Apocalypse Now: Fat Tuesday Feeling So Thin

Sometimes something nice comes together out of nowhere.

Last Wednesday

My friend from all the way back Ned (who has lived in New Orleans for 25 years now): 

Just throwing a song idea your way. I remember every other Mardi Gras thinking to myself: everywhere else in America it's just another Tuesday. Well, this year Mardi Gras in New Orleans is pretty much like everywhere else because Mardi Gras is for the most part canceled. I was wondering if you had any inspiration for a song exploring that feeling. I have yet to sit down and write anything but wanted to share the idea with you.

Me:

Hey Ned! That's a terrific idea. I will give it some thought. Great one.

Thursday

Ned:

Awesome. I'll see if I have some music. There's actually a song I've been working on that might work for this. I've got a rough version of the music on Dropbox. It may be too mellow, a Mardi Gras song maybe needs more hopeful pep in it.

Me:

Listening now. Great stuff, dude. Really nice listen. And frankly the loss of Mardi Gras seems to conjure a slow and sad song. This could work... Giving it a few listens and I'll try to come up with some words.

Saturday

Me:

Sending you my take on the lyrics. See what you think. Went back and forth on the chorus. Settled on an allusion to it not being Fat Tuesday.

Ned:

Damn, dude. The right mix of clever and heartstring pulling. Thinking of trying to get this done and released by Tuesday. And also make a video of the song. May be too ambitious. 

Yesterday

Just Another Tuesday
(Ned Henry/Les Coole)

3 rocks there smack / in my Sazerac / is the only float today
4 beads of sweat / from the mignonette / are the only beads in play
Magazine is empty / And there ain’t a soul around
It’s just another Tuesday / And I’m uptown feelin’ down

CHORUS
Lord, it feels so thin
Please bring it back again

Fairly soon / this doubloon / will be back on the shelf
I’m the King / of not one thing / A krewe unto myself
I’m a one-man carnival / and it’s all neutral ground
It’s just another Tuesday / and I’m uptown feeling down

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Ain’t never seen this town this way / it feels so strange
What I took for granted / that’s all gonna change

No parades / no hand grenades / the Quarter’s one-eighth filled
The good times rolled / they’re all on hold / all broke up, my go cup spilled
The Ash comes in tomorrow / with the tolling of the bells
But today’s just another Tuesday / just like everywhere else

CHORUS

Apocalypse Update: Can't Keep Good (Weird) People Down

As Whitney noted last week, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell closed bars for Mardi Gras, which followed the city's decision not to issue permits for the traditional parade. While those actions are particularly striking examples of the traditions the pandemic has altered, the actions of the locals in response have been downright uplifting.

Megan Boudreaux went through the stages of grief after the decisions, but she came out on the other side as a damn genius. Boudreaux announced on Twitter that she was going to decorate her house in lieu of a float, and the brilliant people of New Orleans jumped.

Boudreaux founded Krewe of House Floats to organize maps of houses across the city, and to raise money for the Greater New Orleans Foundation to assist restaurant and hotel workers impacted by the pandemic. Dozens, if not hundreds of residences in the greater metropolitan area are lit up in any number of whimsical themes. Like this one, which celebrates Prince:

Or Mystic Moai and the Escape from Kraken Coven:

How about, It's Mardi Gras Time and We Don't Give a Duck!?:

There are more in this WaPo article on the grassroots effort, which has raised more than $100,000 in the past several weeks. 

People, especially New Orleanians, are sometimes pretty awesome.

Going Back to New Orleans

A goodly number of gheorghies are NOLA fans.  You know, the Northernmost Caribbean City. I'm talkin' New Orleans, boys and girls. Nawlins. 

I miss it. It's been three years since I was in my favorite city in the entire world.  Post-COVID, if it ever happens, I'm going back post-haste.

Ten (10) times since April 1998, I've ventured down for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a long weekend of revelry unlike much else. Sometimes with fellow gheorghies in tow.  Music, food, people, and drinking in astounding doses.  Devilish debauchery, beautiful sounds, and laissez-faire life. Le Bon Temps Roule. Good gracious, do I love it.

Sadly, JazzFest is another amid a long, long list of cancelled events in 2020.  Who wants to join me there in '21?

In the meantime, there's no reason not to enjoy the Fest in spirit.  NOLA radio station WWOZ has lined up the cubes, and they kicked off yesterday.  They're playing Fest outings of yore by an wide assortment of old favorites. It's a killer backdrop to doing work or writing G:TB posts.

It's not the same as laying out the blanket and parking it before the Fais-Do-Do stage with a belly full of Crawfish Monica and Abitas, ready to soak in some smooth sounds of squeezebox, sax, and spoons whilst sitting in the sun. But it's a start, and it makes me smile. Seriously, who's with me next year?

Tune in to WWOZ here.

Oh, and don't forget that the Crescent City is an hour behind. And a million miles ahead of the rest of the world in having fun.

Hey Hey Hey, It's Faaaaaaaaat Tuesday

Happy Fat Tuesday to all of you.  Here's to the end of a raucous Carnival season for the GTB-boys and girls... and our collective headlong launch into sobriety and serenity for Lent.

As such, have one tonight, be it hurricane or hand grenade, Abita or Sazerac. Cheers, revelers.

In the meantime, here's a game you know well from cocktail parties: it's called 24 Truths and a Lie.  Most of these facts about Mard Gras were copied and pasted from one of several websites with the Fat Tuesday lowdown.  Some were not.  One of them is a fib.

See if you can spot it!

24 Truths and a Lie About Mardi Gras

1. Mardi Gras is always the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
2. Carnival season begins on Jan. 6, Twelfth Night, the Christian holy day of the Epiphany, and ends with Mardi Gras.
3. Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is also known as Shrove Tuesday.
4. "Laissez les bon temps rouler" is the official greeting of Mardi Gras. It means "Let the good times roll."
5. The colors of Mardi Gras are purple (justice), gold (power) and green (faith).
6. New Orleans has been celebrating Fat Tuesday with parades since 1837. 
7. Carnivals include balls, parties, and parades with floats and costumed dancers.
8. The first floats appeared in the parade in 1857.
9. During the 12-day period leading up to Mardi Gras, nearly 70 parades roll in the area.
10. It’s illegal to not wear a mask onboard a float.
11. Each parade is run by a different krewe.
12. Krewes choose a different theme for their parades each year.
13. Each krewe has a system of royalty.
14. Whitney first attended Mardi Gras in 1996; at happy hour at the Irish Times on a Wednesday, several colleagues convinced him to show up the next day at work with bags packed for Mardi Gras. He did, and they all drove the roughly 1,000,000 hours to New Orleans. Way more roughly coming back Sunday.
15. Mardi Gras Indians are more secretive about their parade schedules.
16. Beads have been a tradition since the early 1900's.
17. Mentioning one phrase will score you beads at parades: "throw me something, mister"
18. If you want to keep Mardi Gras family friendly, avoid the French Quarter.
19. Festivities have been canceled 13 times before, most often during wartime.
20. Whitney returned to Mardi Gras in 1997 with his fiancee's sister; that went over poorly.
21. Sometimes coconuts are distributed instead of beads.
22. Mardi Gras sometimes overlaps with the Super Bowl.
23. Joe Corcoran and Whitney had heaping amounts of beads from sweet-talking hot girls and shedding clothing before many female onlookers.
24. Mobile, Alabama, was the first place in the United States to celebrate Mardi Gras.
25. Mardi Gras is a state holiday in Alabama, Florida, and parts of Louisiana.

Good luck! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

The Big Hazy

I didn't go to New Orleans to escape the inauguration of President* Donald Trump; that was just a providential side effect. And I didn't drink to forget. That's just kind of how it goes in that no holds barred town. What follows is a scattershot diary of the parts of the weekend I do recall.

Should've known better, probably, than to start my first day with back to back sazeracs at Backspace, on Chartres. Its motto is 'Located at the intersection of writing and drinking', so I think you know how I feel about it.

After a couple of hours of really bad pool (and watching the dealer we'd been playing with run some local youths off his corner) at Checkpoint Charlie's, my friends and I spent the better part of the rest of the day wandering from bar to bar on Frenchmen Street before winding up at Balcony Music Club. We danced with the locals to a killer brass band at the latter place, but I'll be damned if I remember their name. One of my friends really, really wanted to ride the mechanical bull at The Swamp, and we indulged him. Bourbon Street is by far my least favorite part of New Orleans.

Woke up Saturday morning* rarin' to go** and headed out to grab a bite to eat***.

* It was 10:45, so I guess that's still morning.
** I'm still hungover, so you can imagine how I felt about my life choices at that point in the day.
*** Ate about three bites of jambalaya and choked down a bloody mary before I had to go back to my hotel to clean myself up.

I had a decision to make at that point, and since I was in New Orleans, that decision made itself. I went to Jackson Brewery. I managed to force a few beers down my throat and began to feel almost human just as the local version of the Women's March made its way down Decatur Street. The pussy puns gave me a second wind.

Headed back to B.M.C. just in time to catch the end of a set by the Jazzmen Brass Band right as the buzz was beginning to overtake the pain. Tight race for a while, though.

Caught a Jeff Tweedy lookalike at the Apple Barrel Bar while my friend unsuccessfully tried to chat up the singer's girlfriend. That bar might - might - hold 30 people, if everyone sucks in their stomachs and doesn't move. It's so New Orleans that the band in that tiny venue was unique, talented, and committed to their music. 

Made a tactical error because most of the group wanted to try oysters at Bourbon House. The charbroiled oysters were sublime, and the small batch bourbon flight phenomenal, but the restaurant is the hell and gone back to Bourbon Street from Frenchmen, and I'm quite sure we could've gotten our fill of oysters somewhere closer. 

While we were eating, we noticed multiple tables of young, floppy-haired dudes in tuxedos with dates in fancy dresses. Turns out a fraternity from the University of Alabama (Roll Tide) was having a formal in New Orleans. Had I known such a thing existed, I'd have reconsidered my matriculation in Williamsburg. Who knew stuff like that happened?

Trekked all the way back to the Spotted Cat, where I saw something I'd never seen before:

That's Doctor Sick sitting in with the Russell Welch Quartet, playing a saw with a fiddle bow. No big deal. Happens all the time. Those were four of the best gypsy jazz musicians you'd ever want to see, in a room as big as my basement. As zman is wont to say, cot damn.

And to top it all off, we went back to B.M.C. yet one more time (careful readers will recall that this was the same place where I 'met' Chris Rock and Olivia Wilde that last time I was in New Orleans), where we danced with an elfin lesbian and a smoking hot British girl to Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers. I wish I'd captured my own video of these cats, but this'll have to do.

Ended on a high, we did. It wasn't my finest New Orleans performance, but I'm a bit past my prime. It's still the most unique place I've ever been. I'm in the market for a wearable washboard.

And some cot damn aspirin.

I googled "Sunday morning in New Orleans"...

...and proving google already has a way to tap into our puny human brains and read our minds, this was what popped up first.



Now to go find some more Abita flavors...maybe an AM Ale?

Hey Everybody!

Good morning from New Orleans. I am here for work, and will be for several days, so why don't you folks jump in the comments and help the ole Teej out with some unique, non-French Quarter-y suggestions in this town. Warning though, Igor has already sent me a "War and Peace" length email with suggestions, so I might not get to all the GTB gold star recommendations.