Jazzfest 07 - Part I

blllllllllech. It's TTPTP Day, 07. Time To Pay The Piper. Time to put a cork in the annual New Orleans Jazzfest bender. Never a fun day, but always tolerable after a fun time like this weekend. Fortunately, the weather has been nice all day and the Yankees are winning, so I'm not dealing with any extra irritants.

I took a bunch of photos but most of them aren't that interesting, so I'm not sure I can produce a photo-diary as amusing as last year's collection. (how many drunken photos can one take of young hotties leaning up against a fence that says "NOPD Police Line - Do Not Cross" and still think it warrants another photo? The over under is 10) My cohorts actually took more and better photos than I did, so when they pass them along, I'll post them (including a classic of me in a fake mustache grinding with a Southern Louisiana Rock Cougar during the ZZ Top show. Pretty sure that one will make it into the Creepy VTK Hall Of Fame).

The festivities started out on a bit of a sad note when C-Mac and I went into one of our favorite spots, Evelyn's Place, to say hi to one of our favorite New Orleanians, Evelyn. We ordered up a couple of buds and a couple of bowls of gumbo and noticed the big picture of Evelyn on the bar next to us. Then we noticed her conspicuous absence from the bar and the big black bow and Mardi Gras beads hanging off the picture. The bartender let us know that she had indeed passed away a few months ago and we shared our condolences. She will definitely be missed. The old lady was a true salty American classic. According to this online remembrance, the 4 foot 10 inch 80ish bad-ass once beat up Mickey Rourke to get him out of the bar. Maybe that's what motivated him to quit acting and become a professional boxer. Fortunately, we never had a problem with her and she was always great to us.

The sadness soon ebbed as the tide of Bourbon Street debauchery exerted its pull (clever, eh?). A visit to one of the local establishments immediately put to rest any pretenses I had about being frugal this year. Man, that city knows how to take your money. When AK joined the party a couple hours later we managed to find our ways to The Chart Room which provided us with $1.50 High Life drafts, good company, and the comedic highlight of the weekend. It was torrentially raining at this point and everyone in the bar was waiting out the storm. One guy was nodding off at the bar, entertaining the bartender and the other patrons who kept talking about him and slamming the bar occasionally to see him wake up and then pass out again. Eventually he woke up enough to start talking to AK, me, and this other guy who was busting his balls. AK asked our new wasted pal what he did for a living and in a response that only Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, or reality could have provided, he deadpanned, "I'm an air traffic controller". I jumped off my stool and started running around the bar, unable to contain myself. The guy who was busting his balls starts going nuts too. At first I thought he was just laughing like me at the absurdity of the token barfly drunk being an air traffic controller, but I then realized that he appeared to be more disgusted than amused. I asked him what he did and he responded "I work for the fucking FAA!" Swear to god. That happened and neither one of them was joking.

That's about all I have in me to write at this point. Part II might take a couple days but it'll be worth the wait as, in addition to a few photos, it will cover the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's onstage toe sucking incident, the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight, and our discovery of Jazzfest absentee Tim's female doppelganger and my unfortunate lip lock with her. Yeah. But I won't leave you with that image. I'll leave you with this one:





Rock on.