BlakeAtwood.com

I’d have pictures to show, but I keep losing my USB cable for my digital camera, so pictures may or may not be forthcoming.

My cousin was married in New Orleans on Friday, Nov. 12, which meant I got the once in a lifetime opportunity to go to a bachelor party that included a stop at the House of Blues, a stop at the Blues Cafe, and a walk down Bourbon Street…at dark (Be careful if you click). And I thought Austin was strange.

I also got to stay for the weekend and my wife and I did all of the tourist things you could do. Before the wedding, we made a stop at Cafe Du Mond, which is the place you have to go if ever you go to New Orleans. When they talk about beignets, this is where they’re talking about. After getting powdered sugar everywhere, my benevolent Uncle paid for his family and for us to go on a carriage ride/tour of the city, which was quite informative and fun and provided many pictures, humorous and otherwise.

On Saturday, we went to the Aquarium of the Americas, where I took a lot of blurry pictures of really interesting sea creatures, and touched a shark. We then proceeded to see “Santa vs. the Snowman 3d” in the nearby IMAX theater, a funny Christmas movie that my wife wanted to see because it looked like a funny Christmas movie. We walked around downtown for ages, did some shopping at the Riverwalk, then took a 2-hour walking tour of haunted places in New Orleans.

Our guide was a trip. Imagine a flamboyant Lurch with blonde hair. We saw the house that “House of the Rising Sun” derived its name from. We heard grisly tales of horror and tortured souls, one roams the rooftops clad in nothing but her ghastly birthday suit. (The man she wanted to marry, but who did not want to marry her, jokingly told her that he would marry her if she stayed on the rooftop all night long in the nude. He hardly thought she would go through with it, but her love blinded her to his sarcasm. She did it, and, being as nipply as it was that night, she died. So now she waits, sometimes in a wedding dress, and sometimes in nothing at all). We ended the night with dinner at a fine restaurant called Tujagues.

Sunday morning was the worst, as it was my bright idea to take the bus (otherwise known as public transportation) to downtown. (We’d been staying in a suburb across the Mississippi River). After finally finding where we needed to be to catch the bus, we waited for OVER AN HOUR, and sometimes in the rain, for the bus. It finally came, much to our drenched delight. Once we got downtown, first we ate at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. (and they do have good shrimp), and then we took a 2 hour cruise on the Natchez Riverboat. The weather wasn’t all that nice, but it was good enough. I took plenty of pictures.

We took the bus back to our hotel, grabbed a taxi to the airport, flew to Houston, then to Austin, and were in our cozy beds by midnight. It was a great trip, and I, though wearied by the amount of things we did all within a few days, feel refreshed by seeing and savoring a new place, as well as seeing my cousin get married.

Interview with U2:

“After the initial struggle, they used to worry if they were too biblical to be cool.”

“She thought I’d make a priest one day.”
- Larry Mullen, about his mom

“But the band is all I’ve ever wanted, and I get paid for it.”
- Larry Mullen

“We’ve grown up being a political band. We never saw a need to separate religion and politics from everything we write about and care about.”
- The Edge

“Possessions are a way of turning money into problems.”
- The Edge

“So I just looked at the most powerful man in the free world as he waved at the crowd, and I said, ‘So you are pretty popular round here?’ and he goes, ‘It wasn’t always so. See, when I first came here, people used to wave at me with one finger.’”
- Bono about George Bush

“You can exorcise your demons or you can exercise them. I don’t know what I’ve discovered about myself from analysis. The thing to watch for is navel-gazing — and I do have a very nice one — but most of what I’ve learnt about myself you discover in other people.”
- Bono

“No, you can’t love too much. You can’t out-give God.” He pauses. “But you should try, I think. That’s where I’d like to spend the rest of my life.”
-Bono

I got to see and hear Chuck Palahniuk last week. I’ll post pictures soon. He’s most known for being the author of “Fight Club,” but he’s written more books than that, and, apparently, all of his other books are being made into movies. They’re all at different stages of production, so who know which one will come out first. I’m hoping “Survivor” does, but I think that one was just recently picked up.

As for the reading, Chuck read “Guts,” a story from his novella due out next year, “Haunted.” Simply put, it was gross. Very gross. Not less than ten seconds passed after he finished reading that he asked if anyone had fainted or thrown up. One girl had fainted, or so he was told, and many had gotten that queasy feeling. He’d been keeping a running tally for this tour and said he was at 54 faintings.

I kept trying to understand why he would want to write a story (or relate a story as he told us most of his stories simply come to him by listening to other people) that was so disgusting. Then I thought of “Fight Club” and his other novels, and later a friend referenced Flannery O’Connor. Essentially, the grossness in this story and the vivid violence in “Fight Club” are efforts to jolt us into reality, to make us really feel something instead of the daily numbness we’re all aware of but seldom act to get out of. Chuck said there are three things that will make us feel something at a gut level: Death, Sex, and Illness. His story dealt with all these issues. And it made every one feel something, mostly sick, but the point of the story is that it made them FEEL, not just think.

The Q&A session was amusing, as Chuck threw out severed limbs to his questioners. One woman proposed, to which Chuck replied, “I can’t. I’m in the middle of a 25 city book tour.” Another guy asked him if he owned a pool (as the grossest story he read talked about a pool). Chuck replied that he couldn’t swim and that this was a commonality between himself and Marilyn Manson, whom he had once interviewed.

The best answer he gave was to the first question he was asked. I’m paraphrasing here: “What is the greatest defect in human nature?” Chuck gave it some thought and replied, “To look good.” He went on to talk about what he meant by that, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’m sure I’ll be posting about it soon.

After the reading, my friend and I waited another hour or so to get our books signed. Chuck was very nice and was staying at the store until everyone had their items signed.

All in all, it was a good night. These are the nights I need to get me writing again. I forget how therapeutic it is to write. I begin to wish that I could have Chuck’s motivation. He says fear is his motivation, fear that he’ll die before he can relate these perfect stories.

It’s my belief that we all have perfect stories to tell – we’re just too afraid (or too lazy) to tell them.

“Matt Groening:

‘Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.’”

a funny joke (to me) found while browsing

“A guy came home and there was a post-it note stuck to his door that said, Rev 3:20, he looked that up and it of course said,’ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.’

He then decides to respond by going to the persons door who had left the note for him and leaving a post-it that said only,
Gen.3:10…which says ‘I heard you in the garden,and I was afraid because I was naked;so I hid.’”