When "War of the Worlds" came out this summer, Spielberg was talking about why he made the film, and one of the things that popped out at me was that he wanted to capture "the American refugee experience", something we'd never had before.

I wonder if this comment will be excised from the DVD bonus materials.

A week later, and the reporters are charging in. "I'm in two feet of water" one of them was reporting today, but then the camera panned over, and he's standing in a deep pool of water on a street which is otherwise, completely dry. This is the sort of staged danger CNN's reporters are putting themselves in.

Already the snchors in the studios are asking the leading questions to their interviewees, the softball questions that, when they get their spun response, are going to let them go to bed tonight without that black pit in their stomach and that awful shade of guilt at the back of their minds. "So clean-up efforts are well underway?" "Oh, most certainly." "And you reacted as quickly as you could?" "Oh, most certainly." "And there's nothing different that could have been done?" "Oh, not at all."

Meanwhile the hundreds of thousands continue to flood out of New Orleans, Biloxi, and all points around and in between. Planeloads touched down twice today here in Phoenix, and folks will open their doors and arms.

I'm trying to make a space here, so that one day, when I go back and look in the months to come, because by then the talking heads and the pundits will have pointed their fingers, and anything resembling the truth will be but a faint memory. When we decide to rise up as a people and quit helping the people of New Orleans, and we start blaming them for living beside a levee, or for being too obstinate to abandon their city while the getting was good, I want to remember it how it was.

Little dogs left on rooftops, and people airlifted a week later. I want to recall that it was five days before the folks in the Convention Center could get out to use a toilet, and that bodies were propped up under blankets next to the living. That the criminals of the city went mad and were running their asylum.

I want to remember Fire Marshalls telling refugees that they can seat 80,000 people for a ball game, but they can't host more than 15,000 people for triage and food and water.

Mr. Spielberg, here is your American Refugee experience. It's not ending a week later in triumph with the tri-pods tumbling in defeat, nor with our hero walking to the steps of the brownstone to see his son. It's ending poorly.

As the real needs arise in the months to come, and we aren't still all reeling from the horror and the photos, and the finger pointing begins, let's try to remember that we wanted to help, didn't we? That we knew then that this was going to take work? And maybe even sacrifice?

My new favorite football player?

Henry Melton, Univ. of Texas #37

Go Horns!

It's been a long time since I read a review that was so unabashedly ANGRY about having to sit through a movie that I wanted to plunk down my $8.00 to see exactly what all the fuss was about.

Read CNN's furious review of "A Sound of Thunder"

The film is based upon a short story of the same name of the film by Sci-Fi Statesman, Ray Bradbury. It's considered a sci-fi classic and has spun a thousand bad time travel rip-offs in comics, TV, film, etc... But the original short story pretty much boils the concept of why time travel is a bad idea right down to its essence.

Anyway, Jamie will never let me see this film.

This quiz is funny, and I have no idea how I got this result. The League is as scary as a slow moving tortoise. I apologize about the language in advance.




You're Avante Garde Indie. You listen to abstract
music like free-jazz and Krautrock. You drink
too much coffee and you scare the fuck out of
the rest of us. We're afraid to call you
pretentious because we know that we all just
don't get it. There are few of you out there,
and most of you will probably die soon.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

The story is growing all the more bewildering as each hour passes.

Sniper attacks on hospitals? People firing on rescue vehicles?

The Chertoff had to be told by the reporter on NPR that the New Orleans Convention Center had been abandoned by the police, National Guard and the City of New Orleans. Thousands were inside with no food, water or information.

We're a country with stores stocked to the gills with bottles of water and food that won't go bad for decades lining the shelves.

It's almost inconceivable how the food and water couldn't be air-lifted, air-dropped or somehow delivered to the peopel who can't get out.

And you just keep wondering, where will the millions go in the months to come?

I can't imagine. And I can't imagine what the next several months will bring for any of them.

Sorry. I just don't have much left today.


American Red Cross

May I suggest the blog of Tami Q. Nelson?

She's a dame I met in high school who wound up in Austin where she fell in with my little circle of pals.

A few years back she made the move to New Orleans.

She's currently hiding out in Houston.

Read here.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE COWBOYS GONE?

Dude, you know, when The League started out we had this little circle of blogs with Jim D's blog, Randy's blog and a blog by intrepid American in Japan, Molly.

Molly disappeared first, never coming back to Osakatomebaby after she'd had a move. To this day, I have no idea what became of Molly. Not only did the blog end, but e-mail communiques also disappeared.

Jim sort of started sputtering out, and this summer more or less ended his long-running blog of political and pop-culture commentary. Sure, he's risen like a Phoenix elsewhere (dig around, he's out there), but Jim's original blog is dead, andI am struggling with the notion of removing Jim's blog from the blog roll.

Randy, who had routinely threatened blogicide, has gone so far as to just re-route his readers to The League just a few weeks ago.

Cowgirl Funk is still around, and she's been here for years now, so you have to give Maxwell some mad props.

Sure, Adventures of Steanso, Steven G. Harms and others have joined in the fun, but it is a sobering thought that The League is the last of the original mohicans.

Jim D. had suggested I start a blog due to the length of the e-mails I was sending him, and, eventually, I took up the challenge. I've now wasted thousands of hours on this blog and travelled to Beaumont in celebration of our mutual blogging.

Oh, if only Randy, Jim and Molly would return.