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The crazy life I now live in New Orleans, LA

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Location: New Orleans, LA

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Shaggin Waggin

Kiki totally called it. That's what its gonna be used for. I picked it up today, its all clean and purty now. It drove fine all the way back to Dia's. I hope it doesn't mind a long drive on Friday. That is the day I am heading back. I had thought about making it tomorrow, as its Katja's big bday tomorrow. But gonna give it one more day so I can run a few errands, like pick up more cat food, a few more supplies and get in a real good night's sleep. Then its homeward. I am nervous and excited!!

Congrats to Miss Zoot and family on a beautiful baby girl!!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Holy Crap

I just bought a car. A used one. A 90 Ford Taurus....station wagon. I kid you not. I bought a station wagon. The driver's side passanger door is missing the handle on the outside, but can be opened from the inside. Other than that, it is pretty much fine. So keep your fingers, toes, and whatever else crossed, do some good luck voodoo, prayers, mojo for me that when I go home, it doesn't conk out on me. I should be leaving here on Thursday or Friday. I am gonna go freak out some more, figure out how I am gonna pay rent, get some non-perishable groceries and have gas for all of this. Not to mention the 2 month old electric bill, that I just got in the mail on Saturday. Pray that finding a job is fast and easy!!

Monday, October 24, 2005

Car Shopping Sucks

The only thing keeping me in TX right now is the lack of a car to get home. I want to go home. Don't get me wrong, I love Dia and Randy to death and am beyond grateful for everything they have done for me. But I just want to go home. And I can't find a car in my price range, and its very discouraging. I spent all day looking today....and nothing. So close, yet so far.

Friday, October 21, 2005

My cat is crazy.

She woke me up at like oh I don't know 5 AM this morning. She slept all day yesterday and all evening. I kinda expected her to play all night long but when I went to bed she came running in, jumped on the bed, curled up and went to sleep again. So, I wasn't all that suprised when at 5 she decided that no one should sleep. She batted the blind's for awhile, because that's nice and LOUD. Then at one point I woke up and she was attacking my feet, every time I moved. Then she brought in the room with her, one of the Renew New Orleans braclets. That had been in the kitchen. On the counter. Its still in the wrapper. She pulled that on to the bed and proceeded to play with that. She is running after me where ever I am going today at top speed. She ran into some boxes earlier in a wipe out. I put the bracelet away, and she just brought it back up on the bed. She climbed on top of the TV in the bedroom and leaned over and watched TV upside down for awhile. Then curled up on the bed and is now watching Will and Grace. Laying right next to the bracelet. She is nuts.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Ready to Dance

Supposedly tomorrow Ellen, the Ellen, will be at the Texas State Fair, LIVE. I have become an Ellen Junkie, watching the talk show almost everyday. I think the show tapes a day in advance though....and if it did that, then she was at the fair today. But they keep saying she will be at the fair live, and there aren't any previews from the actual fair yet. So that's a good thing. I may have to go check it out.

Gonna go see Cowboy Mouth tomorrow night. I need to go "Let it go" Seriously.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Cool Thing

So on Friday night, we were on our way to meet Leroy and Katja for drinks at Coops. We found a parking spot on Gov. Nicolls one car length away from Decatur. Coops is located on Decatur. The car in front of us was a van. The trunk was open to the van, and a few people were standing around on the sidewalk next to the van. What was in the trunk of the van you ask? Only the holy bible to all New Orleans music lovers. It was the Offbeat. I think I squealed when I saw it. We got out of the car, and Lisa decided to go and check out the store Gargoyles, they crossed the street and I slowly walked past the van eyeing the goodness that lay within. I was estatic. Then I saw who was sitting in the passenger side of the van, it was Jan Ramsey, the editor-in-chief of Offbeat. I started to cross the street to catch up with Lisa and Dia and I thought to myself, screw it. I went back to the van, they had just closed the trunk. Jan was still standing there. I asked for a copy. She said, "of course, its September's issue, you don't mind do you?" "Nope I never got that copy" "well that's because its been sitting at the printers till this week, you don't know good this makes me feel, here take two copies"
That rocked.

Monday, October 17, 2005






These pics are from Dia. Obviously one is of a burned out building in the CBD. At least what was left of the building. One is of Lisa and I taking a break from hauling things up out of the basement. One is of us prying open the crusty fridge, notice the sweat marks on my hat, it was a warm day. Then there is one of the maggots that were in the fridge, taken fast before Dia and I bolted, gagging. Pleasant no? As soon as I can get a car, I will be back there. I can't be there with0ut a car. Its not a possibility.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Back from NOLA

Its overwhelming. I can't describe it. The pictures we took can't describe it. Its a city fighting to revive. The grass is dead, the trees are dead, the plants are dead. I didn't recognize the city at first. I just kept saying "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" when we pulled off the freeway and were heading down to my house. It was a comment repeated often. I was very very lucky. All I lost was every script of every play I have ever worked on, from High School to a year ago (over 7 years worth). I lost a lot of my mementos from High School and College. In the end its just stuff, but it was my stuff. Stuff that meant something to me. I feel guilty for being upset that I had to toss alot of things, when some people lost a whole lot more than me. Its a hard balance. I had to throw away all the stuffed animals I kept, hoping one day to give to my kids. The weird thing is....some of the storage tubs? Didn't get any water in them. AT ALL. They may have been light enough, and they floated on the water. So my High School diploma? It was dry. It was amazing. We spent the first day cleaning out the basement. Then exploring the city and hanging out with friends. The next day, (yesterday) Dia and I scrubbed all the storage bins (we have the bleach burns to prove it) while my sister cleaned the fridge. There was no way we could do it, Dia and I. But she did it. I have the best sister in the world. I am so glad that Dia and Lisa went with me. It did help. Here is the link to the pictures from Lisa's camera. Dia took some as well, she has a few different ones, such as the bugs in the fridge. http://boneramafreak.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album01

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

New Stress

Its a never ending feeling lately. For the past 6 weeks. Holy crap...its been 6 weeks since that bitch Katrina slammed us. Actually...6 1/2 weeks. The newest stress? I read yesterday that as of Oct 25th, landlords can start evicting tentents for partial damage to their places. Then they can fix the place up and rent it out again for a higher price. Do you know how bad it sucks to know that there is partial damage to your house and this could be happening? I actually didn't think about it too much yesterday during the day. The landlord's even called yesterday and asked when I was gonna be in the city. I said Friday, she said "we'll talk then" No biggie. I called my roomie to see what if anything she had done at the house. Nothing yet, other than finding out we now have power (whoo hoo!!!) the water is "good" and the AC isn't working quite right. So. Techinically I could go home, and stay home. But now? Knowing that after the 25th my ass could be booted? I will wait. The only reason I started to get more stressed was from what my roomie said. She had also heard from the landlord's and in the message that was left with her was "we need to talk about some issues with the house" Hopefully its just more of the "don't go into the basement" kinda things...but it may not be. I don't know what I am gonna do if I get booted from that place. Its home.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Days away

By Thursday night...I could be home. It will be more like Friday I am guessing...but its around the corner. It just for the day, but it will sure be glad to be there. There is a lot to do to make the house habitable. I am one of the lucky ones, I don't have as much clean up as others do. most of the stuff I have in storage will have to be chucked, and that is sad. But its just stuff. After Oct. 25th, the landlords can start evicting people for partial damage. Our house has partial damage. Let's hope that they don't kick us out. Cuz that will royally suck ass. That is one thing I do need to grab that I forgot all about when I left is my lease..there maybe something that says that in there. My hope is that by Nov. 1st I am officially back home.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Other things

Besides watching TV alot, I have been reading alot. I have a lot of books here at Dia's house. Mom just sent me two more to read, half way done with one of them. Its the Dean Koontz "Frankenstein" series. The first one takes place in NOLA. So far its an okay read. I am working on something for my sister for her late bday present. Can't say what it is, since she reads this here. Although next week she will most likely see it. I have also been downloading lots of porn. No, not really. Downloading the free game trials from MSN. The ones that are only suppose to last an hour. But if you don't close the game out and don't shut off your computer you can play a lot longer than that. Usually enough time to either get through all the levels of the game or to tire of it. I am downloading one now. It will keep me entertained as we watch some college football. My Grizzlies don't play till 3:05 MST. Wyoming is down by 6 to TCU right now in the 1st Quarter. My uncle coaches for Wyoming. Of course I have to catch those scores on the internet. Randy has the Kansas game on now.

Last night's concert was fun, Lit is a fun band. But the band that opened for them? They were worse that "Frank" I kid you not. The lead singer couldn't hold a note to save his life and he fell off the amp he was standing on. That was actually amusing. And it was colder than snot out there, but once Lit came onstage it was okay. In a week BTE will be here and the week after CM is here. Now if Bonerama would just come out here all would be good. But since I should be home soon, maybe not. I think a Bone show at the Leaf would be a good welcome home party. ;)

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Soap Update

Okay I only watched 15 mins of "Days of our Lives" today. Dia came and got me before I could watch much more, all so we could have our arms poked with a needle that didn't feel to good. But what I saw was:

Mimi and Shawn discussed their "kiss" and how it was a mistake. Actually that is what Shawn thought, and even though Mimi was agreeing, that is CLEARLY not what she really want. Shawn just needs to let go of Belle, cuz she is married to Phillip now and gave birth to their baby "yesterday" Really that was early last week, but whatever.

Marlena was taken to a coffee shop by Roman #1. I really don't remember his name on the show now..I think Alex. But way back in the day he was the first Roman. Or at least the Roman I remember first. He is now doing this brainwashing thing to Marlena cuz he wants her for himself, even though he was hired to help her regain her memory.

John, aka Roman #2 busted into the hair salon where Marlena was suppose to be, why do I mention this? Cuz the little bit with the hairdresser reading her "Soap Opera Secrets" magazine and her mentioning her "shows" to John was mildly entertaining. John eventually finds Marlena and they talk about being grandparents now, John telling Marlena what a wonderful mother she had been. He was just getting ready to tell Marlena why Belle's real name is Isabella (his dead wife from way before)

Roman #3, and the current Roman, has just arrested Sami for being Stan. Not sure about that whole story line, but it was something Tony DiMira had made her do, something about treason. Sami proclaimed "But dad I can't go BACK to prison" Did I mention that her wedding to Lucas the "day before" didn't happen, again?

Austin is back, the REAL HOT Austin, and he was out at the police station fighting with Kate, him trying to explain why he was there for moral support for Sami, even after everything she has ever done to him and everyone else. Kate, was well, Kate. It was pretty much the same conversation these two have had for the past few days on the show.

And that's all I saw. Fascinating isn't it? Or just plain sad?

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Rather Sad

My day revolves around TV right now. Or reading a book. I am slowly going crazy. At least I think that is what is going on. Thankfully this weekend will be a bit more active. Tomorrow I am going to help Dia at work with a customer service carnival thingy. Friday we are going to see one of her favorite bands. Her parents arrive this weekend as well and we are going to the Texas State Fair. Tuesday we are going to see "Wicked" I am beyond excited to see this. I have been dying to see the production since I first heard about it being done on Broadway. I have had the cast recording since the day it came out. Randy is busy finishing up the book right now. I can't wait to read "Son of a Witch" the follow up book that was just released!! Then my sis comes to town on Wed, then we go to NOLA the next day. Hopefully in the time at home I will know when I can go back for good. I talked to the landlady's office yesterday and they are still trying to figure things out. They are just getting back to the city themselves. Oh and in all that, the boy should be here for at least a day. Or a night. Whichever, at least I get to see him again!!! How boring is this entry? Maybe I will do daily recaps of "Days of our Lives" for those who don't get to watch it. ;)

Monday, October 03, 2005

August Wilson

I remember the first show of his that I saw, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" its a fantastic piece. It was being produced in Ashland, OR at the time. He is a wonderful playwright and will be missed. He passed away yesterday at the age of 60. Thankfully his work has been produced and recognized in his lifetime.


Playwright August Wilson, Who Chronicled African-American Experience, Is Dead at 60
By Robert Simonson02 Oct 2005
August Wilson
photo by Aubrey Reuben
August Wilson, one of America's greatest playwrights and the author of an epic cycle of dramas about the African-American experience in the 20th century, died Sunday, Oct. 2, the AP reported, citing a family spokesperson. He was 60.
He died at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, surrounded by his family, said Dena Levitin, Wilson's personal assistant. Wilson had revealed in late August that he was suffering from inoperable liver cancer and had been told he had only months to live.
His condition was discovered on June 14 by doctors at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. They recommended chemoembolization, which the Pittsburth Post-Gazette described as "cancer-fighting drugs injected directly into the tumor," and a liver transplant. However, it turned out that the disease was at too advanced a stage for treatment.
The shocking news comes just two months after Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre—which devotes each season to the work of a single playwright—announced it had decided to push back an August Wilson line-up previously announced for 2005-06 to the 2006-07 season. The Wilson season is to begin in fall 2006 with a new production of Two Trains Running. The season was also to have featured Wilson's one-man show How I Learned What I Learned, which he performs himself.
Since then, Jujamcyn Theatre announced it would rename the Virginia Theatre after Wilson. Jujamcyn had produced many of the Broadway productions of Wilson's epic dramas, albiet typically at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The new marquee will make its debut on Oct. 17.
With Radio Golf, Wilson completed his ten-play cycle, which chronicles the African-American experience in the past century decade by decade. The 1990s-set work involves real estate developers who look to tear down the home of recurring Wilson character Aunt Esther.
The other plays in Wilson's grand undertaking (in order of decade which the drama is set) include Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney and King Hedley II. All have played Broadway, except for Jitney, which was an Off-Broadway hit. (Jitney was actually the first play of the series that he created. He said he wrote it in ten days in 1979, at an Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips in St. Paul.)
All of the Broadway productions were nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. Fences won the prize. Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, for Fences and The Piano Lesson.
His plays were usually set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the place of his birth. Filled with vibrant characters, and soaring language, they filled American stages with a kind of dramatic poetry and sure-footed storytelling not seen since the heyday of Tennessee Williams, while at the same time posing the sort of towering moral questions associated with Arthur Miller.
Many a stage actor benefited from the juicy and loquacious roles he created; Mary Alice, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo, Charles S. Dutton, L. Scott Caldwell, Courtney B. Vance, Viola Davis and S. Epatha Merkerson all found career-altering parts in his dramas. They were rewarded in other ways as well: Alice, Santiago-Hudson, Caldwell and Davis all won Tony Awards for their work, as did James Earl Jones and Laurence Fishburne, the stars of Fences and Two Trains Running, respectively.
The works were seasoned and refined through a then-unique, and now quite common, passage through a series of regional houses. During these stops, Wilson would trim and revise his scripts. Sometimes, key roles would be recast. The journey almost always ended on Broadway. The behind-the-scenes personnel rarely changed. Benjamin Mordecai, who died earlier this year, was his most frequent producer. Lloyd Richards directed every play from Ma Rainey's Black Bottom—which the director plucked out of a pile of plays at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference in the early '80s—to 1996's Seven Guitars. On his last few plays, he worked with Marion McClinton. Kenny Leon directed Gem of the Ocean in 2004 when McClinton fell ill. The latter works were rated less highly that his earlier triumphs. Nonetheless, critics routinely treated the arrival of a new Wilson play with a sense of occasion, anticipating the chance for a rare glimmer of dramatic greatness of the commerical Broadway strip.
He was born Frederick August Kittel on April 27, 1945, to Frederick Kittel, a white baker who had emigrated from Germany—a man whom he rarely discussed—and the black Daisy Wilson. He was one of six children. When his father died in 1965, he changed his name to August Wilson.
He didn't finish high school, and helped educate himself at the public library. He started writing in 1965, according to the AP, when he acquired a used typewriter. He won the money to buy it by writing a term paper on Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg for his sister, a Fordham student. "I took the $20, and I went down to Kern Typewriter Store and spent it all in one place," he told Playbill's Harry Haun. "I bought this typewriter for $20. It was $20 plus tax, and I didn't have the tax, and the guy told me, `That's okay.' I didn't even have bus fare home so I had to walk home with this typewriter. It weighed about 30 pounds. When I got home, I plopped it down on the kitchen table and said, `I am a writer.' It was then I realized I didn't know how to type."
At first, he tried his hand at poetry, not attempting plays until some years later. He said in interviews that he would wait for his characters to speak to him before his began writing a new play. Many figures would appear in more than one play in his cycle. Music also informed his writing.
"I chose the blues as my aesthetic," Wilson told Playbill in 1996. "I don't do any research other than listen to the blues. That tells me everything I need to know, and I go from there. I create worlds out of the ideas and the attitudes and the material in the blues. I think the blues are the best literature that blacks have. It is an expression of our people and our response to the world. I don't write about the blues; I'm not influenced by the blues. I am the blues."
Talking of acting in a Wilson play, Phylicia Rashad said, "He conveys the poetry, the natural rhythms, of his characters' speech. Everything — emotion, movement, thought, intention — is inherent in that rhythm. Actors sometimes like to dissect, to analyze, to do all those things actors are taught to do. But those things don't put me closer to this work's heart. I have to surrender all that. It's like going to a lake or a swimming pool. You just have to dive in, to immerse yourself. Working in his plays requires a different kind of skill. It's as if you would become a talking drum."
August Wilson was often outspoken and his willingness to speak his mind sometimes bred controversy—no time more so than when, at the June 1996 national conference of the Theatre Communications Group, he used the keynote address to assail what he perceived as a racist imbalance in non-profit theatre. He noting that only one of 66 theatres in the League of Resident Theatres was black, called for a new black theatre and also criticized non-traditional casting. Critic Robert Brustein published a retort, saying Wilson's ideas were a step backward from the sweeping social integration that occured in the '60s and '70s. The war of words culminated in the two men debating on Jan. 27, 1998, before an SRO crowd at New York's Town Hall, a meeting moderated by Anna Deavere Smith.
On another occasion, he insisted the movie version of his most popular play, Fences, be directed by a black director, arguing his case in Spin magazine. The movie was not made. He himself wrote the teleplay for a TV version of The Piano Lesson, which was directed by his longtime collaborator, Richards.
In other ways, Wilson did not court the spotlight. He seemed to fit the description of that antiquated figure of decades past: the serious writer. He habitually dressed in a suit and tie, topped off by his trademark short-brimmed cap. He kept himself above and apart from the more commercial, vulgar aspects of the profession and concentrated on the writing, not the business. He ate at the Edison Cafe, not Joe Allen's, and lived as far away from the heart of the American theatre—New York—as he could: Seattle.
However, he never forgot the city he came from. In an interview with Playbill, he told of his early years, when he trying to become a poet. "I was a poor man, and I bought a record player at a thrift shop for three dollars," he says. "It only played 78s. The thrift shop also had 78 [rpm] records for a nickel apiece. I would go there every day and buy maybe ten records. I did this for months and had about 2,000 records. They were a virtual history of thirties and forties popular music.
"One day in my stack of records I saw this odd-looking, typewritten yellow label. I put on this song called 'Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine,' by Bessie Smith. And I heard this woman's voice that was so strikingly different than anything I'd ever heard. I was stunned, and I listened to it again. And I listened to it again. I listened to it 22 straight times. And I said, 'This is mine.' I knew that all the other music I'd listened to wasn't mine. But this was the lady downstairs in my boarding house she could sing this song. And I began to look at the people in the house in which I lived in a new way, to connect them to the record, to connect that to some history. I claimed that music, and I've never looked back."

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Going Home

I get to go home soon. My zip code opened up this past weekend. We are going to go over on the 13th. Dia, my sister and I. It won't be a permanent return to the city. Just to clean up a bit, and get some more things. Like clothes. However a lot of my winter clothes were in the basement. Which was underwater. One of my roomies actually made it back to the house on Friday. She said there was no damage to the house other than the water in the basement. She said it just smelled really musty. Luckily the water in one of the tubs drained, so its just the tub in my bathroom that will need some serious scrubbing. So its great great news. I can't wait to get back to the city permently. Hopefully the water will be back to a suitable shape soon, I would like to shower. While back, I am going to start asking around about work as well. Might as well, I am sure there will be plenty of hotels, restaurants and bars looking for people.