Dan Lawton : Journalist

“Stella!!” Can You Summon My Inner Brando?

Brando during Streetcar Named Desire

New Orleans, La.–In order to obtain the role of Stanley Kowalski in  “Streetcar Named Desire,”  Marlon Brando drove to playwright Tennessee Williams’ summer home in Provincetown, Mass. to personally audition.  It’s reasonable to assume that if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have landed the part, therefore depriving the American cinema of one of the most violently sensual performances in its history.  More importantly, if Brando hadn’t made the drive to Provincetown, I wouldn’t be in the midst of this drunken frenzy in Jackson Square, New Orleans, stuffed into a V-neck T-shirt and summoning every ounce of machismo my body holds toward my vocal chords, in the hopes that at my most primal, a panel of strangers think that I resemble a young, gilded Brando.

But what about this dipsomaniac next to me?  Why is he staring so serenely into the clear, blue sky above?  He has a gut, a chest full of wild, thick, black hair, and a mug that shows me he’s probably 40 years old.    Is he channeling his inner Brando?

And what about this mime who just spilled Natural Ice on my jeans?  He’s spray-painted himself gold.  I wish he’d stop standing so close to me while he’s speaking.  Shouldn’t he be refraining from conversation anyway?

And my good friend Tom Burwell–who has inexplicably worn a white V-neck as well–making us appear like two castaways from an S.E. Hinton novel who ran smack-dab into a mob of Stella-yellers while fleeing the Fuzz

Yes, it’s a motley crew, 25 wild-eyed aspiring Brando’s, all of whom have convened  on this sunny April day to participate in the annual Stella-yelling contest, the last event of the week-long Tennessee Williams Festival.

When we signed up there were only a handful of people congregated around the balcony on the south side of Jackson Square, but now, fifteen minutes later, the crowd has engorged to hundreds and atop the balcony perch the video cameras of the local news.

It’s a terrifying feeling.  I have never done any acting before.  At least not that I remember.  I clutch my number, 14, tightly in a fist and watch as participants begin to make their way into the performance ring that has been cleared beneath the balcony.

Stella arrives. Stella doesn’t look like Stella from the movie.  She’s older and saucier, but somehow that feels right.

I begin to think there’s a whole pathos to Brando that’s crucial to nailing a good “Stella.” I ruminate on this insight as the crooning begins.  You can just think of Brando as the alpha-male, super-cool, tough-guy he was in his earlier days, I think.  That won’t give you the right scream.

You have to think about Colonel Kurtz  as well.  You have to think about “The Horror.” You have to think about decay.  About Brando dying at 80 weighing 300 pounds.

It is the mime’s turn.  He doesn’t say anything, just pantomimes a scream.  I hate this mime.

You have to realize that regardless of the fact that it doesn’t get any more iconic than Stanley Kowalski, drunk, desperate and drenched, on his knees, with his shirt torn to shreds, screaming for Stella, that it’s futile to attempt to reproduce that yell.

You’ll always fail.  You’ll be lamer than a silent mime painted gold.

Don’t scream for Stella, I think to myself as I push through the crowd and into the circle, scream for Brando instead.

It’s silent inside with the oval crowd ensconcing me.  I feel like I’m  inside of a whale’s stomach. There is nothing but white noise.  The blood flows through my body in violent cascades.  I hate this mime so much.  I find his black eyes in the crowd submerged in gold.  I stare at those eyes.

I stare at those eyes.  And I yell.

Props to PSF ( and Chico across the way) for the film below.


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2010: The Birthing of a Decade; the Butchering of an Iphone

New Orleans, LA–The strange thing about New Year’s Eve is that it’s the only form of pre-planned fun that succeeds for me.  There are an endless number of holidays that are supposed to be fun, but never live up to the hype, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Cinco De Mayo (which is actually somewhat fun when it spawns ecstatic bouts of Tequila drinking by people who wrongly believe they are celebrating Mexican independence), Easter and Halloween   Then there are personal holidays, such as birthdays, graduations and anniversaries, which are undoubtedly some of the most underwhelming and tragic moments of human existence and no reasonable person should attach any significance to.

But New Year’s Eve, for some freakish reason, sits in a category all by itself.  It seems to be the one night that people really act freely, conducting themselves with the reckless whimsy of sailors with a sole evening in port. It is less of a celebration and more of a ritualistic cleansing, which  may be due to the fact that at least subconsciously one can attribute everything that happens on New Year’s Eve to “last year.”

This, along with a number of other reasons, is probably why I haven’t had one bad New Year’s Eve in the last decade. Rarely, if ever, do I make any sort of elaborate plan for New Year’s and 50% of the time I have no plans at all. On many occasions, the night has started out languidly and I have wondered if the streak would die, but it never has.  Yet this year, my yuletide felicity was threatened by an adversary so grotesquely powerful and omnipresent that it would make even Dick Clark cringe.  It was the only force, outside of the police, which had the clout to isolate me from everyone I know and stuff me into a pocket of self-reflection where I stumbled helplessly throughout the streets like a lost dog.

Of course, I am talking about my Iphone.

The Iphone and the corresponding meteoric rise in “smart phones” is arguably the most influential development of the last decade.  It’s become ubiquitous and ordinary at such a breakneck speed that it’s shocking to think that three years ago you were novel (possibly even cool) for having an Iphone.  In my life, owning the Iphone has changed a number of things, the most important of which are that (a) I can settle any trivial argument instantly and (b) I never have to ask for directions.  It is also an incredible device for looking preoccupied and vaguely important in situations that are socially awkward (mostly election day parties).

But there is a downside to so much technological privilege: dependency.

There are now people in this world who have become incapable of even simple navigational skills without a digital map accompanying them.  Furthermore, there are people who appear to be unable to experience any part of human existence without translating it to the rest of the universe via Twitter.  But, to be honest, most of these people likely had serious life problems before they bought Iphones.

Fundamentally, the Iphone is just an extension of the cell phone and the home phone as it simply makes it so much easier to communicate in and navigate the world and, when it is occasionally unavailable, makes the world seem like an impossibly complicated place.

This is what happened to me on News Year’s Eve in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, when AT&T users (the only company to service the Iphone) congregated in such mass that for two hours nobody with an Iphone had service.  Thousands were stranded and transformed into refugees of the digital world. Lost in transit between groups of friends, I walked down the Riverwalk, slaloming between clots of revelers and facing the fact that I might spend the entire night alone.

I have been alone a lot this year.  I have been alone on three different continents and in a dozen countries and I have not minded at all.  But nobody wants to be alone on New Year’s Eve, when the ball or the baby or some piece of illuminated machinery drops from the heavens and drunken single people under thirty wonder which borderline unattractive person they’ll regret making out with.

Of course, the Riverwalk was flush with interesting things to see.  There were white people and black people and a number of people from Florida and Ohio (teams who played in the Sugar Bowl) and a multitude of tough-looking teenagers wearing wife-beaters and flannel and drinking malt liquor out of water bottles.  There was an excess of cleavage, an excess of knee-high black boots, a scarcity of kazoos that almost caused a fistfight, and an odd number of people who appeared to be suffering the same fate of Iphonelessness as me.

The baby fell, the fireworks exploded, the protracted makeout sessions climaxed and a number of people from Ohio attempted to drive down pedestrian walkways in their mini-vans.  It was 2010, a new year and a new decade.  My phone reception picked up within minutes and I was soon reunited with a pack of friends, many of whom had spent the last two hours floundering in the same state of abject loneliness.

We were filled with a desperate energy–a frenzy incited by isolation and cemented by the compulsion that we had dodged a bullet and needed to make up for lost time. I gestured feverishly, explaining my plight, while a friend answered a build-up of text messages. As he tapped away, he whirled toward me and his phone careened off my fingers, into the air, and then onto the cement with a thud.  The LCD screen was cracked like a glass spider web.

I was strangely jealous of the carnage.  In fact, at my basest I wished I had broken my own phone.  This feeling–the idea of hating the evolution of technology simply because it breeds dependency–is likely something one could only experience in the most recent millennium.  I doubt that in 1920 anyone whined about the nuisance of “having to do everything with the lights on” and forgetting how to work under candlelight.  Although maybe I’m wrong.  I simply know that the idea of living  without a phone that can track my progress toward a 7-11 with a light blue GPS ball feels boring and primitive regardless of how pathetic it is, which is probably why I resisted the temptation to smash mine next to my friend’s.

Instead, we shrugged, picked up the pieces and walked on happily to a party featuring a giant tree house, which I didn’t leave until 7 a.m.   Thus,  my streak of epic New Years continued (three in a row, since I’ve had my Iphone).


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Kicking Katrina Victims to The Curb

This column was printed in the Oregon Daily Emerald on May 11.

Forty-four months after Hurricane Katrina descended on New Orleans and its surrounding parishes, there are still 4,600 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers inhabited by hurricane victims. The majority of them are elderly, poverty-stricken, disabled or mentally ill. Some are still rebuilding homes that were destroyed during the storm, a process fraught with red tape and governmental delays. Others have sunk into a state of severe and unremitting depression. Unable to adjust to the chaos and instability of the storm, they have simply tuned out of life. Now, it appears many of these individuals will soon be booted from their homes, as well.

By: Patrick Finney

By: Patrick Finney

FEMA recently announced its intention to repossess all trailers on May 30, and evict those still residing there. It’s not a surprising response, considering the colossal inefficiency the organization displayed from the get-go in providing Katrina aid. From its bungling of the initial emergency effort to its inadequate housing relief, FEMA has routinely appeared out of touch with the full effects of the storm on residents of the Gulf South.

In fact, being wrested from their trailer homes is just one of the many burdens Katrina victims have had to bear. Almost four years after the storm, none of the 500 Katrina cottages that state officials agreed to build to offset housing problems has been erected. The Louisiana Road Home program, which is intended to provide large grants to homeowners for repair, has been beleaguered with red tape and administrative problems. Additionally, a caretaking organization, authorized by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, never materialized, leaving local aid organizations to combat the homelessness and poverty still associated with the storm.

The 143,000 FEMA trailers provided to residents after the hurricane was one of the organization’s most visible and robust undertakings. They did not arrive in the timeliest manner, and many of them were later found to contain dangerous levels of formaldehyde, but for hordes of Katrina victims, they provided a home. Now, most of these trailers have been dragged away as the majority of Katrina victims have rebuilt, but there are still a fraction of residents who call the trailers home. And while a handful or so of these individuals may be looking to freeload off the government’s dime, most of them would love nothing more than to secure their own residence. They simply don’t have the funds or the resources to do so.

However, some people think they’re not trying hard enough. Bruce Ramsey, a columnist for The Seattle Times, supports FEMA’s decision to give hurricane victims the boot. Ramsey criticized a New York Times series on the trailer debacle as a “compendium of hard luck stories.” He was especially irked by the focus on a man who was attempting to finance his home by selling aluminum for soda cans.

“Collecting pop cans is a wino’s job. It is no way to finance the repair of a building,” Ramsey squawked. He called the man irrational and suggested he attempt to sell his gutted, flood-damaged home, or take out a second mortgage.

Ramsey’s right. Collecting cans isn’t the best way to finance the repair of a building. It’s a desperate and an ill-conceived plan. However, it’s nowhere near as ill-conceived as suggesting that a 70-year-old, poverty-stricken man with no resources have his home stripped from him because he hasn’t dealt with his finances adroitly.

The Katrina reconstruction effort has cost hundreds of billions dollars. It’s been a long, painstaking process, and one that’s done little to quell the bitterness many victims feel for the government’s initial response. Now, FEMA wants to evict people from their domiciles with no contingency plan for how they will survive, and pundits like Ramsey support such a plan. What sort of rational idea is that?

FEMA should not only extend the housing privileges in the trailers, they should simply give the trailers away. The demonization of these individuals as freeloaders is not just insulting – it’s absurd. Furthermore, regardless of whether they’re genuinely trying to find alternative housing, it’s inane to suggest evicting an already disadvantaged population for such an insignificant amount of money.

FEMA’s mission is to provide disaster relief, and as long as the ramifications of Katrina are still being felt it should stay the course. Pundits such as Ramsey need to discard their Horatio Alger fetishes and realize it’s hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you’re poor, disabled, disadvantaged, discarded and unstable. The victims of Hurricane Katrina deserve more sympathy, or at the very least, a dose of common sense.


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