Happy Hurricane Season!

"I am El Niño! All other tropical storms must bow before El Niño! Yo soy El Niño! And for those you don't habla español, El Nino is spanish for... The Niño!" -- Chris Farley, a.k.a. professional wrestler El Niño

Yeah, the quote's not really about hurricanes. So, sue me! Chris Farley was one funny guy. I miss his physical comedy, but if there is anyone that could supersede him, it's this guy, and this movie may very well be the movie. Be looking for it.

Anyway... Phew! I'm back! Thank you, ladies, for rescuing me from the "forever on and off ramps of Houston". I like that. It makes it sound like the Twilight Zone or something. Whereas in the tale of the hitchhiker the protagonist is menaced by just that eponymous stranger while she is on a cross-country roadtrip, I, on the other hand, sit at a standstill in unholy traffic jams, all the while being repeatedly lapped by the same old lady with a walker! Aaaahhhh!!!

You might be interested to know that I'm pondering a move closer to the heart of the city, closer to my job, and just in time for hurricane season, no less. I may flinch at category 5's, but I'm terrified of that old lady with the walker. And I don't want to commute anymore. But, in case you were not privy to the details of last year's faux-hurricane evacuation, you should know that I may be shooting myself in the foot.

Last year, not long after hurricane Katrina "swept down like an angel of God" (Adaptation., 2002), hurricane Rita puttered into town with her no-account, hung-over self all droopy-eyed and used up from lack of self-respect and too many one-night stands. She'd blown her wad on the way in from the Gulf, been downgraded to a category 3, and had veered to the right at the last second. Poor, undeserving southeast Texas became her primary target, and it was there that she was at her fiercest. (Some of my family rode out the brunt of the storm from there.)

Unfortunately, she failed to veer right before she inadvertently tipped off one of the biggest mass exoduses in American history. God, was it horrendous. I did partake in it, against my will, and I can tell you that humanity was threadbare in those desperate hours.

I will go into more detail in a moment but, first... the point! I have lived on the northside of Houston as a pseudo-suburbanite for quite some time. I have sneered at the city to our south, cast aspersions, farted in her general direction. Now, dare I venture into its congested heart to live among the philistines? ...Why not!? :)

Nevertheless, during Rita (and all subsequent hurricanes, I'll wager), northside equaled good. Why? Less distance to travel to get to higher ground, or in an every-man-for-himself type state of emergency such as that one, less people to wade through. You see, the freeways became "slaveways" where progress was measured in inches. Travel was only further stymied by the multitude of poor bastards literally running out of gas at ever turn.

Hurricane Rita may have only blown out a few windows around Houston, but it blew holes in any supposed evacuation strategy this city allegedly had. And had Rita hit us full on, I don't want to think about how catastrophic it could have been.

I like to think that the good will out, so to speak, but one wonders, when things get dicey, when might that other shoe fall. Like I said, humanity was threadbare out there.

Traveling on my own personal, hellacious voyage out, I saw many unsettling sights illuminating the cracks in civilization. Notably, I witnessed ambulances and EMTs ferrying defibrillators to elderly and infirmed passengers who were no doubt distraught near death at the prospect and helplessness of being stranded in a sea of humanity while a potential natural disaster bore down on them.

There was one guy, foolhardy and adventurous as he might have been for trying to carve his own road out of our collective predicament -- he was busy having to single-handedly attempt to free his car from where it had bottomed out and become lodged on a small, muddy rise in the ground. He had failed to make it through a ditch while trying to get to some alternate route and had subsequently gotten himself hopeless stuck there. And everyone else just rolled on by.

I was able to get a glimpse of a rarity when the powers that be opened up the southbound lanes of Highway 45 to northbound traffic. Sitting in gridlock in the true northbound lanes, I was able to run the full gamut of emotions from dejected at not being one of the lucky ones streaming comfortably northward to joy that at least some people were spared from our plight to despair from, at length, seeing the southbound lanes suffer the same fate as ours as they finally ground to a halt.

In the Woodlands, just north of Houston, I witnessed parents and their children who, for want of fuel, were lounging idly in the ditches alongside their once-proud vehicles, as if waiting for Woodstock to come to town, not the Apocalypse.

Yet, the dread I felt at what might happen to these unfortunate souls, what might set off the powder keg that this situation was, seemed all for naught. Where was the panic? Why weren't they running riot and bum-rushing the halting progress the rest of us were making. They could have demanded gas, pleaded for safe passage, stolen our hubcaps? But they didn't.

Maybe panic mode seemed a more appropriate modus operandi than the incongruous serenity we found ourselves in the midst of. Even anger might have seemed plausible -- maybe not justified, but plausible if only for those looking for someone to blame. No, if uncertainty was the order of the day, most people seemed prepared to swallow it whole. And the only thing that was apparent in their seemingly passive acceptance of the situation was a strange sort of serenity, an inexplicable calm.

We made it to our destination... barely. How many people can say they've been inside a trailer, syphoning gasoline out of a motorcycle with a turkey baster at 2 a.m. while a parent stood watch with a handgun?!

Yeah, I saw a heck of a lot during that ordeal, but no hitchhikers. Hmm, I wonder why that could be? :p

It was a grand adventure I'd like to never repeat. So, at last, we come to it. By moving closer to that roiling, unpredictable Gulf of Mexico, even just twenty minutes closer, seems like tempting my luck. All I can say under the circumstances is "Happy Hurricane Season!" One more go-round.

To sum it all up, the Coen brothers probably said it best in their classic Blood Simple:

"The world is full of complainers. But the fact is, nothing comes with a guarantee. I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States, or even Man of the Year -- something can always go wrong. And go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help--watch him fly. Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else -- that's the theory anyway. But what I know about is Texas... And down here... you're on your own." -- M. Emmet Walsh