We’ve had crazy weather in New Orleans of late. The last week of 2021 was hot for December. We set record highs nearly every day. Mind you, highs of 82-83 would seem swell not sweltering in the summer but not in late December. It was simply strange much like the Max Ernst collage I’ve stolen for the featured image.
Yesterday, a cold front crept into the city. We had bands of rain early in the morning that woke many of us up way too early. Then came a forty degree drop in temperature. I’m used to whiplash winter weather, but this is ridiculous.
I’m glad that 2021 is over. In many ways it was worse than 2020 for me. I lost several people close to me and the waves of COVID variants made a mockery of our vaccine optimism. Then there was Hurricane Ida, which was a scary storm that turned my life upside down for a month and I’m one of the lucky ones. When nature and human beings collide, always bet on nature.
The most important political news event of 2021 occurred in the first month of the year: the Dipshit Insurrection. It made a mockery of the day on which it happened: Twelfth Night. The beginning of the Carnival season will never quite be the same for me because of the moronic marauders who marred that day last year.
I’ve always been fond of alliteration but I’m on an alliterative tear because I recently rewatched James Ellroy’s L.A. City Of Dreams. It’s the crime fiction novelist’s take on the fog of true crime history in his hometown of Los Angeles. The narrative style is straight out of Confidential Magazine and Ellroy’s American Tabloid trilogy, cats and kittens. BAM.
On a less salutary note, Dr. A and I watched the first two episodes of And Just Like That. I liked the original Sex and the City series for its wicked wit and zippy take on the zeitgeist of the time. The reboot is a monumental mess. more like bad episodes from the Real Housewives franchise than the original snappy and stellar show.
The second episode centered around Mr. Big’s funeral, and they couldn’t figure out what tone to take. It alternated between farce and soap opera; neither worked, Funerals can be funny, but you have to commit as they did on the Mary Tyler Moore Show with Chuckles Bites The Dust or on Derry Girls with The Curse.
And Just Like That is an exercise in forced coolness. They hit all the hot button issues beloved by the Hipster Twitter Left. The original show dealt deftly with the cultural issues of the day, this show flails. The wit has turned to shit. Ugh, just ugh.
Betty White’s passing saddened me but the hot takes on social media had me shaking my head.
It’s easy to tell who doesn’t know many old people. My mother in law died at 99 last summer. When someone lives that long, you celebrate them. The same goes for Betty White.
— Shecky (@Adrastosno) December 31, 2021
When someone dies at that age it’s the period on the end of a long sentence, not an exclamation point.
That reminds me of a funny funeral story. My first wife’s grandmother died in 1993 at the age of somewhere between 99 and 103. Meemaw always lied about her age so who knew? She was a crusty old bird who liked few people and wasn’t shy about telling them that. For some reason Meemaw liked me. I think it may have been because of my long eyelashes or something equally shallow. I am not making this up.
The minister who presided over the funeral service did not know her, so he went on and on about what a wonderful and charitable person she was. It was like Livia Soprano calling Johnny Boy a saint after his death. My brother-in-law Jim and I started to laugh. His mom shot us a dirty look accompanied by some epic finger wagging, We stopped laughing. She later admitted that the eulogy had been funny. She knew her mama,
That concludes this alternately poignant and pungent potpourri post. BAM.
The last word goes to the Radiators: