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Other people’s prose:
“New Orleans” is the Big Easy that the tourists go to so they can drink themselves into a stupor on Bourbon Street and connect themselves to a prefab sense of the city’s character, which is built on a series of stereotypes — most of which are self-perpetuated.
At the same time, [...]
Slate asks, “Why is Miller Lite’s ad campaign more about the container than the beer?”
Because the beer tastes like shit. Next question.
Sloppy thinking can matter more than months of good reporting. In New Orleans, we learned that after Katrina. No amount of solid journalism from the Times-Picayune, NPR, or the New York Times could overcome the perception that a hurricane, and not a massive engineering failure, caused the flooding in New Orleans. It was, people [...]
Other people’s prose:
The city descended on Bourbon Street. New Orleanians, as a general rule, do not like to go there. It is a tourist trap, too crowded and cheap. But on Sunday night it was a beating, living, pulsating mass of people, like a capital city of some country after a dictator has [...]
Satan is a little ticked off at Pat Robertson. He sent this letter to the Star Tribune:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so [...]
Other people’s prose:
Sax can express sexiness like no other instrument; during a striptease, drums snap and pop on the bumps, but the long bleat of the sax is the soundtrack of the grind. Drums are the punctuation; the sax is the sentence.
Alison Fensterstock reviewing a burlesque show in the Times Picayune.
Quote of the day:
Three years ago, the city did away with handwritten parking tickets. Except for a few exceptions, all tickets are now issued using electronic machines that may account for rumors they were preprinted for people expecting handwritten notices, Mendoza said.
“Each ticket includes the license number, vehicle make, model and color [...]
Other people’s prose:
Customers enter the room, a brightly colored rectangle, near Lexington and 52nd, and it spreads south and west before them. Not very good paintings of Venetian scenes adorn the walls in that peculiar French manner that combines bad taste with deep sophistication. Banquettes line the place, with pockets of bistro tables [...]
In the Times-Picayune, book editor Susan Larson has a wonderful interview with Dan Baum about his book Nine Lives:
“Living in New Orleans, taught me a lot about the paucity of life outside New Orleans,” he said. “It’s different out here. We’re richer out here. We have more stuff, and we drive [...]
The fine writer Dan Baum, formerly of the New Yorker and the author of Nine Lives, has a blog that’s required reading for freelancers. He talks shop with advice on everything from paying the bills to making people speak:
Here’s the little secret they taught me at The Wall Street Journal: [...]
The always interesting Roy Clark presents a list of “25 Non-Random Things About Writing Short.” Here are a random items from his non-random list:
Keep a journal where you practice short writing. Obey Strunk & White: “Omit needless words.” Beware: The infinite space on the Internet creates aerated prose. Obey Sir Arthur [...]
My friend Alex Rawls has a gripe about the Grammy’s:
… and seriously – is the only way New Orleans musicians can get on the Grammys is as Katrina victims? Lil Wayne had the top selling album of the year and won Grammys for “Lollipop” and “A Milli,” but instead he performs the [...]
I must get better at self-promotion. Last Friday, I had a story in the Times-Picayune testing the theories of Steven Shaw. In his book Asian Dining Rules, Shaw offers tips and strategies for getting a great meal at any Asian restaurant–including the humble buffet:
“Remember, ” Shaw writes, “a buffet is a [...]
