Tag: New Orleans East

Laugh, Laugh

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.

I wasn’t sure I was going to write here today when I first got up; I overslept, for one, and then was thinking more along the lines of just getting under my blanket in my easy chair and spending the entire day reading and ignoring everything going on in the world outside my bubble–where I suspect I’ll be spending an awful lot of time either for the next four years…or for the rest of my life. It’s thirty degrees here at the moment, and now we’re apparently expecting anywhere from three to six inches of snow (!!!!!) over the next few days, including sleet. It could get really bad here with the snow and ice and cold, and now they are saying we might have to stay home for two to three days! There’s been no word from work, of course–so I will have to get up at six tomorrow morning anyway to find out if they’ve closed the office or not. I love my job I love my job I love my job.1

Yesterday was pretty unremarkable, really. I ran out to make groceries and while it was sunny and nice, whenever the wind blew it felt miserably cold, the kind that goes right through you to the bone. That’s the kind of cold we get here, a wet cold, and that’s why I hate the cold weather here so much (when I can’t just stay cozy and warm at home and underneath blankets); it feels so much colder than it actually gets here. I really do have to write a snow-day Scotty book, don’t I? We watched a terrible thriller called Project Power, primarily because it starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I love, and it was both set and filmed here. It was entertaining enough (as with anything filmed in New Orleans, the geography was hysterically funny–how does one ride a bike from the West Bank to uptown and then to Jazzland in New Orleans East?), but then we moved on to The Jetty, a crime drama about a cold case and a connection to a current one starring Jenna Coleman that is actually quite excellent, and examines age of consent v. maturity, which is stunningly well done. Highly recommended; we have one episode left which we will probably get to later on today and then we’ll start another.

I’ve pretty much blown off everything this weekend for the most part, and have little productivity to show for it, which means that today I need to try to get as caught up as possible before Paul gets up and comes down to join me in the living room this afternoon. I still need to write up my thoughts on Ode to Billy Joe, I have several things I need to be writing, and need to be done, so I think I won’t be turning on the television this morning or this afternoon and instead parking in either my chair to read or at my desk to be writing. When I finish this I am going to go read, and then most likely to shower and get back to work here at my desk,

I was very pleased to see that Jayden Daniels and the Commanders (sounds like a 60’s vocal band, doesn’t it?) won their playoff game (my condolences, Detroit Lions fans) and what a mark he’s making in the NFL! I told Paul yesterday, “ten years ago if someone would have told us that two of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time would be LSU graduates and Heisman Trophy winners, we would have laughed in their face.” It’s true. During the Les Miles era the LSU offense often sputtered and misfired, with talent being wasted on both sides of the ball; the defense was great but the offense could never be depended upon. Since Joe Burrow arrived in 2018, that has changed completely and flip-flopped; now we have a defense we can’t count on, but an impressive offense. I think LSU is going to be very good next year, and might be one of the few bright spots of the year in this household, for sure.

I am really enjoying Farrah Rochon’s Bemused, which will be fun to write about when I finish reading. I think Hercules is one of the more underrated Disney animated films, and my favorite part of the movie was the muses (and I live in the neighborhood of the muses, too)–so this book is absolutely perfect for me. I always loved ancient Greece when I was a child, and was an even bigger fan of the mythology. (Funny how it’s always Greek myths rather than the Roman versions, even as we call him Hercules–which is the Latin; in the Greek it’s Heracles.) I’ve also always wanted to write about a Greek myth, revised and updated and modernized, or even not; I’ve always wanted to tell the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Cassandra on the walls of Troy as her city burned. I love Madeline Miller’s reinterpretation of myth in The Song of Achilles and Circe, but she does it so well I can’t imagine being anything other than a very pale carbon imitation. (Does anyone remember carbon paper? Is it even used or made anymore?)

But if I don’t buckle down and start writing, I don’t know that I can actually go ahead and call myself a writer anymore.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee and head into the living room with Bemused. Have a lovely Martin Luther King Jr holiday, everyone, and I’ll give a snow report update tomorrow morning, either from here on a remote day or from the office.

  1. Okay, to be fair, I just checked my email and they will decide this afternoon whether we’ll be working “remotely” or not tomorrow. My apologies to upper management. ↩︎

Dream Lover

Monday back to the office blog. I did get stuff done yesterday, but I also apparently wore myself out, because later in the day I kept falling asleep. Paul came down later in the day and we watched two more episodes of Night Country, which we are really enjoying, and then I went to bed relatively early.

The biggest news coming out of yesterday was I wrote almost two thousand words and finished that short story, “When I Die.” It needs a revision, but I am going to let it sit for a week or so before taking my red pencil to it. I also cleaned out some things from the kitchen, did a load of dishes, and cleaned/reorganized my two supply drawers, which makes finding things a lot easier…as well as throwing out stuff I no longer need (if I ever did) and I am quite pleased with the result. I am gradually digging my way out of the hole I’ve been in since even before the pandemic, and it kind of feels nice, to be honest. It feels nice to feel like I have some say in what happens to me again, that I have some control and power over my life. It’s probably illusory, but I can live with the illusion quite happily, thank you very much.

I have a lot of practice living with illusions, thank you very much. In fact, I much prefer my fantasy world than the real one, thank you very much.

Heavy heaving sigh. I do feel a little more tired this morning than I remember feeling last week, but again it’s physical, not mental. I am supposed to go back to the gym tonight–I see my therapist Friday morning–which will undoubtedly exhaust me. The exercises themselves aren’t terrible, and really–the walking there and back is the worst, most tiring part of the entire enterprise. And as it progressively gets hotter as summer draws near, there’s that unpleasant aspect of it as well. But it also is stupid to drive such a short distance and try to find a place to park that’s even remotely close enough for the drive to make any sort of sense; this is the kind of thing that nags at me, comes back to haunt me when I am tired and trying to just let my mind go. But it also stands to reason that the more I make that walk, the easier it will get, and I wanted to start taking more walks in the evening anyway, didn’t I? I need to really get over myself at some point, don’t I?

But I am very pleased that I got that story finished yesterday, and I got ideas for how to finish other stories, which always makes the weekend feel more productive. I am glad I dropped off books at the library, preparatory to another cull, and of course I am glad I washed the car–which I’d like to start doing every other week. The car looks better when it’s clean, and what I really need to have done is use some rubbing compound on it and have it waxed again. That would actually be a really cool thing to do when I visit Kentucky next.

I was also thinking this weekend that on one day of my future weekends, I should use the car to go exploring–in the East, for one, and old Highway 51 along the west lake shore, as well as the north shore and Irish Bayou and Spanish Fort and so on. I should also head over to Houma and Terrebonne Parish, drive out to Grand Isle…there’s so much of Louisiana to explore, and I was thinking Avery Island, where they make tabasco sauce, would be an interesting place to visit as well–not to mention everything all along the River Road, from the plantations to the towns to the Cajun influences. It will undoubtedly inspire more work from me, too.

There’s always so little time, it seems.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Secret Love

Tuesday morning and it’s back to the office with me today. Hurray!

I really didn’t want to get up this morning–what else is new–but I could easily crawl back underneath the covers and go right back to sleep. But that isn’t possible, so I sit here and swill my coffee and try to wake up completely so I can get ready for work. Yesterday was a decent day of working at home duties and feeling rested; when I was finished for the day I did work on the new Scotty a little bit, and also did a little more research about Julia Brown, the witch of Manchac Swamp whose entire town was wiped out by the hurricane of 1915 (which has caused a bit of an issue for my Sherlock Holmes story, which was set in 1916 and never mentions the hurricane of the previous year; one would assume the city was still rebuilding at the time of that story, but I guess the lack of mention can be explained away easily enough if i put my mind to it–not that anyone will ever notice or say anything, naturally). After finishing work for the day entirely and moving to my easy chair, we watched the new episodes of The Anarchist and Loot, before starting season three of Who Killed Sara? I have a lot of errands to run after work tonight–prescriptions, the mail, and picking up library books–which is fine; there’s an easy pattern of driving I can follow to get it all done relatively easily and quickly, but the primary issue is that I probably won’t want to do any of those errands once I get off from work today.

Most likely not. But they need to be run, and I might as well get it all over with at once, don’t you think?

I concur.

My birthday is coming up, sooner than I would like–this month is just flying past, which is partly due to me trying to get through the work week as quickly as possible every week; as I’ve said before, doing this is wishing my life away, but what can I say? I vastly prefer the days when I don’t have to come to work than the ones where I do, sue me. Retirement–a mere four years in my future–looks to be more and more enticing all the time; however, I also don’t want the next four years to just blow by, either, so no more of this wishing my life away stuff; I need to focus on each day and squeezing as much worth and value out of every day that I can. I am very excited about working on the new Scotty book and whipping it into shape; making a story come together out of the amorphous nether regions is always kind of fun for me (no matter how much I bitch and/or complain about it) and of course, I find myself once again writing a book during football season–heavy heaving sigh, one day you’d think I would learn–but there’s also no telling what this season will be like for us LSU/Saints fans; both have new coaches and it’s kind of a new era for both teams; I find it highly unlikely, however, that LSU will have another season as bad as the last two, and of course last year’s Saints season was a total disaster. Can’t really complain though; Louisiana football fans have been terribly spoiled this entire century–LSU won three national titles, the Saints won the Super Bowl–so it was probably one of the best runs for Louisiana football in history, really.

The problem with this, of course, is that I really need to be doing some day trip exploring around the state for things I am writing. I really need to go into the river and bayou parishes and scope it out, get a sense of what it’s like there–the sights, sounds, smells, etc.–and if I am going to write about Julia Brown and the Manchac swamp, I kind of need to go have a look around there. I’ve written scenes in the Manchac Swamp before, but it’s been a hot minute since I explored around out there and I don’t trust my memory (which lies to me on a daily basis, the bastard)…and I also should drive around in the East a bit as well–taking pictures and so forth. But….if I can find the Saints on the radio, I can always listen to the game in the car as I drive around.

(I don’t care about missing the Saints games as much as I do the LSU games, honestly; I often will make groceries during the first half of a Saints game because the city turns into a ghost town.)

I also am really starting to like the Fresh Market on St. Charles. The fruit and vegetables are fresher than those at other markets; my blackberries, for example, don’t get moldy and fuzzy within two days when I get them from there. I also like the butcher counter–and in futzing around on their website yesterday I discovered that yes, I can indeed order for pick-up there as well. If I get this all under control relatively soon, I can get to the point where I never have to set foot inside a grocery store again…and I kind of like that idea.

And on that note I am going to head into the spice mines. It’s going to be a lengthy and hopefully productive day down here in the mines, and I will chat with you again tomorrow, Constant Reader.

It’s Too Late

Thursday!

Fortunately last night’s horrible weather seemed to miss our neighborhood for the most part; I’m not seeing any news about storm damage or power outages in the metro area, so we must have dodged another bullet. It was supposed to come through the city around four; they closed the office and sent us to work from home remotely for the rest of the day. I think the thunderstorm got here around eight pm last night? That was when I heard the first thunder and the rain started. Better safe than sorry, of course, but weather scares that turn out to be nothing inevitably make people take future storm threats not as seriously, which becomes problematic over time–it’s why people don’t evacuate for hurricanes, for one thing–but it’s also a no-win situation for the weather forecasters. It’s their job to warn us and keep us safe from inclement weather, so they have to take potentially dangerous storms seriously. But when they’re wrong…people stop listening…and inevitably the time will come when they are right. After last week’s tornado on the West Bank/lower 9th/New Orleans East–and it was a big bad one–well, the possibility of a repeat is pretty fucking scary. And we don’t have basements or interior rooms in most of our houses–I don’t think there’s a basement anywhere in Orleans Parish–and all of the old houses here were built to stay cool in our miserably hot summers, so most don’t have a room anywhere inside that doesn’t have windows because that room would be unbearable pre-air conditioning.

Today is my last day in the office for the week, which is nice. I woke up super-early again this morning yet somehow feel incredibly well-rested; go figure. I was tense about the storm yesterday afternoon when I got home from the office, so I spent my work-at-home time making condom packs while watching the weather reports in my easy chair. I really need to get back to working on my story that I have due at the end of April; I am hoping the malaise will lift somewhat so I can get some writing done. After my work-at-home duties were completed, Paul and I watched the rest of season two of The Righteous Gemstones, which was quite enjoyable; this show doesn’t get near the attention it deserves. As I said yesterday, the corrupt televangelist has almost become a stereotype–like the closeted homophobic politician–but the show handles it very well; that weird line between having faith while at the same time a lot of human frailty.

I will have a lot to focus on this weekend to get done in preparation for my trip to Albuquerque next week; it’s my first ever trip to Left Coast Crime, which I am extremely excited about–this is my first really big event in years; it would have been the combined festivals of last weekend had I been able to actually go down, hang out and spend some time enjoying them. (I am still a little bitter about not having the time to actually enjoy the weekend, but the truth is it’s my own fault because I could have planned better and gotten the work I needed to get done finished long before the weekend; this is what happens when you procrastinate, Greg so remember this the next time you start convincing yourself you can push something to do back another day or so.) But I do think I can get some things done this weekend; the entire weekend looms before me with nothing really do or that must get done…so I should be able to have a nice relaxing weekend at home to get things done, to read, to write and clean and get my house in order so I can safely leave town next Thursday.

It’s so nice having Paul home at night again.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, everyone.

Christmas Won’t Be The Same Without You

I did not want to get up this morning.

A quick look at today’s temperature–it is currently forty-eight degrees–explains it. It is chilly in the Lost Apartment this morning, and my heavy blankets felt all too marvelous for me to want to get out from underneath them when the alarm began it’s insistent cacophony far too early this morning for my tastes, quite frankly. The first day of winter looms nigh this week–perhaps even today or tomorrow–and then we’re in for the cold spells of winter in southeastern Louisiana, I would presume.

It’s weird–since Christmas is this weekend I only have my three days of work in the office this week, and then I have a four-day holiday. The holiday will be spent, of course, trying to get back on schedule with everything–I had a semi-productive day yesterday, and that productivity needs to continue today–but as my coffee kicks in I am also not tired, I am finding; more like I was groggy and didn’t want to come fully awake just yet. The stiff soreness in my shoulders also isn’t there this morning, so perhaps after work tomorrow I can actually return to the gym and start easing my way back into working out again. Yay? Yay.

I spent some time with Vivien Chien’s delightful Death by Dumpling yesterday, which is also an immersive experience into an Asian business center in Cleveland; which is interesting. I know we have a rather nice-sized Asian immigrant community in New Orleans–there was a section along Canal Street that was once our Chinatown–and there are a lot of Vietnamese families in New Orleans East (Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse explored the New Orleans Vietnamese community)–yet another part of New Orleans’ rich and varied culture/community/history I’ve never touched on in my work. The lovely thing about New Orleans is you can never ever run out of things to research, explore and write about here; the sad thing about New Orleans is realizing there is so much that it’s incredibly humbling; I always kind of laugh to myself when I hear myself being described as a “New Orleans expert”–please. There’s so little that I actually do know as opposed to the actuality; I am always realizing how little I do know about the city and its history and culture.

I also spent some time writing on the book yesterday, and it is beginning to really take shape nicely. If I can maintain a decent schedule on it, I should be able to finish on time–which will be just in time to head to New York next month, barring the trip getting canceled for one reason or another (please please please let that not happen again). I also managed to get the promo recordings done–I hate, as I have mentioned, hearing and seeing myself on recordings, so I can’t rewatch them to see if they are any good or not–but maybe I should start recording myself doing readings from my books and stories as promotional materials? I don’t know, it’s hard for me to imagine that succeeding, but…is that part of the self-destructive mentality that is rooted in my deeply felt Imposter Syndrome, or is that a valid critique of me, my attempts to promote myself and my career, and that very really sense that no one cares whether you do or you don’t?

Heavy thoughts this morning on my second cup of coffee, right?

But at least I got an email this morning from one of the places I recorded a video for–a brief read of “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”, from The Only One in the World–and Narrelle Harris, the very kind editor, seemed to have really liked it, so there’s that part going for me this morning. Yay, I think?

I also got the cover artwork for one of these anthologies I have a story in–Cupid Shot Me, Valentine’s Day gay crime stories, and that is the book that “This Thing of Darkness” is going to be revised/edited for (I made a note on my list of stories/manuscripts due this morning to note that this is the one due on January 10th)–and it’s pretty cool. I do love landing short stories, wherever I can. I hate that the short story market isn’t as strong as it used to be; even writing gay erotica was a nice supplemental income back in the days before everyone began truly using the internet to scratch their porn itches…remember the days of porn videos, either renting or buying for the exorbitant price of $89.95? The bargain bins of gay porn videos that had been remaindered? I’ve never pretended not to have written gay porn (or erotica, whichever makes you feel better about it), but it has been a hot minute since I’ve actually written or read any. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever again–there’s some gay noir I want to do that needs to be lusty, sweaty and erotic–but for now…it’s certainly not in my immediate future or in my plans for what I need to get done over the next two months.

And on that note, tis perhaps time for me to head into ye olde spice mines. There’s a lot I have to get done before the holidays this weekend.

Have an awesome Monday, Constant Reader!

Hazard

Thursday morning and I am still feeling unwell.

And winter has arrived in New Orleans; a cold front that of course would be considered spring or fall most everywhere else north of I-10 arrived overnight. It is amusing that our local weather people are talking about a cold front when it is seventy-four degrees outside. But that’s at least a ten degree difference from yesterday, and it is getting close to mid-October, so the colder weather is fairly overdue.

Colder, not cold.

I’m hoping that today is the last day of this lingering whatever-the-hell-it-is; that one more day of soup and vitamin C and juice and DayQuil will not only make today bearable but will also cure whatever it is that ails me. I really loathe being sick–not, of course, that anyone else really likes being sick. Although I suppose there are some who do.

Yesterday as I spent the day covered in blankets in my easy chair I finished reading Circe by Madeline Miller (already wrote about it, but buy it–it’s fantastic), and then fell into some New Orleans history worm-holes on the Internet on my iPad. The history of New Orleans is so rich and vibrant; bloody and filled with not only death but defiance. It started with me seeing a post from the Historic New Orleans Collection of an article about Prohibition in New Orleans–which was pretty much ignored and not really enforced as much as it should or could have been, perhaps–and I thought to myself, self, there’s probably a really good novel that could be set in this time period dealing with Prohibition and everything else going on in the city at the time. Was it James Sallis’ Lew Griffin series that was set in the past? Which reminds me, I need to revisit that series anyway.

I am kind of amazed, really, how little of New Orleans history I actually do know. I mean, I know who founded the city and when, when it became Spanish rather than French, when it was sold to the United States, the Battle of New Orleans…but there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I do know some about the uglier parts of the city’s history–the homophobia and racism, Delphine LaLaurie, how I-10 was deliberately routed to destroy prospering African-American neighborhoods and of course, the hideousness of the Upstairs Lounge fire and aftermath–but there are so many gaps, as I said before. I know about the murder of the police commissioner that led to the mob violence against the Italian immigrants, and the horror of the battle of Monument Place; I know about the Axeman murders and Storyville and Bellocq and his photos of Storyville prostitutes.

But there’s so much more, and so much I don’t know. This is why I always laugh when people call me a “New Orleans expert.” I am far from that. I know neighborhoods and streets, houses and the Quarter. But there are entire populations of the city I don’t know much about; the Greeks and the Islenos, the Vietnamese in New Orleans East, and the growing Latin/Hispanic populations. There are neighborhoods I don’t know, and the West Bank is, for the most part, completely unknown to me.

In other words, I need to explore. I need to read more New Orleans history, and I need to get out in my car on weekends and drive around, exploring and visiting and sight-seeing. I do feel that my next series will most likely be set in New Orleans’ past; it’s just that I don’t know when or where or what it will be. I’ve experimented with the past in short story form; “The Weight of a Feather” (included in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories) may not be set in New Orleans, but the main character is from here. “The Blues Before Dawn”, an in-progress story, is also set in the past…and I think it’s an interesting time/subject to take up. (I don’t know how to end the story or even what the middle is, if I am to be completely honest; but it has a terrific opening and I am sure the story will come to me someday.)

I think one of the primary problems I’ve had over the past few years, that sense of feeling disconnected from the city that I’ve mentioned before, comes from, in all honesty, not reading the newspapers here. When the Times-Picayune became the Sometimes Picayune I stopped reading it; I will only visit their website to read write-ups on the Saints and LSU games. The New Orleans Advocate is doing a great job of picking up the slack, but I never think to pick it up and read it. I need to be better about that; I need to be better informed on what is going on in the city. There’s currently a scandal brewing–or it’s already brewed–about the Archdiocese and one of the Catholic boys’ schools in town; it’s what you would expect–sexual abuse and a cover-up; which has happened so many times now in other cities as to be almost a cliche. There’s a novel there as well, even though when I had the idea a long time ago–years before this scandal brewed up and made it onto the public radar–I was told it wasn’t an interesting topic and no one would want to read it.

I disagreed then, and I disagree now. I think it’s not only timely, but people would read it. It would have to not be a cliche, and it would have to be cleverly done, but I think it would work quite well.

And now, I feel the fever returning and I need to go lie down again for a moment.

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