New Orleans, New Year, Inauspicious Beginning

I received an invitation from my friend Misty to visit her in New Orleans for New Year's, so I decided to drive over for the weekend. The drive over was one of the scariest experiences of my life, since it was raining hard the whole time, and flat out pouring more than 50 percent of the trip. Still, my companion and I made pretty good time for leaving at 6:30 on Friday, and a bit after 3 in the morning, pulled onto Bourbon Street where her apartment is. (She lives on the quiet end of the street, further into the Quarter, needless to say.)

Just driving over the overpasses into town sent chills down my spine, since the last time I had seen them was on television during Katrina, when desperate people were stranded on the highways around the Superdome and bodies were floating in the water. Some houses on Esplanade still bore the tell-tale pie markings, evidence that the house had been searched for survivors, but most had been repainted and repaired, and some were even decorated for the holidays. Still, New Orleans has always been like Venice, a dying city that has borrowed time from the surrounding lagoon, and that has spent its precarious days steeped in vice and hoping for one more sex-and-alcohol-fueled night's reprieve from watery oblivion.

I should have known better than to expect a different outcome when accompanying a heavy drinker to New Orleans for New Year's, but I guess I was in a charitable mood for Christmas. The entire city, with its 24-hour booze cycle and ever-available to-go cups is like a giant enabler for alcoholics. As it turned out, there was rather too much wine-fueled confession for the trip to be very pleasant for me. But I did enjoy seeing the city again, and the way that at least some of the culture had returned--not to mention a lot of the bad behavior.

There's an air of desperation on Bourbon St., with its perpetual smell of stale beer and cigarettes, and the way that pop hits only tangentially connected to the city's native blues and jazz blare from bars advertising "big ass beers" to go. All of mankind's worst faults are on prominent display, while corpulent tourists with decades-old hairstyles stagger from bar to bar, holding fluorescent drink cups filled with over-sweetened ethanol, and wearing vulgar t-shirts loudly proclaiming their shortcomings.

We took the ferry over to Algiers on Saturday, and waited out the rain in a bar for a couple of hours--the way a lot of time is spent in NOLA. Misty and I tried Abita, I think.

I revisited Cafe Du Monde, which was as crowded as ever, and as sticky with powdered sugar residue. We speculated as to how many pounds of sugar they go through every day, seeing as they pour about a quarter pound on every serving of beignets. Still, yum.

We watched the fireworks in Jackson Square, surrounded by a motley assortment of college kids, hippie slackers, young professionals, and millionaires in diamonds and mink coats--a melting pot, indeed.

Twins' First Christmas

I went to my mother's house in College Station for Christmas. She has a new kitten, Eliot (after T.S. Eliot), who is very feisty and playful and loves to climb things--and people! When my brother and I were little, we used to have two Christmas trees--one with unbreakable ornaments, many of which had been made by us or our friends, or teachers at school--and one with glass ornaments, some of which had belonged to my father's family when he was little. It was a "breakable" tree all around, since the garlands on the tree were glass beads, and even the tree skirt was decorated with glass-bodied animals. One year, our cat, Macheath, climbed the breakable tree while we were at the Christmas eve service, knocking it over and breaking a lot of the ornaments on one side. After that, it was "We Two Kings of Orient Are," among other losses. In order to avoid a similar tragedy this year, my mom decorated the tree solely with french-wire bows. Here's Eliot, that bad boy, perched in the Christmas tree:

This was the twins' first Christmas. When my brother and his wife came over, my mother and I were in the kitchen working on dinner, and we put a blanket on the floor so that the twins could play safely while we watched. There are pictures and home movies of my brother and me playing on a blanket in that same corner of the kitchen from thirty-hmm years ago! Then we all moved into the living room to open presents. The twins, being too young to rip open wrapping paper, had to watch while their parents opened their gifts for them. Then we propped the gifts on their tummies, so they could better appreciate them. Here's Jack with a soft "book" behind him and another toy.

Sam was pretty tired, and slept through most of the proceedings. From when he was first born, I thought that he reminded me of a character in a children's book, but couldn't put my finger on what it was. I found the book while doing my Christmas shopping this year, and it's "Harold and the Purple Crayon." I propped it up next to sleeping Sam. How cute that Sam's wearing a blue onesie just like Harold!

Long Time No Post

When you put something off, even something fun, it can acquire the weight of a prison sentence, which in turn encourages further putting off. The whole process can be very off putting. But after repeated comments from a friend, who today claimed that anyone who might at one time have been interested in what I write here had long ago lost interest due to my not posting for three months, I thought I had better post something, anything just to break my non-posting habit. So here it is, a post about not posting. And an outline of my future posts, in which I would like to go back and fill in the last few months and write about what I have been doing.

The initial procastination began because I felt I should be preparing for ACL Fest by listening to the bands that would be playing so that I would appreciate their sets more. Then the fest itself was time-consuming and exhausting, and shortly after that I took a week-long trip to Florida, which trip did not start out nor unfold as planned, and which was accompanied by quite a bit of unnecessary drama and sturm und drang, although it was worthwhile overall.

I promptly came down with a bad cold upon my return, and spent the whole weekend in bed, emerging only to attend the Rolling Stones concert here, which was lots of fun, and at which I took lots of photos and a few mini-movies. I know I can post the photos on Blogger, but I'm not sure about the movies. I'll probably have to use YouTube, which has been swallowed up by Google since I last posted.

Work was very busy after that, and then, even though I got a flu shot, I came down with a really bad cold yet again, and this one kept me in bed and coughing for a whole work week and over a weekend. It's really rare for me to be sick enough to miss work for four days in a row--in fact, I don't think I've ever missed that much due to a cold. I seem to have shaken the cold now, but a neck/back/shoulder problem that was bothersome but not terribly painful except when I coughed or sneezed suddenly came to the forefront, and I finally admitted the severity of the problem and went to see a physical therapist last Friday. I did the exercises he gave me, and it did improve the problem; the trick now is to keep doing them and prevent a relapse. Simple activities such as sleeping, driving a car, and sitting at my desk at work all seem to exacerbate this feeling that my left arm is out of joint and needs to be popped out or back into place. It's that feeling that it's almost right but not quite that's really frustrating and excruciating.

I have a North University Neighborhood Association (NUNA) meeting tonight, and I've had to miss the last several meetings due to work conflicts, so I had better go to this one. À demain, tout le monde.

More Twinsy Photos

Here is one of my favorite photos of the twins. I had this one hanging up at work for several months. Jack is on the left, and Sam is on the right. They're really getting a lot easier to tell apart now. So cute, though, I'm forgetting myself and uttering phrases such as "Don't you just want to eat 'em up with a spoon?" I have no idea why we as a culture have the impulse to say such cannibalistic things, but maybe it has something with our American obsession with food, or our inability to admire something without bringing our appetite into it. Food for thought.

ACL Fest Wrap-Up

Well, the big difference in ACL Fest from 2005 to 2006 was that the parks people made a huge effort to water the grass all summer so that the festival wouldn't be a dust bowl again. Last year was like being in a western, what with all the folks wearing bandanas to keep the dust out of their lungs. Without Hurricane Rita to spoil things, the overall weather was a lot better in 06. Hot, yes, but bearable.

I remember so distinctly last year's Arcade Fire show on Sunday afternoon. It was 108 degrees out, and I had to sit on the ground and let the surrounding people shade me, since standing up made me nauseated and woozy. This year, I had a thermometer I bought for my Costa Rica trip, which displayed the much more tolerable temperature of 93 degrees at the same time Sunday afternoon. Not exactly cool, but still, a whole 15 degrees cooler!

In addition to my thermometer/LED light/compass/mirror gadget, I also carried an umbrella with me all day Sunday. Watching the beginning of Tom Petty, I remarked to my friend Shannon, who also had an umbrella, "Good thing we carried these umbrellas around with us all day. That must be why it didn't rain." Famous last words! At that moment, the skies grew dark and ominous, clouds moved in rapidly, and in 10 minutes, it was pouring with rain. The band left the stage, and people made shift to pack up their stuff, including their handy placemarker totems, put up their umbrellas and stay dry. Friends Sally and Karen had left in search of the bathroom, and had a hell of a time finding us again in the rain and the dark without any of the reference points that are so crucial. It rained so hard that even the holdouts with ponchos decided to get under the umbrellas. The big question, though, was, "Will the Heartbreakers come back and play, or are we gonna stand here like jerks and wait for nothing?" There was an agonizing 45 minute wait, but once the rain had died down, and the electrical problems solved, TP and the band came back out, uncovered their Hammond organ, and played another nearly hour-long set, including "It's Good to be King," "Free Falling," "Learning to Fly," "American Girl," and "You Wreck Me." I reeeeeeaaaallly wanted them to play "The Waiting," and I don't know what was the hardest part, the waiting, or the realizing that I wasn't going to hear that familiar "Ter-chung...dow nee nee now nee nee dow, now" intro, or Mike Campbell's transcendent guitar solo. Oh, well.

The band I was really looking forward to seeing was "The New Pornographers," who together with singer Neko Case have almost singlehandedly restored my faith in American popular music. I crossed my fingers that Neko would grace the festival with her presence, and she did, making jokes about how it was too cold for her, and what did we mean by making her perform in these freezing conditions. I wanted to yell, "Shoulda been here last year when it was 10 below, babe." Ha! Anyway, her voice sounded clear as a bell, and just as beautiful as it does coming out of my headphones. I was grinning and jumping up and down the whole time, singing along. I think I almost cried when they played "Blown Speakers." I'm including the whole setlist below, for archival purposes.

So here are the rest of the bands I caught over the weekend, in chronological order.

Friday:
Part of Los Lonely Boys
Thievery Corporation
Part of Ray Lamontagne
Van Morrison

Saturday:
The Shins
Kings of Leon
Aimee Mann
The Raconteurs (rocked out)
Willie Nelson (still great at 73--loved his song, "You Don't Think I'm Funny Any More.")
Massive Attack (ehhhh)

KT Tunstall
The New Pornographers (my new favorite band, so here's their set list)

1. Twin Cinema
2. Use It
3. The Laws Have Changed
4. Jackie Dressed in Cobras
5. The Bleeding Heart Show
6. Mass Romantic
7. Testament to Youth in Verse
8. Miss Teen Wordpower
9. These Are The Fables
10. It's Only Divine Right
11. The Fake Headlines
12. Star Bodies
13. From Blown Speakers
14. Letter From an Occupant
15. Sing Me Spanish Techno

The BoDeans--and they played the song "Fadeaway"!
Part of MUSE
Part of G. Love & Special Sauce
Part of Damien Marley
Most of Ween
Patrice Pike
Part of Matisyahu (the Hasidic dub/dancehall/rapper dude)
Ben Harper
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Blown Speakers

I'm doing my ACL Fest "homework" and listening to The New Pornographers' album "Electric Version" today. They are a really tight band, and rock out on every track. Pretty much every song on it is good, and there are a lot that are great. "Blown Speakers" is my favorite, although "All for Swinging Around You" is insanely catchy, too. I suppose I should find out if they're playing an after-show somewhere around here, although that is probably also sold out. It's nice to feel like there are some new bands that are carrying the quality torch forward.