Miserable donuts’ Major John is part of the LA cleanup efforts and has posted a bevy of photos: water moccasins, displaced nautical transports, men in camouflage pants… Just keep scrolling. And make sure to read the captions, as well. I particularly liked this one:
One thing sort of stood out today as I went into New Orleans. This is a picture of what is left over when the waters recede in New Orleans. It is highly unhealthy. It also has a smell so strong, so unique it is almost kingly. This smell could be crowned and robed, seated on a throne and given an orb and scepter…I don’t hope to encounter his Majesty again.
I know that smell. I met it once in a dive bar in College Park, MD, where the oaf bought me a couple shots of Goldschlager to loosen me up, then, while we were singing “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” at the top of our lungs just before last call, the sneaky shit moved into my J Crew oatmeal rollneck, where it lived like a ripe transient for the next six months, mocking me.
I was finally able to coax it out with a forty of Miller High Life, two Carl’s Jr. bacon cheeseburgers, and a handful of quarters.
It’s the smell of a hound that has gotten itself wet and then found the carcass of a deer dead a week to roll in.
It’s the smell of a dog in heaven.
O.K. you’ve harmonized or immortalized or simonized your naghty bits, this give you cause to make fun of NO stinks? Me thinks not.
TW “policy”…. Well I do blame Rove
Heat and humidity on top of oall else Katrina?
Sometimes when things go wrong, they go very wrong. What that heat must do with the smell!
People are salt of the earth who continue to work and help. I’m not so surprised. I used to live in Corpus Christi Texas, where everyone I had dealings and time with were great.
There was this one gal who gave me some stern words once, because I was not taking a pinball game contest seriously. Her specialty, I guess. One must respect other’s specialties. She was sweet otherwise.
I’m on Vancouver Island, British Columbia now, so the most I can do is Post the Katrina Red Cross numbers on my sites and make a phone donation.
The 13th Century origins of the Red Cross are fscinating.
http://Anchorpin.Redpin.com
T/H to Wadard of http://yellowonBlue.Blogspot.com
73s TG
So where are the pictures of the machine gun nests and concentration camps? Not gonna show us those, are you?
One of those pictures reminds me of the drive-in daquiri joints in New Orleans. Like a slushy–only with booze. Served to you right in the car like an extra-large Coke! I suspect those colorful little civic touches will be eliminated by the health nazis when it’s rebuilt.
tw: ill. You’d have to drink about 18 before becoming ill.
I think about this, too, when I hear people talking about the NEW New Orleans. One of my first thoughts—and I am fully embarrassed by this—was, “Well, no way I’m ever going to get a gallon milk-jug full of Everclear daquiris from a drivethru at 11 in the morning in the NEW New Orleans.”
TW: forward. Onward and upward.
“quarters”
HA! You fed me slugs.
I would guess the vous, but I don’t think it was big with the j crew crowd…
Thanks for giving well deserved attention to Major John! His New Orleans dispatches are great, and folks might also want to check the archives for the photos he took when he was in Afghanistan too. There’s a great photo of a Brit officer trying to avoid a cloud of hashish smoke while he posed for a picture with some happy locals.
Jeff,
You are mistaken. The kingly smell is probably Amanda Marcotte’s uterus.
She needs not worry about men invading that.
That’s not a New Orleans thing, actually, but a Louisiana thing—or at least, it was about 12 years ago. Got one in Slidell for then-wife-to-be and me. I ended up consuming ehrs because she’s afraid of all things alcoholic ever since the Christmas she asked for more “frooshcake.”
At the time Louisiana didn’t have an “open container” law, so you could drive around enjoying one of these things as long as you didn’t exceed the BAC.
TW: “changed”—as in, “State laws may have changed sicne then.”
Splel chcek are my freidn.
My brother’s favorite drive-thru drink in Lafayette was the “Nuclear Waste.” All the drinking has its costs; when I moved to Virginia from Louisiana, my car insurance premiums were halved.
Major John—you’re doing great work. Hope you get a po-boy or muffaletta and a few Dixies before you go home.
Assuming for a moment that you were serious, Jeff, it had to be the Grill, right? My home away from home. Funny thing is, it’s a Brentano’s now, and when you walk in, you smell books, with a hint of 40 years of stale beer and puke.
Curse you Salt Lick! I had forgotten all about muffalettas…drool…and last I saw, they haven’t developed a muffaletta MRE yet. There is a jumbalaya one, however.
You’ve been to CP,MD? I take it this was a long time ago, Jeff. It;s not so different from when you remember it, I can say.