A "Mission from God" on the Road

St. Louis, Missouri: April 17 – As the Space Needle eventually resolves into purple mountain majesties, and ultimately St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, the thought struck me that if my “Haven’t They Suffered Enough” tour bombs across the Gulf Coast, I won’t be able to talk about it to the TSA crew at the airport.
Humor, the elixir for all that generates stomach and life upset is incredibly diminished in this world. The grim nature of hundreds of shoeless travelers lined up separating laptops and Nikes from airport gift shop kitsch is a reminder that we live in dangerous times. There was a time when air travel was an E-ticket ride to a Disneyland-like Adventureland. Today, the trip through the airport is the adventure. The actual process of being injected into a sardine can has the spiritual effect of a pre-colonoscopy cleansing.
On the other side of the friendly skies, however, there are audiences waiting. Given their present circumstances, many in these audiences would rather that they could sit packed three-by-three in a noise-filled vacuum where seatbacks can never be at anything but an upright position.
The Big Easy – the destination on my ticket stub – has become a sad place for many separated from family, home and all that jazz. Just eight months ago, this most spirited city of music, magic and mirth was grasping on to what seemed like its last flotation device. Where once there was laughter from Canal Street to Lake Ponchartrain there was a Superdome-sized Exodus to Houston and beyond.
This was nothing like losing an NBA basketball team and avoiding the sports pages to consider the grating sound of “Utah Jazz.” This has become the Big Easy’s “Big Doubt. Will New Orleans rise from its ashes or become a string of expensive suburbs like a Phoenix? Who will answer the call of very people that choreographed the character of this place long before Walt Disney was even born?
That’s why we come – 52 of us bearing gifts of laughter. Like the Blues Brothers of Hollywood, we are on a “mission from God.” At least the gods of laughter.
Some of the laughter is back here. St. Bernard Parish, one of the most heavily damaged places during Katrina’s visit, floated a trial balloon recently that seemed funnier than anything the Mardi-Gras folks could create.. Parish leaders suggested that they might consult with a newly independent agent of disaster preparedness. Michael “heckuva job” Brown made a splash from Washington to Bourbon Street as he and his FEMA brethren seemed more underwater than the Gulf Coast. What better agent of disaster preparedness than someone who knows how disasters are created? When the laughter around St. Bernard Parish died down last week, Brown announced he would not accept a fee for his work.
Hope is alive here. People in the Crescent City have forgotten all about the Utah Jazz.