STELLAAAA!

st. charles streetcar

J'adore le streetcar. Love it so much I'm dedicating a whole post to it because when it comes to traveling to Bourbon Street from uptown New Orleans, there ain't no better way to travel. What people don't realize is that following "the storm" (Katrina), the streetcar line was not running for two whole years! Unfortunately, aside from the St. Charles line, all the other streetcar tracks were torn up and will not reopen. Aquel dommage, n'est pas?

I've been practicing mon French lately for hope that I'll get to use it soon.

A note on A Streetcar Named Desire. I'm not a huge Tennessee Williams fan, but Marlon Brando rocks, er, rocked (whatever - he'll always rock). Did you know that every actor in the film version of Streetcar won an academy award that year... except for Marlon?! Now that's just plain bull manure because it is my humble opinion that Marlon Brando was the greatest, most important, most pioneering actor of all-time. Okay - that's all for today. I'm spent. Too many beignets.

OH, THE HUMANITY!

house dedication, 9th ward - new orleans

MoFo and I traveled on down to the Big Easy for a week. We helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity and the Musicians' Village of the devastated 9th Ward. Okay, yes, I may be a man of leisure, but I don't mind picking up a hammer and nail for those unfortunate folks of the 9th Ward. Without these people, the fun parts of the Big Easy could not function - there would be no hotel staff, no servers and no musicians. What is New Orleans without all this? So... though I have taken a vow to shirk work, I felt it my karmic duty to give back a little to the city which has given so much to me in the past.

Special thanks to DoTa for coming out for a couple days to help out our house-building team. And congrats on getting signed with a record label! Back in the day, DoTa and I used to jam together. Look at him now - all grown up with a label behind his music. Pretty damn cool - hmmmm... maybe I'll start a rock band of my own.

TAILGATING ANYONE?

Ahh, the sweet smell of blackened catfish, shrimp gumbo and crawfish etouffee. You may be wondering where a San Fran man might find such delicious dishes... or maybe not if you read the title to this posting.

49er tailgating is really unlike the kind of tailgating I've experienced in other cities - you know beer & barbecue kinda thing. At Candlestick (Monster Park), people drink wine over tablecloths. And when the Saints are in town, the cuisine is Cajun/Creole all around the parking lot.

I came just for the food... and drink, of course - didn't see any part of the game at all. I met the halftime entertainers in the parking lot [see 1st photo] and some other interesting characters [see left], but the highlight had to be... [drumroll, por favor]... the jello shot lady! I had not had a jello shot in years! I'm going to make some more this weekend for sure, though.

ps - thanks for cleaning that catfish, MoFo ; )

FOTC, YEAH YOU KNOW ME!

HBO's Flight of the Conchords rocks as hard as I've ever known anything to rock. If ever I return to the workforce, I would try to work on this creme-de-la-comedie set...

Jemaine & Bret appeared at MoFo's Sangriaween soiree. Such a fantastic find for a t-shirt, I must say. The prize had to go to SaWa's Homewrecker costume, though... and to MoFo's sangria, of course - that stuff will hit you harder than you may realize.

Strange to see a picture of oneself, passed out on a couch, fully clothed... but with half a beard and some serious chops. Would seem like someone was screwing with me... but, in reality, I'd really just been screwing around with myself - uh!*

These pictures were of course destroyed as I must preserve the reputation. In fact, what am I talking about? What pictures? There were no pictures!

See FOTC MySpace page here.

*The current "uh!" record stands at 1000. AnBy is in a close second after (while at a conference) he uttered these words, in reference to MP3 downloads: "People will be getting in their offices, getting in their kitchens, in their bedrooms... uh!" If 1001 people read this post, the new "uh" record will be mine!

THE ALIBI

nothing to do with this entry

Not every bar has a MySpace page, but The Alibi sure does. Strange, they list themselves as a 27-yr. old female... if I were a bar, I think I'd be more of a 30-something-year-old male.

Paragraph.

I once wrote a novel while under the influence of something "totally" legal in California. I wrote a chapter a night for 33 nights. It ended up being 133 pages (in Word), single-space. Its name was "Reckless Abandon", but according to the book's Introduction, it was translated from the original French... when its name was Le Recluse. Not only an obvious mistranslation, but intentionally made much more sensationalist with the English title. American publishers. Damn to hell.

At the time, I had friends working at Time Magazine, Spy and US News World Report. They weren't critics, but I used their quotes for the book's back blurb. And their companies' names, too, of course. Quotes like, "Never has such a young novelist created such an immensely intense classic masterpiece." - J.S., Spy Magazine or "He makes Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Voltaire all look like schmucks." - K.G., Time or "Invest your time wisely, read this book above all others out there, and buy shares in the phenomenon that will be its aftermath." - A.B, U.S.News World Report

Starting at the 6th word of the 6th line of the 6th page, one will find these words: "This is my quest..." and then a page-long (Word!) paragraph about something incomprehensible. At least so to humans. Sometimes I think my ol' dog Ty understood what I was trying to say back then.

Wish he were here now to explain all this to everybody...