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Long story short: I canceled an event in Houston on the Monday following Hurricane Ike’s tragic path through east Texas. I could postpone my flight and arrive on Tuesday, but any other changes to my schedule would cost me at least $600. So I went. I landed and immediately drove to Austin, and then on to San Antonio.
Please click on this one and enjoy my newest html skill, ANCHORS! Rock.
I was nervous about going to New Orleans. The alumni I work with are so proud of their city, protective of its reputation against outsiders the way an older sibling might defend a younger. But at the same time, they’re frustrated with it. They’ll say that they’ve moved on and that the city and its spirit would need a lot more than a hurricane to be raveled, but that a day doesn’t go by that they don’t feel the damage of Katrina. I hear that the residents unite in solidarity despite socioeconomic disparity and difference of race, but I know that the population is not even two-thirds of what it was before Katrina, and that the remaining homeless are predominantly African-American and very, very poor. Was the gap narrowed or exasperated? I don’t know. The city is encouraging tourism to reinvigorate its economy, and it is working. Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest still attract spring breakers and music lovers in strong numbers, and convention facilities are booking well. But it feels a little forced. These are survivors and victims.
I flew in to Nashville and immediately set off for Louisville by car. My flight was a bit delayed, and I’d arranged a formal evening meeting. I was cutting it very close for my arrival. I’d done the drive before, though, and I knew it should take three hours. It’s mostly remote blue hills; only the occasional truck stop and Dinosaur World, a park with plaster dinosaurs.
Minneapolis
Everyone has something good to say about Minneapolis.*
* In summer.
I just wrote out this whole thing and WordPress deleted it. Curses! WordPress, please give me back an hour of my life, or at least let me be as witty as I think I was the first time I wrote those.
The route: Fly to Houston, drive to San Antonio for a night, come back, fly to Atlanta, drive to Birmingham for a night, come back.
I first went to New York with my mom as a 15 year-old. We took the train from Fredericksburg, and my mouth had its own set of railroad tracks. We checked out Princeton and Barnard, and we went to a Broadway show starring Matthew Broderick. We went to MoMA.
I went the following year with the newspaper and yearbook staffs of my high school for a conference at Columbia. We ran into Paul Schaffer and ate at the soup café that inspired the Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” episode.
I applied to NYU and got a scholarship. I didn’t go.
Then it got interesting. My first year at U.Va., I dated a New Yorker. He worked at Abercrombie in the financial district and got picked up to do a modeling job for Teen People from it. I visited him in the city for New Year’s, and we stayed in a studio loft with some kids he knew who went to Wesleyan. I remember hearing about cuddle parties and thinking that they were more spoiled than the silver spoons in the south. He took me to a vintage tee shirt store called Search and Destroy on Bleecker where I found a shirt for a roller rink in Fredericksburg, where I used to go to birthday parties. We went to a couple of parties but opted to go home before the last, and McCauley Culkin was purportedly there. It was perfect.
After we broke up, a break-up about which I will only comment, “It sucked,” I looked into transferring to NYU for film school. My ex and I road-tripped to Vermont, where his mom had moved, and came back via New York for my transfer interview. To be 19 and foolish is a luxury I am relieved I will never again have! He set the alarm clock for “pm,” and I missed the interview. I believe he has moved to France.
I went to visit two college friends and attended a wedding at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. I remember being stressed the whole time: I had just finished casting Room Raiders in Austin, and when I got back, I was going to move to Dallas for two months to cast there, living with a woman I’d never met and driving to 200 homes on roads I’d never driven. And I had communal pneumonia.
And then this. I was asked to represent our office at an event. It happened to be my sister’s birthday weekend, and she happened to be staying with me at the time. She came with me. With my sister, anything can happen. And for the love of God, I needed another good trip to New York City.
Memphis
The Memphis trip will likely withstand the test of time on my memory. In my life, it was the closest I’ve come to getting kicked out of a hotel lounge, it has the deathiest tourist attraction, most tasteless advertisement for wine, and most poor choice of shape for a building not in Egypt.
I want to disclaimer this entry with the fact that I had just been traveling, working, and doing events and meetings for six straight days. (See previous entry.) I asked for permission to take Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon off in Chicago on condition that I would schedule appointments in that time. No problem. So I had fun.
Ten days on the road: Indianapolis, Louisville, St. Louis, and Chicago. Due to the number of images, I’m dividing this into two entries, giving Chicago its own.
