Neophyte In Nawlins and other assorted Musings

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.)

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. 

It was basically a moral imperative, even for this moral nihilist, to get beignets.

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. 

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. 

Visitors could don the outfit for their own iconic shots. The kid before me said the shirt stunk. He was right.