Chris Rose saved the city’s soul, and it very nearly cost him his life. After Katrina, the now-former Times-Picayune columnist’s words, quite literally, kept people sane, safe, and connected – when their tenuous ties to their city and their dissolved realities were frayed to the barest existence. In the process, he published a New York Times best-selling book, won a Pulitzer prize, and then fell—plunged—from that high grace, pressure-cooker pinnacle to a fragile subsistence, after depression, addiction, and the deaths of loved ones (and the near-death of mainstream journalism) took their toll. Now healthier and still brilliant and biting, tthere may be no one more qualified to tell the story of New Orleans. In his latest incarnation as a licensed tour guide, he’s doing just that. Don’t expect a soul-searing exposé, though. Do expect a raucous, booze-spiked, F-bomb-laced bombast, told from an erudite, insider’s perspective with pathos, attitude, irony, wit and song. It’s a wild, fun ride.