New Orleans on the screen
Yes, yes. They won the big game. I had fun shouting at the TV alongside friends at Smaugslair. Ate way too many wasabi peas and pumpkin seeds. Drank just enough beer, mezcal, and Agwa [though I still long for that trip to Peru and the chance for mate de coca].
In a strange confluence, Netflix brought the last disk of Boondocks & the documentary Trouble the Water, which describes the story of a carless couple in New Orleans during Katrina, much of it being amateur footage shot by Kim during the storm. One could wish she were a better cinematographer, but it's pretty as real as it gets. She and her husband and brother basically fend for themselves, save neighbors and strangers, and get the fuck out using their own initiative, ultimately driving a panel truck with 30 people in it out of the city. After the worst of the storm, they hook up with professional documentarians and cover the rest of the aftermath. By no means a perfect documentary, but still fascinating, especially to see the changes in their lives. Not to beat around the bush, but the husband is a high school dropout drug dealer. She's a wannabe rapper, ex-drug dealer. They become heroes. More than that, you get the sense that this catastrophe has made them better people.
I may have mentioned that the Goth Gardener has instituted a rule whereby she gets to punch me in the shoulder when sad things happen in a film I've made her watch. There are certainly a number of sad things about Katrina, but these heroes spared me from a severe beating, by heroically saving their cat. I was never happier to see a cat onscreen.
Oh, and I mention Boondocks in connection with Trouble the Water because at one point, she picks up her brother from prison (the prison system seems to have failed spectacularly). She asks him what the authorities did to prepare them for Katrina. He says they didn't tell them anything about the hurricane; he had no idea it was coming. "Didn't you see it on TV?" "Naw, we only watched BET." I fell off the couch, dying from an attack of black comedy. Wait, not black comedy, but black comedy. Wait, maybe it's both.
In a strange confluence, Netflix brought the last disk of Boondocks & the documentary Trouble the Water, which describes the story of a carless couple in New Orleans during Katrina, much of it being amateur footage shot by Kim during the storm. One could wish she were a better cinematographer, but it's pretty as real as it gets. She and her husband and brother basically fend for themselves, save neighbors and strangers, and get the fuck out using their own initiative, ultimately driving a panel truck with 30 people in it out of the city. After the worst of the storm, they hook up with professional documentarians and cover the rest of the aftermath. By no means a perfect documentary, but still fascinating, especially to see the changes in their lives. Not to beat around the bush, but the husband is a high school dropout drug dealer. She's a wannabe rapper, ex-drug dealer. They become heroes. More than that, you get the sense that this catastrophe has made them better people.
I may have mentioned that the Goth Gardener has instituted a rule whereby she gets to punch me in the shoulder when sad things happen in a film I've made her watch. There are certainly a number of sad things about Katrina, but these heroes spared me from a severe beating, by heroically saving their cat. I was never happier to see a cat onscreen.
Oh, and I mention Boondocks in connection with Trouble the Water because at one point, she picks up her brother from prison (the prison system seems to have failed spectacularly). She asks him what the authorities did to prepare them for Katrina. He says they didn't tell them anything about the hurricane; he had no idea it was coming. "Didn't you see it on TV?" "Naw, we only watched BET." I fell off the couch, dying from an attack of black comedy. Wait, not black comedy, but black comedy. Wait, maybe it's both.