Douglas Barbour wrote:

> A fictional Bellocq features in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through 
> Slaughter, a title all too appropriate now.

There was also a film from the late 1970s, Pretty Baby, with one of the 
Carradine brothers (Keith? David?) and a kiddie-porn Brooke Shields, who 
was all of 12 years old at the time.  Shades of Jodie Foster in _Taxi 
Driver_.  I think Susan Sarandon was one of the whores and Shields was 
her daughter whom Bellocq married!

God only knows how many works of literary, visual, and musical art have 
some grounding in New Orleans.  _Streetcar_, of course, but also some of 
Williams' short plays ("The Lady of Larkspur Lotion," "The Last of My 
Solid Gold Watches," etc.) and often ghastly short stories ("Desire and 
the Black Masseur"), _Easy Rider_, a whole series of Anne Rice novels.  
Okay, I am not a great fan of Ms. Rice's work, which ranges between the 
baroque and repellent, but _Interview With The Vampire_--set in New 
Orleans--is splendid; and she redeemed herself forever with her Op-Ed in 
the New York _Times _over the weekend.  She was not Gothic or 
horror-novelistic: she was just plain angry that the city in which she 
was born and in which she lived a large part of her life had been 
indifferented to death and lied into extinction.

I'm sure there are lots of other works in which N.O. figures 
prominently.  Being the strange-o I am, I think also of the New Orleans 
Opera (http://www.neworleansopera.org/index.htm), which may be the 
oldest opera company in North America (1796), starting at the Théâtre 
d'Orléans.  American premieres of French works were of course much in 
favor.  The company has not touched its website: it appears to refuse to 
acknowledge that it's undoubtedly dead, at least for the season, or 
unless it can find a proper theatre nearby. This is crazy but it is also 
great heart.

There is another oddity.  Houston allegedly would not have been possible 
without the air conditioning that came in after WW2.  New Orleans, on 
the other hand, with a climate at least as bad and with a profusion of 
tropical diseases besides, was always somehow desirable.  I can't figure 
that one out at all.

> I would like to hope that Stephen is right about a possible 
> impeachment, but I don't think so (indeed, the right' spin is already 
> hard at work 'proving' that the pres has done a magnificent job just 
> as he did after 9/11!). And what might happen to the Supreme Court 
> (for at least 25 years) is more than sad to contemplate. In fact I 
> read somewhere that Bush might choose to elevate either Scaglia or 
> Thomas to Chief Justice (now there's something truly terrible to 
> contemplate).

Well, the Chief Justice is now supposed to be Roberts, who got a 
promotion even before a vote was taken.  As for impeaching Bush, good 
luck.  He is so well-handled that he can be turned in a flash from a 
resolute Commander In Chief to a fragile little puppy.  No, he's going 
to serve out his term.  However, the carnage he and Katrina have left in 
their wakes may bring about a different sort of election than we 
anticipated even a week or two ago...IF for a change the Progressive 
Democrats figure out where the jugular vein is and go for it like one of 
Ms. Rice's vampires.  Right, the spirit of New Orleans lives on....

Ken

-- 
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538