Update from Baton Rouge

Here's an e-mail we received from Mrs. Fabulous's brother, who lives in Baton Rouge. It may not surprise you to learn that Baton Rouge has overnight become the largest city in Louisiana.

---
I think Alan's house was spared from the storm, but who knows what the looters are doing. There could be some guys riding around in a one-mile-square area driving his mint condition 356. His camp is probably toast, because the eye went right over Lake Borgne. I had a lot of good memories there.

In all the doomsday scenarios I've heard, I never thought about where do 1.4 million people go when their homes are destroyed? Well, 100,000 take up residence in the next biggest city, which happens to be Baton Rouge.

Living a half mile from the interstate doesn't help either. They have people parking their cars in the middle of O'Neal Lane to get something at the Burger King. Guess the rest of us in cars have nothing better to do than wait on someone getting a burger. Gas lines are blocks long and the Wal-Mart looks like a store in the former Soviet Union,--not much on the shelves. The kids are off for a week, and they're talking about putting all the displaced kids from New Orleans into our school system. It was already overcrowded and in bad shape.

I work downtown, and they're housing 5,000 refugees at the Centroplex. Since last night the Chevron and Frost Top were robbed and today there was a carjacking at the courthouse and someone got shot. New Orleans had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. My building is currently in a lockdown where no non-state employees are allowed in the building. I guess Katrina will spread the wealth.

My friend Barry's nephew brought his boat down to the flooded area to pull people from the rooftops. He came across one group asking if they had a camera in the boat. They decided to wait on the boat with the camera crew to come by so they'd be on TV. They had been on the rooftop for two days. Glad to see someone has their priorities.
---

Hopefully I'll be getting back to trivial movie stuff soon. But right now my heart just isn't in it.