Saturday, July 12, 2008

The Way that Jazz Go Down in New Orleans

The Way That Jazz Goes Down
I’ve come to believe that memory inhibits creativity and spontaneity. I kind of know this from experience; at least I think that I do.
For example, decades ago, a younger me, down on my luck, took a temp job as a dishwasher. I was sent to a club to bust suds.
There I was, up to my elbows in plate scraps, bemoaning my fate, when through the kitchen wall (adjacent to the audience) came the sounds of a gifted jazz artist and… viola, I had an epiphany. I was there, yes I was, (or at that time I was here, the lines kind of get fuzzy). And I was actually being paid to listen to one of the all time great performers of my time!
I remember this, and I remember Ahmad Jamal coming into the kitchen to scam a bite and me feeling special and a part of it all. I remember it like it was yesterday.
From that moment forward, I became a musiholic. I ate, slept, woke, dreamt, and lived music. No artist was too obscure, no venue was out of bounds, no form was ignored, no rolling stone was unturned, and I even put a full Nelson on Willie.
I started to, and still do, listen to Dylan and Dvorjak, The Beatles and Beethoven, Tom Waits, Aretha Franklin, Doctor John, Otis Redding, Neil Young, B.B. King, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson, Clyde McFadder, Eric Satie, Bessie Smith, Peggy Lee, Marvin Gaye, Nat Cole, Elvis, The Dixie Cups, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Vladimir Horowitz, Mendelssohn, Santana, Brubeck and a thousand other artists that you can but hope in your dreams to appreciate.
Listen up! I was actually paid to tend bar and see Miles Davis perform, not once but a half a dozen times (at least)! Top that!
But, I also recall Jazz Fest being twelve dollars, phone calls being a nickel, bus rides being a quarter and my pay being not much more than it is today.
Where does that leave me? I’ll tell you. In a quandary and quagmire. Am I still gonna try my damnedest to get as much time off from work to blow my hard earned to be out there at the Fair Grounds to cram more music into my already overloaded skull? You bet your sweet ass I am!
Do I understand why thirty five years of profit can’t be accounted for so that prices go up, tickets become more inconvenient to procure and Mother Nature more unpredictable, for the privilege of seeing performances by legends of the music world and be actually there when they do their thing? Yep.
Every year I make whatever sacrifice it takes to be there or be square. Sure, there are forces at work beyond my control or understanding that put on the greatest show on earth; but I’ve got to be there! My life, my soul and my heart beats to the sounds of Johnny Vadokovitz (SP) on drums at the Jazz tent. The Dixie Cups and The Dixie Chicks melt my shorts and to be in the Gospel Tent is truly a religious experience. And I’ve got to be in the audience! This year, as in all previous, The New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival will not be televised …Jazz Fest is LIVE!
My policy is to get tickets and worm my way into as many and any hours that I can squeeze in, I pour over programs and maps, make the necessary strategic plans to see my favored performers and then upon arrival scap it all and go where the sounds take me. And I travel light, fast and able. There’s gut in my strut, glide in my stride and no shame in my game.
Okay, I hate the car lot in the space where a stage should be, I don’t understand why the beer doesn’t give me a buzz or how come this year they’re going to build bleachers for high rollers to get a better view than us shmucks on ground level. I don’t know why thirty something’s carry poles with flags and travel in packs. I wonder why folks buy tickets and then claim real estate with blankets, folding chairs and tarps and treat you like a trespasser and interloper should you tread on their sacred ground. I also can’t fathom why people carry so much gear with them, like chairs and backpacks and jungle fashion. And you know what? I don’t care.
In my own warped mind, I don’t think that they really get it. This is not Survivor Twelve, it’s the friggin’ Jazz Fest!
Dig this; a few years ago my step was losing its pep, my ocean was losing its motion…my get up and go was getting’ up and goin’. So I spy this rain tent, you know, one of those misting places that you stumble upon and can never find again?
So I go in out of the din and the glare and all of a sudden it gets quiet; I mean real quiet. The fine mist of cool jetted water is not quite wetting me as much as it is centering me. I can hardly make out the shapes of people around me but I’m sensing that there are them and we’re headed in the direction of this light at the end of the tunnel, if you will.
Nobody’s in a hurry, so naturally I’m not either (you know, go with the flow..?)
So, I’m cruisin’ thinking everything’s cool and this light is getting brighter, all of a sudden I can see the forms in front of me and we’re headed for this opening and we get closer and closer and it starts to open up……SHAZAM!!
The sounds of people having a great time, music all around us, the sun is shining and I smell food cooking. My body temperature welcomes the Sun’s rays and I believe, yes I do, that I have just gone to heaven!
Every year I start my Festin’ with a dozen raw oysters and the hoisting of a beer to my loved ones who’ve passed on or merely passed on by and hope that their heaven is at least as good a time as mine will be; and like I said: be there or be square. See you at the Fair.

New Orleans Pagan Buddhists

Kumi Maitreya was an avatar and the last incarnation of the Buddha. If you believe it, it is so.
If you are not aware of whom Kumi was, you are not aware of a slice of New Orleans history that most grownups wish you to ignore. I say that because it was the grownups that had the most trouble with the Maitreyans. Then as now, grownups rule the world.
Incidentally, my spell check just wanted me to change Maitreyans to Martians, truly I have a grown up spell check.
Anyway, Kumi Maitreya was an ordinary Moss St. housewife here, named Geraldine Hooper, when somehow she achieved a state of spiritual enlightenment. Believe what you will; but, she formed a tribe of young followers from the fringes of society that for a time was in charge of the French Quarter. She could, and did, look within people’s souls and tell them the sound of their vibration and give it back to them as their one true name. Names like Ravi, Eldra, Elfren, Amzie, Angelica, Kutami, Dorje (yours truly), and Abraxsas.
She taught that since the Universe was infinite, everywhere (including ourselves) was, in fact, The Center of the Universe. And where exactly would God live? Exactly, in The Center of the Universe, which meant that God lived inside of all of us. Taking that thought a little further, we come to the conclusion that our bodies are temples, we are all ministers and our homes are churches. This latter conclusion had something to do with the law not being able to bust churches just because our ‘sacrament’ was a substance that was illegal in the grownup world (namely, LSD). It all made sense to me.
And so for a time, The French Quarter streets rang with the sounds of “OIA!” (pronounced OH EE AH!!) which is the sound of a positive vibration; and, the symbol of the Cardinal Cross was seen everywhere.
Kumi also taught us that war was wrong, that the Government was in fact our servants and that each of us should have an altar in our living spaces. That still makes sense to me. There was also a lot of drumming and dancing, if I recall correctly.
I have, and have had, altars at the many places that I have called home, call it a hangover from the old days. My altar is the last thing I look at before entering the asylum (the outside world) and my altar greets me when I am successfully able to make it back home from the outside world (where the crazy people live).
My altar is two and a half feet wide and goes up to a nine foot ceiling, it consists of seven levels, each level full is of holy (as I see them) articles.
On the top level is a portrait of Saint Expedite by local artist Shmeula that I bought at Grace Note, a small but perfect shop at nine hundred Royal St. The portrait depicts an aura-ed African American male with the caption “Please Help Us Immediately!”
According to legend (which as we know is not fact) St. Expedite is a New Orleans saint. It seems that we were having trouble, in the early days, getting statuary in from Europe to our fast growing number of churches being built here. Someone over there stamped one of the crates EXPEDITE, and when it was opened here, they naturally thought that it was the name of the saint. The statue is in the Our Lady Of Guadalupe Church on Rampart and Conti Street, which also houses the Shrine Of St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes).
Also on my altar are many pictures of various saints, the fender of a bike once stolen from me, three Mexican kewpie dolls named Lupe, Rosa and Pilar, silver quarters, a figurine of Batman that I found face down on Bourbon Street, dollar bills that I have made wishes on and a book titled ‘The Making Of Black Revolutionaries’ by James Forman.
There’s also a rubber snake, a sheet of stamps with the face of Audrey Hepburn on them, a photo of my dog Trudy who died, a box of marionette clown heads and a full nativity scene using everything but holy statuettes. A bottle with holy water in it (plucked from the trash), a ceramic Mayan god, tarot cards, The Book of Runes and a video made by the Dali Lama.
A Zippo lighter, a pocketknife, candles, incense, joss paper, alcohol, hot pepper sauce, photos of friends and the obituary of a close working companion. A SouthEast Asian broom, a bingo card, a head of garlic, rosaries and crucifixes. I’ve got a bottle of Holt’s Chill Tonic, the eyes of Buddha, playing cards, alligators, elephants, sea shells, safety pins, a Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle opener and a PBR tap pull. There’s also a hula dancer, some ververte weed, an empty bottle of cologne that my daughter gave me at fourteen that I saved the last of it until she married this year at twenty seven and a bear shaped container with about an inch of golden syrup that I greet each day upon reentering (“hi honey, I’m home!”). Am I superstitious? I don’t think so, a little excessive maybe, but not superstitious (did I mention the voodoo doll?).
Maitreyans believe that freedom and joy are essential components of daily life and that it is important to live a perfect life right now, not some time in the future. So what became of the Maitreyans? Well, you may call it the struggle of good against evil and you might say that, as Maitreyans, we got our asses kicked.
What remains of the Maitreyans, I don’t know. I’ve only connected with a handful in the last five or six years. I guess they’re out there somewhere. Kumi has gone on to whatever she was meant to do in her next life (if she didn’t make it to nirvana). And I sit at a keyboard wondering how I spent that many years high on life and why we couldn’t make more of a go of it. I guess once you’ve created that many centers of the Universe; it would be hard to get them to stick together. OIA!

Voting Thoughts From New Orleans

In my youth I was told that I could grow up to be President and furthermore, that I could petition the Lord with prayer. Thus far, all evidence that those are true statements are to the contrary.
On a 1975 album by the Tubes, a tune called ‘What do you want from life?’ promised me that as an American citizen I was entitled to, among other things, a heated kidney shaped pool, a Gucci shoe tree, Bob Dylan’s new unlisted phone number, Rosemary’s baby, a foolproof plan, an airtight alibi and a statue of a baby’s arm holding an apple.
According to recent emails, I also deserve lower body fat, higher energy levels, wrinkle reduction, sexual potency, better memory, muscle strength and lower mortgage interest rates. Also, at my request, I can have human growth hormones, relaxers, sedatives, university degrees, viagra, lower credit interest rates, and the ability to investigate any of my friends.
Add to that, I can get Heather’s (and her pre-pubescent friends) web cam shots, the websites of young Russian and Japanese women that are just frothing at the mouth to wed me, Paris Hilton’s xxxx video (with sound), breast enhancement, a gargantuan penis and staying power; and honey, I CAN BE COMPLETE!!!
What went wrong?
Me. I must have missed something growing up. This could be equated to our politics. I know that if I lived in a Democratic society I would have leaders that would do what I tell them is best for me. And, if I happened to vote Republican, I would get leaders that I could count on to do the best for me and that no one would tell me lies. This is simply not true. For leaders and example setters, I have charlatans.
Also, I’m told, as an American, I should be able to count on the media to tell me that there are limitations specific to my economic, physical and intelligence station, and not to jerk me off. This has also not been the case in my recent memory.
Is the media Republican or Democrat? Good question. By the above criteria the media is neither. The media is a Dictator. A dictator and, in essence, a vanity manipulator.
Don’t get me wrong; I have paid my buck at the kissing booths of life:
“Hate that gray? Wash it away!”, “Lose 20 lbs. in two weeks!”, “learn the love secrets of the stars’, “A cleaner closer shave”, “Good for coughs, colds, sore holes, puts hair on anything but a cue ball!, etc. etc. etc.”
Like a lot of Americans, I play the lottery, have lost my paycheck at black jack tables, bet my life on someone to love me for the rest of my life and read books on invisibility, physical immortality, gotten drunk on the elixir of patriotism and taken the Course in Miracles. So?
So, should I not be content with the words that my parents praised my birth with? “He’s got five fingers on each hand, he’s got ten toes and, thank God, he ain’t a moron!” I should be so flattered, I should think that. I don’t.
It seems to me that it’s become more important who it is that wins than what it is that’s right. I am suspicious that, as they say, ‘something is rotten in Denmark’, I smell it, I feel it, I know it. The world I live in demands that I should BE SOMEBODY, but it never tells me how to be that somebody; or whom that somebody is. I did not come with an owners manual; so, like a blind man in an unfamiliar space, I’ve been trying to feel my way through life.
I think that there are a lot of us lost Americans, the ones who didn’t become President, the ones whose prayers have not been answered, that may wonder these same things.
It’s as elusive as a fire fly, but as pervasive as planters warts. The rich get richer, the poor have children, the criminals take what they want, the mighty are felled to rise again and the downtrodden are snatched from the brink once again to be given one final flogging. Is this goodness being rewarded? Does God move in mysterious ways? Give me a break!
By all the evidence collected thus far, it’s not a reach to say that: some people get more than their fair share; not because they deserve it, but, by the fact that they’re willing to stick it to some smaller guy, the average Joe. Period. And there are more of us smaller guys than there are them, so go figure. Greed talks and the rest of us walks.
This is not a rant or a rave, but more of ‘I’m weary of folks telling us how fortunate we are instead of letting us in on the screwing that we’re taking. Dry, hard and up against a tree.
And I know that I should be grateful, yes downright grateful, and I remind myself constantly so, that it is a miracle that I am alive, six feet above ground and warm to the touch… BUT. I see people eating from garbage cans, I read about death in the daily papers, I know people who work abnormally hard just to stay financially afloat. I know people who will never get adequate health care, whose children will never be adequately educated and whose future (if not stopped by a bullet) will be to step into their parents miserable places unless we can find a way to break that cycle. Remember, these are also people that were told that they could be President, and not told that they would never be able to afford to visit the dentist regularly.
What do I want from life? I want what a lot of us Americans want: change for the better. The truth would be a start. And yes, I’m not as tall as I appear on film.

Proof of Life in New Orleans

The other night, The Weezel and I were snug as bugs between the cool sheets, half-dozing and idly chitting about the merits of sending Aunt Ethel flowers on the event of her one hundred and Third birthday. Weezel said that it might be a waste of money because of Ethel’s poor eyesight. We chatted about definitions of the words pragmatic, thrifty and cheap. I was just dozing off thinking that if Ethel had had her corneas rebuilt instead of that ‘female’ surgery last year…when I heard; “it’s not as if we didn’t have plenty when we was growin’ up; Cousin Bubba had a nursery and…”
“What?’
“Yeah we had plenty of flow…”
“No, not that: You actually have a cousin named Bubba?”
“Well yes, but he doesn’t like to be called that any more, fact is; I don’t even know how he even got that name, his name’s Andrew”.
I started to drift off again thinking about the nicknames around me in my youth and otherwise. I unearthed enough theory to write a thesis and it’s kept me up nights.
Nom de nique is from the Greek nicken, to nod or wink, and its present form is from the Old English: neke-name for eke-name. I believe it to be the bastard child of slang.
Slang is all around us and we hear and witness it every day in every culture; of course most of us wouldn’t recognize slang in many foreign languages, (I’m not gonna go there) but I’m sure it’s there. Slang is a shortcut through language. Who of us upon hearing thoughts like: ‘Drove it like he stole it’, ‘Hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut’, ‘Dumber than a box of rocks’, or ‘Pretty as a speckled pup on a red rug’ does not immediately pass go and collect two hundred dollars worth of visual? How about “All that meat and no potatoes?” “Think I can get fries with that shake?”
Indigenous Americans had slang and used it to name every thing around them, like Winnamucca, Minnesota, and ‘Tall Brave Who Eat Mushroom And Talk To Tree’. C’mon, where do you think Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse got their names? Fortune cookies?
Anyway, back to nicknames. In my definition nicknames are not forms of shortened names, such as Lori for Delores, Shelly for Michelle, Jim or Jimmy for James, or Stu for Stupid (add a descriptor word to them, like Jimmy Valentine, Flatfoot Jim, or Stupid Jerk-off and you’ve got something else going). I knew an Irish kid named Whitey; a Cuban named Blackey and a few Reds in my time. These are nicknames derived from physical attributes i.e. Lefty, PeeWee, Slow Eyed or Knobby. Again: Slim, Stubby, Twitch, Shorty, Gimp, and Thunder Thighs; these are all names that I can see and understand. My sister Alberta has always been called Bonnie, my sister Mary Joanne, Mickey, and kid sister Panagiota, Penny. Go figure.
I’ve seen nicknames in the media and music all my life: Scarface, Skinny Minnie, Flatfoot Floozy, Short Fat Fannie, Baby Face, Long Tall Sally, OO Poo Pa Do, and if you add descriptors you have Little Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton, Blind Lemon Johnson, Pretty Boy Floyd and Willie the dog faced boy.
There are also nicknames for temperaments: Shifty, Easy, Mellow, Hot, Feisty, Cuddly, Smooth and Asshole. And there are blanket nicknames that we give the world around us: Juicy, Betty, Case, Sweetie, Darlin’, Dude, Badass, Sly Fox, Bones, Elvis, Sugar Foot, Face, various canine terms and sometimes just plain ‘Sup baaaaby?’. There are also private nicknames that we use with loved ones like Sweet Cheeks, Sweet Darlin’, Sugar Tits and Honey Dripper.
There’s name names and there’s name games. Name games are like Sioux City Sue, Jake the Snake, Loose Lucy, Motorcycle Michael, Slammin’ Sammy Snead, Louie the Lump, Machine Gun Kelly, Billy the Kid, Easy Eddie, Broadway Phil, Sugar Ray, Dizzy, Duke and a boy named Sue.
Name names are when a person’s name is almost interchangeable with their nickname. The King, The Killer, The Songstress, The Iceman, The Chairman of the Board, the Godfather and the Queen of Soul. At work we have code names for management: The Preacher, Your Uncle, The Bulldog and Sparky (with all due respect) as well as for working areas: The Farm, Deuce Alley, The Gris Gris Room. I work with three Jennifers and names like Jen or Jenny are passe, instead they’re known as Jennifer/their last name or just ‘hot lips’.
Notice that very few if any movie stars use nicknames. They do use shortened names like Tom, Brad, Mel, Ben, Andy, Joe, Johnny but I think that’s to instill our confidence in them as people and mostly an affectation of male actors.
Also it almost seems obligatory to give a nickname in our TP obituary column (look for yourself, I ain’t getting sued).
We give names to our pets, for in essence, we can’t really know what their real names are; except, all dogs will go by the name of ‘Rover’, male cats can always be called ‘Tom’ and females will always answer to ‘Minnou’. ‘Old Nick was a term reserved for mules and who knows where they get the names for racehorses.
Point being, the Oxford English Dictionary took over seventy years to complete. It defines over a half a million words, and it is a work that can never be completed as long as any person speaking this language holds breath in their body. It was put together largely by the efforts of a professor and a convicted madman/murderer from the confines of an asylum. As long as you can take or make a word to describe your reality our definition of our language continues its evolution. Listen, learn. Your ‘Round’: that’s someone that lives near you. ‘Bounce’: getting out fast. ‘Betty’: a desirable good looking woman. ‘Cool’: a word with an attitude connotation, you either have it or you don’t; something that you cannot learn.
Here I am, drifting off to sleep, when the Weezel’s voice breaks through my reverie miasma. “Don’t you want to know what Bubba’s Daddy’s name was?
“Snurphhhh?
“Sump”. She says, “That’s short for Sumpter…… G’night Polecat.” And Goodnight to us all.

Scare me un New Orleans

It isn’t Halloween that’s scary; it’s everyday life
Thirty Helens agree: “there’s no disgrace like home”. In a nutshell, that about sums it up for me. No, rats are not gnawing at my brain; I’ve come down with a case of Mathematic Statistic Constipation (MSC) compounded by Sensory Media Overload (SMO).
Oh, I know that you think that I have it made with my girlfriend that drinks beer out of the can, a dog that plays pool for money and a monkey that cheats at cards; and you’re thinking “Plus, he continually gets paid to write drivel in a great urban publication, what are the odds of that?” I’ll tell you. About a hundred thousand to one.
You might add that I’m one of 4,300 people who has found space to rent in one of the 2,000 buildings in the french Quarter, that I’m not one of the 1,000 cases a day that need to be seen at Charity Hospital, or one of the ‘one a day average’ killings that take place in this city (counting those by law enforcers). What are the odds?
I’m not one of the half of the population that’s unemployed or the quarter of the population that live in poverty. I am not one of the more than 3,000,000 people that have lost their jobs since the current administration took office. I’m not one of the 46% of children born in Louisiana into single parent homes. The 60% that live in poverty and 17% that are reared in households with an income of less than $7,500.00 a year”. I’m not one out of every seven women in Louisiana that have been or are being stalked (up 20% over national average).
Statistically speaking, I am not one of the 30% of the adult population that cannot read above a fifth grade level. I’m also not part of either the 39% population stuck in illiteracy level one, or the 75% of the population (and this is all in New Orleans) stuck in illiteracy level two”. I am stuck up to my kiester in statistics!
I am part of the 56% of eligible voters that has registered and part of the roughly half of the registered voters that actually do vote.
Does any of that do me any good? No. 99% of the ideas that I have to save humanity are largely overlooked by 100% of the people who could implement those policies.
Where I work, there is a notice, posted by The Louisiana Restaurant Association about crime in the workplace. It says that there is one robbery every 46 seconds, one assault every 29 seconds, one rape every 5 minutes, and one murder every 21 minutes. Is this America?
I decided, hey, I can come up with statistics on my own. I funded a private study, retained an independent research team of expert (me), and came up with these startling, if not facts, at least, plausible statistics. This is only a small %
Life
87% of the public wish Ben and Jen would just go away.
Of the 59 parts of my body that a glamour magazine says “I want ‘her’ to know about” I can only think of 2%.
Only 12% of cars (including cabs and cops) use turn signals.
Nobody likes rap music. It’s just that 85% of young people don’t know how to sing.
Like most screaming heterosexual men, I spend 57% of my time thinking about women and glasses of beer. What do I do with the other 43%? Sleep mostly.
The Universe
98% of people think that if indeed money can’t buy happiness at least it can purchase acceptable substitutes; of those 98%, 100% think that money can buy anything.
Only one person in Flushing, Queens, New York knows all the words to “The Tattooed Lady”. What are the odds?
94% of the population know what a ‘kit’ is; these same people do not know what a ‘caboodle’ is.
There is an editorialist that can use the term ‘87 Billion Dollars’ no less than ten times in a single article.
99% of dead people do not look like they’re ‘only sleeping’.
We’re all overweight.
Every government, at all levels, lies 78% of the time about matters concerning their credibility, capability, culpability or any other ability questioned.
There is a bookstore in Austin that has 1,000 different magazines, 0% are soft or hard pornography.
100% of all the money that I should have been saving for my retirement has been spent on sex, drugs and Rock and Roll.
There are only three degrees of separation between you and someone who’s been mugged. 100% true.
Everything Else
There’s no such thing as consumer confidence to 87% of people with incomes of less than $50,000.00 a year.
It costs a family of three roughly 50% less income than it takes a single parent with two children.
99.9% of everyone you know has had a bicycle stolen or knows someone who has.
‘Canoodle’ is not in the dictionary; but tell someone that you did a little of it last night and 66% will smile knowingly.
Winking with both eyes at the same time will only upset 2% of the population.
96% of people that are alarmed by American jobs that are lost to foreign markets buy goods from other countries without checking the origin on the label.
Public littering is a way of life to 81% of the population in New Orleans. Spitting percentages are higher.
New Orleans, as a city, does not have the highest % of murders in the
U.S.A. The fact is that New Orleans is 15,000 people shy of being called a city (We’ll have to be satisfied with having the highest homicide rate per capita in the country). Question: what happened to those 15,000 people?
Probably, you’re as scared as I am about answering your door on any night, including Halloween. Incidentally, the term ‘probably’ is defined as a 40-70% chance that what you expect will or will not happen. Think about it.

Bitching in New Orleans

Well, well, well. The proverbial three holes in the ground. That would be the pot hole, the sink hole and the hole that my mind fell into three years ago when the veil of illusionary normalcy was ripped from my eyes, mind and sanity. Has anybody else around here noticed that our pity party is over. Yeah, well, fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados, suicide bombers and assassinations happen, right? Why should we keep getting all the attention?
Public figures are disgraced, the crook is up for re-election and the blame gets shifted to the innocent. As usual. No good deed goes unpunished and the floggings will continue until morale improves and for god sake: hide the homeless! With a nick knack paddy whack give my kid a gun….And blah, blah, blah frigging blah.
Yes, I was gonna do another rant, but you already know the drill. You’re tired of hearing about it, talking about it and/or thinking about it and so am I, so I’m not. Got it?
No, I’m not part of the ‘Nation of Whiners’ and I’m not in a ‘mental recession’, I’m well aware of how sucky things are and how little chance we have of doing anything about it. You don’t have to use flash cards for me to know that we’ve passed the eleventh hour or that Jesse Jackson is capable of harboring thoughts of testicular mutilation on public radio about presidential contenders.
I do know that we Americans are better off than most of the rest, if not the rest, of the planet. We’ve got the Four Freedoms. We’ve got freedom of speech which means nobody can tell us to shut the fuck up about anything we want to say anything about. We’ve got freedom of religion; which means Christians rule and the rest of you keep a low profile. We have freedom from fear as long as you mind your own business and watch your back; and we have freedom from want, unless you wind up undereducated, under-employed or under the overpass. President Franklin D, Roosevelt told us about these Four Freedoms on January sixth nineteen forty-one, so blame him, not me, if your country sells you short.
So what about gangs in our streets beating and robbing law abiding citizens? Population control. What about our levees being stuffed with newspaper to fill the cracks; we recycle different from a other folks, that’s all.
I say re-elect the crook, let’s show ‘em how stupid we really are. Also let’s all start wearing clothes pins to signify how we’ve been hung out to dry by the powers that be; and, let’s re-institute the draft to give those poser kids something to really whine about. But above all: let’s quit bitching, Prudence, open up your eyes and come out to play.
Who cares if there’s no public restrooms, mailboxes or telephones? All I care about is whether or not I’m gonna get mustard greens for lunch on Sunday. I give up. I’ve got my own stuff to think about. If I don’t hear another thing about the election, the recovery, the price of oil or the war it will suit me just fine. I’ve got my own opinions and solutions and hey, they’re not doing anyone any good, not even me.
I’m falling back on my old family approach to life: “I’m okay---you’re not!” and “everyone in the world is nuts---except me”. I, along with others in my peer group, knew twenty years ago about global warming. We learned about it from Calvin and Hobbes. The controversy on bilingualism and Social Security can take a flying leap. On immigration I say ‘let everybody in!’ and on gay marriages I’ll go along with my kid sister who speaks for us all when she says: “who gives a fuck?”
What I care about is whether or not there is a friendly familiar face on the other side of the bar handing me a frosty Pabst Blue Ribbon and not about having a doctor who tells me that if I have more than two drinks a night my bones will shrivel and I will be an alcoholic loser that doesn’t deserve a decent erection.
I care that new things that I purchase either break easier or wear out faster than they used to and the instinctual reaction, now, to such substandard goods is to throw them away and buy more; and, I’m really pissed to see that there are grocery stores that want me to buy fresh garlic that is imported from China.
I care and hate the fact that our farmer’s market has such a small following, such slim offerings and such high prices. I also don’t want to see imported crap souvenirs of New Orleans (made in foreign countries) being sold in the French Market where we should have our own home grown purveyors of fruits and vegetables installed (in stalls) on a permanent basis.
And while we’re at it: open the breweries to make beer not to be cut up and sold as condominiums. What are they thinking? I know, they’re thinking that money talks and the rest of us walks, whatever that means. Does it not seem like something that everyone should care about is that New Orleans has become a pit stop for the world and were it not for the drunks, shoppers and snoopers of the world, we would have no reason or income to justify our existence. Is it just me or are we a city with a past and no future other than what some fat cat can get by bleeding our culture a little drier.
I further care about being able to sit in my yard and not be eaten alive by mosquitoes because the landlord next door filled in the culvert to increase parking for the people that have me keeping my cats inside because they’re scraping lead paint into my walkway and NOT cleaning it up properly. Is that not caring? Is that not American?
Yes, it is, because I have the freedom to bitch. I vote.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

New Orleans Sitcoms

Shove over Sarah Jessicas of the world, I’m not taking this insult to
my fellow fellows lying down. I’m putting to paper my own pilot
that I just KNOW HBO is gonna snap up; and yes, it’s called “Socks In
The City”! And yes, it’s about four lovable friends (guys this time) and their adventures in this big metropolis that we call ‘The Easy’. I, of course, will be the star and every episode will begin with me strolling down the uptown Frerret neighborhood past the rubble that was once public housing and I’m dressed in a cute ruffly shirt and seersucker trousers with sweet shiny saddle shoes, when BAM! a bus comes by and splashes a puddle that remains from yesterdays rain that the city has not turned the pumps on to clear, and I stare adoringly into the camera as the bus whizzes by with Emiril”s picture on it and jeering school children throw fried chicken bones at me and a sweet little ditty plays in the background by Barry Manilow because he does such sweet jingly tunes. Are you with me?
Next the tube shows me walking down a busy street (if we can find a busy street) with my three chums.
1.Miranda Pedro, my Hispanic lawyer buddy that was here under the radar until he married a stripper and moved to Metairie with his red headed step child. Miranda is his first name because his father is dyslexic and told the people at the hospital the baby’s last name first or something (we’ll get to that in a sequel episode). He’s an overachiever that adores hats from Meyer and wonders why he hasn’t had sex for the last six months and even at that, his wife is prone to faking orgasms and asking him if he’s done yet.
2. My next buddy we just refer to by his last name Carrlotte. He is a gay African American (actually half Sicilian) in a committed relationship with a sweet British bloke, Harold, with whom he has an adopted Asian child. They’ll go through some hilarious episodes as they try to get married, find a nanny, get profiled and try to find an apartment that will rent to them,
3. Then there’s Sam Hoover, a tall strapping blond fashion designer. A tall strapping oversexed fashion designer who splits his time between here and Los Angeles where he manages his cute but dumb starlet fiancée. Sam is nearing fifty and worries about ED, incontinence and going bald. His girlfriend works too hard and Sam feels neglected except when he’s around me and the guys or getting seriously laid.
Me? I’m Charlie Bradshaw. I sit around in my boxers and type one word on my computer and hope for inspiration for a column to inspire my hordes of readers who look to me to bring joy into their otherwise dull existences. I’m secretly in love with a woman that we all refer to as ‘Big’, but not to her face because she’d kick our collective asses up to our stylish collars. Ergo, I go to Paris with a ballerina and that doesn’t work out like all the other relationships that I have… do not work out (at least on the show). Big does something for a living that I clearly can’t figure out except that she’s constantly finding excuses to break dates with me. Big rarely smiles, but you can just tell that she adores me and is great in bed.
Here we all come walking down the crowded (we’ll get a crowd somewhere) street and we’ve gotten dressed to the nines with outfits from Rubinstein’s, jewels from Adler’s and as we sidestep broken sidewalks and body fluids and trash that STD is eagerly pursuing you can clearly tell that we’re talking about where to dine and how much we can drink, gossip and complain and still be our lovable selves.
Here we are sitting around the table drinking Kamikaze-poltans which are just like those other drinks (cosmopolitans) except there’s less cranberry juice and you have to drink them a lot faster. We’re all stylishly coifed and talk about relationships and orgasms and tend to get misty at the mention of movies like It Happened One Night and An Affair To Remember. Sam has his eyes on the waitress who later corners him in the john much to the annoyance of the man in the next stall trying to quietly shoot up.
Today is full of chatter because Miranda has found out that his wife, Stephanie, is selling her body on the side (explaining her performances in her own bed). Sam is explaining the best way to get those nasty stains from the crotches of trousers, and Carrlotte is ecstatic because his child has learned to fold laundry. That’s when I drop the bomb on them: “Big has asked me to move in with her” I remark, cool as the cucumber on my chef salad (dressing on the side). To which they all shriek like schoolgirls.
What do you think? Does it have legs? Of Course it does! I mean, I LOVE Sex And The City, I ADORE Will and Grace, I DIG Desperate Housewives and I think Ugly Betty RULES! I believe that I can show that guys are sensitive caring, funny and have great taste in shoes and fashion accessories.
In the show, I’ll start to get married several times in every conceivable (named) fashion designer outfit, have steamy love scenes without taking off my clothes and at the end of each episode be able to dash off another brilliant article for Where Y’at.
Sam will sleep with dozens of women of every conceivable description while searching for a true identity and inner peace instead of screwing pieces with little or no identity.
Carrlotte will redecorate his house a half a dozen times with every conceivable matching outfit, adopt stray animals, go to art openings with his lesbian chums and wonder why his husband has premature ejaculations.
Miranda will start taking a cut of his wife’s earnings, rent an apartment for his mistress, learn to tango with every conceivable guest star and become the first man to become pregnant from a toilet seat.
And Moi? I will sit back and let the money roll in, dream of syndication and practice my acceptance speech for the Grammy’s with my three new best friends.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

What Do You Expect From New Orleans

Well, I just put a hundred dollars in my gas tank. things have gotten ugly, real ugly. So far I’ve not heard of anyone getting as much of a raise in salary as the gas prices, food prices and indeed all prices have warranted. And as I gaze out over the fen at daybreak, I am reminded of that little voice in my head that whispers… ‘what do you expect?’
Did I expect that government on all levels is not staffed by people that can’t make a living doing anything else, not that there’s that much else to do around here while we wait for the next big one to tear us a new one. Okay, we do have three options other than politics: 1. Work selling things that come from China. 2. Wait on tables that mostly consist of foreigners that are celebrating their currency exchange kicking our butts. 3. Gaze out over the fen and ask ourselves: “what do I expect?”
It all started with the CEOs of the gas company gloating about how much profit that they make at my expense. And then the article that Abita Beer has to spend triple the money to make a beer, and even the fact that PBR has gone up in price. Yeah, the squeeze is on and I for one do not feel like putting my hands together about it.
But what do I expect (and what does Hillary want?) question mark, question mark. I want to feel like I do when I eat chocolate, when I’m having ice cream, and that’s just not happening in this climate, at this time.
Consequently, I’ve entertained the thought of entering a short story contest. Top prize: two thousand bucks. That would feel like chocolate. Actually, I had to ask my kid sister to explain to me exactly what constitutes a ‘short story’. The only thing that I remember about what she told me (and there was a great deal) is “beginning, middle and end” and, “make it short”. I guess I’ll have to do it third person and other criteria like that that I picked up at the Tennessee Williams Conference and the William Faulkner Festival. I’ve learned a lot at those conferences, mostly through osmosis. I think that what I’m supposed to do is work up some inner demon, an inner subconscious demon and let it fly with as much attention to detail (not to mention alacrity) toward a release that aims at catharsis and self-actualization at the very least. Hence, the ‘gazing out over the fen’. Let me try it out on you.
Okay, here I am in third person gazing, gazing. Perhaps smoking a pipe. It is daybreak with all the riotous colors that accompany a red sky in the morning (sailors take warning!). The first birds of the day are taking flight, chasing the first insects that are on a diet of other insects including the damn mosquitoes that are carrying about a pint of my blood from last night, rich in single barrel bourbon.
I’m gazing for signs of the mailman or the recycling truck or perhaps my lover (that no count that has made a fool of me). The radio plays in the background a forgotten song (Ques: what was that forgotten song? Ans: Brenda Lee, ‘Comin’ on strong’). That old football injury (where I got hit by an old football) is acting up and the medication is just starting to kick in.
‘When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed…. No, no Nannette, I can’t use that line. Okay, off in the distance I hear something. Jingle bells? Clydesdales? Martini glasses? It’s a belly dancer! That’s it, a belly dancer delivering a dancing telegram. What does it say?
Work with me here, two grand aint nothing to sneeze at unless your nose is full of Peruvian marching powder. Okay, we can’t describe a dancing telegram; so, what do we have? I’m gazing over the fence (in third person), at the tor by the fen in deep anticipation and with an attitude both withdrawn and recalcitrant… clearly a made man.
Naw… I’m in a wheelchair, see? A torpedo from Toledo got me with his gat when my guard was down. I think his name was Louie or Lefty or something like that and hanging was too good for him, if you ask me. But he got what was comin’ to him and I even kicked him while he was down… yeah … and then I went out shopping for towels with his moll.
You know, scumbag is not a word that you hear, let alone read, very often and I think that I should include it in the story. Do you think it too harsh? I think it brings up a good visual. Like, just picture those people in your life that you relate to as scumbags; that’s the kind of guy Louie or Lefty was, and I did him in but good…the scumbag! He won’t be pullin’ no roscoe on nobody any time too soon.
Too much drama? Okay, how about a guy who quits his job at Sprawl-mart selling stuff made in China because his other job got outsourced and he’s waiting on tables because it’s the only place to make enough money to buy gas, pay excessive rent and utilities and his girlfriend thinks he doesn’t work out enough or spend enough time with her and he forgot to file taxes this year and he thinks that all politicians are thieving scumbags and the election is coming up and a hurricane is coming and cigarettes just went up to ten bucks a pack. He’s just gotten another ticket on his car, this one for a hundred and twenty bucks, he hasn’t been to a movie in two years and the day he decides to go, he gets hit by a Ben and Jerry’s delivery truck driven by Louie or Lefty or somebody like that, who gets out and tosses a melted Chunky Monkey in his face and tells him that he was better off by the fence with the tor and the fen and who does he think he is calling him names and going off to buy towels? Too much reality? Well, what do you expect, I’ve had a tough day…where’s my chocolate?

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Deja Food in New Orleans

The handlettered sign on the door of the small café on Conti Street read “Closed for Thanksgiving”; and a dozen of us piled into various forms of vehicular transportation and sped to Shweggman’s and spent all of our hard earned in a frenzy of ‘day before The Day’ shopping. It was 1968. Giggling like preschoolers, we made our way uptown to our rented ‘demolition by neglect’ mansion on Chippewa Street and prepared a beggars banquet with all the love, sex, drugs and Rock and Roll in our counter culture hearts. We didn’t get back down to reopen the café until Monday. That was okay by us; after all, didn’t we own the damn place?
As a boy, Thanksgiving was celebrated by the seven members of our family on the tenth floor of a New York City Housing Project and it started at dawn’s crack and didn’t end until the kids were ready to drag themselves, half comatose from triptophane, to bed; while the grownups, with the last of the available welfare cash, headed to the bar across the street for highballs and shuffleboard and congratulations all around for getting through another Thanksgiving. No one would have even dreamed about going to a restaurant to eat on Thanksgiving; it was a family thing, and we did it BIG!
Years later, I would be Executive Chef of a hotel in downtown San Francisco serving a one hundred and twenty foot buffet to twelve hundred strangers that all had one thing in mind: eat as much as you can possibly hold. I watched while hordes of, I think, pleasant people on probably any other day, zeroed in on caviar pie, smoked salmon, carved roasts, pate, plethoras of freshly baked breads and zip codes of desserts with the instincts of wolf packs and the manners of Mongols. The results of my month long planning and work would clog the drains of the ‘City by the Bay’ hours later. What a life.
Last year as a ‘Line Cookin’ Dog’ on Bourbon Street, another cook and myself fed seven hundred people who seemed to come out of the woodwork, and who, looking for…you guessed it; turkey, stuffing, ham, lamb, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, bread pudding… found it and put it into their faces as fast as humanly possible, giving not the slightest clue of thankfulness. That weekend, I put in one hundred and forty hours.
I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner in ‘lost and found’ bars across the country, where the good folks in charge couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger having no place to go on that holiest of holidays: the ‘Feast of the Full Belly’. Say Grace, Amen and dig in.
I’ve served the upscale neauveau riche in Mill Valley “Thanksgiving with seventeen sides” and they came at me like starving Armenians for second and third helpings; howling if one of the serving dishes were not replenished fast enough with oyster cornbread dressing or sage and giblet stuffing or parsnips, turnips, greens, peas and carrots, string beans, sweet potatoes, creamed spinach, broccoli, cauliflower in cheese sauce, pearl onions in cream sauce, corn pudding and baked squash. There was never enough pumpkin pie but there was always left over mincemeat. Pecan pie was for the ‘country connoisseur’ but, after dinner drinks were de rigoure for all. Big freakin’ deal!
“May I have more whipped cream?”
“Is there any more dark meat?”
“Hey, what happened to the wishbones?”
“Is there any meat in that?”
Gimme a break!
To mark this auspicious occasion, in my time, I’ve had my bird in jail, free kitchens, from a can and even from a pint bottle of it called ‘Wild’. I’ve done the ritual in bus stations, stranger’s houses, and with temporary lovers; and guess what? I’m just about over this killing of a ritual bird in honor of the things that I’m supposed to be grateful for that I ain’t got the rest of the year.
No offense intended; I know that we all have a lot of things to be grateful for on a regular basis, but hey, lets be real here, we work our butts off to make that happen. The rent, the utilities, the phone; yeah, that’s worth killing that imbecile of a bird for. But what about our medical, our kid’s schooling, and our daily struggle to make ends meet? Don’t they deserve a day of their own? How about a ‘Patsy Cline Day’? Where we sit around and pop some cool PBRs and smoke some Luckys and consider ‘What a HELL of a situation we’ve gotten ourselves into Day’? How about a day when we go ‘ Bowling for God’ and thank our lucky stars that we’re not like Franky ‘the moron;’ that still drools and has the I. Q. of a fence post? We need more real holidays, is what I’m saying!
How about a monthly fifth to be cracked and a celebration of ‘We paid the landlord again on time day’!? Or a ‘Freedom Day’ where the rent, phone, electricity and hot water are on someone else for a change?
Don’t get me wrong, none, and I repeat none of my Thanksgiving Days have been inconsequential. At least that I remember; they have all been like a collection of photos in a dusty, forgotten album. That one with my visiting nine year old daughter when the closest we got was turkey sandwiches at a Greek diner or the one with the one hundred and eighty pound clubfoot in Portsmouth, England (that’s another story)……..but, hey how much more of this can a poor boy take? I mean, what else can happen?
How about the sky opening and someone from the Heavenly Host asking “white meat or dark” or somehow you wake up on that sacred Thursday and somebody notices that there are no more turkeys? Short of being served by topless shoeshine girls or stripping Chippendales, I don’t think much would impress me anymore. Nope, this day has become redundant, repetitive and transparently dull.
“Oh let’s have Thanksgiving Dinner! Yeah, right! I’d rather have spleen surgery without anesthesia.
Instead let’s get knee walking drunk on Wednesday and stay in bed all of Thursday with TV dinners and make up stories of guilt, shame, triumph, love and betrayal; singing ribald songs and telling dirty jokes ‘til our sides split and order our food delivered from the Nelly Deli.
Okay, okay. I was only kidding. Actually, I got a call from an old friend in Abita Springs, we (and about ten others) used to own a small café on Conti Street. She said a bunch of the gang were coming over for a “Bird Day” celebration--vegetarian, of course. She wanted to make sure that I could take the whole weekend off, had my old corn pudding recipe and if I still had a copy of King Crimson on vinyl. She said that a few of them would come get me in the VW. She told me to remember that there’s water at the bottom of the ocean; whatever that’s supposed to mean. Oh well, here we go again. Happy Thanksgiving!

Advice for New Arrivals in New Orleans

Cab drivers and communists! Cheese and crackers! Christ on a crutch! My long lost nephew has moved back to The Big Easy!
Actually, I don’t know if he’s ever lived here before; I haven’t laid eyes on him since he was knee high to a Huge Ass Beer ™ cup. But, his parents used to live here, so that’s enough for me to classify him as a replant, of sorts. There was, as I recall, a certain gleam in his Daddy’s eyes while he was here, who knows, it may have been him.
I’ve only seen him once since he’s been back, but knowing the intelligence level of his family, and mine, I feel sure that he’s reading this. I must tell him about Mardi Gras, lest he become grist for the mill.
Dear Nephew,
Welcome back and let me say, for one, that things have changed a bit since you were here last in flesh or in gleam and not, I fear, for the better.
You see, there’s this thing called Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday (not to be confused with Lundi Gras, which is the day before, or Foie Gras, which is the Friday before). Fat Tuesday has always been preceded by Carnival. It is, definitively, THE uber-experience. There’s even a Mardi Gras Cake that won $25,000.00 in a national bake off.
The word Carnival comes from the Latin ‘cruise from Hell’ or ‘flesh be gone’ which ever you choose to believe. Carnival is a time for partying, exchanging body fluids, dancing, eating and throwing up, all to excess. A lot of natives do this all the time; but, when you have millions of amateur ‘visitors’ trying to keep up, it can get real messy.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a tired old horse that middle-aged merchants start whipping at the beginning of the year in the hopes that by Ash Wednesday the frothing, wide eyed, sweat soaked, bleeding and exhausted mount will have generated enough profit that some of it may actually stay in Louisiana.
Carnival officially starts at Twelfth Night, which is twelve days after Christmas, called Kings Night, after the Three Wise Guys who came to see newborn Baby Jee; they had given all the gifts they could, starting with a partridge in a pear tree, had to split back to the Orient and marked the occasion as a Catholic holiday. Amen.
What we do nowadays on Twelfth Night is: bake a cake with a baby in it, smear it with purple, yellow and green icing and whoever bites into the baby gets to sue the bakery or buy the next ‘King Cake’ and continue the cycle. Needless to say, a lot of dentists make money during Carnival. This continues until Mardi Gras, which is the day before Ash Wednesday . Ash Wednesday is forty days before Easter and nobody is supposed to have a good time during that period. It’s Called Lent. Why? I don’t know.
When is Mardi Gras? Forty-one days before Easter. When is Easter?
Officially, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox or Winter Solstice or something . So, to find out when Mardi Gras is, do the math, consult an occultist or look at a calendar.
To start celebrating Carnival, start drinking at Thanksgiving and don’t stop until the trash on Bourbon Street is waist high and everyone else looks really, really strange. The two may, at times, be mutually exclusive.
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Carnival is also celebrated with Fancy Dressed and Masked Balls (no pun intended), Parades, public humiliation, and large amounts of money going to other Third World Countries. The only thing we stop short of is human sacrifice, I think.
Parades and Balls are put on by Krewes, which is French for Crews. Krewes are made up of ‘social and pleasure’ clubs that elect a King and a Queen to lead them in parades where they cheerfully throw things like cabbages, condoms, coconuts, medallions, doubloons and strings of beads at frothing, maniacal spectators who then fight over them. The King is usually a middle-aged merchant and the Queen is usually a young woman from a well to do family who has reached drinking age. The King remains masked while the Queen wears Lancôme ™ tastefully. What’s up with that? Again, I don’t know; they’re called ‘Secret Societies’.
Another group of ‘Secret Societies’ is The Mardi Gras Indians. The fact that I consider any ‘Society’ that doesn’t invite me to join them, ‘Secret’ is another issue altogether. The Indians, far and away, would be the last group to ask me in. Why? I can’t sew and I don’t speak their language. Let me explain:
‘The Indians’ trace their roots back to the native Americans that befriended persons of color that they felt a kinship with because of the, non native, persons of non color’s rotten attitude toward anyone besides themselves, middle-aged merchants and young women who had reached drinking age. That’s how I see it, I could be wrong, it’s only my word against anyone else’s.
Anyway, Indians sew elaborate, intricate and complex Native American costumes, the likes of which would have Sitting Bull standing in his grave. They parade in groups of twelve to twenty resplendent in sequins, feathers, fabrics and heavy artillery. In their words “when you see us comin’, better get out the way!”
The Indians chant words like “Jock-imo findo hondo-wando fee nah nay”,
“Iko Iko”, “Tu-way-pa-ka-way. Oowa-a-a!” and “kick your ass on the overpass”. This either means: “my ‘Spy Boy’ spotted your ‘Flag Boy’ and ‘Big Chief’ (from the Metarie Ridge) has a shiny pistol and is “gonna make you jump in de river”, or “War, huuh, (good God, y’all) what is it good for?” (Absolutely nuthin’!).
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Anyway, Carnival generates a gazillion samollions towards the housing, education, working conditions and welfare of the needy for places like Mexico (tee shirts), Burma (sweat shirts), India (condoms), China (baseball caps), Indonesia (beads) and other parts of this country (food stuffs, plastic ware, breast implants and alcoholic beverages), none of which you’ll ever see. Content yourself with having a good time watching a bazillion of out of towners doing things that they would never do at home and remember:
Never drink anything stronger than you are, or of a color not found in nature.
Never, ever try to stop someone from acting improperly. One woman that I know did that and got her ass kicked by not one, not two but three ‘visitors’.
Don’t fight old ladies for beads. Doing so is a sure way of getting a heel print imbedded on the back of your hand.
Dress appropriately. No beads, wallet, credit cards, expensive jewelry or more cash than you care to part with.
If someone wants to bet you that they know ‘where you got your shoes’, tell them that they’re not your shoes.
Your loving Uncle, Phil
P.S. If you want the recipe for the $25,000.00 Mardi Gras Cake email me

Plamancusa@aol

2002 Literary New Orleans

The P.H.D.'s daughter got her wooden leg stolen by a bible salesman that she had tried to seduce.
Here I am again, friends and neighbors; flying in under the radar with a report on the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival slash Writers Conference slash Platform for anyone dumb enough to think they can yell 'Stella!?!?!' as good as Brando (in my opinion if Baldwin couldn't………..) March 20-25, 2002.
Last year, as a literary hopeful, my ‘Main Frame’ and I had scored press passes (hint, hint) and were determined to “be there” rather than “be el-seven”, if you catch my drift. I was curious as to what type of birds these would be; and, aside from bad hair, the absence of clothing style (for the most part, Honey, I don't mean you!) and an epidemic of comfortable footwear, they were much the same as you and I, that is, weird.
I didn't feel like much of a writer, while I was there…at all. I’m confused by the difference between illusion and allusion. I don't know the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity and, I guess like my Mama said when I asked her if I had halitosis (at age nine I had read an advertisement but wasn't sure what it was), as far as 'catharsis' and 'pathos' goes: "if you don't know what it is, you aint got it". I was wondering if what I had was what it takes to have been there at all.
I went to a whole bunch of panel discussions, in fact so many, that it was hard to tell where one let off and another began. A couple of them were yawners, but most were lively, and, mostly, I just tried to keep up with the discussions on things like: 'voices', 'revealing' characters, their development and their flaws, 'juice', 'languaging', (that one's not even in my BIG dictionary) 'perception', finding a gay friendly publisher, and what Willie Morris said to who (or whom) on the telephone late one night.
I also, to my dismay, found out that practically nobody makes a living from writing, it takes up all your time (one guy said it took him four years to write eighty two pages) and that if I keep using parenthesizes, I'll never amount to much at all.
I don't think I'll amount to much as a writer anyway because, I don't keep notes on cocktail napkins, my childhood illnesses weren't severe enough, and although my mother kicked my ass on a regular basis, I wouldn't consider her 'overbearing'. I can't even begin to guess where 'third person past tense' is, let alone write from that perspective. I'm also not at any kind of 'psychic intersection'; if anything, I'm just this guy, you know?
So what makes me think I can be a writer? The panels. I can do those panels. I mean, I didn't know most of those guys, so how do I know they wrote seven books? Because the moderator said so? Hmmmm. If I had one book that I could hold up and call my latest, and then, talk about my last book, or better yet, my first book….
Also, I can answer questions, I've got a 'whole lot of opinion' on a myriad of subjects and I can cut up and b.s. my way through just about any topic, with the best of them. Or so I'd like to think.
I attended panels on Southern Culture, Good and Evil, Wit and Wisdom, Hot Properties, Alternative Writing, The Muse stops Here, and others; and I kept saying to myself "I could have said that!" Once when a question was asked during the 'Bad Girls" panel, I almost raised my hand and yelled "pick ME!"
I can see myself sitting with 'quiet authenticity' after being introduced as a writer of 'complex fiction' with a 'clear sense of the absurd' saying: " that's a very good question, Rex; but as we all know, ' you don't have stories unless bad things happen' or as Flannery O'Conner put it: " The average reader is pleased to observe the stealing of a wooden leg".
Thank you, I'll be signing books in the lobby, and I don't care whose (or is that whoms?) they are.

Valentines in New Orleans

A local fried chicken restaurant (if you can call them restaurants) will be starting a gospel brunch soon. They’re gonna call it “A Wing And A Prayer”. This about sums up my love life.
Now Kids, I’m no expert on the subject, and will never claim to be (at least not in public); but, Uncle Phil has been around the block enough times that he’s worn a rut in it as wide as Bayou Saint John, so if I can’t talk about love, who can? In this rant we’re gonna explore some facts and fallacies about the ‘Big “L” Word” as reported by an independent study: mine.
First some fallacies:
Love makes the world go ‘round: what cabbage truck did you just fall off? Money makes the world go around and don’t you ever forget it.
You can tell it’s Love at first sight. NOT! You can tell it’s lust, power, domination, conquest or the need of possession at first sight: either that or you’re wearing your beer glasses and would screw a snake if someone would hold its head down.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry: Baloney! If you’re gonna hang on to love (assuming you ever find it) be prepared to admit that you’re wrong on a number of occasions, and on more complex subjects than the position of the toilet seat.
Love changes you: not for long, if ever. You’ll find yourself (or them) slipping back into the persona behind the façade that won favor; and, you may not be able to keep lipstick on that pig, if you get my drift.
You can change the person that you love: don’t count on it; and, those quirky little things that are funny now, sooner or later become a major pain in the butt. i.e. underwear on the doorknob. And while we’re at it: that new friend of yours (or possibly yourself) that’s rude to strangers, hasn’t a clue how to tip in restaurants, has an addiction or aggression challenge, likes to tell racist or sexist jokes, admires themselves in passing mirrors, is critical, abusive, unbending and just knows that it’s all about them………drop ‘em, it ain’t worth your time and make up.
Love brings out the best in a person: sure, like jealousy, mistrust, envy, possessiveness, insecurity and in some cases hives and rashes.
It’s the ‘challenge of the unknown’ that’s so stimulating about love: No, here you’re confusing love with rock climbing, spelunking and drawing to an inside straight.
Love is its own reward: right. And the meek will inherit the Earth, I’ve got the winning lottery ticket and your landlord is gonna give you free rent.
You always hurt the one you love: hmmmmm, you might want to make that: ‘you always let the one you love hurt you’
Love sneaks up on you: No, generally it sounds like the entire cast of The Lion King being thrown in to a deep fryer.

Now, for some facts.
Love takes work to make it stay: It does, and more than a few of us are willing to walk away rather than stay for the hard part. Then again, sometimes when your partner wants to ‘compromise’ it’s merely another way of saying “do it my way”.
Love can break your heart: This generally happens when someone has convinced you that you really are someone special, and then concludes with “April Fool!” Been there. Got the tee shirt; and any conversation that begins with “I think I need more space” usually ends with your relationship in the toilet.
Love is a many splendored thing: yeah, the walks in the park, the dinners, the smiles and the good times usually stay long after love has walked away. Enjoy them.
Love is like an oil painting: and you’d be advised to be careful with those brush strokes; there is no ‘do over’ accompanied by your lover’s amnesia. Think about it.
Love is like a song: As in Love is like an itching in my heart, I’ve got you under my skin, I only have eyes for you, you make me feel so young, knock me off my feet, since I fell for you, dazed and confused, (take another) piece of my heart, you’re driving me crazy. Are we talking about love here or dementia following a train wreck?
Love does NOT want to meet your ex: period.
You only have one ‘true’ love: but how do you know that you’ve met them yet?
There’s someone for everyone: and here’s where your friends come in, you know, those people who know all the worst stuff about you but like you anyway? Listen, they’ll go through Hell for you; BUT, if they don’t approve of your love……that’s a ‘heads up’! If you can’t trust your friends to know who’s best for you (or at least good for you), whom can you trust? And: if you haven’t learned this yet……. You will.
There are many kinds of love: but it all boils down to two things; (1) you’re thinking about something more important than yourself and (2) it gives you pleasure to do so. If you ain’t got that, you better ask somebody.
It’s worth it: Yep, as corny as it sounds, with its incredible highs and devastating lows, it’s all worth it. Besides, the alternative is to live a superficial life. Love IS the original ‘Living On The Edge’ roller coaster-drive it like you stole it-hell bent for leather-mind bending-flummoxing conundrum of your life. If you’re fortunate enough to have love in your life cherish it, guard it and protect it; because, one false move, Buddy, and it’s history (and you know it).
And, The Lady In The Glass Bathing suit? Seymour Heer writes, “She’s worth wading for”.
PAGE 4

Last Year's Predictions in New Orleans

Good evening and welcome, yes welcome once again to the annual New Years Predictions of the next latest top stories, coming to you from the Dicken’s Prediction Agency, Polling Grounds, Gossip Central, Rumor Control and from contributions to your local W’YAT station from readers like you. Thank you. I’m your host Phil LaMancusa.
For you readers that are new to the show, let me explain. The Dicken’s Prediction Agency works on the theory that the news of the past, seen through the eyes of the news of the present leads to the news from the future. For example: in our top story tonight (or today at coffee; or whatever the case may be), the cathedral will be adding video poker machines to their vestibule to increase revenues, it will be called “Gambling for God”. A spokesperson for the church is quoted as saying, “four Marys will not beat out four Blessed Saviors, but a full house of Archangels will pay triple”.
In other news, the city has approved Harrah’s construction of a theme water park taking up the entire two hundred block of Chartres St. Using the same architect and construction crew that has worked on the restoration of the court house the park will open in 2020. Meanwhile The Largest Corporation In The World is suing the city, saying that they were promised the sale of the entire French Quarter to build a MacCola DisWalSoft World theme park, tearing down all buildings and replacing them with more durable heavy plastic replicas, a process that they said would take about forty eight hours and not interrupt business in the least.
Speaking of business, a plan has been unveiled at city hall for all plastic cups, beads etc distributed this year at Mardi Gras to be coated with a substance that smells like corn. Herds of swine would then be left to roam the streets literally eating all the trash. The plan hit a snag when Lionel Travis, a six year old, asked: “What are we gonna do with all that pig poop?”
Other breaking stories concern four juvenile robbery suspects who were captured after leading police on a 15-minute chase from uptown to mid-city.
The young males, three 10-year olds and one 8-year old were captured by the city’s elite “Under 12 Crime Unit” when they stopped in their stolen golf cart to celebrate at a sno-ball stand. A spokesperson for the unit identified detective Wenzel Denzel as the 11-year old ‘cop that got the drop’.
Iraq has opened it’s first suicide bomber speedway where loaded cars can compete using empty building as their targets. In the third day of fierce competition prizes were still unclaimed.
Elsewhere in Iraq the fighting seems to be over. The New Orleans Brigade, brought over as a last resort explained how this was accomplished.
They sighted a more streetwise approach using rap music, gang warfare, hip-hop fashion and posters of music stars to frighten Al-Quaida operatives into giving up. As PFC Freddie “Pooh Bear” Minorca, 14, put it “Sh_t….. dem guys don’t know a Mother F—kin’ thing about killin’. We can do more damage on a Saturday night in the ‘hood’ then they do here in a week!”
Back at home the local daily newspaper, promising to only show sports news and sensationalistic murder trials on the front page, has celebrated it’s first daily edition in which there are no murders reported. Said an Editorial aide based in the New York headquarters: “Good thing for us we sent all those guys to Iraq”.
Speaking of Iraq, congress has been asked to appropriate an additional Gazillion Samollians for the rebuilding effort; pointing out that schools, roads, and hospitals aren’t enough to lift the morale of these oppressed people, a White House aide pointed out that we need to build “Shopping facilities, multi-plex theaters, fast food outlets, and amusement parks as well”. The Largest Corporation In The World, that controls both houses, assured Americans that this was a good thing for the economy and lowered interest rates another half a percent.
On the health scene a final touch has been put on the Medicare bill. Seniors will now be charged for services whether they receive them or not. The money will go directly to drug companies and vacationing doctors. A spokesperson for Pharmaceuticals-R-Us, a subsidiary of The Largest Corporation In The World, announced that a ‘Get Tough Or Die’ policy has been implemented and needed “no ‘splaining”. Senior Presley went on to point out that this was a principle that the country was built on and introduced legislature of a bill call ‘No Work, No Food’, aimed at taking care of the nation’s problematic five million Americans that are out of work.
In sports the local teams have agreed to lose all games before they are played to cut down on fan disappointment. “We’re getting back to the original idea of guys getting together to drink beer, paint themselves funny colors and yell stuff, you know?” said Andy Randy of the ninth ward. Not to worry though; public floggings, executions and half time shows will keep the crowds amused. Way to go fellas.
After a word about the weather, rotten, anchorperson Mrs. Aurelia M. Lampo will return with the progress report on the oil drilling scheduled to begin Monday in the courtyard of Commander’s Palace. But first here’s a twenty minute commercial from our sponsor The Largest Corporation In The World.
Thank you and have a pleasant evening.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Beer Drinker Blues in New Orleans

I stopped off at The Royal St. grocery store with bated breath. ‘The whisper on the street’ had it that Schlitz beer had been sighted (“The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous”). I planned on having one of my favorite lunches: a ‘Tall Boy’ and a frozen burrito, yum yum!
Oh, sad day. Oh, bitter disappointment. Oh, sad singin’ and slow walkin’. Oh, wailin’ in the wikki-yup.
Yes, Schlitz beer had been in, but it had been a one shot thing. Now what they had was an esoteric, eccentric line of far fetched, far flung ‘designer beers’ with the gamut of multicolored Abita’s as vanguard and foreign ‘non alcoholic’ beers bringing up the rear. By ‘non alcoholic beer’ I mean: any beer that no self styled alcoholic would drink! Can you imagine any of your friends saying: “Boy, I went on a bender, and did those Coronas f--- me up! Missed two days of work after hitting the Dos Equis, musta been the limes!”
Nonononono! MY friends would be more apt to say: “Leon, found Schaefer at the ‘Pac ‘n Sac, Pic ‘n Pay, Put It In A Bag ‘n Git Outa Here’ store and bought ten cases! Four of us watched the Twilight Zone marathon, thirty pounds of boiled crawfish and didn’t even know what city we was in!”
Let’s get it straight from the gate; I’m an American. My beer is American, I smoke Lucky Strikes (non-filter), I chew Dentyne gum, I drink coffee with all the caffeine I can get AND half and half AND PLENTY OF SUGAR. I wash with Palmolive soap, I use Colgate toothpaste and when I want a mint, I go for LifeSaver’s, End of story.
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Thirty years ago I worked for a man that was to become my mentor. It was at a country club in Denver and he had a keg of beer on tap in the walk-in refrigerator for the cooks. The beer was (and still is, when you can find it) Pabst Blue Ribbon. He said that it was the first beer that he had thrown up on and that was good enough for me. Since then, PBR has been, and remains, my beer of choice. Why? I like it. And, you know what? I have a slogan for that brewery: “Pabst Blue Ribbon--- It works!!”
Also, PBR comes in a nifty red, white and blue can. What can be more American than that? But, what is a red blooded American supposed to do in a world of beers that include weird ingredients (like berries fergodsakes) as incentives for doing what all beer drinkers are about (getting drunk)? Naturally, in direct opposition to this, I look for and buy when I can, American traditional, brewskis.
Anyone who is well over the drinking age (such as moi) can remember when the beer you drank was the beer that was brewed close to where you lived, made with the local waters. It wasn’t until the giant breweries started mass marketing that you started to get swill that came from afar.
Beers like Rhinegold and Ballentine and Oarlocker in the north. Black Label and Schlitz and Miller High Life in the mid west. Hamms on the left coast, and others. We knew where we were by the beers that were favored.
I come from a very disciplined family, if any of us kids acted up at the table, our mother would reach across the table with her soupspoon and whomp us, admonishing: “just drink your beer and shut up!”
I also come from a family of religious drinkers; not only do we drink religiously, but my mother told us that when God created beer, she put it in packs of six so that we would be aware that that was a portion. You can’t go wrong with a parent like that; although go wrong I did, it wasn’t her fault
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Be that as it may, Falstaff, Regal and Jax beers are a thing of the past here, even Dixie is no longer brewed here (Blackened Voodoo beer? Gimme a break!). Rolling Rock, to my taste, is the closest thing to a traditional American beer that you can get and still be in a class joint.
I have a personal boycott going with the Bud and Bud products since the seventies when I found out that they were major funders of marijuana busters in Humbolt County, so they’re out. Miller will never taste the same unless it’s in that clear bottle. ‘Lite’ beer I dislike on princable, just as I disdain ‘sugar free’ anything. Red-Dog is for curb sitters and breakfast brown baggers. Busch and Miliwaukee Best are for ‘old man crotch scratchers’ (and is a Bud product). Foreign beers I’ll drink in foreign places, thank you. And the day that I willingly pay more money for a non-alcoholic beer than regular ones, just shoot me.
Tell me why I should want to drink beer any color, going in, than I want it coming out. Tell me why I should want a Thirty two-ounce can of beer???.
Have you even noticed that finding beer in twelve ounce cans has become a rarity? If you have, then you didn’t tell me. What’s gone wrong in this world? Barqs is even claiming to be a ‘root beer’! What’s up with that?
I was passing that newsstand on Decatur St. and saw the sign in the window proclaiming the availability of a gazillion beers. Do they have PBR? Nooooooo. Why bother?
And now, ‘the whisper on the street’ is that Coors is going to start brewing here. Hello! What, I ask you, am I to do?
In heaven there’s a barmaid that serves icy mugs of American beers for a buck. It won’t get much better that that.

New Orleans Restaurant Rumors

Okay, by now we all have graduated from Gossip Central and are ready for courses in Rumor Control. Soon you’ll be able (with my help, of course) to move on to Hearsay University with, shall we say, impunity; to go forth, unchallenged among the unsuspecting, with insider traded information about local eateries.
I’m not talking about the basic skinny on restaurants like underpaid kitchen staff, lack of health benefits, tough working conditions, chefs that can go from zero to ballistic in four seconds, bounced paychecks, alcohol and substance challenges (not abuse, only the challenge of keeping supplied), and wait staff that are required to come to work ready to kiss everyone’s ass from the dishwashers to the Chefs before they even get to the customers. This is a documentary yet more expansive and in depth.
I’m talking about, for example, this conversation that I had recently with a cab driver friend that is Professor Emeritus of Hearsay U.
Moi: “So they shut down that brothel on Canal St. and the Madame is gonna name names, one of whom, rumor has it, is a local Chef. I wonder who he’ll turn out to be?”
Prof: “What do you mean HE? It could be --------------! You know She’s a nymphomaniac, don’t you? It could just as well be her!” (You know who that is don’t you? Not to worry, the answer to these and other gems will be given towards the end of this sermon. I promise)
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Okay, now that you’ve cheated and found out who the nympho chef is, let’s get on to some more juicy stuff. Test your knowledge and ability to pick up the ‘whisper on the street’ by answering these:
1. Name three French Quarter restaurants that have just or are about to lose their leases and close.
2. Name the restaurant that, when the waiter thinks that the customer is a bit drunk, will add drinks and food to their bill (to be shared by the waitstaff).
3. Name that place that as a prerequisite to being assigned to lucrative table sections, sex with the owner (or his son) is required.
4. When installing the new computer system, at this high profile joint, it was necessary to teach the staff to read and write as some had been actually drawing pictures previously. Where is it?
5. Where do residents go to peer into windows, after closing, to watch the rodents frolic on food counters?
6. Name the restaurant that the management takes a percentage of waiter’s credit card tips (off the top) and if you complain….you get fired.
7. Where do they lace fried chicken with lye as a rat poison?
8. Where is it a common kitchen occurrence to see the ceiling drip into the salad dressings? The soup?
Now, you see, if you ask a waiter those questions they’ll probably look at you like you’re stupid and rattle off at least three answers, for each question, right off the top of their pointy heads. Ready for more?
9. Where are insects such a common factor that if you watch the kitchen as they send out your lunch, you won’t be surprised to see the waitress flick a roach from the cutting board?
10. Smoking while cooking? Sweating into your food? Spitting into the trashcans? Excessive drinking on the job? Paying off the health department? Not having current licensing to operate? Too easy!
11. Discrimination by gender, ethnicity, age, or the size of your-------? Where have you been?
12. Sexual (and other) conduct that can be viewed as ‘misconduct’? That subject goes so deep that you’d have to have a seminar to explain to the uninitiated the complexities of social and sexual politics that occur behind swinging doors. Neither pros nor cons come into play here (we’ll save that for the seminar), it’s there. Has been. Will be.
13. Is it rumor or truth that the Chef of this restaurant is part owner of that building (on Chartres and Toulouse) that is suffering demolition by neglect? The (possible) answer is at the end of the article.
14. What white tablecloth restaurant’s customers had the occasion to be served by the bartender working in her bra and undies for about an hour a coupla weeks ago and why?
15. Name the latest DWIs, adulterers, breakups? Who am I not talking about?
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Restaurants are virtual Galapagos Islands of human behavior and to categorize and extrapolate and rationalize, let alone try to explain that aberrant behavior would take a combination of Messieurs Freud, Darwin and Rodgers (Roy, Fred, Buck and Will). The question remaining is how come that in the year 2002 no one has thought to change that mentality? Answer: It has been tried over the last hundred years to bring sanity to that chaotic world, but thus far, has met with little success. Why? Simple. The restaurant business attracts weirdoes, misfits, transients, runaways, renegades, idiot savants, non-conformers and those of us that are just plain perfect. We know that it’s not Kansas, Toto; but, to a lot of us, it is home.
Well, so what’s one of the main things that keeps restaurant staffs going besides the chance of the elusive hundred-dollar tip, drinks before, during and after work or being gluttons for punishment? Living on the edge, you know, where things happen! Where else can you hear things like: “She got him in the liquor room while he was on the ladder taking inventory and you know how small that room is; took down his pants and did him right there! Said that it was part of his job!” or “Yeah, they (the owners) did a drug test on the staff and they all failed!” or “He came in to work and they had changed the locks, he’d been stealing, from his own restaurant for almost a year!!” or “I swear, I saw it with my own eyes(!), they took the ladle out of the turtle soup, beat the rat to death, you know, blood (?), and then put the ladle back in the soup!” (Guess where this occurred?).
In any case, here’s the answers to the questions (and in some cases, names of places I’ve added to throw you off the track just to keep things interesting): Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Bayona, Brigtsen’s, Brousard’s, Café Marigny, Central Lock up, Cobalt, Commanders, Court of Two Sisters, Déjà vu, Elizabeth’s, Embers, Emeril’s, Felix’s, Frank’s, Gabrielle’s, Galatoire’s, Giovanni’s, Grill Room, Indigo, Jaeger’s, K-Paul’s, La Crepe Nanou, Le Rouge, Mr. B’s, Morton’s, Muriel’s, Napoleon House, Oliver’s, Outback, Pat O’s, Pelican, Peristyle, Quarter Scene, Redfish, Remoulade, Santa Fe, Vaqueros, Victor’s, Wolfe’s, Zoe or none of the above?
Oh, and our lascivious, lewd, lustful, libidinous, lecherous, licentious Lady? Ooops! Out of space.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sunday Newspaper Blues

Question: Name the one thing on Sunday morning that is common to most all New Orleanians, and possibly everyone else in the universe? We’re talkin’ everybody that’s anybody, that is with the exception of brunch cooks, ne’er do wells, runaway princesses, pirates, the mentally challenged and those of us that are ‘Proud To Crawl Home (after Saturday night)’.
Answer: Church? We would hope so. Coffee? Could be. Grits and grillads? Maybe so. Cleaning our powerful handguns? Wondering who that is sleeping next to you? How about: r e a d i n g t h e S u n d a y p a p e r ? Bingo!!!
The Sunday Paper!
I LOVE the Sunday Paper, in fact that’s what my costume is this Halloween, I call it ‘all the news that’s fit to stink’.
To honor of that rag that we affectionately call our TP (pun intended), and, as close to my dead line as possible, I’m going to pick up Sunday’s paper and point out how a ne’er do well (mentally challenged) brunch cook pirate (and his runaway princess) after crawling home (proudly) go through the locally published information at hand. I give you: ‘THE TIMES PICAYUNE’!!!
The first thing you need to do is to heft the paper, get a feel for the weight of the thing, consider the sheer amount of words that you are about consume, retain, dismiss and forevermore live with the possibility of regurgitating at the most inappropriate times ( oooh Baby, oooohhhh Baby……did you read how fares are dropping to the west coast? OUCH!! What was that for?)
Now it’s time to cull the stack. All that stuff that you know you’ll probably never read, unless you’re being held hostage at your in-laws annual brunch ‘get together’ without a decent cocktail in sight; get rid of it. Out goes the ads for Rite Aid, Lasik surgery, The Celebration Station, the K-Mart two day only white sale, Eckerd, AT&T wireless, Office Depot, Sears, Lowe’s, Circuit City, BestBuy.com, and the ads for Pope Paul the second coins, Dachshunds painted on plates and Classic Comfort bras (“so comfortable you’ll forget you’ve got it on”….WHAT?) Personally, I do keep the Walgreens’ section, as Walgreens is the only store that I would actually come across in my wanderings. I suffer from the ‘if it’s not in the Quarter do I really need it’ syndrome.
Next, my favorite to get rid of (though possibly not yours): Sports. As far as I’m concerned, any part of the paper that bandies about words like ‘dominating’, ‘trouncing’, ‘dousing with a powerful surge’, ‘pounding’, ‘shutting down’ and ‘annihilation’ along with ads for muscle cars, penile enlargement, and the Hustler Honey Amateur Contest better be in color and show blood or frontal nudity. And while we’re at it, why is baseball, basketball and football season happening simultaneously?
Next to get the axe is the Parade section with the cover boasting The 2003 Cars & Trucks, the inside answers the burning question of whether Roy Rogers Jr. had to sell his daddy’s saddle to pay the IRS, I’m presently not in the market for a minature ceramic St Nicholas, Laugh Parade doesn’t give me a chuckle and the last time I bought five books for ninety nine cents I received junk mail until I had to relocate. It is interesting to note that gas guzzlers in this time of the oil wars, come with twenty inch aluminum wheels, leather bucket seats, navigation systems and optional DVD entertainment systems; all for about twice or three times my yearly salary!
Real Estate? “This exquisite Country French home showcases wood flrs. Gourmet kit. 4 bdrm 3 ba 1+ acre, Spacious living & magnificent views for the price of a small South American country.”
Jobs? Classified? ‘Split shift, exp necc. Drug test, 6days/week, now hiring, apply in person, EEO/AAP, M/F, call Lisa or Amy: M-F 8am-4pm, 401K and hospitalization’. Do I want to be a Buggy Driver, Associate Professor of General Surgery, Legal Secretary/ Exp Line Cook that much? Nah, and most of us already have jobs we don’t want.
TV Focus? I don’t have cable, I’m a PBS junkie, end of story.
Comics? I read ‘em all. Especially Peanuts, Garfield and Doonesbury. After that Zits, Mother Goose and Grimm, B.C. and Rose is Rose. Generally I find it hard to be amused, but it’s better than the News. Why is the Piranha Club banished to the week day Classified section?? Now that I can relate to!
The Money section? If money were dynamite I wouldn’t be able to blow my nose.
The main News section? Reading it is rarely rewarding and generally reminds me of an Adlai Stevenson quote: “There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action”. In a nutshell Edwards is still out, the War’s still on, Louisiana ranks worst on everything, and we’ll never be prepared for ‘The Big One’.
That leaves the Travel, Living and Dead (Metro) sections.
The Travel section had an article on the Natchez Trace that I’d love to hike. It also had cut rate ads for going anywhere and the book section which had the first three best sellers touting “After her husband leaves her for a younger woman, a fourteen year old looks down from heaven when the young caretaker of an estate finds a newborn girl in a box. A 45 year-old woman finds romance in a small town on the North Carolina coast as she describes what happens in the aftermath of her kidnapping and murder, his employer, an 80 year-old matriarch, helps him keep the baby”, (but not in that order).
The ‘Dead’ section, or Metro as it’s called, will, more often than not, give you a cheery front page on Sunday. Monday thru will give you mostly the details on how New Orleaneans are brutalizing each other or the real horrors of living here. Yes from a man shot twenty five times and living to a seven year old being murdered in the street by his mother’s boyfriend.
However on Sunday, it’s mostly cheery stuff on the cover. Once inside we have pregnant woman steals man’s truck (at gunpoint), N.O. man arrested in shooting of woman (get this, he shot her because she was smoking while pregnant), 3 men wanted on burglary warrants, asbestos in the air, roll over car crashes and the like; also we have the death notices.
Frankly, I read the death notices because I’m sure that one day I’ll see my picture in there. I simply do not trust myself to tell me when I die, and as for my friends, hah, they keep me in the dark about everything!
I do know from reading the obituaries that a large percentage of eighty to ninety year old corpses once were homemakers or retired merchant seamen. Fifty to sixty year olds die usually of heart attacks or cancer, the men were all veterans and the women had promising careers. The Forty year olds usually succumb to lung cancer or heart ‘failure’ or the mysterious undetermined causes. In their twenties and thirties, violence usually accounts for mostly sudden demises especially if their nick names are ‘Boom Boom’, ‘Big Man’, ‘Slick’ or ‘Fast Betty’. If politics continue their merry way, I predict young folks in uniform appearing. Children are the saddest to read about and we won’t go into that one here.
Lastly the Living section: entertainment, horror-scopes and puzzles. After the Comics, it’s my favorite. Dave Barry is here, my personal hero as well as advice from Carolyn, Abby and Miss Manners. A calendar of events and photos from the past live in this section.
In all, the newspaper is a nice place to visit with its horrors and heroes, and if I had more room I’d wax eternal. Look for me on Halloween and if you don’t give me candy, I’ll probably tell you to “read my hips!”

Crayons in the French Quarter

Rejection and despair. That’s the sound that is made when a crayon hits the floor; and, Green was face down in a pool of dust. Again. And, that was the sound that had just interrupted a story that I was trying to compose.
But, I digress, (as an aspiring writer, I’ve always wanted to watch myself, coolly detached, type ‘but, I digress’ into a story, along with other phrases like ‘It gave me great pause’ and words like ‘trepidation’ and ‘indigent’) and since you asked, here’s the story:
I had put aside my borrowed copy of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. In the book, he talks about his misadventures being indigent in these places in the nineteen twenties or very early thirties. I had decided to do a piece on the people who fall through the cracks here in New Orleans. I have a current passing, and sometimes personal, relationship with about a dozen local ‘unfortunates’ and recently it has given me great pause, I think because, on some subliminal level, I can relate to them and their missed fortunes.
I was also marveling at how much so little has changed for the poor over centuries of progress for mankind; as if the impoverished, being one of the lost tribes of Israel, passed their misery from generation to generation.
I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem in D minor and reflecting on how, with one twist of fate, we are all a step away from living on the street or relying on ‘the kindness of strangers’. I’m convinced that, without my consent, an event or, series of events, could have me (like others that I know) eating from trashcans, sleeping in doorways and carrying my life in a black plastic garbage bag. Possibly, my ‘twilight years’ would be spent lying in a mental ward getting my Pampers changed, as I bark like a duck. One degree of separation, that’s how I was seeing it.
I considered getting a cell phone, surely that would save me from a future of cheap wine, generic cigarettes and asking that cute couple from Des Moines to give me money for standing still, on a milk carton, painted silver. In New Orleans being a living statue on a street corner is a vocation; one step above begging, they do not have cell phones. People hurrying from paying jobs to warm hearths have cell phones. The upwardly mobile, drinking snappy cocktails at swank joints, have cell phones. I do not have a cell phone.
After a recent conversation with my older sister on whether poverty was hereditary or contagious, I came to the conclusion, that in my case at least, it is both. I know no one who is not living from paycheck to paycheck, when they’re that lucky, including every member of my family. You can probably guess what I have to say to that smart-ass that coined the phrase that “money can’t buy happiness”!
In addition, I’m not aware that I’ll have an alternative financial plan, should some mishap occur in my life. I don’t even have a primary financial plan. As I see it, I’m living in a world where college buildings will get millions, and the benefactor’s names will be emblazoned on them, possibly along with their cell phone numbers. Meanwhile, the majority of the population; the impoverished, the insufficient, and the undereducated (the un-cell phoned) will get minimum wage, (at best) and no benefits, ignored by the very people that have it in their power to help them. Maybe the folks with cell phones are hooked up to a higher power, or something. Maybe folks with cell phones never slip through the cracks. My head was hurting; I was obviously putting a strain on my brain.
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Then, between Introit and the Kyrie Eleison, as if by design, a crayon, known only as Green, bit the dust.
I kept the basic box of eight crayons by my desk in the hopes that remembering all of their names would be proof enough that dementia wasn’t setting in. What do I know? Twice before, I’ve found Green out of the box and thought ‘that’s it, I’ve got Alzheimer’s’. This time though, I caught them red handed! Who? The other crayons, of course. What were they doing? Practicing color discrimination! Why were they doing that? I don’t know, maybe it’s just what they do where they come from, kinda like us. Where do they come from? That parallel universe that I’m always talking about
From now on, my theory that there is a parallel universe that is invading us with bad tippers, digital watches, haters and cheaters will include crayons with their own agendas. How else would you explain a CEO who builds a house for a hundred million dollars while John Q. Shareholder takes it in the shorts, if certainly not for a parallel universe and its invasion? These types certainly can’t come from this planet. Period. No member of Homo Sapiens could think or act like that. It belies the term. For the unenlightened, ‘Homo Sapiens’ literally means ‘wise man’. I certainly don’t feel very wise, but, I also didn’t consider myself the type of ‘homo’ that would strap on a body bomb and visit a shopping mall for a little ‘catch back’. That, my friend, takes an alien.
I wondered if there was a correlation between the secret life of crayons and man’s inhumanity to man. To this end, I decided to take my color discrimination theory a step further and perhaps learn something that would be of use in my future, and possibly the future of the world.
I went to Walgreen’s and parted with my ‘hard earned’ for a box of sixty -four Crayolas™. There are other, less expensive, brands and bigger boxes, but, sixty four is the largest quantity you can buy in the French Quarter and Crayolas ™ come with a handy sharpener and are made in the good old U. S. of A. (non toxic, of course). I was hoping to surprise the invaders and learn something about their culture, and perhaps save our planet.
Walking home with my purchase was a joy. It was a clear, warm afternoon in the French Quarter and the smells of Tea Olive and honeysuckle were in the air, and the air was full of expectation. The slight breeze whispered of great potentials and happy endings. I was content to meander in a southern miasma of partial amnesia, if you catch my drift.
‘Drifting’ my way through the narrow streets, past centuries old cottages and ornately ironed balconies brimming with ferns and flowers, I wondered how much had changed over the years in crayon land. Was the color ‘Flesh’ expanded to include ‘Asian’, ‘Hispanic’, and a myriad of ‘African American’ colors? Or was it now called ‘Band-Aid’ or ‘Caucasian’? Were the Greens grouped with Blues because envy was safe with melancholy? Were the Yellows now cowering in their own section, and was ‘Aqua Marine’ now in a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t tell’ area? Were the crayons of my youth ‘toxic’ (we used to eat them, you know)? The possibilities were endless.
The box sat on my desk unopened for days. I pictured an uneasy truce between the colors being so closely confined and sealed to boot. I wondered what terrors the opening of the box would unleash. Would they behave? I recalled finding a Yellow Penway ™ Crayon in the street a few days earlier; it was broken in three places, obviously the victim of turf wars.
I read the box. Did you know that in Easton, Pa. there is a factory that makes Crayolas? And, that you can call them toll free at 1-800-crayola for a seventy five-cent coupon off your next purchase, you can tour the factory if you ever get up that way, and that, no, they are NOT made by Oompa Loompas. I called them, and they told me that stuff. They have a website, and, of course, it’s www.crayola.com. I also called their marketing firm (not toll free) and I’m awaiting a call back or press package or something.
See, isn’t that better than dwelling on the fact that a third of the adult population of New Orleans can’t read above fifth grade level? How smart does that make you?
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I finally decided to open the box. I mean, hell that’s more important than the fact that less than half the registered voters actually vote here (and only a fraction of those eligible even register).
First I stood the box on its head for a couple of hours to disorient them. I don’t want any oriented crayons, not on my watch.
And then for the moment of truth.
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I opened the box slowly, carefully, with extreme trepidation, forgetting to breathe.
“Holy Cannoli” I exhaled, “they’re in four smaller boxes and there’s no rhyme or reason to their distribution!” I said to no one in particular. The cat eyed me suspiciously from her perch atop the computer printer. I cleared some space on the desk, dumped the crayons out and tried to make some order, or at least get some sense. I started by looking for ‘patterns’ and some emerged.
The Greens were outnumbered, the Red family that drifted into the Oranges held the power, Yellows are almost extinct having inter bred with every other color. Purples were uppity; Silver was being treated like a red headed stepchild, while Black and White simply did not give a shit.
The colors will boggle your mind. There’s Orange, Red Orange and Yellow Orange. There’s Macaroni and Cheese, Purple Mountain’s Majesty, Timberwolf, Asparagus (looking a little overcooked if you ask me), Tumbleweed and Granny Smith Apple! I kid you not. There’s even a color called Bittersweet; I had wondered about that.
But, it was the family of the Blues that blew my mind: Cadet, Turquoise, Pacific, Sky and Robin’s Egg Blue. Cornflower, Cerulean (?), Periwinkle, Blue Green (not to be confused with Green Blue), and of course Blue. I wondered how many shades of the blues there were, and, would B. B. King be able to sing about them all?
Putting them back (in order, of course) I didn’t see Aqua Marine and there were no flesh tones of any ethnic group in evidence. My neighbor assures me that there’s a box of ninety-six out there and has intimated that the next time she leaves the French Quarter she’ll look for it for me. As a hard core Quarterite, I live with the shopping policy that: “If it’s not found in the French Quarter, I don’t really need it”
There, that’s easier than trying to figure out why it seems that The American Dream is being filmed in Myopic-Vision and is being directed by Frederico Fellini, from beyond the grave; hang on……, I thought I just heard Raw Umber telling Olive Green to “Stop whining and get a !@@##$$%%*8* Job!!”
It’s time to reseal that box, there is such a thing as too much information. And besides, who’d believe me?