The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
AUGUST 30, 2012
The New Orleans streets are a mess with shredded branches and other debris – roof tiles, broken signs, errant gutters – but the city, I think, so far, came through fine. People know how to handle hurricanes down here.
The final dispatch from Benjamin Morris, who covered New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011 for The Rumpus:
The problem of Mardi Gras—of the day itself, Fat Tuesday—is that you only have one body.
Consider the map of the day. Uptown, you have the parades: the last of the season, Zulu and Rex, followed by two parades on trucks, Elks Orleanians and Crescent City.
...moreRecurring dispatches from Benjamin Morris covering New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011:
Some nights only begin once you get hit in the face.
I never saw it coming, though I’m not sure the rider in Bacchus could say the same. The way they hurl their throws, you’d swear they were training for the minor leagues.
...moreRecurring dispatches from Benjamin Morris covering New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011:
If there’s one lesson we know well here in New Orleans, it’s that none of us are immune to the elements.
It’s only a matter of time before a shadow passes over and reminds us of the water, water, everywhere: above us in the clouds, below us in the soil, around us in the Gulf and in the lakes, through us in the River, and within us in our bodies, water-born and water-fueled creatures that we are.
...moreRecurring dispatches from Benjamin Morris covering New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011:
“I thought I’d be happy with just one!” Kellie says, her slender frame weighed down under two full pounds of beads. Around her neck they gleam in a perfect rainbow: red, purple, blue, green, pink, gold, and even white.
...moreRecurring dispatches from Benjamin Morris covering New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011:
“Y’all ready?” I ask the cops, clustered near the corner of Napoleon and St Charles. “Been ready,” one shoots right back at me. “Just ready to get it done.”
The parades this evening, led by the Krewes of Sparta and Pygmalion, are back to back; the Pontchartrain parade has already rolled earlier in the day but most people have just decided to stick around, eating and drinking and playing football and beer pong, lounging about in deck chairs, playing fetch with their dogs, listening to WWOZ on portable radios, bantering with those nearby.
...moreRecurring dispatches from Benjamin Morris covering New Orleans Mardi Gras, 2011:
This is how it begins: with a lot of standing around.
Some of us are drunk. Some of us are getting there, some of us are dead sober, but no one gives a shit either way.
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Now that It is over—now that the circus has come and gone, its glaring lights, its grips and its roadies; now that the visiting dignitaries have made their dignified departures and the newspapers have returned to publishing news
New Orleans has a textured and macabre history when it comes to the sex industry, particularly regarding house moms–that hybrid of manager, referee and babysitter.
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Angela Eve and I work together at a topless joint on Bourbon Street. We spoke in the locker room while she brushed her hair and I applied gloppy eyelash glue.
Angela Eve’s the hardest working stripper at Rick’s. She lures convention goers and Saints fans from their seats with the ease of a seasoned pro and marches them into the $60 dance area all night long.
...moreAre there rules that govern the representation of the “real world” in fiction? How much should fiction writers be allowed to misrepresent history before being called out for it?
...moreGangland tours of LA, with one helluva waiver.
In New Orleans, what happens when sex workers are prosecuted as sex offenders.
A brilliantly written profile of a sniper.
“(M)y grandmother’s feet were bound in China, and there were people here in the U.S. who said, “This is horrific.” And there were people in China who said, “This is horrific.” I am so glad they said it was horrific.
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A new book about a soldier who murdered his girlfriend examines the similar traumas of combat veterans and Katrina survivors.In the introduction to Guernica Magazine’s New Orleans-themed September edition, editor Pia Ehrhardt writes:
“When friends from out of town come to visit, my husband, Malcolm, and I put them in the car and drive. Driving is the only way to grasp what happened, what is happening, and what is not happening in New Orleans today.
...moreThe fourth anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina would likely be garnering bigger headlines right now if not for the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. It might have even drowned out the howling over “socialized medicine” and “death panels” and South Carolina Lt.
...moreRumpus contributor Michael Berger only just learned about Harold Norse, on June 8th; sadly, that was the day Norse died. Here’s a tribute page, and a page where Glenn Ingersoll takes off on a Norse poem.
Mark Doty is spending an awful lot of time in a New Orleans zoo.
...moreFollowing Stephen Elliot’s post http://bit.ly/32Mt06, I began covering Dan Baum’s Twitter story relatively late in the game,
three days after his first tweet about being fired from The New Yorker.
May 8, 10:46am: “People often ask why I left the New Yorker.
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