Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: December 2008 Archives

So we wandered around a bit here in the New Orleans during the annual Waring family  Thanksgiving mass gorging extravaganza. Some areas are popping back, some aren't. And there's weird little pockets here and there where a whole neighborhood has been revitalized except for one business or house. Our favorite was a Church's Fired Chicken emporium just before a freeway on-ramp that we passed almost everyday. The outlet was boarded up and obviously had been since the hurricane. But the sign out front was still there (not quite sure how it survived the hurricane). And it obviously had never been changed since the big blow although a couple of letters had been lost. The message just tickled us a bit.

ET SPICY CHICKEN FOR THE SAM LOW PRICE

I don't know, but I think this says a lot about New Orleans. What exactly, I can't tell you but I think that's part of the charm.

While wandering hitther and yon about the steaming remains of the late, great city of New Orleans we happened upon a number of billboards advertising Carnival Cruise Lines. The billboards were basically a single non-word: "Swankified" and the name of the cruise line.

This type of advertising is, I think, amusingly questionable on a number of different levels. First - they're doing this all over New Orleans. Now, the Crescent City has laboriously drug itself back to some degree from Katrina but there is still a  lot of work to do and I find it hard to believe that there is that many people aching for a sea voyage and with the available cash to be able to do so right now.

Second, what does swankified really mean? Now Carnival is what it is, they're a cruise ship company that caters to the lower end of the market. They're not fancy. So does swankified mean, the lower end of classy? And what is with advertisers and their adding the suffix of 'ified' to everything. Do they think it brings the ever so elusive cool? Is Swankified cooler than just swanky? And continuing on to the most illogical conclusions, I don't think that the cooler version of classy is classified, nor is fancy jazzed up when we use fancified. But that's just me. At the end of the day, Carnival is still renowned for its booze cruises and not for fine wine tastings and string quartet recitals. Instead, from checking out their website, they now have Putteriffic Mini-Golf! I think we'll just leave things be from this point.