Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

28 September 2004

Living in New Orleans, we always feel a little bit like we’re on vacation. When people visit, though, we can fully embrace the tourist culture of this place. Our good friends Tina and Michelle are in town for a few days, so we’ve had an excuse to spend some quality time in the French Quarter, eat plenty of oysters, and partake of Monday afternoon happy hour at a neighborhood bar.

They arrived Saturday evening, so after dropping their luggage we took them straight to the Marigny to hear some music. We were about an hour too early for most sets, but the opening act at the Blue Nile was already going strong. “Trombone” Shorty was set to headline that night, but I didn’t catch the name of the group we saw. It was swinging New Orleans party music, though, and if knew who it was I would certainly return to hear them again.

Everyone has to see Bourbon street once, and since Michelle had never been to New Orleans we headed over to the Quarter for a quick look. If you find yourself in New Orleans and can’t find Bourbon Street, just follow the smell of vomit and rotting trash. The crowd was light on Bourbon street, with fewer sleazy conventioneers and frat boys than I’ve seen in the past. We found some relative calm beside the flaming fountains in Pat O’Brien’s courtyard. Michelle and I unwisely ordered a few Hurricanes. I hadn’t expected a fruity drink that you sip with a straw to pack such a punch.

Rounding out an evening of quintessential New Orleans locations, we stopped at Cafe du Monde for beignets. On the way back to the car, we startled some kids smoking pot on a side street. I guess we looked so old that they were afraid we would turn them in.

Posted by Todd at 9:19 am | No Comments

24 September 2004

Last week, I developed an encyclopedic knowledge of New Orleans restaurants whose names fall between the letters T and Z. I picked up a job writing restaurant blurbs for the Gambit, New Orleans’ alt-weekly. After calling 60 local dining establishments, I learned that many places specialize in trout amandine, some very odd burgers can be eaten in this town (with peanut butter?), and deep-frying really is the cooking method of choice.

I found a few lesser known places I really want to visit. I also got full sometimes just hearing about the crawfish cream sauces that cover half the food in this town.

I just got assigned some more blurbs, so it’s back to work for me.

Posted by Todd at 3:57 pm | Comments (2)

20 September 2004

What do you know, Mr. TMFTML is calling it quits. Now that he’s no longer providing daily evidence that he’s wittier than the rest of us, I’ll feel like my own posts will suck just a little bit less.

Posted by Todd at 6:48 pm | No Comments

James Wolcott takes a few swings at conservative wunderkind Ben Ferguson, calling him a “baby whale version of Rush Limbaugh.” Sometimes it just feels good to smack the right a little.

Posted by Todd at 12:27 pm | No Comments

19 September 2004

Roland Barthe lost his bid to gain a seat on the New Orleans school board. While the structuralist critic has fallen out of favor with many in the academy, this must have been a particularly humiliating defeat for the man who was once the toast of Parisian intellectuals.

Posted by Todd at 6:15 pm | Comments (2)

The cats were acting odd Tuesday. Maybe they sensed the impending landfall of hurricane Ivan. Or maybe they were just upset that I had stacked all the furniture on top of beds and the kitchen counter in case our first floor apartment flooded.

We had hesitated to evacuate until Tuesday morning, but once the mayor told us to leave, the courthouse where Andrea works closed, and the parking lot at our apartment building emptied out, we realized that this could be serious. New Orleans is a bowl resting below sea level with a river on one side and a lake on the other. On the radio people suggested that 20-foot flood waters weren’t out of the question.

The closest hotel vacancies were in Dallas, so we appealed to our friends Andy and Cynthia in Shreveport to take in a couple of refugees and their cats until the storm blew past. Traffic was crawling out of New Orleans, no matter which route we tried. Normally, we can drive to the airport in 20 minutes. Tuesday afternoon it took us four hours to get there. We finally arrived in Shreveport at 1 a.m., twelve hours after we left our house.

By now you know that Ivan turn east and missed New Orleans. I still think that evacuating was a wise idea, though, since the storm could have devastated the city. It was frustrating, although not surprising, how poorly the state handled the evacuations. Only on the edge of New Orleans were extra lanes opened to handle the extreme traffic, and only late in the afternoon. The stop lights on the secondary highways weren’t change to facilitate the evacuation. Governor Blanco got on the radio to marvel at the traffic jams in Baton Rouge, but she didn’t suggest that locals stay off the roads. The Red Cross in Mississippi announced that they had rooms for anyone from Louisiana who needed a place, while the shelters in Baton Rouge said they had plenty of space but no one had asked them to open their doors.

In the current election, I hear a lot of politicians lament the fact that Louisiana’s kids have to seek opportunities outside the state. The failure of the state government Tuesday vividly demonstrates why companies don’t want to locate here.

Posted by Todd at 6:03 pm | Comments (1)

13 September 2004

A New Orleans resident posted the following question on the food site Chowhound’s:

Does anyone know of any decent places to eat in Bogalusa? We’re getting out of New Orleans for the hurricane and seem to be heading to Bogalusa. Any insight into good eats would be greatly appreciated!

A natural disaster won’t stop us from eating well.

Posted by Todd at 10:16 pm | Comments (3)

12 September 2004

Other people’s prose:

The movie theater where I saw Star Wars as a boy, the NorthPark Cinema 4, survives as a dollar theater, in a shopping mall that at one time housed the only Chanel store in Oklahoma. The dollar theater is there with a few remaining tenants. The tile fountains have no water in them. There is an absence here that isn’t exactly quantifiable, or considerable to people who don’t feel it. It’s one thing to talk about the death of the mid-century American drive-in movie theater–people understand that as a clearly defined loss of something iconic, the kind of thing you would preserve and pay homage to in a museum about postwar lifestyles. It’s another thing to try to tell a story of the former glory of a ’70s fourplex, for which there is less sentimentality or understanding.

Hank Stuever in the introduction to his book Off Ramp.

Posted by Todd at 2:58 pm | No Comments

11 September 2004

The street car had crumbled the compact car and pushed it several yards down the median. This happens all the time in New Orleans. A truck made a left turn in front of me, and a car came around on my right and smashed into its side. From my apartment, I hear screeching and shattering. When I walk outside later, I see bits of glass in the intersection, evidence of another accident.

When we moved into our apartment, a blue Honda in the parking lot showed the damage of a severe collision. A few weeks later, the green Volvo was marred with yellow streaks across it’s side, as if it had been sideswiped by a school bus. A few days ago, the formerly pristine white Jetta showed up with its front bumper dragging on the ground.

When I first arrived in New Orleans, I assumed that alcohol was the cause of so many accidents. Now I see the structural problems in the city’s traffic. Live oaks with thick trunks and leafy limbs that completely block your view and obscure stop signs. Street lights that turn green for you at the exact moment they turn red for the traffic coming in the other direction. A culture that generally disregards rules, so that even lane dividers are taken more as suggestions than requirements. Add all this up, throw in a few frozen daiquiris, and you wonder if a car can be found in New Orleans that hasn’t spend time in a body shop.

I suppose the insurance company had good reasons for doubling our premiums when we moved here.

Posted by Todd at 3:51 pm | No Comments

10 September 2004

On the day before the 9/11 anniversary, Wonkette would like everyone to stop talking about the weather:

Yeah, it was a really nice day. And then a bad thing happened. You sort of have to be three years old to think that’s ironic. Let’s honor the victims by not dwelling on the weather.

At times, I wish Ms. Cox could again write something longer and more thoughtful.

Posted by Todd at 6:12 pm | No Comments

Housekeeping note: Regular readers of Frolic may remember that I used to have a photoblog. Instead of resurrecting that site, I set up a Flickr account. Flickr is a free service that lets you upload photos, comment on the photos of others, and receive updates when your favorite participating photographers post something new.

You can find a thumbnail of the latest photo uploaded to my Flickr site in the left-hand column. To see all the photos I’ve posted, click the link to the left called “Photo” under Frolic.

Posted by Todd at 3:55 pm | No Comments

8 September 2004

Police in Paris recently discovered a functioning cinema hidden deep within the catacombs that lie under much of the city. The theater, stocked with 1950s films and recently released thrillers, was attached to a small bar and restaurant. Three phone lines connected the theater to the world above.

When the police returned three days later to investigate further, the phone lines had been cut. In the middle of the floor was a note warning, “Do not try to find us.” [From Kotte]

Posted by Todd at 4:23 pm | No Comments

Straddling the border of France and Spain, the Basque region feels almost impenetrable to outsiders because of its unusual language that bears no relation to those spoken throughout Europe. The field recordings that Alan Lomax collected in this region from 1952 to 1953, recently re-issued by Rounder Records on two CDs, show that the music of the Basque people is equally exotic. From frantic, spinning dances, to mothers singing lullabies, to the chant of blind vendors hawking lottery tickets, these recordings offer a glimpse of a culture that thrived in the Pyrenees Mountains for centuries but has fought hard to survive over the last one hundred years.

A jig-like dance played on hand-drums and an alboka, an instrument that sounds like a cross between a fife and a bagpipe, energetically open the first CD, devoted to the music of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. A piercing female voice calls the villagers to dance. Fishermen in the village of Ondarroa improvise verses celebrating the beauty of their town. A singer occasionally interrupts a chorus with a high, squealing vocal style called irrintzi, which provokes laughter in the audience.

The second CD collects songs from Navarre, where the folk melodies are less exotic and songs are sung in Spanish as well as Basque. Young workers sing flirtatious verses while out in the fields shucking corn. A man strums a guitar and instructs us that a good citizen of Navarre will bravely run with the bulls on St. Fermin’s day. In a serious drinking song, a thirsty man searches for wine or eue-de-vie to fill his empty wineskin.

These recordings preserve the texture of a culture and are remarkable more as a document of the Basque people than for their individual performances. Certain songs, though, memorably stand apart. In “Hiru Lo-Kanta,” or “Three Lullabies,” the haunting voice of a mother sings a melody that gently sweeps down at unexpected moments. José María Alzugarai performs a melancholy farewell to his lover entitled “Adios ene maitia,” or “Farewell, My Love.” Mariano Izeta joyously sings a rapid-fire tune, traditional throughout the Iberian Peninsula, about oxen, rams, and other farm animals.

Also posted at Blogcritics.

Posted by Todd at 1:41 pm | No Comments

The Bush twins seem to be having a great time on the campaign trail. From the look on their faces, Jenna and Barbara are as enthusiastic about their father’s candidacy as I am.

Do you think their participation in the campaign is some form of punishment? Maybe they’re required to work the rope lines in Ohio for a month before papa will give them access to their trust funds? [Photo via Low Culture]

Posted by Todd at 9:15 am | No Comments

7 September 2004

While searching for some extra work, I ran across this advertisement on Craig’s List:

RETRIEVE MY CAR: The car was awarded to me per my divorce settlement, and my x will not surrender it to me willingly. I am located across the country, so it would save me time and money to have someone else do it. I can provide a copy of the title, divorce decree stating specifically that the car is mine, and a copy of the key, so all you will need to do is drive it to the N.O. airport where we I will pay you $300 in cash. This is %100 legal. For further info, or if interested, please contact me.

Even if it’s legal, I would want more than $300 for this job.

Posted by Todd at 8:06 pm | Comments (2)

Last Wednesday, Bill Clinton came to New Orleans to sign a few books and eat some local food. Friday, the former president discovered that he needed heart bypass surgery.

After speaking with some local doctors, the Times-Picayune reports that there is no direct causal link between those two events. It takes more than a single day of deep-fried food to completely clog a heart.

Now that I’ve been reassured, I think I’ll go eat a shrimp po’boy.

Posted by Todd at 9:42 am | Comments (3)