Where I Am Right Now

So the movie went very well. People thought it was funny, everyone was happy, and I got good and drunk afterwards. I am already talking with people about what's next. I myself do not know.

Right now at this very moment I am in New Orleans, La., sitting on the deck of a guest house and enjoying my first internet since last week (it doesn't quite reach up to our room).

I am staying with My Cousin the Revolutionary and our dear friend Drew. We are here to do volunteer work and to eat, and so far we're doing better at the first than the second.

Most recently, as far as the first category, I mastered the fine art of wrestling a forty-pound machine in to pulling eight layers of linoleum off a recovering house's floor. I was very virile and impressive.

As far as the second category, we are striking out. The trouble is that by the time we get back to our room, peel off our sweaty, dirty and disgusting clothes, shower, and formulate a plan for dinner, most anywhere we'd want to eat has been closed.

That should brings me to a wider point - New Orleans is a crippled city. The protest I linked to earlier was over a wave of murders (some drug-related, some out of desperation) that has been the recent talk of the city, but there's much more than that.

So much has to be rebuilt, many services aren't being supplied, and, most debilitatingly, half the population has yet to return, and may never return. That's part of why so many less businesses are open and the restaurants close at eight.

It's frightening and angering to think of how easy it was to prevent this disaster and how little is being done to help New Orleans to come back.

I will be back in Brooklyn next week. I'm sure I'll have more to say then.