It’s been a while since I have
blogged for you. It’s been a while since I thought blog could be a verb, and
the past tense blogged is just off
the hook yo!
A lot has happened.
Visited the Big Easy. For the
uninitiated the big easy is a gigantic easy quiz. Think a big life size check
from the Price Is Right but instead of date,
pay to the order of and all that, it is just a bunch of easy true/false
questions like Water is Wet T F or Water Boils at a temperature of microwave
oven T F or Donald Trump’s Hair is Real... Opossum T F. I kid, I visited New Orleans. And let me
tell you, after two hours into your trip, when you see a woman place a 4
month-old baby onto a bar so that she can do two shots, you know you are in for
a good time. Oh, did I forget to mention that I wasn’t in a bar but in a
shopping mall? Yes, they live differently in New Orleans my friends. I just
flew back from New Orleans and boy is my liver tired. Yes a hedonistic delight
down there, once you whip out your machete and cut through the humidity only to find that once you get indoors, you need a parka because it is freezing in
most establishments, which accounts for the gumbo, etouffee sales numbers, which coupled with
the day round/week long/month entirety/year round drinking, accounts for the
obesity. But I had a great time and ate a bunch of stuff I can’t pronounce like
remoulade and drank a bunch of stuff I can’t remember, like remoulade. Hell, I
even got to run around the Mercedes Benz Superdome (because we all know about the strong
german contingent in Nawlins’ and the goose stepping at Mardi Gras) at 6:30am for a 5k without one single local yelling who dat!
(Geography note: The Mississippi River
basically spans New Orleans to Canada.)
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| M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I - why do I feel like I need to pee, or do I just miss peeing? Weird. |
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| It was basically a moral imperative, even for this moral nihilist, to get beignets. |
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| This is a shot of The Spotted Cat bar and Jamey St. Pierre & The Honeycreepers. They were a really soulful group and very tight, despite the fact that it was 3pm on a blistering, humid sunday afternoon. This to me, in my total New Orleans neophyte-ness, symbolizes New Orleans. |
Read Bill Bryson’s The
Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid. I don’t think I have devoured a
book this way since Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.
I know, too much fiber devouring whole books like this. While not a child of
the 60’s and not from Iowa, I found the book incredibly funny and did not mind
the strange looks from the other hotel pool inhabitants as my laughs
interrupted their imbibing. I also marveled out how Bryson could deftly place
some historical stats to better give you a sense of the 60’s; especially the
atomic age and the testing that occurred after WWII.
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| Behold: the power of adjectives. |
Speaking of WWII, New Orleans also
houses the WWII museum. The
museum is huge and it is actually rather hard to get through and feel like you
learned a lot; this is because they theme the areas and try to make it feel
like you are in the jungle via overhead trees and ambient nature noises or in a
bombed out Germany with uneven flooring and dilapidated décor to match – which in
the end just cramps things a bit too much on a crowded day. Ah but the saving
grace of the museum is the Beyond
All Boundaries movie. A really neat movie experience that, because you are
seated and not pressed along through installments, feel like you are wiser on
the other end. But but but, this is not, I repeat, not, a museum for kids.
There is very graphic video at points throughout which include persons burned
alive and shot in the back. Not for kids.
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| Visitors could don the outfit for their own iconic shots. The kid before me said the shirt stunk. He was right. |
