Happy Mardi Gras! Live cams!!

Live cameras from Bourbon Street and Jackson Square!

From the Cat's Meow, we have several views and you can zoom.  Check below the large image for additional views. (Formerly known as the Bourbocam.)

Click here.

From Jackson Square, watch the party from the comfort of your couch.

Click here.

New Orleans March 2010

I highly recommend this book which is set in New Orleans...

Who Dat Dog

Thanks, Elizabeth!

The countdown begins

Exactly five weeks from now, I'm going to New Orleans with my cousins Zina and Kara and some other people I've never met. We're going to do one of these...



and we're going to do one of these...



and I'm going to do a couple of these...



and probably a few of these...



then, I guess I'll come home.

Dammit.

New Orleans Running of the Bulls

I am SO going to do this next year!



No, silly. I'm not going to do the running part. I'm going to do the standing on the sidewalk drinking a beer laughing my ass off part.

A couple of things from Ava's Great Grandmother (my mom)

Vote for the New Orleans Lakefront Lighthouse

I love lighthouses. Here's an e-mail my mom sent me:

"Our lighthouse on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans was destroyed by Katrina. Built in the 1890s, the lighthouse has been a lakefront landmark for years, guiding boats in and out of the Orleans Marina and the Municipal Yacht Harbor. Some of the original materials were salvaged and they're trying to rebuild it but of course it takes money the city doesn't have right now. There is a company that restores lighthouses and has a contest going on right now to donate new windows and doors for a lighthouse in need of restoration, and the Canal lighthouse is on the list! Click here to vote: www.jeld-wen.com/lighthouse"

A Joke

An old Tennessee mountain woman went to the doctor and was told to go home and come back in a couple of days with a specimen. When she got home she asked her husband, "What is a specimen?"

He replied. "Darned if I know. Go next door and ask Edith. She's a nurse."

The woman went next door and came back in about twenty minutes with her clothes all torn and with multiple cuts and bruises on her face and body.

"What in the world happened?" asked her husband"

"Darned if I know," she replies. "I asked Edith what a specimen was and she told me to go piss in a bottle. I told her to go fart in a jug and then all hell broke loose."

It's Not My Fault

I was supposed to be in New Orleans this weekend, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I was unable to leave Beaumont. When I'm feeling sorry for myself, I do one or both of the following: (1) buy stuff; (2) organize stuff.

This weekend, I did both. I reorganized all of my kitchen cabinets (partly because I found where that fucking mouse had set up house, so I threw everything in that cabinet out...Tupperware, Rubbermaid, canned goods, dish towels...everything) and I spent an exorbitant amount of money on cookware, gadgets, utensils, knives, organizer shelves, dish towels, serving platters and canisters.

It's not like I even cook. It's not that I'm a bad cook, it's just that I don't cook. I blame Alton Brown. He makes it all look so damn fun. I have an uncontrollable desire to fry some chicken.

"What happened to the Bourbocam?"

Someone found my blog by searching for the Bourbocam. The Bourbocam is a live camera at the corner of Bourbon Street and St. Peter and located in a window at the Cat's Meow (our favorite karaoke bar). The camera used to be located on the NOLA Live page. It has now moved to the Cat's Meow website.

Click here for the Bourbocam.

Click here for the Cat's Meow website.

Click here for the NOLA page which has more cameras.

Maps Schmaps

The Schmap website has used one of my Flickr photos for its Inn on Bourbon description.

I Think I Have Louisiana Flu

• Tonight LSU football party
• Soon (!!!) Baton Rouge for Jen's wedding
• Mardi Gras in Lafayette
• Ghost Hunting 101 at University of Louisiana in Lafayette (3 Saturdays!)
• New Orleans for St. Patrick's Day

I knew I should have taken that damn fleaux shot.

FEMA Denies New Orleans Aquarium

One of my favorite places to visit in New Orleans is the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. After Hurricane Katrina, I read everything I could find trying to determine the status of the fish, birds and animals there and was horrified to learn that most didn't make it.

In order to restock the aquarium quickly, the staff of the aquarium did what any sensible person would do, they went fishing. Now, however, since the aquarium was restocked the old-fashioned way, saving tax payers a half-million dollars by not buying the fish from commercial suppliers, FEMA is refusing to pay their $616,000 commitment to the aquarium. (You can read about it here.)

Ah, wouldn't it be nice if FEMA was the only government agency we had to be embarrassed about?

I Rock. I Ran.

Gravity is not my friend. When presented with the opportunity and the perfect set of imperfect circumstances, my body will fall down and usually break something.

When I was three years old, I broke my leg.

In 3rd grade, I cracked a kneecap.

In 4th grade I cracked a bone in my wrist.

I've had at least three sprained ankles (maybe more).

In 1997, I broke my foot (but that didn't stop me from going to New Orleans).


Being so prone to breakage, I haven’t run anywhere of my own accord since high school gym class. By the way, running in airports, chasing freedom seeking dogs and herding rampant children does not count as “of my own accord."

As you may recall from a couple of posts back, I have joined a fitness center. You will all be happy and surprised to learn that I have successfully completed three workouts (which included moves on the dreaded step apparatus between use of circuit machines) without injury.

As impressive as that may be for a person of my limited coordination and frequent inability to remain in the upright position, the thing I am most impressed with is my performance on the treadmill. My fear of all things mechanical, in general, and exercise related mechanical, in particular, has kept me from ever attempting to use a treadmill. I have always been certain that if I ever stepped on one, I would immediately do a George Jetson off the back of the thing and crash into the nearest wall and/or person.

Tuesday night, however, I had the gym mostly to myself and I went for it. I started slow, then I got brave. I walked. I walked fast. I walked faster. I inclined that sucker and walked even faster. Then, wait for it, I ran. I ran and ran and ran. I ran like the wind! Well, it was more like a brief gust of a gentle summer breeze, but my point is I ran and it felt good.

Look out big scary looking elliptical machine. You're next.

Today is one of those days...

...that I really know what it means to miss New Orleans.

The weather is perfect and I crave the peace of sitting on a bench in Jackson Square.

I crave a fried shrimp dinner from Masperro's with a $1 strawberry daiquiri.

I crave a Top Shelf Margarita from Margaritaville at 2:00 in the afternoon, then another.

I crave Cat's Meow.


I crave the Famous Door.

I crave Cafe Du Monde at 2:00 a.m. or maybe 3:00.


I crave a pina colada/banana daiquiri from any frozen daiquiri shop.

I crave browsing the beautiful shops on Royal Street.

I crave a po'boy from Mother's or People's or Johnny's.


I crave sitting on the patio of Pat O'Brien's at dusk sipping a Hurricane and watching someone light the fountain.

I want to meander through the Conti Wax Museum.

I want to watch the penguins and otters at the aquarium.

((le sigh))

Hurricane Katrina Anniversary

From Tim's Nameless Blog

One of These Days

One of these days I’m going to run away to the French Quarter. When I get there, I’m going to, ever so gently, knock the lady on the head who takes the money and issues the tickets for the wax museum on Conti Street. She has my job and that’s just not right. She can keep it until I get there, but then it’s mine.

After I knock her gently on the head rendering her still capable of living a full and wonderful life, yet, incapable of standing behind that counter, reading books and trashy tabloids all day and issuing the occasional wax museum admission ticket, I will take my rightful place behind the counter reading books and trashy tabloids all day and issuing the occasional wax museum admission ticket.

Don't worry. I know exactly where to hit her. I Googled it.

Brad and Angelina's Big Move

First, a couple of disclaimers:

• I've never lived in New Orleans or the French Quarter.


• Nobody made me "Who Can and Cannot Live in the French Quarter Police."


• What other people do is none of my business.


• What Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie do is only their business and, as stated in my third little bullet up there, is certainly none of my business.

Click here for a link to more pictures of the mansion and for a description of the house that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reportedly bought. I don't know for certain that this is the house. However, it certainly fits all the descriptions I've read in the media and it was e-mailed to me by a very reliable source.

People have asked me what I think of their big move and, keeping the above disclaimers in mind, here's my bulleted uneducated opinion:

• Whatever helps the city is a good thing.
• Ideally, anyone who moves into the French Quarter is doing so because they get that tingly feeling when they first set foot there. (I hope Brad and Angelina get tingly all over when they walk through the French Market or stroll up and down Royal Street.)
• Angelina has a reputation of being...uh...eccentric. This makes me think she probably truly loves the uniqueness of the French Quarter.
• Brad has a well known love of architecture which makes me think that his interest in living in the French Quarter is genuine, as well.
• Hopefully, any other celebrities who might move into Brad and Angelina's neighborhood do so out of love and not out of a craving to be trendy.

I wonder if they need a nanny.

Boston Legal in New Orleans

I wasn't going to post about this because I am a huge fan of Boston Legal. However, when I woke up this morning and it was still on my mind, I had to write it down to get it out of my brain. That, by the way, is how you people end up with 90% of these posts.

For whatever reason, the powers that be who run this show chose to present a Disney-ized version of New Orleans nightlife and accents to the rest of the country in this episode. A year and a half ago, this might have flown with people who have never been to New Orleans. Hopefully, now, people know a little more about the soul of the city than what was portrayed on this episode .

Here's a comment I left on another blog last night:

I was so mad!!! This is a great television show with an undoubtedly huge budget and they couldn't even find one single person with an authentic New Orleans accent?! I would have been happy if EITHER of them remotely sounded like someone from New Orleans. They both sounded like actors in a BAD local theater production of a Tennessee Williams play.

Then there was that farce they tried to call a New Orleans jazz club with Denny Crane onstage. It was so obviously someone's Walt Disney imagined version of a New Orleans club right down to all the wholesome, well-dressed patrons that I would have laughed if it hadn't been so sad.

What Really Happened in the Superdome

Read all about it: Why the Superdome was a Sacredome and not a Thunderdome.

Me, New Orleans and Jagermeister

Today, one of my friends told me she had her first Jager Bomb (Jagermeister and Red Bull) the other night. This prompted me to tell her, in great detail, one of my favorite New Orleans stories.

In March of 1995, I took my third trip to New Orleans. It was one of our medium sized trips (only thirteen people). Saturday afternoon, some of the women needed naps and outfit changes and some of the men wanted to rest a while before beginning the evening. My brother, my sister-in-law, my sister's brother-in-law and I weren't in the mood for such pleasantries. We told everyone, "We're going in here," and pointed to the nearest bar to where we were standing. "Come find us later."


"In Here" turned out to be the world famous Famous Door. On the stage was a band that was playing the best dance music we had ever heard. Each song was better than the last song. As soon as we walked in the door, we were approached by people who were in there pushing the Jagermeister. If you did a shot, you got stuff. We thought, "What the hell." Heaven knows we didn't quite have enough plastic Hand Grenade glasses, go cups, beads, yada, yada, yada.

So...

We did shots. We got clackers.

We danced.

We did shots. We got t-shirts.

We danced.

We did shots. We got hats.

We danced.

Did I mention it was 4:00 in the afternoon? I didn't mention that?

By the time everyone came back to the Famous Door a few hours later, we were covered in Jagermeister crap and blitzed to our eyeballs. We were best friends with everyone in the bar. My brother was playing the conga drum with the band and someone (it might have been me) had started a conga line to some Jackson 5 song. We were a sight to behold.

(What do you do with Jagermeister souvenirs? Give them to the children when you get home, of course.)

I'll be the first to tell you, Jagermeister is not a tasty shot. It tastes a lot like a bad dose of Vicks 44 cough syrup. However, if you're in the mood to jumpstart your night, Jager Bomb, baby, Jager Bomb.

"We Are Not Okay"

On the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, here are some links and a Google search for you:

• Tim's Nameless Blog
• NOLA Live
• "We Are Not Okay"