The Joke Is on Katrina

Most customers walk into the Old Coffee Pot restaurant in the French Quarter, read the menu and burst out laughing.

The restaurant on cobblestoned St. Peter Street has served up platters of sweet lost bread and savory jambalaya for more than a century. After Hurricane Katrina, the staff added an entree: “M.R.E.: A hurricane Katrina favorite. Please order early. FEMA needs 4-7 days to ship. $782.90.”

Each time waiter Guy Wenson is asked about it, he stares at the customer and, with a twinkle in his blue eyes, replies, “For an extra $10, I’ll peel back the wrapping and ‘prepare’ it for you at your tableside.”

It’s a cute one-liner, worth a smile and a wink.

Here, the gag has diners bursting into breath-stealing giggles.

In a city that mourns its dead with cheerful brass bands, where the Catholic cycle of Lenten penitence is ushered in with a drunken party, laughter has always been a part of life. Now, as a culture of gallows humor grows among storm survivors, residents are turning their misery into a punch line.

The gibes -- sometimes grim, often silly -- can be found everywhere.

Shops are selling out of refrigerator magnets in the shape of maggots, a nod to the insects that infested kitchens after Katrina. Drivers slap on bumper stickers proclaiming, “New Orleans: Proud to Swim Home.” Residents smirk over T-shirts that read, “I Survived Katrina and All I Have Is This Shirt ... Really.”

New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo has outfitted its alligator exhibit with a mock swamp house, complete with a duct-tape-covered refrigerator, a box of military-issued Meals Ready to Eat, and a search-and-rescue sign that reads “8 Gators -- fed.” (Most houses in the city still carry markings of the block-by-block rescue effort, including neon-colored messages spray-painted on roofs and doors that stated what animals were found and whether they had been fed.)

Comedy clubs throughout the Gulf Coast say business is growing. Before the storm, comedians tested their material each Wednesday night at Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar and Restaurant in the city’s warehouse district to a handful of patrons.

Now, a crowd of 40 is considered a slow night.

“You have to laugh, or you’ll commit suicide,” said co-host Bill Dykes, who runs stand-up events at different clubs here. “People are hungry for jokes.”

It doesn’t surprise comedian Dane Faucheux that an audience would howl even over jokes that simply play on words. After spending months living out of a suitcase, in a place without reliable power or phone service, many people long to giggle at someone else’s harsh reality -- as well as their own.

On a recent Wednesday night at Lucy’s, Faucheux stepped onto a plywood stage. He scanned the crowd inside the smoky downtown bar, calmly gauging the mood in the candle-lit room.

It was a motley crew, a cross section of those who refused to leave after Katrina, and those who arrived because of it. A building contractor slumped over his beer at one table. Nearby, a frazzled-looking emergency room nurse, weary from working back-to-back shifts, sat next to a couple of bartenders.

Taking a deep breath, Faucheux, 27, launched into his shtick.

“So, I lost my apartment in the storm,” he said. “I found it two streets away.”

Gales of laughter and applause fill the room. Several people nodded their head in wry understanding. One woman shouted, “Me too!”

“I’m so glad my pain can make you laugh,” Faucheux deadpanned. “You’re all sick. Thank you very much.”

“Chasing after Moses, the Pharaoh came to the shore of the parted Red Sea, cast his eyes toward the heavens and asked God, ‘Lord, may we also cross?’ God replied, ‘Sure, Pharaoh. I don’t see why not. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers swears the walls are secure and it won’t flood.’ ”

-- Joke told by engineers in New Orleans

Before Katrina hit, killing more than 1,000 people in the region and driving away more than two-thirds of New Orleans residents, the city was a tough place for comics. There were few venues for stand-up comics to hone their craft. After all, they said, how can anyone compete against the antics on Bourbon Street, or the storytelling traditions of the South?

“People here are just funny unconsciously,” said stand-up comic Mike Strecker, whose day job is director of public relations at Tulane University. “The precariousness of our living situation -- where the threat of hurricanes and flooding has always been there in the background -- inspires a comic view of life. We laugh loud and live large. It’s normal here.”

This steamy Mississippi River port city -- which has survived slavery, piracy, Civil War and racial rioting -- has routinely turned misery and decay into something artistic, beautiful or amusing. The music of slaves metamorphosed into jazz in the bordellos of Basin Street, while murky swampland gave birth to ornate cemeteries. The Mardi Gras parades have long been a chance for groups to mock local politics.

“New Orleans has an ‘embrace life’ culture,” said Dr. Janet E. Johnson, associate professor and director of medical student education at Tulane University.

The loss, the pain and exhaustion from the storm were overwhelming, Johnson said. People cried and raged, became depressed and grasped for solace.

As months passed, residents were able to slowly gain perspective on the cataclysmic event, she said. Ineffectiveness of state and federal lawmakers, the failings of the emergency responders, and the snail-paced improvement of city services seemed so absurd that people began processing the pain by embracing the ridiculous.

“Humor is considered a mature defense mechanism,” Johnson said. “When there’s not a lot funny or pleasant around you -- when things are so bad, they’re absurd -- it’s healthy to see something funny about it.”

“I just got back from Vegas. You’d think the people in Las Vegas would be different than us here in New Orleans, but they’re not.

They’re all walking around saying, ‘I

lost everything. I

lost the car. I lost the house ...’ ”

-- Comic Jodi Borrello, performing in front of shipyard workers

The storm scattered the pieces of Borrello’s life -- parents, friends, comedy gigs, a family court-reporting business -- like confetti in the breeze. The 36-year-old single mom and her 11-year-old daughter, Jessie, fled with a pair of flip-flops each, two dogs and three clean T-shirts. The two landed at a relative’s home in Opelousas, La., where they slept on beanbag chairs.

It was hard to lose the white-shingled shotgun house with a porch swing, where Borrello would sit and watch Jessie play hopscotch on the sidewalk. Their home was flooded with 4 1/2 feet of water, and all Borrello could salvage were random objects -- a painting, two boxes of photographs and Jessie’s collection of small porcelain dolls.

Their Mid-City neighborhood was devastated. A man who lived across the street refused to flee. He died before rescue workers could save him. Borrello’s next-door neighbor, a landscaper in his mid-40s, also stayed. As Borrello was leaving, he showed her that he’d pulled a canoe into his living room, just in case. The pair laughed at the idea of parking a boat next to a couch.

He later used it to paddle to safety, and to pick up other people stranded by the storm.

“I found myself crying 12, 13 times a day,” Borrello said. “I had people telling me I had to focus on comedy or I’d be living on antidepressants.”

Weeks passed before her business partner called with offers from people begging her to come perform.

She did a gig for first responders and National Guard troops in Metairie, cracked jokes for rescue workers in Chalmette and reeled off one-liners for police officers housed on a cruise ship on the Mississippi River.

Some people laughed so hard, they cried.

“FEMA says beads are on their way.”

-- Sign posted on a float in the Krewe du Vieux Mardi Gras parade

Some national crises are too serious or tragic for most people to ever find amusing, even years after they’ve occurred, said psychologist Ed Dunkelblau, past president of the Assn. for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, which supports research into the use of humor as therapy.

“There are very few jokes even today about the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombing,” Dunkelblau said.

Even in New Orleans, there are limits. Laughing at the dead is a no-no. Cracks about the Superdome or the chaos at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center are frowned upon.

Some comics, including Borrello, have changed the punch lines of their favorite material to respect such boundaries. “I used to always say, ‘What comes after a Category 5 hurricane? Heaven,’ ” Borrello said. “I can’t say that. It cuts too close.”

Now, the gag goes like this: “What comes after a Category 5 hurricane? The government. Very slowly.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is fair game, as are local politicians, insurance adjusters and anything to do with blue tarps. So are survivors who used their FEMA checks to buy luxuries. One popular shirt reads: “I Stayed in New Orleans for Katrina and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, a New Cadillac and a Plasma TV.” Another takes a poke at the New Orleans Police Department: “NOPD: Not Our Problem Dude.”

“People won’t make fun of the New York Police Department because they were heroes during 9/11. Some of our cops looted Wal-Mart,” said Dykes, the stand-up act organizer. “If you can’t make fun of that, you’ll just get angry.”

“Being an evacuee changes every aspect of your life, doesn’t it? It changes your dating life, I can tell you that much. I’m in Houston and I’m talking to this woman, and things are going pretty well. I said, ‘You want to go back to my place?’ She said, ‘Sure, I’d love to.’ I said, ‘Yeah, so would I.’ ”

-- Comic Strecker, performing at Lucy’s

At the Old Coffee Pot, the MRE gag was written into the restaurant’s menu as an insiders’ joke. It was meant to be a nudge and a wink for the few customers and skeleton crew who, like Wenson, had remained in the city during the storm.

The majority of the restaurant’s staff had fled; only seven of its 44 workers have had either the financial means -- or a home -- that allowed them to come back.

Gloria Esther, a 43-year-old Mid-City resident who returned home in mid-February, sipped her beer at a side table one night. She’d lost all but two suitcases of clothes and a few black-and-white photographs from her parents’ wedding.

Wenson, 50, took her order. When Esther asked about the MRE entree, Wenson delivered his routine one-liner.

“You know, my brother’s in the military, and he’s used those things to make peach cobbler and peanut butter cups,” Esther said.

“I’ll get right on learning that recipe,” Wenson replied dryly. “How about I get you some bread pudding instead?”

With a broad grin, Esther nodded and handed back the menu.