Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

27 February 2006

Happy Lundi Gras!

Bill Joyce created a wonderful cover for this week’s New Yorker. Then, Bill Cheney shot a man, and the cover got canned. He had hoped that the cover would draw more attention to New Orleans. He hoped the cover would make people sad and proud at the same time. The editors, instead, opted for humor.

In an article that was to run inside the magazine, Joyce captures the oddity of Mardi Gras and the city:

For those of us who grew up in Louisiana, ”The Wizard of Oz” was like a documentary. Dorothy left Kansas and simply went to Mardi Gras. Talking trees and wicked witches seemed perfectly normal if you’ve seen your librarian walking down St. Charles dressed in a gorilla suit and a set of woman’s breasts complete with blinking neon nipples.

Have a great Mardi Gras.

Posted by Todd at 11:12 pm | No Comments

20 February 2006

Many New Orleanians are struggling to recover. It’s not just the poor or the uninsured. The New York Times profiles the Baquet family, famous for their Creole soul restaurants, as they try to return and rebuild their lives.

Posted by Todd at 4:38 am | No Comments

19 February 2006

Willie Nelson, Steven Seagal, and Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee have teamed up to raise $250,000 for Childrens Hospital. That’s a noble cause.

And how did this motley trio come together? According to the Times Picayune, “Lee brought in longtime friends Nelson and Seagal to help the effort.”

Harry Lee is never dull.

Posted by Todd at 1:56 pm | No Comments

I saw a Japanese camera crew yesterday headed into Popeye’s on Magazine. I guess there are worse images of New Orleans to show the world.

Actually, I know that there are worse images.

Posted by Todd at 9:50 am | No Comments

16 February 2006

A better blogger than me chided me tonight for the recent paucity of posts at Frolic. He was somewhat sympathetic and recognized that I have to teach nearly three hours most days.

And speaking of me and other bloggers, Bart recounts my visit last night to some of New Orleans’ recently arrived Mexican population. I’m all over the internet.

Posted by Todd at 5:40 pm | Comments (1)

13 February 2006

It’s Mardi Gras, the most wonderful gras of the year! Krewe du Vieux rolled Saturday. It was frigid, but everyone had enough cocktails to combat the cold.

I would like to send a message to guy standing behind me, ignoring the parade and blathering in a loud voice about how he had lived in New Orleans for 30 years but was more than happy to leave. You, sir, have no Mardi Gras spirit!

More later…

Posted by Todd at 4:13 am | Comments (3)

9 February 2006

I saw a street car on St. Charles Avenue. It was uptown of Broadway, waiting for the traffic to pass.

Ok, it was being pulled by a pickup truck. And it was there for a movie shoot. It was still great to see those old green cars back on St. Charles.

It was good to see a movie shoot, as well. Maybe that industry will return.

Posted by Todd at 5:39 pm | No Comments

5 February 2006

Friday afternoon the Coliseum theater burned down. I read the news on NOLA.com as firefighters were working across town, contending with the lack of water pressure and dropping “pumpkins” full of water onto the blaze. The Coliseum hasn’t shown a movie in years, but I was fond of the old facade, which I used to see almost daily in my old neighborhood. It was depressing to know it was gone. It was frightening to learn that we still can’t put out a fire five months after the storm.

Just then, I heard some faint drums. I stepped outside, and a high school band was dancing down the street, getting ready for Mardi Gras. That’s why New Orleans is a wonderful city.

The whole weekend was a series of swings from optimism to depression. Saturday morning I drove around Mid-City. Esplanade looked good. The strip of shops on Carrollton, which included Brocato’s, was nearly unrecognizable. Businesses won’t be open there any time soon.

For lunch, I stopped by the Vietnamese New Year’s celebration in New Orleans East. Amid the debris, the Vietnamese community is making a comeback. And then a young Vietnamese guy I met said that his grandparents and parents were coming back, but the younger generation was leaving for Dallas, and Houston, and California.

I took a detour on the way home to see if work had begun on Walker BBQ. The little barbecue stand, which makes the cochon de lait po-boy at Jazzfest, sits just below the levee. When I had passed by in late-October, there were no signs of life in the neighborhood. Driving towards the lake, it looked like no work had been done. The glass windows of strip mall restaurants were broken open and the chairs and tables were still stacked where the water left them.

Walker’s BBQ, however, was open and doing huge business. They had reopen last Tuesday, adding breakfast in the morning and renaming the cochon de lait as pulled pork. No need to confuse the out of town contractors. I confirmed that they will be at Jazzfest.

My friend Alex had offered me a ticket to Bobby Lounge at the House of Blues. I’d never heard of Bobby Lounge, but how could I pass up a free ticket? Turns out that Bobby Lounge is a backwoods genius. A sharp tongued, barrel house piano player with the flamboyance of Jerry Lee Lewis and the wit of early Tom Waits. Glad I went, because Mr. Lounge rarely makes public appearances.

Feeling good after the show, I stopped at Cafe du Monde for a late-night snack. A banner declared, “The Beignets Are Back.” It was 12:45, though, and the waiters were stacking up chairs and shutting down the place. When did Cafe du Monde start closing at night? The beignets may be back, but for a limited time only.

Posted by Todd at 6:41 pm | No Comments

2 February 2006

After a recent rainfall, I biked through Uptown and smelled mold and green wood. The mold was there before Katrina. I never had a name for that scent, however, until I was overwhelmed by it in an old, flooded house that had been stripped to the studs. The fresh lumber, along with the construction crews on every block, is a new addition to New Orleans.

Posted by Todd at 12:47 am | No Comments

1 February 2006

Housekeeping Note: Recently I spent several hours rebuilding Frolic’s template. I thought I had fixed the comments section, which used to list everyone but me as anonymous. Judging by recent comments, my work was in vain. Maybe this weekend I can completely rewrite the template.

Posted by Todd at 4:46 am | No Comments