Shove over Sarah Jessicas of the world, I’m not taking this insult to
my fellow fellows lying down. I’m putting to paper my own pilot
that I just KNOW HBO is gonna snap up; and yes, it’s called “Socks In
The City”! And yes, it’s about four lovable friends (guys this time) and their adventures in this big metropolis that we call ‘The Easy’. I, of course, will be the star and every episode will begin with me strolling down the uptown Frerret neighborhood past the rubble that was once public housing and I’m dressed in a cute ruffly shirt and seersucker trousers with sweet shiny saddle shoes, when BAM! a bus comes by and splashes a puddle that remains from yesterdays rain that the city has not turned the pumps on to clear, and I stare adoringly into the camera as the bus whizzes by with Emiril”s picture on it and jeering school children throw fried chicken bones at me and a sweet little ditty plays in the background by Barry Manilow because he does such sweet jingly tunes. Are you with me?
Next the tube shows me walking down a busy street (if we can find a busy street) with my three chums.
1.Miranda Pedro, my Hispanic lawyer buddy that was here under the radar until he married a stripper and moved to Metairie with his red headed step child. Miranda is his first name because his father is dyslexic and told the people at the hospital the baby’s last name first or something (we’ll get to that in a sequel episode). He’s an overachiever that adores hats from Meyer and wonders why he hasn’t had sex for the last six months and even at that, his wife is prone to faking orgasms and asking him if he’s done yet.
2. My next buddy we just refer to by his last name Carrlotte. He is a gay African American (actually half Sicilian) in a committed relationship with a sweet British bloke, Harold, with whom he has an adopted Asian child. They’ll go through some hilarious episodes as they try to get married, find a nanny, get profiled and try to find an apartment that will rent to them,
3. Then there’s Sam Hoover, a tall strapping blond fashion designer. A tall strapping oversexed fashion designer who splits his time between here and Los Angeles where he manages his cute but dumb starlet fiancée. Sam is nearing fifty and worries about ED, incontinence and going bald. His girlfriend works too hard and Sam feels neglected except when he’s around me and the guys or getting seriously laid.
Me? I’m Charlie Bradshaw. I sit around in my boxers and type one word on my computer and hope for inspiration for a column to inspire my hordes of readers who look to me to bring joy into their otherwise dull existences. I’m secretly in love with a woman that we all refer to as ‘Big’, but not to her face because she’d kick our collective asses up to our stylish collars. Ergo, I go to Paris with a ballerina and that doesn’t work out like all the other relationships that I have… do not work out (at least on the show). Big does something for a living that I clearly can’t figure out except that she’s constantly finding excuses to break dates with me. Big rarely smiles, but you can just tell that she adores me and is great in bed.
Here we all come walking down the crowded (we’ll get a crowd somewhere) street and we’ve gotten dressed to the nines with outfits from Rubinstein’s, jewels from Adler’s and as we sidestep broken sidewalks and body fluids and trash that STD is eagerly pursuing you can clearly tell that we’re talking about where to dine and how much we can drink, gossip and complain and still be our lovable selves.
Here we are sitting around the table drinking Kamikaze-poltans which are just like those other drinks (cosmopolitans) except there’s less cranberry juice and you have to drink them a lot faster. We’re all stylishly coifed and talk about relationships and orgasms and tend to get misty at the mention of movies like It Happened One Night and An Affair To Remember. Sam has his eyes on the waitress who later corners him in the john much to the annoyance of the man in the next stall trying to quietly shoot up.
Today is full of chatter because Miranda has found out that his wife, Stephanie, is selling her body on the side (explaining her performances in her own bed). Sam is explaining the best way to get those nasty stains from the crotches of trousers, and Carrlotte is ecstatic because his child has learned to fold laundry. That’s when I drop the bomb on them: “Big has asked me to move in with her” I remark, cool as the cucumber on my chef salad (dressing on the side). To which they all shriek like schoolgirls.
What do you think? Does it have legs? Of Course it does! I mean, I LOVE Sex And The City, I ADORE Will and Grace, I DIG Desperate Housewives and I think Ugly Betty RULES! I believe that I can show that guys are sensitive caring, funny and have great taste in shoes and fashion accessories.
In the show, I’ll start to get married several times in every conceivable (named) fashion designer outfit, have steamy love scenes without taking off my clothes and at the end of each episode be able to dash off another brilliant article for Where Y’at.
Sam will sleep with dozens of women of every conceivable description while searching for a true identity and inner peace instead of screwing pieces with little or no identity.
Carrlotte will redecorate his house a half a dozen times with every conceivable matching outfit, adopt stray animals, go to art openings with his lesbian chums and wonder why his husband has premature ejaculations.
Miranda will start taking a cut of his wife’s earnings, rent an apartment for his mistress, learn to tango with every conceivable guest star and become the first man to become pregnant from a toilet seat.
And Moi? I will sit back and let the money roll in, dream of syndication and practice my acceptance speech for the Grammy’s with my three new best friends.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
What Do You Expect From New Orleans
Well, I just put a hundred dollars in my gas tank. things have gotten ugly, real ugly. So far I’ve not heard of anyone getting as much of a raise in salary as the gas prices, food prices and indeed all prices have warranted. And as I gaze out over the fen at daybreak, I am reminded of that little voice in my head that whispers… ‘what do you expect?’
Did I expect that government on all levels is not staffed by people that can’t make a living doing anything else, not that there’s that much else to do around here while we wait for the next big one to tear us a new one. Okay, we do have three options other than politics: 1. Work selling things that come from China. 2. Wait on tables that mostly consist of foreigners that are celebrating their currency exchange kicking our butts. 3. Gaze out over the fen and ask ourselves: “what do I expect?”
It all started with the CEOs of the gas company gloating about how much profit that they make at my expense. And then the article that Abita Beer has to spend triple the money to make a beer, and even the fact that PBR has gone up in price. Yeah, the squeeze is on and I for one do not feel like putting my hands together about it.
But what do I expect (and what does Hillary want?) question mark, question mark. I want to feel like I do when I eat chocolate, when I’m having ice cream, and that’s just not happening in this climate, at this time.
Consequently, I’ve entertained the thought of entering a short story contest. Top prize: two thousand bucks. That would feel like chocolate. Actually, I had to ask my kid sister to explain to me exactly what constitutes a ‘short story’. The only thing that I remember about what she told me (and there was a great deal) is “beginning, middle and end” and, “make it short”. I guess I’ll have to do it third person and other criteria like that that I picked up at the Tennessee Williams Conference and the William Faulkner Festival. I’ve learned a lot at those conferences, mostly through osmosis. I think that what I’m supposed to do is work up some inner demon, an inner subconscious demon and let it fly with as much attention to detail (not to mention alacrity) toward a release that aims at catharsis and self-actualization at the very least. Hence, the ‘gazing out over the fen’. Let me try it out on you.
Okay, here I am in third person gazing, gazing. Perhaps smoking a pipe. It is daybreak with all the riotous colors that accompany a red sky in the morning (sailors take warning!). The first birds of the day are taking flight, chasing the first insects that are on a diet of other insects including the damn mosquitoes that are carrying about a pint of my blood from last night, rich in single barrel bourbon.
I’m gazing for signs of the mailman or the recycling truck or perhaps my lover (that no count that has made a fool of me). The radio plays in the background a forgotten song (Ques: what was that forgotten song? Ans: Brenda Lee, ‘Comin’ on strong’). That old football injury (where I got hit by an old football) is acting up and the medication is just starting to kick in.
‘When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed…. No, no Nannette, I can’t use that line. Okay, off in the distance I hear something. Jingle bells? Clydesdales? Martini glasses? It’s a belly dancer! That’s it, a belly dancer delivering a dancing telegram. What does it say?
Work with me here, two grand aint nothing to sneeze at unless your nose is full of Peruvian marching powder. Okay, we can’t describe a dancing telegram; so, what do we have? I’m gazing over the fence (in third person), at the tor by the fen in deep anticipation and with an attitude both withdrawn and recalcitrant… clearly a made man.
Naw… I’m in a wheelchair, see? A torpedo from Toledo got me with his gat when my guard was down. I think his name was Louie or Lefty or something like that and hanging was too good for him, if you ask me. But he got what was comin’ to him and I even kicked him while he was down… yeah … and then I went out shopping for towels with his moll.
You know, scumbag is not a word that you hear, let alone read, very often and I think that I should include it in the story. Do you think it too harsh? I think it brings up a good visual. Like, just picture those people in your life that you relate to as scumbags; that’s the kind of guy Louie or Lefty was, and I did him in but good…the scumbag! He won’t be pullin’ no roscoe on nobody any time too soon.
Too much drama? Okay, how about a guy who quits his job at Sprawl-mart selling stuff made in China because his other job got outsourced and he’s waiting on tables because it’s the only place to make enough money to buy gas, pay excessive rent and utilities and his girlfriend thinks he doesn’t work out enough or spend enough time with her and he forgot to file taxes this year and he thinks that all politicians are thieving scumbags and the election is coming up and a hurricane is coming and cigarettes just went up to ten bucks a pack. He’s just gotten another ticket on his car, this one for a hundred and twenty bucks, he hasn’t been to a movie in two years and the day he decides to go, he gets hit by a Ben and Jerry’s delivery truck driven by Louie or Lefty or somebody like that, who gets out and tosses a melted Chunky Monkey in his face and tells him that he was better off by the fence with the tor and the fen and who does he think he is calling him names and going off to buy towels? Too much reality? Well, what do you expect, I’ve had a tough day…where’s my chocolate?
Did I expect that government on all levels is not staffed by people that can’t make a living doing anything else, not that there’s that much else to do around here while we wait for the next big one to tear us a new one. Okay, we do have three options other than politics: 1. Work selling things that come from China. 2. Wait on tables that mostly consist of foreigners that are celebrating their currency exchange kicking our butts. 3. Gaze out over the fen and ask ourselves: “what do I expect?”
It all started with the CEOs of the gas company gloating about how much profit that they make at my expense. And then the article that Abita Beer has to spend triple the money to make a beer, and even the fact that PBR has gone up in price. Yeah, the squeeze is on and I for one do not feel like putting my hands together about it.
But what do I expect (and what does Hillary want?) question mark, question mark. I want to feel like I do when I eat chocolate, when I’m having ice cream, and that’s just not happening in this climate, at this time.
Consequently, I’ve entertained the thought of entering a short story contest. Top prize: two thousand bucks. That would feel like chocolate. Actually, I had to ask my kid sister to explain to me exactly what constitutes a ‘short story’. The only thing that I remember about what she told me (and there was a great deal) is “beginning, middle and end” and, “make it short”. I guess I’ll have to do it third person and other criteria like that that I picked up at the Tennessee Williams Conference and the William Faulkner Festival. I’ve learned a lot at those conferences, mostly through osmosis. I think that what I’m supposed to do is work up some inner demon, an inner subconscious demon and let it fly with as much attention to detail (not to mention alacrity) toward a release that aims at catharsis and self-actualization at the very least. Hence, the ‘gazing out over the fen’. Let me try it out on you.
Okay, here I am in third person gazing, gazing. Perhaps smoking a pipe. It is daybreak with all the riotous colors that accompany a red sky in the morning (sailors take warning!). The first birds of the day are taking flight, chasing the first insects that are on a diet of other insects including the damn mosquitoes that are carrying about a pint of my blood from last night, rich in single barrel bourbon.
I’m gazing for signs of the mailman or the recycling truck or perhaps my lover (that no count that has made a fool of me). The radio plays in the background a forgotten song (Ques: what was that forgotten song? Ans: Brenda Lee, ‘Comin’ on strong’). That old football injury (where I got hit by an old football) is acting up and the medication is just starting to kick in.
‘When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed…. No, no Nannette, I can’t use that line. Okay, off in the distance I hear something. Jingle bells? Clydesdales? Martini glasses? It’s a belly dancer! That’s it, a belly dancer delivering a dancing telegram. What does it say?
Work with me here, two grand aint nothing to sneeze at unless your nose is full of Peruvian marching powder. Okay, we can’t describe a dancing telegram; so, what do we have? I’m gazing over the fence (in third person), at the tor by the fen in deep anticipation and with an attitude both withdrawn and recalcitrant… clearly a made man.
Naw… I’m in a wheelchair, see? A torpedo from Toledo got me with his gat when my guard was down. I think his name was Louie or Lefty or something like that and hanging was too good for him, if you ask me. But he got what was comin’ to him and I even kicked him while he was down… yeah … and then I went out shopping for towels with his moll.
You know, scumbag is not a word that you hear, let alone read, very often and I think that I should include it in the story. Do you think it too harsh? I think it brings up a good visual. Like, just picture those people in your life that you relate to as scumbags; that’s the kind of guy Louie or Lefty was, and I did him in but good…the scumbag! He won’t be pullin’ no roscoe on nobody any time too soon.
Too much drama? Okay, how about a guy who quits his job at Sprawl-mart selling stuff made in China because his other job got outsourced and he’s waiting on tables because it’s the only place to make enough money to buy gas, pay excessive rent and utilities and his girlfriend thinks he doesn’t work out enough or spend enough time with her and he forgot to file taxes this year and he thinks that all politicians are thieving scumbags and the election is coming up and a hurricane is coming and cigarettes just went up to ten bucks a pack. He’s just gotten another ticket on his car, this one for a hundred and twenty bucks, he hasn’t been to a movie in two years and the day he decides to go, he gets hit by a Ben and Jerry’s delivery truck driven by Louie or Lefty or somebody like that, who gets out and tosses a melted Chunky Monkey in his face and tells him that he was better off by the fence with the tor and the fen and who does he think he is calling him names and going off to buy towels? Too much reality? Well, what do you expect, I’ve had a tough day…where’s my chocolate?
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Deja Food in New Orleans
The handlettered sign on the door of the small café on Conti Street read “Closed for Thanksgiving”; and a dozen of us piled into various forms of vehicular transportation and sped to Shweggman’s and spent all of our hard earned in a frenzy of ‘day before The Day’ shopping. It was 1968. Giggling like preschoolers, we made our way uptown to our rented ‘demolition by neglect’ mansion on Chippewa Street and prepared a beggars banquet with all the love, sex, drugs and Rock and Roll in our counter culture hearts. We didn’t get back down to reopen the café until Monday. That was okay by us; after all, didn’t we own the damn place?
As a boy, Thanksgiving was celebrated by the seven members of our family on the tenth floor of a New York City Housing Project and it started at dawn’s crack and didn’t end until the kids were ready to drag themselves, half comatose from triptophane, to bed; while the grownups, with the last of the available welfare cash, headed to the bar across the street for highballs and shuffleboard and congratulations all around for getting through another Thanksgiving. No one would have even dreamed about going to a restaurant to eat on Thanksgiving; it was a family thing, and we did it BIG!
Years later, I would be Executive Chef of a hotel in downtown San Francisco serving a one hundred and twenty foot buffet to twelve hundred strangers that all had one thing in mind: eat as much as you can possibly hold. I watched while hordes of, I think, pleasant people on probably any other day, zeroed in on caviar pie, smoked salmon, carved roasts, pate, plethoras of freshly baked breads and zip codes of desserts with the instincts of wolf packs and the manners of Mongols. The results of my month long planning and work would clog the drains of the ‘City by the Bay’ hours later. What a life.
Last year as a ‘Line Cookin’ Dog’ on Bourbon Street, another cook and myself fed seven hundred people who seemed to come out of the woodwork, and who, looking for…you guessed it; turkey, stuffing, ham, lamb, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, bread pudding… found it and put it into their faces as fast as humanly possible, giving not the slightest clue of thankfulness. That weekend, I put in one hundred and forty hours.
I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner in ‘lost and found’ bars across the country, where the good folks in charge couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger having no place to go on that holiest of holidays: the ‘Feast of the Full Belly’. Say Grace, Amen and dig in.
I’ve served the upscale neauveau riche in Mill Valley “Thanksgiving with seventeen sides” and they came at me like starving Armenians for second and third helpings; howling if one of the serving dishes were not replenished fast enough with oyster cornbread dressing or sage and giblet stuffing or parsnips, turnips, greens, peas and carrots, string beans, sweet potatoes, creamed spinach, broccoli, cauliflower in cheese sauce, pearl onions in cream sauce, corn pudding and baked squash. There was never enough pumpkin pie but there was always left over mincemeat. Pecan pie was for the ‘country connoisseur’ but, after dinner drinks were de rigoure for all. Big freakin’ deal!
“May I have more whipped cream?”
“Is there any more dark meat?”
“Hey, what happened to the wishbones?”
“Is there any meat in that?”
Gimme a break!
To mark this auspicious occasion, in my time, I’ve had my bird in jail, free kitchens, from a can and even from a pint bottle of it called ‘Wild’. I’ve done the ritual in bus stations, stranger’s houses, and with temporary lovers; and guess what? I’m just about over this killing of a ritual bird in honor of the things that I’m supposed to be grateful for that I ain’t got the rest of the year.
No offense intended; I know that we all have a lot of things to be grateful for on a regular basis, but hey, lets be real here, we work our butts off to make that happen. The rent, the utilities, the phone; yeah, that’s worth killing that imbecile of a bird for. But what about our medical, our kid’s schooling, and our daily struggle to make ends meet? Don’t they deserve a day of their own? How about a ‘Patsy Cline Day’? Where we sit around and pop some cool PBRs and smoke some Luckys and consider ‘What a HELL of a situation we’ve gotten ourselves into Day’? How about a day when we go ‘ Bowling for God’ and thank our lucky stars that we’re not like Franky ‘the moron;’ that still drools and has the I. Q. of a fence post? We need more real holidays, is what I’m saying!
How about a monthly fifth to be cracked and a celebration of ‘We paid the landlord again on time day’!? Or a ‘Freedom Day’ where the rent, phone, electricity and hot water are on someone else for a change?
Don’t get me wrong, none, and I repeat none of my Thanksgiving Days have been inconsequential. At least that I remember; they have all been like a collection of photos in a dusty, forgotten album. That one with my visiting nine year old daughter when the closest we got was turkey sandwiches at a Greek diner or the one with the one hundred and eighty pound clubfoot in Portsmouth, England (that’s another story)……..but, hey how much more of this can a poor boy take? I mean, what else can happen?
How about the sky opening and someone from the Heavenly Host asking “white meat or dark” or somehow you wake up on that sacred Thursday and somebody notices that there are no more turkeys? Short of being served by topless shoeshine girls or stripping Chippendales, I don’t think much would impress me anymore. Nope, this day has become redundant, repetitive and transparently dull.
“Oh let’s have Thanksgiving Dinner! Yeah, right! I’d rather have spleen surgery without anesthesia.
Instead let’s get knee walking drunk on Wednesday and stay in bed all of Thursday with TV dinners and make up stories of guilt, shame, triumph, love and betrayal; singing ribald songs and telling dirty jokes ‘til our sides split and order our food delivered from the Nelly Deli.
Okay, okay. I was only kidding. Actually, I got a call from an old friend in Abita Springs, we (and about ten others) used to own a small café on Conti Street. She said a bunch of the gang were coming over for a “Bird Day” celebration--vegetarian, of course. She wanted to make sure that I could take the whole weekend off, had my old corn pudding recipe and if I still had a copy of King Crimson on vinyl. She said that a few of them would come get me in the VW. She told me to remember that there’s water at the bottom of the ocean; whatever that’s supposed to mean. Oh well, here we go again. Happy Thanksgiving!
As a boy, Thanksgiving was celebrated by the seven members of our family on the tenth floor of a New York City Housing Project and it started at dawn’s crack and didn’t end until the kids were ready to drag themselves, half comatose from triptophane, to bed; while the grownups, with the last of the available welfare cash, headed to the bar across the street for highballs and shuffleboard and congratulations all around for getting through another Thanksgiving. No one would have even dreamed about going to a restaurant to eat on Thanksgiving; it was a family thing, and we did it BIG!
Years later, I would be Executive Chef of a hotel in downtown San Francisco serving a one hundred and twenty foot buffet to twelve hundred strangers that all had one thing in mind: eat as much as you can possibly hold. I watched while hordes of, I think, pleasant people on probably any other day, zeroed in on caviar pie, smoked salmon, carved roasts, pate, plethoras of freshly baked breads and zip codes of desserts with the instincts of wolf packs and the manners of Mongols. The results of my month long planning and work would clog the drains of the ‘City by the Bay’ hours later. What a life.
Last year as a ‘Line Cookin’ Dog’ on Bourbon Street, another cook and myself fed seven hundred people who seemed to come out of the woodwork, and who, looking for…you guessed it; turkey, stuffing, ham, lamb, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, candied yams, bread pudding… found it and put it into their faces as fast as humanly possible, giving not the slightest clue of thankfulness. That weekend, I put in one hundred and forty hours.
I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner in ‘lost and found’ bars across the country, where the good folks in charge couldn’t bear the thought of a stranger having no place to go on that holiest of holidays: the ‘Feast of the Full Belly’. Say Grace, Amen and dig in.
I’ve served the upscale neauveau riche in Mill Valley “Thanksgiving with seventeen sides” and they came at me like starving Armenians for second and third helpings; howling if one of the serving dishes were not replenished fast enough with oyster cornbread dressing or sage and giblet stuffing or parsnips, turnips, greens, peas and carrots, string beans, sweet potatoes, creamed spinach, broccoli, cauliflower in cheese sauce, pearl onions in cream sauce, corn pudding and baked squash. There was never enough pumpkin pie but there was always left over mincemeat. Pecan pie was for the ‘country connoisseur’ but, after dinner drinks were de rigoure for all. Big freakin’ deal!
“May I have more whipped cream?”
“Is there any more dark meat?”
“Hey, what happened to the wishbones?”
“Is there any meat in that?”
Gimme a break!
To mark this auspicious occasion, in my time, I’ve had my bird in jail, free kitchens, from a can and even from a pint bottle of it called ‘Wild’. I’ve done the ritual in bus stations, stranger’s houses, and with temporary lovers; and guess what? I’m just about over this killing of a ritual bird in honor of the things that I’m supposed to be grateful for that I ain’t got the rest of the year.
No offense intended; I know that we all have a lot of things to be grateful for on a regular basis, but hey, lets be real here, we work our butts off to make that happen. The rent, the utilities, the phone; yeah, that’s worth killing that imbecile of a bird for. But what about our medical, our kid’s schooling, and our daily struggle to make ends meet? Don’t they deserve a day of their own? How about a ‘Patsy Cline Day’? Where we sit around and pop some cool PBRs and smoke some Luckys and consider ‘What a HELL of a situation we’ve gotten ourselves into Day’? How about a day when we go ‘ Bowling for God’ and thank our lucky stars that we’re not like Franky ‘the moron;’ that still drools and has the I. Q. of a fence post? We need more real holidays, is what I’m saying!
How about a monthly fifth to be cracked and a celebration of ‘We paid the landlord again on time day’!? Or a ‘Freedom Day’ where the rent, phone, electricity and hot water are on someone else for a change?
Don’t get me wrong, none, and I repeat none of my Thanksgiving Days have been inconsequential. At least that I remember; they have all been like a collection of photos in a dusty, forgotten album. That one with my visiting nine year old daughter when the closest we got was turkey sandwiches at a Greek diner or the one with the one hundred and eighty pound clubfoot in Portsmouth, England (that’s another story)……..but, hey how much more of this can a poor boy take? I mean, what else can happen?
How about the sky opening and someone from the Heavenly Host asking “white meat or dark” or somehow you wake up on that sacred Thursday and somebody notices that there are no more turkeys? Short of being served by topless shoeshine girls or stripping Chippendales, I don’t think much would impress me anymore. Nope, this day has become redundant, repetitive and transparently dull.
“Oh let’s have Thanksgiving Dinner! Yeah, right! I’d rather have spleen surgery without anesthesia.
Instead let’s get knee walking drunk on Wednesday and stay in bed all of Thursday with TV dinners and make up stories of guilt, shame, triumph, love and betrayal; singing ribald songs and telling dirty jokes ‘til our sides split and order our food delivered from the Nelly Deli.
Okay, okay. I was only kidding. Actually, I got a call from an old friend in Abita Springs, we (and about ten others) used to own a small café on Conti Street. She said a bunch of the gang were coming over for a “Bird Day” celebration--vegetarian, of course. She wanted to make sure that I could take the whole weekend off, had my old corn pudding recipe and if I still had a copy of King Crimson on vinyl. She said that a few of them would come get me in the VW. She told me to remember that there’s water at the bottom of the ocean; whatever that’s supposed to mean. Oh well, here we go again. Happy Thanksgiving!
Advice for New Arrivals in New Orleans
Cab drivers and communists! Cheese and crackers! Christ on a crutch! My long lost nephew has moved back to The Big Easy!
Actually, I don’t know if he’s ever lived here before; I haven’t laid eyes on him since he was knee high to a Huge Ass Beer ™ cup. But, his parents used to live here, so that’s enough for me to classify him as a replant, of sorts. There was, as I recall, a certain gleam in his Daddy’s eyes while he was here, who knows, it may have been him.
I’ve only seen him once since he’s been back, but knowing the intelligence level of his family, and mine, I feel sure that he’s reading this. I must tell him about Mardi Gras, lest he become grist for the mill.
Dear Nephew,
Welcome back and let me say, for one, that things have changed a bit since you were here last in flesh or in gleam and not, I fear, for the better.
You see, there’s this thing called Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday (not to be confused with Lundi Gras, which is the day before, or Foie Gras, which is the Friday before). Fat Tuesday has always been preceded by Carnival. It is, definitively, THE uber-experience. There’s even a Mardi Gras Cake that won $25,000.00 in a national bake off.
The word Carnival comes from the Latin ‘cruise from Hell’ or ‘flesh be gone’ which ever you choose to believe. Carnival is a time for partying, exchanging body fluids, dancing, eating and throwing up, all to excess. A lot of natives do this all the time; but, when you have millions of amateur ‘visitors’ trying to keep up, it can get real messy.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a tired old horse that middle-aged merchants start whipping at the beginning of the year in the hopes that by Ash Wednesday the frothing, wide eyed, sweat soaked, bleeding and exhausted mount will have generated enough profit that some of it may actually stay in Louisiana.
Carnival officially starts at Twelfth Night, which is twelve days after Christmas, called Kings Night, after the Three Wise Guys who came to see newborn Baby Jee; they had given all the gifts they could, starting with a partridge in a pear tree, had to split back to the Orient and marked the occasion as a Catholic holiday. Amen.
What we do nowadays on Twelfth Night is: bake a cake with a baby in it, smear it with purple, yellow and green icing and whoever bites into the baby gets to sue the bakery or buy the next ‘King Cake’ and continue the cycle. Needless to say, a lot of dentists make money during Carnival. This continues until Mardi Gras, which is the day before Ash Wednesday . Ash Wednesday is forty days before Easter and nobody is supposed to have a good time during that period. It’s Called Lent. Why? I don’t know.
When is Mardi Gras? Forty-one days before Easter. When is Easter?
Officially, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox or Winter Solstice or something . So, to find out when Mardi Gras is, do the math, consult an occultist or look at a calendar.
To start celebrating Carnival, start drinking at Thanksgiving and don’t stop until the trash on Bourbon Street is waist high and everyone else looks really, really strange. The two may, at times, be mutually exclusive.
******************************************
Carnival is also celebrated with Fancy Dressed and Masked Balls (no pun intended), Parades, public humiliation, and large amounts of money going to other Third World Countries. The only thing we stop short of is human sacrifice, I think.
Parades and Balls are put on by Krewes, which is French for Crews. Krewes are made up of ‘social and pleasure’ clubs that elect a King and a Queen to lead them in parades where they cheerfully throw things like cabbages, condoms, coconuts, medallions, doubloons and strings of beads at frothing, maniacal spectators who then fight over them. The King is usually a middle-aged merchant and the Queen is usually a young woman from a well to do family who has reached drinking age. The King remains masked while the Queen wears Lancôme ™ tastefully. What’s up with that? Again, I don’t know; they’re called ‘Secret Societies’.
Another group of ‘Secret Societies’ is The Mardi Gras Indians. The fact that I consider any ‘Society’ that doesn’t invite me to join them, ‘Secret’ is another issue altogether. The Indians, far and away, would be the last group to ask me in. Why? I can’t sew and I don’t speak their language. Let me explain:
‘The Indians’ trace their roots back to the native Americans that befriended persons of color that they felt a kinship with because of the, non native, persons of non color’s rotten attitude toward anyone besides themselves, middle-aged merchants and young women who had reached drinking age. That’s how I see it, I could be wrong, it’s only my word against anyone else’s.
Anyway, Indians sew elaborate, intricate and complex Native American costumes, the likes of which would have Sitting Bull standing in his grave. They parade in groups of twelve to twenty resplendent in sequins, feathers, fabrics and heavy artillery. In their words “when you see us comin’, better get out the way!”
The Indians chant words like “Jock-imo findo hondo-wando fee nah nay”,
“Iko Iko”, “Tu-way-pa-ka-way. Oowa-a-a!” and “kick your ass on the overpass”. This either means: “my ‘Spy Boy’ spotted your ‘Flag Boy’ and ‘Big Chief’ (from the Metarie Ridge) has a shiny pistol and is “gonna make you jump in de river”, or “War, huuh, (good God, y’all) what is it good for?” (Absolutely nuthin’!).
********************************************
Anyway, Carnival generates a gazillion samollions towards the housing, education, working conditions and welfare of the needy for places like Mexico (tee shirts), Burma (sweat shirts), India (condoms), China (baseball caps), Indonesia (beads) and other parts of this country (food stuffs, plastic ware, breast implants and alcoholic beverages), none of which you’ll ever see. Content yourself with having a good time watching a bazillion of out of towners doing things that they would never do at home and remember:
Never drink anything stronger than you are, or of a color not found in nature.
Never, ever try to stop someone from acting improperly. One woman that I know did that and got her ass kicked by not one, not two but three ‘visitors’.
Don’t fight old ladies for beads. Doing so is a sure way of getting a heel print imbedded on the back of your hand.
Dress appropriately. No beads, wallet, credit cards, expensive jewelry or more cash than you care to part with.
If someone wants to bet you that they know ‘where you got your shoes’, tell them that they’re not your shoes.
Your loving Uncle, Phil
P.S. If you want the recipe for the $25,000.00 Mardi Gras Cake email me
Plamancusa@aol
Actually, I don’t know if he’s ever lived here before; I haven’t laid eyes on him since he was knee high to a Huge Ass Beer ™ cup. But, his parents used to live here, so that’s enough for me to classify him as a replant, of sorts. There was, as I recall, a certain gleam in his Daddy’s eyes while he was here, who knows, it may have been him.
I’ve only seen him once since he’s been back, but knowing the intelligence level of his family, and mine, I feel sure that he’s reading this. I must tell him about Mardi Gras, lest he become grist for the mill.
Dear Nephew,
Welcome back and let me say, for one, that things have changed a bit since you were here last in flesh or in gleam and not, I fear, for the better.
You see, there’s this thing called Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday (not to be confused with Lundi Gras, which is the day before, or Foie Gras, which is the Friday before). Fat Tuesday has always been preceded by Carnival. It is, definitively, THE uber-experience. There’s even a Mardi Gras Cake that won $25,000.00 in a national bake off.
The word Carnival comes from the Latin ‘cruise from Hell’ or ‘flesh be gone’ which ever you choose to believe. Carnival is a time for partying, exchanging body fluids, dancing, eating and throwing up, all to excess. A lot of natives do this all the time; but, when you have millions of amateur ‘visitors’ trying to keep up, it can get real messy.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a tired old horse that middle-aged merchants start whipping at the beginning of the year in the hopes that by Ash Wednesday the frothing, wide eyed, sweat soaked, bleeding and exhausted mount will have generated enough profit that some of it may actually stay in Louisiana.
Carnival officially starts at Twelfth Night, which is twelve days after Christmas, called Kings Night, after the Three Wise Guys who came to see newborn Baby Jee; they had given all the gifts they could, starting with a partridge in a pear tree, had to split back to the Orient and marked the occasion as a Catholic holiday. Amen.
What we do nowadays on Twelfth Night is: bake a cake with a baby in it, smear it with purple, yellow and green icing and whoever bites into the baby gets to sue the bakery or buy the next ‘King Cake’ and continue the cycle. Needless to say, a lot of dentists make money during Carnival. This continues until Mardi Gras, which is the day before Ash Wednesday . Ash Wednesday is forty days before Easter and nobody is supposed to have a good time during that period. It’s Called Lent. Why? I don’t know.
When is Mardi Gras? Forty-one days before Easter. When is Easter?
Officially, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox or Winter Solstice or something . So, to find out when Mardi Gras is, do the math, consult an occultist or look at a calendar.
To start celebrating Carnival, start drinking at Thanksgiving and don’t stop until the trash on Bourbon Street is waist high and everyone else looks really, really strange. The two may, at times, be mutually exclusive.
******************************************
Carnival is also celebrated with Fancy Dressed and Masked Balls (no pun intended), Parades, public humiliation, and large amounts of money going to other Third World Countries. The only thing we stop short of is human sacrifice, I think.
Parades and Balls are put on by Krewes, which is French for Crews. Krewes are made up of ‘social and pleasure’ clubs that elect a King and a Queen to lead them in parades where they cheerfully throw things like cabbages, condoms, coconuts, medallions, doubloons and strings of beads at frothing, maniacal spectators who then fight over them. The King is usually a middle-aged merchant and the Queen is usually a young woman from a well to do family who has reached drinking age. The King remains masked while the Queen wears Lancôme ™ tastefully. What’s up with that? Again, I don’t know; they’re called ‘Secret Societies’.
Another group of ‘Secret Societies’ is The Mardi Gras Indians. The fact that I consider any ‘Society’ that doesn’t invite me to join them, ‘Secret’ is another issue altogether. The Indians, far and away, would be the last group to ask me in. Why? I can’t sew and I don’t speak their language. Let me explain:
‘The Indians’ trace their roots back to the native Americans that befriended persons of color that they felt a kinship with because of the, non native, persons of non color’s rotten attitude toward anyone besides themselves, middle-aged merchants and young women who had reached drinking age. That’s how I see it, I could be wrong, it’s only my word against anyone else’s.
Anyway, Indians sew elaborate, intricate and complex Native American costumes, the likes of which would have Sitting Bull standing in his grave. They parade in groups of twelve to twenty resplendent in sequins, feathers, fabrics and heavy artillery. In their words “when you see us comin’, better get out the way!”
The Indians chant words like “Jock-imo findo hondo-wando fee nah nay”,
“Iko Iko”, “Tu-way-pa-ka-way. Oowa-a-a!” and “kick your ass on the overpass”. This either means: “my ‘Spy Boy’ spotted your ‘Flag Boy’ and ‘Big Chief’ (from the Metarie Ridge) has a shiny pistol and is “gonna make you jump in de river”, or “War, huuh, (good God, y’all) what is it good for?” (Absolutely nuthin’!).
********************************************
Anyway, Carnival generates a gazillion samollions towards the housing, education, working conditions and welfare of the needy for places like Mexico (tee shirts), Burma (sweat shirts), India (condoms), China (baseball caps), Indonesia (beads) and other parts of this country (food stuffs, plastic ware, breast implants and alcoholic beverages), none of which you’ll ever see. Content yourself with having a good time watching a bazillion of out of towners doing things that they would never do at home and remember:
Never drink anything stronger than you are, or of a color not found in nature.
Never, ever try to stop someone from acting improperly. One woman that I know did that and got her ass kicked by not one, not two but three ‘visitors’.
Don’t fight old ladies for beads. Doing so is a sure way of getting a heel print imbedded on the back of your hand.
Dress appropriately. No beads, wallet, credit cards, expensive jewelry or more cash than you care to part with.
If someone wants to bet you that they know ‘where you got your shoes’, tell them that they’re not your shoes.
Your loving Uncle, Phil
P.S. If you want the recipe for the $25,000.00 Mardi Gras Cake email me
Plamancusa@aol
2002 Literary New Orleans
The P.H.D.'s daughter got her wooden leg stolen by a bible salesman that she had tried to seduce.
Here I am again, friends and neighbors; flying in under the radar with a report on the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival slash Writers Conference slash Platform for anyone dumb enough to think they can yell 'Stella!?!?!' as good as Brando (in my opinion if Baldwin couldn't………..) March 20-25, 2002.
Last year, as a literary hopeful, my ‘Main Frame’ and I had scored press passes (hint, hint) and were determined to “be there” rather than “be el-seven”, if you catch my drift. I was curious as to what type of birds these would be; and, aside from bad hair, the absence of clothing style (for the most part, Honey, I don't mean you!) and an epidemic of comfortable footwear, they were much the same as you and I, that is, weird.
I didn't feel like much of a writer, while I was there…at all. I’m confused by the difference between illusion and allusion. I don't know the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity and, I guess like my Mama said when I asked her if I had halitosis (at age nine I had read an advertisement but wasn't sure what it was), as far as 'catharsis' and 'pathos' goes: "if you don't know what it is, you aint got it". I was wondering if what I had was what it takes to have been there at all.
I went to a whole bunch of panel discussions, in fact so many, that it was hard to tell where one let off and another began. A couple of them were yawners, but most were lively, and, mostly, I just tried to keep up with the discussions on things like: 'voices', 'revealing' characters, their development and their flaws, 'juice', 'languaging', (that one's not even in my BIG dictionary) 'perception', finding a gay friendly publisher, and what Willie Morris said to who (or whom) on the telephone late one night.
I also, to my dismay, found out that practically nobody makes a living from writing, it takes up all your time (one guy said it took him four years to write eighty two pages) and that if I keep using parenthesizes, I'll never amount to much at all.
I don't think I'll amount to much as a writer anyway because, I don't keep notes on cocktail napkins, my childhood illnesses weren't severe enough, and although my mother kicked my ass on a regular basis, I wouldn't consider her 'overbearing'. I can't even begin to guess where 'third person past tense' is, let alone write from that perspective. I'm also not at any kind of 'psychic intersection'; if anything, I'm just this guy, you know?
So what makes me think I can be a writer? The panels. I can do those panels. I mean, I didn't know most of those guys, so how do I know they wrote seven books? Because the moderator said so? Hmmmm. If I had one book that I could hold up and call my latest, and then, talk about my last book, or better yet, my first book….
Also, I can answer questions, I've got a 'whole lot of opinion' on a myriad of subjects and I can cut up and b.s. my way through just about any topic, with the best of them. Or so I'd like to think.
I attended panels on Southern Culture, Good and Evil, Wit and Wisdom, Hot Properties, Alternative Writing, The Muse stops Here, and others; and I kept saying to myself "I could have said that!" Once when a question was asked during the 'Bad Girls" panel, I almost raised my hand and yelled "pick ME!"
I can see myself sitting with 'quiet authenticity' after being introduced as a writer of 'complex fiction' with a 'clear sense of the absurd' saying: " that's a very good question, Rex; but as we all know, ' you don't have stories unless bad things happen' or as Flannery O'Conner put it: " The average reader is pleased to observe the stealing of a wooden leg".
Thank you, I'll be signing books in the lobby, and I don't care whose (or is that whoms?) they are.
Here I am again, friends and neighbors; flying in under the radar with a report on the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival slash Writers Conference slash Platform for anyone dumb enough to think they can yell 'Stella!?!?!' as good as Brando (in my opinion if Baldwin couldn't………..) March 20-25, 2002.
Last year, as a literary hopeful, my ‘Main Frame’ and I had scored press passes (hint, hint) and were determined to “be there” rather than “be el-seven”, if you catch my drift. I was curious as to what type of birds these would be; and, aside from bad hair, the absence of clothing style (for the most part, Honey, I don't mean you!) and an epidemic of comfortable footwear, they were much the same as you and I, that is, weird.
I didn't feel like much of a writer, while I was there…at all. I’m confused by the difference between illusion and allusion. I don't know the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity and, I guess like my Mama said when I asked her if I had halitosis (at age nine I had read an advertisement but wasn't sure what it was), as far as 'catharsis' and 'pathos' goes: "if you don't know what it is, you aint got it". I was wondering if what I had was what it takes to have been there at all.
I went to a whole bunch of panel discussions, in fact so many, that it was hard to tell where one let off and another began. A couple of them were yawners, but most were lively, and, mostly, I just tried to keep up with the discussions on things like: 'voices', 'revealing' characters, their development and their flaws, 'juice', 'languaging', (that one's not even in my BIG dictionary) 'perception', finding a gay friendly publisher, and what Willie Morris said to who (or whom) on the telephone late one night.
I also, to my dismay, found out that practically nobody makes a living from writing, it takes up all your time (one guy said it took him four years to write eighty two pages) and that if I keep using parenthesizes, I'll never amount to much at all.
I don't think I'll amount to much as a writer anyway because, I don't keep notes on cocktail napkins, my childhood illnesses weren't severe enough, and although my mother kicked my ass on a regular basis, I wouldn't consider her 'overbearing'. I can't even begin to guess where 'third person past tense' is, let alone write from that perspective. I'm also not at any kind of 'psychic intersection'; if anything, I'm just this guy, you know?
So what makes me think I can be a writer? The panels. I can do those panels. I mean, I didn't know most of those guys, so how do I know they wrote seven books? Because the moderator said so? Hmmmm. If I had one book that I could hold up and call my latest, and then, talk about my last book, or better yet, my first book….
Also, I can answer questions, I've got a 'whole lot of opinion' on a myriad of subjects and I can cut up and b.s. my way through just about any topic, with the best of them. Or so I'd like to think.
I attended panels on Southern Culture, Good and Evil, Wit and Wisdom, Hot Properties, Alternative Writing, The Muse stops Here, and others; and I kept saying to myself "I could have said that!" Once when a question was asked during the 'Bad Girls" panel, I almost raised my hand and yelled "pick ME!"
I can see myself sitting with 'quiet authenticity' after being introduced as a writer of 'complex fiction' with a 'clear sense of the absurd' saying: " that's a very good question, Rex; but as we all know, ' you don't have stories unless bad things happen' or as Flannery O'Conner put it: " The average reader is pleased to observe the stealing of a wooden leg".
Thank you, I'll be signing books in the lobby, and I don't care whose (or is that whoms?) they are.
Valentines in New Orleans
A local fried chicken restaurant (if you can call them restaurants) will be starting a gospel brunch soon. They’re gonna call it “A Wing And A Prayer”. This about sums up my love life.
Now Kids, I’m no expert on the subject, and will never claim to be (at least not in public); but, Uncle Phil has been around the block enough times that he’s worn a rut in it as wide as Bayou Saint John, so if I can’t talk about love, who can? In this rant we’re gonna explore some facts and fallacies about the ‘Big “L” Word” as reported by an independent study: mine.
First some fallacies:
Love makes the world go ‘round: what cabbage truck did you just fall off? Money makes the world go around and don’t you ever forget it.
You can tell it’s Love at first sight. NOT! You can tell it’s lust, power, domination, conquest or the need of possession at first sight: either that or you’re wearing your beer glasses and would screw a snake if someone would hold its head down.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry: Baloney! If you’re gonna hang on to love (assuming you ever find it) be prepared to admit that you’re wrong on a number of occasions, and on more complex subjects than the position of the toilet seat.
Love changes you: not for long, if ever. You’ll find yourself (or them) slipping back into the persona behind the façade that won favor; and, you may not be able to keep lipstick on that pig, if you get my drift.
You can change the person that you love: don’t count on it; and, those quirky little things that are funny now, sooner or later become a major pain in the butt. i.e. underwear on the doorknob. And while we’re at it: that new friend of yours (or possibly yourself) that’s rude to strangers, hasn’t a clue how to tip in restaurants, has an addiction or aggression challenge, likes to tell racist or sexist jokes, admires themselves in passing mirrors, is critical, abusive, unbending and just knows that it’s all about them………drop ‘em, it ain’t worth your time and make up.
Love brings out the best in a person: sure, like jealousy, mistrust, envy, possessiveness, insecurity and in some cases hives and rashes.
It’s the ‘challenge of the unknown’ that’s so stimulating about love: No, here you’re confusing love with rock climbing, spelunking and drawing to an inside straight.
Love is its own reward: right. And the meek will inherit the Earth, I’ve got the winning lottery ticket and your landlord is gonna give you free rent.
You always hurt the one you love: hmmmmm, you might want to make that: ‘you always let the one you love hurt you’
Love sneaks up on you: No, generally it sounds like the entire cast of The Lion King being thrown in to a deep fryer.
Now, for some facts.
Love takes work to make it stay: It does, and more than a few of us are willing to walk away rather than stay for the hard part. Then again, sometimes when your partner wants to ‘compromise’ it’s merely another way of saying “do it my way”.
Love can break your heart: This generally happens when someone has convinced you that you really are someone special, and then concludes with “April Fool!” Been there. Got the tee shirt; and any conversation that begins with “I think I need more space” usually ends with your relationship in the toilet.
Love is a many splendored thing: yeah, the walks in the park, the dinners, the smiles and the good times usually stay long after love has walked away. Enjoy them.
Love is like an oil painting: and you’d be advised to be careful with those brush strokes; there is no ‘do over’ accompanied by your lover’s amnesia. Think about it.
Love is like a song: As in Love is like an itching in my heart, I’ve got you under my skin, I only have eyes for you, you make me feel so young, knock me off my feet, since I fell for you, dazed and confused, (take another) piece of my heart, you’re driving me crazy. Are we talking about love here or dementia following a train wreck?
Love does NOT want to meet your ex: period.
You only have one ‘true’ love: but how do you know that you’ve met them yet?
There’s someone for everyone: and here’s where your friends come in, you know, those people who know all the worst stuff about you but like you anyway? Listen, they’ll go through Hell for you; BUT, if they don’t approve of your love……that’s a ‘heads up’! If you can’t trust your friends to know who’s best for you (or at least good for you), whom can you trust? And: if you haven’t learned this yet……. You will.
There are many kinds of love: but it all boils down to two things; (1) you’re thinking about something more important than yourself and (2) it gives you pleasure to do so. If you ain’t got that, you better ask somebody.
It’s worth it: Yep, as corny as it sounds, with its incredible highs and devastating lows, it’s all worth it. Besides, the alternative is to live a superficial life. Love IS the original ‘Living On The Edge’ roller coaster-drive it like you stole it-hell bent for leather-mind bending-flummoxing conundrum of your life. If you’re fortunate enough to have love in your life cherish it, guard it and protect it; because, one false move, Buddy, and it’s history (and you know it).
And, The Lady In The Glass Bathing suit? Seymour Heer writes, “She’s worth wading for”.
PAGE 4
Now Kids, I’m no expert on the subject, and will never claim to be (at least not in public); but, Uncle Phil has been around the block enough times that he’s worn a rut in it as wide as Bayou Saint John, so if I can’t talk about love, who can? In this rant we’re gonna explore some facts and fallacies about the ‘Big “L” Word” as reported by an independent study: mine.
First some fallacies:
Love makes the world go ‘round: what cabbage truck did you just fall off? Money makes the world go around and don’t you ever forget it.
You can tell it’s Love at first sight. NOT! You can tell it’s lust, power, domination, conquest or the need of possession at first sight: either that or you’re wearing your beer glasses and would screw a snake if someone would hold its head down.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry: Baloney! If you’re gonna hang on to love (assuming you ever find it) be prepared to admit that you’re wrong on a number of occasions, and on more complex subjects than the position of the toilet seat.
Love changes you: not for long, if ever. You’ll find yourself (or them) slipping back into the persona behind the façade that won favor; and, you may not be able to keep lipstick on that pig, if you get my drift.
You can change the person that you love: don’t count on it; and, those quirky little things that are funny now, sooner or later become a major pain in the butt. i.e. underwear on the doorknob. And while we’re at it: that new friend of yours (or possibly yourself) that’s rude to strangers, hasn’t a clue how to tip in restaurants, has an addiction or aggression challenge, likes to tell racist or sexist jokes, admires themselves in passing mirrors, is critical, abusive, unbending and just knows that it’s all about them………drop ‘em, it ain’t worth your time and make up.
Love brings out the best in a person: sure, like jealousy, mistrust, envy, possessiveness, insecurity and in some cases hives and rashes.
It’s the ‘challenge of the unknown’ that’s so stimulating about love: No, here you’re confusing love with rock climbing, spelunking and drawing to an inside straight.
Love is its own reward: right. And the meek will inherit the Earth, I’ve got the winning lottery ticket and your landlord is gonna give you free rent.
You always hurt the one you love: hmmmmm, you might want to make that: ‘you always let the one you love hurt you’
Love sneaks up on you: No, generally it sounds like the entire cast of The Lion King being thrown in to a deep fryer.
Now, for some facts.
Love takes work to make it stay: It does, and more than a few of us are willing to walk away rather than stay for the hard part. Then again, sometimes when your partner wants to ‘compromise’ it’s merely another way of saying “do it my way”.
Love can break your heart: This generally happens when someone has convinced you that you really are someone special, and then concludes with “April Fool!” Been there. Got the tee shirt; and any conversation that begins with “I think I need more space” usually ends with your relationship in the toilet.
Love is a many splendored thing: yeah, the walks in the park, the dinners, the smiles and the good times usually stay long after love has walked away. Enjoy them.
Love is like an oil painting: and you’d be advised to be careful with those brush strokes; there is no ‘do over’ accompanied by your lover’s amnesia. Think about it.
Love is like a song: As in Love is like an itching in my heart, I’ve got you under my skin, I only have eyes for you, you make me feel so young, knock me off my feet, since I fell for you, dazed and confused, (take another) piece of my heart, you’re driving me crazy. Are we talking about love here or dementia following a train wreck?
Love does NOT want to meet your ex: period.
You only have one ‘true’ love: but how do you know that you’ve met them yet?
There’s someone for everyone: and here’s where your friends come in, you know, those people who know all the worst stuff about you but like you anyway? Listen, they’ll go through Hell for you; BUT, if they don’t approve of your love……that’s a ‘heads up’! If you can’t trust your friends to know who’s best for you (or at least good for you), whom can you trust? And: if you haven’t learned this yet……. You will.
There are many kinds of love: but it all boils down to two things; (1) you’re thinking about something more important than yourself and (2) it gives you pleasure to do so. If you ain’t got that, you better ask somebody.
It’s worth it: Yep, as corny as it sounds, with its incredible highs and devastating lows, it’s all worth it. Besides, the alternative is to live a superficial life. Love IS the original ‘Living On The Edge’ roller coaster-drive it like you stole it-hell bent for leather-mind bending-flummoxing conundrum of your life. If you’re fortunate enough to have love in your life cherish it, guard it and protect it; because, one false move, Buddy, and it’s history (and you know it).
And, The Lady In The Glass Bathing suit? Seymour Heer writes, “She’s worth wading for”.
PAGE 4
Last Year's Predictions in New Orleans
Good evening and welcome, yes welcome once again to the annual New Years Predictions of the next latest top stories, coming to you from the Dicken’s Prediction Agency, Polling Grounds, Gossip Central, Rumor Control and from contributions to your local W’YAT station from readers like you. Thank you. I’m your host Phil LaMancusa.
For you readers that are new to the show, let me explain. The Dicken’s Prediction Agency works on the theory that the news of the past, seen through the eyes of the news of the present leads to the news from the future. For example: in our top story tonight (or today at coffee; or whatever the case may be), the cathedral will be adding video poker machines to their vestibule to increase revenues, it will be called “Gambling for God”. A spokesperson for the church is quoted as saying, “four Marys will not beat out four Blessed Saviors, but a full house of Archangels will pay triple”.
In other news, the city has approved Harrah’s construction of a theme water park taking up the entire two hundred block of Chartres St. Using the same architect and construction crew that has worked on the restoration of the court house the park will open in 2020. Meanwhile The Largest Corporation In The World is suing the city, saying that they were promised the sale of the entire French Quarter to build a MacCola DisWalSoft World theme park, tearing down all buildings and replacing them with more durable heavy plastic replicas, a process that they said would take about forty eight hours and not interrupt business in the least.
Speaking of business, a plan has been unveiled at city hall for all plastic cups, beads etc distributed this year at Mardi Gras to be coated with a substance that smells like corn. Herds of swine would then be left to roam the streets literally eating all the trash. The plan hit a snag when Lionel Travis, a six year old, asked: “What are we gonna do with all that pig poop?”
Other breaking stories concern four juvenile robbery suspects who were captured after leading police on a 15-minute chase from uptown to mid-city.
The young males, three 10-year olds and one 8-year old were captured by the city’s elite “Under 12 Crime Unit” when they stopped in their stolen golf cart to celebrate at a sno-ball stand. A spokesperson for the unit identified detective Wenzel Denzel as the 11-year old ‘cop that got the drop’.
Iraq has opened it’s first suicide bomber speedway where loaded cars can compete using empty building as their targets. In the third day of fierce competition prizes were still unclaimed.
Elsewhere in Iraq the fighting seems to be over. The New Orleans Brigade, brought over as a last resort explained how this was accomplished.
They sighted a more streetwise approach using rap music, gang warfare, hip-hop fashion and posters of music stars to frighten Al-Quaida operatives into giving up. As PFC Freddie “Pooh Bear” Minorca, 14, put it “Sh_t….. dem guys don’t know a Mother F—kin’ thing about killin’. We can do more damage on a Saturday night in the ‘hood’ then they do here in a week!”
Back at home the local daily newspaper, promising to only show sports news and sensationalistic murder trials on the front page, has celebrated it’s first daily edition in which there are no murders reported. Said an Editorial aide based in the New York headquarters: “Good thing for us we sent all those guys to Iraq”.
Speaking of Iraq, congress has been asked to appropriate an additional Gazillion Samollians for the rebuilding effort; pointing out that schools, roads, and hospitals aren’t enough to lift the morale of these oppressed people, a White House aide pointed out that we need to build “Shopping facilities, multi-plex theaters, fast food outlets, and amusement parks as well”. The Largest Corporation In The World, that controls both houses, assured Americans that this was a good thing for the economy and lowered interest rates another half a percent.
On the health scene a final touch has been put on the Medicare bill. Seniors will now be charged for services whether they receive them or not. The money will go directly to drug companies and vacationing doctors. A spokesperson for Pharmaceuticals-R-Us, a subsidiary of The Largest Corporation In The World, announced that a ‘Get Tough Or Die’ policy has been implemented and needed “no ‘splaining”. Senior Presley went on to point out that this was a principle that the country was built on and introduced legislature of a bill call ‘No Work, No Food’, aimed at taking care of the nation’s problematic five million Americans that are out of work.
In sports the local teams have agreed to lose all games before they are played to cut down on fan disappointment. “We’re getting back to the original idea of guys getting together to drink beer, paint themselves funny colors and yell stuff, you know?” said Andy Randy of the ninth ward. Not to worry though; public floggings, executions and half time shows will keep the crowds amused. Way to go fellas.
After a word about the weather, rotten, anchorperson Mrs. Aurelia M. Lampo will return with the progress report on the oil drilling scheduled to begin Monday in the courtyard of Commander’s Palace. But first here’s a twenty minute commercial from our sponsor The Largest Corporation In The World.
Thank you and have a pleasant evening.
For you readers that are new to the show, let me explain. The Dicken’s Prediction Agency works on the theory that the news of the past, seen through the eyes of the news of the present leads to the news from the future. For example: in our top story tonight (or today at coffee; or whatever the case may be), the cathedral will be adding video poker machines to their vestibule to increase revenues, it will be called “Gambling for God”. A spokesperson for the church is quoted as saying, “four Marys will not beat out four Blessed Saviors, but a full house of Archangels will pay triple”.
In other news, the city has approved Harrah’s construction of a theme water park taking up the entire two hundred block of Chartres St. Using the same architect and construction crew that has worked on the restoration of the court house the park will open in 2020. Meanwhile The Largest Corporation In The World is suing the city, saying that they were promised the sale of the entire French Quarter to build a MacCola DisWalSoft World theme park, tearing down all buildings and replacing them with more durable heavy plastic replicas, a process that they said would take about forty eight hours and not interrupt business in the least.
Speaking of business, a plan has been unveiled at city hall for all plastic cups, beads etc distributed this year at Mardi Gras to be coated with a substance that smells like corn. Herds of swine would then be left to roam the streets literally eating all the trash. The plan hit a snag when Lionel Travis, a six year old, asked: “What are we gonna do with all that pig poop?”
Other breaking stories concern four juvenile robbery suspects who were captured after leading police on a 15-minute chase from uptown to mid-city.
The young males, three 10-year olds and one 8-year old were captured by the city’s elite “Under 12 Crime Unit” when they stopped in their stolen golf cart to celebrate at a sno-ball stand. A spokesperson for the unit identified detective Wenzel Denzel as the 11-year old ‘cop that got the drop’.
Iraq has opened it’s first suicide bomber speedway where loaded cars can compete using empty building as their targets. In the third day of fierce competition prizes were still unclaimed.
Elsewhere in Iraq the fighting seems to be over. The New Orleans Brigade, brought over as a last resort explained how this was accomplished.
They sighted a more streetwise approach using rap music, gang warfare, hip-hop fashion and posters of music stars to frighten Al-Quaida operatives into giving up. As PFC Freddie “Pooh Bear” Minorca, 14, put it “Sh_t….. dem guys don’t know a Mother F—kin’ thing about killin’. We can do more damage on a Saturday night in the ‘hood’ then they do here in a week!”
Back at home the local daily newspaper, promising to only show sports news and sensationalistic murder trials on the front page, has celebrated it’s first daily edition in which there are no murders reported. Said an Editorial aide based in the New York headquarters: “Good thing for us we sent all those guys to Iraq”.
Speaking of Iraq, congress has been asked to appropriate an additional Gazillion Samollians for the rebuilding effort; pointing out that schools, roads, and hospitals aren’t enough to lift the morale of these oppressed people, a White House aide pointed out that we need to build “Shopping facilities, multi-plex theaters, fast food outlets, and amusement parks as well”. The Largest Corporation In The World, that controls both houses, assured Americans that this was a good thing for the economy and lowered interest rates another half a percent.
On the health scene a final touch has been put on the Medicare bill. Seniors will now be charged for services whether they receive them or not. The money will go directly to drug companies and vacationing doctors. A spokesperson for Pharmaceuticals-R-Us, a subsidiary of The Largest Corporation In The World, announced that a ‘Get Tough Or Die’ policy has been implemented and needed “no ‘splaining”. Senior Presley went on to point out that this was a principle that the country was built on and introduced legislature of a bill call ‘No Work, No Food’, aimed at taking care of the nation’s problematic five million Americans that are out of work.
In sports the local teams have agreed to lose all games before they are played to cut down on fan disappointment. “We’re getting back to the original idea of guys getting together to drink beer, paint themselves funny colors and yell stuff, you know?” said Andy Randy of the ninth ward. Not to worry though; public floggings, executions and half time shows will keep the crowds amused. Way to go fellas.
After a word about the weather, rotten, anchorperson Mrs. Aurelia M. Lampo will return with the progress report on the oil drilling scheduled to begin Monday in the courtyard of Commander’s Palace. But first here’s a twenty minute commercial from our sponsor The Largest Corporation In The World.
Thank you and have a pleasant evening.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Beer Drinker Blues in New Orleans
I stopped off at The Royal St. grocery store with bated breath. ‘The whisper on the street’ had it that Schlitz beer had been sighted (“The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous”). I planned on having one of my favorite lunches: a ‘Tall Boy’ and a frozen burrito, yum yum!
Oh, sad day. Oh, bitter disappointment. Oh, sad singin’ and slow walkin’. Oh, wailin’ in the wikki-yup.
Yes, Schlitz beer had been in, but it had been a one shot thing. Now what they had was an esoteric, eccentric line of far fetched, far flung ‘designer beers’ with the gamut of multicolored Abita’s as vanguard and foreign ‘non alcoholic’ beers bringing up the rear. By ‘non alcoholic beer’ I mean: any beer that no self styled alcoholic would drink! Can you imagine any of your friends saying: “Boy, I went on a bender, and did those Coronas f--- me up! Missed two days of work after hitting the Dos Equis, musta been the limes!”
Nonononono! MY friends would be more apt to say: “Leon, found Schaefer at the ‘Pac ‘n Sac, Pic ‘n Pay, Put It In A Bag ‘n Git Outa Here’ store and bought ten cases! Four of us watched the Twilight Zone marathon, thirty pounds of boiled crawfish and didn’t even know what city we was in!”
Let’s get it straight from the gate; I’m an American. My beer is American, I smoke Lucky Strikes (non-filter), I chew Dentyne gum, I drink coffee with all the caffeine I can get AND half and half AND PLENTY OF SUGAR. I wash with Palmolive soap, I use Colgate toothpaste and when I want a mint, I go for LifeSaver’s, End of story.
***************************
Thirty years ago I worked for a man that was to become my mentor. It was at a country club in Denver and he had a keg of beer on tap in the walk-in refrigerator for the cooks. The beer was (and still is, when you can find it) Pabst Blue Ribbon. He said that it was the first beer that he had thrown up on and that was good enough for me. Since then, PBR has been, and remains, my beer of choice. Why? I like it. And, you know what? I have a slogan for that brewery: “Pabst Blue Ribbon--- It works!!”
Also, PBR comes in a nifty red, white and blue can. What can be more American than that? But, what is a red blooded American supposed to do in a world of beers that include weird ingredients (like berries fergodsakes) as incentives for doing what all beer drinkers are about (getting drunk)? Naturally, in direct opposition to this, I look for and buy when I can, American traditional, brewskis.
Anyone who is well over the drinking age (such as moi) can remember when the beer you drank was the beer that was brewed close to where you lived, made with the local waters. It wasn’t until the giant breweries started mass marketing that you started to get swill that came from afar.
Beers like Rhinegold and Ballentine and Oarlocker in the north. Black Label and Schlitz and Miller High Life in the mid west. Hamms on the left coast, and others. We knew where we were by the beers that were favored.
I come from a very disciplined family, if any of us kids acted up at the table, our mother would reach across the table with her soupspoon and whomp us, admonishing: “just drink your beer and shut up!”
I also come from a family of religious drinkers; not only do we drink religiously, but my mother told us that when God created beer, she put it in packs of six so that we would be aware that that was a portion. You can’t go wrong with a parent like that; although go wrong I did, it wasn’t her fault
************************************
Be that as it may, Falstaff, Regal and Jax beers are a thing of the past here, even Dixie is no longer brewed here (Blackened Voodoo beer? Gimme a break!). Rolling Rock, to my taste, is the closest thing to a traditional American beer that you can get and still be in a class joint.
I have a personal boycott going with the Bud and Bud products since the seventies when I found out that they were major funders of marijuana busters in Humbolt County, so they’re out. Miller will never taste the same unless it’s in that clear bottle. ‘Lite’ beer I dislike on princable, just as I disdain ‘sugar free’ anything. Red-Dog is for curb sitters and breakfast brown baggers. Busch and Miliwaukee Best are for ‘old man crotch scratchers’ (and is a Bud product). Foreign beers I’ll drink in foreign places, thank you. And the day that I willingly pay more money for a non-alcoholic beer than regular ones, just shoot me.
Tell me why I should want to drink beer any color, going in, than I want it coming out. Tell me why I should want a Thirty two-ounce can of beer???.
Have you even noticed that finding beer in twelve ounce cans has become a rarity? If you have, then you didn’t tell me. What’s gone wrong in this world? Barqs is even claiming to be a ‘root beer’! What’s up with that?
I was passing that newsstand on Decatur St. and saw the sign in the window proclaiming the availability of a gazillion beers. Do they have PBR? Nooooooo. Why bother?
And now, ‘the whisper on the street’ is that Coors is going to start brewing here. Hello! What, I ask you, am I to do?
In heaven there’s a barmaid that serves icy mugs of American beers for a buck. It won’t get much better that that.
Oh, sad day. Oh, bitter disappointment. Oh, sad singin’ and slow walkin’. Oh, wailin’ in the wikki-yup.
Yes, Schlitz beer had been in, but it had been a one shot thing. Now what they had was an esoteric, eccentric line of far fetched, far flung ‘designer beers’ with the gamut of multicolored Abita’s as vanguard and foreign ‘non alcoholic’ beers bringing up the rear. By ‘non alcoholic beer’ I mean: any beer that no self styled alcoholic would drink! Can you imagine any of your friends saying: “Boy, I went on a bender, and did those Coronas f--- me up! Missed two days of work after hitting the Dos Equis, musta been the limes!”
Nonononono! MY friends would be more apt to say: “Leon, found Schaefer at the ‘Pac ‘n Sac, Pic ‘n Pay, Put It In A Bag ‘n Git Outa Here’ store and bought ten cases! Four of us watched the Twilight Zone marathon, thirty pounds of boiled crawfish and didn’t even know what city we was in!”
Let’s get it straight from the gate; I’m an American. My beer is American, I smoke Lucky Strikes (non-filter), I chew Dentyne gum, I drink coffee with all the caffeine I can get AND half and half AND PLENTY OF SUGAR. I wash with Palmolive soap, I use Colgate toothpaste and when I want a mint, I go for LifeSaver’s, End of story.
***************************
Thirty years ago I worked for a man that was to become my mentor. It was at a country club in Denver and he had a keg of beer on tap in the walk-in refrigerator for the cooks. The beer was (and still is, when you can find it) Pabst Blue Ribbon. He said that it was the first beer that he had thrown up on and that was good enough for me. Since then, PBR has been, and remains, my beer of choice. Why? I like it. And, you know what? I have a slogan for that brewery: “Pabst Blue Ribbon--- It works!!”
Also, PBR comes in a nifty red, white and blue can. What can be more American than that? But, what is a red blooded American supposed to do in a world of beers that include weird ingredients (like berries fergodsakes) as incentives for doing what all beer drinkers are about (getting drunk)? Naturally, in direct opposition to this, I look for and buy when I can, American traditional, brewskis.
Anyone who is well over the drinking age (such as moi) can remember when the beer you drank was the beer that was brewed close to where you lived, made with the local waters. It wasn’t until the giant breweries started mass marketing that you started to get swill that came from afar.
Beers like Rhinegold and Ballentine and Oarlocker in the north. Black Label and Schlitz and Miller High Life in the mid west. Hamms on the left coast, and others. We knew where we were by the beers that were favored.
I come from a very disciplined family, if any of us kids acted up at the table, our mother would reach across the table with her soupspoon and whomp us, admonishing: “just drink your beer and shut up!”
I also come from a family of religious drinkers; not only do we drink religiously, but my mother told us that when God created beer, she put it in packs of six so that we would be aware that that was a portion. You can’t go wrong with a parent like that; although go wrong I did, it wasn’t her fault
************************************
Be that as it may, Falstaff, Regal and Jax beers are a thing of the past here, even Dixie is no longer brewed here (Blackened Voodoo beer? Gimme a break!). Rolling Rock, to my taste, is the closest thing to a traditional American beer that you can get and still be in a class joint.
I have a personal boycott going with the Bud and Bud products since the seventies when I found out that they were major funders of marijuana busters in Humbolt County, so they’re out. Miller will never taste the same unless it’s in that clear bottle. ‘Lite’ beer I dislike on princable, just as I disdain ‘sugar free’ anything. Red-Dog is for curb sitters and breakfast brown baggers. Busch and Miliwaukee Best are for ‘old man crotch scratchers’ (and is a Bud product). Foreign beers I’ll drink in foreign places, thank you. And the day that I willingly pay more money for a non-alcoholic beer than regular ones, just shoot me.
Tell me why I should want to drink beer any color, going in, than I want it coming out. Tell me why I should want a Thirty two-ounce can of beer???.
Have you even noticed that finding beer in twelve ounce cans has become a rarity? If you have, then you didn’t tell me. What’s gone wrong in this world? Barqs is even claiming to be a ‘root beer’! What’s up with that?
I was passing that newsstand on Decatur St. and saw the sign in the window proclaiming the availability of a gazillion beers. Do they have PBR? Nooooooo. Why bother?
And now, ‘the whisper on the street’ is that Coors is going to start brewing here. Hello! What, I ask you, am I to do?
In heaven there’s a barmaid that serves icy mugs of American beers for a buck. It won’t get much better that that.
New Orleans Restaurant Rumors
Okay, by now we all have graduated from Gossip Central and are ready for courses in Rumor Control. Soon you’ll be able (with my help, of course) to move on to Hearsay University with, shall we say, impunity; to go forth, unchallenged among the unsuspecting, with insider traded information about local eateries.
I’m not talking about the basic skinny on restaurants like underpaid kitchen staff, lack of health benefits, tough working conditions, chefs that can go from zero to ballistic in four seconds, bounced paychecks, alcohol and substance challenges (not abuse, only the challenge of keeping supplied), and wait staff that are required to come to work ready to kiss everyone’s ass from the dishwashers to the Chefs before they even get to the customers. This is a documentary yet more expansive and in depth.
I’m talking about, for example, this conversation that I had recently with a cab driver friend that is Professor Emeritus of Hearsay U.
Moi: “So they shut down that brothel on Canal St. and the Madame is gonna name names, one of whom, rumor has it, is a local Chef. I wonder who he’ll turn out to be?”
Prof: “What do you mean HE? It could be --------------! You know She’s a nymphomaniac, don’t you? It could just as well be her!” (You know who that is don’t you? Not to worry, the answer to these and other gems will be given towards the end of this sermon. I promise)
*******************************
Okay, now that you’ve cheated and found out who the nympho chef is, let’s get on to some more juicy stuff. Test your knowledge and ability to pick up the ‘whisper on the street’ by answering these:
1. Name three French Quarter restaurants that have just or are about to lose their leases and close.
2. Name the restaurant that, when the waiter thinks that the customer is a bit drunk, will add drinks and food to their bill (to be shared by the waitstaff).
3. Name that place that as a prerequisite to being assigned to lucrative table sections, sex with the owner (or his son) is required.
4. When installing the new computer system, at this high profile joint, it was necessary to teach the staff to read and write as some had been actually drawing pictures previously. Where is it?
5. Where do residents go to peer into windows, after closing, to watch the rodents frolic on food counters?
6. Name the restaurant that the management takes a percentage of waiter’s credit card tips (off the top) and if you complain….you get fired.
7. Where do they lace fried chicken with lye as a rat poison?
8. Where is it a common kitchen occurrence to see the ceiling drip into the salad dressings? The soup?
Now, you see, if you ask a waiter those questions they’ll probably look at you like you’re stupid and rattle off at least three answers, for each question, right off the top of their pointy heads. Ready for more?
9. Where are insects such a common factor that if you watch the kitchen as they send out your lunch, you won’t be surprised to see the waitress flick a roach from the cutting board?
10. Smoking while cooking? Sweating into your food? Spitting into the trashcans? Excessive drinking on the job? Paying off the health department? Not having current licensing to operate? Too easy!
11. Discrimination by gender, ethnicity, age, or the size of your-------? Where have you been?
12. Sexual (and other) conduct that can be viewed as ‘misconduct’? That subject goes so deep that you’d have to have a seminar to explain to the uninitiated the complexities of social and sexual politics that occur behind swinging doors. Neither pros nor cons come into play here (we’ll save that for the seminar), it’s there. Has been. Will be.
13. Is it rumor or truth that the Chef of this restaurant is part owner of that building (on Chartres and Toulouse) that is suffering demolition by neglect? The (possible) answer is at the end of the article.
14. What white tablecloth restaurant’s customers had the occasion to be served by the bartender working in her bra and undies for about an hour a coupla weeks ago and why?
15. Name the latest DWIs, adulterers, breakups? Who am I not talking about?
********************************
Restaurants are virtual Galapagos Islands of human behavior and to categorize and extrapolate and rationalize, let alone try to explain that aberrant behavior would take a combination of Messieurs Freud, Darwin and Rodgers (Roy, Fred, Buck and Will). The question remaining is how come that in the year 2002 no one has thought to change that mentality? Answer: It has been tried over the last hundred years to bring sanity to that chaotic world, but thus far, has met with little success. Why? Simple. The restaurant business attracts weirdoes, misfits, transients, runaways, renegades, idiot savants, non-conformers and those of us that are just plain perfect. We know that it’s not Kansas, Toto; but, to a lot of us, it is home.
Well, so what’s one of the main things that keeps restaurant staffs going besides the chance of the elusive hundred-dollar tip, drinks before, during and after work or being gluttons for punishment? Living on the edge, you know, where things happen! Where else can you hear things like: “She got him in the liquor room while he was on the ladder taking inventory and you know how small that room is; took down his pants and did him right there! Said that it was part of his job!” or “Yeah, they (the owners) did a drug test on the staff and they all failed!” or “He came in to work and they had changed the locks, he’d been stealing, from his own restaurant for almost a year!!” or “I swear, I saw it with my own eyes(!), they took the ladle out of the turtle soup, beat the rat to death, you know, blood (?), and then put the ladle back in the soup!” (Guess where this occurred?).
In any case, here’s the answers to the questions (and in some cases, names of places I’ve added to throw you off the track just to keep things interesting): Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Bayona, Brigtsen’s, Brousard’s, Café Marigny, Central Lock up, Cobalt, Commanders, Court of Two Sisters, Déjà vu, Elizabeth’s, Embers, Emeril’s, Felix’s, Frank’s, Gabrielle’s, Galatoire’s, Giovanni’s, Grill Room, Indigo, Jaeger’s, K-Paul’s, La Crepe Nanou, Le Rouge, Mr. B’s, Morton’s, Muriel’s, Napoleon House, Oliver’s, Outback, Pat O’s, Pelican, Peristyle, Quarter Scene, Redfish, Remoulade, Santa Fe, Vaqueros, Victor’s, Wolfe’s, Zoe or none of the above?
Oh, and our lascivious, lewd, lustful, libidinous, lecherous, licentious Lady? Ooops! Out of space.
I’m not talking about the basic skinny on restaurants like underpaid kitchen staff, lack of health benefits, tough working conditions, chefs that can go from zero to ballistic in four seconds, bounced paychecks, alcohol and substance challenges (not abuse, only the challenge of keeping supplied), and wait staff that are required to come to work ready to kiss everyone’s ass from the dishwashers to the Chefs before they even get to the customers. This is a documentary yet more expansive and in depth.
I’m talking about, for example, this conversation that I had recently with a cab driver friend that is Professor Emeritus of Hearsay U.
Moi: “So they shut down that brothel on Canal St. and the Madame is gonna name names, one of whom, rumor has it, is a local Chef. I wonder who he’ll turn out to be?”
Prof: “What do you mean HE? It could be --------------! You know She’s a nymphomaniac, don’t you? It could just as well be her!” (You know who that is don’t you? Not to worry, the answer to these and other gems will be given towards the end of this sermon. I promise)
*******************************
Okay, now that you’ve cheated and found out who the nympho chef is, let’s get on to some more juicy stuff. Test your knowledge and ability to pick up the ‘whisper on the street’ by answering these:
1. Name three French Quarter restaurants that have just or are about to lose their leases and close.
2. Name the restaurant that, when the waiter thinks that the customer is a bit drunk, will add drinks and food to their bill (to be shared by the waitstaff).
3. Name that place that as a prerequisite to being assigned to lucrative table sections, sex with the owner (or his son) is required.
4. When installing the new computer system, at this high profile joint, it was necessary to teach the staff to read and write as some had been actually drawing pictures previously. Where is it?
5. Where do residents go to peer into windows, after closing, to watch the rodents frolic on food counters?
6. Name the restaurant that the management takes a percentage of waiter’s credit card tips (off the top) and if you complain….you get fired.
7. Where do they lace fried chicken with lye as a rat poison?
8. Where is it a common kitchen occurrence to see the ceiling drip into the salad dressings? The soup?
Now, you see, if you ask a waiter those questions they’ll probably look at you like you’re stupid and rattle off at least three answers, for each question, right off the top of their pointy heads. Ready for more?
9. Where are insects such a common factor that if you watch the kitchen as they send out your lunch, you won’t be surprised to see the waitress flick a roach from the cutting board?
10. Smoking while cooking? Sweating into your food? Spitting into the trashcans? Excessive drinking on the job? Paying off the health department? Not having current licensing to operate? Too easy!
11. Discrimination by gender, ethnicity, age, or the size of your-------? Where have you been?
12. Sexual (and other) conduct that can be viewed as ‘misconduct’? That subject goes so deep that you’d have to have a seminar to explain to the uninitiated the complexities of social and sexual politics that occur behind swinging doors. Neither pros nor cons come into play here (we’ll save that for the seminar), it’s there. Has been. Will be.
13. Is it rumor or truth that the Chef of this restaurant is part owner of that building (on Chartres and Toulouse) that is suffering demolition by neglect? The (possible) answer is at the end of the article.
14. What white tablecloth restaurant’s customers had the occasion to be served by the bartender working in her bra and undies for about an hour a coupla weeks ago and why?
15. Name the latest DWIs, adulterers, breakups? Who am I not talking about?
********************************
Restaurants are virtual Galapagos Islands of human behavior and to categorize and extrapolate and rationalize, let alone try to explain that aberrant behavior would take a combination of Messieurs Freud, Darwin and Rodgers (Roy, Fred, Buck and Will). The question remaining is how come that in the year 2002 no one has thought to change that mentality? Answer: It has been tried over the last hundred years to bring sanity to that chaotic world, but thus far, has met with little success. Why? Simple. The restaurant business attracts weirdoes, misfits, transients, runaways, renegades, idiot savants, non-conformers and those of us that are just plain perfect. We know that it’s not Kansas, Toto; but, to a lot of us, it is home.
Well, so what’s one of the main things that keeps restaurant staffs going besides the chance of the elusive hundred-dollar tip, drinks before, during and after work or being gluttons for punishment? Living on the edge, you know, where things happen! Where else can you hear things like: “She got him in the liquor room while he was on the ladder taking inventory and you know how small that room is; took down his pants and did him right there! Said that it was part of his job!” or “Yeah, they (the owners) did a drug test on the staff and they all failed!” or “He came in to work and they had changed the locks, he’d been stealing, from his own restaurant for almost a year!!” or “I swear, I saw it with my own eyes(!), they took the ladle out of the turtle soup, beat the rat to death, you know, blood (?), and then put the ladle back in the soup!” (Guess where this occurred?).
In any case, here’s the answers to the questions (and in some cases, names of places I’ve added to throw you off the track just to keep things interesting): Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Bayona, Brigtsen’s, Brousard’s, Café Marigny, Central Lock up, Cobalt, Commanders, Court of Two Sisters, Déjà vu, Elizabeth’s, Embers, Emeril’s, Felix’s, Frank’s, Gabrielle’s, Galatoire’s, Giovanni’s, Grill Room, Indigo, Jaeger’s, K-Paul’s, La Crepe Nanou, Le Rouge, Mr. B’s, Morton’s, Muriel’s, Napoleon House, Oliver’s, Outback, Pat O’s, Pelican, Peristyle, Quarter Scene, Redfish, Remoulade, Santa Fe, Vaqueros, Victor’s, Wolfe’s, Zoe or none of the above?
Oh, and our lascivious, lewd, lustful, libidinous, lecherous, licentious Lady? Ooops! Out of space.
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