Hookers or Cake

I’m going to New Orleans and Froghair was kind enough to write up some splendid advice! Hot Damn! Thank you kindly Bullfrog

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Advice for visiting New Orleans from a former United Cab driver…

…mostly for hookersorcake…

So…up in Midcity around the racetrack where Jazz Fest happens, try:

Liuzza’s By the Track - 1518 North Lopez.  This place does well because of Jazzfest, but on the whole it’s kind of a locals-generally kind of dive bar and restaurant.  They’re famous for a roast beef, garlic and oyster sandwich - you don’t hafta have the oysters if you don’t want…but you’d be a fool not to.

Mandina’s - 3800 Canal Street.  This is the place to go get you some soft-shelled crab…I think the season starts right around Easter - me and Jamie had a standing Easter date to eat soft-shell almondine here, and out of season this is still a fine, reasonably priced, locally loved Italian restaurant…eat up all the pasta…

Pal’s - 925 N. Rendon.  Go to the bar to play Roll-A-Day and flirt with the heavily tattooed bar tenders…they have Ry Cooder on the juke-box.

All three of these places are within walking distance of the fairgrounds/racetrack so they’re all good places to plan on going during the day while you’re figuring out your Jazz Fest plans.

Uptown:

The Saint - 961 St. Mary.  This is a great little dive bar.  Rob Zombie’s bass player owns it and you never know who’s gonna come in and what kind of trouble they’re going to get into once they get there…on Sunday nights they used to do Truck Stop country music and the teevee’s are usually tuned to women’s wrestling from the fifties or old BW horror movies and they’ve got pinball machines.

This is my old neighborhood…I lived four blocks up St. Mary’s from here - if you walk up in that direction there are two other places a couple of blocks away on St Mary’s…Moonlight Cafe and another place with moonlight on the sign…can’t remember the name…there’s also a Lily’s Pizza on this corner…this is about the best pizza in New Orleans so if you want Pizza some night, this is the place for you…

Parasol’s - 2533 Constance.  Maybe they’re calling it a Roast Beef Po’ Boy this week and maybe they’re calling it Debris’  either way, that’s what you want to eat here…You can tell everyone you was eating debris’ in the Irish Channel…

Miss Mae’s -  corner of Napoleon and Magazine.  This is where I did the vast majority of my drinking in New Orleans.  Usually late late at night…you’ll find it tends to be kind of a college dive earlier in the evening and the night - and the place locals do their after hours drinking…I used to hang out here with great jazz cats like Walter Payton - but me and Afrika Bambataa’s kid used to make up songs here at the bar and drink ourselves into a warm and glossy stupor.  There was a story for years that there was an old box spring nailed to the ceiling that was the boxspring upon which Miss Mae earned the money to buy the place…I dunno if she’s still living, but if you run into her in the bar don’t tell her that story or her head’ll explode and you’ll get 86’d.  Tipitina’s is two blocks up the road towards Tchoupitoulas…let yourself in and rub Fess’ head - there’s a bronze bust of Professor Longhair (Fess) as you walk into the bar…local legend tells us to rub the head ‘til the patina comes off and he turns shiny and brassy for good luck.  Call him Fess or people will point at you and laugh.

Cassamento’s - right around the corner on Magazine street is one of the greatest oyster bars in the entire world…it’s like eating inside a bathtub - the whole thing inside is done in blue and white tiles…this is the right place for a raw oyster - beats the living shit out of ACME and all those other little oyster bars in the quarters…

Snake and Jakes - up at 7612 Oak Street.  The whole name for this place is Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge.  I don’t think they open until eleven pm, though that might have changed…it’s definitely an after hours place.  Be a little on your guard here.  It’s in an old house in a residential neighborhood - unless they’re banned again, this is a place that various less-famous members of the Neville family drink - though the famous brothers themselves tend to be downtown drinkers…somewhere over in the Marigny probably…This is a good bar for watching people - not too close, they get aggressively cranky - but if you keep your shit together, this is a great place to see pimps and hookers and transvestites and rockabilly kids and lesbian roller derby girls and just generally all the characters who made it and didn’t make it into Tom Waits’ songs…I recommended this bar to a friend of mine and when he asked the concierge at his hotel to call him a cab to take him here, the concierge adamantly warned him against going to this place…your mileage may vary.

Jacque Imo’s - 8324 Oak Street.  I dunno what’s happening with the menu here these days, but you should be able to get some unbelievable creole food here - I always liked the deep fried rabbit tenderloin…this is Nicolas Cage’s favorite restaurant in town…if he’s in for Jazz fest you’ll catch him sitting at the bar here - frequently with whatever the famous director guy who’s his uncle and owns the winery but whose name I can’t think of…Coppola maybe…?

Next door is the famous Maple Leaf Bar - this is one of my favorite bars in New Orleans…my buddy Jamie works the bar here on Sunday nights…seems to me like the Rebirth Brass Band is still the house band here - hard to argue with a place where Dr. John, James Booker and Professor Longhair all used to be the house band…If there’s only one place on this list you end up going, make it the Maple Leaf…

In the Quarters (Vieux Carre):

I sort of like Marie Laveau’s - if you want some voodoo themed knick-knacks this is the place for you…walk a few blocks up lakeside and cross over North Rampart and you can wander around in the cemetery where she’s buried…my other favorite grave up there is of Homer Plessy (plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson…that’s the one that established the “separate but equal” clause that was over-turned by Brown vs. Board of Education).

Coop’s - 1109 Decatur.  This is the only place in the quarters I ever ate regularly as a resident…They have an unbelievable tasso with crayfish.  It’ll knock your dick in your watch pocket.

Central Grocery - 923 Decatur.  The Muffaletta sandwich was invented here.  Spicy hams and salamis and olive salad on unbelievable foccacia bread…all the wrong kind of touristy - but the sandwich is damned good.

Port of Call - 838 Esplanade.  This place is purported to have the best hamburger/cheeseburger in all of NOLA.  They put grated cheese on the burgers which annoys me so I never make this claim, but the conventional wisdom is that this is the best burger around, so if you wanna go someplace where you don’t have to hear about how good the seafood is…this is the place.  There’s a bar right up the street here called Checkpoint Charlie’s - me and Jim Smith used to run the open mic here - the place is purportedly owned by the Russian mob - the quality of the pour goes up and down - I used to be able to get a good little beverage in here, but it’s unreliable.  They make one of the cheapest, shittiest hamburgers you’ll ever eat and it’s worth having one just so you can tell people you’ve had the worst hamburger in the world made by minions of russian mobsters…also, they usually only do it a couple times a month so you may miss the window here, but you can get a haircut and a shot for seven dollars at Charlie’s some nights of the week - AND he has washers and dryers for clothes if it turns out you need to wash something but don’t want to be too far away from a bottle of Beam…

From this bar if you walk up Frenchmen, you’ll be in the Marigny…any of the bars along the next couple of blocks will be full of music and dancing…

If you’re gonna see any local bands while you’re in NOLA, I highly recommend Ingrid Lucia and the Flying Neutrinos or Tuba Skinny…try the Spotted Cat in the Marigny or uptown at Tipitina’s for them…I know Ingrid Lucia just played a show at Tipitina’s with Kermit Ruffin (Kermit’s got a regular gig up at Vaughn’s way the fuck up in the Bywater - 800 Lesseps St).

These are the places I would go if i were going to NOLA this weekend…you may find all sorts of different trouble to get into…I hope you have fun.  If you want to bring me a present, it’s okay, but you don’t hafta…

Always call for a United Cab - don’t fool around with those other companies.  Never leave your purse on the bar or sitting on the floor next to you.  Stay out of the Treme regardless of what you think you know from the teevee show…

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

Writing tips on how not to be a writer.

Stop writing! And if that doesn’t work try the following.

Stop trying. Oh sure, you can try being concise and brilliant, but why not just enjoy life and be silly. A star transformed itself into a weeping electric diamond just so you could shit on the head of a dead god. Lighten up sour puss!

Realize you suck. Ignorance is bliss. And you are ignorant. If you haven’t realized yet that you’re an ignorant fool, oh you poor fool. You is an ignoramus. Stop trying to be cool. Nobody loves you. You are completely alone with everything. This is good news dummy!

Become a spirit animal and live in the dreams of trees! Sweeet!

Write for the one person you truly love… yourself. Forget all those stupid readers. They’re just emotionally needy suckers who’d rather ignore their own life by reading about someone elses. Talk about how totally fucking awesome you are and people will just explode into tall piles of cash. If people wanted to hear some boring tool whimper they’d live alone in silence with themselves. People want action! And they want it from really dumb twenty year olds.

Write until you no longer exist. Until you are just the story itself whistling away drunk in some cat house. And then life will read you and reject you for publication, but you’ll still be drunken whoremonger!

Get a Bluetooth earpiece! I did this. I wear it 24/7 and say all the crazy shit the voices in my head say all day long and everyone thinks I’m on the phone. The voices then feel they have a voice and I don’t have to pretend I’m an artist. See you cut out the middle man and you’re freedom itself.

Use exclamation points!!! And be pointlessly crass! Real writers are subtle and brilliant.

Good Luck! And Happy Not Writing!

I had to quit doing yoga. Everytime I’d masturbate I’d lose all sense of time and space. The face I’d be about to come upon would become an amorphous song and I’d loose the melody.

A flaccid humm

A worthless elegy

The death of duality

A yawn that would yell at me

A babbling brook that would tell me

“Everything is and always has been

you.”

Death is gonna fuck ya. The only question truly is if you want to make it a threesome?

Sorry, I haven’t been writing much. I guess I haven’t had anything interesting to say. So in place of my silliness I give you a blog of one of my favorite cartoonists, .

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You won’t see Hillary Clinton in the same light ever again. Read Meryl Streep’s introduction of Hillary Clinton during the recent 2012 Women in the World conference:

Two years ago when Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg first envisioned this conference, they asked me to do a play, a reading, called – the name of the play was called Seven. It was taken from transcripts, real testimony from real women activists around the world. I was the Irish one, and I had no idea that the real women would be sitting in the audience while we portrayed them. So I was doing a pretty ghastly Belfast accent. I was just – I was imitating my friend Liam Neeson, really, and I sounded like a fellow. (Laughter). It was really bad.

So I was so mortified when Tina, at the end of the play, invited the real women to come up on stage and I found myself standing next to the great Inez McCormack. (Applause.) And I felt slight next to her, because I’m an actress and she is the real deal. She has put her life on the line. Six of those seven women were with us in the theater that night. The seventh, Mukhtaran Bibi, couldn’t come because she couldn’t get out of Pakistan. You probably remember who she is. She’s the young woman who went to court because she was gang-raped by men in her village as punishment for a perceived slight to their honor by her little brother. All but one of the 14 men accused were acquitted, but Mukhtaran won the small settlement. She won $8,200, which she then used to start schools in her village. More money poured in from international donations when the men were set free. And as a result of her trial, the then president of Pakistan, General Musharraf, went on TV and said, “If you want to be a millionaire, just get yourself raped.”

But that night in the theater two years ago, the other six brave women came up on the stage. Anabella De Leon of Guatemala pointed to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting right in the front row, and said, “I met her and my life changed.” And all weekend long, women from all over the world said the same thing:

“I’m alive because she came to my village, put her arm around me, and had a photograph taken together.”

“I’m alive because she went on our local TV and talked about my work, and now they’re afraid to kill me.”

“I’m alive because she came to my country and she talked to our leaders, because I heard her speak, because I read about her.”

“I’m here today because of that, because of those stores.”

I didn’t know about this. I never knew any of it. And I think everybody should know. This hidden history Hillary has, the story of her parallel agenda, the shadow diplomacy unheralded, uncelebrated — careful, constant work on behalf of women and girls that she has always conducted alongside everything else a First Lady, a Senator, and now Secretary of State is obliged to do.

And it deserves to be amplified. This willingness to take it, to lead a revolution – and revelation, beginning in Beijing in 1995, when she first raised her voice to say the words you’ve heard many times throughout this conference: “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.”

When Hillary Clinton stood up in Beijing to speak that truth, her hosts were not the only ones who didn’t necessarily want to hear it. Some of her husband’s advisors also were nervous about the speech, fearful of upsetting relations with China. But she faced down the opposition at home and abroad, and her words continue to hearten women around the world and have reverberated down the decades.

…

She’s just been busy working, doing it, making those words “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” into something every leader in every country now knows is a linchpin of American policy. It’s just so much more than a rhetorical triumph. We’re talking about what happened in the real world, the institutional change that was a result of that stand she took.

…

Now we know that the higher the education and the involvement of women in a culture and economy, the more secure the nation. It’s a metric we use throughout our foreign policy, and in fact, it’s at the core of our development policy. It is a big, important shift in thinking. Horrifying practices like female genital cutting were not at the top of the agenda because they were part of the culture and we didn’t want to be accused of imposing our own cultural values.

But what Hillary Clinton has said over and over again is, “A crime is a crime, and criminal behavior cannot be tolerated.” Everywhere she goes, she meets with the head of state and she meets with the women leaders of grassroots organizations in each country. This goes automatically on her schedule. As you’ve seen, when she went to Burma – our first government trip there in 40 years. She met with its dictator and then she met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman he kept under detention for 15 years, the leader of Burma’s pro-democracy movement.

This isn’t just symbolism. It’s how you change the world. These are the words of Dr. Gao Yaojie of China: “I will never forget our first meeting. She said I reminded her of her mother. And she noticed my small bound feet. I didn’t need to explain too much, and she understood completely. I could tell how much she wanted to understand what I, an 80-something year old lady, went through in China – the Cultural Revolution, uncovering the largest tainted blood scandal in China, house arrest, forced family separation. I talked about it like nothing and I joked about it, but she understood me as a person, a mother, a doctor. She knew what I really went through.”

When Vera Stremkovskaya, a lawyer and human rights activist from Belarus met Hillary Clinton a few years ago, they took a photograph together. And she said to one of the Secretary’s colleagues, “I want that picture.” And the colleague said, “I will get you that picture as soon as possible.” And Stremkovskaya said, “I need that picture.” And the colleague said, “I promise you.” And Stremkovskaya said, “You don’t understand. That picture will be my bullet-proof vest.”

Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never give up. That is what Hillary Clinton embodies.

(Source: )

Sometimes I feel like TV is watching me.

Superbowl party? Nope, Antiques Roadshow marathon!

I don’t know if you remember or not,
but we are made of a kind of breeze
a lush electric happiness
that flows through the trees that
sneezes a handful of bees
and dances in a hole in the ground

a hole that goes quite a ways down
We’ve no answer for it.
It just sucks in all light and sound
with no reason we’ve found other than
The End

Thankfully the ending is always pretending
or so sayeth the wind