UPDATE: 8:04pm CDT Hope this helps.
Jesus. I hope they get those people off the streets. Call the American Red Cross: (866) 438-4636. Donate what you can, and use this number to look for any friends or relatives who stayed behind with whom you can't get in touch. NOLA.com posts that "there is a database being developed for people who are missing and may need to be rescued from New Orleans. Call 225-925-6626 to give officials their names. They may also have information about people already rescued. We attempted to check this number and were unable to get through (busy signal)." Call FEMA to begin the assistance process: 1-800-621-FEMA or http://www.fema.gov. (Call FEMA while you can, before Bush finishes his appalling process of dismantling it.) Hopeful news. I just found out that my sister Marie's neighborhood in Marrero is probably okay, very little wind damage and no flooding in pretty much the whole neighborhood. I'm still trying to find out about Mike, Rhonda and Mia's house in Tall Timbers, but from what I've been hearing that might be okay as well. The West Bank seems to have fared relatively well, far better than the East Bank. Polimom's blog reports that Algiers Point took some damage but is mostly okay. If that's the case, that close to the river, then I'm hoping Tall Timbers did well too. Unfortunately, according to some televised aerial footage my sister saw, our parents' house in New Orleans East is not visible, completely submerged. I'm ... numb. When I'm not numb I'm a sobbing wreck. Fortunately, everyone's keeping me busy; my family, spread out between Lafayette, Shreveport and Birmingham, have difficulty contacting each other but seem to have a relatively easy time contacting me, so I'm a messaging hub and Internet looker-upper. It's good to be busy, and I've taken leave from work until next week, 'cause I have to confess that I really couldn't give a crap about a single thing going on there right now, and that's not fair to them. 2:07am. I should probably get to bed. Thoughts from N.O. musician Jack Fine. (Thanks to Mary for contributing to this post.) When I was home three weeks ago, we met Jack Fine, a longtime trumpet player in New Orleans, 78 years of age, and the leader of the Palmetto Bug Stompers, who play every Sunday at the Old Point Bar in Algiers Point. We talked for a while; he seems like a great, great guy. I was just watching CNN, and there was his voice; he had apparently stayed behind and ridden the storm and floods out in his home in Algiers. He's alive and well, and called in to Paula Zahn's show to describe what he was seeing and feeling. Thanking Gawd for TiVo and its ability to rewind live television because of its buffer, I transcribed these comments from Jack:
God bless him. That's so New Orleans. Long may he blow. And New Orleans too. Can and will New Orleans be rebuilt? Governor Blanco and the director of FEMA: "Absolutely. Absolutely." This was before the breach in the 17th Street Canal got worse, but the city's already 80% flooded anyway. This is what he need to hear, and what we need to believe, to make it happen. We're going to need every ounce of effort from everyone who loves New Orleans, and we're going to have to take it one day at a time. Vermin. (Updated 11:34am) There's a plague in New Orleans right now -- alligators and poisonous snakes are everywhere, as are the most vile form of vermin I can think of at the moment -- looters. It's one thing for desperately hungry and thirsty people to go into stores and take food and water. It's another thing entirely when human scum, taking callous advantage of a catastrophic, desperate situation are looting stores for everything from big screen TVs to basketball goals. My friend Matt called to see how I was doing, and said his mom watched news footage of the looters and wondered, incredulously, "Where are they going to put that stuff?" From the T-P story: "Watching the sordid display and shaking his head in disgust, one firefighter said of the scene: 'It's a fucking hurricane, what are you [going to] do with a basketball goal?'" There have also been robberies and carjackings, and some of the looters are going house to house, breaking in or going in through smashed windows.
Children's Hospital. With a hundred terrified, sick kids inside. Jesus Christ. (UPDATE: This is apparently not true. See comments for story.) Many police are either unable or unwilling to do anything about it, and in fact some police are actually joining in on the looting. Here's a picture of a New Orleans police officer looting DVDs from a Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District.
Kevin, another New Orleans refugee who wrote in last night, wrote in and told me about this picture in the online paper, saying, "This might be a good picture to put out on the blogosphere; it's as clear as a passport photo. Someone has to know his name. I'd love to see it broadcast far and wide so it can follow him for the rest of his life." Other police officials said that even if they arrest them, there's no place to put them. How about in a body bag, after putting a round through their heads? Just an idea. [ Link to today's entries ]
UPDATE, 4pm N.O. time: "East New Orleans underwater" From the WDSU Katrina blog:
Shit. I wish they'd be more specific. East New Orleans is big. Some areas are bound to be worse than others. Down but not out. Jon Donley's weblog at the Times-Picayune makes me feel good:
Kermit Ruffins asks, "What is New Orleans? New Orleans is ... red beans and rice on a Monday night." Even right after it just had its ass kicked by a hurricane. Yeah you rite. We're getting flooded, but apparently not to the doomsday levels that they had been talking about. I just saw a live camera shot of the Quarter, and there's hardly any water there at all. (Lots of wind damage, though.) Unfortunately, I'm hearing about people cowering in their attics in N.O. East, six feet of water in the Ninth Ward, and flooding and a diesel spill on the West Bank, all places where I've got family and friends. I wish they'd be more specific about where the localized flooding is happening. I'm still digging around trying to find out what's going on. I'm glad Poppy decided to bug out. They were going to try to ride it out at first, and that worried me. My uncle on the North Shore also was going to try to ride it out, in a hotel in Covington, but I'm glad he changed his mind too. His house is right on the shore of the lake, too ... yeesh. I hope it's still there. UPDATE: Ugh. Chalmette and Arabi are under up to 12 feet of water, and it's probably the same in the Lower Ninth. (Residents reported that Rocky and Carlo's is underwater.) I just saw footage from CNN with chest-deep water on the I-10 near the Florida Ave. / West End Blvd. exit, and some dimwit trying to drive through it and having to be rescued. If anyone hears anything flooding-wise about New Orleans East around Read Blvd., or in Marrero, Algiers or Faubourg Marigny, please drop in a comment. Quotes of the day. Just so that I won't be all doom and gloom drama queeny here, I present a couple of my favorite local hurricane-related quotes:
To be fair, Schiro was "highly visible" during Betsy, according to a N.O. Public Library article, and is "unfairly remembered" for that remark. It's still funny, though. Hope? 6am. The alcohol is the only thing that got me any sleep; fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV and the live net feed from WWL. It looks like the eye missed us by at least 40 miles, but it's still going to be bad. It's weakened to a Category 4, but of course, several of the worst-case scenarios described a Category 3. We had a slight turn to the east, with the eye coming ashore between Gulfport and Biloxi, so the Mississippi Gulf Coast is going to get it worse, but we're not out of the woods yet by any means. There's several more hours of this to go. Shit, the roof of the Superdome is leaking, with rain pouring in. Bill Capo on WWL was debunking reports that 1/12 of the roof had "peeled away" and was gone, but the latest is that there are currently two nine-foot holes in the roof. Just saw the picture ... Jesus.
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Pray for New Orleans. My family's out, they're all okay. They might be homeless by Tuesday, though.
WWL-TV live coverage (while it lasts). Here's what the National Weather Service is saying as of this afternoon:
I'm pretty much in a state of disbelief at the moment. The damage from this hurricane is likely to be "apocalyptic", as terrified experts keep saying. By this time on Tuesday, the New Orleans I love might not exist, and will almost certainly never be the same. I can't even begin to think of how many casualties we might have. I'll be drinking heavily as of now. [ Link to today's entries ]
Food art. Via GreggO, here's an amazing online exhibition of photographs by Douglas Gayeton entitled "My Shoes Are Caked With Mud: A Tuscan Photo Exhibition". They depict people he's met in Italy (where he lives part-time) who make olive oil, wine, sausage, and the like. The photographs are hand-annotated with observations, definitions, recipes, and are wonderful. My only quibble is that I wish they were larger on the site, as it's often hard to read the handwriting on the images, but well worth the effort. Bravo! Glorious geekery. Via The Brad, here's a set of business cards that Kevin Trotman bought back in the 1980s. Big deal, right? Well, he bought them at a SF convention, and they're the "business cards" of a bunch of "Star Trek" characters. They're all done with completely generic business card clip art, and they work perfectly. "Kang, Klingon Command. Wars Arranged, Planets Conquered. No War Too Small." Hee hee. John Cleese and the semicolon. Poor John Cleese. He's got a bout of diverticulitis (eek, that's nasty, my grandma has that), "the main reason for [which] is rooted in his gluttony." Turns out he has to have a few bits of his colon removed, by a surgeon "whose Parkinson's is only in an early stage." (Well, fair play to him.) Always kind to his fans, Mr. Cleese says that "The infected bit which has been cut out by the s urgeon will be offered for sale on the website in the next few days. Proceeds from the sale will be divided between J.C. and the very nice surgeon." I don't know, do I want a semi-colon? That's kind of half-assed, isn't it? (All blame for the puns go to Steve and Dave. Not me. I swear to God I didn't do it.) Apparently Mr. Cleese's surgery went well, but he seems to have made the news in its aftermath:
(Mmmmmmmmmmmm, sushi.) Get well soon, John! That's a lot of traitors. Oooo, bad numbers for BushCo. A new AP/Ipsos poll shows that the disapproval of the way the war in Iraq is being conducted is 58%, approval 36%. Furthermore, when asked if it's okay for people who oppose the war in Iraq to express their opinion publicly, 87% of the pollees responded in the affirmitive. Gee, then that number represents about 258,385,731 traitors, doesn't it? (Actually, it means something more like 35,639,415 wingnuts.) Gobshite: "I'm soooo, soooo sorry!" Pat Robertson, apparently befuddled at the wide scorn and disbelief that greeted his claims that he never called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez mere hours after he went on television to call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, has decided to apologize for having called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. I'm sure not even Jesus believes him. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We had this one on Tuesday night, while I was taking too long in the kitchen making stuffed mirlitons. It's a really, really lovely variation on the classic Pink Gin, switching bitters halfway and adding a tiny bit of sweetening. Wes was looking for soemthing flavorful and dry yet simple, and this really did the trick. I'm not sure of its history or origins; it's listed in CocktailDB, and Wes got this version out of the book Vintage Cocktails, by Susan Waggoner and Robert Markel.
To make the classic Pink Gin, add 6 dashes Angostura bitters to 2 ounces of gin, stir and strain, up or on the rocks. Revisiting sake. The Los Angeles Times Food section had a fascinating article about sake yesterday. There are some apparently excellent artisanal sakes out there, a whole world that I know nothing about. The only sake I've ever really had is the mass-produced stuff, and I have ... a bad history with sake. The last time I had any was in 1985, and the hideous, monstrous, near-fatal hangover I had afterwards was enough to keep me off the stuff for 20 years. It's time for a revisit, I think. It's a bit of a daunting prospect, as there are lots of styles and sub-styles, and lots of new terms and definitions to learn: jizaki, junmai, daiginjo, ginjo, honjozo ... oy vey. I'll start with a couple of the specific brands mentioned in the article and see if I can keep any of it down, much less actually enjoy it with my food. (I can't begin to tell you how atrocious that sake hangover was. As my friend Hiroki said at the time, "Just be glad you got drunk on sake while eating fish; if you eat red meat and get drunk on sake, you wake up the next morning and wish you were dead." Yeah, good thing. *moan* And that crawfish-uni story begs to be rewritten.) Quote of the day. Libby Gelman-Waxner, reviewing the new "House of Wax" movie in Premiere magazine, via Wes:
"Hee hee", says he. "'Confidently terrible' ... I'm going to use that one myself." So will I, probably. [ Link to today's entries ]
The chocolate Borg assimilates another species. San Francisco's Scharffen Berger, one of the finest makers of chocolate in the United States, has been bought out by what is perhaps the worst maker of chocolate in the United States, Hershey's. I heard this a week or so ago and refused to believe it, but got a poke in the eye with a sharp stick regarding this topic via email this morning, and was forced to confront reality (unlike certain high-ranking politicans who run the country at the moment). They say that Scharffen Berger will make their chocolate the same as ever, but will have more resources and growth opportunities, which could be a good thing if they don't screw around with it. And yes, I know, Hershey's chocolate has its fans, and it's what we all grew up on here in the States, and I know that Certain People will leap into the comments to take up for it. But as for me ... well, since I tasted the good stuff, I just can't go back to Hershey's. Some can, I can't. It's like growing up on thin, tasteless gruel and suddenly being introduced to gumbo. I don't want the gruel anymore, even if there's a touch of nostalgia associated with it. Hershey's chocolate is industrial chocolate, made in Gargantuan quantities on the cheap, with none of the high quality of ingredients, time or care that's put into the making of artisanal chocolate, and it shows in the flavor and texture. My chocolate epiphany came in my Intermediate Pastry class several years ago, where we had an hours-long chocolate tasting; 17 or 18 different brands of chocolate in a blind tasting. Valrhona and Callebaut came in first. Hershey's came in dead last; most of us opined that it was like eating a piece of chocolate-flavored paraffin. Yeah, if I'm desperate for a fix, I'll have a Hershey's Kiss. But I just don't want them anymore. My worry, shared by some of my fellow chocoholics, is that once Hershey's has their claws in Scharffen Berger they'll start cheaping out on the ingredients and methods, and that'll ruin it. They say they won't do that; in fact, they're starting an Artisinal Chocolate division that started with the Scharffen Berger acquisition and continues with last week's Joseph Schmidt Chocolate, my favorite chocolatier in San Francisco. They say they won't change things, and we must believe them, because huge megalithic corporations never lie, do they? They only care about quality and not profit, don't they? I feel about as depressed as Marvin the Paranoid Android about this. The vilest alcoholic beverage ever concocted? Up until now, I thought the vilest hooch ever concocted was something called kvass, a beverage from Russia and Ukraine made from fermented stale rye bread. (Well, some people like it, but it wasn't for me.) Apparently there's one that's about seventeen million times worse. I've never heard of this beverage before, which is probably a good thing because it means I've never been to prison or known anyone who's been to prison. It's apparently well-known and notorious among that set, and it's called "pruno", which is prison-made hooch made from oranges, fruit cocktail, sugar cubes and ketchup. The closest description of its flavor, apparently, is that it's like "bile-flavored wine cooler". Sounds lovely. Why don't we try making a batch of our own? (Or maybe, since I'm not actually in prison, I'll just open up a bottle of that 23-year-old Ron Zacapa rum from Guatemala instead ...) Pat Robertson lies about his Chavez comments, claiming that he didn't say "assassination". Actually, not only did he say "assassination", he said "assassinate" too. He said, and I quote, "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." Here's the video, in living color. Pat Robertson is a lying scumbag. Letter-to-the-editor of the day. Mike points us to this gem in the Times-Picayune and asks, "Sincere letter or satire? You be the judge."
Wow. Now that's an art project! (Surely nobody could be this much of a Brobdingnagian idiot for real.) [ Link to today's entries ]
Radical cleric calls for Presidential assassination. Pretty dramatic headline, no? You've got visions of a bearded mullah issuing a fatwa against The Vacant Smirk, don't you? Well, you're a bit off this time. The radical cleric is an extremist Christian by the name of Pat Robertson, head of the so-called Christian Broadcasting Network; astonishingly, he's called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, to keep that country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent." (The AP have picked this up, as have media throughout the world.) Here is a partial transcript of his remarks on "The 700 Club", via Media Matters for America (the link includes video of Robertson's remarks):
Evil, or merely batshit crazy? WWJD? WTFWJD? This Modern World. Tom Tomorrow's latest cartoon, dedicated to a couple of guys in yesterday's comments section. 
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Quote of the day. Picking only one was hard. I spent my whole life being scared: of not being ready, of not being right, of not being who I should be. And where did it get me? Sigh ... what a wonderful, wonderful show that was. I still can't talk about the ending at work without getting choked up. There's a lot of interesting stuff at HBO's "Six Feet Under" website today. DO NOT FOLLOW OR READ THIS LINK if you haven't seen the series finale yet! Sourdough snuffed out. One of the two names, perhaps the biggest name, in sourdough bread in San Francisco is gone.
I've enjoyed Parisian sourdough on many occasions in the City By the Bay. I get a pang of sadness when I hear about things like this, because it reminds me of the places and brands that made New Orleans more unique, and are now gone ... K&B (there's a whole generation of kids who now have no idea what you mean when you describe a certain color as being "K&B purple"), D.H. Holmes, Maison Blanche, Seafood City. I'm glad Binder's and Leidenheimer's is still baking our signature French bread, but I miss the old commercials about "the wonderfully stubborn Reising family", who were bought out by Leidenheimer's. Speaking of old commercials, there was a wonderful special on WYES, the local PBS affiliate in New Orleans, called "Stay Tuned: New Orleans' Classic TV Commercials". (There's a nice review in Da Papuh from a couple of weeks ago.) Everybody's there, from the old animated spots for Jax Beer that were written and voiced by Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the 1950s, to Al Scramuzza to Wild Bill Watson to Annamae and Rosemary to "Da Special Man" ... whoo. It's a wonderful slice of New Orleans cultcha that I can't wait to see; Mom's got it on their TiVo (don't delete it, turn it green!). I'm hoping that WYES will make it available on tape or DVD at some point. Speaking of bread ... Have you ever had the simple pleasure of eating Indian Fry Bread? It's great stuff, born out of necessity, as was the thing of which it reminded me the most when I first had it. There used to be a terrific little breakfast/lunch place on Haight and Fillmore in San Francisco called Delta's Depression Dough. Back in the Depression Delta's mom couldn't afford a proper oven for baking bread, and would fry rounds of her bread dough in bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet. Later on she used that technique as the centerpiece dish of her restaurant, serving "depression dough" with myriad toppings, savory and sweet. I loved that little place, loved depression dough, and would go there every time I visited San Francisco. Delta passed away and left the restaurant on to her son, who himself passed away several years ago (as I understand it); the restaurant was then sold and the space's current incarnation was at last visit called Kate's Kitchen. It was pretty good, but there was no goddamn depression dough, and eventually I stopped going. Indian fry bread had similar beginnings to depression dough:
The bad thing about fry bread, depression dough, or whatever you'd like to call it -- it's really bad for you. It starts at about 700 calories per piece, with at least 27 grams of fat. There's been some controversy of late, as fry bread is being attacked as a health hazard in Native American culture, with obesity and diabetes being rampant among Native Americans. Thing is, it's become so synonymous with the culture that many Native Americans have rebelled, and refuse to give up their beloved fry bread. Others dispute that it's the sole cause of health problems among Natives:
I can relate. Fried shrimp and oyster poor boys, dressed with lots of mynez (and a little cheese and crisp bacon added if you want to make it into a Peacemaker, a.k.a. "Pacemaker") are synonymous with my culture too, and ain't exactly health food. Maybe cutting down to fry bread once a week instead of once a day, and in smaller portions, might be getting off to a good start ... The right begins to splinter. The "noble cause" that two thousand American soldiers have died for looks like it'll be called something along the lines of the Islamic Republic of Iraq:
I don't think this is what they had in mind. In fact, instead of a constitution to unite the people under an umbrella of freedom, it appears more likely to be a constitution that's likely to lead to civil war. It now seems that conservative pundits are beginning to punt. Here's Andy McCarthy of the National Review:
We now see the beginning of serious dissent from congressional Republicans, if Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-NE) comments are any indication:
Incidentally, Dubya's approval ratings are hitting record lows, currenetly at 36% approval in his handling of the presidency, and 33% approval for his handling of the economy. Think Progress points out that Richard Nixon's approval ratings in the summer of 1973, when the Watergate scandal was in full swing, was 39%. At this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton's approval rating was 59% and Ronald Reagan's was 60%. In a separate poll about 2-1/2 weeks ago, Bush's approval rating with regards to Iraq fell to 38% and continues to fall.
If he continues to plummet like this he'll start redshifting soon. [ Link to today's entries ]
Frank Rich: The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan" Via Atrios, an op-ed from today's New York Times:
Atrios also links to a piece on Tom Smith's weblog regarding a Yahoo! News story about a rival, pro-war camp started by the father of another dead soldier that's sprung up in Crawford to oppose Cindy Sheehan's band of war protesters. The article begins with this sentence: "A patriotic camp with a 'God Bless Our President!' banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch." Tom says,
Indeed. We mustn't question Dear Leader, and we must accept everything he says as God's Word. Mustn't we? [ Link to today's entries ]
Mmmmmm, foie gras ... Animal rights activists, take a pill around these parts. I know how they make foie gras, I don't have a problem with it, and I eat it. Not often, of course, given its cost and its high fat content. But hey, I'm a carnivore, and I enjoy it. (In fact, one foie gras preparation I had at Marisol a couple of weeks ago is one of the best things I've ever put into my mouth, ever. More on that later.) There's an interesting article in Restaurant Report about the current state of affairs in the foie gras world, how the nation's number one producer is losing its lock on the business, and how we'll soon be having a new way of getting foie gras to our tables. Kansas: Add this to your curriculum. The Onion, brilliant, as always.
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Tales of the Cocktail starts today! Man, I wish I was in New Orleans ... ("I can see it in my dreams / arm in arm down Burgundy / a bottle and my friends and me." Thanks, Tom). Okay, done singing now. Anyway, the timing of my trip in for Dad's birthday couldn't quite last long enough to catch the Crescent City's premier event this weekend, alas. We'll have to do some schedule jiggling next year, though, so that I can attend Tales of the Cocktail, a celebration of the cocktail as well as the history of drinking and dining in New Orleans. Many luminaries of the cocktail world will be there, including Doc, Dale, Robert and many more. There's a spate of "Spirited Dinners" being held tonight at restaurants all over town, each featuring two cocktail-related authors and/or cocktailian mixologists as well as menus inspired by spirits and liqueurs, and of course accompanied by paired libations. (Good Christ, I'd want to clone myself a dozen times over to take in all those fantastic meals. They ought maybe stagger them next year.) If you're in or anywhere near New Orleans over the next three days, GO! Speaking of the Doctor ... I forgot about this -- it came out a few months back, and I'm not sure how I managed to forget to post it. Modern Drunkard magazine founder and editor Frank Kelly Rich interviews Dr. Cocktail about his own journey into the world of cocktails, and about cocktail culture now and then. Have a read (and have a drink). Little Queenie in da house! Last week's edition of "Down Home" was fabulous fun, featuring a visit and guest DJ duties by Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris, the New Orleans diva herself and one of my favorite singers. She's got a new album in the works entitled Purple Heart, which she was kind enough to bring along in work-in-progress form. It sounds great, and I can't wait for the finished product (this fall, fingers crossed). We listened to a lot of great music that she brought along, including the first album by Blood, Sweat and Tears, which I'd never heard. It was the brainchild of Al Kooper, who left the band after that first record, and sounds nothing like all the "Spinning Wheel" and "You Make Me So Very Happy" hits that made it onto the radio a few years later. This was pretty mindbending, a blend of blues, rock, folk, classical and jazz that unfortunately didn't make it into the realms of big hits and million sellers. Check out the playlist; except for that first Joe Krown tune and Leigh's own "My Darlin' New Orleans" from her days with the Percolators, the song choice is all hers.  Look at those grins ... that's two people who just had a blast, and I'm happy to say I've made a new friend, too. Leigh rocks. Stay tuned to this space for more news of the forthcoming release of Purple Heart. [ Link to today's entries ]
Breakfast of champions. "You know," Wes pointed out a while back, "you still haven't finished posting stuff from Jazzfest, and that was three months ago." Yeah, I know. I'm a lazy bastard, and God Emperor of Procrastination. Let's all pretend it's endearing. We certainly get enough photos and food porn descriptions of elegant meals in fancy restaurants, but let me assure you that we are also thrown into paroxysms of gustatory ecstasy by pure, simple down-home food, as we did when we were relaxing at the Seale Guesthouse in Eunice (our favorite place to stay in the area) ... 
... enjoying what surely must be the Breakfast of Champions: boudin, cracklins and Screwdrivers.  
Boudin, roughly pronounced "BOO-dan", is both Cajun delicacy and Cajun fast food. You get the best boudin from gas stations and convenience stores, and some of it is so monstrously good it could easily be served on the finest china in the most chic restaurants for $10 a plate, except for the fact that you know you can get it for about a buck a link, wrapped in a paper napkin, at the Best Stop in Scott, Louisiana or any of scores of other places like it. Cracklins, in case you don't know, are little (or big) chunks of pork skin and fat, fried in rendered lard and seasoned. We got some cracklins from the Best Stop in Scott as well, and they were ... well, like crack. I could. Not. Stop. Eating them. Porky fatty crispy creamy spicy smoky, good Lord ... they were so good you'd slap ya mamma and everyone else's mamma too. I think this shot of my new cracklin habit rates as Photograph of the Day (click to enlarge): 
Hangin' out on the Cajun prairie in a beautiful house with great friends and eating fantastic food ... well, as the old cliché goes, it just don't get no betta den dat. Cocktail of the day. Still working my way through Dave Wondrich's new book Killer Cocktails, enjoying it while at the same time wanting to tear all the pages out so I can read the damn thing like a book. As I mentioned before, he's aces at presenting history and context amidst a slew of recipes for classic, forgotten and newly-created cocktails. Lillet fan that I am, here's one we enjoyed last night that's a Wondrich original, a French treatment (and pronunciation) of Irish whiskey.
Oh, speaking of cocktail books, while walking to the Louisiana Music Factory to spend too much money the other day, I passed Beckham's Bookshop a few doors down (as one does when walking to the Factory), spotted something in the front window, and walked out with a 1929 edition of Professor Jerry Thomas' The Bon-Vivant's Companion for my collection (oh, and four or three others too ...). The Doctor is still in. From Steve comes a link to a nice AP article about New Orleans perennial Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack a quintessential New Orleans musician, even though he hasn't lived in New Orleans for nearly forty years. Fortunately, he comes back for visits all the time; "If I don't get my crawfishes every now and then, I'd start losin' it," Mac said. I know how he feels. Vassar Clements, RIP The great American musician passed away yesterday at age 77. He was best known for his bluegrass playing, but also played swing, country and with bands like Grateful Dead and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (his playing on "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" was amazing, and the first time I really heard his playing was in the bluegrass outfit Old and In the Way with Jerry Garcia). He'll be missed. What the f--?! Rush Limbaugh is completely batshit insane. I never stoop to even mentioning his ridiculous diatribes, as they generally don't warrant, but as I'm attending a vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan in Highland Park tonight, I can't let this one go.
Her "story" is that her son died in Iraq, motherfucker. "A Humvee mechanic, Spc. Casey Sheehan was one of seven U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad's Sadr City on April 4, 2004, by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire." I don't think it's just his 30 Oxycontins and 20 Vicodins a day, either. How can any radio station continue to carry this asshole's bullshit show? I guess it's really just for the money, and that honesty, decency and integrity don't really matter. This man is deeply disturbed, and I'd have to suspect the same of most if not all of his followers. Quotes of the day. Via Kos; all these quotes are from when President Clinton committed troops to Bosnia:
"Funny thing is," Kos points out, "we won that war without a single killed in action." [ Link to today's entries ]
Happy Elvis Death Day! (Um, well, perhaps "happy" isn't quite the appropriate greeting, but you know what I mean.) You can celebrate by listening to plenty of the King's music, having a fried peanut butter, bacon, banana (and Vicodin) sandwich, catching an Elvis impersonator, or make your very own Elvis mural out of Post-Its. (Thanks to Steve H., Steve M. and Lisa for the links 'n stuff.) In a statement issued by the Looka! Department of Shameful Confessions ... when I heard the news Elvis had died, I was on a school bus with a bunch of fellow high school band members, on the way to a Chicago concert that was chaperoned by our assistant band director. (Hey, Terry Kath hadn't blown his brains out yet, so they didn't completely suck then, and we used to do jazzy arrangements of their horn-laden songs in marching band.) The Cocktailian and the Master Mixologist. In the most recent edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, the Professor, our cocktailian bartender, "invites Madam Geneva for a cocktail." Given that "Madam Geneva" is an old nickname for gin (from the Dutch genever and the French genievre), I think I might just like this drink already, particularly when you add Pimm's No. 1 and San Pellegrino Aranciata. Sounds damned refreshing. Wonder what it'd taste like with Campari instead of Pimm's. Gary also reminds us of a show that premiered last Sunday on the Fine Living channel: "Raising the Bar: America's Best Bar Chefs", hosted by the estimable Tony Abou-Ganim, creator of the Cable Car Cocktail, one of our favorites, and among many other things was the beverage director and creator of the cocktail program at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and was thereby responsible for a big milestone on our cocktail journeys. We watched it last night, and it's a really good program. You know you're off to a great start when you begin with a visit to Dale DeGroff, and it sails along from there. I'll need to watch it again and jot down some notes before we zap it from the TiVo; unfortunately the link on the Fine Living page for the show that claims it takes you to five of the cocktail recipes in fact only loops back to the same page ... oops. Most of the drinks they make specify proportions, though, so they'd be easy enough to try at home. The show was full of great ideas (lavender-infused gin ... oh my) and great places to visit next time we're in New York, Miami or San Francisco. [ Link to today's entries ]
Food porn forthcoming. I'm back, and tired, and lots to do (including unpacking, which I haven't done yet). Lots of pictures to go through as well. I shall never, ever employ the services of SuperShuttle again. The trip home was great. Dad's 70th was a blast -- fried shrimp and oyster poor boys at Mandina's; a trip to Meyer the Hatter (at the same location on St. Charles and Canal since 1894) for his birthday present, a new Panama; then dinner at home -- Mom made broiled trout with a crabmeat sauce, fresh vegetables and a cheesy orzo, plus chocolate mousse cake ... yum. My adorable new little niece arrived in New Orleans from China, newly adopted. (Well, technically she's my cousin, but my uncle and I are close in age and grew up together, so she feels more like a niece.) She's amazing, settling in more and more every day, and more and more of her personality is emerging -- ebulliently happy, good taste in food (for a 20-month-old), smart as all get out and with quite a sense of humor. Man ... a month ago she was an orphan in Guangzhou, and now she's a West Banker named Mia. White Linen Night was fun, although too crowded, and hot; Satchmo Summerfest, the new annual festival in honor of New Orleans' favorite son, was really terrific, but hot; and "Native Tongues 4, a presentation of monologues by local authors performed by local actors, was fantastic, and (except for the serious bits) hilarious. Weight gain -- seven days, four pounds. About average, I guess. Palace Café, Marisol, Liuzza's, Emeril's Delmonico, Gene's, Coop's, and Café Adelaide ... not a bad haul. Lots more on all of them as I catch up later. Got stuff to do ... NOLA cocktails. Of course, I drank well while I was home, too. A Vieux Carré at the Monteleone, natch; a fine Corpse Reviver No. 2 from Chris, one of my two favorite bartenders at Arnaud's French 75 Bar and a devotee of Dr. Cocktail (alas, we didn't get to see Bobby, my other favorite Arnaud's bartender, this time); hearty rye Manhattans at Marisol; barrel-strength George T. Stagg Bourbon whiskey at Michael and Louise's place; 1995 Perrier-Jouet Champagne and Hennessey X.O. Cognac on Dad's birthday; and a spectacular Sazerac at Emeril's Delmonico (um, two, actually). Today's Times-Picayune features an article on cocktails in New Orleans -- the real stuff for real cocktailians, not that Hand Grenade swill they slop to tourists on Bourbon Street. Read about Chris McMillian, supremely cocktailian bartender at the Library Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton, who makes the best Mint Julep anywhere, among many other things, and is a kindred spirit when it comes to quality: "A Bellini made with peach schnapps and one made with peach purée is like the difference between instant coffee and fresh ground beans." I'd go even farther than that; it's the difference between a drink that I'd pour into the nearest potted plant and a drink that I'd pay $10 for. Many local restaurants and bars who take the time to make quality cocktails are profiled, from Herbsaint to Café Adelaide's excellent Swizzle Stick Bar to the W Hotel's Loa (although I must say that I once had one of the worst Sazeracs of my life at Loa), and they all seem to care very much about their cocktails. This is a good thing. I was sorry to read that Lilette discontinued their eponymous signature cocktail, consisting of Lillet Blanc with a splash of soda, a dash of Madagascar vanilla extract and snips of fresh vanilla beans. I really enjoyed that, and so did Wes, but apparently our opinions weren't shared by most of Lilette's diners. "They got sent back a lot because they were so unusual," said [Lilette's beverages manager Jason] Baas, "and we wanted to put things on there that wouldn't get sent back." That makes sense, of course, but I'm disappointed in anyone who sent them back. I will admit, though, that it was probably the snips of vanilla bean floating around in the drink that put people off; I'll bet that if they tried it again without that it might work better. Keeping score. In the first of two links purloined from Kos today (cheap, easy and relevant free content, dontchaknow), here's a list from ThinkProgress.org of the 21 Bush administration officials implicated in the Plame outing. "Treason," as Kos put it, "runs deep in the White House." Have they no decency, at long last? (Of course not.) The depths to which the right wing, as demonstrated by their media hacks and pundits, have sunk to further their agenda is on perfect display with their odious attacks of Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq last year, who was invited to the White House by Bush but left "sickened" after her visit to the Oval Office, who opposes both him and his war, and who has become a folk hero after camping outside Bush's Crawford ranch, refusing to leave until he speaks to her. Kos provided a link to the Cunning Realist weblog, "not because it's a conservative blogger taking on his own side, but because it is the best explanation of why the attacks on Cindy Sheehan are so outrageous."
One of the most odious comments came from the repugnant Michelle Malkin, infamous internment apologist and near-denier, who said that she didn't think that the late Casey Sheehan would approve of what his mother was doing. Cindy Sheehan lobbed it right back in her face with grace, dignity and righteous anger:
Thank you, Cindy. (More at The Peking Duck.) TBogg put it pretty well too:
And the simplest explanation is usually the best. [ Link to today's entries ]
I'm off. I'm back home in New Orleans for a week as of today, for my dad's 70th birthday. Posting may (or may not) be scarce, depending on how much time I've got and how many drinks I've had before I go home. A visit with The Libation Goddess. Audrey Saunders, that is, cocktailian extraordinaire, until recently bar manager at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, and soon to be the proprietor of her own joint, the forthcoming Pegu Club. That bar will be worth a trip to NYC alone! I don't subscribe to Food and Wine magazine, so occasionally I miss out on some good stuff, including a nice, long article about Audrey and her mixological adventures in preparing to open the Pegu Club. For one thing, at that bar there'll be ... no vodka! Hooray! (Well, they'll have a little, but it'll be hidden under the bar, out of sight.) There'll be 23 different brands of gin, and cocktails on the menu that she's dug out of Charles Baker's The Gentleman's Companion: Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Glass. I may swoon. Cocktail of the day. Let's revisit the namesake cocktail of Audrey's wonderful new bar, a favorite of Wes' and mine. It's wonderful.
Have these at home, and if you can find a bartender near you who knows how to make one of these (and actually has orange bitters), you're a lucky individual indeed. Safe, simple, soon? NASA prepares to scrap the concept of the reusable Space Shuttle in favor of a step back into the past -- putting astronauts in capsules atop payload stages on top of booster rockets, as was done during the Apollo program. Some shuttle components will be retooled and reintegrated into this "back to basics" system, which even has its own website already. I dunno, Crow. This seems like "safe but cheap", rather than showing the kind of scientific vision and drive that got us to the moon. We should be working on SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) vehicles, and if we really want to go to Mars we should be building the ship in orbit, shouldn't we? At this rate, don't expect warp drive anytime soon. Cartoon of the day. Ted Rall, via Steve in yesterday's email. 
[ Link to today's entries ]
Don't let the door hit you in your (big) ass on the way out. "Carb supporters rejoice," says the headline in the Los Angeles Times, with a similar one in the San Francisco Chronicle. Why are we rejoicing? Because Atkins Nutritionals has filed for bankruptcy. Mad Carb Disease has been conquered! In email, our friend Dave said, "I can see folks dancing in the streets, holding large crusty breads and plates of pasta over their heads, and firing potato pellets into the air..."
The flood of all those absolutely nasty "low-carb" packaged foods probably contributed to their demise as well, because 99.999% of those foods tasted like shit (and were expensive). I don't know a single person who's still on the Atkins diet, and I heard a story on NPR yesterday where several people who had been on Atkins were interviewed; none of them was able to stay on the diet, and they all regained the weight they lost, plus an average of 10 pounds more. As I said before, there's something wrong with a diet that says you can have all the cream and cheese you want, that you can eat a 16-ounce porterhouse steak topped with bacon and blue cheese, but you can't have an apple or a carrot. Moderate your carbohydrate intake, as you modify your intake of everything else (but vegetables) with reasonable portion sizes, and exercise more. That's it. Thirty-three pounds later, that's what worked for me. (It'd be forty if I didn't keep going to New Orleans and eating, and if I actually exercised more.) Cocktails of the day. I finally picked up Dave Wondrich's excellent new book Killer Cocktails: An Intoxicating Guide to Sophisticated Drinking. It begins with mixological rudiments (types of liquor, equipment, etc.) which you can skip if you're no longer a beginner and get into the meat of the matter -- the cocktails. There are a lot of drinks in there you won't find anywhere else, and I can't wait to get to exploring them. Dave's writing and cocktail discoveries, both new and forgotten, are as top-notch as always, although there are differences of opinion at our Eagle Rock aerie. I enjoyed The Four Commandments of the Martini, but we do shake Martinis at our house; Wes likes 'em that way, finding them actually colder than when stirred. (Dave, if you ever come over, I'll certainly stir, and I must confess that my own Martini epiphany was a stirred one made by Dale DeGroff.) As much as I'm enjoying it, though, I dohave one wee problem with the book. It's got a spiral-bound, stand-up design which allows it to stand on the counter like an easel as you mix. Good idea, but someone at the publisher decided that instead of making the book such that you flip consecutive pages as the book faces you, then flip the whole thing over to continue on the other half of the book (i.e., the consecutively numbered pages are on each facing leaf), the pages are printed back-to-back; i.e., you have to flip the whole goddamn thing around after every page if you're reading it continuously. I found that design unwieldy,and it makes me want to just tear all the pages out and staple them together so I can turn pages without having to flip the entire book around. The contents are worth the annoyance, though. I was thrilled that Dave came up with a near-forgotten New Orleans cocktail I had never heard of. He says it comes from "The Bon Ton Bar" on Magazine Street in the 1930s; I wonder if that's the still-extant Bon Ton Café on Magazine, home of some of the best crawfish étouffée and bread pudding in the city. In any case, apparently the bar/restaurant is still there (which leads me to think it's the same place I'm thinking about) and is the only place in the world that serves this drink.
It was ... interesting. The verdict's still out on this one, and I think I need to try this with a better rum than Bacardi (which was all I had on hand at the time), or try it with Myers' white rum and a different Bourbon (I used Wild Turkey). The single teaspoon of Bourbon gives it a really interesting character, and while I didn't do back flips over this one, it certainly merits further experimentation. Thanks, Dave! I learned of yet another New Orleans cocktail the very next day, another that I hadn't heard of before. Dr. Cocktail emailed me to ask what I knew about another Monteleone Hotel creation aside from its wonderful, classic Vieux Carré Cocktail, one called "The Goody". I had no idea, did a little Googling, and managed to find this:
Sounds perfectly good and refreshing, but pretty ordinary and not terribly complex; I have an overwhelming compulsion to run to the bar and add bitters, or pimento dram, or something. The Sushi Encyclopedia. Everything, and I mean everything you always wanted know about sushi, but were afraid (or merely didn't know) to ask. Rule No. 1: "Never dip sushi in soy sauce from the rice-side and suck up too much amount. It will be too bitter to eat, or will damage the taste of sushi seriously." *gasp* "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!" Not only that, Captain Renault, but apparently the Guantánamo "trials" are rigged, too. (Your winnings, sir.) Next up, kangaroo courts with real kangaroos, kids.
He was? I'm shocked, shocked. July Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
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