A Confederacy of Dunces Couldn't Keep Me Away

New Orleans is long past my rear-view, the Superdome is majestically behind me (sweet Jesus, my entire hometown's downtown could fit in there), and I'm possibly on the contestant list for eighteen months (still unsure, if I never hear from them I guess I know for sure).

Boy, is my brain tired...

The "Jeopardy" try-out, I'm not at liberty to divulge the questions (excuse me, answers) but I feel pretty good about how I did. At least, I think I did good. Driving out of NO later that afternoon (following a trip to a riverfront mall where I spent way too much on an Eli Manning Giants shirt, but I don't regret it because I felt on top of the world), I could safely say that, win or lose (or draw) I was glad that I got the opportunity to go.

On the way back, we stopped on the Gulf Shore (at Gulfport this time) to take in the beach. Only thing is, I was still wearing my fancy Jeopardy clothes, so I couldn't really get in the waves or anything (well, I could have, but then I'd be hoping I dried out on the long drive back). There is a good photo of me that resulted, looking like I'm keeping the beaches clear of illegals while looking fashionable. Alabama wasn't any more interesting between Mobile and Montgomery, so I drove that stretch while my sister rested. Atlanta was banging at ten that night (we lost the hour that we'd gained back on the border between Alabama and Georgia), and the next thing I remember is waking up just as the familiar sights of my street went by. Needless to say, my sis and future bro-in-law crashed at the house that night, and we all got a fairly wore-out night's sleep.

So I'm back, and I'm glad I went. I would love, love, love to get on the show, but I got a pretty good trip through a part of the country I'd never seen (all of it, even the boring parts, was worth it). I've got a few souvenirs, some memories, a lot of cameraphone pics, and an experience that will be hard to top. But it will be harder to go back to "sad bastard Trevor," at least for a good long while. Because who the hell thought I'd get a chance to try out for Jeopardy? Anything is possible...even finding a real, non-tranny woman on Bourbon Street.

Okay, that might be impossible...

Bourbon Street Is Decadent and Depraved

Second day in New Orleans, first full day of sight-seeing (and only, as myself, my sis and her finance plan to abscond with the loot...I mean, leave town tomorrow after my Jeopardy try-out. Yeah, that's the ticket), and I know that technically we didn't do a whole lot of venturing beyond Canal Street and a side-jaunt down Bourbon Street, but we got to do more than enough.

The trip down was much better than any previous long-ass trip in a car during which I was a participant (I think it helped that we were all well past the age when farting in an enclosed space was a source of amusement, though that did not preclude any involuntary passing of gas). Georgia minus Atlanta was rural but pleasant (our path through ATL was nice because we didn't have to deal with traffic. My thinking is we won't be so lucky tomorrow). Alabama was notable for a couple of things: the fact that my future brother-in-law and I wore Clemson shirts in Auburn was not received kindly by the locals at a Firehouse Subs there (much harsh stares and possible brandishing of nooses could be inferred), and the stretch from Montgomery to Mobile (which I took over on after my sis expressed exhaustion at having driven so far, because she thinks I drive too slow for the interstate) was devoid of anything besides trees, more trees, grass, the occasional wild goat, and trees. Not even a fireworks warehouse billboard to liven up the scenery.

That particular stretch of Alabama answers my question "why do people take drugs?"

Mississippi was a revelation; as a kid who watched Mississippi Burning at a tender age, I've always been under the impression that you don't want to make a Mississippian angry (also, they still have the Rebel flag on their state flag). But the Gulf Coast, at least, was awesome; sandy beaches with gentle tides coming in, not at all like the Atlantic at Myrtle Beach (also, a significant lack of tacky tourist trappings at Biloxi, where we stopped). After that, it was on to Louisiana and New Orleans...where we happened upon Canal Street overrun by young college-age men in red dresses. Either it was some sort of charity/fraternity thing, or their drag queens have really quite trying.

Culture shock, thy name is New Orleans...

Today was a little better in that regard, NO is both urban enough to feel like a big city and Southern enough to be weird about it. I know we won't be doing much more while we're here (the Jeopardy thing is in the morning, and we all miss my niece something awful), but I want to come back, at my leisure, and see all the stuff that's here. It helps that none of us had an agenda (i.e., "I wanna see some big tourist trap!"), but I will be back sometime in the future. While wandering away from the excess of Bourbon Street (best way I could describe it: Clemson on a Thursday night, magnified by a large percent. The country boy in me is coming out, but really, apart from a trip to NYC and a passing familiarity with DC, ATL, and Greenville, my frame of reference was pretty small before now), I happened upon a little bookshop that had some long aisles I wanted to wander down, had I more time. Alas, I bought a book by a guy about New Orleans jazz because I figured that's what you do in New Orleans (plus, I already own and cherish a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces). This city is amazing, and while we did a lot, we just scratched the surface.

Anyway, long day ahead first of Jeopardy, then driving home (not sure if I drew the short straw on that yet, though it's the least I could do). Tom-Tom should be programmed to take us through a more-wild-goat-infested part of Alabama on the way back (or steer us to the nearest Jareds Galleria of Jewellry), and I pray for patience while trying to navigate through ATL, whether as driver or passenger. But hell, this has been a kick-ass trip all around, and whatever happens with the show, I'm glad I got to take it.

Could've used some Skinimax on the hotel cable, though ;-)

“Rednecks”/”Birmingham,” Randy Newman, and Southern Identity

The thing about the South is, we know we’re idiots. Not that we ourselves are stupid, but that’s how we’re viewed by the rest of the country. No one ever says someone from Oregon is an inbred cracker, for instance. Midwesterners may be boring, but they never had a major network television show dedicated to glorifying bootleggers running corn across Iowa county lines, for instance. No, we Southerners have a lot to answer for, but we’re not the idiots that a lot of people think we are.

Sure, there was that whole slavery thing (really, we’re sorry about it. White people have had a long history of being too lazy to do things when they could just get someone from another group to do it, for less pay). And we dropped the ball on integration for about, oh, a hundred years. And we still embrace the big, dumb, and loud when it comes to politics (Dubya is one of us, like it or not). Randy Newman is one of us, too, a New Orleans boy by way of Los Angeles and back again. So on that basis alone, I give him a free pass on “Rednecks.”

If you haven’t heard it…first off, he uses the n-word. He’s writing from the point of view of a typical good old boy (in fact, that’s the name of the album the song comes from, though I got it from a best-of compilation), and I can see where it wouldn’t necessarily be high on a lot of people’s playlists because of that (I saw him on “Austin City Limits” refusing to do the song, because “why do you think I can’t sing it?”). In that sense, he’s echoing Mark Twain, who used the n-word with such stunning regularity that people still have issues with “Huck Finn.” I didn’t get the whole controversy until I actually read the book, and then I understood. Twain sets a record for using the n-word, surely, though I’m afraid he might still be lagging behind any association of white people in the South (or the North, for that matter) who like to dress up and scare non-white people. Larry the Cable Guy fans, for instance.

The South is defined via pop culture as backwoods, infested with toothless morons who live to drink moonshine and knock up their first cousins. And with any groundless rumor and unwarranted stereotype, this one has basis in fact. We are backwoods, and proud of it. We went to freaking war with the rest of the country with maybe one gunsmith in Selma and a couple of fellas in Waycross who could whittle rifles real good, of course. When “The Dukes of Hazzard” is the single most important television show set in your neck of the woods, and “Deliverance” was filmed just down the road, you tend to be self-conscious.

Of course, we’re not all idiots down here. I recently read a couple of books by Lewis Grizzard, a Georgian (but we won’t hold that against him) who was pretty funny and insightful, even if I suspect him of having political views that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with (side note: I get tired of people lazily using “liberal” as a pejorative. Come up with something more clever, such as “practitioner of fellatio on small woodland creatures,” for instance). As he points out, and as Newman does in “Rednecks,” racism isn’t just a Southern thing. Y’all Yankees got nothing to brag about, basically is what each is saying.

On the flip side of that coin, “Birmingham” is both a gentle poke at the Southern attitude (who in their right mind would call Birmingham the equal of Paris or London?) and a celebration of said attitude (well, it is the greatest city in Alabama, when your competition is Montgomery, Mobile, and maybe Muscle Shoals, where Stax Records was located or recorded or was somehow or another connected to Muscle Shoals, I’m blanking on which of those options is the correct one). Once again, Newman inhabits a character, a regular working guy (the kind that Mitt Romney knows well, because he fired them a lot), a guy who don’t want much out of life except to work at a steel mill and go home to his wife and his dog Dan (the meanest dog in Alabama, naturally). Newman, by the way, is Jewish, something that still seems alien to a lot of Southerners even though they’ve been around since the beginning. But like any good writer of fiction, he inhabits the roles of both the redneck of “Rednecks” (who, after the jaunty first verse about how stupid he is, proves himself to be smarter when he talks about the North’s “enlightened” policy of putting blacks into ghettos in major urban areas) and the common man of “Birmingham” (a guy who really doesn’t have to answer to anybody for anything), and he does so with that rollicking, easy-going vocal delivery that “Family Guy” parodied so well in their Y2K episode (you know the one, where he’s writing songs about Lois getting an apple from the tree, because he just sings about whatever’s going on around him).

God help me, I love to listen to “Rednecks,” even though I wouldn’t do so in mixed company (it’s easy to see where someone might not get the premise of the song and think that Newman is actually espousing the views he posits, or at least they just don’t like the use of the n-word in the song). “We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground” is a Southern-ism, and it’s appropriate for my hometown as much as it is for anywhere else. But as much as I take joy in that part of the song, I tip my hat to Newman when it comes to the second verse, because it would be easy to take pot-shots at the South without acknowledging that the North isn’t the land of opportunity that it was promised to be for freed slaves after the war. A dirty little secret about American history is that while many abolitionists were in it for the liberation of the slaves and wanted them to have every opportunity to make a good life for their families, some were secretly doubtful that the black man lacked the “mental capability” to live independent like the white man. Of course, this was a view that the slaveholders shared, because as long as they thought of the slaves as “children” it was easier to justify to themselves the conditions under which they “owned” them. Newman makes it clear that, yeah, us Southerners have a lot to be ashamed of with regards to slavery and segregation, but Northerners need to ask themselves why the urban landscapes of cities such as New York and Chicago suddenly became less desirable for white families to live in once blacks and other minorities started moving into the inner city. The distance between what we believe and what we do is something that this country needs to work on.

Must Be the Money

"Jeopardy" is a little over a week away (or is it two weeks...no, August 13, which is a Monday, so...wait, how do I carry the square root...I may be in more trouble than I think), and in all the time I've had to think about the ramifications that possibly appearing on the show could have (assuming I make it past the audition stage in New Orleans...in the middle of hurricane season. I am a master of timing), my own personal philosophy about wanting to be on the show has changed over the years.

When I first started trying out for the show (online testing), I was interested in acquiring a record total, something not quite in the Ken Jennings territory but close (in other words, I didn't want to have to work again). Now, as I actually stand on the precipice, I'm more inclined to believe that money doesn't buy happiness (though it can buy you peace of mind...hey, maybe I should write commercials).

Granted, I still want to do well, very well indeed, should I be picked to be on the show (and the waiting period could last long enough that maybe I'd actually have something approaching financial stability whenever I get on, but I wouldn't bet on it). But in life in general, after having seen up close (from a very non-likeliness of participation in the riches viewpoint) how money and wealth don't always mean your problems go away, I just want to make enough out of life to not owe anything when I'm gone (many, many centuries from now) and to take care of my family, should I happen to have one (working on it as we speak, though I've said that for years now). Most of all, I want to be able to avoid the pitfalls of believing that, if I just get this or that opportunity to make money, all my worries will be gone.

Just take a second to check out any of the news outlets devoted to celebrities, the ones who are famous for being famous (or Kim Kardashian); theirs is a whirlwind circle of seeking attention by being fame whores who get paid to be fame whores and who don't really contribute anything to society (unless you count reality shows as contributions to society, and I'm inclined to disbelieve that notion). Who wants to do that, really? All the money in the world, and the minute the cameras shut off it's like you're nothing. Until the eventual reunion show.

God help us all...

Anyway, looking forward to the trip there and back (I always wanted to see Mississippi, though preferably through the rearview mirror), and I'm hoping at the very least I have a hell of a (responsible) time in the Big Easy.