Frolic: jazz, books, food

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

30 July 2008

Mayor Nagin’s shiny head almost explodes when he’s confronted by WWL reporter Lee Zurick in this video. If we can’t get the worthless man thrown in prison, then maybe the press will annoy him enough that he’ll stomp off to Dallas and never return. Either way, we’ll be better off. [Thanks Yellow Blog]

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The Abita Brewery is actually in Covington? Am I the last person to know this?

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24 July 2008

An innocuous post on the Gambit’s blog about Chris DeBarr’s departure from the Delachaise leads to the most hilarious string of comments. I blame Poppy Z. Brite for the making the whole thing so damn funny.

Update: Fun’s over. Gambit pulled all the comments.

Posted by Todd at 8:12 am | No Comments

23 July 2008

The Louisiana state Ag Commissioner wants everyone to eat only local food the first week of August. This is a bad idea.

We should eat more local food, but directing a first time shopper to Louisiana’s markets in the month when they’re nearly empty won’t encourage that.

And very few people manage to eat nothing but local food. Sarah Andert wrote a Gambit Weekly cover story last week on local food. Then she tried to eat nothing but local food for a week. From what I can tell, the poor woman survived on cucumbers and bottles of Abita root beer. She proved that people who can’t cook have a hard time surviving on fresh food. She also made it seem that supporting local farmers and fishermen leads to an eating disorder. Eating local food is not a sacrifice fit only for fanatics–it supports the local economy, connects us to where our food comes from and, most importantly, gives us delicious meals.

Michael Pollan, often consider the lead zealot of the locavore movement, takes a far more sensible approach in this NPR interview. Every purchase is a vote, he says. We can’t expect to be perfect, but we can try to make a few better votes each day.

Instead of asking the state to eat nothing but Louisiana food, the Agriculture Commissioner should have asked people to add one local item a day to their diets. That would have been possible. And instead of being intimidated or frustrated, people would see the possibilities of local products.

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A barge spilled 400,000 gallons of oil into the Mississippi River. The whole town smells awful. Can’t Sideny Torres clean this up?

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21 July 2008

I missed it again. In April, Frolic turned five. Hard to believe that I started this site in 2003. I’ve neglected the poor thing recently, but I promise to provide more updates. Although it’s got nothing to do with Frolic or the blog or me, I give you a rare, 1975 performance of David Bowie playing Five Years on the Dinah Shore Show:

Posted by Todd at 8:17 am | Comments (1)

This week on his NYT blog, Frank Bruni ranks New York restaurants on their looks. He often gets readers’ requests for recs that are more about the feel of a place than its food. And it’s not always upscale they want:

But then sometimes they want scruffy. Not true scruffy, mind you, but artful scruffy. The kind of scruffy that makes them feel that they’ve discovered an out-of-the-way lair, not that they should hurry back out the door and shower.

We’ve got plenty of true scruffy in New Orleans. Our hipsters have as many tatoos as their New York counterparts, but they’re less likely to be propped up by a trust fund.

Last week I ventured into Nighthawk Dinner and Spirits for breakfast. I’ll admit its exterior is offputting. Another writer friend of mine had driven by and decided it wasn’t the place to take her teenage son. No doubt a good call.

At one booth, a guy was passed out next to his plate of eggs. I didn’t notice him wake up, but he was gone when we left. The back room bar was already starting to see interest at 9am. This was not art directed scruff. And we certainly felt like we’d discovered an out-of-the-way lair. I didn’t, however, rush home to shower. Then again, in New Orleans during the summer everyone is always a little rank. Maybe we’re just not as fastidious as they are up North.

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18 July 2008

Turns out my actions are newsworthy. At least in a very modest, completely minor way. Buried in the middle of Kevin Allman’s report for the Gambit blog on Tales of the Cocktail, he mentions my departure from OffBeat. Yes, for the first time since I started writing–leaving aside those months after Katrina when I really did nothing–I have no regular food column.

No big story behind the split. After writing 19 months worth of columns for OffBeat, I decided it was time to focus on bigger outlets.

When I left OffBeat, I worried that I wouldn’t have enough work. I imagined months going by when I would write nothing but pointless pitches to editors who never acknowledged the effort. It looks like that won’t be the case. Many things are in the works. Soon, I might even be able to talk about a few of them.

Posted by Todd at 3:20 pm | Comments (1)

15 July 2008

After 69 years in the snoball business, Hansen’s has gone high tech and posted a webpage. The site includes a complete list of flavors and toppings, and–unlike on the signs around the shop–they’re spelled correctly. An online history exhibit is promised. Now Ashley just needs to install a live webcam so that we can check the length of the line.

Posted by Todd at 12:06 pm | Comments (1)

1 July 2008

To Do List:

Drink a beer at Markey’s.

See Botero’s fat people at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Light something on fire to celebrate our liberty.

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