    "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
With these hands ... We pray for the strength, Lord ... to rebuild this city. Just a quick check-in after one of the best Jazzfest days ever. Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris was beyond amazing in a brilliant, sassy, funny, devastatingly emotional and ultimately joyous set to start off at the Jazz Tent. Then Don Vappie, encouraging rebirth of the city and especially its music education for the young. Then Sonny Landreth, smokin' as always. Then an astonishing set by Allan Toussaint and Elvis Costello, whom I can't wait to see on tour. Then ... the Boss.   It's been 26 years since I've seen him, and once again he put on one of the best shows I've ever seen. I'll let Steve take over from here, from the piece he wrote tonight:
Read the whole thing, it's great. [ Link to today's entries ]
Jazzfest in 1 hour and 45 minutes! Given my lack of time for weblog posting, let me refer you to the site where my good friend Steve will be posting about Jazzfest three or four times a day (Why? Because AOL is paying him, woohoo!) -- Blogging New Orleans. There are categories for "Recovery" and "Pictures" and "Videos," but Steve's stuff will probably all be under the "Jazzfest" category. Have fun! Restaurant Cuvée: Sneak preview No time for a full post (I'll do one later), but I have a set up at Flickr for our spectacular meal at Cuvée.  Oh, my. [ Link to today's entries ]
It's Jazzfest time in New Orleans ... (Sing it, Dave ...)
Never could make out that second line ... anyway. We leave this morning, heading home to New Orleans for two weeks of The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and therefore posting will likely be light to nonexistent over the next two weeks. There's wi-fi where we'll be staying, but don't count on my having lots of time to post. I'll be checking email and Looka! posts, so if anyone's gonna be at Fest, drop me a line. (Gotcha, Barry, Ashley and Louis.) If you're stuck somewhere outside of New Orleans, you can keep up with what's going on via streaming webcasts from WWOZ, and there'll be streaming video from MSN. Be sure to tune in on Sunday at 11:30am Central Time for the set from my friend Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris; I got a little forewarning that she'll definitely be on the webcast, although I forgot to ask whether it's 'OZ or MSN. Let's hope for both! Besides soaking in the music and, I hope, doing a day or two of volunteer work with the Katrina Krewe, we'll be eating. A lot. We've got scheduled meals so far at Cuvée, Bayona, Ye Olde College Inn (mmmm, fried oyster, bacon and Havarti poor boy ...), Café Adelaide, The Bistro at Maison de Ville, Drago's (mmmmm, charbroiled oysters ...), Cochon, (mmmmm, pig!), plus one shrimp boil, one crawfish boil, various and sundry stops for muffulettas and poor boys, a possible stop at Creole's Lunch House in Lafayette for stuffed bread, and not to mention all the food at the Fest. Although we'll miss Creole's Stuffed Bread (and Miss Merline, and Mr. Raymond) dearly this year, there's some really delectable-lookin' new stuff to check out (via Michael, who emailed these suggestion to a friend of ours, and to which I've added my own comments):
Plus some other old favorites:
There's so much more that there's really not enough time to talk about it, and certainly not enough time (or stomach volume) to eat it all: Sausage and jalapeño bread, Cuban sandwiches, sweet potato pone, boudin balls, ya ka mein, spicy crawfish sushi roll, Oysters Rockefeller bisque, jama jama with red-hot sauce and plantains, plus all the local Creole specialties like red beans, jambalaya, etc. One caveat -- there's one dish that you'll hear people rave about, and you'll see long, long lines for it: Crawfish Bread. Everybody will tell you that they love Crawfish Bread. Basically, it's just some crawfish tails baked into an empanada-like pie with about sixteen tons of melted cheese. Some people love it, but Michael and I are in agreement that this is the single most overrated dish at the Fair Grounds. Need I also remind you what Dean said: "Crawfish bread is all right, if you don't mind not having a bowel movement until June." Unheralded genius. Yep, everybody knows about Professor Longhair, and Dr. John, and these days (sadly, mostly due to Katrina) more and more people know about the great Allen Toussaint as well. It seems, though that not enough people outside the circle of hardcore New Orleans music lovers seem aware of the massive contributions to New Orleans music of James Carroll Booker III, "arguably the greatest rhythm and blues pianist who ever lived." There's a pretty good profile of him in the Chronicle, including some amusing anecdotes about his musical genius:
Start with "Junco Partner" if you don't have any Booker, then try to ... well, buy all the rest of them. [ Link to today's entries ]
I scream, you scream ... ever'body love ice cream, rock ... rock my baby rock. (Yeah, go George Lewis.) I mention that great old jazz song to remind all y'all to get your free ice cream today ...
Mmmmm, free ice cream! (Hey, does anyone have Free Bacon Day?) Death of a theatre. When I was in college I worked as an usher at the Village Aurora Cinema Six in Algiers (that's on the Westbank of New Orleans, in case you didn't know), from early 1980 until right before I moved to L.A. in August 1982. I got paid a whopping $3.35 per hour (minimum wage at the time, for an annual half-time salary of less than $3,500), but also meant that thanks to a professional courtesy agreement among mosts local theatres I didn't have to pay a movie admission anywhere in the city for two years. I saw lots of movies, and saved quite a bit. Yesterday I got an email from a guy named Kent, who must have started working at the Aurora right after I left. He stumbled across a videoblog done by a guy who had apparently grown up in Algiers with the Aurora as his neighborhood theatre. About three years ago he returned to Algiers some 20 years after having moved away and was shocked to find it being demolished. It's eerie. I recognized everything; what was left of it, that is -- the side of the lobby where I usually worked, looking back to my usher's station; the concession stand; the projection booth; one of the smaller theatres on my old side. It's sad to see, but suburban regional theatres have been dying in New Orleans for years. Not only is the Village Aurora gone, but so is Belle Promenade (along with the entire mall), the magnificent Robert E. Lee in Lakeview (as Juliette said, the theatre "was deserted long before the 17th St. Canal breach, but it's an even sadder sight now"), the Plaza Cinema 4 in New Orleans East near my parents' old house, where I also worked briefly (the entire Plaza shopping center is now a ruin, as is the Grand Theatre multi-plex that was built adjacent to it and was itself doing lousy business before Katrina), the Kenilworth Cinema, where I was a projectionist for several months, the Lakeside Cinemas at the Lakeside shopping mall, the Lakeside Theatres across Vets (including the fabulous theatre that used to be an old church), the Sena Mall in Metairie (now Martin Wine Cellar), the downtown Joy ... it's so, so sad. Speaking of the Joy, in the course of some Google-research for this post I stumbled across an independently-produced local documentary called No More Joy: The Rise and Fall of New Orleans' Movie Theatres. I know nothing about it, or if it's any good or not ... but screw it, I'm orderin' it today. The good news amidst all this sad nosgalgia is that the venerable Prytania Theatre is still open, the only single-screen movie theatre in the city or anywhere near it. (Check out Juliette's entire set of N.O. movie theatre photos, all post-Katrina.) Village Aurora Cinema Six. Man, have I got some stories from that place ... Idiots. I sometimes (if not often, if not always) suffer despair at the mere mention of the Louisiana state legislature. I remember someone's anecdote of "Hayul, ah remembuh when legislatuhs used ta throw chicken bones at each otha and get inta fistfights on th' floah of th' legislacha ..." I don't think they've progressed all that far since. The latest, besides their constant attempts to ban abortions with no provision for the health of the mother and impose creationism on state classrooms? Yet another attempt to ban flag burning.
With all that needs to be done in Louisiana, with all the important work before the state legislature, this asshole is wasting time trying to increase the penalty for flag burning, which is already protected protest speech? Anyone remember the last Louisiana legislator who was so preoccupied with flag burning? Yep, that's right ... David Duke. In fact, the only bill he ever wrote was not to ban flag burning, but to reduce the penalty for assault to a $25 file if the person convicted of assault had assaulted someone who was burning a flag. Aren't you proud, Sen. Cain? Moron. Yay, Mick! Via Barry K., from the otherwise loathsome U.K. paper The Sun (although perhaps not as loathsome as The Daily Mail):
Tony Blair may be Bush's poodle, but Mick certainly ain't. Heh. Your tax dollars at work, Part 254,966. (Via Wes.) What, again? Sadly, yes. From today's New York Times:
Ah, the good ol' Army Corps of Engineers. The same people responsible for making sure that New Orleans will be protected during the next hurricane season, which starts in just over a month. We are so fucked. [ Link to today's entries ]
Photo of the day. Glass flowers, Bellagio, Las Vegas.  The entire ceiling of the reception lobby of the Bellagio looks like this; the photo only shows a small part. It's pretty spectacular. That sinking feeling ... as Bush's approval rating is now 32%, according to a new CNN poll. I wonder how many rats will sink with this ship? Speaking of our despicable leaders, Digby tells us yet more about how despicable they really are: "The sheer volume on inhumane activity that the Bush administration has endorsed or perpetrated is so huge that it's hard to keep up." [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. I'm such a geek. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm not one of these people who run right to the computer and blog everything they do right after they do it. I actually have a life. Yet here I am, five minutes after Wesly made me the fabulous cocktail I'm having right now. Well, he's finishing up a documentary on the Mintority Report DVD that I've already seen, and I've got five minutes. He got the inspiration out of Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology, and it's not a drink we haven't had before. He just used some special ingredients, followed Gary's suggestions (i.e., garnish with a lemon twist and/or a cherry, and Wes opted for the "and"; using a different bitters than usual) and knocked me out. Boy, this is good. I shudder at the idea of ordering one in a bar, though ... how many bartenders will scoff and say, with a harrumph, "All my Manhattans are perfect."
You get a great flavor from the Peychaud's, and the extra level of bitterness you get in the Punt E Mes helps make up for the bitterness in the Angostura that we're not using in this version. Absolutely superb. Better and better. While New Orleans is still Not Okay, things move forward a millimeter at a time. French Quarter Festival is this weekend, and next weekend is Jazzfest -- those will help enormously. Chris "Mr. Clio" Wiseman offers his observations of some other things that are getting better:
My own observations/additions: I'll be at that Bud's next week, woohoo!! I can't speak for #3, as I know nothing about football. I'll take Chris' word for it. I'll add my parents' new house and my friends' new roofs to #10. To #12 I'll add my hopes that Holy Cross' purchase of the John F. Kennedy High School campus goes through. To #13 I'll say that now that I can't have Creole's Stuffed Bread every day, I'll just have more Hubig's Pies. (The lady at Terranova's says you have to get there early to get any flavor other than apple or lemon, so lovers of strawberry, cherry, chocolate or coconut pies should be early risers.) Make sure you read the fantastic link at #14 about the gumbo z'herbes fundraiser for Leah Chase. On any other Holy Thursday, those foodies would have been lunching at Dooky Chase Restaurant, savoring the thick, rich, green gumbo that Leah Chase has been preparing for more than a half-century to represent the last meat to be eaten before Easter. Ingredients have varied from year to year, but her filé always included sassafras leaves from a tree her father planted. Hurricane Katrina killed the tree and flooded the 65-year-old Orleans Avenue restaurant, which is not expected to reopen for nearly two months. But in the past five weeks, a group led by Poppy Tooker, a self-styled culinary activist, determined that the Holy Thursday gumbo z'herbes lunch must be served and that the proceeds would help Chase, 83, renovate the establishment where she has cooked for the likes of Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall and Lena Horne. What a fantastic story. I won't have time to do it before I leave for Jazzfest, but as soon as we get back I'm making a huge pot of gumbo z'herbes. (I'll have to see if I can find some peppergrass when I'm home; any ideas?) Soooo-EEEEEEE!! Pig, pig, pig!! Okay, how can you resist a restaurant whose name translates from the French as "pig?" Well, you can't. Amidst the spate of new restaurants that have opened in New Orleans since Katrina (former Café Adelaide chef Kevin Vizard with his eponymous joint on St. Charles, Chef David English's new Seven on Fulton, which Poppy tried the other night) is the brand spanking new Cochon, co-owned by Chef Donald Link of Herbsaint, who's currently celebrating being nominated for "Best Chef - Southeast Region" by the James Beard Foundation. I didn't even know about Cochon's appearance, but Mary found out and quickly made reservations for the Pack for a week from Wednesday. The press release, out ten days ago, tantalizes us thusly:
Oh my Gawd. Oh hell, let's just look at the menu:  The problem with this menu ... is that I want all of it. [ Link to today's entries ]
Jazzfest sadness. The mainstay of Jazzfest food for me has been, for more years than I can count, something you've doubtless heard me talk about before if you've been reading this weblog (and the rest of the site too) for any length of time -- that miraculous little bun called Creole's Stuffed Bread. It was always the first thing I'd get, pretty much immediately upon my arrival at the Fair Grounds, and I'd often have a second one too. It's just ... so frackin' good I can't even do it justice. It sounds boring -- a fresh-baked bun stuffed with ground meat, sausage, cheese, hot peppers and spices. The end result is far, far more than the sum of its parts. Every Jazzfest day began with a warm greeting from Miss Merline Herbert, who's been making these for over 20 years and who sells them at the Fair Grounds: "Hey baby, how you doin'?!" When the food vendor schedules for Jazzfest were published last week, there was one heart-stopping omission -- no Creole's Stuffed Bread. I can't imagine Fest without it, and wondered what had happened. That very day, our intrepid friend Robin went to the source to find out, and reported back to us:
I'm so sorry to hear of Mr. Raymond's passing, and may he rest in peace. Miss Merline, you take care -- we'll certainly miss you this year, and we can't wait to see you next year. Dems meet today in New Orleans. As Steve said in email this morning, this is "my kind of political stunt;" one, we hope, that is "the start of a real, ongoing effort to make the message real through action."
Yeah? Maybe, but if "grandstanding" actually ends up doing something to help New Orleans and its people, it's fine with me. What the fuck have the Republicans done for us since the storm?
Oh, for Christ's sake ... "9/11, 9/11, 9/11," 24 hours a day for the last four-and-a-half years, and they have the gall to accuse anyone else of exploiting a tragedy? Excuse me while I find something to throw against the wall ...
Gee, could a contributing factor to that have been the continuing lack of desire of Congressional Republicans to allocate all the money the population of the Gulf Coast needs to protect themselves, including Category 5 hurricane protection and the restoration of the coastal wetlands? Instead, they're spending $10 billion a month on their little war. So do some good in New Orleans, DNC ... show us what you can do. It's a chance for you to be relevant. Have some fun while you're there too -- French Quarter Festival is this weekend. Oh, speaking of this weekend ... it's the mayoral election in New Orleans. This is gonna be a big one. I noted one of the more interesting developments this week (via Schroeder via Oyster): the Louisiana Weekly, the voice of the state's black community for over 80 years, has endorsed Mitch Landrieu for mayor.
As one of Oyster's commenters pointed out, though, Mitch is hardly new blood; father Moon and sister Mary were and have been around for a long time. Oyster has some great posts on the mayoral race, its candidates and the complex issues surrounding it. For a guy who likes to wear flight suits, notice that Bush does not so much fly as plummet. As Steve M. said in email this morning, his ratings fall so low so fast that not even Faux News can find a way to pretty 'em up:
Thirty-three. Do I hear thirty? [ Link to today's entries ]
Blecchh. Posting resumes, gently; I've been sick for the past week and wasn't up to it. Upper respiratory flulike thing kept me fairly miserable and home in bed for three days ... man, what a drag. If avian flu is gonna be a lot worse than this, then we're fracked. The Cocktailian. In the most recent edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, The Professor, our cocktailian bartender, serves up something to mark today's 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 -- The Trembling Martini, simply a 6:1 gin-and-vermouth classic Martini, but made with locally-produced gin and vermouth (pretty cool, actually). Cocktail of the day. Besides the above, we also offer an appropriately named vintage cocktail ...
We'll be having this one tonight, I think. All the President's Lies. Carl Bernstein, half of the Washington Post reporting team that broke the Watergate coverup and brought down a crooked president, lays out the case for his call for Senate hearings on Bush, now. The introduction, and a few highlights:
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