The Real World: Back to New Orleans, Episode 07
“The kitchen is where the food is and I want to eat my food.” - Knight
A few days before Super Bowl XLIV, a rumor started going around that the Real World cast may be watching the big game at the Rusty Nail. The Rusty Nail is my home away from home, so when I caught wind of this potentially disastrous development, I predictably freaked out and marched on over to get some answers.
Thankfully, the lovely Cyndi was behind the bar and my friend Scott was in attendance when I stormed into the Nail with an axe to grind. Cyndi assured me that although MTV producers had approached the proprietors about potentially allowing the roommates to stop by on Sunday, the terms of the arrangement were respectfully declined. Having been successfully talked off the ledge, I grabbed a PBR and started to catch my breath when Scott posed what turned out to be a very thought provoking question.
“What if the Real World did spend an evening here? Obviously no one wants them jamming up a Super Bowl party, but would seeing the interior of The Rusty Nail on TV a few months from now be the worst thing in the world?”
The Real World: Back to New Orleans, Episode 05
“If he feels froggy and leaps, we will have an issue.” - Preston
I’ve got to admit, I’m running out of steam. Maybe it is because I used up my weekly quota of self-righteousness at Bridge Lounge’s weekly trivia night, ranting about what I perceived, under a cloak of frustration over my own intellectual shortcomings (not to mention about 15 High Lifes), to be a blatant antisemitic slant running through the evening’s questions. Maybe it is because the heat and humidity in this town is slowing turning my brain to mush. But it is probably because the most recent episode of The Real World was really lame.
Based on the previews I’ve seen all season, I recognize that this may just be a calm before the storm - we’ve still got ass-cigarettes, piss-brushes and Schedule II narcotics floating around the house willy-nilly - but that does not excuse wasting over one half of one hour on Jemmye’s decision to pursue a legitimate relationship with Knight over staying faithful to her “boyfriend” back home.
The Real World: Back to New Orleans, Episode 03
“I don’t give a fudge what anybody thinks.” - Knight
Despite what many people think, Mardi Gras isn’t some devil weed that transforms ordinary people into stark-raving-mad lunatics who drunkenly lurch around New Orleans fueled by an insatiable thirst for cheap, plastic beads and their own depraved desperation. While the level and frequency of one’s intoxication may be slightly above average for the two or so weeks that parades run down St. Charles Avenue, the scale of Mardi Gras debauchery seldom reaches wide-scale and wanton corruption of moral decency.
The true phenomenon was very accurately documented in the episode of Treme that was set on Fat Tuesday proper. Even though alcohol and drug use was prevalent, few - if any - of the characters behaved in a way that was totally unexpected. Sure, the drinkers started drinking earlier, the smokers smoked more often and the cokeheads did coke under less sanitary conditions, but even the expanded revelry for which the season is notorious was shown to have limits. Mardi Gras is crazy and people do cut loose, but the mere fact that Easter is nigh does not turn virgins into sluts, sluts into boozehounds or boozehounds into crackheads.
Given the fact that no one had to be rushed to the hospital or took part in a PCP fueled street orgy, I’d say MTV has given the holiday a pretty fair shake so far. There was, however, something about this week’s episode that I did manage to find extremely troubling.
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- 10 Plays
The Matt & Jack Podvast, Episode #004
The mayoral election is in the books, the Saints won the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras has come and gone, so we are back in the studio to talk about all these things and more. Our voices are shaky and our synapses are fried, but we pulled it together for a few hours to talk about bum wines, Twitter, AT&T’s colossal 3G fail, jukeboxes and The Doors (both the movie and the band).
We tried to keep it concise and coherent, but that couldn’t stop the conversation from spilling over to The Band, Warren Zevon, Elton John, Lou Reed, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Michael McDonald-era Doobie Brothers and - of course - Steely Dan. Enjoy, and please keep the great feedback coming.
The party is not over. In fact, the party has just begun.
I awoke this morning feeling very differently than I have on the two other Ash Wednesdays I’ve experienced as a full-time resident of New Orleans. Once again, Mardi Gras beat the shit out of me in the most splendid way a holiday season can take a toll on the human body. I was tired, hungover, and sore; but the overwhelming sense of disorientation that consumed me could not, as in years past, be so easily pinned on the predilection for cheap fortified wine that I develop during the Carnival season.
I am so disoriented because the sick bastard commonly known as “normalcy” that is usually waiting at the tail end of any bender worth its salt (and armed to the teeth with harsh reminders that the party is over) is nowhere to be found.
And the reason why the cosmos have not yet handed down a mandate to get back to business as usual? Well that’s simple: The party is not over, not by a long shot. In fact, the party has just begun, and any concept of business-as-usual should be purged from New Orleans residents’ collective consciousness.
Possibly lost in the commotion of the longest, most magnificently protracted Super Bowl celebration on record is the fact that on the day before the Saints made history, the citizens of New Orleans very likely changed its course. The election of a supremely qualified and capable new mayor is the latest step in a slow but steady march that is laying the tradition of corruption and ineptitude that has plagued all levels of government for so long to waste.
The pride that comes with a professional sports championship and the eye-opening life affirmation that comes with a Mardi Gras done right assure that the indomitable spirit and unparalleled culture of this city are here to stay. But everything else, it seems, is up in the air. And as long as the ever-expanding class of thinkers and doers keeps innovating and accomplishing, the new “normalcy” is going to be better than ever before.
Yes, my friends. The party has just begun.
