Going Back To New Orleans

When the clock strikes midnight Central time, I'll be back in the Big Sleazy cracking a cold one at Molly's At The Market!


Molly's - where, depending on the time of day/night, the crowd can range from this:


To this:


Our long national nightmare of me not going to Jazzfest and returning with a comical picture diary is over. Thanks to some commission work from MCSmackdown, I'll be frolicking at the Fairgrounds and queasy in the Quarter once again. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

New Orleans Null Set

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Things I didn't do this weekend:

1. Eat crawfish remoulade, crawfish etouffee, crawfish monica, gumbo, oysters rockerfeller, soft shell crab po boys, alligator po boys, meaty white beans and ribs, fried okra, red beans and rice, sweet potato pone.

2. Drink $3 Miller Lites in the sunshine at the Fairgrounds or $6 cocktails on the streets of the French Quarter

3. Listen and dance to live zydeco, blues, rock, reggae, country, etc., fat drunk and happy with friends.

4. Enjoy my 9th consecutive Jazzfest in New Orleans. The streak is over.

Things I did do this weekend:

1. Eat jambalaya (made by yours truly) and muffalettas (made by the mostess hostess TL)

2. Drink 50 cent Miller High Lives and free Hurricanes in Cambridge, Lynn, and Sandwich, MA.

3. Listen and dance to live R&B in Lynn and (not live) New Orleans' Brass Band Jazz in Sandwich, fat drunk and happy with friends.

4. Party Jazzfest style in absentia.


I couldn't really afford it last year but went anyways. This year I really couldn't really afford it and had to pass. Since the beginning of the current millenium, the New Orleans' Jazzfest has been a big part of my winters (looking forward to) and springs (enjoying and recovering from). My yearly reboot. I couldn't make it this year but a couple fellow Fest veterans and I decided to have our own celebration. Friday night brought many beers and a disappointing Celtics' game. Saturday brought a stopover at the Lynn Yacht Club for a benefit gig for Joel's cover band (4 hours with Lynn's finest) and late night partying, chowing, drinking, hottubbing, etc at the compound in Sandwich. Sunday brought a New Orleans level hangover, a leftover jambalaya omelette, and an extremely gratifying Celtics' game*. It wasn't New Orleans, but it was a good time. And I won't be sick for a week like last year.

* The Celtics are a total mystery to me right now. How can you win 4 home games by an average margin of 25 points and then lose all 3 road games against a sub-500 team when you had the best road record in the NBA. Is the fix in? The refs did make some pretty shocking decisions in the two of those road games that I saw. And how did Atlanta all of a sudden become the loudest arena in the NBA? Their attendance has been mediocre all year and the last time they were in the playoffs they couldn't even sell out any of their games. I'm thinking they may have been piping in the extra noise. There's really no excuse though. They better get this sorted if they don't want to go 7 with LeBron (or worse). Cleveland's given them fits all year, but I still like them to take it in 6. Hopefully Orlando can give Detroit some problems and stretch out that series. With the exception of the Cavs, I was spot on with my round one predictions (though I was off with some of the predictions of how many games it would take).

Jazzfest 07, Part II

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ok. just wanted to let that settle in a little. and now for those promised pictures of me and the Southern Louisiana Rock Cougar at the ZZ Top show (mind you - these are not photoshopped):





















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and settling ...









and one more of me and what might more accurately be described as a Southern Louisiana Rock Post-Coug (you should have seen the teeth on this one - sorry, "teeth"):

















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Jazzfest 07, Part II - pictures courtesy of longtime Jazzfest traveler and VTK reader, C-Mac. Friday was a watery mess. The real torrential downpour waited until we were at the Fairgrounds and walking between tents in search of food. I got some fried chicken, then got completely drenched, and got a kick out of walking up to people in the rain while eating the chicken and saying "I think the chicken's a little dry this year." It killed, I tell ya. The aftermath:









Saturday brought the heat, the rest of our crew, and the food.

the heat:





the rest of the crew:









the food:



Crawfish Monica:



Crawfish Etouffee:





Sunday... jeez, what the hell happened on Sunday? I know we saw one of the Mardi Gras Indian parades through the Fairgrounds:








and some kids playing in the dirt during Steely Dan. The kids' pile of dirt and rocks had a little twig with a white napkin flag poking out of it which got trashed by the addition of more mountain. I fashioned them a new flag from a fork and a paper towel I found on the ground. Our mental capacity was very similar at this stage of the bender. They were probably a little smarter.











The last night in the Big Sleazy was obviously a bit blurry. But I did manage to capture this little bit of video which nicely exemplifies the last soldiers, those of us who were still chasing the tiger, pounding high lives and pork chop sandwiches at 3:30 in the morning, 3 hours before we had to get up to go to the airport:





Crazy indeed. That flight was rough. As was the five day gastrointestinal illness I contracted, presumably from some sort of Post-Katrina, government ignored, bacterial situation that must have made its way into the ice cubes that made their way into my cocktails. See you next year, New Orleans!

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.

justiceforneworleans.org

It's that zydecorific time of year - New Orleans Jazzfest. As I have every first week of May over the last eight years, I'm heading down to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival. My yearly reboot. The food, the drink, the music, the party, the Fairgrounds, the Quarter, the etc. Jambalicious. Some of you may remember and have appreciated my report from last year's pilgrimage. Obviously, we're going to party our asses off again this year, and I'll be sure to take some pics worthy of a photo-diary/recap for you VTKids next week, but I thought this might me a good opportunity to highlight the continuing failures of our governmental institutions to take care of our own. I mean, really. I know most of us are a little dulled right now by everything that's happening in our country and the world (possibly too dulled to pay attention to what's happening in Somalia, The Most Lawless War Of Our Generation:

Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi said Thursday his forces were now in control of Mogadishu. The BBC reports, for the first time in nine days, gunfire has stopped. Ethiopians and government troops are patrolling the city conducting house-to-house searches, as residents collect rotting bodies that have been abandoned in the streets.

and the way in which the media is covering it:

The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the US media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now! examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once on a Sunday night news broadcast. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story.

),

but I digress. Check out this report about the current state of New Orleans 20 months after Katrina.

Over $100 billion was approved by Congress to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion of that money was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

Louisiana received $10 billion to fix up housing. Over 109,000 homeowners applied for federal funds to fix up their homes. Eighteen months later, less than 700 families have received this federal assistance. Renters, who comprised a majority of New Orleans, are worse off – they get nothing at all. Some money is scheduled to go to some landlords and apartment developers for some apartments at some time.

109000 applied.
700 received.

The education system is apparently not doing any better:

New Orleans is now the charter capital of the U.S. All the public schools on the side of the Mississippi which did not flood were turned into charters within weeks of Katrina. The schools with strongest parental support and high test scores were flipped into charters. The charters have little connection to each other and to state or local supervision. Those in the top half of the pre-Katrina population may be getting a better education. Kids without high scores, with disabilities, with little parental involvement who are not in charters are certainly not getting a good education and are shuttled into the bottom half - a makeshift system of state and local schools.

John McDonogh, a public high school created to take the place of five pre-Katrina high schools, illustrates the challenges facing non-charter public education in New Orleans. Opened by the State school district in the fall, as of November, 2006, there were 775 students but teachers, textbooks and supplies remained in short order months after school opened. Many teens, as many as one-fifth, were living in New Orleans without their parents. Fights were frequent despite the presence of metal detectors, twenty-give security guards and an additional eight police officers. In fact several security guards, who were not much older than the students were injured in fights with students. Students described the school as having a "prison atmosphere." There were no hot lunches and few working water fountains. The girls' bathrooms did not have doors on them. The library had no books at all, not even shelves for books in early November. One 15 year old student caught the 5am bus from Baton Rouge to attend the high school. "Our school has 39 security guards and three cops on staff and only 27 teachers," one McDonogh teacher reported.

The changing demographics are also of interest:

The pre-Katrina population of 454,000 people in the city of New Orleans dropped to 187,000. The African-American population of New Orleans shrank by 61 percent or 213,000 people, from a pre-Katrina number of 302,000 down to 89,000. New Orleans now has a much smaller, older, whiter and more affluent population.

And in a piece of news that really should be more shocking than it is, it appears that the US government passed on and/or wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. (Here are the documents that the Washington Post based their reports on)

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

But I guess it doesn't matter if they're not actually going to use the money that's allocated to help the people of New Orleans. It's criminal negligence.

Friday Posting Frenzy Finale

If this is your first visit today, please note the multitude of posts that have appeared since this morning. I posted a lame video of Britney Spears drunk (her in the video, not me in the posting of it) because I didn't have time to post anything better. Kristin called me on it, so I started posting more to make a legit VTK day out of it. Now it's several hours later and I really need to get some work done, so this is the last one of the day and it will consist of me cleaning out all the garbage in my VTK Possible Posts file, which hasn't made it to publication yet. So, feel free to skip it. all of it. but here goes:

If you want to be distracted for 1 minute, watch this:



If you want to be distracted for 2 minutes: try this (boston.com)

If you want to be distracted for 4 minutes: try this (SB)

If you want to be distracted by a sad story for the rest of the afternoon, read the 5 part series about NFL Hall of Famer Mike Webster's descent into mental illness and homelessness and it's likely connection to all the head trauma he incurred over the years in football.

If you want to feel slightly better about the story, read about the slight consolation of justice afforded to his family.

If you want to hear something Orwellian that I may or may not have posted about before, listen to this: the USDA is attempting to stop using the word “hungry" to describe people who are hungry. The new phrase is "food-insecure". People who live in hunger are now residing in "households with very low food security" – and there are 330 references using this lingo on the USDA website.


If you want to see a picture of the massive andouille sausage and broccoli omelette that I made myself last weekend, here it is.

If not, too bad.

If you want to stay informed on the situation in New Orleans post-Katrina, including the ways in which the Bush administration is using the tragedy as a sacrificial rat for their pet policies (sound familiar?), read this site.

If you want to be truly morally righteous: root for UMass tonight at 8 PM EST when they play in the Div 1-AA National Championship football game.

Have a great weekend, VTKids.

Day of Atonement

I’m back from the Dirty South, The Crescent City, The Big Sleazy, N’Awlins Louisiana, and I’m not quite mentally recovered yet. Four days and nights of partying in that town will take it out of you. The scene at the airport on Monday is always pretty comical, with half the people responsibly suffering their way back into the sober world and the other half of us laughing it up in the airport bar, leaving the suffering for Tuesday – today – the Day Of Atonement – the DOA. Luckily, I was spared work on the DOA and was able to mill around my apartment by myself and listen to music. Not a bad exit strategy. I took about 70 photos (including an absurd amount on the first full day/night when I decided to catalog every drink I consumed (what am I - 19?)), and so I won’t show all of them, but here is a brief photo diary:







Here’s Tim transcending his body on the first night. He later got in a heated stare-down with his pillow (Dude v Pillow).







The first beer I documented – the coveted Pilsner Urquel.












Beer v Port-a-Potty.








This is taken from the gin and tonic’s perspective. Poor little guy. Probably hung on for a mile or two, but in the end it was too much for him.







The goer cocktail.













Christian, Didi, and Maria join the party in time for the tequila shots at Molly’s.






Adam catching a nap at the pizza/movie bar.









Me, the seersuckers, and the 2 by 4 that I carried around to the bars on Frenchmen’s Street. I don’t know.












This is actually a remarkably accurate documentation of the last beer of the night.







The gang, enjoying some Crawfish Monica at the Fairgrounds.









Love this photo. These people actually got married on the Gospel Stage between sets. Extra points if you can guess what Adam is saying.











We ran into some people that hang out at the Plough and Stars and this is one of them celebrating finding a Fosters amidst a pile of Miller Lites.










An artist at the Radiators show.









blah blah blah dippity DOO!










Evelyn’s Place – classic southern waterin’ hole. I’ve been getting gumbo and muffalettas there for years – from Evelyn at night and Frank during the day – a couple of real characters. This year we mention to Evelyn that we’re from Massachusetts and she says “oh really? Frank’s from Pittsfield”. I nearly fell off my stool.







Tim and I nightcapping off Round … not sure … at Jimani’s.







Local boy done good: Sterling’s own playing with YMSB at Jazzfest.







Didi, chillin’ with a bowl of Crawfish Etouffee at the YMSB show.







Big Daddy Kane carving it up at the Congo Square stage.







Big Crawdaddy lying on the ground as the festival ended.













Maria on Bourbon Street in her new boa.













Tim on another street with her new boa.














Second to last call.











Last call for JazzFest 06. That's either the bar or my head.



see you next year, New Orleans.

[photos by me and akboognish]