If I Have to Work, It Might As Well Be in Paradise

Somewhere around Mississippi I think my brain went to sleep.

I've cried from happiness three times in my life. Crossing Lake Pontchartrain and entering New Orleans was my third.

The color of my new house (and this morning's chicory coffee) woke me up a little.

Bye Bye New York, Be Good

It's a soppy, windy, dark New York morning. Everyone in the subways is miserable. The exception, for once, is me, because in New Orleans today, it's 83 degrees with clear skies.

I couldn't think of a more perfect send-off.

Small Shorts Don't Squeeze Your Finances, Or Another Reason Why I'm Ready For N.O.

The shorts turned out to be two dollars. I had to look around to double check that I was indeed in the East Village.

The drag queen who took my money told me: "You know, honey, they come in bigger sizes as well."

Her comment wasn't offensive, as the shorts I had selected were meant for a toddler. "Oh I like them tight," I told her, not mentioning that they'd be the crown jewel of my gogo dancing outfit later tonight.

She smiled affectionately and handed me the bag.

Sometimes New York still has a kick to it. But it's more in dashes, like this one.

Five minutes later at a cafe, with a book on "the precarious financial lives of American families," I watched people dragging shopping bags past the window, and more shopping bags, and people outside of expensive restaurants ashing trendy cigarettes, and the occasional sports car pulling up to get attention.

Maybe more people have stable jobs than my book suggests, I pondered. How else can they afford to live in an impossibly expensive city and still be able to shop for nick knacks at Pottery Barn on the weekends?

Then the guy next to me tells an attentive girl about his newest freelance gig that won't pay that much, and how he's going to see his astrologer this afternoon.

Okay, so everyone here is living on credit.

Courtesy of Ayn Rand

You never see confident people reading self-help books.

These May Just Be The Lunatics I'm Looking For

At my job today, I posted a "bleg" (a blog post asking readers for advice on something) about my move to New Orleans.

I was expecting either a flood of crime statistics and essays on how global warming will increase hurricane frequency, or some sensible but cautious advice mixed with the former.

Instead, the comments built a testament to New Orleans that almost matched my wild (slightly "enhanced") rantings to my friends about it. They even got into prose:

On your first morning there, get up early. Go down to Cafe Du Monde, order a cafe au lait and one order, to go - this will cost you about four bucks and net you a cup of strong, milky coffee laced with chicory and a bag containing three beignet and a lot of icing sugar.

Walk away from the street, toward the Moonwalk, but over it, not along it - keep following the paved path back toward the river. Keep the statue of what’s-his-name at your back. When you’ve gone far enough, you’ll see a set of railroad-tie stairs that lead straight down into the Missisippi. Late at night it’s often well populated by sex workers and runaways, in the early morning it’s usually empty and, regardless of your company, quite peaceful.

Uncover your coffee, and use the icing sugar in the bag to sweeten it. Drink it slowly. Eat two of your beignet. Watch the river hurry past to meet the ocean. Listen to the city wake up 100 yeards behind you and yet so muffled it could be last year.

When the coffee and two beignet are gone, roll up the bag containing the last one. Scrawl ‘Enjoy’ on it, and leave it on the steps for when the thrown-out/took-off queer boys roll out from their temporary night’s digs looking for a breeze and a smoke. Go back home to unpack. Be glad to be in New Orleans.

— Posted by S. Bear Bergman

Of course, there were the occasional killjoys:


As a geologist, I gotta say that the single most important thing a new New Orleanean should know is that the ground under the city gets further away from sea level every year. I love New Orleans as a city, but in the medium-term (and definitely the long-term), it’s not a sustainable location unless you want levees that are four stories tall. Until it floods, enjoy it!

— Posted by Callan Bentley

Also plentiful were phrases like, "gets into your blood," and "you'll never leave," which would creep me out in any other context.

Yet I still can't completely believe in the existence of a whole city of people detached from the American norm -- hopefully, it's just because I've been walking around in Chelsea too much.

I also got a lot of congratulations, like I won something.

I'm jumping up and down, to be sure, but no premature ecstatic squeals until I see for myself what's behind Door Number 1.

The Straw In My Guinness Doesn't Bother Him

In a city where the music is rarely honest anymore, my Irish bartender at The Queys -- the only New York bartender I can truly call my own -- means it.

There's Something to Astoria's Square Faces and Beady Eyes

After some cajoling, I got each of my friends to show me their sex faces -- some obviously more authentic than others.

Really Keren?



What does the way you portray your sex face say about you? Probably something, but the internet isn't rich in that sort of information.

I have noticed that the men chasing the short skirted D&G girls around Astoria's Euro-club circuit tend to have the same square features, beady eyes and leathery skin common to the weight-lifting section of my gym.

A study I just found when looking for sex face information confirmed that there's a pattern here:

It found that men with squarer jaws, larger noses, and smaller eyes tend to opt more for casual flings, whereas "casual women" have more oval faces, larger eyes, and smaller foreheads. In short, the uglier men are more "casual" but the uglier women are more into commitment.

Some more obvious conclusions:

"The study also found that men and women are looking for opposite things when it comes to relationships, with men seeking women who are open to casual or short-term flings while women look for potential mates."

Subway Stairs Were Never So Condescending

I don't like sports fans, (especially the obese ones) mostly because they're living vicariously.

I box. Boxing isn't a sport -- it's my nervous and sexual tensions mixed with a strange psychology experiment and flung into a ring. Even while panting through my third mile every morning, I feel no bond with my athletic brethren (only envy for their intimidating calf muscles).

Right about when the Olympics began, my infinite stubbornness caused me to run my right leg into the ground and I was sentenced to prescription Motrin and the Chelsea Pool.

As I was wobbling home on swimmers' legs last week, a sudden respect for Usain Bolt, the running sensation I had been forced to read about all day, washed over me.

His face in a Times photo I saw earlier oozed an enormous amount of body and willpower combined in just the right way.

For a second I saw the athletes of the word standing in the sun, exalted in their victory over mind and muscle. Then a sharp pain in my bum knee snapped me out of it (and I got scared that my next move would be to grab a Coors Light and start yelling at the nearest flat screen TV.)

Bolt doesn't need anyone else to join his glory party. I don't want a party either -- just the ability to right-hook a bag again.

There’s the Real World and Then There Are Near-Misses, Histories Repeating, and Unprecedented Events

After a long Monday of searching meteoriolgist’s facial expressions and then relief over holding levees, I settled into bed with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and read:

“If you make people perform a noble duty, it bores them. … If you make them indulge themselves it shames them. But combine the two – and you’ve got them.”

Even after New Orleans’s “dodging of the bullet” was announced by the 20th news outlet, the Katrina parallels were still being deployed en masse.

How much was it REALLY almost Katrina? The non-meteorological world may never know.

But I do know that giving a New Orleanean sleeping in a gas station in northern Lousiana a hasty (and sloppy) Katrina comparison is the equivalent of telling a cancer survivor that the mole on his back looks exactly like that malignant one that led to all the chemo last year.

Per Rand’s observation, past tragedies work wonders to sex up positive, boring news. My point is not so much that it's cruel and tactless (which it is), but that it doesn’t stand out.

It's just part of a barrage of unprecedented but spineless clichés that I’ve allegedly never seen anything like.

Here's a sampling:

(The AP)

• Gustav to test lessons of Katrina (CNN Money)
• Hospitals use lessons from Katrina to prep for Gustav (CNN.com)
• A Prophet of Katrina’s Wrath Returns to His Storm Vigil (The New York Times)
  
• Is Gustav Katrina the Second? (Bellaciao, France)
• Evacuees compare Gustav, Katrina ordeals (USA Today)