The Automatik

I haven’t written much about Hurricane Katrina since last year. I suppose I felt like all my essays were falling on tired eyes, which is not to say that people don’t care, but more that many people are in the same boat as I am: the problems are so complex, so vast, and so overwhelming that it just feels like a tear in a bucket. I know the history of New Orleans and so I have a grasp of how messed up things were before – and maybe that’s a helpful or maybe it’s a hindrance, something negative to focus on so that the worst self-fulfilling prophecies seem to be coming true. I have faith in the people of New Orleans. The politicians? Not so much.
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I understand that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin sounded a bit wacko with his now-infamous “Chocolate City” speech last week. It was inappropriate for him to allude to conversations with God. Like several people have pointed out, when Pat Robertson does that, people start foaming at the mouth.
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No I can’t hide the memory of you away
Today or any other day
It’s a time for remembrance
A time to cry
And, I’ll cry

The Cowsills, “A Time for Remembrance”

When I heard the news about Barry Cowsill’s death last night I felt completely gutted.
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I know that many of you are probably experiencing this phenomenon the wonderful media have dubbed “Katrina Fatigue.” Let me tell you something: since August 29th, I’ve been pretty fatigued myself.
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New Orleans and its surrounding cities and neighborhoods are no longer as I knew them. The coast of Mississippi has been changed forever. Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian are nothing but felled trees and splintered wood. My father and stepmother’s house has been crushed by a 20-foot storm surge that wreaked destruction five miles inland, lifting up their van and spinning it around and floating three strange sofas into their shattered and now-exposed living room. Their neighbors’ roof is now in their backyard, but there is no sign of the rest of that house. Even if they didn’t lose their houses outright, many members of my family, not to mention nearly everyone else I know that still lives there, have been rendered homeless and jobless for the foreseeable future.
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I went to the mall last night. I swear, I think someone gave me the brown acid. And I’ve never taken hallucinogens. There were more freaks on parade than I can address in one sitting: the metrosexual tweens, the faux-Hilton sisters, the doughy white woman trying to impress her younger black co-worker by discussing Bernie Mac and Michael Jordan, the two hip-hop guys in matching brightly colored Disney character baseball jerseys, and many more.
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From Smack Dab #5, April 1996:

Although you, loyal readers, may have believed fervently that Heidi and I were always media mavens who possessed a brilliant interrogative style, this was alas, not always so. Case in point: our first collective brush with fame, Suede’s Brett Anderson.
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I have been alerted to this piece of crap from our dear “friends” at Pitchfork magazine. It’s a review of Sloan’s last album, Action Pact. I hope that the fact that this review came out today and the album came out last year is an indication of the delay of its U.S. release and not laziness or apathy.
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Miami Vice notwithstanding, I’ve got a serious 80s fashion fetish, one that has remained strong for twenty years. When I was a mall rat back in the day, my friend and I used to hang out at Merry-Go-Round every weekend our moms would let us. Even though it was dreadfully overpriced, it was THE place in the suburbs (The French Quarter downtown had BONGO) for cool 80s attire, and since it was close to the Wild Pair, shoes to go with your parachute pants were available right next door.
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Let’s talk about a little-discussed genre of music, the “I’m on tour now but I’ll be home soon” genre, or what I like to call “Tour Trauma.” (If it is discussed somewhere, please point me in that direction.) You know the kind of song I’m talking about. Kiss’s “Beth” is sort of like that, although it’s more about band practice and not touring, but you get the idea. A good example, and a maudlin one, is Journey’s “Faithfully,” where Steve Perry sadly laments that “the road ain’t no place to start a family.” Bon Jovi’s paean to manifest rock destiny, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” really stretched the boundaries and elevated the rock star to the same level as Billy the Kid.

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