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        Goo Goo Dolls >> Goo Goo Dolls >> A night to remember / triumphant Superdome article
        
(Message started by: Shannon on Sep 27^th, 2006, 11:01am)

Title: A night to remember / triumphant Superdome article
Post by Shannon on Sep 27^th, 2006, 11:01am

http://www.nola.com/entertainment/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-6/1159337076130960.xml&coll=1

A night to remember
Monday's celebration leading to and through the Saints game was transcendent and unforgettable.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Chris Rose

How do you dress your kids for school on the day the Saints play "Monday Night Football" if you don't have any Reggie Bush jerseys in their size?
�
It was a dilemma that none of my self-help parenting books addressed Monday morning as the ritualistic battle over what my kids would wear took on a different tenor than usual.

To send them to school in anything but black and gold -- as the administration had urged parents to do in a show of school spirit and city unity -- would have been akin to sending my children out trick-or-treating on Halloween without a costume.

Basic black we've got plenty of in my house but here's the rub: Who, besides Paris Hilton and Elton John, actually owns gold clothes?

There was much give and take and I finally convinced my kids by heavily referencing Mardi Gras that yellow actually is gold, at least in New Orleans.

"Yellow," I told my daughter, "is the color of kings and Saints." This seemed to satisfy her.

At the parent/teacher/student assembly at my kids' school Monday morning, the only "educational" item on the agenda was whether face-painting would be allowed that day.

This had actually been discussed in administrative meetings that morning.

Alas, it would not be allowed. There were groans. Principals can be so exasperating at times. The many children who had arrived with fleurs-de-lis already in place on cheeks and noses would have to turn themselves in for a scrubbing before reporting to class.

Then the music teacher stepped forward and began pounding out a melody on his chest with his hand, and he asked the parents to follow his lead and chant, over and over, "Saints go marching in, Saints go marching in . . ." which we did, maybe 200 of us, in group baritone.

Then he led the children into a high-pitched and squealy version of the song over our jungle beat and it was beautiful, poetic and touching.

And very strange, really, when you think about it. I looked around and thought: What the hell is going on around here?

Funny: As the meeting broke up and the kids went off to classes, many parents and teachers and kids all hugged each other before parting like it was the last day of school, like there would be some sort of transformation and personal growth before we all saw each other again -- the next morning. You knew then that, well . . . Monday would be a day like no other.

And you keep telling yourself: It's only a game.

Who dat?

I had instructed my children that they were to respond to any questions asked by their teachers Monday with one answer: "The Deuce is loose!" and I was kind of kidding but kind of not and when my son Jack greeted his kindergarten teacher with this as he entered the classroom, she looked at me like I was crazy and maybe I am but it's nothing a little tweaking of my medication can't cure.

(cont'd)

Title: Re: A night to remember / triumphant Superdome art
Post by Shannon on Sep 27^th, 2006, 11:03am

What happened after that, I don't know, but I do admit -- now that I've had time to consider the implications of the matter -- to a little apprehension about all this.

I have witnessed, firsthand, the long-term health effects of being a Saints fan. It's not pretty. It's a meat grinder, truth be told.

You have to ask yourself, after all our children have been through around here -- you know, that death and destruction thing -- do you really want them to enter a culture that leaves scars worse than fire?

Ah, why not?

As I got to the Superdome about 2 p.m., I could see that what I had witnessed in a microcosm Uptown had layered itself over the city.

Through the fog of a thousand kettle drum grills and Webers smoldering under the interstate overpasses, in the cacophony of hundreds of minivans and pickups with their doors flung open, blasting "Hey Pocky A-Way" and "Yellow Moon," and under portable tents set up in parking lots and on neutral grounds, jammed full of rebels-without-a-care, it smelled, sounded and felt like a new day, a beautiful day.

And a choir of angels did sing from on high, "Who dat? Who dat?"

Or did I just imagine that part?

Clearly, no one went to work; either that, or the term "business casual" has taken on new meaning around here.

It seems like all the adults in town just dropped the kids off at school and hoped some teenager to whom we paid nine bucks an hour would pick them up after school and would feed and bathe them because we had more important matters to attend to: rebirthing a city. Or at least a step in the right direction.

We're family

Now of course, there were naysayers out there in the Great Elsewhere. All that money, they said, that could have been used to fix people's houses. All that effort that could have gone somewhere else. All this fuss -- about a game?

The simple answer is that, for the city's economy to survive, the Convention Center and the Dome had to be fixed -- first and fast -- because they are the bread and the butter.

A more nuanced answer is this: Better a Saints game to rechristen the building than a boat show or a gun show, for the irony of that would have been simply too much, even here in the city whose chief export in the post-Katrina age is, in fact, irony. By the ton.

Bobby, my best friend from first grade, called me from Kansas City on Monday afternoon to say everyone in his office was watching the pre-game stuff on ESPN and some were grumbling about our misplaced priorities but I asked him: "Then why is everyone watching TV at your office when they're supposed to be working?"

Obviously, people care about this.

And what can you tell them? The Saints are family around here and you're stuck with that just like you're stuck with, well . . . family.

The Saints are our crazy uncle Frank, prone to off-color remarks and broken promises and he's certainly not the guy you send to carpool to pick up your kids when you're stuck at the doctor's office, but you have to admit: Holiday gatherings just aren't as much fun without him.

And every now and then he delivers a nice present when you least expect it.

Outside the Dome before the game, the "family" swelled into the tens of thousands and the crunch of bodies on the concourses around the building was, in fact, chaotic and probably dangerous.

Crowd control was an oxymoron. I wound up pinned in, unable to move in any direction while the Goo Goo Dolls were playing and I was smooshed up against a sweaty, shirtless, moose-jawed guy whose face paint was melting in the sun and we looked at each other and we found the same spiritual impulse overcome us at the same time.

We hugged.

I hugged a sweaty, moose-faced guy and it just felt right, dammit. So go ahead, judge me.

The Goo Goo Dolls' lead singer -- he of the famously pasted hair and impossibly east European name -- yelled to the crowd: "Thank you for letting us be a part of this. You're amazing."

And yes, we are.

Exhausting, exhilarating

All the stages fell silent in the minutes preceding the opening of the Superdome doors, silent in that kind of "Star-Spangled Banner" way, and a guy onstage counted backward from 10 like it was New Year's and the crowd joined in and confetti cannons blasted a storm into the air as the doors swung open and little bits of colored paper -- and you know what colors -- floated across the expanse and people just stood there -- tens of thousands of them -- silent with their arms raised in the air like it was the Rapture.

And it was.

This building, this monument to our shame, our disgrace and our sorrow, will always be so, but it always has been and always will be more than that. Neither Katrina nor Tom Benson have been able to make the Superdome go away.

Its durability is our durability.

Untold hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were re-entering the building Monday night for the first time since they walked out of it last September -- as evacuees, employees, police and rescuers.

They will never forget. We will never forget. But we will also never surrender.

There was a game to play but, before that, rock stars and ex-presidents, Hall of Famers and celebrities, cheerleaders and first responders and pomp, circumstance and glory and it was too much, really -- all for a game -- but then again everything around here is too much, all day, every day, so why not too much here and now?

All the meanderers in the hallways and bathrooms were running into old friends, hugging the ticket takers just because, tipping like madmen, yelling incoherent cries of pride and defiance.

And the drunkest of them yelling: "Super Bowl!"

Funny, just about everyone in the visiting media made Super Bowl references -- that was what it felt like -- but they failed to realize that Super Bowls have no home teams. There is no sense of desire, longing and need at a Super Bowl.

Irma sang the national anthem. Jesus wept and I died. Then and there. Died over and over. Live, die, rise up. Live, die, rise up. Over and over.

I was exhausted. I was ready to go home. And the game hadn't even started.

Love Potion No. 9

The game. When they blocked the punt and scored the first touchdown, something inside of me that I didn't know was there broke loose. I let out a yell so loud that my throat still hurts today.

I fell into a human scrum that consisted of a tall skinny guy, a short woman, a cop and a beer vendor. Every layer of authority and sociology was stripped away. We literally fell on top of each other. I have never experienced a flashpoint of sudden emotion unloosed so fast.

No drug, religion or meditation has ever brought me there. And, I don't know: Maybe people in cities with great teams do that all the time but this was a crazy good thing. Love Potion No. 9. I started hugging everyone in sight.

And, well, you know what happened after that. After the game, I thought about going to the Quarter or finding all my friends and waking the dead but, in the end, I turned to my wife and said: "I've given everything I've got."

(cont'd)

Title: Re: A night to remember / triumphant Superdome art
Post by Shannon on Sep 27^th, 2006, 11:03am

I remember being all worked up in the daze leading up to the game, worried about the message we were sending America and I was all worried about what the guys in the broadcast booth were going to say but the fact is, I don't know what they said or how it all looked because I was acting a fool and hugging strangers and too busy making 70,000 new friends to give a hoot what everybody else thinks.

It is superficial and meaningless and a sign of total loss of perspective but I stand before you and I declare: It is good to feel like a winner.

And out my window today as I write this -- my open window, oh, glorious day -- I hear the same sounds I hear every day: chain saws and hammers and drills, and it would be foolish to suggest that the workers have more pep in their step today and that everything is going to be easier now because, well . . . because it's not.

It's a long road home no matter what colored glasses you're wearing today but there is something about waking up in a community that is thinking the same thing, that is feeling -- if only for a moment -- like we all just accomplished something together -- when actually it was a bunch of millionaires whose names we hardly know.

Ah, but let us live it, just for today, because who around here hasn't felt like we've had a big L stamped on our foreheads for the past year and I, for one, am ready to wipe it off, like all those silly kids had to do at Lusher Elementary the other day when the principal brought the hammer down.

Only a game, you say?

Like hell it was.

. . . . . . .

Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at [email protected], or (504) 826-3309 or (504) 352-2535.

Title: Re: A night to remember / triumphant Superdome art
Post by babsil30 on Sep 27^th, 2006, 12:02pm

OMG, that is one of the best articles I've ever read! Seriously, I could feel the emotion, the passion.

wow!! Thanks Shannon for posting it!!

Title: Re: A night to remember / triumphant Superdome art
Post by pink boa lady on Sep 27^th, 2006, 6:09pm

chris rose is fabulous! �he writes awesome articles for the paper.

he's like this on everything he writes about (especially after the hurricane) and the really funny laugh out loud articles are on celebrities that come to town that aren't so smart...or when he did a series of articles on the real world when they shot here.

you can probably do a google search for them or go to www.nola.com they should be there.