Which Would You Rather?

At a certain point, you don't write, because you *haven't* written and beyond the normal level of chaos, self-flagellation -- though quiet -- exerts its own weight.

So first thing's first: what's happened since the Fall? Well! The biggest, most exciting piece is our move to New Orleans. I never did make my own Calas cakes after that first jaunt so many years ago. Memories of glorious expanses of wrought iron, great buskers, and Django Reinhardt-esque performances at the Spotted Cat surfaced periodically in my mind. So Javier and I entered into discussions and you know how Rilke said that once you commit your will to making a thing happen, somehow the stars align? Well, the stars aligned. So long story short, now it's Javier, the toddler & myself, keeping company with the likes of Anne Rice, dusting off Nic Cage's pyramid, and collecting little plastic babies for the next round of King Cakes. Points to us in the game of Life!  We will happily accept all rejoicing, advice, undercurrents of envy...

Or....hmmm. What WAS true was that by October of 2016, training for the Iditarod was already entering high gear. My mushing skills were woefully underdeveloped, much to the confusion of my canine team. By the end of the first week, I was nursing bruised ribs and a deflated ego. I couldn't help remembering that one day in college when I convinced myself I would spend a summer on an Alaskan fishing boat, banking money and hardening myself to life in one fell swoop. Regardless of the animals involved, Alaska did not seem to be such a good plan for me...

And so here we are in Michigan, a few days out from a massive power outage (the more fortunate among us, that is). Snow has been falling since early morning and I have been checking out heavier decorative papers in the basement that could be used for a birthday crown for the little one's second birthday.

I go back and forth on the amount of time to invest in a crown, as she was delighted by the first one, before ripping it up and crying over it in less than 15 minutes. "Tape it! Tape it!" she demanded. "Bwwwoken," she moaned. She spends a lot of time destroying things and then getting upset about it. She has grown supremely confident in my limited fixing skills. A relative newcomer to language, but she weighs in, like everyone else. "Tape it!" she tells me, when the dining room light won't turn on. "Not worrrrrking," she observes from her car seat, as I curse my non-starting Subaru. She sighs.

The will to be an active agent, and the confidence to forge ahead in spite of reality, is definitely one of the most endearing aspects of toddler-hood. Any time a kitchen timer buzzes, she shouts, "I GET IT!!!!" before she barrels ahead, from wherever she was. No matter that the timer is never remotely in her reach. No matter that I get it every single time. There will be a time, some indiscernible time, when she will take charge of the timer. And know what needs to be done afterward. In the meantime, here's to the agency of the almost 2 year old.  

New Orleans Float-O-Rama: Visual Feast at Blaine Kerns

Blaine Kerns's web site is a little frightening. It looks like a tourist trap to be avoided...And yet. Mardi Gras World makes 90% of all the floats in the Mardi Gras parades. So it could be a fun behind-the-scenes trip. Like a studio visit on a huge scale. Several New Orleans guide books and travel sites recommended it. Maybe if one gave into the hokeyness of it, the over-the-top-ness of it, it'd be fine.

As it turns out, it was more than fine. It was one of my favorite parts of my New Orleans trip. For most of the tour, I felt like this fellow tour-goer looked:

Beware monkeys in top hats.

It began with an obligatory video overviews of Mardi Gras history, with the development of the Krewes etc. In case you're not already aware (I wasn't), each Krewe throws its own parade and there's at least one parade (if not several on the weekends) during the two weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday. The Krewes are all responsible for paying the costs for the floats and all their throws (which always include the ubiquitous beads, but also often include cups, doubloons and various other items, in keeping with the Krewe's theme that year).* After the video came a nicely informative tour, followed by a permitted wander throughout the hanger. If I recall correctly, this mammoth place was only one of 18 hangers, all filled with floats.

{*Why would anyone want  those throws, Compatriot and I asked each other, they're just plastic/metallic beads, and slurpee cups. But you DO, once you're watching a parade, you get swept up and the float's rounding the corner, you're shooting your hand skyward and hollering. You eye your neighbor enviously, what with her snazzy metallic purple beadstring with the elongated diamond shapes and wonder why you only seem capable of snagging fake pearly beads. Meanwhile, Compatriot is triumphant because she scored a light-up peacock necklace. Built guys wander around with mounds of necklaces around their necks and you want to accuse them of buying them: how could they possibly have gotten so many? Perhaps their noontime drinking properly acquitted them for aggressive bead diving**.}

**Diving is advised against. "If you almost catch a throw, or drop it to the ground, do NOT bend over to pick it up. Trap it with your foot." People's hands get trampled.

Laughing Squid and Dutch Baby both made me wish we had the opportunity to visit earlier in the year, so we could have seen more floats and characters in process, but it was a fantastic time nonetheless. I especially like that Dutch Baby snapped a few pics of guys creating the sculptures out of polystyrene using chainsaws.

Suitably frightening jester where one waits for the Mardi Gras World shuttle

The king was self-serious, but the mermaid's humor was wicked.

The lizard behind the lockers

Reminds me of Maurice Sendak's Jennie

Initial Float sketch

prototype leaf

the balloon without its porcine pilot, plus tour guide.

Marx, Vulture, Kennedy, Jennie

Aviator pig, to go with his balloon. I wish I had more back-story on him.

The bull's got a secret or two

Alien over Elvis

Unadorned float

Whew, bring the pretty! I could happily work on these. Seriously.

I think this was a jabberwocky affair. Scary.

Napoleon Kongapart

I fancy a self-important pigeon.

Humpty Dumpty: what a baby.

My head hasn't emerged! Bring the chainsaw!

 More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakeasaurus/sets/72157629266698648/

New Orleans: Calas Cakes, Fake Siblings, a Quiet Jazz Hall

One of the first places where we ate, following Central Grocery (and Felix's for oysters the night before -- check out a comparo with their across-the-street rivals, Acme here) was The Old Coffee Pot. We were ready for a good Southern breakfast. We crossed Bourbon Street, as it seemed we had to do, no matter where we were going, passed a closed Preservation Hall and were seated in the main room, below and to the side of one of the most singular chandeliers I had ever seen. Not that I noticed it myself.

"Look up~~" Compatriot murmured.

It's so small and subtle, no wonder I didn't see it.

14' ceiling mandatory. Luckily these abound in NoLa.

There's just SO much going on with it. I love it.

The waitress came over. "You identicals? You twins?"

We laughed and shook our heads, no, no.

"~~But you're sisters--"

"No, no we get that a lot, but no~"
 
The waitress shook her head vigorously and roped in nearby diners. "They look like SISTERS! Don't they look like sisters!" The next two tables peered over at us and they nodded their heads, "Oh yeah, yes they do!"  Mmmp, mmp, mmp! What did we think we were doing, coming across as so similar, with no blood ties? This ushered in regular false sister sightings (sometimes, girlfriend sightings), with us at the center; where strangers were utterly convinced of their rightness. Collectively speaking, New Orleans is confident we're related. We get this every once in a long while here, but it was definitely in overdrive there. Comp usually chalks it up to superficial similarities in our appearances and to people not really being observant, but I like to think it also reflects us being sympatico, and behaviors associated with that: the negotiating over menu options together, excitement over food, watching other people, etc.

Related or not, we both know how to eat well.

I suspect the french toast (lost bread) had turmeric to give that nice orange tint.

Mine was good, but I must say Comp's was better: Creole fried rice fritters called Calas cakes.  They are slightly sweet, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg; between a certain earthiness and nuttiness, they feel wholesome-- even though they're fried. This of course, could be me lying about the relative health of food I like, which I am prone to do. But oh, how I wish they would travel up here!

Poor, ignored grits. you were lovely, too. Creamy, salty and buttery.

We looked up every once in a while. And chatted with the traveling Brits at the next table over. Here's another shot of the place.

Calm in the middlin' morn, busy-busy during weekend brunch time. We spent our latest night on Saturday, listening to rousing jazz at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street. After a 3 AM bedtime and a longish line of drinks over many hours, I must confess I was the worse for wear the following day. Grits sounded comforting. We returned to the Old Coffee Pot, only to find ourselves in the dining room purgatory of the outer hall. Some people had tables outside; the relative cold was chastened by one of the largest space heater things I have seen, hanging about ten feet above our heads. I mourned our unfed state, but was also haggard enough to be mostly content with standing and staring about. Compatriot found a zine from a nearby shelf -- if there's anything to read anywhere, she'll find it -- and riffled through rants slagging tourists (maybe it was written by community members of the service industry? I think). They turned the outdoor speakers onto funk and soul music at a blaring level; this seemed mean. The waitresses alternately ignored and acknowledged the unbrunched lot of us (we got a "Hi honey-- HEEEEEEeeeeeeeEY!" which gave us hope we would not be turned away unfed.)

Once released from purgatory, I felt the need to gleefully document from the other side. I hoped to get a really woeful expression, but I refrained from taking several shots.

And then, happily, there was coffee, and grits and a biscuit with butter and honey. A good biscuit, finished off this way, is one of my favorite favorite food things: I think my Dad originally turned me onto that.* We sighed and ate and C kindly ordered a breakfast plate that included Calas cakes, so we could revisit those as well. One of us smiled, or said hello to one of the waitresses we had crossed paths with. "They LOOK like twins, but they ain't twins," she muttered as she walked past.
Before we left for the afternoon, three waitresses gathered nearby and discussed it once again (one we hadn't met before); my favorite line from the exchange was the mysterious, "Even if they're NOT sisters, they're GONNA be sisters!"

*Little did I know, it was a three biscuit day! At GW Fins that night, a small, slightly sweet biscuit was placed on a wee plate to the side of both of our place settings. I ate one and suddenly a pair of tongs silently darted in from the dining room's gloom with another: Biscuit Fairy! This kind of servant is exceedingly rare. And shy. But appreciated.

In case you missed it, her pin reads, "Tipping is not a town in China."

The famed Preservation Hall. Just a little further down on Saint Peters Street

Fully intended to go, but did not make it inside.

New Orleans, Take One

I have been avoiding you. It's not like I'd cross the street and take a sudden intense interest in bland modern architecture at the very moment you were to wave, but maybe, if I knew you were nicely seated in a room with the door open, I'd add an extra step in my stride as I passed in the hall; or inadvertently dip my head between my shoulders in a faulty attempt at invisibility. I'd hopefully think myself elsewhere...because, as you know, that's where I have been for most of the past week: elsewhere.

And I have the pictures to prove it! Which is the problem, really. So. Many. Pictures. Hundreds. Digital cameras are a blessing and a bane: I could not stop taking photos, wherever we went in New Orleans, even as I knew most would be mediocre and fail to convey whatever grandness I felt the need to capture. "Okay, you have to stop now, because people are looking over~~" Compatriot told me just after we were served our luscious and ridiculous looking entrees at the frustratingly dim G.W. Fins. At that point, I should say, it was not that I was taking SO many, but that I needed to try the flash a couple times. Ambience. Pfffffh.

Only a few of the many, many glowing policemen. Moribund battery.

Many cases were a total fail: parades (where I was foiled by low battery/shifting people backs/movement/my ineptitude), bars, where I just didn't even bother. The latter part was especially frustrating, because all these random interactions were happening that I also wasn't taking notes on, so there was no way to remember wonderful bizarre turns of phrase...How on earth can we keep our vacation WITH us without documenting? Which naturally brings us to that problematic divide where the documentation of experience gets in the way of experiencing the moment. Right? OH GOOD LORD, just tell us about the vacation already.

We came, we saw, we ate as many fancy flavor combinations as we could order, we drank Nola Fizzes and special drinks that didn't seem to be available to buy; we shot our hands up for cheap metallic beads; we narrowly avoided being felled by collapsing drunks in the late morning hours; we were repeatedly mistaken for sisters. We warned each other that both of us wanted downtime and not this go-go-go business and then we did like six things in a day and fell into exhausted sleep on our nicely made beds, despite an inevitably unreliable thermostat. One of us did a fantastic job of navigating to all our vaunted destinations, one of us packed five too many fancy tops, one of us was chosen as a taxi driver's future bride; both of us scurried past Bourbon Street after our first jaunt down it, on our way to better things.

Some snaps from the first day:

Obligatory plane shot. I fancy a window seat.

First meal: Muffalettas

This sandwich is bigger than your head. We shared half of one and were stuffed. Pennsylvania peeps: think hoagie, but better. The Passionate Eater had a nice description from 2007, which still holds:

"If you've never had a muffaletta, allow me to explain this prodigious sandwich that calls New Orleans its birthplace. A muffaletta is sandwich that is loaded with a piquant and acerbic chopped "olive salad" that is almost comparable to a caponata + tapenade mix. The salad contains substantial hunks, bits, and pieces of marinated or pickled vegetables, including capers, pepperocinis, pimentos, anchovies, and olives. This is no puny sandwich. The crusty, dense, and chewy bread that encloses a muffaletta is twice the size of a dinner plate from Denny's. And every muffaletta is interlayered with slice-upon-slice of soft provolone cheese and salami flecked with peppercorns. Forget about Skittles, the muffaletta is the true rainbow of flavors. Gulliver would definitely find these things in Brobdingnag."

We didn't take any carriage rides, but I often snapped pics of the horses.

Saint Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square

From farther away, where we sat eating our beignets...

...from Cafe Du Monde

Oh geez, more horses.

But it's better than the "So Good" stores, right? See below.

If it wasn't fuschia, it was the animal print.We saw three of these scary stores.

The taxidermied alligator enticing you to consume.

Can't have the real thing? How about marble? Antique row of shops

Famous Cornstalk Hotel

We did not stay here

The swanky Hotel Monteleone. We didn't stay here, either.

More buildings should look like wedding cakes on steroids, IMHO.

Home base, in the French Quarter, but at a nice, calm remove from...

...Bourbon Street. Where Homer Simpsons with inflated balloon penises walk and bars announce: BIG ASS BEER.

All for now. Coming up: buskers, monkey floats, food comas and cemeteries.