What Are Y'all Doing Friday Night?

My supertalented pal Alice Lee has a gig at the Knitting Factory this Friday. You would like her music, I bet. Melodic, soulful, dreamy, smart. Like Edith Piaf crossed with Beck, or Nina Simone plus Jamiroquai divided by Brazil 66. PLUS, SHE PLAYS AN ACCORDION WHICH IS ALMOST LARGER THAN SHE IS. IT IS GODDAMN INSPIRING, IS WHAT IT IS.
1,9 to Franklin St.
N,R,A,C,E to Canal St.
$10

Alice Lee - throat, guitar, etc.
Cat Oberg - violin, drums
Alan Hampton - bass
Scott McCampbell - guitar

This is Alice:


She's donating current CD sales to Red Cross fund, you can listen to it and buy it here. Her blog is funny, too.


(Cel phone photo of the Star Wars diorama by Clara Lee, incidentally.)

Five years of kicking my ass, one week of making up for it.

Just so's you know upfront, y'all: this post is hideously self-absorbed.

Anybody who's lived in New York can tell you the same old chestnut. "New York is expensive. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. I'm ignored by the powerful and harangued by the crazy. Many are prettier, famouser, talenteder, richer, or saner than I, while others frottage me on the L train. I am always running out of socks, hope, and money! What's more, daily, whether I mean to or not, I see at least one dog taking a shit. Never the same dog twice. Never the same dog twice!"

...Actually, I don't know why that should bother me, the never-the-same-dog-twice thing. Why should I want to watch the same dog shitting repeatedly? Because it would mean that I would have an ongoing relationship with one dog, rather than brief, nasty street encounters with anonymous dogs?

Anyhoo, New York, New York, big city of dreams, after five years of beating me senseless, just gave me a hot, lickery kiss. I've landed a job at the New School, as Assistant to the University Librarian. I found out Tuesday. Y'all, I've been trying to get a job at the New School for TWO YEARS. My first interview for a position was in August of '03. I've applied for 48 different jobs since, and have interviewed for four. My friend Noel says at this point they would've had to either hire me or get a restraining order. Decent pay, excellent healthcare and vacation benefits, and FREE TUITION. I'm about two semesters shy of a B.A. So I start my job on Wednesday, then will fuckin' MATRICULATE! (oh my God, is that the right word?) in January. I'm scared, but it's a new, fun brand of scared; opportunity is knocking, and it's startling me somewhat.

Some other cool shit happened to me in the last week, too, stay tuned for CELEBRITY DIRT! (Preview blind item: what dirty-toofed former Austinite was seen coked up and wearing a ginormous shearling coat in ninety degree weather recently? Hint: it wasn't me.)

(TECHNICAL INTERRUPTION: OK, so, I tried to link to the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore, up there. I couldn't find a page that just played it when you linked to it, though, so I audioblogged it by downloading it to iTunes it then played it from my computer speaker into my cel phone. If you, Barbara, can find me a link to that song, let me know in the comments. I know it sounds like shit in the audioblog. I know, I know.)

Punk-Cashin'-it Conservative

Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
President signs executive order allowing contractors to pay below prevailing wage in affected areas.

Bush allies getting Katrina work Companies with ties to the White House among the first awarded reconstruction deals.


(Thanks Ruth Goldsmith for fwd-ing me the wage rules article, Dad for photo)

Deamonte Love of New Orleans

This story
made me feel temporarily better. The kids in the article are in my hometown of San Antonio, now, too, which gives me a small-comfort warm feeling. San Antonio and New Orleans have some similarities I've been ruminating on this past week. Both are old cities, pre-American Revolution, pre-United States, having been French and Spanish and Mexican colonial-power outposts, both cities historically Catholic, both historically bilingual. San Antonio and New Orleans are also cities of poor people of color whose underpaid labor has made white people wealthier and who've benefitted very little from social programs, but whose music and food and art make their cities world-famous tourist attractions. Both are party cities, restaurant cities, bar cities, convention cities. Both are charming, lovely, friendly, violent, and poor. San Antonio, thank God, is not levee-dependent, but a large majority of its population would be similarly fucked if a natural disaster struck.

I pray that there comes out of the NOLA tragedy a new national focus on America's poor; my hometown needs it, and so does yours.

FEMA? I hardly knew her!

(Psst...Say that jokey post title aloud with a Louisiana accent and... it still sucks! Shoot, y'all, sorry. Let's move on.)

First off, FEMA, in case you're not so well-versed in government bodies (rowr!), is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is charged to protect us in case of hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, witches (I think?), and, apparently, uppity poor people. FEMA partially constitutes the The Government, which, in case you're in need of further elucidation, is dictated by the Constitution. My favorite bit of the Constitution? The Preamble! It's right there at the beginning of the document, it's short, and you can dance to it. Sing it for the Durty South, y'all, like they used to do on Jimmy-Carter-era Saturday morning television:

We the People
in Order to form a more Perfect Union,
establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquilityy-yy-yy,
proviiide for the Common Defence,
promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Lib-er-tyyy
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain!
and establish!
this Constitution!
for the:
United States o-o-of
A-
me-ri
caaaa.

As of blog time (nearly five a.m. on Wednesday morning, 9/7/05, with CNN on), Justice remains flamboyantly un-Established in South Louisiana. Domestic Tranquility in the Southern Parishes is Very Fucking Much Not. The Common Defence seems to have been ignored in the Ninth Ward, and as for the Promotion of Louisianians' General Welfare...it's so funny, I forgot to laugh.

But here, lemme try a giggle, with a KRUNK NOLA-STYLE FEMA BIT.
Oh, FEMA, you triflin' bitch. Where were you last week? Don't tell me you thought that the Weather-Related Mass Drowning, Starvation, and Chaos Administration had a handle on it. Because that's supposed to be you, lazy-ass. Don't you try to implicate Santa! Don't front, son! Santa don't make it rain. Hurricane evacuation ain't Batman's job, neither, it's YOURS. What's that you say, FEMA? What-whaaaat? Budget cuts?? WHO CUT YOU? Was it ReeRee? Did ReeRee and LaKwan cut you, baby??
...No? They drowned, you say? Damn. Well, who cut your funding then? WHO WAS IT?

Anyhow.
I realize my interpretation of the duties of our government strikes some as quixotic. Those in and out of the current Presidential Administration favoring a strict interpretation of the Constitution may argue that nowhere do the Framers propose massive hurricane-refugee airlifting. And they would have a point, as would those favoring the smallest taxes and smallest federal government in protesting that they don't control the weather.

Clearly, I just need to accept that some things went wrong, but some things went right (!), and trust that the president is gonna investigate. Yay! A sleuthin' POTUS!Who needs regulatory agencies or independent nonpartisan investigations when we have the fuckin' Hardy Boys!?

And while some among us may point out that the 18,000 yearly US deaths resulting from a lack of affordable healthcare seems also kinda...well, crisis-ish (can you imagine if there were 18,000 Americans killed each year by al-Qaeda?? Or 18,000 shark attacks? ), the poor and healthcare-free in non-New Orleans America can console themselves that at least they're not dying because all their local hospitals are underwater. Yet.