I quit

I've been extremely busy with house painting, working on the Quarter Rat publication and website plus graphic design work. I have to quit something so I am ending may career as a background actor. Please don't try to talk me out of it, my mind is made up. Here are the reasons that made me decide to drop that vocation.
• The pay. Right now the average rate is $80 for ten hours of time. Just about minimum wage. In those same ten hours I can make much more as a house painter. My graphic design fee is $400 for ten hours. Not a hard choice.

• The co-workers. This is the main reason, the recent production that I have worked on and from what I hear from friends who are background actors is that the casting companies are desperate to fill space with anyone they can. One buddy was working a shoot a few weeks ago and said the van ride to the location was unbearable. The van was packed with extras most of which hadn't bathed in weeks. "You know those guys we see under the over pass holding the cardboard signs asking for money? THEY were hired as background. I thought I was going to vomit from the odor. Every other word out of their mouths was a profanity."


• Food. One of the perks that compensated for the low wage was that they used to feed you pretty good. PROFESSIONAL background actors would take reasonable helpings and be happy. The barrel scrapings that have been getting hired lately, they pile the food onto their plates like they haven't eaton in weeks and go back for seconds. I have witnesses an obese old lady stuffing food into her purse from the crafty table. Gee, and I wonder why the next day all we get served is red beans and rice with a slice of watermelon.

• Double standard. Those of us who treat this as a profession and try to do our best dress as we were instructed, stand where instructed and conduct ourselves professionally. However the casting companies just want to meet the numbers required and bring in anyone who answers an E-mail. 


If the scene being shot requires "Casual dinning" street thugs come in with logo em-blazed t-shirts and jeans hanging off of their asses. The wardrobe people don't say shit because they are too scared to. Those extras are placed in deep background out of focus or frame just because no one wants to be the one to tell them to go home because they obviously can't read or don't bother to read the requirements. Meanwhile I just lugged 40 pounds of clothing with me to the holding tent just in case they didn't like my first choice. For $80.


I'll be standing on my mark doing exactly what I am told in the hot sun to look over and see a group of guys sitting in the shade enjoying the bounty they just looted from the crafty table. The Production Assistants eyeball them, but say nothing. 

Now the casting companies whine that they can't get background actors to come in to work. How about this, next time you need bodies, just go down to Poydras and Claiborne with the van, wake up the people sleeping with the cardboard signs and say "Want to be in a movie?"

No place like home...

Back in New Jersey, the number one thing people like to complain about is New Jersey. Too crowded, too expensive, too corrupt, too hectic. If you interrupt their tirade about how Jersey sucks to ask them why don't they move they respond "What?? Leave Jersey?" Residents there have a dysfunctional relation ship with their abusive state spouse. Don't let another state make a joke about it, no matter how true it may be.

When I first moved down here a year ago, I was pretty much jobless, penniless and homeless. Still I felt more at home, more at ease and happier in New Orleans than if I had been given a mansion back in the Garden State.  I have yet to hear a resident here bad mouth the Bid Easy, instead you hear everyone rave about their love of the city like newlywed on a honeymoon.

A new Facebook friend who is serving in the military overseas has been sharing his love story with New Orleans with me. He sent me this Mark Twain quote:
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.
- Letter to Pamela Moffett, 9 and 11 March 1859 

Well I hope I don't make him too homesick, but I'll send him a little Dr. John in return. Stay safe Franklin, I'll treat you to a beer when you get back home.

he's dead

Back in the late 1990's I drove commuter bus for Academy Bus Lines up the route 9 corridor to Wall Street. Two of my stops every morning and in the evening was the World Trade Center. In the morning after my run, we parked the buses a few blocks away on a pier literally in the shadows of the twins. I spent many an afternoon in the plaza beneath them, listening to classical musicians play as I downed a dirt water dog for lunch.

My older brother took me up to the top of the towers back in the late 70's after they were constructed.  I never failed to be in awe of them regardless of how many times a day I looked up at them.  When driving charter buses in and out of the five boros of New York City, I could always find my way back to New Jersey by using the towers as a navigation landmark. Magnificent to see at night.

In September of 2001 I was working in north Jersey for a sign company. Driving to the job site on Route 18 we listened dumbstruck to the radio news reports. From the job site, we could see the smoke on the horizon, by mid afternoon a sickening electrical fire smell filled the air. On the ride back to the shop, I tried to remember the faces of my passengers that got on and off of my bus years before.

Things changed for the entire world that day. In the years since bickering has taken place over conspiracies and motives. Does it really matter? Innocents are dead, soldier have died, billions have been wasted. I don't think anyone wears a white hat in this world anymore. No soldiers are coming home today, billions more will be spent and new theories are popping up on the internet.

It's an "US or THEM" world today, I'm happy to be an us.

The view from work

 Pontalba building

I spent the past week or so working on an apartment in this very historic building. From the balcony I was literally a stone's throw from the Cabildo building where they signed the Louisiana purchase. During my smoke breaks I could walk out on the balcony and listen to the musicians as tourists milled about below me.

Beats driving a cab in Jersey.

 The Pontalba Buildings form two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

These are matching red-brick block long 4‑story buildings built in the 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba. The ground floors house shops and restaurants; the upper floors are apartments that are the oldest continuously rented such apartments in the United States.

In the short story Hidden Gardens, Truman Capote describes the Pontalba Buildings as "...the oldest, in some ways most somberly elegant, apartment houses in America, the Pontalba Buildings."

They were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974

The Upper and Lower Pontalba Buildings, which line the St. Ann and St. Peter Street sides of Jackson Square, were built in 1850 by the Baroness Micaela Almonester de Pontalba, the daughter of Don Andres Almonester y Roxas, the Spanish colonial landowner associated with the neighboring Cabildo, Cathedral and Presbytere. Inspired by the imposing Parisian architecture the Baroness favored, the distinctive rowhouses were intended to serve as both elegant residences and fine retail establishments. In 1921 the Pontalba family sold the Lower Pontalba Building to philanthropist William Ratcliff Irby who subsequently, in 1927, bequeathed it to the State Museum.

We finished up the apartment. Yesterday early start, long lunch then worked until 4 am. I slept for a couple of hours on a pile of drop cloths on the balcony over looking Jackson square. 

A lone saxophonist down by the river sung me to sleep in the moon light. Homeless guys fighting over the last swig woke me up.

Wm C. Cayle House 1862

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've been too busy with a paying job, painting houses.  A few 14 hour days amongst the past sixty plus days of no days off. I've been surprised with the size and status of some of the work Pride Improvements has been getting. I thinks it's that Jersey work ethic we brought down with us. No offense to the locals, they just have a different approach to work. "Good enough when we get around to it." Back in Jersey contractors had a lot of competition, others always willing to do it for less money, so you have to always do it better. 

Here are some photos from  the Wm C. Cayle house that we have been   working on for the fast few weeks.

Back in Jersey we were use to the burden of restrictive building codes, permits, inspections, bribes,    pay-offs and the occasional union workers slashing tires of non union workers. I won't say what work my boss managed to step in, but was surprised that it didn't go to a local good ol boy. Again, I think it has to do with standards. Most of the new work comes from referrals.

About six months ago I was doing some work for a man. One morning I asked what was on that day's agenda. "This morning you're putting  a new roof on the garage." 
"New roof on the garage? This morning? By myself? That's kind of a big job for one person, besides, I really don't have any roofing experiance..."
" NO you goddamn moron! I bought a new blue tarp at Walmart for the roof."

Oh yea, the blue tarp, the Louisiana state flag. Covering the remains of a garage were about five layers of blue tarps, each one in a worse case of decomposition than the one on top of it. Seeing this I came to the conclusion that it was one more example of the Gulf Coast residents being neglected and pushed aside.

I inquired "What  happened, didn't the insurance company pay for a new roof after the storm?"
"Sure they did. I spent the money on a new lap top so I could watch porn in the privacy of my room.  I just have to buy a new tarp every year.  Now don't be doing something stupid like falling through the remains of the roof while you're stringin it up, I don't want my insurance to go up if you get hurt." 
"Aren't you going to give me a hand? It's getting kind of windy."
 "Hell no, I'm going inside to look at a new web site I found,  justturned18titties.com. When you're  done installing the new roof, I want you to rewire the living room electric. The new extension cord  is  in the Walmart bag."

As the screen door slammed behind him,  I said to myself "Welcome  to Louisiana."

Audrey Elizabeth Styles 1920 - 2011

I think the one thing mom gave me besides a best friend of 48 years, is a connection to history. I wish now I had taken notes. Born in rural Pennsylvania during the depression and a war bride.

She loved this bridge. It is known as the Tunkhannock Viaduct built between 1912 and 1915. It held the title of the largest concrete bridge for 50 years. Audrey's father help build it. Rex Holley worked as a steam shovel operator for coal mining in West Virginia. He moved to Pennsylvania to work on a large railroad construction project that ended up making the record books. While staying at a boarding house he met my Grandmother working as a house keeper and by 1920 they had a second daughter, Audrey. Mother always said that if not for that bridge, she wouldn't be here today. I guess neither would I or her granddaughter.

Audrey attended secretarial school admittedly to avoid getting a job right away. After graduating she moved in with her older sister and her new husband who had settled in Point Pleasant NJ. I'm trying to picture Mom as a college girl in the 1940 version of "Jersey Shore." Audrey met a local young man and got married at the age of twenty. She was widowed at the age of twenty one.  Her husband John R. Carleton was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

 

Now being a war widow, the Department of Defence gave her preference hiring for a position at Naval Weapons Station Earl in Colts Neck NJ. She worked there for many years and met her second husband, a WW2 navy veteran. Audrey married him and gave him two sons a year apart. Within a decade that husband died of a stroke. Widowed again this time with two young boys and a mortgage.

 

About 1962 she met another sailor Frank Styles, I guess she had a thing for men in uniform. They married and had me in '63, he went to Vietnam in '64. Their rocky marriage ended 13 years later when he died leaving her with a rebelioness teenage boy. Widowed the third time. I could write pages about her humor, wisdom and strength. Tell all of you about her tough farm girl attitude, and a mean right hook that could drop a 15 year old boy where he stood. I remember one time she was staring off into space and I asked what she was thinking about. She tearfully replied "I bet if he hadn't died in the war, we would still be married."

When asked about marriage: "My cooking has already killed three, no more."

View of the bridge from my Grandparents grave.

Cover 21

Last week at the Moulin View, I was discussing New Orleans with Andie. She was telling me how this town lets you know if you belong here or not. Andie said she has known people who move here only to be driven back to where they came from. Jobs lost, cars stolen or bad vibes roll up the welcome mat. For those who belong here the city opens herself up for the embrace that keeps you for life. You still have to earn it, you still have to prove yourself for the lady's approval.

I've been here a year and things are looking better each day. There's been some challenges, some downfalls but I think New Orleans likes me.  Here is my third cover for the Quarter Rat, enjoy.