraunt - The little lady selling chicken satay sticks on the streets in Bangkok for 30 cents. You were the best,

Worst Restaraunt - Temple Garden in Hue. Never, ever go there. Lukewarm vegetables in some kind of goulash (important to note we didn't order veg goulash), crappy fried noodles that were like smaller tougher ramen and overpriced drinks.

Worst Named Areas - Thailand. Listen, I am a fourth grade boy at heart so when you have a placed named Bangkok, another named Phuk-et and a place you call Pee - Pee island you now I am going to have to giggle a fair amount. For shame Thailand, for shame.

Worst Place Most Like America - Bangla Road on Patong Beach, Bourbon street with more hookers.

Best Place most like America - Ban Thahn market. Italian market with more random meat to buy.

Section of Lonely Planet most in need of an update - Saigon, Vietnam. Not a single restaraunt listed in the four block radius of our hotel was still there.

Best Locals Trying to Rip you off - Saigon. Very respectful, not too intrusive, a brief no and they went on their way.

Worst Locals Trying to Rip you off - Paton and Karon Noi. More arm grabbing, aussie catch phrase using and outright lying than needed to sell me $2 sunglasses for $15 bucks.

Picture Show

2008-10-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Since we finally got internet in our hotel, we can upload pictures and such please come and enjoy our magic picture show

Heyyyyyy! Ho-ooooo!

2008-10-24T04:15:00.001-07:00

So our Saigon guide rocks. He tells good stories, he's friendly and he's honest about what he thinks. We love him.

I asked him if it was true that all Vietnamese people have a shrine to Ho Chi Minh in their houses. He snorted and said, "Maybe in the North. If they're stupid."

I asked him the same "Was Ho a 'ho?" question I'd asked our guide in Hanoi. There, I got discomfort. Here, I got a very different answer.

Apparently, there's a politician who has risen very quickly through the party and some say he is Ho's son. His mother was once one of Ho's servants, so our bit comparing Ho to Jefferson wasn't that far off. When asked directly if he was Ho's son, the man replied with one of those standard, "All Vietnamese are Ho's children" bits.

I knew it!

Here's a link to a story about Ho's kid: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1291000.stm

Other news from Saigon:

1) Before coming here, other people on our travels told us how the traffic was a nightmare and the guidebook even gave a list of places were to go to watch the madness from the safety of a non-moving chair. Anne, a Dutch girl we met, told me that when she was in Saigon, she saw three accidents, including one that involved a girl and blood. She said she was freaked out, especially at rush hour when people avoid the traffic in the streets by jumping on the sidewalk, pedestrians be damned.

We haven't seen that part yet, but when we asked how long it would take to get from the airport to our hotel, we were told anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours, depending on traffic. It was somewhere in between that.

2) Another thing about driving in Vietnam: You must not only have a vehicle, like a car, bicycle or moped. You must have a horn. Because you must honk that horn all the time, not in a "Hey, jerk! Get out of the way!" way but in a "I'm here, driving past you. Beware." way. And since you must learn to pass a lot here, you must honk a lot. We were on a bus trip and the blaring horn was soooo getting on my nerves. Between it and a man I called "Typhoid Tyrone"-- he could not stop coughing -- I was completely on edge.

3) Jordo is like Magellan. He gets to a new place, pulls out the map, and immediately starts figuring his way around. He knows street names and, perhaps more impressively, north, south, east and west wherever he is. (He says it's from the sun. He also says he can tell the time of day from the sun. I say that when the sun is shining, I know a liar when I see one.) It's very impressive, especially since I get to a new place and start walking in circles. He's good to travel with. I was thinking the other day how much fun this trip has been and how we haven't had any of those disagreements that people who travel together have. I mean, Jesus Christ and Buddha could go on vacation together and even they're going to disagree about something. Or maybe not. Maybe we're just like them. I guess Jordan can be Buddha, since he was compared to that diety earlier. I'll be Jesus. We have a lot in common: We're both Capricorns. And don't forget our self-sacrificing natures.

4) Re: The tunnels again. Jordo and I were marvelling how, at the first series of tunnels we visited, all the townspeople had worked together to dig them out in such a short time period. We tried to imagine what would have happened if the people of Philadelphia had to work together to do such a project, and we had Johnny Doc complaining that non-Union labor was doing the work, Rendell wanting to make sure there was room for the casinos, Street saying things were racially biased. We also couldn't imagine living in caves with some of our neighbors, like the guy we call "RDD", short for "Republican Drug Dealer," since 1) he is a drug dealer and 2) he told me he's a Republican. He hangs at the corner near our house. I could live with the fact that he's a drug dealer, but the Republican thing would get old quick.

5) Earlier in our trip, we noticed quite a few couples -- usually Japanese -- who wore matching outfits. Even matching bathing suits. Of course, the day we noticed it we looked down and noted we were both wearing green khaki shorts and black t-shirts. I was like, "Oh no, do you think we're becoming one of THOSE couples?" Jordo said, "Come on. You know us. We just threw on whatever was on the floor." True.

War just f'ing sucks

2008-10-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

How's that for a profound title? Thank you. I am a professional writer.

We've done a few tunnel trips in the last few days and they've left me chilled. Let me explain.

When we were in Hue, we took a day trip to the DMZ to see a series of tunnels that basically housed an entire village as well as fighters for years during the war. These tunnels had been carved by hand, handfuls of dirt at a time, over about 20 months. There were multiple entrances, some to the sea and others in the forest. Families had tiny carve outs, like caves, but teeny tiny caves where you barely fit even when sitting down. (We were imagining if we had to share a cave with another couple -- our thoughts went to the tallest couple we know, Chris and Don -- and we were like, "No way. We'd all be suffocated. Don's legs would take up most of our space.")

There was a maternity ward, and 17 babies were born there during the war. (16 survived and still live in the area.) There was a community gathering room and a cooking area. There were photos of kids having lessons and nurses at work. There were different levels, steps, and as I tried to get down one set without falling, I commented to Jordo, "They can build these complex tunnel system and no one thought to put in hand rails?"

The whole thing was a complex maze going off in all directions. Most of the time, I could walk upright. (So while my stature works against me when we play pool volleyball in Duck, it worked for me here. Except at one point I got too cocky and smacked my head.) Still, I felt like the walls were closing in.

And those, my friends, were the big tunnels.

Here in Saigon, we went to the Cu Chi tunnels. These are famous because the network is HUGE and were very effectively used by guerillas during the Vietnam/American War.

The first thing Sa, our rocking local guide, showed us was a piece of wood on the ground in a wooded area. I'd say it was smaller than a newspaper front page. That, he said, was one of the entrances. Jordo and I was dumbstruck. If I had to get down that tunnel, it would be like Winnie the Pooh in the honey tree and I'd just be stuck midway until I starved enough to fit in. One of Sa's pals showed us how to get down the tunnel, and when his hips and shoulders cleared the sides, I almost applauded. "Vietnamese people small," Sa said. (I wanted to say, "Um, we noticed." Lots of salespeople here seem to relish telling us how freakin' huge we are. "We have free size," they tell me when I'm looking at clothes. In one mall, this crazy woman kept rubbing Jordan's belly and calling him "Buddha." Meanwhile, her male compatriot was touching Jordan's arm hair and comparing his own hairless arm to Jordo's.)

Then we actually went down into the tunnels, which, we were told had been expanded by 40 percent to accomodate tourists. Oh my God. It was like being a giant in Liliput. I had to bend almost in half most of the time, and at one point found it easier to crawl. Sa told us that when the tunnels were in use, people learned to run without panting, communicate without speaking and cook without smoke. I don't know how they did the running/no panting thing. Negotiating those tunnels left me with a raised heart rate. (They did the communication thing with notes passed via children and the smokeless cooking by cooking around dawn when the air was heavy.)

Sa told us that during the start of the conflict, Americans soldiers were surprised because it seemed no one was in the area. When they figured out the tunnel system, they tried to get people out by doing things like 1) pouring water in or 2) pouring gasoline to set aflame or 3) using tear gas. Those things didn't work, Sa said. The people in the tunnels were actually thrilled by the fresh water, the gas was soaked up by the ground and didn't catch fire, and the tear gas was able to be isolated since the tunnels had different ventilation systems. (Please note: I have no idea how historically accurate any of this is. It's just what we were told that I'm retelling here.)

He told us how a group of men were specially trained as "tunnel rats." (I read something else that described these guys as "the smallest guys with the biggest cojones.") No way that's my job. The tunnels are creepy enough now and there's no one down there except guides and tourists; I can't imagine going into the darkness not knowing if someone was possibly waiting inside kill me by knife or gun, or if bamboo booby trap death was headed my way.

Because there were bamboo death traps, and Sa showed them to us. Some were formerly tiger traps, updated with spikes on the bottom to impale soldiers. He estimated that about 10 percent of American casualties were caused by this sort of warfare. Not that everyone of those people stepped on a spike or dropped in a spinning spike hole. Instead, one soldier would fall and the others would try to rescue him, leaving themselves open to ambush. We saw the many different bamboo spike based traps, including the ones that went into the water. A man in a military uniform demonstrated how each one worked - basically, someone would step on the trap and either fall into a hole or get caught by spinning sticks or something else horrible.

Horrifying. Simply horrifying. Someone, I think it was Sa, jokingly said to Jordo, "You want to try?" as we watched one trap and I was like, "Wow. That is so not funny and I have the most macabre sense of humor on earth." I didn't even like being near the traps.

On our way out, we heard an English language video playing in one of the huts and asked Sa if we should see it. He hesitated, saying, "Well, it's anti-American. Propaganda." That did not deter us. Indeed, the video spoke of the "American Imperialists" and the "brave (Vietnamese) martyrs, but it was to be expected. Still, I did find it It disturbing to see smiling women sharpen bamboo poles that would be used in one of those awful traps. (I understand the why, but I don't fully ever understand the internal 'how.' Sa had told us how women soldiers had so confused the Americans, making them extra lethal.) The video also had this boppy little song to accompany it, so you're seeing people hauling munitions and running and hiding underground with a merry tune playing.

After the video ended, Sa told us he normally doesn't recommend his tourists see it, particularly the older ones. "They start crying," he said. "They say, 'My son died here.'" Or, if they're younger, their friends or brothers or uncles or cousins.

I keep forgetting to bring my ipod on these long car trips so I'm stuck singing in my head while we cruise through the countryside. After this visit, stereotypically, I kept humming, "War! Good God, y'all. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again...." for about an hour. Which was better than the other day, when I couldn't get Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca" out of my brain. (Other featured songs on "Natalie's head's Vietnam playlist": "The Consort" -- Rufus Wainwright, "Wherever whenever" -- Shakira and "Blasphemous Rumors" -- Depeche Mode. The last one isn't one of my fave DM songs, not even close, but I think it popped into my brain because of the lines, "And I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors/ But I think that God's got a sick sense of humor/And when I die/I expect to find him/Laughing.")

In our next installment of "Hammers and Scales" --- "Ho IS a 'ho: Natalie and Jordan's South Vietnamese guide tells it like it is...."　We gotta lighten this up a bit!

Fairness Doctrine

2008-10-24T03:27:00.003-07:00

Here's our girl, second before getting out of the Cu Chi tunnels.

I am not fat, just big boned

2008-10-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

Though after scurrying through former Viet Cong tunnels I could be mistaken for either.

So there may or may not be an image next to this post, we finally bought a flash drive but the internet cafe is slow as dirt.

Anyway, we just got back from touring the Cu Chi tunnels, which are a series of, well tunnels, used by the vietnamese for fighting both the french and the americans. They were built originally in the 1930's and then during the american war they were expanded to the point that a few of the trap doors were actually in the middle of the US Army base in the area (yeah, kind of a problem). We wandered around the outside for a while and then wandered in.

The tunnels were tiny, tiny, tiny, although the insides had been expanded by 40% in order to accomodate the larger sizes of the Western tourists. We went down about three leves, each involving sort of sitting on the step and sliding your butt down, then crab walking about 25 feet to another turn or step down. Our guide was blazing through it, while my tall self was reduced to crawling at a glacial pace to avoid hitting myself in the head. Natalie, sadly, was stuck behind me, with nothing left to do but take pictures of the every accumulating amount of mud and water attaching to my backside (that's my girl). We did this for about ten minutes, though it felt a lot longer, and then we were back up to freedom.

Obviously wandering around in something this size raises the question of girth, or more accurately what happens when girth meets stone. Thankfully the only part that got caught at some point were my shoulders, though the way I have been eating I was a little worried that my gut was going to get stuck going into the third level.

After the relative calm of Hue, Saigon feels like we are back to the big city grind. Kind of like Bangkok, but more neon, more large billboards and many many more mopeds. The strangest catch to far has been the prevalence of arm socks on many of the female moped riders. Apparently light skin is extremely favored here, tanned skin being seen as vulgar (not sure if that means trampy or just low class). Given the obvious problem of heat and sun, many women opt to wear some sort of sleeves while stuck in traffic and then remove them when they are out of the evil rays of the sun.

Our guide, San, has been by far the best we have had on the trip. He is pretty honest about the failings of Vietnam and the problems in Ho Chi Minh City's gentrification, but at the same time willing to spend a half hour going through the various opinions and the reasons for state control of portions of the economy. The only drawback was his like of John McCain, but nothings perfect.

Khe Sahn

2008-10-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

It's weird to travel somewhere and see destruction caused by your own country, even if it's allegedly in the name of good and freedom. (You know I'm talking to you, Iraq War mongers.)I felt my heart twist many times in Iraq when I'd meet someone killed by American guns or bombs, and I'm not talking about combatants; I'm talking about kids, like the boy who was basically playing peek-a-boo but the American soldier who shot him didn't know that, and the
teenage girl who was fleeing Baghdad with her family when a bomb fell near their car. (The dead girl's younger sister still had a piece of shrapnel in her head and the mother said it was giving her headaches and asked if I could help do anything about that. I asked one of the Army officers about this. I didn't get a real answer. I still feel like I failed that family.)

Now here we are in Vietnam, or "Iraq Episode I" as George Lucas would put it.

What I know of this "conflict" comes from school and books and movies and the few veterans I know -- Jaqui's dad used to talk about the war when we were teenagers but we totally didn't listen, being jerk teenagers; Walt told some tales from his Marine days, but being Walt, the stories meandered just a tad and they were mostly about him and Octave being crazy.

I didn't live through it and in it, like Iraq. (Although I suppose if I were a more savvy toddler I would have kept up with the news a little better in the early 1970s. US Troops left the country behind in 1975 but what did I know? I was probably eating a cookie and watching "The Electric Company.")

So I felt it was very important to see, learn, and listen to war stories while we were here. I think it's the respectful, right, thing to do.

As Jordo wrote, we took a DMZ tour yesterday. There's a lot to discuss from that -- like our guide telling us how three generations of Vietnamese have been affected by the chemicals used during the war, and how even today, people are killed by unexploded mines and grenades -- and I'll get to it later, but for now I want to focus on the final stop: the former American base at Khe Sahn.

Walt was at Khe Sahn. I know this not because he told about his bad ass Marine days at this famous battle, but because I organized all of his photos in a series of albums for him one year. (And let me tell you: If you know Walt, you know there were 100s and there were all over the place.) I've always had a hard time picturing the gentlest person I know -- WJP -- as a Vietnam vet, but there was the photographic evidence. He was playing cards shirtless, showing off his boxer's physique, and posing with friends. And in one picture simply labeled, "Khe Sahn," he had a look of shock and emptiness on his face as he walked through high grass. I have no idea now if I'm making this part up or not, but I imagine or think he had just seen the bodies of his fellow soldiers.

Khe Sahn was a f'ing mess. After months of fighting, there were hundreds of Americans dead, thousands of Vietnamese dead. Even today, POW-MIA folk come back and search the Khe Sahn hills for human remains. Those that they do find usually belong to the Vietnamese.

Now, where the infamous air strip was, nothing will grow. It's empty land. There is a bunker, probably a re-creation, but still oppressive in feel, so hot when you're inside with the low roof of bags above you. There are American ordnances, helicopters, tank parts. They've put a museum there, a small one, with photos from the battle. There is a definite slant to the presentation, as one photo notes how American soldiers are scared and preparing to flee and another superimposes an image of President Johnson over a fighting picture with a caption like, "What is President Johnson thinking now?" (I took photos of all this, but like J said, we're having photo upload issues.)

I sat down at the table out front to look at the guest book. It caught my eye: The latest entry, the page to which it lay opened on the table, was written boldly, in big letters, and signed by Frederic A Eidsness Lt, USN Riverine Forces, Republic of South Vietnam. It was also the longest. It read, "Every American who runs for national office, especially those who seek the office of the presidency, should visit this place to gain a perspective on how we would view an emeny who occupied our nation -- that we would take great care in our foreign policy not to use military force, nor occupy a sovereign nation except after all other options are exhausted and only in self defense."

But most of the writings were from tourists like me, wishes for an end to war or reflections. (I'll record some of them here, but note the names may be incorrect as it's sometimes hard to read other people's writing. I'm leaving in misspellings and grammar errors, too.) "We keep going on" and "Life is fight but war is mistake" and simply "Peace" with a smilely face. Jackie from Bingalong, Australia, wrote, "I pray for the souls of all who lost their lives here and their families. May all find peace."

Some of those who fought here and lived shared their experiences, like Sgt. Glenn E. Prentice said they fought for 77 days, from 15 Dec 67 to 22 April 68 and "We never feared them (the NVA) but we respected them."

Linda Bogert, whoever she is, wrote about what happened after Khe Sahn to the man who may be her husband, father or grandfather on "Peter Bogert served in the Marines and was hear in the 60' and survived to have 2 children and 1 grandchild. Semperfi."

The one that most touched me, was perhaps the simpliest, meticulously documented by someone named Bai Thi Linh Van on September 29, 2008, a Monday at about 10:33 a.m. It said just this:
"4-5-1968
My dad died here!"

While I was looking at the book, three little girls came and stood in front of me, just smiling and giggling. I smiled back, said hello and talked to them a bit but they didn't understand me. Later, I went outside to take a photo of them in front of the museum and the flowers growing there. They were so cute, posing. "Such beautiful girls," I told them, as I and another tourist snapped their image. The girls may not have known much English, but they understood, "beautiful" and giggled some more.

I'm going to send that picture to Walt when we get home, to show him that things can change and life goes on and it can all get better.

Apparently We Fought Some Kind of War Thing Here

2008-10-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

Given that we have spent the last three days touring former US military bases and the DMZ, here's my only original contribution to the comparison between our work over here and our current woes over in Iraq:

I think that the US military in Vietnam had a higher rate of heroin use than the US military in Iraq.

I don't mean to be flip, but going through these tours seems like doing some sort of bad Iraq check list. Overconfident about traditional fighting tactics? Check. Losing support of locals possibly sympathetic? Check. Engaging in possibly questionable tactics involving the poor treatment of persons later found out to be civilians? Check.

Anyway, since there are people far smarter and better to write about these things I'll just give an update on Hue.

1. The past two days have been the downfall of our "all food over here is awesome" mentality. Two nights ago we went to a restaurant picked by the lonely planet as one of the better places in Hue. It was the worst we have eaten so far (thanks lonely planet). Then last night we went to a place recommended by (1) our guide, (2) our hotel (3) lonely planet. By the end of the night I had a raging headache and natalie's stomach was in knots (this was our first sickness like that of the trip). If this keeps up I am switching to an all hamburger diet or something.

2. Man does it rain here. For the past couple of days we have been stuck in an all day downpour, wandering out occasionally to go to a temple and then running back inside to get out of our now soaked clothes.

3. We spent yesterday traveling through the DMZ and Kae Sahn military base with a nice guide named Hai (as she said a couple of times "not hi, it's Hai!" with an inflection that was lost on the german members of our tour group). She attempted more jokes on the trip than any guide before, but most were lost in translation. Finally at the end of the day she said it was an hour and a half home, but for us three hours. Everyone laughed. This time, however, she was serious. It was 90 minutes to her office then 90 more minutes to Hue.

4. Sorry for no photos, but we didn't bring a flash drive and are relying on the kindness of internet cafes that have computers built some time in 1998, so it has been a little hard to figure out the photo posting. We will do something when we get back.

5. The weirdest part about this trip has been morning television. We have watched two presidential debates and various National and American League Championship series all before 9 am. Anyway back up to watch the world series now.

Hue

2008-10-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

We are now waiting out a storm in some small internet cafe named "Jerry Net" (and really one of the things I love about vietnam is that every internet place ends with net, my favorite so far was a small shack in a small town we were driving through called "love net" Is it a requirement that everyone there is furiously refreshing their match.com profile? Is there a higher rate of porn downloads there?)

We have been in Hue for two days now. The first day we basicall wandered around the city checking out the 5,000 colleges and the main drag. We stopped for a snack and a drink at someplace called the DMZ cafe (no surprise, mainly catering to expats) and we given a flyer indicating that it was women's appreciation day. Actually it appeared to be occurring from october 9 - october 30th, so "day" probably isn't appropriate. Women's Apprecation fortnight and then some? Not really sure.

Anyway, we were expectant as to in what way DMZ cafe would honor women. Notes from the Seneca Falls convention? Spoken word pieces on the bravery of North Vietnamese women during the american war? Seminar on sex trafficking? No, just a free super sugary cosmo type drink for every woman in the bar. Carrie Bradshaw your people have spoken!

We spent today with our guide who was very excited to tell us all about the newfound freedom in Vietnam, up until he learned Natalie was a journalist and then he said please don't use his name in anything (not to worry tourist guide x, your secret is safe with us). No seriously he was a really nice guy, his father served with the South Vietnamese with the Americans and he was pretty frank about the various failings of US War policy here. Not the war itself mind you, he thought that was good, just thought we fucked it up in how we conducted it. It's really hard to actually have that conversation without thinking about our current little dalliance over in Iraq.

His whole tour was great, the various tombs, the temple that was home to the monk who immolated himself in Saigon to protest the war in the 1960's, etc. There was only one thing that bugged me from the second I met him.

His hair.

Well not his haircut, that was some sort of standard issue crewcut, but these series of hairs that came out of a mole on the right side of his neck. They were long, I mean from his just below his jawline down to his chest long (not that I saw his chest, again not that kind of tour). They were wavy and blew in the breeze and very hard to ignore (I kind of felt like Chong in Up in Smoke where he meets the guy big red marks on his face who asks him "what are you doing?" and Chong says "nothing man, I'm not looking at your face at all.)

Anyway about 24 hours after meeting him and frantic confirmation with Nat that the hairs were (1) real and (2) creepy, our faithful guide stands on the steps of the tomb of the last great emperor and says "so the hair on my neck, you have noticed this?"

I'm all thinking "how do I say I only see inner beauty in Vietnamese?"

As it turns out such hairs are a blessing of sorts, if on the right side from female angels and from the left side from male angels. To cut them off would be a great sign of disrespect so our guy has let it grow for all of his 37 years.

Of course, all my empathetic self could think was "what kind of asshole angels would want you to run around with all that neck hair?"

Uncle Ho and other things

2008-10-20T02:32:00.001-07:00

Five bullet points for easy reading:

1. In Thailand, it was all about the King. In Hanoi, it was all about Ho Chi Minh, or "Uncle Ho" as he's called affectionately.

Our Hanoi guide told us so much about Ho: How modest he was, and how he lived in a house on stilts in the city instead of a presidential palace. (Complete with photos of Marx and Lenin above his desk. His books were there, too, but we couldn't see the titles. It would have been great if the Vietnamese version of "Thin Thighs in 30 Days" was among them.)How smart he was, speaking many languages. How much he cared about the people and how everything he did was for them. How he loved children and, since he had none of his own, all of the Vietnamese people are considered "Ho's children." (I had read something about Ho having a few girlfriends and possible illegitimate kids so, being that hard hitting journalist that I am, I asked Tuon, our guide. He actually blushed and seemed very put on the spot, then said there was no evidence that Ho had babies. Later, Jordo and I started speculating about a possible Ho relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, and then we heard the Gates to Hell creak open a small bit so we stopped.)

Tuon told us how his 5th grade son does well in school and each year wins the honor of being named one of "Ho's grandchildren." He described how every house has a shrine to Ho in a quiet place, much like the shrines they keep for their ancestors. Jordo and I were wondering if this is just rote memorization, like Tim in Thailand said she loved the king because she had to, and Tuon in Hanoi said he loved Ho or else he'd be killed. "Think about visitors to Monticello," Jordo pointed out. "They'll like, 'Woo hoo! Jefferson rocks! He's the best!' And then the Hemmings family shows up and they get all quiet."

Only Ho knows. We'll know more when we get to Ho Chi Minh city, which people here still call Saigon.

2. Some of you already know that when I was in Iraq, I was haunted by the music of Lionel Richie. It was everywhere, particularly the song "Hello." My translator would hear it, get all misty eyed, and start singing along. I wanted to kill both him and myself as well as L. Richie. (Years later, the AP or someone like that did a story that said Lionel Richie is HUGE in Iraq, no one's sure why, and Lionel was told and said he was very excited. Probably made him want to dance all night long.)

On this trip, other odd songs keep popping up.

In Thailand, at the musical showcase we went to, they played, "Dixie" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" --- on traditional Thai instruments. So they sounded just crazy and Jordo was like, "Um, should we be discussing repression people right now?" (Still, we sung along.) Our first night in Hanoi, we went to a bar that promised live music -- and it pretty much turned out to be a piano student playing from the Simon and Garfunkel songbook. (Painful.) On another evening, we enjoyed a bottle of wine in our hotel bar -- where the Thai singer was doing "Summertime" with thick accent and odd instrumental accompaniments. It was ... brilliant. I could have stayed there all night.

Last night, we went to a bar in Hue. They were playing the Monkees so I was all jazzed up and telling Jordo stories of my childhood love for them, particularly Davy Jones. (When, as a teenager, I met him at the all-happening Middlesex Mall in South Plainfield, NJ, I was like, "WE HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY! AAAAAA! I LOVE YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE 2,000 YEARS OLD!" And he was so kind. He smiled and said, "God bless you." Probably thought I was escaped from somewhere.)

Earlier today, we stopped at same Hue bar and guess what they were playing? The Monkees. Same song, too. The internet cafe where I am writing this is playing "I'm all out of love" but not the Air Supply version. A special remix for the Asian market, I'll wager.

3. Honeymooning rocks. You tell people you're on your honeymoon, and next thing you know you get free wine and cookies and stuff. I think we're going to be pulling this honeymoon trick well into our 80s. When we got to our hotel room in Hue, there was a heart made out of rose petals on the bed, which was on the verge of cheesy, but still kinda sweet, and I was already inclined to like the place since they called us "Mr and Mrs. Pompilio."

4. We really like our guide here in Hue. His name is Nham. He's very friendly and eager to learn American idioms: "Piece of cake, right?" he'll say, smiling broadly. One of the first things he did was show us a picture of his 2-year-old son, who he sometimes calls "My Little Buddha" and other times "Tonic." Why "Tonic"? Two reasons: 1) He has a cousin named "Jin," so "Jin and Tonic." 2) Tonic was also very much a wanted baby -- and came like a soothing tonic to his parents' marriage.

How they got Tonic was another story: Nham and his wife had been married for 8 years and always wanted a baby but couldn't have one. Nham told us that they'd gone to doctors and had tests and been told that everything was normal but they were just missing somehow. It was odd, Nham said, because he has 7 brothers and sisters and only two of them had children but they all wanted them.

So Nham and his wife consulted a Feng Shui expert, who looked into their lives and eventually went to visit the graves of Nham's father's parents. There's the problem, he said. Your grandparents are facing the northeast, where the storms come in. It's bad. The Feng Shui guy told them to dig up the grandparents and move them to another cemetery so they could face the mountains in the west.

Nham thought this was crack-tastic, so he consulted another Feng Shui guy -- and got the same advice. So he and his siblings dug up their grandparents' graves -- in Hue, they generally don't cremate -- and he personally helped carry his grandfather's coffin to a new resting place, where it could face west.

Within two months, Tonic was on the way. And all of Nham's other siblings have kids now, too. Coincidence? You decide.

5. Most terrifying conversation ever that we had today during a delicious lunch: I asked Jordo if he would eat dog if it were offered to him. (Our guide book said we'd find that on the menu here but we haven't yet, thank God, although there is the word "Chien" everywhere but it means something else.) Jordo said he would try it. Then I asked him if he would try cat. He said yes, he would. Then I asked if he would eat human. He paused and said, "Well, not if that means killing the human for food, because that's wrong." I asked what he would do if there was some crazy cult of people who sacrificed themselves for consumption by fellow humans. Would he eat one of those people? Again, he paused, and said, "Nah, there might be diseases and that might push my gross out level. " MIGHT, ladies and gentlemen. I told him I was now scared to share a bed with him lest he feel an urge to snack in the middle of the night. (It's bad enough he argues with judges in his sleep. The other night, it was, "He's still in custody, Your Honor.")

I also think I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on him around the cats. "I'm not going to eat our cats!" he protested, a bit too loudly. Whatever. Rocky already likes to sit on pans on the stove. If I come into the kitchen one day and see Jordo rubbing her down with Cajun spices, we are out of there.

Hanoi Highlights

2008-10-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Back to city life, and we couldn't be happier. We like the noise and grit and action and just being able to walk through regular neighorhoods and see how people live.

1. My favorite part of the our Hanoi visit thus far was the Cyclo ride. For an hour, Jordo and I were driven around on seats attached to the front of bikes -- separate ones for each of us, or the poor old bike guys would have had heart attacks-- and we got to tour various neighborhoods. Street crossing here is an art. There's even something in our hotel room giving advice about it, saying to keep a steady pace and don't look back. Well, when you're on the cyclo, helpless to control the action, it's fascinating to look up and see a wall of mopeds heading right at you, death seeming imminent, and then somehow the wave parts and you survive. I just kept laughing every time we made a turn into traffic because, really, what else was there to do? The cyclo driver didn't speak much English, which was actually good because then I could just sit and take in. We passed the lake where John McCain was captured during the Vietnam War (The American War, as they call it here.) We drove through alleys where craftsmen were shaping metal for things like kitchen stove domes. We passed a few temples and vendors and it was just so interesting. Amazingly, although Jordo's cyclo was right in front of mine, and at times I was sure we were going to crash into it, we only bumped once. These Cyclo guys, they know their stuff.

2. We saw a tradiational Vietnamese Water Puppet Show. Water puppets are kinda creepy looking, especially some of the human ones with their fixed stares and crazy smiles. They reminded me, in a way, of the Shuffletown People. That reference will be lost on everyone except Susan, so a quick explanation: In the mid1980s, the three of us shared babysitting duties for a family that lived near me. One of the kids had a game called "Shuffletown." Basically, it was a little village with a firehouse and a school and a store and stuff and the people of Shuffleton glided along through the town to various locales. (You couldn't just lift them up. They were stuck on their shuffle track.) So I would play this with Zack, the oldest boy, and instead of a fun game of playing house and school, it became a shuffling town of horror. All of the townspeople, controlled by Zack, would try and get my one Shuffleperson, who would be frantically shuffling away and getting more and more frustrated since I couldn't just lift him up and run to safety. (I knew I could outrun a 6 year old.) I swear, Zack was like Damien when he was moving those Shuffletown People, surrounding my guy, and I would just scream and try to distract him with treats to save myself. It never worked. My player was always killed by the mob. (Ever since then, the Shuffletown People have appeared in Susan and my lives via postcards or notes they leave around. I think the little bitches even put something in my wedding album.)

But back to the water puppets, see here for more information and a few photos: http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/1239 Basically, it's puppets moving on the surface of the water, their handlers out of sight, and it's pretty cool for the most part, except when your husband says things like, "Imagine them gliding towards you in the tub. Or the shower. Or any body of water, really. Or they'll be in the pipes, using their little puppet hammers to get out" (He says this knowing I had shower anxiety for weeks after seeing "The Ring.")

So the crowd was a bunch of white people like us who, most likely, had no idea what the Vietnamese narrator was saying. (Note: We've noted that at breakfast ,they seem to group the white people together, so we've taken to calling it "Anglo Alley.") Never mind, as the shows were largely without words, just music, and depicted different scenes from village life. Jordo and I danced with the music as it changed and cheered for the dragons and the phoenixes, who got it on right in front of us and produced an egg. We noticed that in many of the sketches, there was one puppet that wasn't quite like the others, so we made it our game to find him in each one. Was he the fish that couldn't jump in sequence with the rest? Had he been demoted to simply holding the water lily puppet in place? What was life backstage like for the puppet handlers? Was their jealousy? Rivalry? Disgust over their gimpy compadre? ("Jesus, did you see how Thi Ca is lead in the phoenix dance today? What genius came up with that idea? His phoenix has the grace of a water buffalo! That should be MY part.")

In short, we laughed and had fun throughout the show.

Not true the woman to my left, Hostile Helga. (She was German.) She glared at both of us for laughing and me in particular for coughing, sneered at the puppets, checked her watch repeatedly, leaned back so it looked like her eyes was closed, whispered to her husband, and seemed to roll her eyes a few times. Really, Helga, you gotta dance with the one who brung you, and with that attitude, you're not going to any OktoberFests.

3. Man oh man oh man, we have been eating so so so so much. Noodles and rice and fried rolls of all sorts and any sort of deliciousness that comes our way. On the plane ride from Bangkok to Hanoi, Jordo asked if he thought the seats were smaller than the ones we'd flown in on. I sadly informed him the seats were the same but our butts were bigger.

More later on "Uncle Ho."

Fonda Hanoi

2008-10-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

On our third day in Hanoi now, the first one without any sort of plan or tour so are wandering around the Old Quarter looking for water puppet postcards, a mailbox and a little more propaganda art.

For the past two days we have been squired around by a nice man named Mr. Tuan, who has been very friendly and helpful, albeit a bit rushed. Everytime we are looking around somewhere he will give us a few minutes to look at the wing of a gallery or a collection of photos and then he will reappear hovering sort of passive aggressively until we make eye contact and then he will say we need to keep going. Mr. Tuan would make a good scheduler.

First day was a whirlwind of vietnamese tourist sites. Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the Ethnology museum established by the French (I guess after you've colonized a place, it's nice to build a museum to the people you've displaced) and the temple of literature (basically the first university in vietnam). We ended the day watching a water puppet show, which was either too cutesy or very scary or both (imagine the chucky movies, or if you are susan smith burns, the shuffletown people).

Natalie is writing an opus about our 2nd day in halong bay now, so I will be lazy and bullet point some stuff:

1. There are 85,000 people on mopeds at every intersection, very few stop lights and no real stop signs. We have yet to see an accident other than on a long stretch of road where somebody rear ended someone else. People cross streets in a sort of weird interlocking pattern that oddly enough, works.

2. Vietnamese tourist hucksters are far nicer than Thai tourist hucksters. I don't know if it is that they speak less English but they generally drop their entreaties after one attempt.

3. We have started every morning watching either a debate or one of the baseball LCS. It's kind of strange to watch the phillies or obama before 8 am.

4. Internet is $1 an hour. Coke is $1 a can. I know that there is an economic theory that explains it but I still find it weird.

Cruising Halong Bay

2008-10-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

When our travel agent sent our first proposed itinerary and it included a trip to this place, I was like, "We can save the money and skip it." It's a 3 hour drive from Hanoi, each way, and then it's just water. I see water all the time, even if it's semi solid water like the Delaware and Schyukill Then we noticed how she'd made special notes about how amazing it was, out of the movie "Indochine," so we agreed to keep this and cut something else.

I am so glad we did that.

The drive from Hanoi was through small towns and fields, with farmers working with water buffalos and a very uncomfortable-looking cow strapped on the bike of a motorbike. (Alive! And probably quite angry.) (Mopeds, the main mode of transport here, are everywhere and I'll get to our near death by two wheeler later. But it's not unusual to see entire families- Mom, Dad, kid and baby -- on one bike. ) It amazes me how much weight someone can carry on the back of their bikes, like bags and bags and bags of vegetables and fruit that are taller than they are when sitting. At one point, I saw someone on a bike ahead and I thought, "Wow. That is some crazy lumpy cellulite" and I realized it was bags of fruit. Oops.

When we finally reached Halong Bay, the early morning fog was clearning and we could see it was a very popular tourist destination: There were busses disloading people and lines to get aboard one of the many sight seeing boats. But we didn't have to worry about any of that. We had OUR OWN BOAT, with OUR OWN CREW. It was the same kind designed for a whole tour group, but our Abercrombie and Kent folk do things in style so it was just us. Soooo coool. We sat atop the boat while Tuan, our guide from Hanoi, told us the legend of Halong Bay: Once upon a time, invaders from the North -- Could've been anybody as the Viet were fighting with the Chinese, Mongols, random folks who got lost, etc. at the time -- came into Halong Bay and started wreaking havoc, killing the fishermen who lived there and destroying villages. The survivors prayed to the heavens for help and their prayers were answered: A mother dragon and her babies came down to the bay and shot jets from their mouths. Those jets became the 1,000 or so rocky islands throughout the bay. The dragons stopped the invaders and made life safe for the Viet people again. Ha Long means "Descending Dragon" in honor of the Mrs. Firebreath who saved everyone. Her children, as children do, eventually had to get back to heaven -- they probably had dates or something -- and the place where she said goodbye to them is "Baby Dragons Bay."

Our first top was a limestone cave that was only discovered in the last 20 years. It was amazingly beautiful. I mean, it's a cave, and I wasn't expecting much, but the height and the design and the natural sculptures were truly awesome. We could pick out different animals in the structures: an elephant, a tiger, and lots and lots of long-tangled jellyfish going up the walls. Jordo and I surmised that when jellyfish rule the world, this will be their town hall. We hope they will be gentle overlords.

After the cave, we rode around the bay a bit and then lunch was served. It had been advertised as a fresh seafood lunch, but since I found that totally gross, they accomodated me with "seapork, seachicken and seabeef." Delicious. And so much food! They kept bringing course after course, with two bottles of wine, and between the good food and the great view and the incredibly hot company, I couldn't have been happier. After lunch, ignoring conventional wisdom, we jumped right into the bay, leaping from the second story of the boat and swimming around it. I could have stayed out there for hours.

Even though we'd really done nothing more strenuous this day but chew and some swimming, we were exhausted by the time we got back to Hanoi around 8 pm so we stayed in, watching bad movies. Message to Sawyer from "Lost" : Whatever possessed you to be in that bad Damien wanna-be film? Even your hotness couldn't save you there. And you know I am very forgiving wherever you are concerned.

More on Hanoi to come.

Phurther Phuket Phollies

2008-10-16T05:20:00.001-07:00

So we've left Thailand behind with many promises to be back and arrived in Vietnam. Some wrap up thoughts of Phuket:

1) The first time I ever heard Phuket even mentioned was in winter 2004 after the tsunami. I remember seeing some of the photographs later recovered from people's cameras. They're in their bathing suits, just standing on the beach, watching the water recede. They were probably confused or excited or scared, maybe calling their friends and family to them to come watch the spectacle, maybe shouting for those friends and family to run. I read an article by Jet Li, who was in the Maldives when the tsunami hit, and he described how it didn't come as one torrential wave like in a cartoon. It was more like he took one step and the water was up to his knees and then another and it was at his waist and another and it was at his shoulders until it went over his head and he struggled to keep his daughter above the angry sea.

So we wanted to stop our mindlessness for a moment to remember those people who, like us, were just on vacation and having fun when the world changed.

We'd heard there were underwater memorials but we wanted to see one on land. When we asked the police officer at Patong if there was a memorial on that stretch of beach, a tourism hub, he said no, shrugging, "Thousands of people died here." Since we had read about a memorial at Kamala beach, we asked a tuk-tuk driver how much it would be to get us there. Amazingly, he wasn't even sure where it was, but gave us a price and agreed to look for it since we had a general idea where it would be.

The main memorial can be seen here: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2020537860098531603SMCwPh
For those who can't open that link, imagine a spiderweb of metal, roughly shaped like a sphere, with what seems to be waves of the same material inside of it. It's huge, about 20 feet high, on a raised patch of earth.

One of the things that struck me was the wording on it. It was not angry or regretful. In part, it read, "“Natural disaster is caused by a shift of nature to obtain equilibrium of the earth. Motions and forces of nature are inseparable. Its dynamism includes connecting, flowing and changing things ranging from atomic structure, physical chemistry, human behaviour to inner universe as a cycle of life linking everything to one.”

A little further away, on the beach, there was another memorial placed by Japan. It, too, had a subdued tone, something about paying respect to the Andaman Sea so it would respect you -- us -- back. It made me think of the offerings we'd made on our boating trip. I hope to stay forever on the Sea's good side.

2) Back to frivolity: A bunch of Australians we met on our boating outing told us we HAD to go to Bangla Road and oh, wasn't it the bestest and funnest. So that's how we spent our last night, amazed at the skankiness that was Bangla Road. (Note remarkable restraint in not making any "Bang-her Road" jokes. And to the pervs out there who commented on where we're visiting: Phuket is NOT pronounced the way you think it is, so stop it with your little remarks.)

We were saying it was another Bourbon Street, Thailand. But much, much, much worse. The sex tourist quota was way high. The minute a guy entered one of the bars, he had a lady at his side, and he could buy her a drink at a reduced "lady drink" price so indicated on the menu.

Jordo and I camped out at one bar for a bit, drinking Long Island Iced Teas out of glasses shaped like naked ladies (Me: "Watch your hands, sicko! You're married now!" Jordo: "It's a glass!") We watched what was obviously, tragically, a relationship based on nothing more than the exchange of bhat develop near us. We noticed another couple watching, too, and I walked over to ask them if they thought they were seeing what we thought we thought we were seeing. The couple, from Holland, agreed.

We saw other couples find each other in this way. In one bar, the older white man was holding the young Thai girl's arm, as if she couldn't bear to touch his hand. (Well, Julia Roberts's big standard was she didn't kiss her johns on the lips.) (Incidentally, we've been talking about judging people based on superficial factors and how wrong and it and I had to admit it: I look down on people who like "Pretty Woman." I'm trying to be better about this.) (No offense, T.)

We saw another couple walking together and it looked like he was trying to turn into the McDonald's. Like, "Oh, I said I'd get you a meal, too? Have a happy one." The woman resisted and there seemed to be a little argument. Then the woman went down on her knees in front of the man, causing me to gasp. (Especially since we were like Stalker Jack and Jill, right next to them.) She got up and they seemed to make up and they walked on. Jordo mused that maybe she was just trying to show her submission to her manly man who has to pay for companionship.

It was disturbing. And sad. And it could have been funny, too, if Jordo had just heard me out and gone through with my plan to have him enter a bar alone while I stood outside and observed for a little while. He declined, possibly thinking I would evilly observe for way too long or shoot incriminating photos. Such trust issues, we have in this marriage.....

(That said, please note that when Jordo was getting a Thai massage, I pulled back the curtain a few times and took photos that could be seen as incriminating -- i.e., woman sitting on his back, smiling. I plan to keep these on hand in case he ever says he wants to run for public office as I will not be a good pol's wife. I had that reinforced while watching Michelle Obama's speech at the DNC, when I thought, "Michelle, tell these people to bite your tall drink of water self and vote for your husband because he's the best, dammit. That's what I'd do.")

3) Jordo did the "Palin, Palin" thing while we were shopping on Bangla Road and one man actually answered back, questioningly, "Palin?" Later, when we walked by that guy again, he shouted, "Palin! Palin!" You have to be flexible in retail.

More later.

Patong Beach is No Jersey Shore

2008-10-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

Because as best as I can tell, the Jersey shore doesn't have prostitute bars.

Really, Patong is the worst. It's a bunch of young australians on something called 40 trip (imagine frat spring break weekend but more group songs), and old pervy euros with thai girls who are pushing 18 at best. Aside from that there was a group of Australian women way overdressed (it's a crappy beach town and they come in looking like extras for the Grammy's) and your intrepid bloggers.

So what do we do? Well we wander around for a while and finally settle at what appears to be some random dive bar with a bunch of australians. We get menus for drinks and below the list of beers and liquors is the little heading "lady drink". Does this mean women can only have soft drinks and the like? No, fear not, lady drink is what you order for the bar girl that keeps you company. We realized this after looking over at some white guy pushing 60 who was chatting away with a Thai girl who looked at best 22 (a hard living 22, but still).

Not wanting to jump to conclusions, we sought out the only other couple in the bar (dutch duo in their 30's or 40's) and asked their opinion. They were with us, they guy was a sex tourist all the way. As if to confirm our collective suspicions the old guy haggled with the thai girl for a bit, started kissing for a few minutes and then walked off hand in hand. Ahh Patong.

This repeated at each bar we went to. Some old whiteguy sitting their trying to hit on some remarkably bored looking Thai girl who was at best 1/3 of his age.

Did I mention the drinks we ordered? They came in glasses shaped like headless naked women. And our check number? 69. Same as everyone else's check there.

Stay classy Patong Beach, someone has to.

Phun Phactoids Phrom Phuket

2008-10-13T21:56:00.000-07:00

So much to tell! But because we've got some serious leisuring to do here on our last day in Phuket, I'm just going to do a bullet point review of some of our adventures/observations:

1. "Boss! Madame!" That is how people try to get our attention when we walk down the streets any tourist-y place, be it Bangkok, the Floating Markets, or on Phuket's Bourbon Street. I've found I can dazzle them into silence by just rattling off a bunch of Italian, even if the English translation is something like, "I'm sorry. I love my cats! I'm hungry. Where is the Piazza Repubblica? Don't you know that a woman who doesn't have children doesn't have a house?" (That last line is one I had to memorize for a play I was in in Florence, "La Mandragola." It was just so ironic at the time, that I had to say this as I played the nagging mother-in-law, that I never forgot it. I will perform on request when I get back home.)

Jordo, however, has more problems blowing people off. He tried to say, "I'm sorry" in Italian but kept forgetting the words. Then he went Spanish with "Lo siento." Sadly, too many people recognized that and began speaking Spanish back to him. So he made up his own language. So far, it has one word and that's the word for "no": Palin. So when hawkers say, "Boss, boss. Good deal for you on shirts. Hand made," Jordo brushes them off with, "Palin, Palin" and keeps walking. Only I am amused.

2. Negotiating prices. We'd been told before we got here how people love the bartering and, let me tell you, I hate the bartering. It gets so dramatic! At the Floating Market, we'd automatically offer about half or a third less than the listed price, then it would take 20 minutes of heavy sighing and jumping up and down and arm grabbing (on the part of the sellers) to finally settle on a final price. Seriously, if they could just tell me, honestly, the lowest price they'd take, I would happily give them 100 bhat more (about $3) just to end this dance. Every transaction takes too long for my liking.

That said, we got some cool stuff at the Floating Market, including a spirit house. Spirit Houses are everywhere here, dwellings on the outside of homes to keep the good spirits close and the bad spirits out of the inside of the house. People give offerings to their spirit houses everyday, ranging from flowers to food to beer. We hope to get ours home safely.

Jordo also got some pants, and in the spirit of negotiating, he told me to act like I hated them when he put them on. So when he did, I started laughing. Then he got confused, not sure if this was a true mockery or savvy technique. I tried to indicate it was the latter, and when the girl handed me the calculator to ask how much I would let him pay for the pants, I put in all zeros. It worked OK, as we got them pretty cheaply.

3. Here at the beach and by the pool in Phuket, the Speedo craze is alive and well. One of our favorite gentlemen so nattily dressed has been nicknamed, "Admiral Partypants" as he wears his tiny black Speedo and a jaunty white captain's hat. He is about 65 or so with a belly to rival Santa's. That said, he still enjoys strutting up and down the length of the pool, letting all the sunbathers take a good look at him. Of course, J has dubbed him my boyfriend, and the various other older Speedo wearers --- including Mr. "I love my leopard print undies" -- are just shipmates on the Admiral's Cruise of Love. We have been here days and I have never seen the Admiral clothed in anything other than this outfit. (I'd also like to add I have never seen the Admiral clothed in anything less than this, just in case the rumors of my love for the Admiral go international.)

4. Yesterday, at the recommendation of friends, we went on a boat/cave junket. It was pretty awesome. It was an all day affair, starting before noon and getting us back by 9 pm. Loved it. Gorgeous scenary, like "Lost," with the jutting rocks and the beaches and trees. (We discussed how we'd do if we were stranded there like "Lost." Answer: Jordo would be well liked by the fellow islanders. I would be burned as a witch.) We got to canoe on our own, jump off the top of the two story boat and into the Andaman Sea, avoid jellyfish, see some caves where the tops were so narrow at times that we had to lie back in our canoe and visit others so cavernous that we could chat with bats squeaking from the ceiling. (No vampire bats, our guides assured us ahead of time, but like that would have been a problem.) As it got dark, we worked with our guide, Max, to make an offering to the water god, constructing it of banana leaf and tree, yellow carnations and purple orchids, three pieces of incense for Budda, his monks and his holy book, and candles. We let these offerings free after dark in an inlet, reachable by cave, that was surrounded by steep mountain walls. Our offerings, floating with all the others, was so beautiful. Very peaceful. On our way back through the cave, we splashed the water to see the plankton glow like fireflies. Jordo noted that because it was so cloudy we didn't have any stars in the sky. I said they were in the sea.

5. Throughout this trip, my traveling companion has taken to referring to himself as "J-Dog" and in the third person, as in "J-Dog doesn't roll that way" or "J-Dog can't help but be popular with the ladies" or, one of my favorites, "That's now how J-Dog does." (Wrong. On so many levels.) J-Dog started this campaign on the plane to Tokyo and had said it would stop when we landed. It has not. We leave for Hanoi tomorrow and I was reading in our guidebook about the "exotic" foods the Vietnamese eat, which includes dogs. Fair warning, J-Dog.

More later!

Phuket

2008-10-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

After running all around Bangkok we finally reached the lazy beach portion of this trip. Phuket, an island on the central east side of Thailand, appears to be ground zero for Russian and Australian tourists.

The flight here, while short, at least provided the possiblity of our first real sex tourist sighting. Unfortunately it wasn't.

Right across the aisle from us was an australian guy, 50's, heavy set chatting up a Thai girl who couldn't have been more than 20 years old. Chatting up is probably incorrect, he did all of the talking and I didn't hear her say more than one word. He kept going on about his weight loss plans (needed) and that he doesn't talk to his daughter anymore (which makes sense, since he was probably hitting on all of her friends).

Immediately we were shocked. We had figured the sex tourist thing was sort of a one shot deal at a brothel or something, not a situation where you fly some young Thai girl to a resort getaway and force her to listen to you drone on about your previous trips to Phuket. All sorts of etiquette question arose. Do you pay for both flight? What about meals, do you get her something at the airport or just rely on the airplane food? What about bags, can she bring an extra over the 2 bag limit? Do you pay for that too?

Sadly are hopes were dashed when we realized at the end of the flight that while he may very well be a sex tourish, she was just some poor Thai girl stuck next to him on the flight. He offered her his phone number which she dutifully listened to and appeared to ask him to repeat, all the while never writing it down.

After the bad sleep in Bangkok, we both came down with a little bit of sickness, so have spent most of the paast two days lazing at the pool and drinking Orange Squash. It's not squash, but rather some orange juice concentrate that you add water to until it tastes, well, a little more like orange juice.

We're off to the beach town of Patong tonight, which promises to be kind of like the jersey shore, just more australians and transvestites/transsexuals.

Protest Thai Style

2008-10-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

So far we have wandered around: 1. the garrison of protesters taking over the government building, 2. the euro travel street (now named Bourbon Street Thailand by Nat) and 3. the Patpong sex district. Only the first one was worth seeing.

Natalie already did a good job describing the kindness of the protesters but I wanted to add a couple of things.

First, they are insanely clean. Everywhere we walked there were people eating and drinking water, but you would be hard pressed to find an empty bottle or styrofoam food container laying around the ground. In the middle of one of the speeched that everyone seemed to be paying attention to. there were still 4 or 5 people in one area sweeping the dirt off of the main walk.

Second, they were a pretty mixed bunch. Old and young seemed mixed together relatively well and if there were divisions a la Move On and ANSWER during the gulf war you couldn't tell from looking at the signs.

Finally, it's sort of a weird mix between the actions of the protesters and the opions of the folks around them. It's not a bunch of long haired hippy types protesting and the establishment folks having at best a muted response and at worst Bill O'Reily type anger. Yesterday a group of doctors refused to treat the policeman injured in the tear gas incident because of the thuggish tactics. The day before two pilots for Thai Airlines refused to fly with members of parliament on board their plane. I keep trying to imagine what would have happened if people had taken over Capitol Hill and then there was a mini-scale riot just trying to push them back to the grounds they had already been holding for a month. Hard to see public opinion (much less doctors and pilots putting their jobs on the line) on the side of the protesters.

Zev

2008-10-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we ventured out of the city, taking a tour to one of the floating markets and seeing a show in a traditional "Thai village" although it was a totally set up village for tourists. Lots of fun and good shopping and adventures to be had by one and all.

The bus already filled with people picked us up at our hotel in the early morning and headed into the countryside. Our guide filled us in on what we were passing, but it seemed like she only knew the word for "right" so everything was on the "righthand side." I was looking out the window, thinking, "Wait a minute. There's nothing on the right. But there seems to be something similar to what she's describing on the left. Does she want us to keep looking right until we circumnavigate the globe and turn up left?" (Jordo was listening to his ipod during this ride so he missed it but I filled him in later while I was climbing a coconut tree. Listening carefully to the guide, he concluded she was saying "left" sometimes but it sounded like, "ref" so the r-sound was throwing me off.)

Our fellow travelers were a mildly interesting bunch, including a group of three we called the "Romanian Dance Team" (RDT), which appeared to featured two parents and a daughter but whose relationships with each other were clouded later in the trip. (On the ride back to Bangkok, the alleged father and daughter were holding hands in a way I've never held my father's fand. "Dad" also kissed "daughter" fondly at one point during the ride.)

But the most memorable fellow tourist was Zev.

Zev was from Israel. He was travelling with a blond woman wearing sweatpants that said "Brasil" across the butt. He was completely bald, tall and husky, but in shape. He seemed a bit too suave for school.

We, of course, concluded he was Mossad and spent the rest of the day trip 1) trying to determine his mission and 2) thinking up ways to trip him up so he'd blow his cover: "Wow, Zev, check out that guy over there with the 'I (heart) Iran's Revolutionary Guard' shirt. Kinda crazy, eh? Where would someone buy one of those?" Then when Zev followed the man into the bathroomm then emerged smiling moments later while he put an "Out of Order" sign on the door, we'd know.)

Everything Zev did, we tried to tie back to his days fighting terrorists for his home state. When we met people with snakes around their necks who offered to let us hold the pythons for a small fee, Zev got as freaked out as someone with his military training would allow themselves to get. He walked away from the snakes while his companion laughed and kept saying, "Oh, give him the snake. He likes snakes" while Zev shook his head and, probably, readied the knife in his pocket. Jordo and I pondered this fear: Earlier mission gone awry? Overemphasis with Indiana Jones?

When we talked to Zev, he told us of the many places he'd visited in the US, including both coasts and Las Vegas, which kept us busy trying to remember if any world leaders had been assassinated lately in any of those places. He told us he lived outside Tel Aviv, but note he didn't say exactly where.

You have to be careful if you're Zev.

Jordo wondered if the woman with Zev was his wife and I guessed it was his girlfriend, partially because high-flying James Bond types don't have wives and, if they did, they left them at home to take care of the house while they toured the world with their dalliances. (Sorry, I'm standing in the way of your jet-setting lifestyle of espionage, Jordo.) We then turned her into one of Zev's missions: Her Brasil-loving pants revealed her familiarity with South America, her blonder than blond hair meant she could have been of German descent. Could Zev's relationship with her be part of a long-running mission to bring the woman's Nazi father to justice? "He's just like Eric Bana in that movie," Jordo whispered to me at one point, referring to "Munich."

Zev, of course, was completely unaware of our wackiness and did not notice the way we followed him around the Thai village. As we prepared to watch a Muy Thai and dance performance, we realized we had to move into the center seating area, but to do so would have put us right next to Zev. "He'll think we're following him," J said, even though we were. We chose to sit a few rows behind Zev and Eva Braun, amazed he even let someone sit in his blind spot.

When we parted with Zev, he told us he was leaving the city to go to the north of Thailand. God knows what will happen there. Please note:
Zev arrives in Bangkok = Formerly peaceful protest turns deadly and violent.
Zev goes to Northern Thailand = Myanmar border skirmishes? Declaration of war with Cambodia?

Stay tuned.

Fortunately, we are leaving today and heading south for the beach area of Phuket, which promises to be calm and soothing, even if it was hit by the tsunami. At least Zev won't be there.

But I wonder where he was in December 2004.

Where we work

2008-10-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

Since Natalie is composing some sort of awesome opus next to me as a check debate stuff on the web, I'll avoid the tally of the day.

For the past three days we have been doing our interneting at a little place up the street from our hotel (which despite their claims does not offer free internet, well unless "free" means $5 hour).

We entered some sort of monthlong school holiday where all of the other patrons are boys under the age of 15. All are sitting around, wearing headphones and playing world of warcraft with each other. Apparently this is a big game in Thailand because last night the local espn channel showed the World of Warcraft World (?) championships during prime time.

There is one kid though, who may at best be 8 years old and when he sits in the chair in front of his computer his legs can't touch the floor. All he does is sit there with headphones on playing some version of Mario Kart and giggling. He has done this now both times since we have been here and when we came in today we didn't see him. Sure enough about 15 minutes later we hear the same giggle/scream from the other room. He's back on the racetrack.

Sorry we haven't gotten more picture up, but we don't have a flash drive yet. Will try and add more graphics as we can.

We Laugh in the Face of Danger ---- Then Run and Hide until It Goes Away

2008-10-07T23:32:00.001-07:00

Watching TV yesterday morning, we saw shots of protesters outside the government buildings in Bangkok. It seemed awfully civilized when we were watching, with everyone kind of standing around and sipping water. At one point, it looked like a protester and a police officer were sharing water. We made up dialogue for them: "What are you doing for lunch? I'm thinking Pad Thai." "I'd come but I have to refill my tear gas canister. Maybe dinner?"

"Pshaw," we said. "This is not an uprising." Jordan noted that he would only start to worry if 1) someone died or 2) they were lighting cars on fire. "Learn from our people!" we shouted to the calm rioters on TV.

(What's going on: The government has been shaky since 2006, when the then-Prime Minister was ousted in a coup and accused of corruption and abuse of power. He is now in London to avoid trial. The first man who replaced him was accused of simply being a proxy and members of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) took up occupancy outside government buildings six weeks ago and pledged to stay there until that man was removed from office. A court did that in September, but then the protesters were further pissed off when Parliament elected the bad former PM's brother-in-law as the new PM, and if you think people were shouting "conflict of interest" before, now they're bellowing it. According to The Washington Post, "The People's Alliance for Democracy include royalists, wealthy and middle-class urban residents and union activists, all of whom feel threatened by political and social change. ... The alliance claims Thailand's electoral system is susceptible to vote-buying, and that the rural majority, the [supporters of the original Prime Minister are] not sophisticated enough to cast ballots responsibly.") (A time line of events can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/07/AR2008100701425.html)

So last night, as you may recall, we'd planned to go to Rama V's statue for our pilgrimage -- and to check out the scene, since the Parliament was nearby, even though Tim said, "Do not go up there. Too dangerous. For me." (We were sitting in the backseat and I didn't respond to this and Jordo side mouthed, "We're going, aren't we." I nodded, "Of course.") She told us how perceived danger was driving away tourists, and tourism is the country's biggest industry.

BUT, when we tried to take a taxi from our hotel to that area, we were told no driver would get close because it was too close to the "mob," as everyone kept calling it.

This morning, we get to breakfast and pick up the Bangkok Post and it's all, "Brink of Anarchy!" Two people died, there was a picture of a car on fire, and some other people had lost limbs, including a man who allegedly had a bomb in his pocket that he was not happy to see. Tear gas had been used. Protesters were determined to interrupt the new PM's first speech to Parliament, blocking the building and refusing to let the members leave. PM, target of so much outrage, climbed over a fence to escape.

Uh oh.

So of course, we had to go to the government center.

We had to lie a bit to get there: We told our driver we wanted to go to the boxing stadium not far away. Driving along the main street, there were a few uniformed officers standing around, but they did not inspire worry or fear since 1) I outweigh every Thai woman and 2) I outweigh about half of the Thai men. (They are tiny! My monstrous American body would shrug off their attempts to club me. ) Plus, Jordo noted earlier when we saw soldiers at the airport that their guns didn't have clips.

So we get dropped off at the stadium. As our driver pulled away, Jordo was like, "Wait until he's out of sight. We don't want him to think we lied to him." Meanwhile, driver, happily speeding away with bhat in hand, never looking back at two dumb Yankees who are looking for trouble.)

So the mob scene: Today, it was anything but. In fact, it was one of the cleanest, calmest protests that I'd ever seen.

Since people have been camped out here since August, they have sleeping areas roped off, people cooking food and giving it away for free, vendors selling t-shirts, and massive amounts of bottled water. Many people were wearing their yellow PAD t-shirts and just hanging out, talking quietly. We were greeted with smiles and allowed to take pictures whenever we asked -- One man, noting that we had just taken a picture of a door mat imprinted with a "Wanted" poster and images of the former PM and his wife, gestured us back for another photo that featured his feet near their heads. There was a featured speaker in a separate area -- we were allowed in after a quick pat for weapons -- and the loudest people got was when they agreed with something she said and they rattled their plastic clapping hands like the ones people use at sporting events.

In one area, we saw police riot gear just lying about, as if the police had said, "Hey, do you guys mind if we store this here in case we need it later? It's a bitch to drag these shields around." I saw one man that appeared injured -- he had a bandage across his nose-- but it's unknown how that happened or if it even had anything to do with this situation.

But honestly, walking here and seeing this? It felt real. We'd gone to an area of the city for dinner last night that felt like Bourbon Street and it was icky and fake and filled with tourists like us. The scene around the government center was real life, whether we liked it or not.

And when you're in one part of the city, say near our hotel or at any of the monuments, you don't know bad things are happening elsewhere. Maybe people are talking about it in the streets and we just don't know it beause we don't speak the language, but I don't think so. Jordo and I were wondering if there'd been similar deadly protests on Capital Hill, would people in Georgetown act differently? You would think so.

We were told many times before coming here about how friendly Thais are and it's been true, to the point that we paranoid Americans are always like, "What's the angle? Why is this guy talking to us in the street? What does he want?" Most of the time, it seems, he/they want nothing more than to be friendly and help. We found that same welcoming spirit among the protesters.

Of course, later in the afternoon, multiple dudes tried to scam us and we got into a cab where the driver faked a break down after going around in a circle since we wouldn't agree to let him take us on a longer guided tour and then demanded money (He got less than $1), but we still believe most people are good-hearted. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Aside: Jordo suggested I name the future country that I rule as Queen, "Natistan." I am considering it. I like the idea of "Natistanis."

Day 2

2008-10-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

OKay now finally on some sort of schedule that doesn't involve waking up at 5 am and then wanting to sleep all day. Spent the day touring the grand palace and riding the river on a boat. Got caught in the rain in the middle of the river.

Bangkok is hot hot hot. Ninety degrees before 10 am. This is great for Natalie, who really would love to live in Northern Sweatlandia. Not so good for myself, as if I don't get back into A/C every two hours or so I will turn into a pool of salt water.

Side note, I am on day 3 of election detox. Before I left I promised myself and Natalie that I wouldn't obsessively read blogs or poll websites. So far so good. Palin could have singlehandedly stopped the financial meltdown and captured Bin Laden and I would have no idea (if that didn't happen please don't tell me, I can save the grieving until I get back).

Some thoughts:

1. Man the Thai King loves to see himself in photos. Except we finally saw a present day photo and maaan has the king let himself go. Sort of like only knowing Al Pacino from "Scarface" and then seeing Al Pacino in "88 Minutes."

2. You can't walk 50 feet without finding some good small food vendor. The best part is that the food on the street runs the gamut from grilled vegetables to fresh fruit to fried chicken. Clearly I am leaning on the latter vendors.

3. I can't pass other tourists without thinking "I wonder if they are on a sex tour." I can't pass a tourist walking alone without thinking "that person is definitely on a sex tour."

4. I brought too many pairs of shorts. Only schoolkids or guys working construction wear shorts. I feel like an ass.

5. Bangkok traffic is a lot like Philadelphia, but with waaayy fewer stop lights and a lot more of those little pocket bikes that got banned from here.

Royalty

2008-10-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

Throughout Bangkok, you see photos -- some billboard size -- of the king and queen. The King, the 9th of his line, is the longest reigning monarch in the world and is, according to our tour guide, quite beloved.

Still, in some cases, you would have thought he would have chosen better photos of himself to display. And maybe he could crack a smile once in a while, unless he, like Dwight Schrute, thinks bearing teeth is a sign of weakness. (I told Jordo that when I am Queen of Nataland, I will definitely have total control of which photos of me are displayed. In fact, I'm sure there will be quite a few incidents where my people come to me and say, 'Queen Natalie, all of those photos of you look just like actress Anne Hathaway. In fact, I will wager those are Anne Hathaway. Surely there is some mistake?" Then I will have that person beheaded as a symbol to all to not question the !ueen. If she wants to pretend she's Anne Hathaway, so be it. It's like the Emperor's new clothes. You just go with it.)

We had a fabulous day yesterday with Tim, our guide, who took us on a tour of the Grand Palace and filled us in on all things royal. We walked through a museum of royal relics, including ancient betel nut containers since, at one time, it was believed white teeth were for animals and the royal humans liked chewing this narcotic nut until their mouths were red and their teeth turned black. (Jordo had this in India and I was up for trying it until he described the constant spitting that goes along with it. ) We saw robes of real gold and jewels galore, all made more interesting by the presence of Tim. (My travel opinion : I'm a big believer in guided tours, even when you go to a museum to see an exhibit, get the audio headset. It's so much more enriching.)

One thing I noticed: When Tim talked about the King, it was with the fondness and respect one uses to describe a grandfather. "Our King," she's day, proudly boasting of his accomplishments like he was part of her family. In English, he is Rama IX, which is fortuitous as 9 is a lucky number in Thailand. (In your face, 7!) She had the same familiarity and affection in her voice when discussing Kings of the past, noting how Rama IV, 5 generations ago, negotiated with Europe to ensure Thailand in the one country in SE Asia that was never colonized. (That's the King featured in "The King and I," although he is not bald and Yul Brenner-like in museum images.) Another King, Rama V, now worshipped as a quasi-God, liked cigars and the color pink, thus those paying homage to him bring those items to his statue weekly.

Even dress is determined by the Kings, in a way. We were on a commuter boat and I noticed a lot of people were wearing yellow shirts. It was clearly not a school group as some were old, some young, and none of the shirts matched. So I asked Tim. Yellow was worn on Mondays, she explained, out of respect to the current king, who was born on a Monday. The practice started about 10 years ago to mark his birthday. (It was his 70th, I think.) Tuesday was a day to wear pink, as the past King I mentioned above was born on a Tuesday. Every day has a color to honor a past royal. (This Tuesday morning, Jordo and I noticed a ton of pink shirts going by -- and one or two yellow ones, prompting J to say, "Look at them, doing their yellow walk of shame.") (I guess during my reign, people will wear a lot of black. Or, to make myself look better, I'll make the common folks were ridiculously bright colors.)

Tim also knew the King and Queen's birthdays -- hers August 12 and his December 5 -- and talked about the celebrations surrounding those days. The King's sister died earlier this year but her final resting ceremony has been postponed until the end of rainy system. Tim told us how every day, monks from around the country come to the Grand Palace to pray for her. On the front page of the Bangkok Post this morning, was a photo of an elaborate gold ship on a float, going down the street, bearing the sister's ashes.

Tonight, we will go to the ceremony for V. We will be bringing him cigars and pink flowers.

Gotta go buy some silk, or at least look at it. More later!

Quick background information for those who asked: We are in Thailand and Vietnam until the end of October on a delayed honeymoon. We booked a lot of things through a travel agent, meaning we have people meeting us at the airports in Bangkok, Phuket, Hanoi, Hue and Hoi Chi Min City. Stylin'.

One Sleepless Night in Bangkok

2008-10-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

After the monstrous 14 hour flight to Tokyo, we arrived to find our connecting flight to Bangkok delayed. Six hours in the International Section of the Narita Airport, here we go:

1. There were 4,300 different duty free shops, 50% of which had the same name and seemed to be selling the same brand name things (cigarettes, alcohol, cosmetics).

2. In one hour I think I spent rougly $500 dollars on ice coffee trying to get myself on schedule for Thai time and avoid jetlag. I have had this problem before with currency that starts at like 100 something per dollar. All of a sudden I think it is 1,000 something per dollar and start thinking I am getting the greatest deal on the planet. Then I realize later I am not. The last time this happened I paid $20 for oatmeal in italy. As there was neither gold nor cocaine in the oatmeal, it was definitely not a good deal.

3. Normally I like to buy a crappy thriller to read on the plane. Normally I read it all the way through. They are never very good, but at least it kills the time and is vaguely interesting. This is the first time that I ever had to throw it away. Thanks, author of "The Sanctuary" (I can't even remember his name now). You totally suck.

4. At least five people on our flight were sex tourists. I am positive.

Right now we are sitting in an internet cafe surrounded by high schoolers all playing some linked in dungeons and dragons game. Don't they have school or something?

One Night in Bangkok

2008-10-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

We made it. (Tricia, stop worrying. You can look at the internet and watch the news again now.) The flight was fine, just a little long, especially as we had to wait 6 hours in Tokyo for our connecting flight to Bangkok. Some kind of delay, but don't ask us what kind as we couldn't read a thing.

We got in around midnight, met by a guide holding a sign with our names. We then made her pose with the sign and my stuffed 34-year-old Snoopy bean bag, who is playing "Flat Stanley" or "Travelocity Gnome" for this trip.

Big day ahead. More later, but we just wanted everyone to know we're fine! So excited to be here!
NXP

Completely random: Jordan would like to send the following message to the Facebook world: If you send another Lil' Green Patch request, he will kill you. However, in the interest of being green, he will compost your body.

In case of emergency....

2008-09-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

We're going to keep Jordan's phone operational when overseas but people should call us ONLY IF THERE IS AN EMERGENCY since it costs $3,000 a minute to talk there. (Or $3. Something like that.) Just remember: What you think is an emergency might not be something I consider an emergency.

A guideline:

EXAMPLE 1: Our house burns down. The cats are OK.
RULING: This is NOT an emergency.
If the house is gone, the house is gone. Telling us we've lost all of our worldly goods won't bring them back and would only ruin our trip. Take the cats to your house and give them treats and love. Save your Debbie Downer update until you pick us up from the airport.

EXAMPLE 2: Our house burns down. The cats are NOT OK.
RULING: This is NOT an emergency.
Because we are never going to know the cats aren't OK. Your job is to now find exact replacement cats and fast. Good luck finding a grouch like Bourre, a needy cuddle slut like Rocky and and a Lady Licks-A-Lot like Spike.

EXAMPLE 3: Some sort of professional or personal humiliation befalls someone we don't like; not fatal but amusing.
RULING: This is NOT an emergency BUT you must email details immediately. Perhaps send a text alerting us so we can run to an internet cafe.

EXAMPLE 4: A bizarre Bermuda Triangle accident causes the disappearance of the following major league baseball teams: Red Sox, White Sox, Blue Jays, Angels, Mariners, Rays, Orioles, Twins, Tigers, Rangers, Indians, A's, and Royals. The New York Yankees, the sole surviving AL team, are forced to represent the league in the World Series.
RULING: This IS an emergency.
Call immediately. Have a game schedule handy. Buy tickets if you can.

NXP

GETTNG BACK INTO THE GAME

2008-09-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Hello Internets, long time no see.

Since we are going back on the road we figured it would be a good idea to put the mass e-mails back up here.

Here's hoping they have beignets in Thailand.

Peevish Pets

2007-05-29T19:36:00.000-07:00

After a week of going away events, we hit the road Saturday, driving along the Gulf Coast to Destin, then hitting Savannah, and now reaching Williamsburg, where we're staying with my friend Lisa. A good trip so far, us in our packed cars, harassing each other by walkie-talkie.

The cats are already home. We put them on a plane Friday. As you can imagine, they were not happy to find themselves shoved into their cages and tossed into the backset of the car for yet another plane ride. (Thus, the title.) Simon, the veteran traveller, was silent, accepting of his fate. Bourre? Not so much with the silent or accepting. A lot of whining. A lot. At the cargo place, there were at least six other animals in cages and they were silent. Bourre? Screaming. I felt like the mother of the bad kid at the park.

It's not cheap to ship them this way. Plus they have to go to the vet and get shots before you can send them. And I had to express mail their medicine and ship a supply of their special food to Philly ahead of me. But it's worth it. One, because I would have killed them after hours together in the car. And two? People like me, we are suckers for our pets.

(Sidebar: Pet suckerage is big in my family. This Thanksgiving, the big conversation around the dinner table was, "If your loved one killed someone, would you help them hide the body?" ((Side sidebar: This is after dinner with Jordan's family, where the main conversation was national politics in light of the recent Democratic sweep into Congress. I'm willing to bet some Pompilios didn't even know there had been an election.)) Pretty much universally, we agreed to help each other hide evidence. Except for my sister. She was adamant that she would rat us out to police because killing was wrong, a stance that actually infuriated my mother. To torture my sister, I kept coming up with options where maybe killing was OK, like someone attacking you with a knife. She said, "Well, if someone was attacking Max (her cat) with a knife, I would kill them." I said, "And then that would be OK?" She said, "Yes." She will do anything for those cats. I can't wait to see that case in court. )

A lot of people will tell you they didn't evacuate before Katrina because of their pets. Shelters weren't accepting animals. (And, in one case, I had journalist friends who evacuated BECAUSE of their pet. Because they didn't want to leave her home alone. She repaid their love a few days after the storm, when they were trying to get back into the city, by eating the only food they had when they were out of the car. Go, Stella!) I witnessed some heart-breaking scenes as National Guardsmen separated people from their pets, leaving the animals on the streets and herding the people into trucks. (There was one photo that ran in the Inky of a man named Tom Cruise, his face in pure anguish, clutching his dog as the Guardsman waited. I always wondered what happened to him but I lost his email address after the storm.) One day, a week after the storm, I was downtown when a man wearing a fire department shirt came up to me with a brown ball of puppy fluff. He'd found the dog wandering around New Orleans Centre, a mall next to the Superdome. He asked if I could take the dog and I said no. I've always regretted that.

Also during the second week, I was working on the porch of my friend Steve's house when I was assaulted by a hungry black cat. She literally jumped on my lap, on the computer, and began purring and nipping my hands. I had to call my story in when she was there and the receptionist at Knight Ridder Washington quickly dubbed her "Knight Ridder Kitty." "You have to bring her home," the woman told me from the luxury of her desk in her air conditioned office where they probably had fancy things like "boxes" that could transport an animal. I left the cat, but not before generously sharing my photographer's packet of tuna with her. (He wasn't pleased.) (Whatever.)

Even now, when you drive around NO, you notice the markings on homes that refer to pets. Almost all of the houses are marked with the familiar X which details when and how the house was searched, by which unit of the military or policing agency, and if any human bodies were found. Others have additions like, "ASPCA 10/1, one dog inside" or, on one house in the Upper 9th Ward, "Two dead dogs inside" or, like a house in the Lower 9th Ward, "Dog on roof," or on another house nearby, "One dog, one cat, one bird inside." There are "Cat outside, 10/12, left food" scrawlings and "No dog found" notices spraypainted on walls, turning some houses into noteboards. (My sister: "Don't tell me these things! They make me so upset." Meanwhile, i'm cruising by houses where the numbers indicate two human bodies were found inside.)

Some people left their pets in their homes because they'd gone through hurricanes before and they figured they'd leave with a few days belongings, hit the beach or a friend's house elsewhere, then head home. As a former New Orleanian, I can't count the number of times I was told -- by the media and meterologists -- that the city was doomed. And every time, that storm didn't hit or it wasn't bad and the experts were wrong. I was on the plane, going to NO before Katrina, reassuring people that things would be fine, fine. To be on that plane, I had to cancel what might have been my first date with Jordo, a movie outing he probably saw as innocuous and I saw as the start of a great romance. I told him, "No big. I'll be back in a few days." And I wasn't home for two weeks.

I wrote a story about an elderly woman who was displaced by the storm. A story I didn't tell was about her beloved cat, Poupon. She went to stay at a hotel during the storm, something a lot of people do because they're high and seemingly stronger. She left her baby behind, convinced he'd be fine. Then the levees broke. Poupon survived in the house for weeks, apparently floating around on her piano when the water filled their Gentilly home. When a friend finally got into the house weeks later, Poupon was alive, but weak and ailing. The friend called Poupon's mom, who was in a Texas hospital, on the phone and she sung him a Brahms lullaby as she'd done every night they were together. Poupon died soon after. As she says, he heard her voice and knew she was OK so he could let go.

One of the last houses I helped gut before I left was in the Lower 9th Ward. My friend Vikki was with me and we were working for Rhino (Rebuilding Hope In New Orleans) again. (Hey, Vik! Great work!) Before we went to the house, Katie, our leader, was telling us a little about the homeowner. And, she added, the family had had a dog named Katie, which she thought was cute. It was a random, side comment but foreshadowing like no other.

So we're emptying in the house of its contents, Vikki and I in one of the front rooms, when Vikki stops and tells me to look. And there's a dog skull. And dog's collars, one I think was red and the other was one of those white flea fighters, were still there. And there was the rest of the dog, including the skeleton and a stretch of skin with short brown fur. We just kinda looked at each other and the dog and were like, "Oh God, what do we do?"And what we did was pick up the dog's remains and throw them out, adding them to the pile of debris with all the furniture and the clothing and knick knacks. The collars jingled when I picked them up, a familiar sound to anyone who has pets. (Later that day, Vikki dangled my car keys near my ear and I turned with a jump, thinking she was dangling Katie's collars. I think finding that dog upset me more than I realized.)

Did we do the right thing, just throwing the dog away? Should we have saved the collars for the homeowner? I don't know. We weren't sure if the homeowner was going to come by as we worked, but I practiced scenarios in my head if she did. If she asked something like, "Did you find any of my dog's things?" I planned to say, "A lot of dogs ran away once the water went down," allowing her to think her dog had fled and not died a probably horrible death. It was a lie but I was ready with it.

From what I understand, my cats -- safely home in Philadelphia, awaiting our return -- are two pissed off balls of fur. I can't wait to see them.

Odds and Ends

2007-05-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

A few things I'd written down but hadn't posted:

I love paper. Of course, there are newspapers. I save them, not just the ones I have stories in, but historic ones, too: the Rangers 1994 Stanley Cup victory, the Yankee 3-peat, beastly Pedro Martinez manhandling Don Zimmer, 9/11, Katrina, etc. I love writing paper and can spend hours in stationery stores. I love finding old calendars and notebooks that tell you stories from someone's life -- including my own.

While gutting, I've had such fun with the puzzles of paper, like half-written grocery lists and, one random afternoon, boxes of checks from 1965. (Yes, '65!) There were payments, like $10 to the energy company and $5 for monthly insurance. On eweekend, we were doing a street clean-up and I kept finding documents from a local funeral home, like a pricing guide and a cancelled check. I also found other types of paper on that median -- straw wrappers and sugar packets and napkins, the archeologist's clue that a McDonald's was nearby.

One day, I went to a gutting assignment in New Orleans East with a group from the Episcopal Church. We didn't know what to expect as we'd been told the house was "mostly empty" of contents. Lies! It was filled, and it was deceptively large. The occupants had been musicians and we found an organ -- and old fashioned one with tons of pipes, made somewhere in the Mid-West, leading someone to joke that today, such a thing would be made in China -- that we had to take out in huge hunking pieces; two upright pianos; a box filled with triangles and cymbols and wood blocks and Glockenspiels. (Remember those from elementary school chorus and how exciting it was if you were chosen to be the one to play the Glockenspiel?)

There were boxes of sheet music, too, lots of old time stuff. And interspersed we found newspapers, old ones: Ones detailing the struggle for "negro rights" and the Kennedy assassination. They'd been so carefully saved and now they were moldy. I wanted to save them, thinking maybe the family could put them in frames or do something to preserve them. (This is unusual for me, as I'm usually the one who wants to throw everything out if there's a hint of mold on it.) My gutting companions told me no.

But I did take down a framed, oversized proclamation, still hanging on a wall, that was signed by former NO Mayor Dutch Morial. It was in honor of a Baptist Church. It was moldy, true, but we all agreed there was something special about it. A few hours later, we met Yvonne, 78, and her nephew Luis. This had been her family home. The proclamation had been given to her father. How happy she was to see it! She thanked us over and over again and said, like so many other homeowners have, that God was good and she knew it because we were there helping her. She couldn't stop smiling. She insisted we take a photo of her and Luis with the frame.

It's nice to know other people appreciate the power of paper.

Some more tidbits/advice from our favorite storyteller (See below and "It's All in the Way You Tell the Story"):

1) Keep extra copies of your "skinny" photos. Because if there's a flood and they're all in one place, you'll never have proof of those glory days.

2) Some people have questioned the idea of private companies offering "disaster tours" of the city. Not everyone. "I would have charged $5 a head if people wanted to tour my destroyed home. Hell, I would have let them take a piece of sheetrock as a souvenir. Busses, stop here! I could have quit my job."

3) In the days after the storm, there were tears, of course, but many other emotions. What really made her cry, however, was when someone from The Salvation Army gave her a $25 gift card. "I could buy underwear!" she said. "I could handle anger. I could handle frustration. I couldn't handle compassion."

Another story from another fine storyteller:

Two of her friends, brothers, decided to stay in their NO home for Katrina because it would be too difficult to move their elderly mother. (Either they didn't have transportation or it was a pick up but there was some reason they just couldn't drive out of the city.) Confined to a wheelchair and suffering from Alzheimer's, she was fragile, often unresponsive, although sometimes they'd see a light in her eyes when they spoke to her. She liked watching "Golden Girls" and, although she didn't speak, she did laugh. Sometimes, her sons would see her rocking slightly and laughing, "Hee hee hee hee" during the show.

Their house didn't flood during the storm. They didn't have electricity and it was hella hot, but they couldn't leave. Worried about their mother, they moved her outside to the front porch where they took turns fanning her. They were out there when a National Guard truck came by. It saw them, stopped, and dropped off some water. They were thrilled.

The next day, the brothers were on the porch. Their mother was inside. One Guard truck rolled down the street and the brothers waved, expecting it to stop and leave food or some supplies. It rolled on. A second truck passed later. Again, they waved but the truck kept on going.

They knew what they were missing.

"Ma," they said, "We've got to bring you outside again. Because people will stop for you. Nobody stops for us. We're sorry."

And she just laughed, they said, her little "Hee, hee, hee, hee," head shaking. She loved being useful and needed. She went outside and -- sure enough -- someone stopped by with MRE's later that day.

She died a year after the storm, her sons by her hospital bed.

Our Final Weeks

2007-05-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

I'm so bummed, in advance, about leaving that I haven't felt like blogging.

We've begun to make leaving preparations: The cats have a flight back home. We're talking about what route we'll take. We're making arrangements to return out kick ass mattress. My copious amount of Mardi Gras beads have a place to stay until Mardi Gras '08.

We've also made a list of things we have to do/people we have to see before we go. This list includes eating at Todd English's restaurant because my mother requires it. Apparently, she is madly in love with Chef English and doesn't care if his restaurant has garnered mediocre reviews. (I don't know but she may expect me to slip him her phone number. I might, because it would be cool to have a cook in the family. Dad especially would enjoy that, despite the weirdness of it all.)

Otherwise, life is pretty much the same. We had Jazz Fest for the past two weekends, so that was awesome. I continue to be a gutting master. Today, we did a house Uptown that hadn't flooded but had suffered roof damage in the storm and it looked like it had had water up to the rafters, so gross and destroyed it was. It was dirty work, with plaster walls and so much dust you couldn't see at times, but a good gut. This is the second time I've worked for the owner, George. (The house is a double and last time, we only finished emptying and partially gutting one side.) Last time, George gave us drinks and snacks. This time, he did that -- and more. He fried a whole turkey and made a vat of jambalaya. It was the best turkey I've ever eaten. I mean, I've had fried turkey before, but this was so juicy and flavorful -- he fries it in peanut oil -- that I could have eaten it for all three meals.

George was modest about his food but told us that when he rebuilds, he's putting in a super big kitchen because he loves cooking. He was naturally a quiet man, the kind who looks down when he smiles, and so sweet. He introduced us to his girlfriend and one of his oldest friends and I really got a glimpse into his life. Of course, he invited us back when things were finished, even if it was years in the future. I wonder if I'll ever see him again.

And then I got to thinking that, at one point, I was spending a lot of time at a house about two blocks from George's. But if the storm hadn't hit, I never would have met him. And I never would have met Mr. L or Gloria or Heidi or Suzanne or all of these wonderful people that have filled our lives these past few months.

So Katrina, you bitch, thank you. I've had a lot of people tell me that good things always come from bad and I'm almost believing them.

Eastern Market

2007-04-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

My favorite job was when I was under the age of 12. I was really good at selling Christmas trees. Living in a rapidly gentrifying area in the middle of a city full of people who didn't want to drive out to the burbs to buy trees can be a goldmine. That, plus Christmas trees are a little hard to price. I think as long as you know the name of the tree and tell someone it will hold water well through Christmas, you could charge an arm and a leg and no one would be any the wiser (this may be the closest I ever got to sympathizing with Kenneth Lay). I worked for a farmer who would bring the trees in from West Virginia and people often thought I was his 12 year old son (in reality my mom had finagled the job probably in violation of a million child labor laws). It was, in my life, the best sales job I had ever held (though honestly the only other sales job was hawking tomatoes, apples and apple cider from same farmer in the non-Christmas months).

I got to do all that because my parents had been smart enough to buy a house near the Eastern Market, a farmer's market stuck in the middle of Capitol Hill.

My two younger sisters ended up working there as well on the weekends, working for one of three farmers who brought their fresh produce for sale (at a hefty markup, Christmas trees not being the only thing you can overcharge city folk for).

There was the old Greek family who had a produce stand where my mom swears that the wife of the team would peel grapes for me (I don't doubt that I would make such a ridiculous request as a kid, just that it is really possible to peel grapes).

There was also the guy who every Thanksgiving would sell my mom a turkey that weighed far more than the eating ability of the assembled.

It's a wonderful place and hopefully this well be a brief hiccup in an otherwise great history.

Job Conditions, Pt. 2

2007-04-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

I recently helped gut a house that hadn't been touched since the storm. That's not that unusual. What was unusual was how pungent the house was.

In the days and weeks after Katrina, the city smelled. Bad. It was like something rotten and stagnant and unclean. (Could have been me. I didn't shower for days on end and it was 1,000 degrees.) But that smell gradually went away and the flowers came out again and New Orleans was returned to a normal city smell, except at night Uptown, when the flowers always smell deliciously sweet. (Bourbon Street never smells good, even though it is only blocks from beignet-making heaven. The overpowering smell most mornings is pee and cleaning fluid. Delicious.)

Some houses I work in, everything's OK -- just generally moldy smelling -- until you pull out a hollow closet rod that's still filled with water and it spills on you. You're grossed out for a while, but you move on. (And smugly congratulate yourself for your thrift store shopping prowess.) You're wearing a mask, which helps, and you breathe through your mouth until the odor dies. (I also employ this technique around the seafood part of the Italian Market. Or I hold my breath. I'm like Houdini in my breath-holding abilities.)

But this one house overpowered the second you stepped inside. You wouldn't think that, after 20 months, rotten food would smell anymore. Wrong. Or that flood water, still sitting in bowls and cups, would still prove gaggable. It does. Or that there would even BE flood water after so long. There is. In the bedroom, the mattresses were still dripping wet and bags and bags of adult diapers proved their absorbency, expanding to triple their size. (God, they were heavy and rancid.) The living room had a wet couch and a china cabinet filled with water-bearing objects, all smelly.

The kitchen was particularly heinous, with black slime covering the floor, but for some reason, I made it my pet project. I attacked the cabinets, still filled with food, and the dozens of scattered cans, bottles and jars on the floor. When you're gutting, you're supposed to separate out the food from other items and the food pile for this house was one of the largest I've ever seen-- huge jars of salsa with floating mold and rotted and rusted canned vegetables and tons and tons of spices. It was ... gross. Just gross.

There were moments in the Kitchen of Rankness that I asked myself why I was in there. Usually, I avoid kitchens, partly for this very reason. (And there's usually tile there, which you already know I hate, and cabinets can be a pain.) And on later reflection, I realized it's because of how much I liked the daughter of the woman who had owned the home.

Her name was Gloria. Her mom -- who had one of those great old time names, like Odette or Odile. I found a paper napkin that had been saved from her 80th birthday party -- had lived here but had died right around the time of the storm. Gloria hadn't been able to go into the house since her mother's death so it had sat and ripened.

Gloria was tough and funny and positive when she was talking to us -- "The water washed away everything but the chance to rebuild," she said at one point. She was upbeat when she talked about her mother, a diabetic who had lost both her legs years ago and used a wheelchair to get around. Her mother had insisted on her independence and on living alone and taking care of herself. She had been a native New Orleanian and she loved the city and its festivals and that showed in her house, where windows had been covered with strands of Mardi Gras beads and her glassware collection included glasses from Jax Brewery and the racetrack. When she finally go so sick that she had to go to the hospital, she brought some of her beads with her.

While hospitalized, Gloria's mother began hoarding the free booties/slippers the hospital gave to patients. Gloria said she couldn't understand it: Her mother didn't have legs. But as the end grew closer, and her mother seemed content and accepting of her death, she finally got it: Her mother was going to Heaven, where Jesus would make her whole again, and she wanted to have something to wear on her new feet. (This comment led to a later discussion with Jordan about God's apparent inability to provide footwear. I mean, he can give you legs and feet but he can't throw in a pair of Aerosoles? We're not asking for Jimmy Choo's here, Lord.)

Gloria just charmed me. She was so thankful to us volunteers for being there, asking us for our addresses so she could write thank you cards and promising us a big BBQ if we ever came back to New Orleans. One of the volunteers said, "Can I give you a hug?" and she said, "Can you give me a hug? Hugs for everyone!" and she hugged all 20 of us in turn, never losing her smile.

I asked Gloria if there was anything special we should look for in the house, anything she wanted us to save. It was the only time her face crumpled. A catch in her voice, she said, "Anything, anything of my mother's you can find." She left in tears.

That's why I do this, even when I can't breathe.

In Dreams

2007-04-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

Remember my comment a while back, how Jordan doesn't feel he should be responsible in his waking state for crimes he commits in my dreams?

So last night, I had a dream that he was a two-timing jerk. I told him of his shocking misbehavior this morning.

Well, he said, I had a dream last night, too. Do you want to hear it?

No, I said.

I'm going to tell you anyway, he said. In my dream, you were selling nuclear weapons to Kim Jong Il, to fund the genocide in Darfur, which you were aiding with your boyfriend, country music star Toby Keith.

(He did not add his standard, "And you loved Toby Keith so much you were going to marry him and rename yourself Natalie Toby Keith." He pulls that one out anytime I say I hate someone (male).)

Really? I said. I don't believe you.

And really, dear readers, do you believe that dream?

At least my dreams are real.

Job Conditions, Pt. 1

2007-04-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

I hate roaches, especially NOLA roaches. They're big and they fly and if you smoosh them, they crunch. (Tell me, what is the evolutionary benefit of putting wings on these things?) On "Fear Factor," they had a stunt where contestants had to lie in a clear box for a minute while hissing cockroaches swarmed their bodies. And let me say this, no way. Not for $1 million. Not for $2 million. I just couldn't do it. No other non-stinging insect has such an effect on me. (But I am a hater of the stingers, too. I once spent four hours at the gym. Not because of any love of fitness, but because I had woken up at my parents' house to find dozens of wasps flying in the air above me. They had built a nest into the wall of the house and into my room. Instead of dealing with the wasps, I screamed repeatedly, grabbed a gym bag, and took aerobic class after aerobic class to avoid going home again.) (Maybe someone needs to unleash some wasps in my bedroom now. Or maybe they can be trained to swarm around my fridge.)

Let me tell you my most terrifying personal roach experience: It was 1998. My notably unreliable boyfriend at the time had failed to fully close a box of -- I think it was pasta or cereal -- before he put it in the cabinet. I came home from work and was on the phone with my friend Sue. I decided to take out said box and pour it into a bowl or pot or whatever it was. I can't remember, because all I can remember were the roaches that came tumbling out of the box. I threw the box on the ground, screaming for all I'm worth, then I grabbed the can of Raid and sprayed, sprayed, sprayed at each and every roach as it scurried out of that box. There were complete roach families in there. They kept coming, I kept spraying and screaming. I sprayed until the can was empty and I screamed myself hoarse. I sprayed so much that I couldn't stay in the house. I screamed so much that I was surprised my neighbor didn't call the police. (I asked him if he'd heard me and he said no. That didn't make me feel safe.) (Sue, by the way, escaped unharmed save for ear pain and some emotional scars.)

To this day, my first reaction is to put everything that's opened - cereal, baking products, chips, bread, etc - into the fridge. My sister mocks me for this. We'll see who is laughing when she is attacked.

But I knew, coming here, that I would have to face my roach fear. Before I arrived, one friend told me a gutting story that went like this, "Blah blah blah, blab blab blab, and then I pulled down the ceiling tile and DOZENS of roaches fell on top of me. Blah blah blah." He could have added, "And one of the roaches had the face of my wife and it opened its mouth and told me to pick up milk on the way home," and I wouldn't have heard it. I was lost in the horror of that moment, being showered in roaches.What if one of them got in my pocket, liked it, decided to make it his home? (True story: Friend of mine goes and buys a few pounds of crawfish. His wife, a great hater of seafood like myself, kindly allows him to bring it into their home ... where the paper bag promptly breaks, sending cooked crawfish all over the room. OK, that's gross enough. Now fast forward a few weeks. My crawfish-loving friend is at work. He reaches into his jacket pocket, at random, and what does he find? A shriveled up crawfish. "It didn't even smell that badly," he said.)

There are days when I'll kill more than a dozen cockroaches. I've forced myself to get above my crunching horror and just kill them: With my feet, a crowbar, a hammer, whatever is handy at the time. Infant in arms at time of cockroach onslaught? Doesn't matter. The roaches must die. One recent day, for example, I was so proud of myself because I didn't flinch -much - when we were pulling down sheetrock and I kept uncovering hoardes of roaches that would then scurry off and hide before I could slay them. It made me nervous, knowing they were in there, watching, but I kept going.

So roaches are one less-than-ideal aspect of what I do. Another? The smells. I'll get into that on another post

Crazy, but not that Crazy

2007-04-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Defendant was in court the other, not my client but was there for an evaluation to see if he was competent enough to stand trial. After hearing from the doctors who evaluated him, the judge made a clear finding that client was unable to understand what was happening to him, that he was unable to assist his attorney and that he had a best a tenuous grip on reality. Given that, the judge ordered client held until they could place him in a mental institution.

Client erupted, screaming that he was being railroaded, that this was unfair and he didn't know why this happening?

Judge: "If you can't control yourself I am going to find you in contempt and give you six months in jail."

Client: "Well didn't you just have a hearing where you said I didn't know what I was doing."

Judge: "Sir we determined you were incompetent."

Client: "So I can't go to trial because I'm crazy, but I am not crazy enough to avoid getting in more trouble."

Well, yeah, I guess.

God

2007-04-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Of all of the difficulties in doing criminal defense work, I am becoming more and more convinced that God may be one of the more infuriating ones. I don't mean the actual being (whether they are out there or not) but rather the faith most clients place in God sorting out what is actually a horrible situation.

I had a client a few weeks back who was arrested for a string of violent crimes and in addition to being caught with four or five items corroborating his involvement and five civilians (they don't know the defendant) identifying him, he also gave a videotaped statement confessing to the crime. The judge has already said he would at the very least double the clients time if this case went to trial rather than plead guilty, which would definitely mean that after a trial client would be lucky to get out of jail before he was 75 (if he lived that long).

Horrible situation, and while we certainly could have a trial, it wasn't a case where we were likely going to win an acquittal, and gambling thirty years of a clients life on a case like this wasn't something that I would advise.

Client's response, "I am not worried, God will get me out of this . . . ."

Hmm, so God is going to come down and suppress all of the evidence, get the witnesses not to show up and cause the videotaped confession to disappear? God somehow is going to come down and fix the mess that you are in?

Client: "I am just going to trial and put my faith in god, he will vindicate me at trial"

Two weeks later, same response. "God will provide, I just have to put my faith in him."

This is not an uncommon occurrence, where clients, feeling lost and in a horrible situation, step back from trying to figure out how to get through a horrible situation and instead jump into a wonderful world where nothing can be proved or disproved (maybe god will save them, but who knows). I guess this could be seen as an expression of faith and belief in a world and life greater than that of this mortal earth. I guess that having a belief system in times of stress may allow someone to get through a horrible situation with a sense of dignity and belief in something larger than their current predicament.

But maybe, just maybe, turning to God is a way of avoiding having to make a remarkably difficult decision and pawn it off on God.

The Evil Men Do

2007-04-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Not Jordo. Please. (Although I did have a dream recently and he was a real jerk in it but he seems to think that he shouldn't be responsible for the things he does in my dreams. What kind of logic is that?)

I'm talking about the men (and women) who take advantage of people while they're down. The people who flocked to New Orleans in the aftermath of the storm with the soul purpose of benefitting from the misery of others.

People from outside the city will ask me, "What's wrong with the people down there? Why don't they have their lives together yet?" And there are a million answers I can give: federal aid that isn't yet; insurance money that may never be; the incredible, often paralyzing, stress of losing everything, possibly including your job or a loved one; the shortage of construction workers and contractors in the city.

Or, at the least, reliable contractors. The group leader of the organization I was working with this week told me there are hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners who have found themselves robbed by the people who were being paid to help them.

Now meet Miss Dorothy, the reason for this post.

I helped gut Miss Dorothy's Gentilly home this week. No big. I gut houses all the time. Miss Dorothy's story was sad, but at this point, sad is almost standard. She's in her 80s, born and raised in New Orleans, a mother and grandmother with one true apple of her eye, grandson Paul, in his 30s, who lived on the other side of the shotgun double she bought about a dozen years ago. Before the storm, Miss D was active and mostly healthy and worked at a local nursing home as a "senior helping seniors." She evacuated with them. For a few days, they bounced around Louisiana, at one point staying in a school that partially collapsed during the storm. She didn't have a cell phone and she didn't have all of her children's cell phone numbers. In fact, she was so busy taking care of others that she didn't even realize what had happened in New Orleans until someone told her about it at one of the shelters.

"I said, 'You lying! New Orleans?' and he said, 'You're never going home again," Miss Dorothy told me and the other volunteers as we stood on the street outside her home this week. She was neatly dressed in black pants and a black and white button-down shirt, with silver earrings. gold rings and a gold and silver watch. She leaned on a cane while she spoke until Paul, her grandson, found her a battered lawn chair. "I went to watch the television and I couldn't believe what I was seeing."

She got choked up while she was talking, especially when she described how, for days, she didn't know if her children and grandchildren were alive and dead. It was more than a month before she was finally able to speak to Paul on the phone. She bounched around the country, spending months with nieces in California, before returning to her son's home in Louisiana. She was weaker, sicker than she'd been before the storm and unable to be a "senior helping seniors" any longer, but she was determined to be home again. She had flood insurance. She thought she could rebuild.

She hired a contractor her son had met. He was licensed AND he was a minister in his chuch back in Alabama. He seemed godly and kind.

So she paid him more than $44,000.

It was only later -- after he'd left town, the job about 3/4 of the way done -- that she realized she'd been taken. The work was beyond shoddy: It would have been dangerous for her to live in that house. As we ripped down the sheetrock, we found another layer of mold-covered plaster attached to slats of mold- and sometimes termit-shredded wood.

Miss Dorothy went to Alabama, to the contractor's church, to ask for her money back. She met his wife, his children, and he looked her in the eyes and told her he was sorry if she was unsatisfied but he had no money to refund her and he had filed for bankruptcy. She described sitting in the church, watching this man at the front, with everyone looking at him with respect. And she knew what he really was.

Paul stood next to his grandmother's chair while she spoke. He smiled at her, filled in some details, brought her some water. But Paul, so amiable with us and gentle with his grandmother, got more serious when he and I spoke privately during lunch. I told him I'd had problems with an unscrupulous contractor, too. (Not you, Mike Armstrong, but if you are reading this, that means you are not at my house fixing my moldy ceiling/roof, which could mean a future hostile post about you. You have been warned.) The loss of money was upsetting, I told him, but what was worse was how stupid I felt, gullible, used.

Paul said he understood. His face darkened and grew more tense as he spoke, "I don't know what we're going to do if we can't get that money back. This is going to kill her. The storm was bad but this is going to kill her. And if something happens to my grandma ... she's my heart. I don't know what I'm going to do without her. But I know I'll do something. Nobody's going to get away with this."

I said, "No jury would convict you. Call me if you get in trouble. I know some defense attorneys."

I GOT NO PATIENCE, AND I HATE WAITING

2007-04-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

If I ever take over the world, one of the first things I am going to do is introduce the “Correctional Officers Get Off Your Ass and Do Some Work Act (of 2007, 2008 or whatever year I seize control)”

For some reason that may be my lack of charm or lack of grit, whenever I go to jail to see a client there must be some special signal that makes the officers delay bringing my client down to see me. It could be 8:00 am on a Sunday, no one else there and my client in the next booth, but for some reason it takes 2 hours for the guard to walk 5 feet over to let him in to talk to me.

Today I went to the jail at about 1:00 pm, ready with a crossword puzzle and a sudoku from the paper. One hour goes by, nothing. Then two other attorneys show up, have their clients brought in within 5 minutes. Two more attorneys show up and their clients are immediately brought down. I am beginning to feel more and more like the last kid to get picked at kickball, watching all the better athletes pass me by.

After about two hours, I have finished the crossword and the sudoku and find myself reading the bridge hand section. (I haven’t played bridge since college and can barely remember how it works. Back in 1995 the main goal of bridge was to get Anne Halsey to go on a date with me, so you can imagine how much I remember about the actual game). I finally go back down to the desk officer and it goes something like this:

Me: “Do you know when my client will be down”

Officer (playing computer pool and totally lining up the shot wrong): “I called, so shortly”

Me: “You called two hours ago, what’s shortly”

Officer (missing the shot on computer pool): “Well shortly”

Me: “Is there anyone who can help get him down here?”

Officer: “You wanna talk to a supervisor?”

Ahh the supervisor, now my heart leaps at the idea of someone in charge getting down here to help me out. Unfortunately, apparently the only difference between the supervising officer and the desk officer is that the supervisor says my client will be down “soon” rather than “shortly.” Such are the perks of authority.

After about 3 hours, having exhausted the paper, contemplated the meaning of life, wondering whether the officer was contemplating the meaning of life, trying to calculate pi to a ridiculous decimal and deciding that maybe Starbuck was really the 5th Cylon, they bring in my client.

After about ten minutes he decided that he didn’t want to talk about the case anymore because it was getting close to food time and told me to come see him tomorrow. I said I wasn’t going to do that given my schedule, so I agreed to meet him over the weekend.

On the way out, the desk officer said “Are you done already? That was a long wait to talk to him (client) that little?”

Indeed.

On Being Nancy Drew as I've Always Dreamed

2007-04-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Back to my strongpoint this week -- destruction.

Most of the time, when you're gutting a house, you don't know that much about the people who used to live there. You might have a name and some details as to where they are now, but you don't know the names and ages of all of the occupants, or if their house was once the gathering point for holidays, or if the home had been newly constructed or a family legacy. You don't know if it was a happy home or a hellhole.

So you play detective, at least in your head, as you work. Or, at least, I do.

We were working at a house in Gentilly today, one of many now-empty homes on a once-busy street. It hadn't been occupied since before the storm. The homeowner had left a note asking us volunteers to try to preserve any molding or door frames that could be reused it in the rebuilding, but the house was way beyond that. About five feet of water had sat in here for weeks, and then the building had sat for more than a year. The only things the family could gain from the gutting was the recovery of some family treasures, and even those turned out to be few and far between.

But I needed a goal and decided it was to figure out the family. The game was afoot, as Sherlock said.

(But first, an aside into my love of Nancy Drew. When I was little, I wanted to be Nancy Drew. I wanted my dad to be a lawyer named Carson and my maid/surrogate mom to be Hannah Gruen and although I found my boyfriend Ned a little dull (even as a elementary schooler, I thought I could do better), I liked my friends George and Bess, but George more because Bess was a bit of a baby (even as an elementary schooler, I blamed that on the fact that she was blond). My mother will tell you I tried to solve mysteries in our house even when there were none. I tried to fingerprint family members with flour, ink, and tape even though I had no idea 1) how to do it, 2) how to read it if I could, 3) how to lift prints off of other objects. My mother will also tell you about "The Case of the Missing Cookies," in which 5 or 6-year-old me tried to determine which family member had absconded with most of a plate of Christmas desserts. Was it Mom? Dad? Gram? Pop? Could Pepe, our toy poodle, or Big Buy, our Great Dane, have been part of the crumb conspiracy? (Clearly, my sister had not been born, or she would have naturally become Suspect #1 even if she couldn't swallow solids.) My mother will say I went to everyone in the house, trying to get fingerprints and questioning them and making a mess and carrying on while wearing a baseball cap and squinting as if through a magnifying glass although I had none ---- and in the end, the culprit was me. I think she's insane and that this is one of her revisionist memories altered for comic effect at my expense, but I do remember the family-wide fingerprinting attempts.) (Or, to put a positive spin on my possible guilt/cover up, I'm like Kaiser Soze before my time.)

The house had four beds: One in what was clearly the master (adult) bedroom, two twins in one room and another full with a canopy in another. A few photos remained: a smiling couple, looking very 1980s; a teenage boy in a Sean John shirt; a boy of about 4; two teenage girls with their faces pressed together. Among the few legible documents I found was a reminder postcard from a dentist.

The master bedroom, where I found some of the pictures, had an ornate, wooden headboard that fell apart as we pulled it out. It was a bed built for two, but other things in the room made me think it was a female-only dwelling: The small closet seemed to only contain women's clothes and TONS of women's shoes. The dresser, which also fell apart in our hands, had lots of lace, no boxers. Lots of make-up and creams and perfumes. A single woman had occupied that bedroom, I concluded. (Of course, I could be wrong. Come to our house in Philly and you might conclude the same as I have the entire third floor closet and some of Jordo's undergarments are just as delicately made and ornate as mi--- never mind.)

One bedroom was movie set teeny-bopper, but teeny bopper from Summer 2005. (Actually, it may have been more 2000. Backstreet Boys, N'Sync AND Britney, still on the walls?) But there was also a "Class of 2005" poster on one wall and a few paintings that looked more elementary school than high school. There were high school yearbooks and cheerleading costume complete with poms, but also a stuffed Elmo and a big collection of stuffed animals, including a teddy bear head. Girls' clothes in the drawers, including one white bra with green mold that had totally over-sculpted cups that would turn an A-cup into Carmen Electra. So daughters, I concluded. Two of them. One in her late teens, done with high school. The other about 11. The stuffed animals belonged to her, remnants of her childhood. The teenybopper posters did, too: After all, she was the little sister and would adopt the likes of her older sister, at least at first, meaning she may still have been clinging to the Boy Band glory days while her sister had moved on. (Did I not turn my sister into the world's youngest Duran Duran fan? Child thought she was actually going to marry Simon LeBon and she was 7.)

The final bedroom had the two twins. The walls were bare except for one alphabet poster. In one corner, we found a bunch of sports trophies and a plaque from a car show at the Superdome. There was a box of those monster cards -- Yu Gi Oh or Pokemon or whatever it is the kids play with today. (I used to play Pokemon with a kid I knew all the time but I could never understand the cards so I'd try to hide that fact with a dramatic presentation each hand. I always lost.) There were boys clothes, lots of little shoes. Brothers, I decided. One teen, based on the photo I'd found in the other room. The other elementary school aged.

So my final deductions: One parent (female), four children - two girls, two boys. When the storm hit, the oldest had just gotten out of the high school, the youngest was just learning to read.

Of course, I'll never really know who lived there. Or where they are now. Unlike the Nancy Drew books, things don't always tie up neatly in the end here. I just hope they were happy.

The Door to Charles and Winnie's House

2007-04-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Sally, for sending this.

"God May Not Come When You Want Him But He Is Always on Time."

2007-04-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

An unusual week for me, because instead of destroying houses, I joined a group that was rebuilding one. And the people we were working for were there the whole time, living in a trailer in front of their home-in-progress, walking through the house each day and marveling at the work and thanking us over and over again.

Charles and Winnie were the homeowners. Charles is about 70, Winnie about 63. They'd moved out of the 9th Ward and into this blond brick ranch-style house in eastern New Orleans just a few weeks before the storm. (Both their houses -- old and new -- were flooded.In fact, the one in the 9th Ward was knocked right off its foundation.) A group of volunteers had come and gutted the house more than a year ago, but the couple had been unable to rebuild. Instead, they were living in a trailer in the front yard. I've seen a lot of FEMA trailers, but somehow, theirs seemed even smaller than usual: You couldn't stand side-by-side inside the width of it and the bedroom was basically a bed with no room to move on either side of it. But they'd decorated with prayer cards all around the door and in the bathroom so small that it seemed you'd be unable to lift your arms to wash while in the shower, they had a peach shower curtain and a peach scrubber that matched it.

They could live in the cramped quarters, but they really wanted the house to be complete: Winnie's mother is 97 and needed to come live with them.

The rebuilding crew was a good bunch of folks, about 25 strong, mostly from Pittsburgh. Most were teenagers, but there were couples and even entire families there. (Which led me to imagine what it would be like if the Pompilios went on a similar trip: Lou, out buying everyone food, which would be the best thing as his gifts in the home/gardening realm are limited as evidenced by the time he decided to trim the trees in front of our house and managed to kill them. Trimming. And they were evergreens. Those things never die; Mom, with cigarette. In wheelchair. "Supervising." Loudly. As she does now when we help her prepare a holiday meal; Tricia, single-handedly constructing most of the house, her only challenge being if asked to light a fire as the last time she tried to ignite one in her own fireplace she was puzzled that tossing matches on full logs didn't work; me, well-meaning, but really quite clumsy, living up to the "bull in a china shop" description my mother pressed on me years ago. This lack of grace was evident during this adventure, when, while helping install insulation in the attic, I put my foot through the ceiling. It's hard to look/feel cool when your leg is dangling in the hallway and the rest of you is among the rafters.)(Ironically, I was born on a Tuesday and according to the old rhyme, Tuesday's child is "full of grace." Full of something, friends, but it ain't grace.)

Besides the Pitt crew, there were a few strays like myself, including Mark and Tamara from Washington (Hi, guys!) and Beth from San Francisco, one of Jordo's oldest friends -- and our guest blogger, see above or below or wherever it is if she actually follows through and writes us something -- who made a point of noting that she wanted inclusion in any blog entry about this week. (Does this count? Because really, if I have to start talking about you, Beth, that just takes the focus off of me.) (And by the way, I think I'm done mentioning you now, unless I decide to detail your harrowing day dealing with fractions and mismeasured trim or your age-inappropriate crushes on other members of the work crew.)

(Just kidding, reading public. Don't call the police.)

Now back to me.

I missed the first day of work at the house but I caught up with everyone on the second. It was a painting day. I met Charles right out front. "I have no teeth and a Southern accent so I can be hard to understand," he said. He immediately gave me a tour. He was so proud of everything that had been done, and it was far from done. He also insisted on showing me his back yard. A few weeks earlier, another volunteer group had come through and created a little seating area there for him and his wife. They'd used bricks to make side tables for metal furniture that was mostly missing cushions. They'd brought in some potted plants that already looked like they'd seen better days. "This is our salvation," Charles told me. "After being in that trailer all day, this is just so nice." He kept pointing out the tables made of bricks, and the way the volunteers had used some of the other bricks to line part of the yard. "That just makes it so cozy," he said.

Charles was just so friendly, so willing to talk about anything. (And so loving to talk. He later blamed that on being raised Baptist. Kids today, he said, complain about going to church but they don't know what it was like when he was coming up and church was all day and "you'd fall asleep and they'd wake you up and you'd be hungry and then you'd take a break in the afternoon and go back again at night. Lord...") One morning, he was going on about tv programs and "American Idol," one of his favorites, and how Sanjaya should not still be among the contestants. He said that when the show was on, if the phone would ring, Winnie would say, "Who could be calling us NOW?" He liked Simon, he said, because Simon made the show. Just like JR once made "Dallas" and Alexis made "Dynasty" and had we watched those shows too? "Those were some soap operas," Charles said, shaking his head.

I've worked with religiously-affiliated groups since coming here but this week was the first time we started each day with a prayer circle. (We had another one before lunch, which can be annoying when you're hungry and want to eat but you can't get everyone into a circle. One day, Beth and I were about to start gnawing off our own arms because everyone was so slow.) (Second mention, Beth!) I didn't mind it. It was a good way to start off, all joined together. Roger, who usually led the group, was just so up-beat, even when he was giving out work assignments. "Have you walked through there today?" he'd say, referring to the house. "It looks AMAZING in there and that's all thanks to you and your hard work. I can't believe how far we've come in just a few days. But we've also got a ways to go, so let's see who is going to do what this morning..." (Roger was very nice. When my leg busted through the ceiling, he kinda shrugged and said, "To paraphrase a saying, stuff happens." I felt better.) A morning prayer circle was also the sight of one of the cutest things I've seen in a while: There was this crazy little brown terrier-type dog, Angel, that came running over from across the street when the vans pulled up each day. All of the kids loved Angel, as did we, even when Angel's dirty paws marred our freshly painted doors one day. During one morning prayer, one of the girls was holding Angel in one arm, meaning she couldn't join hands with the 14-year-old boy on one side. So he was holding the dog's paw without even thinking about it, just standing there. (I only wish Beth could have gotten a photo.) (Third.)

Charles led us in the prayer on a few of the days. His sentences were often punctuated by the words, "Oh Heavenly Father" and "Thank you." He always remembered to give thanks for the U.S. troops overseas and the fathers and mothers who let their children go so he could have his life in New Orleans. In part, it would go something like this, "Thank you, oh Heavenly Father, for another day you have given us, oh Heavenly Father and for bringing these wonderful people here from far and near here to help us, oh Heavenly Father, because you are so good and loving, oh Heavenly Father. And thank you for your sons and daughters overseas, oh Heavenly Father, who are risking their lives so that we may live these blessed lives, oh Heavenly Father. Keep them safe, oh Heavenly Father, and give them shelter, oh Heavenly Father, so that they can come home again, oh Heavenly Father Father. And thank you for their parents, oh Heavenly Father, because they have let them go so we can be free, oh Heavenly Father." Despite his lack of teeth and his Southern accent, Charles wasn't hard to understand when he prayed aloud.

So the work we did: Painting and windows and doors and trim and closets and floors and sanding and spackling and plumbing and insulating. We were volunteers, working for free, but you never got that idea. It was a professional work site, and everyone was trying to do the best job they could. (Thank God we had some professionals among us.) It wasn't just, "These people are lucky to get help at all. Let's just slap something together." It was careful, detailed. Beth (And here's number four.) and I devoted ourselves to caulking one afternoon and we took our job very seriously. There was something so satisfying about going into a room and making it look right and neat, and then having Charles come in behind us and say, "Oh, beautiful, just beautiful. Oh, Lord, thank you."

Charles and Winnie were often asked what they wanted and their wishes were granted, even the ones that seemed, well, odd, like her request for bright yellow pillars and front door with dark gray trim. (Basically, Saints colors, but I don't think that was intentional.) Charles wasn't shy about saying he wanted the original lanterns that had hung from the porch redone and replaced, so he joined a group sanding them for painting. (It was great to see this 70-year-old man surrounded by teenagers, all intent on the same task, chatting away.) Winnie wanted the group to pick a name for the house and they chose "Amazing Grace," inspired by an earlier evening when one of the church members had led them in the song, with some modified lyrics. One of the volunteers, an artist, painted the name in yellow on the gray trim around the front door, surrounded it with yellow flowers and vines. She painted a small gray cross in the middle of the yellow door.

On Good Friday, we gathered in the front room for a sort of dedication - almost all of the major work was done and the group would be returning to their homes in the next few days. We were joined by others who had been volunteering but working on another home. People sat on benches made from planks of wood and oversized plastic containers or on the floor or they leaned against the walls. One of the Pittsburgh pastors led the services, strumming a guitar and leading the group in song. Winnie and Charles sat next to him, with Winnie singing harmony each time, her voice always distinct from the others.

The pastor pointed out how appropriate it was we were gathering that day. Like so many New Orleanians after the storm, Jesus had felt forgotten and forsaken when he died. It was a dark day, he said, but the best part about that was knowing that things were going to get better: New Orleans, like Jesus, would rise again.

He asked the question, "When have you felt that God has forsaken you?" And Winnie, through tears, began telling their tale: How'd they just moved into the house when the storm hit, and they'd moved so they could have a place to bring her parents. The 11-hours they spent on a bus to Baker, La. The realization that they'd lost everything "and it's not the material things but why did this have to happen?" She talked about losing her father after the storm and how it had felt to be homeless, crammed into a shelter with dozens of others -- "I know what it's like to be hungry. I know what it's like to go to bed at night listening to the crying and moaning of the people around you. I know what it's like to be in pain and to think God has abandoned you."

Her soft sobs sparked tears around the room. Both men and women dabbed their eyes with coarse paper towels. I saw one woman lean into her husband, and it struck me because I hadn't even known they were married before, they'd seemed to disconnected.

Charles, who rubbed his wife's neck with one hand, while she spoke, took over for his wife at some point. He said he knew they suffered some, but he considered them blessed. He may have had arthritis pain in his shoulder but at least he could lift it and there were so many people who were unable to walk when "Uncle Arthur" visited. So many people had lost loved ones in the storm but he hadn't had to bury any of his children or grandchildren. He may have lost everything, but people came forward to give. "Everything I've got on, someone gave me," he said, tugging at his baseball cap and looking over his pants and shirt. (He actually made the comparison that if he were a man without shoes, at least he wasn't a man without feet. This is also one of my dad's favorite expressions. Like when I complained about losing my job, he said, "Remember, 'I felt bad because I had no shoes and then I saw a man with no feet.'" I replied, "Are there a lot of people with no feet around? Because I haven't seen any.")

God was good, God was good, Charles said repeatedly. He knew this because God had sent so many wonderful strangers to New Orleans to help his family get their lives back together.

"God may not come when you want him," Charles said, "but he is always on time."

Cheesesteak 2.0

2007-04-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

For those who aren't aware, one of Philadelphia's greatest culinary acheivements is the cheesesteak, a relatively simple combination of meat, onions and cheeze whiz on bread that is sooo much more than the sum of its parts. As a sandwich that is already a heart attack waiting to happen, I always wondered if someday someone would find a way to make it worse for you. Leave it to my temporary city to find that way.

Last night we went to a restaraunt up the street named Jacques-imos. They had the genius idea of taking a whole roast beef po-boy and frying the whole thing. This may be the greatest change to the sandwich since, well, I don't know when. Philadelphians, take note, if someone can figure out how to fry a cheesesteak they may very well destroy Pat's and Geno's over the next few years.

Let Lying Dogs Sleep

2007-04-05T16:28:00.000-07:00

Interviewing clients right after their arrest can sometimes be a tricky proposition. Some clients clam up, not knowing their new attorney and not necessarily trusting them. Others, overcome with emotion, can't stop crying, and any attempt to get even the slightest bit of information will lead to an outpouring of tears that nothing can get through. Some of course, are all to willing to share their side of the story, which often boils down to "everyone's lying on me."

Tell a client they were arrested for a burglary and they will say they weren't there. Tell them there is a videotape of them inside the house burglarized and they will say the tape was doctored. Tell them that they gave a statement confessing to the crime and they will say they never said anything. Tell them and show them the statement recorded on videotape and they will say that they didn't really mean it. Everyone and everything is lying on them.

I thought had heard some of the most ridiculous versions of the "everything's a lie" interview until today. A colleague of mine just got a new client who is charged with assaulting a police officer and assaulting a police officer's dog. In the course of explaining the charges to him, said colleague explained that he was being charged with assaulting a police officer.

Client response: "Those cops are lying, I never touched them."

Okay, fair enough, on to the next charge. Colleague explains that client is charged with assaulting a police dog.

Client response: "That dog is lying, I never touched that dog."

Colleague: "The dog is lying?"

Client: "Yeah, that dog is lying if he told the cops I hurt him."

I must admit, I have absolutely now idea what to say to a client who believes in talking (and lying) dogs. If anyone has ideas, let me know.

It's All in the Way You Tell the Story

2007-04-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

Someone I'd just met told me her storm story this weekend. She and her roommate/aka gay husband (Patrick) didn't evacuate because they each had a dog, so they watched, and photographed, the rising water that eventually engulfed their one-story home, forcing them to seek refuge on the second floor of a neighbor's home. They were rescued by boat. They spent nights sleeping outside in the sweltering heat before being evacuated across the state to Cajun Country, where they landed with some clothes, a few key documents, and little else. Their New Orleans house is now a shell as they keep waiting to find out how much money they'll get to rebuild. Despite the fact that much of the city is a disaster zone, city officials had given the woman a formal warning about cleaning up the jungle that her yard had become. (Which is how I met her. I was there to pull weeds and clean up her yard, armed with -- God help us all -- a machete.)

Yet despite her sad and sometimes horrifying tale and the general feeling that life and insurance companies and government officialas aren't fair, I can honestly say I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time.

It was how she told the story.

Let me put it this way: When the most important bit of storm advice you get is, "Make sure you're wearing a bra," you know you're talking to someone special. As in, "And they're pulling these 70-, 80- year old women in their nightgowns off the roofs of their houses and putting them in the boot with us and I was like, 'Good Lord, gravity is not kind!' And I know we all have to deal with it some day but hadn't we been through enough at that point? I was like, 'Patrick! Take off one of your six shirts and give it to that woman right now because I can not look at that!" (Later, we discussed the bra rule: Does that mean that, if you think a natural disaster is coming, you have to wear one to bed? Or is having one handy good enough? Does a bra join your wedding ring and insurance papers and photos in the "Bag of Things That Must Be Saved"?)

I know I can't do this woman's story justice. The funny just won't translate. You just had to see her, sitting on the floor of her gutteed house, showing photos of the flood and its aftermatch on computer. You had to listen to her incredibly self-deprecating way of describing things, and get excited and sad as she did as she yelled and laughed and pulled us along through late August and early September, 2005.

Some bits and pieces:

Her tale began the day before the storm. She lived in Lakeview, a part of the city that had never flooded before and two nervous friends were coming to ride out the storm with her and Patrick. So when the water started filling the streets, her house was clean. As it kept rising, she still insisted her friends go outside to smoke so the cigarette smell wouldn't infuse her belongings. "We kept going outside! And I'd cleaned all day the day before! And what did that matter?" she laughed. "We lost everything anyway." (Her friends had brought a bunch of their stuff over as well. As it turned out, their home didn't flood. More bitter irony.)

(Pictures: the two women smiling, one wearing a headlamp; smoking outside; water in the street; the pecan tree that toppled and destroyed the back deck.)

She described how the water took its time reaching her first floor, but once it was there, it seemed to pick up speed. It didn't come gushing through cracks in windows and doors. It seemed to come from below, gaining inches rapidly , covering their feet then their ankles. She said she could understand why so many people drowned in their homes. There just wasn't time to get out.

But she and her roommate and friends did manage to get out. They had a key to the neighbor's two story home. There, they watched the water rise, "She had a floating floor and it really was floating! Then we're on the second floor worried the dogs are going to pee in the house, the same house that was taking on 6 feet of water. We were so worried, my roommate went on the balcony and peed in certain places hoping the dogs would follow the scent."

(Pictures: Smiling on the balcony after marking one's territory; the floating floor and floating furniture; her house, below them, which water high on the first floor.)

So they're trapped on the balcony of the neighbor's house and firefighters come by with a boat. They're at least five feet from the boat and are told to jump in. "And I'm like, 'Oh no. I can see the headline now, "Fat Woman Kills Firefighters While Jumping into Boat.' It'll be on the front page of the Times Picayune with a big picture of my fat ass." I was a mess. I was like, 'Please, Jesus, don't like me tip this boat over.' And the firefighters are telling me to jump, jump. So I wrap my hands around this board and lower myself as much as possible and then plink! Barely a ripple. They were very impressed. Then Patrick was about to hand me my dog and the firefighter put his arms up like, 'I'll take him.' And I said, "No! No! He's such a jerk!" and just then the dog went crazy in Patrick's arms, biting and barking and the firefighter was like, 'Whoa. OK.'"

(Pictures: Sadly, none of cute firefighters, but one of the group after they'd been rescued and were standing together on the bridge. Evil little dog was hiding his face in the shot, though.)

The firefighters ferried them to a bridge near City Park where about 90 other people were huddled after being rescued. There was no food or water or any kind of comforts. As the hours passed, the water surrounding them got deeper and deeper. Three times, a Coast Guard helicopter flew overhead and seemed to assess the situation before flying away. The third time, they dropped down a harness and tried to put an elderly woman in it. But she'd had some hip surgery and they couldn't get her in, so they just pulled up the harness and flew away. "I don't agree with those people who opened fire on the Coast Guard at the Superdome, but if I'd had a gun, I would have let loose that third time they circled overhead and didn't do anything. It would have just been like, 'Everyone out of my way' and I would have fired."

They all spent the night on the bridge and it was dark and eery and hot. (But in a tribute to American decorum, the group decided that one side of the bridge was the men's bathroom and the other side was the ladies'. They sang songs and tried to be sleep but the helicopters (see above) kept waking them up.

(Pictures: Some lovely ones of City Park under water, with the trees climbing out of the water; others of the group against the bridge and, amazingly, still smiling; the two restroom facilties.)

The next morning, Patrick swam back to the house and got some food and water to share with everyone on the bridge. Everyone, that is, except the man who was tooling around in a boat and who had refused to let Patrick use it to get food.

(Pictures: One of Patrick, looking tough, which she joked was going to be used for his next personal ad.)

They decided to try to walk out of the city. They were along the railroad tracks when they looked back and saw somone had started rescuing people by helicopter. Patrick yelled at her, "We could have had a helicopter rescue!" Instead, they kept walking, eventually ending up on another overpass in Jefferson Parish, from which they were rescued.

When they got on the bus, they weren't given food or water. They were given Old Spice deoderant sticks. "We smelled so bad! We're just rubbing those sticks up and down our arms and all over our bodies and we didn't care."

They could have been placed in "gen pop" at Thibodaux, a big room with crying babies and musty air. But because they had their animals, they had to be separated and, as it ended up, they got the much better end of the deal."That's another trick to evacuating: have your animals. We ended up at the Taj Mahal comparatively."

(Pictures: General shots of the gen pop area and the Taj, as well shots of individuals they'd met: the woman from Minnesota who said, "I don't know what I'm going to do about a job. I don't think Pet Smart is going to be open again." Which prompted them to say, "It's a national company. Go home to Minnesota and work there;" the elderly man, about 80, who had his back to the camera. His wife had evacuated without him, leaving him home with his dog and cat. When he got to the shelter and called him, she told him she wanted a divorce. He spent a lot of time crying.)

After a few days, they made it to one of her cousin's houses.

(Picture: Patrick in two layers of boxers borrowed from a teenage boy, smiling but looking ridiculous. "The first pair he put on, you could see right through it and I said, "No way are you going to have dinner with the family wearing those.' So then he put this other pair on top of it and it had these little snowmen on them and he would kill me if he knew I was showing you this picture.")

Eventually, they made it back to New Orleans.

(Pictures: Her parents' house, destroyed; her cousin's house, destroyed; her house, destroyed; some random pictures of some local libraries, taken because she'd used her city worker i.d. to get back in the city early and wanted to have some sort of proof she was there working if she was stopped. (She wasn't really working.))

It was a horrible story. It was a hysterical story. She made us cringe when she told us how she and her family had lost everything, then made us laugh as she described her big subterfuge, sneaking into the city weeks before normal folk were allowed in. She made us feel the heat and misery of sleeping on the bridge while making us roar as we imagined her poised to jump into the rescue boat.

it's all in how you tell the story.

10 More Random Things

2007-03-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

1. With no TV, we watch a lot of TV courtesy of borrowed DVD's of the British Office and downloading shows on I-Tunes. The good of that is that you can watch the most hilarious points of The Office over and over again. The bad of that is that you can get stuck on one of those serialized vaguely mysterious shows (Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica) over and over again looking for clues. Battlestar Galactica concluded its season last week and I have seen the last episode now 4 times trying to figure out exactly who the final cylon is.

2. Simon's digestive system continues to amaze. I swear if you compare food consumed to what he leaves around the house, the poop outnumbers the food by a factor of at least two. With no TV, these are the things I notice.

3. Humidity is not, nor ever has been, my friend. I somehow imagined that a bunch of wool suits would be the perfect court outfits for the south. I may start winning cases only because the jury is worried I am going to pass out from dehydration.

4. XM radio's customer service stinks. As in you are on hold for 45 minutes and then they tell you to unplug the machine and plug it back in again. As I was on hold for 45 minutes I had already done that like five times. Their follow up advice? Umm, get a new one. Thanks XM.

5. The judge I am in front of is convinced that I am going out of town to celebrate Easter, and I don't want to tell him that I never really did much for celebrating the re-birth. It's kind of like the time in law school my Constitutional Law professor assumed I celebrated passover and when I told him that I wasn't Jewish he looked like I just told him the Bill of Rights was for wusses.

6. The office down here decided to have a softball team. In the spirit of getting to know my officemates I decided to play. Except most of the team showed up in cleats with their own bats and batting gloves and were, well, much better than I was. Next time I am going to be the designated mascot.

7. The beignet should absolutely take over as the post-cheesesteak dessert. Pat's and Geno's should sell it in the booth with the cheese fries and drinks.

8. I have never seen more people out in suits on a Saturday night. You could be at some random divey bar and some guy is going to walk in wearing a blue suit, white shirt and broad striped tie. Not in an ironic "I am a southern gentleman way". More in a "no really I am an unironic southern gentleman" Maybe there's a story out there about how Katrina limited the drinking options so much that everybody's gotta share the same bar stools, but it's kind of weird to see.

9. They have praline encrusted bacon topped with brown sugar. I have no idea why this hasn't taken over the country. Then again I am the guy who is CONVINCED that if you had bacon flavored candles they would sell like mad.

10. If there was a way to combine TV shows the wire and battlestar galactica, I would never watch any other TV.

Ten Random Things

2007-03-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

1. We're still crashed in the shell of Walt's house, but now we have a REAL BED so we think we're all fancy. No more waking up on the floor with a deflated air mattress around us. We're big time now. We'll probably stay here, in the House of No Kitchen Appliances/No Furniture/No TV/No Internet/Etc, until we come back. It's just easier.

2. George Foreman is a genius. Without his grill, we'd be starving.

3. The cats are FINALLY adjusting. That said, they'll be going back to Philadelphia as changed animals. Bourre, for one, is twice her size now that she doesn't have steps to climb up and down or a backyard to play in. Her newest nickname -- and she pretty much has a new one every week -- is Tubbles, as in "Tubby who is Double her size." (Jordo is pretty good with the cutting cat nicknames. She was "Whiny McTubbs" earlier this month, when her screaming kept us awake at night.)

4. Don't hate us because the weather here is beautiful. Sure, we don't have snow or ice or even the hint of cold, but we suffer sometimes, too. Like earlier this week, I was working with a gutting group that insisted I wear a spaceman-type suit and a 9/11 respirator while working. I thought I would die of heat stroke. (Which really bummed me out, for multiple reasons, one being that that would be an unglamorous death. If you're going to die young, either go 1) Noble, like saving orphans from a burning building or 2) Vaguely Cool, like totalling your Porsche while speeding on a California highway or 3) Mysterious, like Amelia Earhart-esque but involving - instead of an airplane - Brad Pitt, a yacht and a missing diamong necklace.) (On a more positive note, if I were to die of heat stroke now, at least I have a tan so I'd look good at the wake.)

5. I'm in a minor panic about baseball season starting with me out of NY radio range. Do I get an air card for my computer? Satellite radio? I can't miss a game, especially as Carl Pavano may actually pitch an inning or two. (Hate him.) (Speaking of baseball, the other night, Tubbles was whining in the early a.m. hours and I just got so irritated that I began throwing random things at her, like clothing, pillows, etc. The next morning, Jordo said, "Yeah, you were like Curt Schilling with that aim." Do you see how how cruel he can be? He knows how I hate C Schilling with the burning passion of a thousand suns. He even insisted on the CS comparison after I offered more appropriate pitchers like Ron "Louisiana Lightning" Guidry.)

6. Philadelphia thinks it knows potholes. It knows nothing. There is no stretch in the world like our section of State Street Drive, which is more off-road than the Grand Canyon.

7. I still can't believe I went to a Justin Timberlake concert. True, the ticket was free, but really. I almost started a riot in the auditorium when I asked if Justin had been with Backstreet Boys or N'Sync. (I still think this is a legitimate question and does not deserve the mockery/shock it garnered.) It was an experience akin to the time I took my sister and cousin to see New Kids on the Block at MSG one Thanksgiving. Tricia maintains I had a good time because she saw me clapping. I maintain I was clapping because the show was finally over.

8. I'm on my third cell phone since moving here. I am a technological black hole.

9. During the St. Patrick's Day parade, we (including guests Dave and Amy) caught cabbages and carrots as well as assorted beads and flowers.(Getting flowers required kissing strangers. I got mine legitimately. Jordo said the clerk in his court just happened to be there and just happened to give him one. Sure.) Jordo also ended up in possession of a racy green thong. I have now planted that among his belongings and am waiting for it to reappear at the most inappropriate of times -- in court, at the gas station, during a family meal. (It could be anywhere at this point. Good luck, friend.)

10. Fun food facts: Snowballs are a poor man's Italian ice. It's OK to give up BYOB's when your drinks are $3 each. You can't eat too many beignets.

Screams of My Father (Alternative Title: David Flynn is a Jerk)

2007-03-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

I promise this is my last post about the US Attorney purge (seriously, go to www.talkingpointsmemo.com, they found this story and have by far the best coverage). But all of this brings me back to somewhere between 1982 and 1987 (a little hazy on the exact time).

Back then my dad was still alive and working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, the main area for federal enforcement of various civil rights laws that had developed. He had worked in a bunch of the sections there but had ended up as Deputy in the Appellate Section. The job wasn't especially glamorous. Pay was fine but far below what the private sector paid, but he loved the work and more importantly thought it was important (Mom: If you are worrying that your kids are generally fine taking relatively low paying jobs doing work they find important, you have only yourself and Dad to blame).

Back in 1980, however Reagan got elected and slowly but surely the priorities of the Civil Rights Division changed. The Department started cutting down on enforcing voting rights, stopped pushing cases against segregated school districts and totally reversed their stance on affirmative action. In addition to orders from on high, they also appointed new section chiefs who were, how shall we put it, less concerned about making sure people weren't discriminated against.

Or as my friend Mike put it once, they were very very very concerned about the rights of white people to get into college and that was about the extent of their concern.

Anyway, now that we now the Attorney General lied and that the Civil Rights Division was getting stocked with right wing cronies whose main concern was making it harder for poor black people to vote, I am happy my Dad doesn't have to see it. It might have made him angry enough to buy one of those guns that Bush's Court of Appeal says DC residents can buy now.

The Music Man

2007-03-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, let me just note that not every homeowner I work for is an adorable elderly man who you just want to put in your pocket and take home with you.

There have been two homeowners among the many I've now met who were demanding/bossy/unhelpful. One, I think, was mentally handicapped. The other was just bitchy. She basically watched us work -- for free, I might add -- and looked grouchy while doing so. At first, I was miffed. Then I realized she'd pretty much lost everything she owned and, if I were in her shoes, I'd look more than grouchy. "Grouchy" would be a good mood for me under those circumstances.

But there is a high percentage of adorable old men.

I've been working with RHINO recently (Rebuilding Hope In New Orleans). Excellent organization, very together, good works. I'm a big fan. Each week, I've joined groups of college students and one or two locals in our gutting/tear down missions. On the most recent gutting, I met the Music Man.

He must have been in his late 70s at least, appearing healthy at first glance, with a young face and full head of gray hair, but if you looked more carefully, you could see one side of his body was slumped and he sometimes shook uncontrollably. He had not entered his home since the storm. This, despite the fact that he has been living in a trailer right outside his own front door. He couldn't bear it, he said

We all gathered on the street to meet and talk to the homeowner. He immediately started crying. He said he couldn't thank us enough.

We hadn't even gone into the house yet.

As we stood there around him, I asked about the license plate on his car. It said something like, "MUZIKMAN" or "MUZIKMN." Whatever the letters, it was clear what it stood for. So I asked him, "Why are you The Music Man?"

And he was off. He'd been a producer and promoter, he said, and began listing name after name of musicians he'd worked with. I didn't recognize one -- not a jazz fan here -- but it was clear he was proud. (And if I didn't know these names, the rest of the group definitely didn't. Honest to God: One girl, about 17, came out of the house, carrying a stack of records, and said, "I've never even seen one of these before. What do you play them on?" I thought about beheading her with a well thrown album.) He just went on and on, a little less than 10 minutes, I'd say, but it felt like longer as the group was kinda awkward and itchy to get to work and this conversation hadn't been planned.

It just made me so incredibly sad. Even writing about it almost makes me cry. He just wanted to talk to someone.

Then we started emptying the house. As I'm an old hand at this now, our group leader put me in charge of a group working in the back rooms. (Never give me power. I was all, "You! Blond Ponytail! Get over here and help me carry this dresser! Red Baseball Cap, you start emptying the closet." One group of my minions -- that's how I like to think of them -- were all hung up about how to get an air conditioner out of a window. "Where is it attached?" one girl said, looking at the house and the unit. I came over: "Just push it. Push it out of the window." They were like, "But we'll break it!" I said, "It's already broken. Push it." And they pushed it out the window and cheered when it hit the ground.) (You'd be amazed by what sheer force can accomplish. Sometimes, I'll be trying to take a door down by the hinges and they're rusted and I just get fed up and swing at the hinge with all my might and it breaks. V. satisfying.)

But even being an old hand doesn't make me immune to emotion when we do this. We had to throw away all of his jazz posters and music books and credentials from different music festivals. We pulled out hundreds of records, which we saved because someone thought they were still usable. Someone found the paperweight he specifically asked we look for, but pretty much every thing else was ruined. We basically dumped his memories on the curb, then went back and tore his house apart.

Throughout the day, The Music Man walked around outside, trying to smile as he examined the glassware we'd saved and the ever-growing pile of records. But it was a shaky smile.

A lot of people break Katrina down by color. Black and White. But it's the elderly, of any color, who suffered the most. At least that's what I think.

I've been worrying about The Music Man these last few days, as I worry about Mr. L living alone in Pontchartrain Park. I don't think I'll be able to leave New Orleans without a final check on them.

If You Outlaw Guns, only Outlaw's Children Will Shoot Themselves Accidentally

2007-03-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

This post is horribly late, I know . . .

Apparently the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has now ruled that citizens of the District of Columbia can keep gays in their house. This is a direct affront to the will of the people of the city. They have repeatedly confirmed that in the District it should be illegal to have gays in their house and all of the elected leaders of the District of Columbia have echoed this feeling. These unelected judges have once again disregarded the will of the people and shown themselves to be nothing more than judicial activists. These tyrants in black robes must be stopped. They must be impeached immediately.

What, they said we can have GUNS in our homes. Oh well, never mind, I guess Frist, Dobson and the Federalist Society have no problem with that one (unless of course the guns are gay, which is a whole new problem).

Haven't read the case, but I see that already my temporary state Senator David Vitter has proposed a DC firearm law (the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act). Hmm, David, big bad federal government going to certain area of the country and telling them what to do with their laws? Didn't your region lose a war and about 8,000 court cases over the same sort of thing.

Growing up in D.C. there are always these incredibly annoying moments where the federal officials seize upon something to try and push some new development in D.C. Back when a congressional aide was shot there was a big move to reinstitute the death penalty (despite opposion from the actual residents of the city), and if memory serves at some point Ollie North showed up at Lincoln Park calling for a repeal of the handgun ban and said he was packing heat (my line of work disclines me from snitching to the police, but that was a time where I would have made an exception).

These sort of glorified photo ops with the backdrop of actual (ie. non-federal) D.C. always annoyed me. Be it Ollie or Dick Armey, I always imagined that they would get lost going near the SE-SW freeway and spend hours going in circles around the Kapper dwellings until they ran out of gas.

Mornings

2007-03-10T07:08:00.000-08:00

Jordo and I both have to be at work by 8 a.m. so we get up and get ready at about the same time.

He takes a shower, shaves, and puts on a pressed suit.

I roll out of bed (easy because it's the low air mattress), yawn, find the dirtiest clothes I have, ignore all make-up, and stick on a baseball cap.

Then we leave the house, The Dirtbag and The Lawyer.

Yes, my work down here doesn't require much in terms of personal appearance. I have gone days without blow drying my hair, at least a week without a hint of make-up. Instead of showering before work, I shower after, when I'm covered in dust and grime. Instead of going to an office, I travel to different locations every day. I'm never quite sure what kind of work I'll be doing: could be knocking down walls, could be pulling up floor boards, could be general clean up of someone's trashed yard.

But you can guarantee I'll be wearing ill fitting clothes, (I had a rule during my pre-trip shopping venture at thrift stores: No more than a $1 for tshirts, no more than $3 for pants. As you can imagine, these guidelines have led to some interesting ensembles. The one word that consistently describes me? H.O.T. I have to beat off the male admirers with my faithful crowbar.) I always wear a baseball cap. I spend 90 percent of my day wearing leather gloves and a dust mask that covers most of my face.

It's just ... funny. It's so different.

Yet also similar. As with any job, I've developed favorites and routines. But I never thought I'd be telling you I had a favorite crowbar. (I do.) I have a preferred shovel. (I call him "Pointy," as in, "Are you using Pointy? That's my shovel. Find one of your own.") If given a choice between taking out tile or pulling out walls, I'm going to go walls every time. (I generally hate tile. Hate, hate, hate it. Much of it sticks and requires Herculean strength to remove. One day, we were getting killed by the tile because it just wouldn't come up and as my friend was about to give in, I inspired her with, "Don't let the tile win." Tile and terrorists, terrible.) (Oh, and sometimes, tile is a little dangerous, as in, "I could kill you." : In one house we were gutting, we got through two separate layers of kitchen tile to find a third. We started the prying. Then someone turned the tile over and it said, "Asbestos tile," because apparently, that's how you made tile back in the day. One friend said, "One fiber of this and you'll have cancer in 5 to 10 years." We stopped working on that house. I think it has to be classified as toxic now.) I love swinging a hammer and having the pieces of wall pile up by my feet. I enjoy shoveling them out of the house and into a wheel barrow or a garbage can.

Before I left the Inky, I'd been having pains in my hands, probably from too much typing, they told me. Now, I sometimes suffer from what I call "Hammer Hand." You can get it from holding a hammer all day. My right hand frequently catches HH. I try to balance things out, giving the left hand a shot at breaking things, but that doesn't last for long. (The joke is that I'm going to go home with really buff arms. Or arm, as my right arm gets all the work out. I'm going to be walking into bars and restaurants right side first. All photos must be taken from the right.)

At the Inky, at the end, I felt mentally battered. Here, I am physically battered. My arms and legs are covered with cuts and bruises. It's really quite gross. I know I bruise easily, but this is just ridiculous. One friend said to me, "People are going to think Jordan beats you." I said, "Have you met me? Have you met Jordan?"

She should see us in the morning.

Oh, and before I sign off: For those who don't read The Times Picayune, check out our latest media star:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-20/1173422078209920.xml&coll=1

DA's like to keep cops off of the streets

2007-03-06T18:32:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has worked in the criminal justice system knows that the majority of cases are resolved short of trial. Cases get dismissed, motions to suppress evidence get granted and people charged with crimes plead guilty.

It is the last one that allows the urban criminal justice systems to actually function, avoiding lengthier delays between arrest and trial. "Plea bargaining" is generally a give and take. DA's will make an offer, clients with either accept it, reject it or make a counter offer. Often there is a meeting of the minds and a deal is worked out. Sometimes not.

Here is where it has gotten tricky in Louisiana. Given the ridiculous mandatory sentences for some cases, a clients only option to avoid a 10-15 year jail sentence is for us to try and work out some sort of deal with the DA. IF we can.

The IF part of that is much bigger here than in Philadelphia. You see, as I learned today, the DA's generaly policy is that if they have a strong case, they will not even consider a sentence less than the mandatory minimum.

Example: I have a client who is 25. He has one prior arrest, for which he was found guilty. He know has been arrested again for distribution of cocaine. Because of his prior felony conviction if he is found guilty after trial he has to serve a MINIMUM of 15 years at hard labor, with no parole, probation, etc. I don't know many 25 year olds who think past 30, much less 40, so staring at that number it seems reasonable to try and resolve it without a trial and spare him that amount of time.

The DA does have an exceptionally well put together case. 10 police officers, video and audio surveillance and a ton of other circumstantial evidence.

DA's position: We have such a good case, we can't lose, he's gotta do the 15 years.

My position: If you are not going to offer less than he would get after, what is the possible reason to plead guilty.

I'm not going to rant again about the unfairness of mandatory minimums, but the problem with the DA's attitude is the actual effect on law enforcement.

We are going to have
-10 police officers spending.
-1 police officer bringing over the alleged narcotics.
-1 police technician bringing over the video and audio surveillance.

So we end up with 12 police officers spending a day or more in court waiting to testify in a case. 12 officers who could be, I don't know, patrolling the streets. 12 police officers who could be out investigating the backlog in unsolved homicides this city has. 12 police officers who could be writing up their arrest reports. You get the point.

So instead of this case being resolved short of trial and offering something that a client could live with, we are going to have what in all effects may be a long and drawn out guilty plea where the net effect is taking 12 police officers off of the streets. Crime prevention indeed.

The Things They Saved

2007-03-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

First, a shout out to all my pals from Eastern Michigan. Stay warm!

And now to the news....

I was with a group gutting houses yesterday and I was thinking how much you can learn about someone by their possessions. The person who had lived in one side of the double house we were working on had been elderly, as the "Sexy to Sexty" joke book, a few canes and the general look of the clothing showed. She was religious, as evidenced from the crucifixes and saint statutes from the muck. She had a sense of humor which occasionally was a bit on the risque side, something demonstrated by some of the mugs she had in her cabinet and some other items we found. (I made her, in my head, be an Italian Catholic. Then I found her mail and learned I was right.) She was an old time New Orleanian who saved copies of The Times Picayune and had glasses from the defunct Jax Brewery and a fair share of Mardi Gras beads.

So I was very philosophical as I dumped this woman's life's possessions on a curb. (Yes, it had sat untouched since Katrina. Glasses and such still had water in them.) What would someone say about me if Philadelphia flooded and a team had to come in and empty out my home? (Thank God Philadelphia will never flood like that, by the way, because I just imagine the absolute horror I would feel at having people all over my stuff. On another gutting outing a while back, we were tearing down the closet shelves in a teenager's bedroom when we noticed that the flood waters had glued a photo of a barebreasted woman to the bottom of one of them. We carried out the shelf, woman intact. "Nobody has any secrets anymore," one friend observed.) I was very philosophical.

Then we started emptying out the other side of the double.

A man had lived there, an elderly one who had served in the military. He liked his guns, as evidenced by the boxes of ammo and many guns we found. He was a cop or a pervert, as the handcuffs and dirty magazines we uncovered showed.

Standard stuff, right?

Now imagine you're me, in a closet, pulling out boxes. And you open one and find these metal things shaped like grape clusters. And being me, and Mardi Gras minded, you immediately think this must be a souvenir from the Krewe of Bacchus or something like that. Then you look closer. And you're holding a hand grenade.

An entire box of them.

I remained calm. "Oh, my," I said to the college students working around me. "I believe these are hand grenades. I think I will carry them out of the house now. La la." One girl shrieked. The boys just looked intrigued. I gingerly transported the box outside and walked up to one of the project coordinators.

"Hand grenades," I said.

"Put 'em by the truck," she replied, unfazed.

I would later learn that such finds were common. In fact, a special crew later came out to collect the guns, ammo, and the grenades. (Which, it turned out, weren't live. They were practice grenades from WW II and Vietnam, the experts told me. They were the exact weight of live grenades so the grenade tosser could practice the craft. The guys told me I was lucky they were just practice ones, because the salt water that flooded the city could have eaten away at the pin and, without the pin, I would have 3 to 5 seconds before the grenade would explode. "Would it at least tick?" I asked. "No," they said. If I heard anything, it would be the blast, and then it would be too late.)

I went back to work emptying the closet. More guns, more ammo, some knives. La la. Things are going smoothly.

And then I saw something that terrified me more than any explosive could: God's. Biggest. Roach.

This thing was big, Africa big. It could have stood up on its little roach hind legs and had a face to face conversation with me. Only my face would have been contorted in horror while the roach would have calmly described ways it could bury itself in my hair.

I didn't remain calm. With a "Hi-YA!" type shout, I slammed my foot on the ground, aiming to hit Sr. Cucaracha. He nimbly avoided me. I tried again, and missed again.

And that told me something: Get out of that room. Escape while you still can.

All in all, I think I had an easier time handling the grenades.

Oh Beautiful Day

2007-03-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

A day like today is a wonderful trifecta of Bush incompetence. Hearings on the Walter Reed disaster, four former United States Attorneys Bush appointees testifying how they were pushed out under circumstances that can charitably be described as sketchy, and jury for Scooter Libby confirming what most of us thought, that the White House is paying the salary for some lying assholes.

Throughout the past 6 years or so, my friend Mike Schaffer and I have had some form of the following conversation:

One of Us: "Can you believe that now Bush has (been caught lying about intelligence in Iraq, stacking contracts for former oil buddies, allowing crazies to write policy, etc."

The Other: "It's amazing, this will definitely be the thing that shuts him down."

Needless to say, for the past 6 years none of those predictions/hopes came true. Yes, I know, November of 2006 was a wonderful time to watch the maps change from red to blue, but losing your majority isn't the same as having your associates frog marched by the US Marshals to jail. And, yes I know, this was only VP's chief of staff but one hopes that ball can roll pretty fast.

I am too young to actually remember the last Republican president who fell from grace thanks to paranoia, executive overreaching and bungled cover ups ((1)yes I am sure Reagan did all of those things, (2) no they never were proven enough to make him fall). My mom, however, says that when the indictments were coming down my dad threw my infant self up in the air over and over saying "guilty!" "guilty!" He's not around anymore, but I like to think he'd be doing that dance again with his grandson.

P.S. Dear Congressman Waxman,

There are now at least four former United States Attorneys who seem very upset about being pushed out of their jobs by this corrupt administration. You have subpoena power. During the Clinton impeachment stuff, my friend Efrem made the point that with $40 million and subpoena power, you can bring down anyone you want. Hire Iglesias, Lam, McKay and Cummins right now, they will make it worth your while.

Fish Scales

2007-02-28T18:03:00.000-08:00

For most urban public defender offices, drug cases are a large part of the caseload. There are a million reasons why the war on drugs is probably one of the biggest wastes of time, but that's for a whole different post. This will just be a rant about Philadelphia narcotics investigations.

For the most part there are a bunch of different ways police conduct street level arrests of drug dealers. They can (1) use undercover officers buying drugs, (2) simply watch corners in the city, see if they find someone who appears to be selling drugs and arrest them, (3) use confidential informants to buy drugs from dealers, and on and on.

The problem with most of these types of investigations is that they almost always end up relying entirely on the word of the one police officer doing the surveillance; there is nothing to corroborate their testimony. And as history has shown us (Operation Sunrise in Philly, Street Crimes Unit in New York, Ramparts in LA and the guy in Tulia Texas) narcotics units are often where crooked cops end up (or are made crooked). As Chief Burrell (of "The Wire") noted, "In narcotics there are no virgins."

In Philly anyway, the police pretty much show up at trial, make some notes from their police report, and ramble on the stand about whatever they say happened. You ask police, DA's, etc. about maybe somebody, anybody in the investigation wearing a wire, videotaping the alleged sales or hell, even taking a picture of the alleged transaction and you are met with the response: "we don't have the money, we don't have the resources, we can't afford it, blah, blah, blah."

So you can imagine my shock when I get to New Orleans and have my first drug case. There, sitting in the file is a clear black and white videotape with the officer, a clear shot of the face of the person selling drugs and the sound accompanying the whole damn thing.

Let me get this straight. The city devastated by a hurricane that has lost half of its police force and is struggling with solvency at times finds a way to videotape their drug investigations. Meanwhile, the city that is booming with 8 million new condos can't afford even a camera phone for police to take pictures of their "observations."

To be honest, I am not that happy with the use of videotapes, because, well if they have your client on video selling you are pretty much screwed.

But that being said, if you really wanted to make sure the "bad guys" are off of the street, speed up the criminal justice system and make sure cops were out doing police work and not sitting on a witness stand, why not video all of these transactions? You would have a hell of a lot fewer trials (because it would be a lot harder to suggest the officers were lying or made a mistake) and you could save a lot of overtime pay for officers coming in to testify and waiting around all day for their turn on the stand. What does it say about the credibility of these officers that Philadelphia doesn't trust them to video what they say happened?

Of course, if we stopped the war on drugs we could save a whole lot more money, but that's a whole different mess.

Sitting on 22s

2007-02-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, let this be my first “I am new and these locals are weird” post.

I was blessed/spoiled to have lived most of my life in cities with a relatively straightforward grid pattern, making navigation by either foot or by car relatively easy. Philadelphia, easy. Washington, DC, easy. New Orleans, not so much. Some of the major streets sort of wind all over the place.

The lack of the straight roads isn’t so much of a problem as the directions. See, in most places (hell, every other place) people use words like North/South/East and West. Apparently down here, it’s “lake side” and “river side”.

Lake side is north, check.

River side . . . . . well what to say. River side is south, east and west. Yes, ladies and gentleman, you can be driving “towards the river” and “away from the river.”

So, being (1) a little stupid and (2) getting directions like “go towards the river and make a left on X street”, you can imagine the fun getting around this city.

Thank god for mapquest.

I am an Expert Post Digger and a Minorly Good Roofer

2007-02-27T17:26:00.002-08:00

I've spent the last three weekdays working with Habitat for Humanity. I've really enjoyed it.

We start ass early - 7:30 a.m. - but I get to spend most of my day outside, in the sun, actually DOING something. Like shoveling or raking or cleaning up or, on one memorable day, roofing. Then we're done at 3:30 and the rest of the day is mine. It's awesome. (Oh, East Coast Friends, being outside all day is a GOOD thing here. It's in the 70s. And I'm getting tan.)
(Please don't hate me. I got enough hate mail from those Eagles fans to last me a lifetime.)

I had originally said I wouldn't work with Habitat. Not because I don't admire their cause, but I thought that no one would benefit from a dwelling I'd helped build. I have few talents - imy near perfect aim being one of them - but construction is not one of them. In fact, I don't think I've ever built anything that didn't come out of an Ikea box before. (And one time, when Jaqui and I built an Ikea dresser, we somehow managed to totally screw up the knobs so they were forever crooked. Which, true, takes some talent, but not the sort of talent you want going into a place where you will live.)

But I had a change of heart, thought, "Why not? Do it a couple days and then I can leave. Maybe they'll just assign me painting duties."

My first day was mostly digging two feet deep holes for fence posts. A lot of them. There were a bunch of us on the job and some people had the fancy post digger things and others, like me, had shovels. We were all newbies. We got our instructions, then went to work.

About an hour later, it's time to put the posts in and add the concrete. Our leader, Allain, is commenting on each hole as he directs the work, "Oh, this is not deep enough.... This one is off center..." And then. He gets to mine. "This one," he said, "is perfect."

(Side note: When I first wrote that paragraph, it ended up sounding pornographic so I went back in to adjust. Use your imaginations.)

I was glowing. Yep, that was my hole. Do you know it? It's the "perfect" one. Perhaps you've heard about it on the news.

On my second day, when they were dividing up workers in the a.m., they said, "Who wants to work on a roof?" And next thing I know, I'm with that group. Our group leaders assured us before hand, "I've been here nine months and only two people have fallen off roofs and they haven't died. One broke his pelvis and the other broke his arm. No big deals." (Which someone can say when it's not their pelvis in question.) Still, I next found myself climbing a ladder and scurrying across a pitched roof that is about half shingled. I got up to the peak of the roof and was like, "My God, my God, what have I done? I will never be able to get off of this roof. This is the rest of my life, here on this roof, unless someone rescues me by helicopter."

Then I stood up. Then I started walking around. Then I was like, "I am on the ROOF!"

It was so cool. Then we shingled. For hours. So I had to take measurements and pound nails and go back and forth across the roof and up and down the ladder multiple times. Who was this person, I thought?

But don't worry: I was still true to myself in my mind. I was working with a group of college kids on Spring Break and one of them got all misty eyed as she hit her nails. "Just imagine," she said, "a baby could be born in this house and it could be the baby who grows up to cure cancer! How amazing would that be!" And I'm thinking, "Or, the baby born in this house could be a Ted-Bundy look-alive who worships John Wayne Gacy and admires the techniques of Jeffrey Dahmer and goes on to be the nation's most prolific serial killer." (I do not say this out loud. No need to crush the young.) (Plus, I was afraid my knowledge of serial killers would cause them to freak out and take the hammer away from me.)

Even the mundane tasks I've undertaken have taken on meaning to me. Like one morning, we spent some time just picking up trash in a neighborhood that still looked like it had been struck by a bomb. I found a pin that said, "Today I am 6" and stopped for a moment because, well, these things have a story. Who was six? Did her family get out intact? Was she able to keep any of the toys she'd gotten for that birthday? Was she even a she?

A short time later, I found a weekly newspaper still rolled in its plastic bag. It was from the week Katrina hit, a reminder how, in many things, life here stopped that week.

I go back to Habitat again tomorrow. I don't know what we'll be doing, but I'm excited to find out. Every day is a different mini adventure.

The only thing Habitat lacks, in my opinion, is that contact with the person or family you're helping. Home owners are required to put in something like 350 hours of "sweat equity" on their dwellings, but none have been around the houses I've worked on.

I had that kind of personal contact this weekend when I joined the Times Picayune's Muckrakers as we gutted a home in Gentilly. The homeowner's name was Anne and she told us her father had built the home in 1946. Her brother was coming in from California to rebuild it later this year.

There weren't many savable items left - mostly dishware and a very warped photo of someone in a cap and gown. I was with Alice in one of the rooms when she actually gasped as she pulled something out of the muck. It was some kind of sword. One of her brothers, who had been in the military, had brought it back from some travels with him. She had been calm and cool all day, sweet as can be, and that was the only time I saw her seem rattled.

Later, we found a Pepsi bottle with what appeared to be Arabic writing on it. Her brother had brought that home, too, she said.

Another thing about that work day struck me: We were a mix of journalists, people from the Pic and Jimmie Briggs from NY and me, and normal folk, like Jimmie's friends. None of us had to be there, on a Saturday morning, shoveling out the remains of someone's life.

But we chose to be there and, looking at the people around me, I wasn't suprised by who they were. I knew them all. They are good people.

Then came my surprise.

The newspaper has a social columnist, a very neat and proper woman who writes about the city's society world. (It's quite intense, with debutantes and all that stuff.) This woman showed up at Alice's house a little later than the rest of us. She had on red lipstick and gold earrings and her clothes were far nicer than anyone else's.

But she came in and, quietly, with a dustpan and broom, she collected the broken pieces of dry wall and trash. I never heard her speak - although I'm sure she did. She's the type of person who can afford to have someone clean for her, yet she was here cleaning for someone else.

Some people have said that the storm showed people's true colors, for good and for bad. People weren't who you thought they were, for good or for bad. I think that's true.

Mardi Gras Deadline

2007-02-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

Proof you can celebrate Mardi Gras and file a story with USA Today on time.

It's one, two, three strikes you're out . . . .

2007-02-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

As Nat mentioned in the last, I am here working at the public defender's office for the next few months. Criminal courts are very similar the whole country around. Judges with too many control issues, district attorneys who don't have a ton of discretion and sheriffs who seem absolutely bored with the moving of clients from jail to court and back again (to be fair, if I had the sheriff's job, I would be bored too).

The only variable, it seems, it the fate of clients. The legislature of Louisiana, in a move that can only be described as absurd, established a sentencing scheme that borders on Draconian. I could go through the whole rigamarole, but it's easier to keep it simple.

Example: Suppose you are a drug addict, using cocaine. You, as most addicts do, don't really do a good job kicking the habit. You get arrested three times and end up pleading guilty because you were, well guilty. There's not really a totally excellent drug program and your lack of money makes flying off to the Carribbean a la Britney damn near impossigle. As most addicts do, you relapse and get caught again. Bad news buddy, if you have been convicted 3 times for possession of crack cocaine. Under the sentencing laws of the state of Louisiana, you could get up to your natural life in prison. Worse, if you are convicted a fourth time the MINIMUM sentence the judge is allowed to sentence you to is 20 years (no probation, parole or supervised release prior to your 20). So now the citizens of this state have to pay and house a non-violent offender who never really harmed anyone else, but is, well, an addict who maybe didn't have the money or the will to kick the stuff. The addict, meanwhile, gets to spend 20 years at the Louisiana Department of Corrections. In Philadelphia, a case like this is worth probation, maybe a one year jail sentence. In Louisiana, at some point I am going to have to tell a client "Congratulations. If you plead, the DA agreed to only let you do six years on the nickel bag of crack you had."

Now to be sure, there is some times a judge can go lower than that, but my undersanding that is few and far between.

It's the kind of thing that makes you want to punch somebody.

Why We're Really Here

2007-02-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

We came here for reasons other than Mardi Gras, although it may not seem like it from our blog thus far. So I'm going to tell a few stories. (I'll let Jordo relate his own courthouse tales. He's already got a few --- dozen.)

Part of helping with the rebuilding is helping with the unbuilding. That means gutting houses, tearing down walls, cleaning up debris and brush, etc.

Last week, I joined a group of people - including friends from The Times Picayune - in helping an elderly man remove a shed from his backyard. The shed, which was packed with everything from bicycles to bolts of fabric to appliances, had been knocked down by the the tornado. (Yes, a tornado.) If you haven't heard, a rare urban twister touched down in the city and its suburbs last week. It did a fair bit of physical damage -- knocking down homes that had just been rebuilt, tossing trees on buildings - and it also did a fair bit of psychological damage. Imagine: It's taken you more than a year to get your house together after Hurricane Katrina, you're about to move back in, and a tornado comes by and rips the roof off. I heard that story from more than one person. One elderly woman died; she and her daughter had been living in a trailer in front of their home, which just needed the wiring finished before they could move back in. Both the trailer and the house were shredded. I went to their former site, with bricks tossed everywhere and the wheels of the trailer dozens of yards from the pipes that once anchored it to the ground.

Another day, I joined a group removing nails -- thousands of nails -- from the ceiling and walls of an elderly man's home. The house had already been gutted and only a frame remained. But before anything could be done to that frame, the nails had to go. It was tedious, sometimes frustrating, work as nail heads disintegrated and some nails just refused to be pulled. At times, I wondered, "Is this really that important?" And then I met Mr. L.

I'm going to call him Mr. L to respect his privacy. Mr. L is an 84-year-old African American man, tall and lean, very handsome. He looks more than a decade younger than he is, and he only used a cane because he'd injured his knee recently.

Mr. L had lived in the house where we now stood for more than 52 years. He and his wife, who died in 1997, raised five children there. The structure had started as a small dwelling, but over the years, Mr. L had added rooms and improvements. A chandelier still hung in one room and the two front doors had been specially made to fit the space. (Mrs. L had only had a chance to enjoy the doors for a few months before she died in 1997, Mr. L told us. He was also upset that the storm had warped the wood, meaning he'd have to get new ones when he rebuilt.) The front porch was paved with light bricks. The house, Mr. L said, had been something he had been very proud of.

Then Katrina came. Mr. L lost his house, four of his children lost their homes, and, for a time, he said, "There was not one house in this city where I could lay my head." He left the city to live out-of-state with his fifth child, but had returned to his neighborhood as soon as he could get a FEMA trailer. As it was, he was the only person living on his street. Without street lights or any glows emanating from any surrounding homes, it was dark, dark at night, and it made me fear for his safety. Mr. L said he liked the day, when he could go about the neighborhood and look at what was once his home and thriving neighborhood, but night was hard for him. "It's a long, long time," he said. "Sometimes it looks like morning's not coming."

Mr. L couldn't stop smiling when he saw what we'd done. "Look how much better it looks without all them nails!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to sleep well tonight."

I started talking with Mr. L about his life pre-K. His name was Wilfred and he'd had a twin brother named Wilbert who died in 2001. I said, "Did they call you Fred and Bert?" He said, "No, my aunt called my brother 'Hart' without the e and they called me 'Dumplin'. I was a grown man and they'd call me Dumplin' and it would make me so mad."

We talked a little longer, joined by my friend Dave, a Dart fellow in town to help both the city's journalists and its rebuilding process. Mr. L could not stop thanking us.

And then he said the words that brought tears to my eyes: "What you did, it's not going to be in the history books, but it'll be in my heart," he said, putting a hand to his chest.

Before we drove away, Dave and I said, "Bye, Dumplin' " He just smiled at us.

Tomorrow I'm going to start a stint with Habitat for Humanity to see how I do with the actual building part. Further updates as events warrant.

Bada Bing; Bada Blah

2007-02-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Quickly, to respond to Natalie's last two points:

1. Whether she threw that hard or not, on the inside it still really hurt.
2. Darth Vader was really talented at using the Force, it doesn't mean it was ok for him to kill all of those Jedi (Matt Parker, back me up on this).

On to more important things. On Sunday we saw the Bacchus Krewe's parade and their very special guest was James Gandolfini from the Soprano's. Though given his lack of enthusiasm for throwing you might have mistaken him for the inert body of Big Pussy Bompasero from the end of season 2. He basically sat on a big chair and lazily tossed out a few coins at a time no more than a few feet from his float (as Natalie has already proven, items from the float can be thrown quite a distance). Yeah yeah yeah, you are a big time actor on a "real" TV show, congratulations. Now get your ass out of the chair and start throwing like the Honorary Marshal should for god sakes.

(Natalie wants to point out that she disagrees with the above. I think that it just because (1) he is italian or (2) she may have a crush on him. Just sayin'

In My Defense

2007-02-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

1. I didn't hit him THAT hard.
2. I can't help it if God has blessed me with perfect aim and I am often inspired to demonstrate it, hitting targets both still and moving.

My gutting and clean up work has begun. I'll get to that -- my real reason for being here -- in a later post.

The parade was awesome -- until the float broke down. Riding on a Mardi Gras float is the closest many of us will come to being a rock star: Thousands of people are in the streets, screaming and pointing at you and when you deign to give them attention, they light up. You're masked - it's required - and that little bit of anonymity makes you a bit more bold. You dangle fancy beads and special throws over the edge of the float and work the crowd up into a frenzy before dropping them. You flirt. You dance. It's just a great, great time.

And the Muses of Float 16 were having a great time for most of Thursday night. Huge crowds, friends along the route, wine on the float. I didn't hear all of the special shout outs Jordo arranged along the way, but I did catch the "We hate Brian Tierney" (Inquirer publisher) and "We hate Henry Holcomb" (President of the newspaper guild) ones. (I missed "Derek Jeter loves Natalie," which I would have appreciated.) When I heard those chants, somehow rising above the crowd noise, I spun like a top, found the shouters, and showered them with beads. Awesome.

Then the float broke down. Then they couldn't get it fixed and they pulled us out of the line up and we missed the last quarter of the parade. Then we got to the party late. That kinda sucked.

But it's still Carnival. We're still having a ball.

Show Us Your Wits

2007-02-17T08:46:00.002-08:00

The picture to your right is Natalie and her friends from the Picayune Angela and Stephania . . . I think.

I say I think because a combination of running the parade route, the cold and the fact that Natalie found it fun to bean me in the head with bags of beads left me a little disoriented. That, combined with my technological idiocy, allowed me to take possibly the most blurry picture ever on a digital camera (the one to your right).

From the top. In the days leading up to the parade , I had figured that I would start at the beginning of the parade, watch it up until Nat's float, and then tag along the float until the end, trying to get as many beads as I could from Natalie, Angela and Stephanie (since I am a rank amateur at this parade thing, I figured it was best to stay close to people who know me and would pity my lack of beads).

I'll let Natalie get more into the floats, but the basic theme was "Supermuse" a daring female superhero fighting the villians of New Orleans (right wing congressmen, corrupt judges, racist sheriffs all done up as super villians).

Anyway, after Natalie's float passes, I cut behind the crowd and start to try and get ahead to see them. All of a sudden. THWACK!! I get hit in the head by a bag of beads. I look up to see my girlfriend, laughing at me from the 2nd floor of her float. This repeats itself another two or more times and I finally get that she is not throwing to me, but rather AT me.

Wonderful, I am walking along in the cold trying to provide as much encouragement as I can and Natalie is having her fun beaning in the head with cold hard plastic. Nice.

This process repeats itself for another hour or two, until there was an unfortunate breakdown in their float, but I will let Natalie tell that story.

One last thing, throughout the parade I was trying to get people to yell words of scorn about various Philadelphia media owners/union presidents, etc. To the lady in the crown and her boyfriend who screamed "We hate Brian Tierney" at the tops of their lungs, must thanks is given.

somewhere the "blame game" is actually getting played

2007-02-12T19:30:00.001-08:00

Wow, I though the John Street - Lynne Abraham feud over Philly's murder rate was bad. You can't listen to the radio in this town without hearing the police rip the district attorneys and vice versa. Apparently the police hate the DA for refusing to prosecute a boatload of cases, the DA hates the police for not getting lab reports and witness information, and both are loathed by the general public for New Orlean's crime rate and abysmal murder clearance. It's the kind of fight that I always imagined was happening, but to see it playing out in public is, well, vaguely satisfying.

Hateful beasts

2007-02-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Bourre cried until 4 a.m., nonstop. Simon's ass issues make him a less than desirable bed companion.

Oh, and our air mattress doesn't hold air. So we had howling cat, smelly cat and hard floor. Not a lot of sleeping last night.

Jordo starts work tomorrow. I will start my side journalism project.

Then we'll go see some parades.

Milestone

2007-02-10T17:21:00.000-08:00

Jordo caught his first beads today, thrown from a float in the Krewe of Shangri-La's parade. He played it cool, the one arm up in the air thing, the casual catch. (No flesh bared.) But we're expecting him to become a float-chasing, bead-grabbing maniac who knocks over children and old people by the end of next week. We've seen it before.

NOLA

2007-02-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

We're all set up now in my friend Walt's house. It has all the basics - walls, floors, roof, windows, locks, electricity - and compared to what some people have had to live with since Katrina, it's high style over here on State Street Drive. Air mattress, mini fridge, George Foreman grill. Pillow cases used as curtains, doors not attached but propped into place, building materials scattered throughout and now being used as garbage cans, tables, etc.

For those who don't know, Walt was my police reporting partner when I worked at the Times Picayune. He is one of the craziest, kindest men alive. He can be scattered at times, and when we worked together, I was the one who would pull our stories together. (Sometimes, because he has a tendency to wander off topic when telling a story, he would call my phone and start dictating facts the way they did it in the old newspaper days: But we'd be sitting right next to each other. I know. People would walk by and stare and say, "Are they on the phone to each other?" But it worked.)

I could tell Walt stories all day. Like how his car is always filled with, well, everything - blankets, books, trash, crowbars, towels, clothing, newspapers, cereal bowls with remaining milk - and how one time, he came to my house to help me change a tire but first had to get the jack out of his trunk. That involved dumping the contents of the trunk into the street, and among the contents were a rifle, a handgun, various other weapons including something that looked like numchuks, and scores of papers and clothes. It was like the clown car of possessions. I kept saying, "Why do you need this rope? Is that gun loaded? When are you ever going to wear all these clothes?"

Another time, we were working a story about a French Quarter bar owner who had been kidnapped. We found a guy who said he had some information, so Walt invites him to talk. Man's in the backseat, Walt and I are in the front two seats. I was not pleased with this. The man was clearly a scammer, so I kept saying, "Out. I want him out of this car. Now." while Walt would say, "Aw, c'mon, Natalie. He's a good guy. He's going to help us out, aren't you? Come on." Walt later said he thought we'd done a good job playing "Good cop/Bad cop." I said, "Are you kidding me? I wasn't playing!"

Walt also told me one of my favorite Times Picayune stories - and there are many. There was an editor in the 1970's who came to work one day, went home then killed himself. "And," Walt said, "his jacket is still hanging on the coatrack in the back." I was like, "Totally no way!" But we walked to the rack and there was this truly garish 70s style suit jacket with red and white checks. (I checked the pockets, of course. Empty.) That jacket had hung there for decades and stayed there until right before Katrina, when it mysteriously disappeared from its hook.

Then there's the story of the voodoo murder and speaking in code over the phone but forgetting what the code was and the best Valentine's Day I ever had, which involved a dog in eastern New Orleans coming across various body parts Feb. 13, but those are tales for another time. Just know this: Walt is aces.

We're off to the airport now. The cats are arriving from Philadelphia via Continental at 8 p.m. We expect hostility.

Marching In

2007-02-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

Finally arrived after two barbecue filled days in Memphis. After the cold of Philly, 70 degrees is a welcome change. Realized my first packing mistake, lots of suit pants, no belts, still searching for ties.

Radio One

2007-02-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

Spent the time from Knoxville to Memphis listening to the radio. Aside from a whole lot of Christian stations, there was the ESPN radio station, which as far as I can tell has 4 minutes of programming for 30 minutes of ads.

All of the pop music stations had the weirdest ads. Some serious voice would intone:

"Tonight on a very special episode of Friends,
Joey professes his love to rachel
But What will she say?"

Huh? Am I in some sort of time warp where Friends is just finishing up their seasons. Did I transport to some strange area where they just kept kept NBC at bay until 2007?

Ah well, we're in Memphis now, time to figure out what ribs to stuff our faces with tonight.

Pack it Up, Pack it In

2007-02-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and started to pack socks and t-shirts. In the middle of it all I was like "wow deja vu" then I remembered that I had already packed them. Twice.

I have this problem with packing. It's just that I always forget when I have already packed some items, so I will pack some more. Then I will forget again, and repeat. I will probably be the only person in New Orleans with two pairs of pants and 32 pairs of socks.

Fat White: A History

2007-02-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

I moved into this house in July 2003. Fat White appeared in my home, via the cat door, soon after. Apparently, he'd been around the neighborhood for a while. One neighbor called him "Glock" because his eyes are messed up and it looks like he has glaucoma. Another younger, more innocent neighbor called him "Snowball," and, indeed, he is round. I called him "Fat White" because he is fat and white.

Fat seems to have a special love for my tuxedo cat, Simon. Like you will see them walking down the street together, blocks from home. If Simon is rolling around in the street, Fat is there watching him. My neighbor, Paco, swears he saw them "KEES-ING" in the alley one day. (Bourre does not like Fat and will chase him out when she sees him. But she spends most of her time on the third floor so that doesn't happen often.)

While I think it's beautiful that Simon's found love, I can't help but be annoyed by FW. He invades my home on a daily basis. The minute you walk in from outside or come down from upstairs, you hear the familiar creak of the cat door and if you run to the window, Fat is usually sitting there with his back to the door, operating under the "I can't see you so you can't see me" theory. One time, he led my Dad and I on a merry chase up and down the stairs and into the basement. We ended up in the basement, no sign of him anywhere, and my Dad says, "Maybe we should look up." So we did, and it was like a slow motion scene in a horror film. There he was, in all his Fat White glory, amongst the ceiling pipes. Chilling.

Fat White and the other neighborhood strays seem to think I operate a 24-hour cat buffet. Fat goes the extra mile, though. Like he'll sleep on my black jacket or black suede boots, leaving them covered in white fur the next morning. He'll nestle down in the living room chair or the foot rest, leaving a white trail behind. I have even seen him on the second floor of my house, in the office. He was with Simon.

When we leave for NOLA, we're barricading the cat door so no cats can get in. This has multiple people worried about Fat's well-being while we're gone. I've got to say, I think Fat will be alright. After all, he is the fattest stray cat in existence. He has to be eating somewhere else.

But I'll probably build him a little sleeping shelter in the back before I go anyway. I am weak.

Things We Will Not Miss

2007-01-31T15:24:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of things we will miss about Philadelphia. Walking everywhere, good BYO restaurants, friends, etc.

One thing we will not miss is the chubby furball to your right. Since his arrival at the house he has earned the name "Fat White." He doesn't belong to us, we don't know exactly where he came from, but he seems to have decided to take up residence when we are either upstairs or out of the house. He's like a bloated Kato Kaelin with two bad eyes. Except that Kato Kaelin didn't eat all of OJ's kids food. Or leave white fur all over OJ's house.

Natalie can share her history with this evil evil feline. I will try and take the positive road, for four months I won't have to watch him try and sneak into the house.

Packing

2007-01-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

Sine I am now glaringly unemployed, I have plenty of time to pack. In theory.

I like packing, even if I do do it in a haphazard way. (Like I'll get to my destination without my toothbrush and toothpaste but with my bathing suit. And I'm in Vermont in winter.)

After Mardi Gras, we're moving into the guest house of a woman who should be annointed to sainthood. We've never met her - she works at the Times Picayune, where I once worked - but she supports our mission. (Oh my God. We have a mission. I'm not sure if I hate that or love that, leaning towards hate.) So I'm packing practical things, like towels and dishes, and things I just like, like candles and Scrabble. Then I'll get distracted by something I find in a closet or a drawer and the next thing you know it's 3 hours later and the room is in shambles in the name of "organization."

Packing clothing is a little more complex than usual. I've purchased a supply of $1 tshirts and $2 pants from local thrift stores for my house gutting efforts; those are my "gross clothes." Then there are the every day things and the nicer outfits. In the midst of all this, I'm emptying my drawers and closet so a friend can sublet the house while we're gone. The problem is I started packing last week, never taking into consideration that I needed to have clothes this week. Smart.

So if I'm home, there are a lot of scrubs and tshirts. Jeans and a black sweater have become my official going out outfit of January 2007. Last week, soon after I'd packed and when I was in the midst of my post-job hangover, I found myself wearing pajamas almost all day. Shower? Hair? Please. When I dragged myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth, I felt like calling KYW1060 so they could send a reporter over. Flossing would have merited breaking into regular television programming a la a presidential assassination.

One day, this is really what happened: Pajamas, gross, no sense of time, working on resume and cover letter and being bitter about it. There may or may not be a glass of wine involved. Jordan calls to ask, "Do you want anything from the outside world?" I'm puzzled, like why would he call now? Then I realized: it was 4:30 p.m. He would soon be home and realize I had hit bottom - and that would make me feel like I'd hit bottom. I raced up the stairs, hurled my body into the shower, threw on new clothes, willed the hair dryer to work faster so my hair wouldn't look like I'd just washed it, and made it downstairs again by 5:15 p.m. I felt like the woman in the old commercials who threw flour on her face when she walked out of the kitchen with the Mrs. Smith's pie.

I'm better this week. Like, it's 1:30 and ... OK, I lied. Scrubs and tshirt. I have got to find some other clothes.

Clearing the Record

2007-01-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

Simon wants it known that he was found on the streets of DC, making he and Jordan natives of our nation's capital. But it was in New Orleans that Simon spent his finest hours, including the night he came home with Mardi Gras beads around his neck and no collar.

Bourre (pronounced Boo-ray, and not Burr, as the vet insists upon doing) is a NO native, born Uptown behind my old house. She is named after a Cajun card game.

An Cat Dubh/An Cat Liath

2007-01-29T19:34:00.001-08:00

These are Natalie's cats joining us on our adventure. Internet, meet Simon (black one staring jealously) and Bourre (wolfing down food as quickly as possible). In about two weeks they will be taken in two little carts and flown down to New Orleans to join us.

Both of these adorable little scamps are originally from New Orleans and so you think they would welcome a trip back to their roots. Fat chance. Upon getting off the plane I have no doubt they will look at us with utter contempt for having hijacked them in those little cat plane boxes. If we are never heard from again it's probably because they took us out and dumped our bodies in a bayou.

Right Back to the Beginning

2007-01-29T18:32:00.000-08:00

Some time in the summer of 2006, through a combination of good weather and a bottle of wine we ended up on the roof of Natalie's house kicking around the idea of moving to New Orleans for six months or so to work. Natalie having lived there full time in the mid 90's to early 2000's and covered the city during Katrina and its aftermath. My experience was basically limited to a trip in 1995, a weekend or two in 2006 and my collection of "girls gone wild: mardi gras!!!" videos.

Thanks to the good graces of at least one office in Philadelphia, we were able to plan about four months of living and working in the Crescent City. Natalie got a gig rehabbing houses and writing a book on journalism and trauma and I signed on to work at the Orleans Public Defender.

Hopefully this blog will chronicle our missteps, mishaps and pratfalls as we go through the next four months. Expect updates on Orleans Parish courts, how to quickly knock down a house and the genius of the po-boy sandwich. And if this blog leads to fame and fortune and a movie about us starring Brangelina, all readers of this blog will be allowed to serve as extras on the set.

P.S. If you are an Eagles fan and had previously "shared your thoughts" on Natalie's story about rooting for the Saints, please go back to philly.com and spare us the trauma.

Definition

2007-01-27T08:41:00.000-08:00

Beignet (noun): a deliciously deep fried piece of dough covered in powdered sugar. Sort of thing that would be embraced by Philadelphians but for the cheese steak stranglehold. Example: Jordan, stop trying to stuff 10 beignets in your mouth at the same time!