“9th ward diagonal car 1″
Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006

Last year, I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” and linked various phrases to images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The degree to which Dylan’s words fit the events unfolding before us was uncanny.

A year later, New Orleans remains a city crippled not only by a natural disaster, but by a man-made one: a Republican administration that sat on its ass and ate birthday cake while a city drowned has compounded that frightening lack of human decency by breaking promise after promise to those in the region.

Of course, only a fool would think that that has been an accident. Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the administration’s post-Katrina strategy, an act of bad faith of such magnitude that one recoils from the sheer monstrosity of it. As Dan Froomkin noted at the time:

And that is exactly what has come to pass: a bungled recovery process that has allowed the wreckage of the storm to fester under the hot Louisiana sun. And it’s all being done with political objectives in mind, as Frank Rich noted in the The New York Times this past Sunday:

All across the media landscape, the Bush administration is being shown for what it is: a callous political machine that cares only for its own survival.

That is going to be brought home over the next two days, as President Bush attempts to whitewash his response to the storm with a series of PR stunts. After all, you don’t introduce new products in August: you just shine up the old lies and put them out on the shelf in some new packaging.

As noted here a few days ago, Matt Cohen, who blogs at 1115.org, decided to take a first-hand look behind the Bush administration’s spin. Traveling down to New Orleans with his camera, Matt has posted a powerful set of pictures on flickr that document the all-too-slow recovery of New Orleans (I thank him for granting me permission to use a few of his images here), and he has just written a searing account of his trip through the 9th Ward.

It’s called A Victory Lap for Broken Promises:

It’s an amazing post that showcases the best of what blogs can do. Please go and read it.

Of all of the images that Matt has posted, the one below struck me most deeply:

9th ward this was home, Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006

“HOME This was HOME,” the spray-painted eulogy reads. The house still stands, but the home inside it is gone, for now. It will be vanquished permanently, if the Bush administration has its way.

And that is something that we will never forget.

Update: Please visit Shakespeare’s Sister for many more perspectives on the first anniversary of Hurrican Katrina. In her post, Shakes argues convincingly that “Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.”

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Frequent commenter and former TC contributor Rod sent me this Stereogum link, which announces a series of listening parties for Bob Dylan’s next album, Modern Times (release date: August 29).

The Philly session will be held on Sunday, August 20th, at 7pm. If you want to attend, send an email to listen@bobdylan.com with “RSVP Philadelphia” in the subject line.

Stereogum informs us that Columbia Records, which is sponsoring the listening session, will provide “free food and beverages.” Would some country pie be too much to ask?

As for the drink, well, Columbia Records should heed these words of wisdom [mp3].

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Noting Young Matt’s latest Friday Top Ten (particularly his “Favorite Song,” which certainly falls very high on my own list as well), I thought I might attempt to illuminate. Or, no… not illuminate. What’s that other word…?

Sartre once said, “Hell is other people.” (He said, exactly, “The Infernal is the peoples others.”) He was quite right, in that I, Neddie Jingo, am, by definition, other people. I can’t be you, can I? You have no idea what it’s like inside here. It’s, well, hell.

Let’s put on our Maurice Chevalier skimmers and twirl our bamboo whangees, describing a gentle buck-and-wing to the following, remembering the founding precept that “Dair’s no-seeng, like lee-tail gairls!”:

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks
When you’re trying to be so quiet?
Oui, si t’heure ce-te-rondette
D’eaux oui auldouine hart baise-tu dit n’aille y-te
En Louise eault s’a enfeuille au-vraine
Tontine y’eux tu dit-faille y-te
L’aille-te flic-q’heure on-dit au poisite l’auffe
On-dit ce-reume dit-y-ce paille je scauffe
Dit-con tristé chien pliet-sauf
Boutaire n’eautine, rit-lui-n’eautine
Tout-heure n’auffe
Jus Louise
En-heure louvaire s’eaux Antoine!
En dix Visions au Johanna
D’anneault qu’on qu’eur maille maïn…

Well….

If you can figure that out, you deserve a cookie.

Enjoy the funniest prank call I’ve ever heard: Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster’s “The Music Scholar.”

Wurster, the drummer for Superchunk, calls in to Scharpling’s WFMU radio show pretending to be the most pompous Rock Snob ever, claiming to have seen the Beatles perform live in 1964 when he was six — and declaring the rot to have already set in.

I know guys like this.

I may even BE a guy like this.

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Bob Dylan. Martin Scorsese. What more do you need to know?

It’s on right now on PBS: No Direction Home

I’ll add my reactions after the movie.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Compiled after reading this.

Bob Dylan, Everything is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.

Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground.

Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin’,
Everything is broken.

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face.

Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.

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I wanted to pick a Dylan song for National Poetry Month, but I had a hard time choosing one. I very nearly went with “Ballad of a Thin Man” (”Here is your throat back / Thanks for the loan”), and also considered “Tombstone Blues” (”The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken”), “Visions of Johanna” (”The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face”), and “Not Dark Yet” (”It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there”), among others.

In the end, I went with one of my favorite Dylan songs. It lacks the stark images and absurdist narration of the other lyrics, but it delivers a heart-rending, layered message in plain-spoken language.

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