The Wall Street Journal calls this “the neatest thing you’ll see all day,” and since the Saints game is still an hour away, the WSJ may be right. Director Chris Milk teamed up with Google and Arcade Fire to produce a music video that personalizes itself for each watcher:

“The Wilderness Downtown,” which Google calls a “musical experience made specifically for the browser,” is set to Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait” and takes the viewer on a journey focused on a location from childhood — provided that the user enters the address and Google Street View covers it.

Close out all your other programs (this thing will take all your computer’s processing power), go to the site, enter the address of the house where you grew up — and watch the windows start to sprout. Play with the mouse and watch the birds fly over your old backyard, or just sit back and experience the slightly eerie feeling of seeing your street injected (almost) seamlessly in videos that emerge and shrink on your computer screen.

These weekly posts are intended as an episode-by-episode guide to the many psychological ailments, drunken gibberish, senseless actions, Bourbon Street mixed drinks and other embarrassments on MTV’s The Real World: New Orleans.

It contains spoilers — and who cares? You stopped watching this show several years ago — but also a lot of information that might help viewers of the series come to terms with their outrage over the cast’s cultural vandalism of New Orleans (and what was once a really lovely Uptown house), and also the bleak, black future of our society.

The emotional trauma caused by the show admittedly makes such coverage an overwhelming task, so posts may be supplemented by information culled from Wikipedia, WebMD and un-scientific polls of nearby Gambit staffers. Readers are also encouraged to submit any comments that may help us make sense of this wreckage.

When you’re living in a house occupied by feral creatures with names like “Jemmye” and, somehow, you manage to distinguish yourself as the most insane, uncivilized and flatulent one of them all, the only thing left to do is leave. So like Puck and some other people from other seasons, Ryan joins the list of Real World cast members who were called back to God before their time. Let us remember Ryan, the hairdresser with a heart of gold (and also many mental disorders).

Brother and Cousin. Just when you thought the life of Ryan couldn’t be more of a cartoon, we meet his brother and cousin — who are apparently named Brother and Cousin (this is probably because they didn’t want their names on TV, but I desperately want to believe that “Brother” and “Cousin” are their Christian names so just let me tell myself that, OK? Please let me believe that). Eric, who I guess talks now, described the three as “the Three Stooges meets All-American Rejects,” and that’s kind of perfect. Other fitting descriptions: a group of cavemen that just discovered Fall Out Boy, PacSun employees who send VHS tapes of themselves jumping off buildings to Jackass even though it doesn’t air anymore, or, just Ryan and two brown-haired versions of Ryan. When they’re around each other, they communicate only in grunts and farts.

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Pre-game festivities for the NFL season opener between the Saints and the Minnesota Vikings (7:30 p.m. Thur., Sept 9) include a Mardi Gras-style parade (with floats by Blaine Kern Studios) through the French Quarter and music by the Dave Matthews Band and Taylor Swift. The Krewe of NFL parade route starts at Esplanade and North Peters Street, proceeds along North Peters, merging on to Decatur and then back to North Peters, and then it feeds on to Tchoupitoulas Street and ends at Julia Street. The concert is at Jackson Square and the stage will be on the river side of Decatur Street facing the square. The parade however, is not a parade between Dumaine and Toulouse streets, says NOPD. For those blocks, it’s an event being orchestrated by NBC for its pregame broadcast (6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.). The staging is expected to intersperse songs, floats passing by the Jackson Square on-camera set and segments with Bob Costas. People who wish to be close to the stage can apply for tickets to be in the “casted audience.” An NFL spokesperson and the ticket website say tickets are first come, first serve. Also, access to Jackson Square will be restricted to ticket holders.

Three years ago, filmmaker Spike Lee and CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien gave video cameras to several New Orleans teens to document their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Brandon Franklin, saxophonist for To Be Continued Brass Band, was one of those children. (2:38 mark) He survived the floodwaters and went on to become a young father and a beloved and widely respected musician and teacher. He was gunned down on Mother’s Day this year at the age of 22.

Although TBC has been one of my favorite brass bands for years, I didn’t know Brandon very well and had only hung out with him a few times in the weeks just prior to his death. Yet writing an article about the loss of this young man has been one of the most difficult assignments I’ve ever faced, harder in some ways even than reporting from Ground Zero after Hurricane Katrina. Before the levee breaches, folks in New Orleans joked after every storm, somewhat morbidly, about how we dodged a bullet, ‘The Big One’ that would surely one day hit and fill our bowl-shaped city with water. Five years after surviving a near fatal wound we, the ‘resilient’ ones, have finally turned a corner in the recovery of our city. But we’re also still dodging bullets that threaten to take out what we’ve fought so vigilantly these last five years to save - a future for New Orleans. We all must commit ourselves to addressing this threat if we’re truly going to redeem this city. Brandon’s story serves as a testimony to what’s worth saving in New Orleans and a portending of darker days should we fail to heed its warning.

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8:30-11:30am: ‘Bravery, Strength, Resilience’
Memorial Celebration Will begin at The Lower Nine Monument, Tennessee St. at N. Claiborne.  United States Congresswoman Maxine Waters to serve as keynote speaker.

10:00am-6:00pm: 5th Annual Katrina Commemoration March
Healing Ceremony located at Jourdan Road and North Galvez at the levee breach in the Lower 9th Ward. March starts immediately after reading of names, going down Claiborne Ave ending at Hunter’s Field (St. Bernard Ave. at Claiborne Ave).

* video courtesy of Lisa Palumbo