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"Nobody with a good car needs to be justified."

Name the source of that quotation. No, it's not originally from "Jesus Built My Hot Rod."

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So I guess New Orleans made it through Ivan in pretty good shape. It always seems to somehow. It's bound to sink one day, and when it does, that's when I check out. I don't want to live in a world with no New Orleans. Even if I've only been there once in the last eight years or so, it's still just about my favorite place on earth. Even as fond as I've grown of NYC in the last three years, it's hard to put it above the Big Easy.

It's a weird place. Maybe that inevitable-sinking thing has something to do with the decadent mood of the city. Like, yeah, we could all go down at any moment, but right now we're here, so fuck it--let's get it on.

I once read an interview with some rock star--I think it was either Trent Reznor, Marilyn Manson, or that guy from Pantera--where the guy said something like, "Florida is where old people go to die. New Orleans is where young people go to die." I thought that was right on. I remember seeing all those gutterpunks down there--kids under 20 who were basically already homeless drunks. If I'd ever gotten the balls to move to New Orleans, I'd probably have ended up like those kids. I used to think about New Orleans all the time when all I was doing was drinking, trying to figure out some way that I could get down there and . . . well, who knows what I thought I was gonna do besides drink. Obviously, I never figured out anything that seemed like a workable plan. Good thing, for if I was hopeless in Pulaski, VA, I woulda been pathetically hopeless in New Orleans. From what I've heard, it's not an easy place to live. The two close friends I had who moved to New Orleans both moved out within a couple of years because the crime and everything else was just too much. Anyway.

Speaking of New Orleans, I re-read A Confederacy of Dunces for about the twentieth time a couple of weeks ago. What an awesome book. I was reading it with an eye toward how it would come across as a movie (I'd just read that the planned production starring Will Ferrell has been canned), and really I just don't think it would work. A good portion of the book is Ignatius's journal entries, and that would be a big loss. And while some of the dialogue would go to the screen perfectly, Ignatius's speech just wouldn't work. It's genius on the page, but I just cannot imagine anyone getting the delivery right, even someone as good as Philip Seymour Hoffman. Least of all Will Ferrell--who's funny, but come on, we're talking about one of the greatest characters in literature, not the cowbell player from Blue Oyster Cult.

If they do ever film it, though, I want to be Jones, the janitor at the Night of Joy. I can totally do him.

(no subject)

My darling wretchmuffin correctly identified the source of "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified" as Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. I'm reading that again, and I dig it the most. Hahaha, I just remembered a funny story about that book. I first read it in my 20th-c. American novel class in '98. Dr. Little always did this thing when we started covering a new book where all the students would write down one thought-provoking . . . um, thought. He'd collect them, mix them up, and then read random ones out loud. For Wise Blood, he was unlucky enough to pick out mine and read: "After reading the first few chapters of Wise Blood, my first thought was, 'This book is fucking crazy.' So now I've gone ahead and finished it, and my thought is still 'This book is fucking crazy.'" It was hilarious because it was almost like he didn't realize what he'd said until it was already out of his mouth.

A guy who'd graduated high school with me was also in that class--which was sort of interesting considering that we'd graduated nine years earlier. This was the kid who'd pulled a knife on me in the ninth grade because I called him "the Laughing Buddha." Don't ask--it was a bad scene. Anyway, after high school, dude got in a bad car wreck. He recovered pretty well, but something happened that made his voice really gravelly. But it must not have bothered him, because he was always talking shit and asking weird questions in class. I can still hear him talking about Hazel Motes's visits to Leora Watts's house: "So when he went to the whore's house, why did the whore just let him in? Wouldn't the whore have had her door locked?" Something like that. I can't remember the exact question, but the important thing is his use of the word "whore." I dunno, it's a perfectly valid word, but it just struck me as incredibly funny that he didn't say "prostitute" or "Leora Watts." And repeating it in that billygoat gruff voice, too: "the whore . . . the whore . . . the whore." I was sitting right next to him making those *SNORK* noises that come when I try to stifle a laugh and it escapes through my nose. You know the ones. I can't explain exactly why I thought it was quite so funny, particularly in a class where I'd already gotten the professor to use the term "fucking crazy," but you can't always explain those things.

Anyway, yes, re-reading. All over the apartment are new books waiting to be read, and I'm reading the ones I already know. But I like doing that sometimes. I can revel in them much more easily when I'm not trying to figure out what the hell's going on. I think that's one reason that I wasn't more succesful in grad school: I never had time to read anything twice. Heck, I didn't read a lot of the stuff we covered in class even once. And I always made A's and B's. I was pretty good at somehow absorbing what was said in class and somehow regurgitating it later. Which is to say that I didn't learn a lot in grad school except how to write longer papers. I think I took more out of my undergrad classes. Pity, really. I've always said I'd be dangerous if I could just get my shit together. Still waiting on that one.

(no subject)

Oh my dog. I seem to have inadvertantly stumbled into some Powderpuff Girls fan fiction. Check it:

Camera shifts to ground level of the flea circus as a debonair, black-suited flea walks along the sidelines.

NARRATOR: Oh no! What's HE doing here? Could it be? It is! The Wicked Flea is visiting Townsville!

WICKED FLEA (holding up ray gun): I've got something that will cut those giants down to size!

The Wicked Flea hops onto the cart and looks around. The children are turning from the table and returning to their chairs.

WICKED FLEA: Let's try this on the three sisters there...

I've always wanted to be in a movie where I got to say, "Let's try this on the three sisters there," but I never envisioned this. *gorf* At least I'm debonair.

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Chubby old pissing in big bin

I wanna meet the target audience for that. Both of 'em.