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!”
Sunday, May 25, 2008
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.
***************************************
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?
****************************************
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.
***********************************************
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?
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.
***************************************
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?
****************************************
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.
***********************************************
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?
Satchmo in New Orleans
I may not be the picture of wholesomeness, watching Fred Rogers at 5:00 a.m. with a beer, a cigarette and a blank expression on my mugg; but you know, I get some of my best thinking done on an all-nighter. Then again, I like New York in June (how about yew?).
Well, whatever; take this ‘Satch-fest’ thing, or whatever it’s called. This is a subject that I’ve been avoiding for the last five years. Avoiding talking about, avoiding writing about, avoiding thinking about. Why? Because a New Orleans love affair with Mr. Armstrong is like that of a faded harlot, after making nothing of herself, bragging about an ex-lover who, when all stories be told, spurned her. I mean, is this the same man that told reporters, about a half century ago, that if he never set foot in this town again that it would be too soon for him (or words to that effect)?
To prepare myself for this writer’s hell, I immersed myself in the subject of Louis, the myth, the legend, the man. I read books, both in his own words and that of others, I played recordings over and over again, I heard rumors of cosmetic surgery, homosexuality and ties to organized crime. I know about at least one of his illegitimate children. I’ve had him for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the last friggin’ month, okay?
What did I come up with? A headache.
Was he a sell out, a philanderer, a musical Buddha, a pawn or a king? Yes. Did he lie about his birthday? Did his Mama ‘sell fish’ to keep bread on the table? Yes. Is his 1927 recording of ‘Hotter Than That’ and ‘West End Blues’ an epiphany of musical innovation? Yes. Did he mind slapping around his old lady if she beefed about his chippies? No. Did he bend over to the Guy Lombardo school of music? Yeah, man!
Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s draw the shades, open a bottle of cheap champagne, disconnect the phone and light up a Lucky. Also let’s chow down on a three-pound meatball po-boy from Matassa’s.
Louis was born a poor black child here (go figure), hustled anyway he could, and was fortunate enough to raise himself up in a time of ‘anything’s legal if you don’t get caught’ New Orleans (same as now).
Then, as now, there were three ways out of the ghetto (in those days most of this town was a ghetto): sex, drugs or music. Period. Racism was taken for granted by him for at least fifty-seven years.
Conflicting reports of how and when he got his first horn, put aside, does not diminish the ability he had for coaxing sounds from that ‘thang’. He simply could, so he did. A New Orleans hustle if there ever is one; take what you got and work it.
His second wife, Lil Hardin, schooled this overweight numbskull in the subtler ways of gaining acceptance to a wide variety of audiences (read ‘white’ here). Louis soon learned what could butter that scrap of bread he had to offer. White America. (you oughta look up ole Lil if you want some schoolin’) Basically he became a twentieth century minstrel, a clown with a horn.
New Orleans is a place that genius’ can live and die in, even now, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a musician; but ‘they be po’. Ya gotta leave town to make it. So he did.
And he never came back! (‘cept once or twice)
He was, and still is, a musical genius’ genius, BUT, the fact remains that our city is a graveyard for people like Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Baby Dodds and their ilk .We play lip service to, and take credit for the roots of that thing called Jazz. But, like me, we’re too drunk, lazy, or complacent to nurture and keep it here.
Louis left the country to escape racism and mob control, did you know that? Louie criticized the President about civil rights and the white washing that it gave to Jim Crow. And got blacklisted for it. Hell, neighbor what are we celebrating?
You don’t know Louis like I know Louis: Louis was a dumb kid from the third ward who suddenly found out that he had the talent and ability to not only reach the expertise of a master, such as Joe (KING) Oliver, but to surpass it! What are you to do then? Who do you play for?
Louis played for the world.
But he had to sell out. It’s as simple as this: say that I’ve got a whole alphabet to hip you to, but you can’t dig nutthin’ but the A B Cs? Guess what? Then as now, I’ll go where the do re me is and, like the farmer said to the potato: “plant you now and dig you later”.
A hundred years later, and if you’re lucky, if you’re very very lucky, if your listening ear has not become as prejudiced as Louie’s South is. If you are that lucky, you’ll put this rag down and put on the Hot fives and Hot Sevens, light up a Lucky, pop a cool one and dig. If not, you’re a dumb Mother Cracker and only deserve to read Dick and Jane for the rest of your life.
If you’re a woman reading this: Louis was no better than that loser you’ve got now: don’t envy his women. If you be a man reading this: If you ain’t blowin’---you ain’t knowin’ …………and if you can’t get somebody to hear your LMNO’s, how are you gonna get to your XYZs?
Think about it. Myself? I’m gonna put myself to bed with the Saint James Infirmary in my head and wish I was more like the ‘Satch’. Red beans and ricely yours. Amen.
Well, whatever; take this ‘Satch-fest’ thing, or whatever it’s called. This is a subject that I’ve been avoiding for the last five years. Avoiding talking about, avoiding writing about, avoiding thinking about. Why? Because a New Orleans love affair with Mr. Armstrong is like that of a faded harlot, after making nothing of herself, bragging about an ex-lover who, when all stories be told, spurned her. I mean, is this the same man that told reporters, about a half century ago, that if he never set foot in this town again that it would be too soon for him (or words to that effect)?
To prepare myself for this writer’s hell, I immersed myself in the subject of Louis, the myth, the legend, the man. I read books, both in his own words and that of others, I played recordings over and over again, I heard rumors of cosmetic surgery, homosexuality and ties to organized crime. I know about at least one of his illegitimate children. I’ve had him for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the last friggin’ month, okay?
What did I come up with? A headache.
Was he a sell out, a philanderer, a musical Buddha, a pawn or a king? Yes. Did he lie about his birthday? Did his Mama ‘sell fish’ to keep bread on the table? Yes. Is his 1927 recording of ‘Hotter Than That’ and ‘West End Blues’ an epiphany of musical innovation? Yes. Did he mind slapping around his old lady if she beefed about his chippies? No. Did he bend over to the Guy Lombardo school of music? Yeah, man!
Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s draw the shades, open a bottle of cheap champagne, disconnect the phone and light up a Lucky. Also let’s chow down on a three-pound meatball po-boy from Matassa’s.
Louis was born a poor black child here (go figure), hustled anyway he could, and was fortunate enough to raise himself up in a time of ‘anything’s legal if you don’t get caught’ New Orleans (same as now).
Then, as now, there were three ways out of the ghetto (in those days most of this town was a ghetto): sex, drugs or music. Period. Racism was taken for granted by him for at least fifty-seven years.
Conflicting reports of how and when he got his first horn, put aside, does not diminish the ability he had for coaxing sounds from that ‘thang’. He simply could, so he did. A New Orleans hustle if there ever is one; take what you got and work it.
His second wife, Lil Hardin, schooled this overweight numbskull in the subtler ways of gaining acceptance to a wide variety of audiences (read ‘white’ here). Louis soon learned what could butter that scrap of bread he had to offer. White America. (you oughta look up ole Lil if you want some schoolin’) Basically he became a twentieth century minstrel, a clown with a horn.
New Orleans is a place that genius’ can live and die in, even now, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a musician; but ‘they be po’. Ya gotta leave town to make it. So he did.
And he never came back! (‘cept once or twice)
He was, and still is, a musical genius’ genius, BUT, the fact remains that our city is a graveyard for people like Buddy Bolden, Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Baby Dodds and their ilk .We play lip service to, and take credit for the roots of that thing called Jazz. But, like me, we’re too drunk, lazy, or complacent to nurture and keep it here.
Louis left the country to escape racism and mob control, did you know that? Louie criticized the President about civil rights and the white washing that it gave to Jim Crow. And got blacklisted for it. Hell, neighbor what are we celebrating?
You don’t know Louis like I know Louis: Louis was a dumb kid from the third ward who suddenly found out that he had the talent and ability to not only reach the expertise of a master, such as Joe (KING) Oliver, but to surpass it! What are you to do then? Who do you play for?
Louis played for the world.
But he had to sell out. It’s as simple as this: say that I’ve got a whole alphabet to hip you to, but you can’t dig nutthin’ but the A B Cs? Guess what? Then as now, I’ll go where the do re me is and, like the farmer said to the potato: “plant you now and dig you later”.
A hundred years later, and if you’re lucky, if you’re very very lucky, if your listening ear has not become as prejudiced as Louie’s South is. If you are that lucky, you’ll put this rag down and put on the Hot fives and Hot Sevens, light up a Lucky, pop a cool one and dig. If not, you’re a dumb Mother Cracker and only deserve to read Dick and Jane for the rest of your life.
If you’re a woman reading this: Louis was no better than that loser you’ve got now: don’t envy his women. If you be a man reading this: If you ain’t blowin’---you ain’t knowin’ …………and if you can’t get somebody to hear your LMNO’s, how are you gonna get to your XYZs?
Think about it. Myself? I’m gonna put myself to bed with the Saint James Infirmary in my head and wish I was more like the ‘Satch’. Red beans and ricely yours. Amen.
Essence Festival New Orleans 2003
The 2003 Essence Music Festival is here and it’s sponsored by Coca-Cola. That says a lot to me, although I don’t know what. Perhaps I’m unclear on the focus of the event; I mean, is the purpose of the ‘Party With A Purpose’ to party or to pursue purposes? I seem to recall (here I go again) that when I was first made aware of this event, it was described as a convention by and for African Americans to network, share experiences, and to work on/out cultural, political and economic challenges mutually exclusive to African Americans. Music was thrown in to help unwind after a day chock full of workshops and empowerment seminars. I don’t know, I’ve never been to Essence. I guess I felt like it was a place that an old white guy would be out of place in. It’s just that I don’t remember it as being…commercialized.
So, here I go, ready to pull my foot out of my mouth (where it’s sure to wind up) and write, again, about something I know nothing about. I may even have to get ready to ingest a little crow.
I have the credentials of the un-empowered. I was raised inner city, in the projects, on welfare, broken home, physical abuse, public schools…the works. But I’m not a person of color; in essence, I’m not black and have no birthright to the blues. And while my ‘roots’ did not fling open the doors of an affluent mover/shaker American society, many of those doors were left ajar, mainly because of my color, or lack of it. The same cannot be said for my many colored friends. As much as we need workshops now, we needed them more then, and, maybe if we had had them then, we wouldn’t need them now. Hmmmm.
Ask random New Orleanians about Essence and they’ll probably confuse it with Bayou Classic, which is mistakenly likened to a Mau Mau uprising. Am I prejudiced? Are we prejudiced in the Big Easy? Are we prejudiced in the South? Hell, while we’re asking, are we prejudiced at all in the good old Yew Ess of A? The answer is a resounding NO! (Anyone heard of ‘Racial Profiling’ though? Shhhhhh!)
One restaurant manager (White) explained to me that it wasn’t the out of towners that caused trouble. It was ‘our’ blacks coming in to prey on their own, or ‘them’ (black people in general are referred to as ‘them’ or ‘those people’ by whites). The restaurant was going along at a good clip that night, if I recall; but, when the call came in that it was “getting dark” up the street, we promptly closed.
Recently a woman (Black), who is much more intelligent and articulate than I am, made the point that Essence was a good thing…for the tourist industry. She also pointed out that the seminars and workshops did have a positive effect…for those that attended. We agreed that, in essence, it could be called a “Black Jazz Festival”. If she ever runs for office, she’s got my vote.
One point is that it’s easy for the rest of the population to make assumptions about African Americans. Blacks generally don’t go explaining their ‘Blackness’ to us dumb Crackers, or anyone else for that matter. We get our information from the examples that are set in public, and, the media. We are left to draw our own conclusions. Our conclusions generally run the gamut from Jack the Ripper (they haven’t proven that he wasn’t of color) to the idiots on Sanford and Son.
Well let me tell you: I don’t go there. If there are any Blacks that read this column, (gotcha!) let me tug on your coattail. I personally have seen persons of color ordering meat cooked medium rare, wine other than white Zinfandel, and then tip grandly. I know Black people who can’t dance, don’t spit, do vote, hold down steady jobs, marry and are faithful to their spouses, and don’t wear their trousers with their undies showing. I personally have seen a look of disgust cross a brother’s face when I mentioned that I actually liked pigs feet! And look, if I don’t say that some of my best friends are Black, it’s because I have no best friends. Hell, I’m as liberal as anybody else! It’s just that I don’t know who these people are!
If you saw me get out of my Eminem blaring ride, in FUBUs, with my baseball cap on sideways, gold crucifix around my neck, drinking a 40, smoking a blunt and grabbing at my crotch would you take me for a ‘Brutha of Anotha Mutha’? Probably not.
I know what I’d take me for: someone who needed to turn that damn music down and get to a seminar because I’d obviously got Black mixed up with stupid. But heck, a lot of folks display, in their image, their level of intelligence.
That also goes for overweight hicks in Mickey Mouse shirts, Asians that dye their hair blond, white kid pierced/tattooed gutter punks, Italian stallion goombahs, war perpetuating nationalists, public drunks, misogynists, self-serving hypocritical evangelists, people that take unfair advantage, plantation mentality bosses, breast beating liberals, those that don’t play fair, and Albanians in general.
But I’m not prejudiced.
I like to think of myself as… biased.
A while ago Calvin told Hobbes that he was writing a self help book called “Shut Up And Stop Whining: How To Do Something In Your Life Besides Think About Yourself”. Hobbes advised “You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything.”
I’ll go one better: “It’s The Twenty-first Century: Stop wearing Other Peoples’ Names On Your Clothing” Or “Behave Like You ARE A Song In The Key Of Life. There’s still a lot of work to do”.
But that’s just my opinion.
So, here I go, ready to pull my foot out of my mouth (where it’s sure to wind up) and write, again, about something I know nothing about. I may even have to get ready to ingest a little crow.
I have the credentials of the un-empowered. I was raised inner city, in the projects, on welfare, broken home, physical abuse, public schools…the works. But I’m not a person of color; in essence, I’m not black and have no birthright to the blues. And while my ‘roots’ did not fling open the doors of an affluent mover/shaker American society, many of those doors were left ajar, mainly because of my color, or lack of it. The same cannot be said for my many colored friends. As much as we need workshops now, we needed them more then, and, maybe if we had had them then, we wouldn’t need them now. Hmmmm.
Ask random New Orleanians about Essence and they’ll probably confuse it with Bayou Classic, which is mistakenly likened to a Mau Mau uprising. Am I prejudiced? Are we prejudiced in the Big Easy? Are we prejudiced in the South? Hell, while we’re asking, are we prejudiced at all in the good old Yew Ess of A? The answer is a resounding NO! (Anyone heard of ‘Racial Profiling’ though? Shhhhhh!)
One restaurant manager (White) explained to me that it wasn’t the out of towners that caused trouble. It was ‘our’ blacks coming in to prey on their own, or ‘them’ (black people in general are referred to as ‘them’ or ‘those people’ by whites). The restaurant was going along at a good clip that night, if I recall; but, when the call came in that it was “getting dark” up the street, we promptly closed.
Recently a woman (Black), who is much more intelligent and articulate than I am, made the point that Essence was a good thing…for the tourist industry. She also pointed out that the seminars and workshops did have a positive effect…for those that attended. We agreed that, in essence, it could be called a “Black Jazz Festival”. If she ever runs for office, she’s got my vote.
One point is that it’s easy for the rest of the population to make assumptions about African Americans. Blacks generally don’t go explaining their ‘Blackness’ to us dumb Crackers, or anyone else for that matter. We get our information from the examples that are set in public, and, the media. We are left to draw our own conclusions. Our conclusions generally run the gamut from Jack the Ripper (they haven’t proven that he wasn’t of color) to the idiots on Sanford and Son.
Well let me tell you: I don’t go there. If there are any Blacks that read this column, (gotcha!) let me tug on your coattail. I personally have seen persons of color ordering meat cooked medium rare, wine other than white Zinfandel, and then tip grandly. I know Black people who can’t dance, don’t spit, do vote, hold down steady jobs, marry and are faithful to their spouses, and don’t wear their trousers with their undies showing. I personally have seen a look of disgust cross a brother’s face when I mentioned that I actually liked pigs feet! And look, if I don’t say that some of my best friends are Black, it’s because I have no best friends. Hell, I’m as liberal as anybody else! It’s just that I don’t know who these people are!
If you saw me get out of my Eminem blaring ride, in FUBUs, with my baseball cap on sideways, gold crucifix around my neck, drinking a 40, smoking a blunt and grabbing at my crotch would you take me for a ‘Brutha of Anotha Mutha’? Probably not.
I know what I’d take me for: someone who needed to turn that damn music down and get to a seminar because I’d obviously got Black mixed up with stupid. But heck, a lot of folks display, in their image, their level of intelligence.
That also goes for overweight hicks in Mickey Mouse shirts, Asians that dye their hair blond, white kid pierced/tattooed gutter punks, Italian stallion goombahs, war perpetuating nationalists, public drunks, misogynists, self-serving hypocritical evangelists, people that take unfair advantage, plantation mentality bosses, breast beating liberals, those that don’t play fair, and Albanians in general.
But I’m not prejudiced.
I like to think of myself as… biased.
A while ago Calvin told Hobbes that he was writing a self help book called “Shut Up And Stop Whining: How To Do Something In Your Life Besides Think About Yourself”. Hobbes advised “You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything.”
I’ll go one better: “It’s The Twenty-first Century: Stop wearing Other Peoples’ Names On Your Clothing” Or “Behave Like You ARE A Song In The Key Of Life. There’s still a lot of work to do”.
But that’s just my opinion.
Saint Charles Trolley in New Orleans
To all my friends that haven’t seen me in a while: I’ve taken employment uptown. I know, I must be nuts, but it’s a good job and only has two drawbacks. 1. It takes me away from my beloved French Quarter many hours a day and (b) having given up private transportation; I must rely on public.
Rely probably isn’t the operative word here. One cannot rely on something as nebulous as a trolley schedule and, at the end of the day (and the beginning and middle), those rumbling sardine cans rarely keep a schedule that logic and reason can fathom. Also, I seem to posses the unique talent for getting to the corner just in time to see the darn thing leave without me. Perfect.
Waiting for the next car (that’s what they call trolleys) can be maddening, especially in inclement weather and after dark when there’s no light to read by. It’s an especial challenge when I see from three to eight of the beasts going in the opposite direction before one comes going my way. Sometimes the fifteen minutes between cars, that the company promises, turns into forty-five or more.
Try waiting thirty minutes, watching one uptown car after another go by, it’s raining, there’s no shelter, your not dressed properly for the sudden chill and the car that stops for you explains that he’s only going to Lee Circle. And another twenty minutes passes before you can catch one going your way and finally get out of the wet and the cold. It borders on cruel and unusual punishment.
It seems to me, in my pea-brained intelligence, that, if we can time the movement of heaven, earth and the very stars themselves, then running a Municipal Railway shouldn’t be rocket surgery. Needless to say, I have a lot of time to think as I undertake my daily odysseys.
I was thinking about how, in the old days, you could stick out your thumb and easily catch a ride; and how, that ride would be more often than not with a longhair like you. Not so today.
Well, what happened to those happy hippies in their flying Volkswagens, with peace and ecology stickers, playing loud Rock and Roll heralding the coming revolution and vows to save the world with nothing more than the love in our hearts? I’ll tell you. At least fifty-one percent of them went over to the dark side.
Think about it and humor an old fart. In the sixties and seventies we didn’t just disapprove of war, ecological suicide and greed: we marched against it! We didn’t just sit back and let the status quo get off with easy victories at the polls we protested!
Our music told us that we had “questions about hate and death and war”, and that the Times They Were A Changin’ because we knew that we were on the Eve Of Destruction and that “it’s been a long time comin’ but I know a change is gonna come”. Each group was musically subversive.
A lot of us sat in at lunch counters, refused to sit in the back of the bus, sang songs and carried signs. A lot of us got our asses kicked and some lost their lives; where are all those children now? I’ll tell you.
They work for special interest groups that rape and rip off our planet and people. They’ve formed religious coalitions that espouse an expeditious hastening to their heavenly home that can come only after the destruction of our planet and all of it’s resources. And some, having lost all the fight in them, sit by bathed in ennui and complacency and allow it to happen without using their hard won vote and voice to change things. They never dare speak a word aloud about any insanity.
How many of you know that this administration refuses to accept and comply with other governments that are concerned with global warning? How many know about human slavery still existing, both economically and physically?
How many of you read about genocide, hunger, ignorance, poverty, violence and hatred and sit by, not raising a voice? How many of you know that we are destroying the only planet we have in the name of ‘economic stability’?
We murder animals and eat them. We buy gas-guzzlers for the tax incentives while the government reaps huge profits on the tariffs that they impose on gasoline sales. We roll finely shredded vegetable matter in thin paper, place it in our mouths, light it on fire and die of cancer. CEOs reap millions while children go to sleep hungry…in America!
Another example: if you own a car (at least in my neighborhood) you pay out the wazoo for gas, insurance and upkeep. Furthermore, you run the risk of being given tickets by parking Nazis that don’t even work for your city. Towing, stealing, breaking and entering, keying, antenna damage and that jerk from out of state that uses it for a urinal or worse, some homeless or street person using your bumper for a latrine are also considerations. For what? So you can go to work and work and work; without health benefits, equal pay for equal work, a threat on your Social Security and the possibility of your kid coming home maimed or wounded as a reward for fighting in a war that we started? In my day, ‘Supporting The Troops’ meant ‘Bring Them Home!’
Chase the American Dream like a dog chases its tail and hope only that you live long enough to see your kids through college and your house paid for and, I’ll tell you what. You have violated everything that we fought for forty years and more ago: the responsibility of changing the world for the better.
I have no pension, no benefits, no 401K and I’ll probably pay rent for the rest of my life. Yet I still listen to the old music; and yes, I’m the guy waiting for the trolley in the rain. What’s more; if I ain’t got nuthin’ nice say… I’ll say it anyway!
Rely probably isn’t the operative word here. One cannot rely on something as nebulous as a trolley schedule and, at the end of the day (and the beginning and middle), those rumbling sardine cans rarely keep a schedule that logic and reason can fathom. Also, I seem to posses the unique talent for getting to the corner just in time to see the darn thing leave without me. Perfect.
Waiting for the next car (that’s what they call trolleys) can be maddening, especially in inclement weather and after dark when there’s no light to read by. It’s an especial challenge when I see from three to eight of the beasts going in the opposite direction before one comes going my way. Sometimes the fifteen minutes between cars, that the company promises, turns into forty-five or more.
Try waiting thirty minutes, watching one uptown car after another go by, it’s raining, there’s no shelter, your not dressed properly for the sudden chill and the car that stops for you explains that he’s only going to Lee Circle. And another twenty minutes passes before you can catch one going your way and finally get out of the wet and the cold. It borders on cruel and unusual punishment.
It seems to me, in my pea-brained intelligence, that, if we can time the movement of heaven, earth and the very stars themselves, then running a Municipal Railway shouldn’t be rocket surgery. Needless to say, I have a lot of time to think as I undertake my daily odysseys.
I was thinking about how, in the old days, you could stick out your thumb and easily catch a ride; and how, that ride would be more often than not with a longhair like you. Not so today.
Well, what happened to those happy hippies in their flying Volkswagens, with peace and ecology stickers, playing loud Rock and Roll heralding the coming revolution and vows to save the world with nothing more than the love in our hearts? I’ll tell you. At least fifty-one percent of them went over to the dark side.
Think about it and humor an old fart. In the sixties and seventies we didn’t just disapprove of war, ecological suicide and greed: we marched against it! We didn’t just sit back and let the status quo get off with easy victories at the polls we protested!
Our music told us that we had “questions about hate and death and war”, and that the Times They Were A Changin’ because we knew that we were on the Eve Of Destruction and that “it’s been a long time comin’ but I know a change is gonna come”. Each group was musically subversive.
A lot of us sat in at lunch counters, refused to sit in the back of the bus, sang songs and carried signs. A lot of us got our asses kicked and some lost their lives; where are all those children now? I’ll tell you.
They work for special interest groups that rape and rip off our planet and people. They’ve formed religious coalitions that espouse an expeditious hastening to their heavenly home that can come only after the destruction of our planet and all of it’s resources. And some, having lost all the fight in them, sit by bathed in ennui and complacency and allow it to happen without using their hard won vote and voice to change things. They never dare speak a word aloud about any insanity.
How many of you know that this administration refuses to accept and comply with other governments that are concerned with global warning? How many know about human slavery still existing, both economically and physically?
How many of you read about genocide, hunger, ignorance, poverty, violence and hatred and sit by, not raising a voice? How many of you know that we are destroying the only planet we have in the name of ‘economic stability’?
We murder animals and eat them. We buy gas-guzzlers for the tax incentives while the government reaps huge profits on the tariffs that they impose on gasoline sales. We roll finely shredded vegetable matter in thin paper, place it in our mouths, light it on fire and die of cancer. CEOs reap millions while children go to sleep hungry…in America!
Another example: if you own a car (at least in my neighborhood) you pay out the wazoo for gas, insurance and upkeep. Furthermore, you run the risk of being given tickets by parking Nazis that don’t even work for your city. Towing, stealing, breaking and entering, keying, antenna damage and that jerk from out of state that uses it for a urinal or worse, some homeless or street person using your bumper for a latrine are also considerations. For what? So you can go to work and work and work; without health benefits, equal pay for equal work, a threat on your Social Security and the possibility of your kid coming home maimed or wounded as a reward for fighting in a war that we started? In my day, ‘Supporting The Troops’ meant ‘Bring Them Home!’
Chase the American Dream like a dog chases its tail and hope only that you live long enough to see your kids through college and your house paid for and, I’ll tell you what. You have violated everything that we fought for forty years and more ago: the responsibility of changing the world for the better.
I have no pension, no benefits, no 401K and I’ll probably pay rent for the rest of my life. Yet I still listen to the old music; and yes, I’m the guy waiting for the trolley in the rain. What’s more; if I ain’t got nuthin’ nice say… I’ll say it anyway!
Pre- Katrina lunch in New Orleans
Let’s get serious here for a minute. The ozone layer, homeless and jobless rates, the stock market, the energy crisis, pattern baldness and who the heck should honestly be our president (can you use those two words in the same sentence?) doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when mid morning comes, now does it?
The question really, as Douglas Adams put it in his sequel to Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, is, basically, “where shall we have lunch?”
I think of that, as the weather turns warmer and I wander from room to room, considering that empty feeling, that ‘hunger not of the soul’, picking up stray socks and blaming the mess around here alternately on the dog and/or the cat. Pondering, playing and toying with and on the eternal predicament: ‘where shall I eat? What do I feel like having? And, how far am I willing to go to get it?’
Running down the mid day meal is an experience and an adventure; I know, I do it an average of eight times a week. The criteria being that I should be able to begin my quest with an eleven-dollar bill and finish with a full belly and a fresh pack of squares (make mine Luckys, please).
Sanely enough, in the French Quarter, you can walk toward your destination, change your mind half a dozen times about where to stop, and wind up eating somewhere completely different than all of them.
********************************************
All places, from Annie’s Chicken Shack to Vat O’ Gumbo have things that I consider great and only with trepidation, and a great deal of faith, do I stray from requesting (I never ’order”) any other offerings. For example: Fiorella’s, on Thursdays, has a butterbean special that can’t be beat; but if you want their ‘famous’ fried chicken, you’ll have cramps (and maybe die) from hunger by the time it gets to you. Ergo: I go there on Thursdays AND I have butterbeans. In the same vein; if I recommend to someone the fried oyster po-boy at Mr. Johnny’s, I don’t want them to come cryote-ing to me because they didn’t like their red beans!
Go where you will for red beans, I say; those of us that ate Buster Holmes’ beans can’t eat them anywhere else, and he’s long gone just like a turkey through the corn. Opinionated? Me? You bet your blue plate!
Also, lunch requires some ‘splaining. For example, if I tell you that the most beautiful cook works at The Royal Street Gro. and the best sandwich maker works the counter at the Quarter Gro. That doesn’t mean to say that she doesn’t make a dynamite six-inch alligator (she sure does!) or that he’s anything that you’d kick to the curb (his club sandwich! Yes, yes!), it’s just my view; and if you don’t like the news (or views), as they say, feel free to make some of your own.
Speaking of Grocery stores. They are where most of us Quarter Rats excel in culinary savvy. They are where the true heartbeat of local cuisine (we like to call it ‘cookin’, thank you) is found. Ask anyone that’s had the crawfish pasta that is the Friday special at C&C, or the well thought out specials at Matassa’s, the roast beef po-boy at Peoples, the mac and cheese at Verde Mart, the chili cheese fries at the Nellie Deli, the alligator po-boy at The Royal Street (did I mention that cook, or their gumbo?), or the ‘pot cookin’ at J.C.’s
Is the muffelatta better at Progress or Central? Do you opt for the service (?) at Napoleon House? Who’s been to Frank’s lately and why? Ever wonder what natives discuss over coffee? Guess no more, we talk food and the discussions are as passionate as great foreplay, and it’s even sanctioned in groups (God, you give great menu!!!).
Speaking of menus. Have you tried Jaeger’s Back Kitchen? It is probably the best new place to open in a long while, maybe years. The ‘pot cookin’ is second to none, the prices are good and the service friendly. It’ll make you want to throw rocks at the Old Dog, just up the alley, but that’s another story.
If you’ve guessed by now that I have a lot to say on this subject, probably so much to say that I just will not have room for little things like addresses, phone numbers, business hours or the names behind the faces, BINGO! You win the Cuisinart! You’d be amazed how fast a thousand words go by. I’ll just leave it up to you to find out where these gems are; hint: they’re all in the Quarter.
Speaking of the Quarter; this is not to say that I don’t enjoy lunch beyond it’s boundaries. Like the Pho at Nine Happiness, the Pad Thai at Singha, a Menage a Trois at the whorehouse (The Sporting House), or the gumbo at Dubon’s. That’s just not so. Like I said, I just don’t have room to write it ALL.
Mena’s, Oh My Lord, Mena’s; have you ever had a better ham hock with cabbage, boiled potato and cornbread? And it’s just across the alley from Country Flame. What to choose? What to choose? And where to go to go to choose it. How do you choose it? I stand outside 1212 Royal St. for half an hour, rubbernecking the menus of Midnight Express and Mona Lisa’s, like a sailor in a red light district, trying to decide where I’ll get my kicks. They both get my vote for great food and they treat you like family.
The Gumbo Shop, twenty five years ago , had a banner inside the dining room that proclaimed in big letters: “Ici On Mange Bien” that is, “Here One Eats Well”. That’s still true of the Gumbo Shop and, for that matter, my French Quarter. If I had room for another thousand words… I would go on and on and on. But, I don’t.
Next Month: How the President saved the day by moving the French Quarter over there to solve The Mid East Crisis. (“betcha I can tell ya where you got that towel… on yo head! hahahahahahahaha
The question really, as Douglas Adams put it in his sequel to Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, is, basically, “where shall we have lunch?”
I think of that, as the weather turns warmer and I wander from room to room, considering that empty feeling, that ‘hunger not of the soul’, picking up stray socks and blaming the mess around here alternately on the dog and/or the cat. Pondering, playing and toying with and on the eternal predicament: ‘where shall I eat? What do I feel like having? And, how far am I willing to go to get it?’
Running down the mid day meal is an experience and an adventure; I know, I do it an average of eight times a week. The criteria being that I should be able to begin my quest with an eleven-dollar bill and finish with a full belly and a fresh pack of squares (make mine Luckys, please).
Sanely enough, in the French Quarter, you can walk toward your destination, change your mind half a dozen times about where to stop, and wind up eating somewhere completely different than all of them.
********************************************
All places, from Annie’s Chicken Shack to Vat O’ Gumbo have things that I consider great and only with trepidation, and a great deal of faith, do I stray from requesting (I never ’order”) any other offerings. For example: Fiorella’s, on Thursdays, has a butterbean special that can’t be beat; but if you want their ‘famous’ fried chicken, you’ll have cramps (and maybe die) from hunger by the time it gets to you. Ergo: I go there on Thursdays AND I have butterbeans. In the same vein; if I recommend to someone the fried oyster po-boy at Mr. Johnny’s, I don’t want them to come cryote-ing to me because they didn’t like their red beans!
Go where you will for red beans, I say; those of us that ate Buster Holmes’ beans can’t eat them anywhere else, and he’s long gone just like a turkey through the corn. Opinionated? Me? You bet your blue plate!
Also, lunch requires some ‘splaining. For example, if I tell you that the most beautiful cook works at The Royal Street Gro. and the best sandwich maker works the counter at the Quarter Gro. That doesn’t mean to say that she doesn’t make a dynamite six-inch alligator (she sure does!) or that he’s anything that you’d kick to the curb (his club sandwich! Yes, yes!), it’s just my view; and if you don’t like the news (or views), as they say, feel free to make some of your own.
Speaking of Grocery stores. They are where most of us Quarter Rats excel in culinary savvy. They are where the true heartbeat of local cuisine (we like to call it ‘cookin’, thank you) is found. Ask anyone that’s had the crawfish pasta that is the Friday special at C&C, or the well thought out specials at Matassa’s, the roast beef po-boy at Peoples, the mac and cheese at Verde Mart, the chili cheese fries at the Nellie Deli, the alligator po-boy at The Royal Street (did I mention that cook, or their gumbo?), or the ‘pot cookin’ at J.C.’s
Is the muffelatta better at Progress or Central? Do you opt for the service (?) at Napoleon House? Who’s been to Frank’s lately and why? Ever wonder what natives discuss over coffee? Guess no more, we talk food and the discussions are as passionate as great foreplay, and it’s even sanctioned in groups (God, you give great menu!!!).
Speaking of menus. Have you tried Jaeger’s Back Kitchen? It is probably the best new place to open in a long while, maybe years. The ‘pot cookin’ is second to none, the prices are good and the service friendly. It’ll make you want to throw rocks at the Old Dog, just up the alley, but that’s another story.
If you’ve guessed by now that I have a lot to say on this subject, probably so much to say that I just will not have room for little things like addresses, phone numbers, business hours or the names behind the faces, BINGO! You win the Cuisinart! You’d be amazed how fast a thousand words go by. I’ll just leave it up to you to find out where these gems are; hint: they’re all in the Quarter.
Speaking of the Quarter; this is not to say that I don’t enjoy lunch beyond it’s boundaries. Like the Pho at Nine Happiness, the Pad Thai at Singha, a Menage a Trois at the whorehouse (The Sporting House), or the gumbo at Dubon’s. That’s just not so. Like I said, I just don’t have room to write it ALL.
Mena’s, Oh My Lord, Mena’s; have you ever had a better ham hock with cabbage, boiled potato and cornbread? And it’s just across the alley from Country Flame. What to choose? What to choose? And where to go to go to choose it. How do you choose it? I stand outside 1212 Royal St. for half an hour, rubbernecking the menus of Midnight Express and Mona Lisa’s, like a sailor in a red light district, trying to decide where I’ll get my kicks. They both get my vote for great food and they treat you like family.
The Gumbo Shop, twenty five years ago , had a banner inside the dining room that proclaimed in big letters: “Ici On Mange Bien” that is, “Here One Eats Well”. That’s still true of the Gumbo Shop and, for that matter, my French Quarter. If I had room for another thousand words… I would go on and on and on. But, I don’t.
Next Month: How the President saved the day by moving the French Quarter over there to solve The Mid East Crisis. (“betcha I can tell ya where you got that towel… on yo head! hahahahahahahaha
Statistics in New Orleans
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.
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.
Feruary in the French Quarter
Well, I was gonna do the story about how our dear friend Marrinette completely wore out her welcome in Saquine, Texas (where she had gone for the funeral) by running over (and killing) her dead brother’s deaf dog (from the dog’s point of view). But, no…
Then I thought about doing a piece on where to find the best gumbo in the French Quarter. Maybe next month.
Or, what about the time, while out walking, I saw my life flash in front of my face in the form of a blonde, on a bicycle, headed in the opposite direction and hopefully into my past? Alas and alack it’s just not to be. Why? Because it’s February; you know… February, Valentine’s Day…..Love and stuff. And so, I am compelled by greater forces than I care to admit to, to compose a Po-boy view of love; you know, that four letter word that we feel as adrenaline when we’re young and nausea as we get older.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe that true love can be found, and God knows, I’ve found it hundreds of times; and forgive me if I sound jaded; but, I haven’t found any future in it?
Yes Lord, it’s the ‘Love makes the world go ‘round’, ‘Love is a many splendid thing’, ‘Love is like an itching in my heart’ and ‘Who wrote the book of love?’ (and where can I get a copy?) time of the year.
Well, it’s happened to me again; and I don’t know whether to sing show tunes or to run screaming.
The last woman to run through my emotional house was carrying scissors and left me with a bad liver and a broken heart (it’s my pate and I’ll cry if I want to), but that’s another story; suffice to say (as Tom Waits said) “I lost my equilibrium, my car keys and my pride”.
That said, and just in time for the big V.D. (Valentines Day), I’m going to dispense some wisdom, wit and a sick mind’s road map on how to tell when love is coming, going or just passing through.
First the words of wisdom: To the men: if you think that you will ever learn any more about women than the fact that they use more toilet paper than you do; forget it (!) you won’t.
To the women: if you think that (a) ‘still water runs deep’, (b) he’s smarter than he looks, or (3) he can guess what you’re thinking: it just ain’t so, and will never be. Likewise, if you think that you can change his unenlightened attitude toward everything that you hold dear: get real, girl; it won’t happen in a lifetime of toilet paper.
Now for the bad news.
How To Tell When Love Is Beginning
The phases of ‘Love Beginning’ are when: you are least expecting it, aren’t looking for it, could care less about it, and possibly would prefer to avoid it. Usually it’s when you happen to glance up and think to yourself “I wonder if fries come with that shake?” Then comes the eye contact, the mutual smiles and hidden dialog in your first bits of conversation. I.e. (a)“What do you think about sex, drugs and Rock and Roll? (b) Had your blood tested lately? (c) Is that a gun in your pocket? Or (4) Do fries come with that shake? These and other subtle bits of repartee usually get answers like (a) Beat it, loser! (b) I think I hear my Mother calling me. (3) I’m sorry, you obviously have mistaken me for a complete imbecile; now go away. (d) What part of NO don’t you understand? Or (e) Let’s keep this pleasant and I’ll be real if you will.
With any luck at all it will be the last one and you start to ‘accidentally’ run into each other, which leads you to have a date or a few, then you find that you actually like each other (although you fail to understand why), share a drink, a laugh, a song, and then a kiss (another four letter word). Now you’re getting in to deep water and you recall that the last time you saw a light at the end of the Tunnel Of Love it was on the front of an oncoming train that became known as The Heartbreak Express. So you bolt.
But you come back; why? Duh! You’ve been bitten by the Love Bug! It’s like an itching in your heart. It’s about Love and Happiness, and all of that R&B stuff. How do you know?
How To Tell When Love Is Moving In
Well, now that you’ve chewed on each others faces, maybe even shaken a few covers together; you’ve discovered that you have more in common than you thought. You call each other for no apparent reason, adopt each other’s friends, like each others cats/dogs/small farm animals, have a favorite eating place, steal kisses even though they’re freely given, and started holding hands in public. You’ve considered using the ‘L’ word. So, naturally you have a meltdown. You get the ‘Lover’s Bends’.
It’s kind of a cross between The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul and a Tractor Beam from the Starship Enterprise; those of us who have “been there-done that” know immediately what I mean. The rest of you just haven’t thought about it that way or are in for one friggin’ growth experience. To make a long story short, you’re reeling in your heart on the chance that it won’t get it’s ass kicked and your heart, quite naturally, is resisting because, eight to five, it will.
The conversations that you have with yourself, your friends, your analyst/bartender, panhandlers go like: “I can do this….I don’t want to do this…I’m no good at this…I’ve done this..can I do this(?)…what will/do you/I/they think of me doing this? And finally: ‘to hell with every body, I’m gonna do this! (should I be doing this?)
Chances are you survive the emotional mugging. You take the plunge. It’s forever after again; the whole enchilada, the brass ring….Ready, set, go! SH_T!
You write notes, you send flowers, you pick out towels. You tell your family, your previous lovers (the ones who are talking to you again), the people at work. In short, you cut off all your exits. It’s barefoot in the park time. Right?
Wrong. Do the words “I need more space” sound familiar?
Then I thought about doing a piece on where to find the best gumbo in the French Quarter. Maybe next month.
Or, what about the time, while out walking, I saw my life flash in front of my face in the form of a blonde, on a bicycle, headed in the opposite direction and hopefully into my past? Alas and alack it’s just not to be. Why? Because it’s February; you know… February, Valentine’s Day…..Love and stuff. And so, I am compelled by greater forces than I care to admit to, to compose a Po-boy view of love; you know, that four letter word that we feel as adrenaline when we’re young and nausea as we get older.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe that true love can be found, and God knows, I’ve found it hundreds of times; and forgive me if I sound jaded; but, I haven’t found any future in it?
Yes Lord, it’s the ‘Love makes the world go ‘round’, ‘Love is a many splendid thing’, ‘Love is like an itching in my heart’ and ‘Who wrote the book of love?’ (and where can I get a copy?) time of the year.
Well, it’s happened to me again; and I don’t know whether to sing show tunes or to run screaming.
The last woman to run through my emotional house was carrying scissors and left me with a bad liver and a broken heart (it’s my pate and I’ll cry if I want to), but that’s another story; suffice to say (as Tom Waits said) “I lost my equilibrium, my car keys and my pride”.
That said, and just in time for the big V.D. (Valentines Day), I’m going to dispense some wisdom, wit and a sick mind’s road map on how to tell when love is coming, going or just passing through.
First the words of wisdom: To the men: if you think that you will ever learn any more about women than the fact that they use more toilet paper than you do; forget it (!) you won’t.
To the women: if you think that (a) ‘still water runs deep’, (b) he’s smarter than he looks, or (3) he can guess what you’re thinking: it just ain’t so, and will never be. Likewise, if you think that you can change his unenlightened attitude toward everything that you hold dear: get real, girl; it won’t happen in a lifetime of toilet paper.
Now for the bad news.
How To Tell When Love Is Beginning
The phases of ‘Love Beginning’ are when: you are least expecting it, aren’t looking for it, could care less about it, and possibly would prefer to avoid it. Usually it’s when you happen to glance up and think to yourself “I wonder if fries come with that shake?” Then comes the eye contact, the mutual smiles and hidden dialog in your first bits of conversation. I.e. (a)“What do you think about sex, drugs and Rock and Roll? (b) Had your blood tested lately? (c) Is that a gun in your pocket? Or (4) Do fries come with that shake? These and other subtle bits of repartee usually get answers like (a) Beat it, loser! (b) I think I hear my Mother calling me. (3) I’m sorry, you obviously have mistaken me for a complete imbecile; now go away. (d) What part of NO don’t you understand? Or (e) Let’s keep this pleasant and I’ll be real if you will.
With any luck at all it will be the last one and you start to ‘accidentally’ run into each other, which leads you to have a date or a few, then you find that you actually like each other (although you fail to understand why), share a drink, a laugh, a song, and then a kiss (another four letter word). Now you’re getting in to deep water and you recall that the last time you saw a light at the end of the Tunnel Of Love it was on the front of an oncoming train that became known as The Heartbreak Express. So you bolt.
But you come back; why? Duh! You’ve been bitten by the Love Bug! It’s like an itching in your heart. It’s about Love and Happiness, and all of that R&B stuff. How do you know?
How To Tell When Love Is Moving In
Well, now that you’ve chewed on each others faces, maybe even shaken a few covers together; you’ve discovered that you have more in common than you thought. You call each other for no apparent reason, adopt each other’s friends, like each others cats/dogs/small farm animals, have a favorite eating place, steal kisses even though they’re freely given, and started holding hands in public. You’ve considered using the ‘L’ word. So, naturally you have a meltdown. You get the ‘Lover’s Bends’.
It’s kind of a cross between The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul and a Tractor Beam from the Starship Enterprise; those of us who have “been there-done that” know immediately what I mean. The rest of you just haven’t thought about it that way or are in for one friggin’ growth experience. To make a long story short, you’re reeling in your heart on the chance that it won’t get it’s ass kicked and your heart, quite naturally, is resisting because, eight to five, it will.
The conversations that you have with yourself, your friends, your analyst/bartender, panhandlers go like: “I can do this….I don’t want to do this…I’m no good at this…I’ve done this..can I do this(?)…what will/do you/I/they think of me doing this? And finally: ‘to hell with every body, I’m gonna do this! (should I be doing this?)
Chances are you survive the emotional mugging. You take the plunge. It’s forever after again; the whole enchilada, the brass ring….Ready, set, go! SH_T!
You write notes, you send flowers, you pick out towels. You tell your family, your previous lovers (the ones who are talking to you again), the people at work. In short, you cut off all your exits. It’s barefoot in the park time. Right?
Wrong. Do the words “I need more space” sound familiar?
A View for Obama 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.
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.
Essence Festival in New Orleans
Welcome to Essence! Boy, do we have a time in for you, and yes, you may make it back to wherever you come from in one piece. I hope so.
Some have been here before. Many have not. This column is to try to school you on the ways of the Big Easy and how to avoid growth experiences that you may wish to postpone, possibly for some future incarnation.
Fact one: everyone in New Orleans is running a hustle of one kind or another, it’s how we make a living. You see, out of town visitors are basically our only source of income. From experience I can swear that our folks will accept your last nickel whether you are willing to part with it or not. Don’t feel special, we do the same to each other and we smart locals have perfected the art of simultaneously holding on to our wallets, watching our backs and not believing everything we’re told by strangers. But, being the homicide capitol of the country indicates to me that not all of us are quick studies.
I’m told that it is refreshing to find such a major city steeped in black culture and as you see us going about our daily business you may want to consider that with our quaint third world attitude, a certain plantation mentality can sometimes be seen slipping through the façade. But face it, you probably can’t offer better where you come from, hey? But, we are special; we rock twenty four seven, you can drink in public, gamble your hard earned away and go to church, oftentimes on the same street. They say that shame and pride are two sides of the same coin; you’ll be hard pressed to find that coin in any of our pockets.
Oh, there are optimists here…somewhere, and if you see trash on the street, people spitting, car music blaring and the occasional sound of gunfire or sirens; please be assured that we don’t like it any more than you do, but we weren’t taught any better manners. Blame it on the lead-based paint.
You may think that we can’t find correct fitting trousers for our young men. Not true. Wearing pants six sizes too large, holding them up by the crotch and walking as if you have diaper rash is a ‘style’. Why? Got me! There is an elected official that has proposed a law against it and we don’t know which is the more ridiculous.
As far as national averages are concerned we rank just above an andouille sausage in intelligence here; although, I would not live anywhere else even if you could find me a job. And yes, unemployment is an issue here, so we’re building more hotels and expanding the convention center to put more unskilled locals to work, of which there are more than a few.
Speaking of personal safety, take a lesson from the natives: don’t wear beads, walk on unlit streets, get drunk in pubic or consider that friendly stranger your new best friend. Don’t take money out in an uncontrolled environment; I keep different denominations of bills in different pockets to be ready for different purchasing situations: I don’t pull out a wad of twenties for a cup of coffee or a pack of smokes. ‘Nuf said.
Drinking alcohol here is expected, encouraged and invited at every turn you take and with that comes an element of our population ready to take full advantage of your lack of experience and vulnerability. And I know that it would be really cool to follow your new friend up the street for ‘a little something extra’… don’t. I’ve found more than a few discarded wallets on the street on Sunday morning, not surprisingly with out of town driver’s licenses and no money.
Speaking of driving, you may also may want to know that this city makes an awful lot of money on parking tickets and the towing of illegally parked vehicles. Read posted signs and under no circumstances park within twenty feet from any street corner. Period.
Also, on our streets you’ll see and smell urine, blood, vomit, syringes, condoms and glass from car break-ins; it’s something us residents have gotten used to, would like to change and don’t often boast about. When you have tourism, poverty and ignorance in the same mix, it’s bound to happen. Consider us a dysfunctional Disneyworld.
You really have the opportunity of having a wonderfully great time here, there’s music everywhere, gaiety and laughter; just don’t get stupid on us; you can get yourself hurt and somebody can land in jail.
Now here’s my disclaimer. I write this column monthly and I am fortunate to have editors that allow me to air my views about this city and related subjects. More than once I have pissed someone off and I’ll apologize in advance if this be the case with you. Once again I hope that the powers that be will read me and ask me for suggestions, so far as I know they haven’t and I’ve given up expecting them to. I love this city, but as I tell people, living here is like taking a warm bubble bath with a martini and a snake.
Everyone that I know or have talked to can relate an experience with someone unlawfully or inconsiderately interfering with their peacefully inclined lifestyle. It’s a fact of life here. For a glowing example I suggest that while you’re here, pick up our daily newspaper and read the Metro section. You will see our daily reports of crime and in the obituaries see another one of our citizens felled by violence. Multiply that by three hundred sixty five and you have the Big Easy quality of life.
So go and enjoy the Essence Festival. Attend a motivational seminar, it’s the only time of year that we have them on that scale. Then go home where often as not you may not have to lock your house, your car, your bike or your heart. Just for God’s sake be careful out there.
Some have been here before. Many have not. This column is to try to school you on the ways of the Big Easy and how to avoid growth experiences that you may wish to postpone, possibly for some future incarnation.
Fact one: everyone in New Orleans is running a hustle of one kind or another, it’s how we make a living. You see, out of town visitors are basically our only source of income. From experience I can swear that our folks will accept your last nickel whether you are willing to part with it or not. Don’t feel special, we do the same to each other and we smart locals have perfected the art of simultaneously holding on to our wallets, watching our backs and not believing everything we’re told by strangers. But, being the homicide capitol of the country indicates to me that not all of us are quick studies.
I’m told that it is refreshing to find such a major city steeped in black culture and as you see us going about our daily business you may want to consider that with our quaint third world attitude, a certain plantation mentality can sometimes be seen slipping through the façade. But face it, you probably can’t offer better where you come from, hey? But, we are special; we rock twenty four seven, you can drink in public, gamble your hard earned away and go to church, oftentimes on the same street. They say that shame and pride are two sides of the same coin; you’ll be hard pressed to find that coin in any of our pockets.
Oh, there are optimists here…somewhere, and if you see trash on the street, people spitting, car music blaring and the occasional sound of gunfire or sirens; please be assured that we don’t like it any more than you do, but we weren’t taught any better manners. Blame it on the lead-based paint.
You may think that we can’t find correct fitting trousers for our young men. Not true. Wearing pants six sizes too large, holding them up by the crotch and walking as if you have diaper rash is a ‘style’. Why? Got me! There is an elected official that has proposed a law against it and we don’t know which is the more ridiculous.
As far as national averages are concerned we rank just above an andouille sausage in intelligence here; although, I would not live anywhere else even if you could find me a job. And yes, unemployment is an issue here, so we’re building more hotels and expanding the convention center to put more unskilled locals to work, of which there are more than a few.
Speaking of personal safety, take a lesson from the natives: don’t wear beads, walk on unlit streets, get drunk in pubic or consider that friendly stranger your new best friend. Don’t take money out in an uncontrolled environment; I keep different denominations of bills in different pockets to be ready for different purchasing situations: I don’t pull out a wad of twenties for a cup of coffee or a pack of smokes. ‘Nuf said.
Drinking alcohol here is expected, encouraged and invited at every turn you take and with that comes an element of our population ready to take full advantage of your lack of experience and vulnerability. And I know that it would be really cool to follow your new friend up the street for ‘a little something extra’… don’t. I’ve found more than a few discarded wallets on the street on Sunday morning, not surprisingly with out of town driver’s licenses and no money.
Speaking of driving, you may also may want to know that this city makes an awful lot of money on parking tickets and the towing of illegally parked vehicles. Read posted signs and under no circumstances park within twenty feet from any street corner. Period.
Also, on our streets you’ll see and smell urine, blood, vomit, syringes, condoms and glass from car break-ins; it’s something us residents have gotten used to, would like to change and don’t often boast about. When you have tourism, poverty and ignorance in the same mix, it’s bound to happen. Consider us a dysfunctional Disneyworld.
You really have the opportunity of having a wonderfully great time here, there’s music everywhere, gaiety and laughter; just don’t get stupid on us; you can get yourself hurt and somebody can land in jail.
Now here’s my disclaimer. I write this column monthly and I am fortunate to have editors that allow me to air my views about this city and related subjects. More than once I have pissed someone off and I’ll apologize in advance if this be the case with you. Once again I hope that the powers that be will read me and ask me for suggestions, so far as I know they haven’t and I’ve given up expecting them to. I love this city, but as I tell people, living here is like taking a warm bubble bath with a martini and a snake.
Everyone that I know or have talked to can relate an experience with someone unlawfully or inconsiderately interfering with their peacefully inclined lifestyle. It’s a fact of life here. For a glowing example I suggest that while you’re here, pick up our daily newspaper and read the Metro section. You will see our daily reports of crime and in the obituaries see another one of our citizens felled by violence. Multiply that by three hundred sixty five and you have the Big Easy quality of life.
So go and enjoy the Essence Festival. Attend a motivational seminar, it’s the only time of year that we have them on that scale. Then go home where often as not you may not have to lock your house, your car, your bike or your heart. Just for God’s sake be careful out there.
Dinner in New Orleans
I had another restaurant dream last night, I usually get one when pulling double shifts or training new recruits, which I did last week. For those out there that have never had a waiter’s job, it goes like this: it’s a super un-naturally busy restaurant night, the place is packed, the kitchen is three miles away, your station is full and everybody wants something. You’re racing full tilt to get things done and nothing is what it should be, food is coming out wrong, customers are asking for strange things, have strange questions and identical faces. You can’t tell where you are except that you’re balls to the wall busy and running your ass off and nothing is getting done.
It’s really loud, by the time you make the distance to the kitchen, other waiters are rushing everywhere, you’ve forgotten what you came for and the cooks are screaming in a language unintelligible to you.
I imagine if someone was to look at me in the midst of this nightmare, I would appear like my dog Ginger does when she has her dreams: whimpering and jerking like she’s hooked up to an electrode. Perhaps dogs are reincarnated waiters. Things that make you go hmmmm.
I did not waken refreshed. Pensive and not refreshed. I went on a wonder and this I wondered:
What is this thing about waiter’s nametags or introductions? The “Hello, my name is Jeremy and I’ll be your waiter tonight” type of action. Personally, I go with the guy who doesn’t want to know a waiter’s name unless the waiter is going out with his daughter and maybe not even then. Specifically, I don’t go out to eat to make friends; that’s what I go to bars for. I go out to eat to be with good company, have someone cook me something yummy to eat and then have somebody else do the dishes. That’s what I’m in a restaurant to do, and unless the waiter (male or female) treats me like either one of us has the intelligence of a box of rocks, that’s what I’m here to tip well for. Customers should be like me.
Let’s start with this, what’s with these parties of eight, ten or more that think they can get a table with no reservation on a busy night and who are the boneheads that move heaven and earth, and the chair that my date has her purse on, to seat them? Those people are gonna get loud, they’re gonna throw the kitchen out of synch, with my food, and, they’ll never get the good service smaller parties do. AND, a word to parents; your two, four, six, eight, ten or twelve-year-old does NOT want to come fine dining on a Saturday night. They want to go to Burger King, Don’t get me started on split checks, cell phones or hot tea.
How about those people that drink bottled water? Don’t they know that every food they eat and every cocktail they drink is made with our local sludge? I want to say: “would you like local water, bottled water or a margarita? because you’re gonna pay as much for foreign water, with or without carbonation, as for some first rate tequila: get a clue .
And while we’re at it, what is it with the lemon with water? to me, it’s like kissing your sister, and what waiter has not spied a customer slipping some Sweet and Lo into it (or into their pocket, I might add).
Allergies? I don’t understand them. I once avoided going out with a stunning woman after she volunteered the fact that she was allergic to garlic! What kind of future could you have with someone like that? Diets? Listen, if you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise or be comfortable with who you are. Period. Especially when you go out to eat: Going out is either a sensual experience or a forage, and hopefully you know the difference. In either case, and above all, you should know why you’re there. Attention shoppers: it’s only dinner! Rule number one: the Chef knows what they’re doing. Chef know that smoked pork chops go with greens and mashed potatoes, and that Adkins was a culinary misanthropic sexually repressed pervert and the Pastry Chef considers Sugar Busters an abomination to nature. Deal with it, like I said: it’s only dinner!
You’ll be hard pressed to find a waiter that will sing the praises of most of their client’s cognizant reality concepts in and of real time. Mostly, it’s like they’ve been dropped from outer space into an eating establishment with no clue as to how they got there. Example: “Hello, (with a flourish of napkin) welcome to Chez Nez, I’m your waiter Anthony and I’ll be serving you tonight (and kissing your ass for money); can I get you a wine list or a cocktail before dinner?” Blank stare. You’re who? I’m what? We’re what? And do I want a huh? How do I work this?… You get this very very very often.
I’m of the school of “I don’t care who you are, I’m here with someone and I want strong drink right now!”
And here’s the big one: tipping. They (whoever they are) should pass out this information at our borders: waiters are paid less than half our minimum living wage by owners who insinuate that gratuities will make up for that inequity and are taxed by a government on that assumption. Simply put, I, as a server, depend on you, as a customer, to supplement my meager wage with money based on my knowledge and expertise of service. Tips (To Insure Promptness) is how I make my living. It’s a sick concept; but, it’s in place and a reality to me and the people that I am financially responsible to. To stay afloat, unless I’m a complete bonehead, you need to consider, as a client, that my service is worth a reasonable compensation, at least fifteen to twenty percent above your tab. That’s the reality of it. If you think that this is easy you’re welcome to try it. Me? I’m gonna go soak my feet and wonder why, if that overweight turkey with the cigar minded me looking down his trophy wife’s cleavage, he didn’t think to dress her better.
It’s really loud, by the time you make the distance to the kitchen, other waiters are rushing everywhere, you’ve forgotten what you came for and the cooks are screaming in a language unintelligible to you.
I imagine if someone was to look at me in the midst of this nightmare, I would appear like my dog Ginger does when she has her dreams: whimpering and jerking like she’s hooked up to an electrode. Perhaps dogs are reincarnated waiters. Things that make you go hmmmm.
I did not waken refreshed. Pensive and not refreshed. I went on a wonder and this I wondered:
What is this thing about waiter’s nametags or introductions? The “Hello, my name is Jeremy and I’ll be your waiter tonight” type of action. Personally, I go with the guy who doesn’t want to know a waiter’s name unless the waiter is going out with his daughter and maybe not even then. Specifically, I don’t go out to eat to make friends; that’s what I go to bars for. I go out to eat to be with good company, have someone cook me something yummy to eat and then have somebody else do the dishes. That’s what I’m in a restaurant to do, and unless the waiter (male or female) treats me like either one of us has the intelligence of a box of rocks, that’s what I’m here to tip well for. Customers should be like me.
Let’s start with this, what’s with these parties of eight, ten or more that think they can get a table with no reservation on a busy night and who are the boneheads that move heaven and earth, and the chair that my date has her purse on, to seat them? Those people are gonna get loud, they’re gonna throw the kitchen out of synch, with my food, and, they’ll never get the good service smaller parties do. AND, a word to parents; your two, four, six, eight, ten or twelve-year-old does NOT want to come fine dining on a Saturday night. They want to go to Burger King, Don’t get me started on split checks, cell phones or hot tea.
How about those people that drink bottled water? Don’t they know that every food they eat and every cocktail they drink is made with our local sludge? I want to say: “would you like local water, bottled water or a margarita? because you’re gonna pay as much for foreign water, with or without carbonation, as for some first rate tequila: get a clue .
And while we’re at it, what is it with the lemon with water? to me, it’s like kissing your sister, and what waiter has not spied a customer slipping some Sweet and Lo into it (or into their pocket, I might add).
Allergies? I don’t understand them. I once avoided going out with a stunning woman after she volunteered the fact that she was allergic to garlic! What kind of future could you have with someone like that? Diets? Listen, if you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise or be comfortable with who you are. Period. Especially when you go out to eat: Going out is either a sensual experience or a forage, and hopefully you know the difference. In either case, and above all, you should know why you’re there. Attention shoppers: it’s only dinner! Rule number one: the Chef knows what they’re doing. Chef know that smoked pork chops go with greens and mashed potatoes, and that Adkins was a culinary misanthropic sexually repressed pervert and the Pastry Chef considers Sugar Busters an abomination to nature. Deal with it, like I said: it’s only dinner!
You’ll be hard pressed to find a waiter that will sing the praises of most of their client’s cognizant reality concepts in and of real time. Mostly, it’s like they’ve been dropped from outer space into an eating establishment with no clue as to how they got there. Example: “Hello, (with a flourish of napkin) welcome to Chez Nez, I’m your waiter Anthony and I’ll be serving you tonight (and kissing your ass for money); can I get you a wine list or a cocktail before dinner?” Blank stare. You’re who? I’m what? We’re what? And do I want a huh? How do I work this?… You get this very very very often.
I’m of the school of “I don’t care who you are, I’m here with someone and I want strong drink right now!”
And here’s the big one: tipping. They (whoever they are) should pass out this information at our borders: waiters are paid less than half our minimum living wage by owners who insinuate that gratuities will make up for that inequity and are taxed by a government on that assumption. Simply put, I, as a server, depend on you, as a customer, to supplement my meager wage with money based on my knowledge and expertise of service. Tips (To Insure Promptness) is how I make my living. It’s a sick concept; but, it’s in place and a reality to me and the people that I am financially responsible to. To stay afloat, unless I’m a complete bonehead, you need to consider, as a client, that my service is worth a reasonable compensation, at least fifteen to twenty percent above your tab. That’s the reality of it. If you think that this is easy you’re welcome to try it. Me? I’m gonna go soak my feet and wonder why, if that overweight turkey with the cigar minded me looking down his trophy wife’s cleavage, he didn’t think to dress her better.
Gumbo Logic in New Orleans
‘Wasted and wounded; it ain’t what the moon did, and God what’m I payin’ for now?’
I resisted the temptation of having a beer for breakfast. Well, almost. Then again, what was I supposed to do, leave it by itself in the fridge and me on the verge of a hangover…..question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, the choices we have to make when we’re on our own, especially when we have the whole day off.
Speaking of choices, is it just me, or is anyone else out there feeling older by the nanosecond? I mean, I hear folks talk about computers that will do everything but wipe your behind and my response is to go out and buy my landlady flowers to help her overlook the fact that I sit out late on the porch smoking Luckys, drinking PBR and listening to Buddy Holly on my turntable singin, “ that’ll be the day-hey-hey, when I die.”
I read in the paper that because Chinese people have to learn how to write all those squiggly kinds of handwriting (whatever it’s called) that they suffer from a lack of creativity. Who knew? Yet it figures, ten thousand years of civilization and the best that they can come up with is Moo Goo Gai Pan? C’mon my yellow brothers, we, on the other hand, know how to butcher people in the street as well as in other countries, and we’ll go you one better…. our children can do it as well, even in their schools!! Just think, maybe because our kids are dumber than dirt, they can concoct ways of smuggling AKA 47s into the gym without being caught… way to go guys.
In the same newspaper, I learned that if we stopped spitting and urinating in public, our crime rate would go down. Well, I tell ya, this American did his part only as recent as last night. That’s right, I could’ve whipped that bad boy out and let’er rip on the fence post, but did I? Not on your tintype! I held it!!! And I just know, that the world is a better place for it.
AND, just yesterday while listening to the plan to rescue a three-legged dog (anybody want one?) I heard about a State Trooper who apprehends an alligator, lassoes it, drags it behind his pick up to a ditch and puts a bullet through its head. Let’s see, what reading level would you put that role model at? Is it just me?
It seems to me that I come from a simpler, more gentle time; a time when singers were harmonizing “could it be I’m falling in love?” as opposed to grunting “gotta find me a Project Girl uh, uh!”
I’ll tell you how it was when I was growing up as opposed to how I see things now.
1. Then: I believed that by dressing smartly, learning to converse intelligently (on a variety of subjects), having skills on the dance floor, speaking politely to everyone but my peer group and, later on, knowing how to handle my alcohol intake would gain me the respect I thought that I deserved.
2. Then: I considered crossing at the corner, saving a candy wrapper for the next litter can, and finding a reason to compliment the next person I spoke with.
3. Then: I considered asking questions instead of demanding answers, meaning “excuse me” instead of “get out of my way” and never to taking a kindness as a weakness.
4. Then: I put romance before finance and even politeness before truth. I had never heard the phrase “talk shit, take none” and wouldn’t have believed it if I had. I practiced patience. Go figure.
5. Then: I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or younger than seventy, weighed my words before I spoke them and knew that this was ‘all about me’ but tried not to let anyone else see it. I believed in miracles.
6. Now: I don’t know. It seems that not only am I out of step and time, but that the drummer that I’m marching to got shot in a cosmic drive by long ago by weapons of mass distraction. I wonder if that last beer had a buddy in the box?
7. Now: good guys do finish last, bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them and being meek does not insure me of any inheritance what so ever.
8. Now: the phrase “have a nice day” means nothing. No one is having a nice day. What are you looking at? You know that it’s true! Do the terms ‘two weeks to live’, ‘ got mugged on the corner’ and ‘there is no cure’ sound foreign to you?
9. Now: I look a someone riding a bike to see if it’s mine that was stolen, make sure that I lock the door behind me and look over my shoulder when I walk home at night.
10. Now: I just don’t know.
Here’s what’s in today’s paper, and I’m not making this up.
1. In the 1990s New Orleans lost 9,000 jobs, mandatory helmet bill killed in House, Panel OKs easing video poker rules, they’re clearing out Tallulah Prison, SARS fatality rate higher than thought, Malvo’s confession can be used and a man is arrested after a ten hour stand off.
2. In the main section there are ads for one-day sales, no interest or payments till June 2004, you won’t believe our low prices, sex for life and it’s the laser procedure you’ve been waiting for.
3. In other news: man shot, killed after visiting friend, New Orleans man admits to 1976 rape and killing, man, 81, booked on obscenity charge and 4 are accused of beating deputy in a parking lot. There’s a woman arrested in a shooting, a man sought in a slaying, and, a girl, 16 sent to jail after shooting her boyfriend claiming that they were in bed and she was merely ‘playing’ with the gun. Oh, and a seventeen year old student died Thursday of blows to his head. Do you wonder why I drink?
4. Here’s one on the front page of the sport section: “ The 1-2 punch of Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isadore last year accelerated the ecological nightmare known as coastal erosion.
On the lighter side: Jade Jagger designs jewelry for the stars, plasma screens are so sleek, they hold a sophisticated, almost artlike allure, Ben and J. Lo have found a Georgia retreat and there’s a new computer that will wipe your butt (alright, I made that one up)
Oh, and if you needed to know: my horoscope advises me to write in a journal, Snoopy is starting on a book entitled ‘The Dog’, the answer to 27 down is not ‘Rosebud’ and today is Jimmy Ruffin’s birthday.
Excuse me while I fetch a beverage.
I resisted the temptation of having a beer for breakfast. Well, almost. Then again, what was I supposed to do, leave it by itself in the fridge and me on the verge of a hangover…..question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, the choices we have to make when we’re on our own, especially when we have the whole day off.
Speaking of choices, is it just me, or is anyone else out there feeling older by the nanosecond? I mean, I hear folks talk about computers that will do everything but wipe your behind and my response is to go out and buy my landlady flowers to help her overlook the fact that I sit out late on the porch smoking Luckys, drinking PBR and listening to Buddy Holly on my turntable singin, “ that’ll be the day-hey-hey, when I die.”
I read in the paper that because Chinese people have to learn how to write all those squiggly kinds of handwriting (whatever it’s called) that they suffer from a lack of creativity. Who knew? Yet it figures, ten thousand years of civilization and the best that they can come up with is Moo Goo Gai Pan? C’mon my yellow brothers, we, on the other hand, know how to butcher people in the street as well as in other countries, and we’ll go you one better…. our children can do it as well, even in their schools!! Just think, maybe because our kids are dumber than dirt, they can concoct ways of smuggling AKA 47s into the gym without being caught… way to go guys.
In the same newspaper, I learned that if we stopped spitting and urinating in public, our crime rate would go down. Well, I tell ya, this American did his part only as recent as last night. That’s right, I could’ve whipped that bad boy out and let’er rip on the fence post, but did I? Not on your tintype! I held it!!! And I just know, that the world is a better place for it.
AND, just yesterday while listening to the plan to rescue a three-legged dog (anybody want one?) I heard about a State Trooper who apprehends an alligator, lassoes it, drags it behind his pick up to a ditch and puts a bullet through its head. Let’s see, what reading level would you put that role model at? Is it just me?
It seems to me that I come from a simpler, more gentle time; a time when singers were harmonizing “could it be I’m falling in love?” as opposed to grunting “gotta find me a Project Girl uh, uh!”
I’ll tell you how it was when I was growing up as opposed to how I see things now.
1. Then: I believed that by dressing smartly, learning to converse intelligently (on a variety of subjects), having skills on the dance floor, speaking politely to everyone but my peer group and, later on, knowing how to handle my alcohol intake would gain me the respect I thought that I deserved.
2. Then: I considered crossing at the corner, saving a candy wrapper for the next litter can, and finding a reason to compliment the next person I spoke with.
3. Then: I considered asking questions instead of demanding answers, meaning “excuse me” instead of “get out of my way” and never to taking a kindness as a weakness.
4. Then: I put romance before finance and even politeness before truth. I had never heard the phrase “talk shit, take none” and wouldn’t have believed it if I had. I practiced patience. Go figure.
5. Then: I didn’t trust anyone over thirty or younger than seventy, weighed my words before I spoke them and knew that this was ‘all about me’ but tried not to let anyone else see it. I believed in miracles.
6. Now: I don’t know. It seems that not only am I out of step and time, but that the drummer that I’m marching to got shot in a cosmic drive by long ago by weapons of mass distraction. I wonder if that last beer had a buddy in the box?
7. Now: good guys do finish last, bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them and being meek does not insure me of any inheritance what so ever.
8. Now: the phrase “have a nice day” means nothing. No one is having a nice day. What are you looking at? You know that it’s true! Do the terms ‘two weeks to live’, ‘ got mugged on the corner’ and ‘there is no cure’ sound foreign to you?
9. Now: I look a someone riding a bike to see if it’s mine that was stolen, make sure that I lock the door behind me and look over my shoulder when I walk home at night.
10. Now: I just don’t know.
Here’s what’s in today’s paper, and I’m not making this up.
1. In the 1990s New Orleans lost 9,000 jobs, mandatory helmet bill killed in House, Panel OKs easing video poker rules, they’re clearing out Tallulah Prison, SARS fatality rate higher than thought, Malvo’s confession can be used and a man is arrested after a ten hour stand off.
2. In the main section there are ads for one-day sales, no interest or payments till June 2004, you won’t believe our low prices, sex for life and it’s the laser procedure you’ve been waiting for.
3. In other news: man shot, killed after visiting friend, New Orleans man admits to 1976 rape and killing, man, 81, booked on obscenity charge and 4 are accused of beating deputy in a parking lot. There’s a woman arrested in a shooting, a man sought in a slaying, and, a girl, 16 sent to jail after shooting her boyfriend claiming that they were in bed and she was merely ‘playing’ with the gun. Oh, and a seventeen year old student died Thursday of blows to his head. Do you wonder why I drink?
4. Here’s one on the front page of the sport section: “ The 1-2 punch of Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isadore last year accelerated the ecological nightmare known as coastal erosion.
On the lighter side: Jade Jagger designs jewelry for the stars, plasma screens are so sleek, they hold a sophisticated, almost artlike allure, Ben and J. Lo have found a Georgia retreat and there’s a new computer that will wipe your butt (alright, I made that one up)
Oh, and if you needed to know: my horoscope advises me to write in a journal, Snoopy is starting on a book entitled ‘The Dog’, the answer to 27 down is not ‘Rosebud’ and today is Jimmy Ruffin’s birthday.
Excuse me while I fetch a beverage.
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!
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!
Lottery Dreams in New Orleans
You know, it takes a great man to realize when the time is ripe and right to change the fundamental principles of his life.
I’m not talking about things like explaining my extensive ‘bald spot’ as a solar panel to my sexuality or my claim to women that I am actually a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I’m talking, you know, fundamental principles like swearing allegiance to your after shave (Old Spice), hair tonic (Vitalis) and whether you want your toilet paper with the sheets rolling over or under (under, definitely UNDER)! Or even the big one, (thanks to Buddy Nordan) the drive to know the difference between good and evil and how to break into show business. I am speaking of what exactly I will do when I hit the Lottery.
True Lottery players never think in terms of ‘if’ they will hit the big one, only ‘when’. Hithertofore (I love that word) I was intrigued by thoughts lewd and lascivious, loud or lament-full, ludicrous or lucrative. I promised the Gods that I would be thankful and true, that I would help mankind and only use the dough for good. It hasn’t worked so far. I finally settled on a great umbrella outcome of my windfall: I would reward my friends and punish my enemies. This fundamental principle has been the guiding light of my eventual economical freedom. This too has not panned out… thus far.
Well, I’ve got a new one. I am going to open up one hundred bars; you know palaces of pleasure, institutions for imbibing, homes of hangovers (contracted and cured), altars dedicated to alcohol. But now, I am not thinking locally… I am dreaming globally. I am not thinking generic… I am dreaming specific. I want to give Pabst Blue Ribbon to the world!
Recently I was given a book by one of my students, the book is One Hundred Great Wonders Of The World. I thought that, as a goal, I should visit each and every one of these wonders, and, that I could do, easily, when I hit the Lottery (Powerball—whatever). Can do, will do; but, what in the name of God’s Balls (or as the English say “Od’s Bodkin) would I drink when I got there?
Okay, what I need is to be able to have my favorite drink (Pabst Blue Ribbon) available at each stop. Okay, suppose that I am a Gazillionaire or a Bazillionaire? Okay, I could have brewskis delivered where I wanted them. What about the rest of you?
Well hey, I got the bucks, why not open stands where you can tip back a cold one too (happy hour five to seven)?
So, Eiffel Tower is easy, likewise Yosemite, Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge. But how about The Great Fjords? How about The Nile River? How about Versailles? Mount Fuji? Angor Wat? You can bet your sweet Bippy that there no frosty mug at Stonehenge, Volcanic Iceland or Carargue! Forget about the Matterhorn and there’s no PBR on the Danube! And it’s no joke that you can die of thirst on the Sahara.
Listen to this: “Madagascar is an island of staggering biological diversity. When the island ripped away from Africa 165 million years ago, animals and plants continued to evolve without interference from outside” Consider visiting an island that is able to get away from a continent. Consider the people that you know that would chew their arm off to get free of that one night stand that they stupidly went home with…the coyote (much worse than an ordinary dog). Consider doing that, or visiting there without a cold one in a frosty mug. To me it’s plainly unthinkable.
Here’s other places that you’d not think of visiting without a beer handy: Giant’s Causeway, Edinburgh Castle, Versailles, The Grand Canal, Peter’s Basilica, Neuschwanstein, or Pamukkale. They scream for a great beer as a chaser. How about The Great Wall, The leaning Tower of Pisa, The Colosseseum or The Parthenon. Unimaginable without an icey cold PBR!
The mind reels with names such as: The Kremlin, Alhambra, The Temple Of Karnak, Mount Kilimanjaro, The Okavango Delta and Teotihuacan. My spellcheck has just had a meltdown.
Anyway, what I would do is fly in my private plane and view these wonders, have a cool one while my jets are cooling and, after dining locally, plan my next destination. I could do this until the whole hundred were seen. All the while I would be mapping out the list of a hundred more ‘Not Quite Ready For The Top One Hundred Wonder’ locations. Places like Dogpatch, Gasoline Alley, Abe’s Barbecue, The Shrine Of Donald Freeman’s Favorite Tweezers or the location of the world’s biggest crouton.
I’d like to visit an escargot ranch at roundup time, the place where they put them tiny stickers on tomatoes and a Survivor Island (where I would kick everybody off).
How about going to The North Pole to see if Santa is really there, tracking down The Easter Bunny (does he really live on Easter Island?) or going to the place where God’s final message to mankind is:
(“SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”)?
Oh, the places we could see! The things that we could find out: what makes an elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the musty must, what makes a muskrat guard his musk, what makes a king out of a slave, what makes a flag to wave, what makes a Hottentot so hot and who put the ape in apricot? And: what do they got that we ain’t got? It certainly won’t be the good old dough ray me!
Who is we? Why it’s all my friends that will be along for the ride, laughin’ and a scratchin’ and a drinkin’ some beer!
What about my enemies? Why… we’ll send them postcards! Who knows what evil lives in the hearts of man? The Shadow do…Hahahahahahahah!
I’m not talking about things like explaining my extensive ‘bald spot’ as a solar panel to my sexuality or my claim to women that I am actually a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I’m talking, you know, fundamental principles like swearing allegiance to your after shave (Old Spice), hair tonic (Vitalis) and whether you want your toilet paper with the sheets rolling over or under (under, definitely UNDER)! Or even the big one, (thanks to Buddy Nordan) the drive to know the difference between good and evil and how to break into show business. I am speaking of what exactly I will do when I hit the Lottery.
True Lottery players never think in terms of ‘if’ they will hit the big one, only ‘when’. Hithertofore (I love that word) I was intrigued by thoughts lewd and lascivious, loud or lament-full, ludicrous or lucrative. I promised the Gods that I would be thankful and true, that I would help mankind and only use the dough for good. It hasn’t worked so far. I finally settled on a great umbrella outcome of my windfall: I would reward my friends and punish my enemies. This fundamental principle has been the guiding light of my eventual economical freedom. This too has not panned out… thus far.
Well, I’ve got a new one. I am going to open up one hundred bars; you know palaces of pleasure, institutions for imbibing, homes of hangovers (contracted and cured), altars dedicated to alcohol. But now, I am not thinking locally… I am dreaming globally. I am not thinking generic… I am dreaming specific. I want to give Pabst Blue Ribbon to the world!
Recently I was given a book by one of my students, the book is One Hundred Great Wonders Of The World. I thought that, as a goal, I should visit each and every one of these wonders, and, that I could do, easily, when I hit the Lottery (Powerball—whatever). Can do, will do; but, what in the name of God’s Balls (or as the English say “Od’s Bodkin) would I drink when I got there?
Okay, what I need is to be able to have my favorite drink (Pabst Blue Ribbon) available at each stop. Okay, suppose that I am a Gazillionaire or a Bazillionaire? Okay, I could have brewskis delivered where I wanted them. What about the rest of you?
Well hey, I got the bucks, why not open stands where you can tip back a cold one too (happy hour five to seven)?
So, Eiffel Tower is easy, likewise Yosemite, Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge. But how about The Great Fjords? How about The Nile River? How about Versailles? Mount Fuji? Angor Wat? You can bet your sweet Bippy that there no frosty mug at Stonehenge, Volcanic Iceland or Carargue! Forget about the Matterhorn and there’s no PBR on the Danube! And it’s no joke that you can die of thirst on the Sahara.
Listen to this: “Madagascar is an island of staggering biological diversity. When the island ripped away from Africa 165 million years ago, animals and plants continued to evolve without interference from outside” Consider visiting an island that is able to get away from a continent. Consider the people that you know that would chew their arm off to get free of that one night stand that they stupidly went home with…the coyote (much worse than an ordinary dog). Consider doing that, or visiting there without a cold one in a frosty mug. To me it’s plainly unthinkable.
Here’s other places that you’d not think of visiting without a beer handy: Giant’s Causeway, Edinburgh Castle, Versailles, The Grand Canal, Peter’s Basilica, Neuschwanstein, or Pamukkale. They scream for a great beer as a chaser. How about The Great Wall, The leaning Tower of Pisa, The Colosseseum or The Parthenon. Unimaginable without an icey cold PBR!
The mind reels with names such as: The Kremlin, Alhambra, The Temple Of Karnak, Mount Kilimanjaro, The Okavango Delta and Teotihuacan. My spellcheck has just had a meltdown.
Anyway, what I would do is fly in my private plane and view these wonders, have a cool one while my jets are cooling and, after dining locally, plan my next destination. I could do this until the whole hundred were seen. All the while I would be mapping out the list of a hundred more ‘Not Quite Ready For The Top One Hundred Wonder’ locations. Places like Dogpatch, Gasoline Alley, Abe’s Barbecue, The Shrine Of Donald Freeman’s Favorite Tweezers or the location of the world’s biggest crouton.
I’d like to visit an escargot ranch at roundup time, the place where they put them tiny stickers on tomatoes and a Survivor Island (where I would kick everybody off).
How about going to The North Pole to see if Santa is really there, tracking down The Easter Bunny (does he really live on Easter Island?) or going to the place where God’s final message to mankind is:
(“SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE”)?
Oh, the places we could see! The things that we could find out: what makes an elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the musty must, what makes a muskrat guard his musk, what makes a king out of a slave, what makes a flag to wave, what makes a Hottentot so hot and who put the ape in apricot? And: what do they got that we ain’t got? It certainly won’t be the good old dough ray me!
Who is we? Why it’s all my friends that will be along for the ride, laughin’ and a scratchin’ and a drinkin’ some beer!
What about my enemies? Why… we’ll send them postcards! Who knows what evil lives in the hearts of man? The Shadow do…Hahahahahahahah!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Big Red Is Dead
Big Red is dead, and wherever she went, I’m sure she’s not happy about it. In fact, I believe that she’s pretty pissed off. She’s gonna miss Jazz Fest.
I got the call that she was circling the drain a couple of weeks earlier and had composed my excuses to miss the wake and burial when the email came about the demise (computers are great, aren’t they?). Reluctantly, I resigned myself to the fact that one did not miss Big Red’s funeral, especially if one were one of Big Red’s sons.
Of course, if you had known Red, you knew that extended periods of mourning were not to be expected or permitted in our family. The next tragedy, at least in our family, doesn’t get put on hold while you take time to get over the last one, if you get my drift. Big Red had seen four siblings, three husbands, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin go before her and never missed a beat raising the five children she bore and dominated. In fact, if anyone could be counted on to not cry in her beer over ill winds (for long), it was her.
So, this year, as usual, I’m going to Jazz Fest. But with different eyes, with different ears and with a new sense of smell. You see, when someone or something that you take as constant and indestructible, an undeniable presence if you will, is somehow permanently, and here I repeat, permanently removed from your life, you must face your own death. Spooky, huh?
Now, you know me, it takes a lot of whiskey for me to get maudlin. If Red’s passing has taught me anything, it’s taught me the importance of savoring the moments. Here’s what I mean.
I go into my stash to see how many Fest days I can afford (I believe in conspicuous consumption) and wrangle my way out work (trading shifts, bribing coworkers coverage, whining to the boss, whatever it takes) for those days. And then, having begun what has now become my spring religious experience, I go through the Jazz Festival rituals.
Standing in line for tickets at the Municipal Auditorium may not be everyone’s cup of gin, but I, on the other hand dig it. I see folks from last year and the year before, eavesdrop on conversations of ‘he said, she said’, watch women with long legs on shiny bikes glide up. The day is naturally clear, as blue a sky as we ever get here (with the natural ‘scattered shower’ prediction), robins egg blue to be precise. It’s a bit breezy, but we knew it would be. I’ve already asked about to see if anyone I know wants me to score for them, it’s cash only, and nothing feels better or more vulnerable than having a few hundred bucks in your pocket. The ticket sellers are distant and aloof, but who gives a rats whisker, this is when it becomes MY Jazz Festival, when I get MY tickets, in MY hand. It’s the beginning of it’s all about ME. If there is anything I hold dear of in my life, it’s my Fest tickets. I watch over them like a mother hen from the time I ritually purchase them to when I hand them over at the gate for the ritual tearing.
Next, the ritual of the packing for the day. Nothing too large, bottled water is allowed and any other food or beverages will have to be consumed before entering the gates or snuck in. You know about ‘The Search’, don’t you? Should I eat before going? Big question. Should I wear baggy pants with shorts underneath? Sweatshirt or light sweater? Sunblock. Hat. Dark glasses. Sittin’ towel. The right footwear. Don’t get overburdened but by all means cover the butt. There’s only one in and one out per day.
The morning of, I’m like a kid going off to camp. Where’s my hat? In what pocket are my tickets, my money, my bus fare, my friggin Chap Stick?
I’m also, if you’ve been reading past Fest issues, a Jazz Fest maverick in the true sense of the word. I don’t herd, I don’t camp and if I see anyone I know with one of those long poles that have flags or fishes or cows horns on top of them……….(what is it with that anyway?)…….I head in the other direction. I kinda don’t get the wearing of matching clothes, ‘I’ll meet you at the water fountain at such a time’, ‘ we have our spot picked out’ attitude. I guess I’m missing some kind of bonding thing, but not much. The way that I get Fested is by roaming the grounds, wind in my receded hairline, sun in my face, gumbo on my shirt, mud on my tennies.
I’ve already had coffee for an hour before the bus ride; I know what stop to get on and where to get off. I’ve gone to the bathroom. I’m a veteran of thirty years. This year Big Red’s gonna miss it.
Like I said, I come prepared. I come prepared for an exhausting day of avoiding crowds, sunstroke, food lines and pit stop delays. I come prepared to see my music idols and icons, some of whom now resemble Jabba the Hut. I come prepared to be restless and to roam free, as free as the grass grows.
I’m mentally composing this riding in my brother’s car as we follow the hearse. Big Red was buried with a six pack at her feet (in the coffin), Lotto tickets, TV guide, rosary and a ziplock of sand from her favorite beach. The procession passes her favorite bars, Bingo parlors, past domiciles, and then a slow pass in front of the Track.
Big Red was also buried wearing bright red lipstick. She claimed that you never know when you might meet a millionaire at the mailbox, I’ll always remember her words of encouragement after reading (against her will) one of my (as I considered it to be) more witty columns: “The only thing funny about you is your face”. Say goodnight Gracie.
I got the call that she was circling the drain a couple of weeks earlier and had composed my excuses to miss the wake and burial when the email came about the demise (computers are great, aren’t they?). Reluctantly, I resigned myself to the fact that one did not miss Big Red’s funeral, especially if one were one of Big Red’s sons.
Of course, if you had known Red, you knew that extended periods of mourning were not to be expected or permitted in our family. The next tragedy, at least in our family, doesn’t get put on hold while you take time to get over the last one, if you get my drift. Big Red had seen four siblings, three husbands, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin go before her and never missed a beat raising the five children she bore and dominated. In fact, if anyone could be counted on to not cry in her beer over ill winds (for long), it was her.
So, this year, as usual, I’m going to Jazz Fest. But with different eyes, with different ears and with a new sense of smell. You see, when someone or something that you take as constant and indestructible, an undeniable presence if you will, is somehow permanently, and here I repeat, permanently removed from your life, you must face your own death. Spooky, huh?
Now, you know me, it takes a lot of whiskey for me to get maudlin. If Red’s passing has taught me anything, it’s taught me the importance of savoring the moments. Here’s what I mean.
I go into my stash to see how many Fest days I can afford (I believe in conspicuous consumption) and wrangle my way out work (trading shifts, bribing coworkers coverage, whining to the boss, whatever it takes) for those days. And then, having begun what has now become my spring religious experience, I go through the Jazz Festival rituals.
Standing in line for tickets at the Municipal Auditorium may not be everyone’s cup of gin, but I, on the other hand dig it. I see folks from last year and the year before, eavesdrop on conversations of ‘he said, she said’, watch women with long legs on shiny bikes glide up. The day is naturally clear, as blue a sky as we ever get here (with the natural ‘scattered shower’ prediction), robins egg blue to be precise. It’s a bit breezy, but we knew it would be. I’ve already asked about to see if anyone I know wants me to score for them, it’s cash only, and nothing feels better or more vulnerable than having a few hundred bucks in your pocket. The ticket sellers are distant and aloof, but who gives a rats whisker, this is when it becomes MY Jazz Festival, when I get MY tickets, in MY hand. It’s the beginning of it’s all about ME. If there is anything I hold dear of in my life, it’s my Fest tickets. I watch over them like a mother hen from the time I ritually purchase them to when I hand them over at the gate for the ritual tearing.
Next, the ritual of the packing for the day. Nothing too large, bottled water is allowed and any other food or beverages will have to be consumed before entering the gates or snuck in. You know about ‘The Search’, don’t you? Should I eat before going? Big question. Should I wear baggy pants with shorts underneath? Sweatshirt or light sweater? Sunblock. Hat. Dark glasses. Sittin’ towel. The right footwear. Don’t get overburdened but by all means cover the butt. There’s only one in and one out per day.
The morning of, I’m like a kid going off to camp. Where’s my hat? In what pocket are my tickets, my money, my bus fare, my friggin Chap Stick?
I’m also, if you’ve been reading past Fest issues, a Jazz Fest maverick in the true sense of the word. I don’t herd, I don’t camp and if I see anyone I know with one of those long poles that have flags or fishes or cows horns on top of them……….(what is it with that anyway?)…….I head in the other direction. I kinda don’t get the wearing of matching clothes, ‘I’ll meet you at the water fountain at such a time’, ‘ we have our spot picked out’ attitude. I guess I’m missing some kind of bonding thing, but not much. The way that I get Fested is by roaming the grounds, wind in my receded hairline, sun in my face, gumbo on my shirt, mud on my tennies.
I’ve already had coffee for an hour before the bus ride; I know what stop to get on and where to get off. I’ve gone to the bathroom. I’m a veteran of thirty years. This year Big Red’s gonna miss it.
Like I said, I come prepared. I come prepared for an exhausting day of avoiding crowds, sunstroke, food lines and pit stop delays. I come prepared to see my music idols and icons, some of whom now resemble Jabba the Hut. I come prepared to be restless and to roam free, as free as the grass grows.
I’m mentally composing this riding in my brother’s car as we follow the hearse. Big Red was buried with a six pack at her feet (in the coffin), Lotto tickets, TV guide, rosary and a ziplock of sand from her favorite beach. The procession passes her favorite bars, Bingo parlors, past domiciles, and then a slow pass in front of the Track.
Big Red was also buried wearing bright red lipstick. She claimed that you never know when you might meet a millionaire at the mailbox, I’ll always remember her words of encouragement after reading (against her will) one of my (as I considered it to be) more witty columns: “The only thing funny about you is your face”. Say goodnight Gracie.
Wasted in New Orleans
News from the front: no progress has been made and the wind, my friend, is howling at your doorstep, down your chimney and up your assets like the Dire Wolf, all six hundred pounds of sin. It’s hotter than July (go figger) and the perfect storm is forming in your aura, if nowhere else. I’m at a category three myself.
I know what you’re thinking: what else can happen? Well, this: we got a bunch of yahoos wanting us to believe that their temporary agendas, with outcomes that we can or cannot predict, alter or effect are dialogue that we should consider considering. Go ahead, they seem to say, use what few brain cells that you have left to store useless information about the inhumanity (on all fronts) of our lives and conditions. But, you know what? All of our challenges will not amount to a hill of beans if we don’t take care of the hill itself. The rest is, after all, just mental masturbation, Capeesh?
Shot at and missed, shit at and hit. The war, the economy and gas prices, sure are important; but, do you really concentrate on socks and shoes if you aint got no feet? Do you lock the doors when the walls cave in? If you ain’t got a planet left to wage war on…what’s the point of having peace talks?
The big ‘E’ word. The environment. And how would you like to come see the poster child for environmental dysfunction? Well, ‘c’mon down!’ Come on down to New Orleans and The French Quarter!
As residents and workers here, we can’t help but chuckle when we see a tourist, inebriated or not, trip over what should be a smooth walking surface. The city says the sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the landlords, the VCC says it has a say on what goes on there and not to fool with blockage or adornment. Landlords and residents shoot the bird at any responsibility and say that if they are city streets, let the city take care of them. It’s the big ‘not my problem’ all the way around and then I trip and bust my butt.
Oh, and watch out for fallen light posts (or non existent ones). The city says to report a missing or broken light post just submit it’s identification number (?) The story of our lives here – submit a number. By the way, THE LIGHTING DEPARTMENT ONLY INSPECTS DURING THE DAY!!!
Demolition by neglect? Where would you like to start?
Add to that, the dark corners where disrespect and crime flourish and there’s no better example of environmental disaster than the vomit and blood and urine and condoms and used hypos on our streets; unless it’s the frigging trash, like the drunk passed out in your doorway or dog shit on the sidewalk.
I know what you’re thinking: “why Phil, it’s a hell of a lot cleaner now that we have a trash company looking out for us”. Nooooo, Fool… we’ve got ten times the number of cleanup elves sweeping up after us… so fast that we can’t let a hint drop without someone being there from SDT to catch it before it hits the ground. We are NOT better citizens about cleanliness, we just have more baby sitters. With your eyes open you can still see trash being tossed everywhere; cigarette butts, chewing gum, chicken bones, go cups and a zip code of spit being left on our streets to be hosed down and picked up by our bazillion dollar trash service.
Paint, kitchen grease and construction mediums being flushed down our storm drains and ultimately to the lake? Let me count the ways.
Recycling? In your dreams, Sucker. One of the other things we have not come to grips with is that you can’t just throw something away… there is no away! It has to go somewhere, and if something that can be recycled is not recycled, you wind up wasting one resource and exploiting another to replace it.
Glass, cardboard, plastic, paper and even compost are parts of reclamation in any civilized community. Simple stuff like a deposit on a bottle, money for cans and cardboard or at the least, an environmental Nazi to fine the shit out of people that don’t take the life of the planet seriously are ideas that haven’t even occurred yet.
Yes, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City. We’ve got an epidemic of complacency that IS stuck on stupid. We have people that know the difference in right speech, right thought and right action with their ears in a cell phone and their pants around their asses. We have parenting with no skills, models with no roles and lots of work with no pay.
We’ve been hung out to dry on every level and now the long slow hurricane season of the soul sets in with flash flood watches covering the southern portion of my disposition and a line of thunderstorms developing in the western region of my mental health and the northern regions of my ability to deal rationally with my precarious emotional situation. Severe weather well into the afternoon except for a lone gust of wind in my bedroom in a high pressure zone with a 103 and millibar and weak pressure ridge extending from my eyes down to my cheeks.
We know what needs to be done, what needs to happen and yet with daily life and every indiscretion that we allow to happen, another nail is driven into the coffin of the planet. It is said that an impotent person, an oppressed person, a beaten person does not make waves, and the ignorant get away with crimes against nature. Not one of us is truly enfettered and alive until we complain about the stuff that bothers us… the things around us that insult us.
Our sensibilities have left our sensitivities for dead and put vice grips on our hearts and minds. Well, my forecast for the extended period of time until we wake up and take it all back is high tonight, low tomorrow and---
precipitation--------is-------expected.
(Excerpts of this piece lifted from Tom Waits and others… but, of course, you knew that.)
I know what you’re thinking: what else can happen? Well, this: we got a bunch of yahoos wanting us to believe that their temporary agendas, with outcomes that we can or cannot predict, alter or effect are dialogue that we should consider considering. Go ahead, they seem to say, use what few brain cells that you have left to store useless information about the inhumanity (on all fronts) of our lives and conditions. But, you know what? All of our challenges will not amount to a hill of beans if we don’t take care of the hill itself. The rest is, after all, just mental masturbation, Capeesh?
Shot at and missed, shit at and hit. The war, the economy and gas prices, sure are important; but, do you really concentrate on socks and shoes if you aint got no feet? Do you lock the doors when the walls cave in? If you ain’t got a planet left to wage war on…what’s the point of having peace talks?
The big ‘E’ word. The environment. And how would you like to come see the poster child for environmental dysfunction? Well, ‘c’mon down!’ Come on down to New Orleans and The French Quarter!
As residents and workers here, we can’t help but chuckle when we see a tourist, inebriated or not, trip over what should be a smooth walking surface. The city says the sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the landlords, the VCC says it has a say on what goes on there and not to fool with blockage or adornment. Landlords and residents shoot the bird at any responsibility and say that if they are city streets, let the city take care of them. It’s the big ‘not my problem’ all the way around and then I trip and bust my butt.
Oh, and watch out for fallen light posts (or non existent ones). The city says to report a missing or broken light post just submit it’s identification number (?) The story of our lives here – submit a number. By the way, THE LIGHTING DEPARTMENT ONLY INSPECTS DURING THE DAY!!!
Demolition by neglect? Where would you like to start?
Add to that, the dark corners where disrespect and crime flourish and there’s no better example of environmental disaster than the vomit and blood and urine and condoms and used hypos on our streets; unless it’s the frigging trash, like the drunk passed out in your doorway or dog shit on the sidewalk.
I know what you’re thinking: “why Phil, it’s a hell of a lot cleaner now that we have a trash company looking out for us”. Nooooo, Fool… we’ve got ten times the number of cleanup elves sweeping up after us… so fast that we can’t let a hint drop without someone being there from SDT to catch it before it hits the ground. We are NOT better citizens about cleanliness, we just have more baby sitters. With your eyes open you can still see trash being tossed everywhere; cigarette butts, chewing gum, chicken bones, go cups and a zip code of spit being left on our streets to be hosed down and picked up by our bazillion dollar trash service.
Paint, kitchen grease and construction mediums being flushed down our storm drains and ultimately to the lake? Let me count the ways.
Recycling? In your dreams, Sucker. One of the other things we have not come to grips with is that you can’t just throw something away… there is no away! It has to go somewhere, and if something that can be recycled is not recycled, you wind up wasting one resource and exploiting another to replace it.
Glass, cardboard, plastic, paper and even compost are parts of reclamation in any civilized community. Simple stuff like a deposit on a bottle, money for cans and cardboard or at the least, an environmental Nazi to fine the shit out of people that don’t take the life of the planet seriously are ideas that haven’t even occurred yet.
Yes, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City. We’ve got an epidemic of complacency that IS stuck on stupid. We have people that know the difference in right speech, right thought and right action with their ears in a cell phone and their pants around their asses. We have parenting with no skills, models with no roles and lots of work with no pay.
We’ve been hung out to dry on every level and now the long slow hurricane season of the soul sets in with flash flood watches covering the southern portion of my disposition and a line of thunderstorms developing in the western region of my mental health and the northern regions of my ability to deal rationally with my precarious emotional situation. Severe weather well into the afternoon except for a lone gust of wind in my bedroom in a high pressure zone with a 103 and millibar and weak pressure ridge extending from my eyes down to my cheeks.
We know what needs to be done, what needs to happen and yet with daily life and every indiscretion that we allow to happen, another nail is driven into the coffin of the planet. It is said that an impotent person, an oppressed person, a beaten person does not make waves, and the ignorant get away with crimes against nature. Not one of us is truly enfettered and alive until we complain about the stuff that bothers us… the things around us that insult us.
Our sensibilities have left our sensitivities for dead and put vice grips on our hearts and minds. Well, my forecast for the extended period of time until we wake up and take it all back is high tonight, low tomorrow and---
precipitation--------is-------expected.
(Excerpts of this piece lifted from Tom Waits and others… but, of course, you knew that.)
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Creole seasonings from New Orleans
So you want to know about Creole Seasoning? Well, before the 1980s there was no such thing and then along came Paul Prudhomme and his blackened fish and stuff. Actually I cooked for Chef Paul at Commander's Palace in the early seventies where he had us mix up two seasonings, one for meat and one for seafood. From thence sprang forth a plethora of seasonings: meat, fish, shrimp, vegetable, poultry, blackening, pork and veal and magic sauces also. Some claim that there is an 'Opening your mail' seasoning out there. Well, here's our all purpose seasoning that we want you to make up for yourself. Just go to that market that has bulk spices with yout measuring spoons and bag up your own or contact Kitchen Witch at kwcookbooks.com and have 12 jars shipped at no tax and no shipping.
KITCHEN WITCH CREOLE SEASONING
2C. SEA SALT
4T CAYENNE PEPPER
4T BLACK PEPPER
3T WHITE PEPPER
3T GRANULATED GARLIC
8T PAPRIKA
2T DRIED LEAF THYME
2T DRIED LEAF OREGANO
2T DRIED LEAF BASIL
1/4t GROUND CINNAMON
1/4t GROUND NUTMEG
DIRECTIONS: MIX ALL TOGETHER AND GRIND IN SPICE GRINDER TO DESIRED CONSISTENCY (NOT TOO FINE). STORE IN AIRTIGHT CONTAINER AND USE WHEREVER YOU PLEASE, i.e. soups, stews, beans, grilled items, macaroni and cheese, avocado, popcorn, dressings etc. etc.
Try rimming Bloody Mary glasses… Have A Ball, Season With Abandon and Care: It’s powerful stuff!!!!
KITCHEN WITCH CREOLE SEASONING
2C. SEA SALT
4T CAYENNE PEPPER
4T BLACK PEPPER
3T WHITE PEPPER
3T GRANULATED GARLIC
8T PAPRIKA
2T DRIED LEAF THYME
2T DRIED LEAF OREGANO
2T DRIED LEAF BASIL
1/4t GROUND CINNAMON
1/4t GROUND NUTMEG
DIRECTIONS: MIX ALL TOGETHER AND GRIND IN SPICE GRINDER TO DESIRED CONSISTENCY (NOT TOO FINE). STORE IN AIRTIGHT CONTAINER AND USE WHEREVER YOU PLEASE, i.e. soups, stews, beans, grilled items, macaroni and cheese, avocado, popcorn, dressings etc. etc.
Try rimming Bloody Mary glasses… Have A Ball, Season With Abandon and Care: It’s powerful stuff!!!!
The homeless in New Orleans
Twelve thousand or more homeless people are estimated to be in town and they ain’t having any fun! There were six thousand before the storm and it went down to two thousand the year after Katrina. Count them, identify them, help them? How? There’s no housing, unless you consider sleeping under an over-pass; on a park bench; or in an abandoned, mold filled house as a place to hang your hat. And lord help the hapless, homeless fool who works his ass off washing dishes or sweeping our streets that has the audacity to not be able to afford the reaming that most landlords are ready to supply. Adequate medical facilities or services are not available; not before, not now, maybe not ever. .
Why, you might ask, is someone who works…homeless? Ask your city administration, your councilperson--- your mayor. We were told that rather than have any protection from skyrocketing rents, that we would have an ‘economy driven recovery’. What that means is that, unless you’re working for $15-20.00 an hour, you cannot afford to live here. Okay, here’s your next question: what do you think a dishwasher, porter, maid, cleanup person or even gravedigger get paid? At minimum wage ($5.50 an hour), forty hours a week ($220.00) after taxes (about 25%) a working stiff has what? Do the math. Did you know that waiters get paid $2.15 an hour and rely solely on the kindness of strangers?
Folks back from evacuation moving into abandoned buildings? Yes. Teenagers back without their parents? Yes. Runaways and job-seekers looking for warmer climes? Construction workers, your average Joe, and folks thinking that there was actually a road home. Fools.
Want to hear a story? A ballet dancer with a rent paying side job gets shot in the face, spends months in the hospital, and becomes homeless. Guess what would happen to you if no one was there to pick up the tab for your rent? How long do you think your boss would hold your job? And what are city services when you’re discharged from a hospital? A one way ticket to nowhere. AND pretty soon you’re not presentable enough for anyone’s consideration.
The dignity of clean clothes, a clean body, a phone to call home; these are, for 12,000 people in New Orleans not commonplace. What you and I consider basic, are to 12,000 people living here luxury. How close are we to being number 12,001? Closer than you might think. Ask someone in the camp under the mayor’s window, there’s estimated to be about 150 of them (until they’re booted out). Ask one of the hundreds that live under the freeway on Claiborne Avenue. Oh, by the way, a homeless person’s health plan is this: Don’t Get Sick! (or get sick and die).
Where are we going with this? I want to let you know what some folks are doing to help the homeless.
1802 Tulane Avenue. Saint Joseph’s Church. Beautiful Building. Go around in back, past the parking lot and there is a wooden compound that opens it’s doors to the people who have been thrown away by society. Designed by volunteers, staffed by volunteers and powered by donations from common folks and non political organizations; this haven offers laundry facilities, showers, phone calls and food for anyone who can make it there. Sanctuary.
No one asked them to do it. Some people just do what they can for those that cannot.
From a recent church bulletin: “ Neighborhood concert with Washboard Chaz Trio at the Rebuild Center”, and “The Lantern reminds us that they are still collecting travel sized toiletries for the homeless and cell phones which are turned in for cash.” And “The Kiwanis Club of Jefferson provided and served a spaghetti dinner”, and further “St Dominic sponsored a canned good drive”,
You should visit them, they will welcome you. They can always use a hand and they are rightfully proud of what they are doing and have done. Make no mistake, this is a hand up and not a handout.
At our shop we are collecting coin and can to help out, it’s still the season for giving and being in need has no cut off time period. It’s a cold world and we’re all in it together …. or else we’re in it by ourselves.
When we went there, we were amazed at the size and construction and workmanship that is available to those in need. There are numerous organizations that are doing whatever they can to help the helpless; do yourself a good turn and find who they are, where they are and what you can do. There’s a real need here and a chance that everyone that can help should not pass up.
The next time someone asks for that spare change, remember 1802 Tulane… send them there.
Tell you what. If everyone living in New Orleans would give twenty five cents a week, that’s one dollar a month, twelve dollars a year…. times what? Two Hundred thousand people back? Once again, do the math. Or how about a can of food for the bags of groceries that they give to people that have a roof and not much else.
A quarter a week. Sister Beth Driscoll: Lantern Light / St Josephs Rebuild Center 1802 Tulane Ave. NOLA 70112 or even at our shop, we’ll be glad to pass it on.
As someone once sang, back in the day: “There’s a chance peace will come in our time--- please buy one.”
Why, you might ask, is someone who works…homeless? Ask your city administration, your councilperson--- your mayor. We were told that rather than have any protection from skyrocketing rents, that we would have an ‘economy driven recovery’. What that means is that, unless you’re working for $15-20.00 an hour, you cannot afford to live here. Okay, here’s your next question: what do you think a dishwasher, porter, maid, cleanup person or even gravedigger get paid? At minimum wage ($5.50 an hour), forty hours a week ($220.00) after taxes (about 25%) a working stiff has what? Do the math. Did you know that waiters get paid $2.15 an hour and rely solely on the kindness of strangers?
Folks back from evacuation moving into abandoned buildings? Yes. Teenagers back without their parents? Yes. Runaways and job-seekers looking for warmer climes? Construction workers, your average Joe, and folks thinking that there was actually a road home. Fools.
Want to hear a story? A ballet dancer with a rent paying side job gets shot in the face, spends months in the hospital, and becomes homeless. Guess what would happen to you if no one was there to pick up the tab for your rent? How long do you think your boss would hold your job? And what are city services when you’re discharged from a hospital? A one way ticket to nowhere. AND pretty soon you’re not presentable enough for anyone’s consideration.
The dignity of clean clothes, a clean body, a phone to call home; these are, for 12,000 people in New Orleans not commonplace. What you and I consider basic, are to 12,000 people living here luxury. How close are we to being number 12,001? Closer than you might think. Ask someone in the camp under the mayor’s window, there’s estimated to be about 150 of them (until they’re booted out). Ask one of the hundreds that live under the freeway on Claiborne Avenue. Oh, by the way, a homeless person’s health plan is this: Don’t Get Sick! (or get sick and die).
Where are we going with this? I want to let you know what some folks are doing to help the homeless.
1802 Tulane Avenue. Saint Joseph’s Church. Beautiful Building. Go around in back, past the parking lot and there is a wooden compound that opens it’s doors to the people who have been thrown away by society. Designed by volunteers, staffed by volunteers and powered by donations from common folks and non political organizations; this haven offers laundry facilities, showers, phone calls and food for anyone who can make it there. Sanctuary.
No one asked them to do it. Some people just do what they can for those that cannot.
From a recent church bulletin: “ Neighborhood concert with Washboard Chaz Trio at the Rebuild Center”, and “The Lantern reminds us that they are still collecting travel sized toiletries for the homeless and cell phones which are turned in for cash.” And “The Kiwanis Club of Jefferson provided and served a spaghetti dinner”, and further “St Dominic sponsored a canned good drive”,
You should visit them, they will welcome you. They can always use a hand and they are rightfully proud of what they are doing and have done. Make no mistake, this is a hand up and not a handout.
At our shop we are collecting coin and can to help out, it’s still the season for giving and being in need has no cut off time period. It’s a cold world and we’re all in it together …. or else we’re in it by ourselves.
When we went there, we were amazed at the size and construction and workmanship that is available to those in need. There are numerous organizations that are doing whatever they can to help the helpless; do yourself a good turn and find who they are, where they are and what you can do. There’s a real need here and a chance that everyone that can help should not pass up.
The next time someone asks for that spare change, remember 1802 Tulane… send them there.
Tell you what. If everyone living in New Orleans would give twenty five cents a week, that’s one dollar a month, twelve dollars a year…. times what? Two Hundred thousand people back? Once again, do the math. Or how about a can of food for the bags of groceries that they give to people that have a roof and not much else.
A quarter a week. Sister Beth Driscoll: Lantern Light / St Josephs Rebuild Center 1802 Tulane Ave. NOLA 70112 or even at our shop, we’ll be glad to pass it on.
As someone once sang, back in the day: “There’s a chance peace will come in our time--- please buy one.”
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