Katrina coverage

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday. You know, for whatever reason it didn't really click with me just how bad things were in New Orleans until sometime on Thursday. Partly because I really don't watch much of anything besides sports on television; partly because I work from home so it isn't like I'm listening to what people are buzzing about in an office.

Either way, once it fully sunk in, I spent most of the afternoon Friday watching the news channels before I had to work.

I remember the image of a middle-age daughter watching her elderly mother with Alzheimer's slowly die on a cot outside the Superdome. And a nurse talking about how many heart attacks and asthma attacks were going untreated due to lack of supplies and how many children born within the week were malnourished because they ran out of supplies.

That a situation like this could happen in the United States is absolutely, completely unforgivable. Heads should roll for this.

I also remember, I think it was CNN, a host interviewing an oil industry expert of some sort. In West Seattle, the two gas stations on the corner where Alaska meets Fauntleroy went up 20 cents overnight despite the fact the Northwest gets exactly zero percent of its gas from Gulf Coast refineries. The host asked why the price went up and the expert mumbled something about oil futures. Then the host asked more specifically, if a gas station has gas delivered to its well on Saturday, and the storm hits on Sunday, does that gas sitting that has been sitting in the well cost the establishment any more money than it did on Saturday, and he hemmed and hawed and finally said "no." I give the guy credit for not flat-out lying, at least. It's been pretty encouraging watching TV and seeing reporters actually challenge politicians and analysts on their bulls-- for once.

*Anyway, that's about as much seriousness as I can handle for one day. It's Saturday morning. CMLL wrestling is on. Last week was just a star-studded affair -- for one, there was four hours of wrestling on instead of two. For another, we have a brand new CMLL champion, as Ultimo Guerrero rallied from one fall down to take the last two falls and defeat L.A. Park and win the belt. L.A. Park used to be called La Parka in WCW, but lost some sort of copyright lawsuit in Mexico with his former promoter and changed his name to L.A. Park, even though he still wears the exact same costume, which is a basically human skeletal system, including a skull for a mask. I'm serious. For the entire show this morning, they've been pushing the main event of the CMLL tag team title match with veterans Atlantis and Blue Panther (yes, Blue Panther, in English, not Pantera Azul) defending against young punks Averno and Mephisto. Now, two weeks ago, Atlantis injured himself doing a headfirst dive outside the ring -- they showed the slo-mo over and over again and even used a telestrator so you could see for damn sure he hit the floor head-and-neck first -- so it would seem the champs are at a disadvantage.

(Late edit -- brand-new tag teams champions in Averno and Mephisto. This has been a momentus couple weeks in Mexican wrestling.)

*First Saturday of college football. The one thing I never got used to living on the West Coast is football in the morning. Baseball at 4 pm instead of 7 is no problem, but 9 a.m. is just too early for football. I'm also that one guy who will watch a game like, say, Holy Cross and Lehigh on Comcast 8, but there's no equivalent on DirecTV that I've discovered yet. … OK, flipping through the channels, wow, they really didn't think through those new helmets at Wisconsin, did they? You've GOT to see these things. They are so low-budget looking. It looks like someone taped a W on the front and back with duct tape. … And hey, whaddyaknow? Rutgers' 27-7 lead over Illinois is gone and it is now 27-27.

(Late edit -- Rutgers lost in overtime. You surprised?)

*Back tomorrow with a new Dispatches from Iraq piece.