    "Eating, drinking and carrying on..." -- Adelaide Brennan
Get yo' ticket in yo' haaaand ... I'm gonna see the Zulu queen. At da airport, online courtesy of Continental's President's Club's open wireless network (thanks, exclusive rich people club!) As I will be engaged in copious amounts of revelry over the next five days (and recovering the sixth, remembering that I art dust and unto dust I shall return), posting will be spotty to nonexistent. "Oh well it's Carnival ti-iime, everybody's having' fun ..." [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. We continue our mini-recap of great New Orleans cocktails ... It was Wes' turn to mix last night, and he said, "This is one I've been thinking about all week." It was created by Walter Bergeron, head bartender at New Orleans' Monteleone Hotel in the 1930s and is that hotel's signature cocktail. It's also really, really good ... particularly when you make a top-shelf version like Wes did last night, using Sazerac 18-year-old rye and Carpano Antica vermouth. (It's still really good with Old Overholt and Martini & Rossi.)
If you like Old Fashioneds, give this one a whirl. You'll love it. Just a closer walk with Gate. This just in from the Times-Picayune. I'll most likely be there.
See some of y'all there, maybe. Wake for Barry. Via OffBeat's weekly email:
Spin. Robert Charles Wilson has been one of my very favorite SF writers for about a dozen years now, ever since I read The Harvest, in which one night all of humanity is asked a question: "Do you want to live forever?" It's superb, and I've loved pretty much every Wilson novel since. His most recent is perhaps his best; I picked it up in hardback as soon as it was out (I'm far too impatient to wait for anything to come out in paperback, and I like my books to be made to last) and devoured it in just a few days. It's called Spin, and Patrick posted an excellent article the other day about Spin, Wilson's work and how it fits into the best of classic SF:
Wonderfully put, thank you. If you read SF, and even if you don't, do yourself a favor and read this outstanding novel (now out in paperback, for the patient and thrifty). Then read just about everything else Wilson has written, especially The Harvest, The Chronoliths and Darwinia. Quote of the day. As Wes and I were saying as we were watching Bush, Rumsfeld and McClellan on "The Daily Show" ... "Do these people not hear themselves when they speak?"
(Faire le *boggle*.) As Markos put it, "business concerns take precedence above all." Atrios offers a recap:
Naw, not shady in the least.
I only hope we can get that history (and see the perpetrators held accountable and punished) during our lifetimes ... Heckuva job, though. More Katrina emails have surfaced, showing a White House in chaos.
Wish them into the cornfield, Anthony. Please. ALL of them. [ Link to today's entries ]
Cocktail of the day. New Orleans cocktails are the order of the day all this week, as we approach Mardi Gras day in six days! I was particularly inspired to demonstrate the proper way to make this drink, after that ridiculous version in that Variety article which used "Meyer lemon-infused gin" and no cream! Last night we had Ramos Gin Fizzes, one of the quintessential New Orleans cocktails, invented by Henry Ramos in the 1880s in his bar at Meyer's Restaurant (now long-gone). As the story goes, when Huey P. Long was governor of Louisiana he brought with him to New York's Roosevelt Hotel the bartender from the New Orleans Roosevelt just so he could have New Orleans gin fizzes whenever he was in New York. Every man a king ... The magical secrets of this drink are the egg white (for body, texture and froth), orange flower water for its amazing perfume, and to shake the living crap out of it, with plenty of ice, for no less than thirty seconds and preferably one minute, about six times longer than you'd shake any other drink. You really want to emulsify the egg white and get a good frothy head going. During its heyday it's been said that Mr. Ramos had a dozen young barbacks behind the bar who did nothing but shake gin fizzes all day. (I would have dropped dead after the first dozen; making one batch of two fizzes last night made me want to take a nap, and that was even before a single sip.) Also, make sure you use plain seltzer or carbonated water, not club soda, as the latter contains too much salt. No photo of this one, sorry. After all that shaking it was all I could do to crawl downstairs carrying the two glasses without spilling them, and it would have been far too much of an expenditure of my little remaining energy to get the camera bag. (Okay, that's a lie, I just wanted to start drinking immediately.) It looks something like this, although I didn't garnish with a flower.
Serve these with a brunch and your guests will fall at your feet and declare their everlasting devotion. Dive in the gumbo. The Los Angeles Times' Food Section has an excellent article on gumbo today, and its culinary, cultural and spiritual connection back to Louisiana for the thousands of Louisiana Creoles who've made their lives in Los Angeles since the 1940s. I still miss a few of the great old Creole joints that helped keep me from being too homesick when I first moved here -- the now-gone Edouard's in Inglewood, and the late great Jase's Sid Cafe (a.k.a. "Sid's", and R.I.P. Mr. Jase) which was on Exposition Blvd. near USC. Fortunately places like Harold and Belle's are still around, plus newer places like Uncle Darrow's (close enough to work to drive there for lunch ... thank you, Norwood!), and then there's always my own cooking ... Those gumbo recipes they provide look pretty good. But they ain't as good as mine. :-) Listen to "Down Home" tomorrow night. Just a heads-up ... tomorrow night my radio program will feature all Mardi Gras and Carnival-related music, in addition to a special tribute to Allen Toussaint, who just received a lifetime achievement award from the good folks at OffBeat magazine. 7:00 - 9:00pm Pacific time on 88.5 KCSN in Los Angeles, or streaming in both broadband stereo and dialup mono signals on the web at KCSN.org. Mawk ya calendas! It will not stand. BushCo is really off its nut this time. Even the rabid, frothing right-wing nutjobs like Hannity and M*ch**l S*v*g* are calling him a traitor, after springing upon the American people a deal to have six of our main ports (including New York, New Jersey and New Orleans) run by a company that is owned by the government of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, a conglomeration of mini-nations that have ties to terrorism. It is perhaps the largest WTF moment in an administration that's had a long history of WTF moments. Tim Grieve writes in Salon:
Of course not. Quote of the day. From Steve Gilliard:
It's been pointed out that even though the company is owned by the Dubai government, it's primarily run by Brits and Americans, and that it smacks more of cronyism than a national security threat. That's undoubtedly true, but having our ports run by a company owned by a government that seems lackadaisical at best in preventing their country from being a base for terrorists itself seems imprudent ... at best. It's odd, though, that the Republicans who have such a big problem with Dubai-owned companies running our ports have had very little concern with port security in the past ... port security being a major poing in the Kerry campaign. Quote of the day, part deux. Steve Nichols, in a comment in response to the sentence "Bush and Cheney are so used to getting their way that they think questions are impertinent" from the above passage:
Cha-CHING! The money quote of the day. [ Link to today's entries ]
Getting it. Clancy DuBos, writing in this week's Gambit:
Read the rest.. [CORRECTION: It's been brought up that the editorial was not in fact written by Clancy, but was unsigned.] If you think that Mardi Gras is nothing other than a bunch of drunken out-of-town fratboy idiots going "Woo-HOOOO!" and their girlfriends flashing their tits to get beads, then you know nothing about Mardi Gras. It would be nice if the world media would get their heads out of their asses and make an effort to find out what it's really all about. Neologism of the day. Coined yesterday, by Wes.
Now, we need y'all to start using it and spreading it around so that we get it in next year's edition of Webster's. Feed me, Seymour. Oh my, more stuff to do in New York. Via Audrey, here's a scrumptious list from New York Magazine:
Oh my god. We're going to be drunk and bloated the entire time we're there. [ Link to today's entries ]
Carnival bullshit. (They don't get it.) I was reading this morning's front-page article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "A Melancholy Mardi Gras", and began working on a post in my head when Mary and Poppy beat me to it in email and journal, respectively. The gist of the article was that Carnival is "weakened by disasted as the city itself", and while nobody expects Mardi Gras this year to be exactly the same as it is every other year, the Times, being outsiders who don't understand the way things worked in our city then as well as now, cannot assume that low parade attendance on the first night of parade season spells doom for Mardi Gras in general. (To be fair, the article did say that crowds "will surely pick up when Carnival begins its final push next weekend," but I don't like this negative tone right out of the gate. First thought out of my head was that I rarely went to early parades myself when I still lived at home, and with no insult intended toward those krewes, I've never once been to the Shangri-La, Pygmalion or Sparta parades, and I sure as hell would be likely to skip them if it was raining. The early parades are never as well-attended as the later parades and the "big" krewes like Endymion and Bacchus. (That said, it would most certainly behoove you to check out smaller krewes like Tucks, for instance, who always put on a great parade.) Plus, as it was chilly and rainy Saturday night, that will always reduce attendance at early parades. (People tend to be more die-hard about the weather on Mardi Gras Day.) Mary's neighbor Henry also added, with regards to the line about the unopened boxes of throws still left at the end "First of all, most of those guys belong to other krewes, so they will just throw 'em at those parades. Secondly, anyone who has beads leftover--you know what that is? 'Cause they weren't throwing 'em enough! It's their fault!" Heh. Besides, Krewe du Vieux was gangbusters crowded and fantastic, so there. Then Poppy weighed in, firmly and authoritatively, about the national and international media coverage and said it all better than I ever could.
There are more examples from the national media in her complete entry. Read it all. Here's more from the link Poppy references:
Yeah you rite. Oh, speaking of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, I've heard that the krewe, for the first time ever, is bringing in 20 actual Zulu natives from Africa. They've talked about this for years, but are finally doing it! What the ...?! I swear to God, if anybody had said to me what these Australopithecines apparently said to New Orleanian Dan Frazier on an airplane, I would have ended up getting arrested on arrival for backhanding these idiotic assholes. This is what BushCo, their sycophants' and the aforementioned national media's lies about New Orleans hath wrought. [ Link to today's entries ]
Mary's latest article for Frommer's. Y'know, like a big ditzbrain, I forgot to link Mary's new article on New Orleans for Frommers.com (and she emailed it to me over a week ago ... it's not easy being both God Emperor of Procrastination and Avatar of Absentmindedness). So here it is, read it all but especially the latter half:
I'm taking a red-eye home next Friday at 1am, arriving around 8, and after my shower the first place I'm going is the Lower Ninth, and my school. I need to see. Er, no. John Dvorak, when I've deigned to read him, has been one of my least favorite columnists for a good while now. His latest magnum opus, that Apple might and indeed should drop OS X and "switch" to Windows because Apple hardware now runs on Intel chips, is perhaps his most absurd yet. Dave Schroeder on Slashdot cogently explains why Dvorak is full of shit. (He's full of shit so often, in fact, that I wonder why people continue to pay him for this kind of drivel.) [ Link to today's entries ]
"A pour man's game." Ugh. There are some puns at which even the likes of me must groan ... fortunately, I can't claim credit for this one -- it's the title of a nice article in weekly Variety about the resurgence of cocktails. It's been done before, as we know, but I never complain about seeing another one; the resurgence must surge further! The article mentions some familiar names -- Dr. Cocktail (of course), Tony Abou-Ganim, and has a fair number of quotes from our friend Daniel Reichert, proprietor of Vintage Cocktails, a catering company that provides menus of mostly classic and historic cocktails (along with some new ones) for various events. (Nice gig.) This article, like so many others I've read these days, tends to falter once it gets to the recipes. Their Sazerac is close, but is very, very wimpy when it comes to the Peychaud's Bitters ... one dash? C'mon folks, it's not expensive stuff, and this drink is a showcase for the flavor of Peychaud's. Use at least three, if not four. That drink they call a "Ramos Gin Fizz" ... um, ain't. It's got several ingredients in common, but Henry Ramos' bartenders weren't infusing their Plymouth gin with Meyer lemon peel in 1888 ... and the drink needs cream and lime juice in it, too. What is this, some kind of California "lite" version? Sheesh. It might be a tasty fizz, but it ain't a Ramos. Fortunately, there's a tasty-looking new creation by Daniel himself, and being fans of its namesake we love the name: 
Perhaps the most exciting thing in the whole article was one little passing mention, and since it's there I guess I can finally comment on it ...
Oh, frabjous day! Calooh! Callay! Finally, there'll be a local bar for us. A bar where we never have to make sure the bartender puts bitters in a Manhattan, a bar where we never have to wonder if the $10 cocktail we've ordered is going to be any good, a bar where we'll just know every single drink will be excellent. (Dan, ya gonna have a coupla regula bawflies, bra.) We haven't had a single place where we like to go out for cocktails since Cinnabar closed, and even though we love making drinks at home we love going out, too. Daniel's new place will be at least 14 miles from the house, though, so we'll need to find a restaurant we like within walking distance of the bar. Drinks drinks drinks, then dinner, then drive home. Anybody know a good place to eat in Studio City? NOLA in the news. Plenty of national news stories about the city today.
(Actually, the first Mardi Gras parade of 2006 was Krewe du Vieux, last Saturday.)
Well, it's not good that convention business is down -- we need to get that back up again -- but all y'all potential Jazzfesters should have plenty of places to stay now!
(Hi, Mary!!) Frommer's New Orleans is the definitive guide to the city, and not only because my friend wrote it and my red beans 'n rice recipe is in there. It's the best one, seriously. Here's Mary in another USA Today article from a few weeks ago:
Yeah you rite, dawlin'. It's been years since I came home for Mardi Gras, but this year I'm there, Morgus costume and all. Belgian beer fest begins tomorrow! A truly amazing annual Belgian beer festival takes place annually at Lucky Baldwin's Pub in Old Town Pasadena, and if you're in the L.A. area and you like beer, you're not going to want to miss this. The pub's owner has special connections in Belgium and gets brews that would otherwise never be seen on these shores. Our friends Gregg and Mike, who turned us on to this fest, say, "If you haven't been to one of these, it's an amazing sight. This year they have 80 different beers on tap over the course of the two-week festival, with at least 50 being online at once." Those two are hardcore -- they're going to be there for about eight hours this weekend, attempting to try every beer ("Kinda like a pub crawl without going anywhere.") If you're uninitiated in the world of Belgian beer, there's no better place to start. There are many brands, flavors and textures to enjoy, and they offer small taster glasses for $3 -- you can easily sample 6 - 10 beers between two people in an evening. To help you soak up the alcohol, they'll have a special Belgian bar menu for the duration of the festival featuring recipes from one of the bartenders' Belgian mother. Otherwise, they have pretty good British pub grub. I don't think we'll get through 50 beers, but we'll get through a decent amount. You've got two weeks, so check it out! The disgrace of Guantánamo. Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:
More, including hearing transcripts, from Eric Umansky. Our government has been fighting against efforts to get these people legal representation, to have actual arraignments and trials with an opportunity to present exculpatory evidence and testimony. No, this government just wants to throw people in jail and keep them there indefinitely, at their pleasure, without due process. Aren't you proud? [ Link to today's entries ]
(Slightly belated) quote of the day. From Poppy's journal, February 2, 2006, 11:36pm.
Take that. Heh. BAR! DeGroff, Pacult and Wondrich ... the natural and perfect faculty for the first truly cocktailian school, "the world's first academy dedicated to teaching the finer points of distilled spirits and mixology, their origins, cultural contexts and gastronomic possibilities at the highest level," offering a 12-week course of intense study. This is in stark contrast to most so-called "bartending schools", where they "teach" you using colored water instead of actual wines, spirits, liqueurs, etc. During what is typically a 2-week course you basically learn to freepour, and that's about it. Imagine paying top dollar to dine in a restaurant where the chef learned how to cook using plastic food, without tasting anything or learning anything about the history and context of the culinary arts. Such an academy is sorely needed now, long overdue and very welcome. Of course, it would have to be in New York! Well, Wes and I and our friends can always continue our independent study at our respective home bars. :-) The Cocktailian. In the current edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, The Professor, our cocktailian bartender, notes that yuzu juice is the voodoo in Ponzu's new cocktail. (Um, good luck finding that yuzu juice, though. I have a tough time even in a Japanese market.) I got it! I got da thousan' dollahs! Alas, if I could buy a car from Da Special Man at Frankie and Johnny's, I would. Unfortunately I had to buy it from a car salesman (*scrub*scrub*scrub*), but all unpleasantness aside ... I am now the deliriously happy owner of a 2006 Toyota Prius, with Option Package #3 HF, in Barcelona Red Metallic. 
It is sweet. Oh, and the salesman ... he caved. After my third message about his adding on those three accessories without my having ordered them, he finally called back and was snippy and testy about it, insisting in a rather condescending tone that that's the way they come over on the boat from Japan, and that it's on the sticker, and when I told him I felt as if I was being ripped off he replied that that if I didn't like it he'd refund my $1K deposit and sell the car to someone else. I immediately called the Customer Experience Center at Toyota USA and spoke to a representative there who assured me that those three items did not come standard. Furthermore, when I told him the salesman's bullshit story about terrorist watch lists and oh-obviously-you-haven't-bought-a-car-since-9/11, he was flabbergasted. "I really don't know how to respond to that," he said, "except to assure you that I've never heard of such a thing." A report was generated and transmitted to the dealer's customer service liaison ... and I got a call back within an hour. "Oh, now ... we don't want there to be any bad feelings or bad blood, and we don't want anyone to feel like they're being ripped off." He then magnanimously reduced the price by $300, the cost of the unordered accessories, and said that I could keep them. I didn't want them, I replied; if I had wanted them I'd have ordered them, but he insisted. Boy. Someone must've gotten to him. Anyway, I don't care anymore. I've got my car, and I love it. I never need to have anything to do with the dealer again, and I'll get my service done in Glendale or Pasadena, closer to home. [ Link to today's entries ]
Jazzfest schedule is out! Only by weekend so far (first weekend, second weekend); I'm hoping that they'll break it down by day soon. Oh hell, here it is:
Plenty of gospel, which is a relief; we didn't really think there wouldn't be a Gospel Tent, but all those choirs are local and many of the members lived in heavily affected areas of the city. I note with sadness that there's no listing so far for the Crownseekers, but The Johnson Extension are there! Not too many big name acts, but I'm sure they'll keep adding people until the last possible minute. Oh, and if you're going, order your Friday tickets by today! For a few more hours, tickets for the Friday of each Jazzfest weekend are only $20, with advance purchase price going up to the Sat-Sun price of $30 and $40 if you buy at the gate. [ Link to today's entries ]
Miiightyyyyy-coo-tee-fi-yoooooo ... WWOZ DJ George Ingmire has produced a short audio documentary about the black "Mardi Gras" Indians of New Orleans, featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles, Big Chief Victor Harris of the Fi Yi Yi and Big Chief Alfred Doucette. Listen to the documentary here.. Take that job and shove it. I don't have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, so I can't log in to find the actual article, but Wes read this quote attribution this morning:
Gee, they just can't give that job away, can they? Maybe I should take it. By their standards I'm eminently qualified -- I've worked as a grocery clerk, a dental assistant, a movie theatre usher and an animation cel painter. Oh no, wait ... I'm not a Republican, a big Republican donor or friend thereof. Damn. Nothing in Google News as yet. If you come across anything new, please post it in the comments. Holy crap. Things get somewhat more serious today, with more and more people wondering if Dick Cheney was drunk when he shot a man in the face with a 28 gauge shotgun. Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old Republican attorney who caught the vice-president's load of birdshot in his face and chest, is now reported to have a heart attack after at least one piece of birdshot has lodged in his heart. George Gongora, a photographer with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, is an avid skeet shooter and quail hunter and has been for many years. In this demonstration of the effects of a birdshot round from a 28 gauge shotgun at 90 feet, he shows that Mr. Whittington probably has approximately two hundred birdshot BBs lodged in his face and upper body. It seems almost an automatic, knee-jerk reaction for the White House and Vice-President's office to lie and cover things up, to decide that the public doesn't need to know things, and to stonewall the release of relevant news. It prompts the question ... why the stonewalling? What don't the want us to know? If they're stonewalling this, what else don't they want us to know? Oh, and what did Cheney do after he shot a man in the face? The victim was rushed to Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi and admitted to the intensive care unit. Meanwhile, Cheney and the rest of the hunting party went back to the ranch, sat down and had dinner. Do you think that maybe he might have gone to the hospital to be with and check on the man he had just shot in the face with two hundred pieces of birdshot, like you or any other decent human being would have done?
This is your Vice-President. [ Link to today's entries ]
C'est Levee! Jonno has posted a great set of photos from the Krewe du Vieux parade on Saturday. Some good friends of mine are in that Krewe, and I'd have loved to see the parade, but alas, I missed it by a couple of weeks. (I'll be home on the 24th.) Dead-Eye Dick. So, do we now need another specialized division of the Secret Service to protect other Americans from the President and Vice-President? What amuses me no end is that there was at least an 18-hour delay for the news to reach the American people that our Vice-President had shot someone ...
Scotty McClellan's press conference was pretty priceless too. I'm looking forward to the entire transcript to be released, but here's a tantalizing tidbit:
Um ... "The vice president thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to give that information out. Since she was an eyewitness"? Gee ... as Mary said, this recalls an exchange from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Anyway, I digress ... apparently the press conference got better ...
Wow. Here's video via Crooks and Liars. As soon as we heard the news, some of my friends and I began to wonder and speculate amongst ourselves how long it would take for the White House or the NRA to blame the victim. While we haven't yet heard statements from either of those, we did hear this from the ranch's owner:
Yeah, well. Then there's this, from an experienced hunter (emphasis mine):
So the man who's a heartbeat away from having his fingers on America's nuclear trigger can't even remember the cardinal rule of gun safety while hunting? Gee, I feel safer already.
I'll bet it's going to smell a lot worse before we hear the end of this ... The Index. A small sampling from the January 2006 Harper's Index:
Numbers are fascinating. [ Link to today's entries ]
White House knew of levee failure on the night of the storm. Let's hear that Chimp quote again. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
According to the Times-Picayune, it was in fact a total of "28 federal, state and local agencies -- including the White House -- [who] reported levee failures on Aug. 29, according to a timeline of e-mails, situation updates and weather reports." Here is an excellent compilation of the key documents, including emails, situation updates and weather reports, collected by Congressional investigators. (*deep breath*) One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten ... (*walk around block*) Do not return any of these people or their party to office. Speaking of "Brownie" ... Is he gonna sing?
The question is, is he blowing the whistle, or just covering his own ass? It's highly likely that it's the latter, as I don't believe this man has any true integrity or propensity to do the right thing. The phrase that really gets me is, "the rock being the administration's desire to keep Katrina matters secret". There is absolutely no fucking good reason on God's green Earth for the administration to keep anything secret with regards to Katrina, except, of course, to cover up their own indifference, culpability and neglect. Abramoff says Bush is lying. Quelle surprise.
Quotes of the day:
A MeFi poster opined that if unlawful wiretapping, starting a war on several false pretenses, mismanaging the federal budget (and so much more), dismantling FEMA "to the point of utter haplessness", subsequently presiding over the destruction of a major American city and then turning his back on them and their entire region, this "won't make a dent." Another countered that "[d]espite murders, organized crime, kidnapping, and illegal bootlegging, Al Capone was brought down on tax-evasion." Perhaps the cumulative effect of his high crimes and misdemeanors (and a new Congress that isn't his rubber stamp) will finally do what needs to be done. DblDbl 98 Meat Pty XChz. What, you ask, is that cryptic headline? It's what your receipt says when you go to In-N-Out Burger (the best hamburger chain in California by far, except for their disappointing fries) and order a 100x100. See, for y'all unfortunates that don't have In-N-Out where you live, their classic burger is the Double Double -- two beef patties, double cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato and special sauce (it's Thousand Island, and I always get the ketchup-instead option). In-N-Out burgers are infinitely customizeable, however, and those in the know regularly order from the chain's "secret menu" (so secret, in fact, that it's right there on their website. (Here's a slightly more illustrative one.) You can get a 3x3, three patties and three slices of cheese; a 4x4, four patties and four slices of cheese, etc. A few years back I found a site where one fairly disgusting 18-year-old kid (who was, unsurprisingly, already morbidly obese) bought and consumed a 20x20 -- twenty hamburger patties and twenty oozing slices of melted cheese, with the accoutrements on a hapless bun -- and consumed the entire thing himself, documented by some truly revolting photographs. He's been outdone, but fortunately not by a solo outing. Andy and his friends were drunk in Vegas (no!), and thought it would be a really great idea to go to In-N-Out and order a 100x100. Gut-wrenching, artery-clogging hilarity ensues.
"Ugh," said Nettie. "Please let me NEVER get behind someone in the drive-thru line who's ordering the 100x100, or for that matter the 20x20." Not to mention the bathroom line. There are, of course photographs. Dig in. [ Link to today's entries ]
Warrantless wiretapping saved L.A.? Um, not so fast. The President today claimed that his administration had thwarted an al Qaeda plot to hijack planes using shoe bombs and fly them into the Library Tower (which he called the "Liberty Tower", sheesh) in downtown Los Angeles, according to a newly and very conveniently declassified report. Given that his administration is under increasing fire from Republicans (at least the non rubber-stamp ones) and Democrats alike, it isn't coincidental at all that this was announced today. Not at all. In any case, this alleged plot was allegedly foiled in "early 2002", but I seem to recall having to take off my shoes for inspection upon boarding planes ever since the Richard Reid attempted shoebombing incident in December 2001. That wouldn't make it a very smart plot, would it? Furthermore, via Atrios, some members of the White House Press Corps pointed out this morning that while you might be able to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, it doesn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of sense to try to hijack a plane with one:
Thank you, Scotty, as always, for that ... cogent response. Furthermore, if a 9/11-style airplane/building bombing had been a serious threat, you'd think they might have told, say, the Mayor of Los Angeles at some point:
Well, Antonio wasn't mayor then, but did anyone tell Jim Hahn? Also, according to an item in AmericaBlog, there are questions as to whether these plot-foiling claims contradict earlier claims:
Alex at Martini Republic: "The timing of this revelation is pretty obvious -- it is somehow intended to ramp up the fear of terrorist attacks (including 4 year old plots which never got off the ground, so to speak) and prop up support for his domestic surveillience program. The Fear Tightrope was a handy tool in 2004, using terrorist warnings and press briefings to repeatedly imply that we'd all die if Bush weren't reelected. [...] Except, as we've noted, this plot had nothing to do with domestic surveillience. Any communications took place overseas, between al Qaeda and an Indonesian terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiah. And how was the plot uncovered? 'Their plot was derailed in early 2002, when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative,' Bush said. Nothing to do with wiretapping US citizens without warrants. Maybe nothing to do with wiretaps at all, for all we know. All this left [Washington Post columnist Dan] Froomkin shaking his head."
"That and make everyone really, really scared, so maybe they wouldn't notice how thick the crap is flowing from the White House." What Alex said. Yet more from Martini Republic: "Would have been nice for the Administration to brief the locals on terror threats to town past and potentially present, ya think? "But the way this administration lies and lies and lies, who can tell whether the whole tale was something Rove made up yesterday?" There just seems to be ... an overwhelming odor of fish around all this today. UPDATE: (Once more from Martini Republic) "[The] Bush Administration did not speak to City directly, but relied on California Homeland Security Chief Matt Bettenhausen as go-between, who claims to have notified a Deputy Mayor yesterday. Feel safer yet?" I swear ... I really wish that one day I could buy a car without having to actually speak to a fucking car salesman. (*scrub*scrub*scrub*) Right off the bat, the bastard tries to add $300 worth of "accessories" that I didn't order to the final price of my new car, and that's not the half of it. Then, even though I've got my own financing, they're badgering me to fill out a credit/loan application "just so that we can pull your credit report" (which I already gave them permission to do), so that they can check via my credit reports that not only am I creditworthy but also not a terrorist, because they can't sell a car if I'm a terrorist or if I'm on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN list) of he Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), 'cause if they do business with me and I am, they could be fined up to ten million dollars! "WTF?!" says I. "I just want to buy a car, and come here and give you money for it." "Obviously," says he, "you haven't tried to buy a car since 9/11." I ended up having to practically get sworn statements from three people in the dealership that they wouldn't actually submit that as a separate loan application, and had to order them multiple times not to do so. (I'm only buying them because they're the only dealer I could find that would 1) order the car I wanted, and 2) charge only the MSRP and not a hideous $5-6K markup). Are these people as full of shit as I think they are? After this I hope I don't have to buy another new car for at least 10 years, but by that time I want to be able to buy a car without having to see, speak to or touch a human car salesman. Blleechhhh. Speaking of crooks ... Your Republican congressional leadership at work.
The bill had already been voted on, and no one who voted on the bill saw or voted on this provision. Incidentally, Bill Frist has received over a quarter of a million dollars in campaign contributions from ... wait for it ... the pharmaceutical industry! (What a coinkydink.) More from AmericaBlog: "One more VERY odd thing, the staff director of the Senate Appropriations Committee is talking on the record about this, which is very strange since he's a Republican, his boss is a Republican, and he's pointing the finger at Republicans. He's naming names, including the names of several Republican Senators. It sounds like GOP Senator Cochran, the actual chairman of the Senate approps committee, was left out of the process, they went around him, so Keith, his chief of staff for the committee, is now speaking publicly. Wow."
John adds, "The Republicans control the Senate, the House, the White House and the Supreme Court. If you don't like what you're seeing, vote for a change in November." Music game answers. Guessing kinda fizzled out a few days ago, so the answers are revealed below. 17 of the 25 lyrics were guessed correctly, which works out to a 68%. Not bad, considering how obscure some of them were. Still, I'm bummed nobody got #8! Are there no other Colorblind James fans out there?! If interest is waning, I might do one more, or none. We'll see what I feel like in a few weeks. Perhaps it was meant to be yet another blogospheric meme to float away into the wind. McDonald's fries. No wonder they taste so good.
It's not as if I actually eat their food ... well, except for the fries, which anyone must admit are damned good. They'd better not feck with them, that's all I gotta say. Diana said, "You can take the trans fat out of McDonald's fries when you pry it from my cold, hard arteries." Mary added, "Julia Child herself proclaimed McDonald's fries the ne plus ultra. SO THERE." 'Nuff said. Mmmmm, 50-year-old chicken! Boy, y'know, there's nothing that quite says "Yummy!" like a canned chicken that's been in your cupboard since 1956. (Via Dave ... thanks!) It was part of a food basket given to Mancunian Les Lailey and his wife Beryl as a wedding gift, and he decided to eat it to celebrate their fifty years together. (Beryl, to her credit, wanted nothing to do with it.) Be sure to watch the video link entitled "Meet the man who scoffed a 50-year-old tin of chicken"; Dave noted that it feels very much as if it were scripted by Christopher Guest. Make sure you've got the Doblys turned on.) Cartoon of the day. This week's edition of Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World", in which Sparky and Republican Guy discuss whether the "innocent" have anything to worry about. [ Link to today's entries ]
The devastation tours. The Los Angeles Times, always good at keeping New Orleans on the front page frequently, yesterday ran an article about the "Devastation Bus Tours" that were controversial in New Orleans when first proposed. Some didn't want to turn destroyed neighborhoods into mere tourist attractions, but as it turns out, locals ride the bus, "saying it traverses a sadness that must be seen and shared." Cocktail of the day. My turn last night, and a long-overdue visit to a true classic. This cocktail goes as far back as the first-ever bartender's guide/cocktail recipe book, Professor Jerry Thomas' The Bon-Vivant's Companion, or How to Mix Drinks, first published in 1862. It's been called the drink that gave birth to the modern Martini, although it bears little resemblance these days; perhaps an ancestor would be a better description. Thing is, nobody after Thomas seemed to agree on a recipe. Thomas called for twice the amount of sweet vermouth as gin (which I'll try next), others called for twice the amount of gin. Patrick Gavin Duffy, in his seminal bar guide, called for dry vermouth instead of sweet, and whoever made that initial substitution in a Martinez pushed the drink on its way to being a Martini. I opted for a cross between two versions I found at CocktailDB.com, balancing the gin and the vermouth, which I wobbled by using a powerful vermouth -- Carpano Antica Formula, my favorite sweet vermouth (full of herbs, spices and bitter notes). I'll reproduce Professor Thomas' version as well, and we'll do that one tonight.
Now, the original version from 1862. A "pony" is one ounce, and we're interpreting the amount "a wineglass" to be two ounces.
We'll probably try this with the good old standby, Martini & Rossi. Boker's Bitters was a stomachic bitters which didn't survive the 19th Century, and seemed to be Professor Thomas' favorite. (Here's a scan of an old advertisement for Boker's Bitters from the New York Weekly Tribune, April 30, 1879.) Obviously you can't get it anymore, but you can make a quite reasonable facsimile with this recipe, a modern interpretation by Dr. Cocktail. Old Tom gin was a sweeter gin, and if you wish to approximate that add a couple dashes of simple syrup ("gum syrup" was simple syrup with gum arabic added). I like Martinis, but we shouldn't forget the Martinez, a great drink in its own right, and a nearly-forgotten cocktail that deserves recognition. Fiat lux. (That's "Let there be light," for all y'all who didn't have Latin in high school, which would include me.) It is astonishing that five months after Katrina, 66% of the structures in New Orleans still have no electricity, here in the Twenty-First Century. (We're living in the future now, kids of the Sixties and Seventies, but not only do we not have our personal jet packs, we also can't even restore electricity to a major American city five months after a natural disaster.) Some New Orleanians have begun to take matters into their own hands.
Whatever it takes. Mmmmm, sausages. GreggO forwarded this piece from Daily Candy L.A.:
That sounds really good. And at only 3 WeightWatchers points for 2 sausages, I can eat it without splurging. [ Link to today's entries ]
Quote of the day. Via Atrios.
Brilliant. Emeril's Delmonico.
Thanks to Chris Rose's Saturday, August 6, 2005. Life as we knew it in New Orleans was happy, and would continue to be so for another twenty-three days. I went with some good friends to Delmonico, and we had one of the best meals we'd had in ages, during one of the best trips home ever. (Click on the small pics for full-sized images.) 
We were greeted by one of the managers who, upon hearing that one of our party was a travel writers, quipped, "Okay, so which one o' y'all 'r we s'posed to suck up to?" Heh. While they did send out a couple of nice desserts without our ordering, I think that at Delmonico they pretty much suck up to everybody. We got that distinct impression upon receiving our amuse bouche, which they called a "Corn Dog" ... spicy veal sausage dipped in cornmeal batter, fried and served with rémoulade sauce. Gone in one bite, and absolutely delicious. We also got amuse-sized portions of one of their regular appetizers, Kataifi-Fried Louisiana Oyster with American Caviar and Leek Pearl Stew. Kataifi is shredded phyllo dough, which made for a perfect, unusual and delightful coating for da ersta; the "pearls" were tapioca, and the creamy leek broth was scented with Herbsaint. Oh my. Then we saw these go by, on their way to another table ... 
We! Must! Have! Those! Buttermilk Onion Rings, one of the side dishes availalbe à la carte. They were without a doubt the best onion rings I'd ever had; to quote my old college friend George Campos (hi, George!), "They were an intensely religious experience." (And George was only talking about the buttermilk onion rings at Popeye's. He would have ascended into Heaven after tasting these.) Onward ... to our actual appetizers. I didn't get to photograph everyone's; Keith and Andre were way across the table, and Nettie would likely stab me with her fork if I made her wait so I could get a picture (love ya, mean it!), but I did get a couple for posterity: 
That was Mary's Tomatoes "Three Ways" -- raw heirloom, with crème fraîche, dried with basil and balsamic syrup, and fried with rémoulade sauce and burrata mozzarella. 
I'm struggling to remember the exact menu description, but it was a Country-style Creole Pâté with marinated onions and house-made Creole mustard. This was great, and I'm glad everyone was willing to help me with it (so selfless, they were). 
My salad was Spinach and Arugula with Grilled Peach, Shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano and a Huckleberry Vinaigrette. And, of course, the Caesar Salad, with plenty of anchovy in the dressing, was prepared and served tableside. Then came entrée time. I was trying to behave myself, and by choosing what looked like the healthiest dish on the menu, I also ended up with one of the best, and one more typical of a fine ristorante in Italy than a classic Creole: 
This was a Whole Roasted Bronzino, a mild and delicately-flavored Mediterranean fish that's begun to pop up all over now and takes on other flavors very well, served with Fennel, Olives, Warm Pea Shoots, Green Tomato Chutney and Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Amazingly, wonderfully good, no sauce necessary, bursting with flavors. It was a pleasure to be served something this flavorful without having to worry about cream and butter and Hollandaise squeezing me out of my trousers this trip. Management relieved us of our agonizing decision over what dessert to order by having our waiters show up with this: 
Fresh out of the oven, still warm and gooey, these were ... well, the best chocolate chip cookies I'd ever had. They came accompanied with pint-sized old-fashioned glass milk bottles from a local dairy (Mauthe's, I think, but I may be wrong) filled with, of course, ice-cold milk. "Milk and Cookies", we were informed, was the dessert of the evening. But wait, there's more! 
Classic Crêpes Suzette, prepared tableside and flambée, served atop Pecan Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream. A perfect way to end a perfect meal, with spectacular service, and then we were carted off by the wait staff in Emerilware-branded wheelbarrows. (Okay, I made that last part up.) We chatted for a while with Shane Prichett, the chef de cuisine, immediately shifting into foodiespeak, and found out that he was One Of Us ... i.e., a pork fanatic. We began putting our heads together, and concocted a plan to reconvene at Delmonico in a few months' time for a special meal that Chef Shane would prepare for our table ...an all-pork extravaganza in several courses. It was tremendously exciting, and we were already so looking forward to it already by the time we got to our cars. Then on August 29, there was a massive change of plans ... for the entire city. We'll all be back during Jazzfest, and well in advance of those dates we'll call Chef Shane and see if he's still up for it. Until then ... if you have a chance to patronize any of Emeril's restaurants, do so. He deserves your support. I feel sullied for even having posted a link to that Chris Rose article yesterday, despite my skepticism. (I still think Chef oughta retire from TV and stay at the restaurants, though, where we need him.) Aide pour la Nouvelle-Orléans. If BushCo won't come through with the federal aid necessary to help rebuild the city, then perhaps the city should look elsewhere.
Sounds good to me. Whatever it takes. Vive la France! Vive la vie! VIVE L'AMOUR!! (*kissleftcheek*kissrightcheek*) Letters, they get letters, they get stacks and stacks of letters ... They, in this case, being New Orleans alternative paper Gambit Weekly (or, as it's referred to locally, "da Gambit"). The author, in this case, being Poppy Z. Brite, New Orleanian writer of mighty fine novels, short stories, essays and whatnot. Here's the letter (scroll down), with Poppy's own introduction from her journal, which sums up how a lot of my New Orleans friends and I feel about the subject:
Diana took the words right out of my mouth (or off the tips of my fingers, as it were) in email this morning: "Poppy rocks." Ain't dere no more: L.A. edition. I stumbled across a fun little page called Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More, although I think it's sometimes a stretch of the word "great". Perhaps the nostalgia elevates them in one's mind, but I'm sure they're sorely missed. I've been living in Los Angeles sine 1982, but I seem to have only made it to a few of these over the years ... Ship's, of course (love makin' my own toast at the table), Kelbo's (my friend Lou used to have a cat named Kelbo) and good ol' Woody's Smorgasburger. I also remember a place called New York George that we used to go to all the time, plus the legendary 24-hour coffeeshop/restaurant Nancy's in Westchester, just inside the border with Inglewood (I used to live right across the street when I first moved here). I'm sure I could think of more ... chime in, L.A. denizens. [ Link to today's entries ]
The grapefruit bitters experiment begins. I'd been keen on the idea of trying to make grapefruit bitters for a while, but seeing a recipe in the Times' article on bitters a couple of weeks ago inspired me to give it a whirl. The recipe was based on grapefruit peel and the bitter white pith, with only coriander as
a background flavor, steeped in Everclear. I tried to think of some other complementary flavors as I prepared the
ingredients, and consulted the handy-dandy flavor compatibility chart in Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page's excellent book
Culinary Artistry On my lunch hour last Friday I headed out to The Wine House, my favorite spirits-purchasing stop within a decently short drive from work. In the spirits section I ran into one of the staffers, who's seen me buying liquor there all the time, and he asked me if he could help me find something. "I'm looking for the dreaded Everclear," I said. He almost-successfully held back his expression of distaste (yeah bra, the guy you've seen in here buying 15-year-old George T. Stagg Bourbon, Amaro Nonino, Marolo Chamomile Grappa and both varieties of Chartreuse is going to go back to his dorm room and make Purple Jesuses, right). "We don't carry it," he replied, politely but curtly. A moment later I noticed a bottle of Wray and Nephew White Overproof Rum. Hmm. Almost the same proof as Everclear (151, in California, as apparently 190 proof Everclear isn't legal here; according to this label scan W&NOP used to be a 151), yet with something that Everclear lacks ... flavor. In fact, my recollection of the grapefruit entry in the flavor compatibility chart listed rum as one of the flavors with which it's particularly compatible. Might be more of an interesting flavor base, mightn't it? Let's give it a whirl, I thought, and at $17 not too expensive of an experiment. I wanted at least one more background flavor element, so in went about an inch of fresh ginger, peeled and julienned. My grapefruilts were large, and the amount of spirit called for in the original recipe didn't even cover all the ingredients, so I just added all the rest of the rum. Hell, if it turns out to be good I'll give some away. 
Studying the flavor charts a bit more ... I'm tempted to throw in a couple tablespoons of cashews too, maybe mid-week. Once the caramelized sugar goes in and I give it a semi-final taste, I might bring the proof down a little ... we'll see. In any case, I'll probably post my final/current version recipe early next week. Oh, and if any of you are trying the Times' grapefruit bitters experiment, either following their recipe or futzing around with it like I am, please post a comment and let me know! Stay in the kitchen. Oh dear. (I hadn't heard about this until the weekend.) Chris Rose in the Times-Picayune finds himself outraged at something Chef Emeril was allegedly quoted as having said to a gossip columnist in the New York Post:
First off ... this is the New York Post, people. It doesn't have to be true for them to print it. Then again, they do claim it's a quote, and I don't think Chef is denying he said it, but that it's not what he meant. Sigh. I've heard many different things about Emeril since the flood, and I've done my best to give him the benefit of the doubt. Some good friends of mine have good friends who work for Emeril, and their initial reports (when Brett Anderson in the T-P was still crowing "Where is Emeril?") were that he had been really good to his employees, writing them each a personal check for $1500 to help them get by while the restaurants were closed. Then I read somewhere else that everyone in his New Orleans restaurnats had been laid off (something which the Brennans very pointedly did not do). Then I heard that only some were laid off and others moved around to his other restaurants around the country. Nobody in the local media can seem to get their stories straight, and that the only thing they demonstrate is their desire to cut him down. Whatever the case is, if Emeril really said that, then he needs to apologize to locals for saying our city is dead, and everyone needs to move on. He needs to get Delmonico open soon ('cause it's a great restaurant), help the locals realize that he still has something to offer the city, has been doing so for 20 years and still will in the future. (Locals who feel insulted need to remember that everyone's stressed, that they liked his places before, and they just get over it and start eating at his restaurants again and, as Dave pointed out, turn the other cheek when slapped, no matter how inadvertently they were slapped.) Rose does make a good point -- if Emeril is complaining that he doesn't have many customers, then why is every other restaurant in town packed, with 90-minute waits for a table not uncommon? He also needs to stop talking to gossip columnists, stay off of TV and start cooking again. I've had some of the best meals of my life in his restaurants and hope to have more, but I swear ... I don't ever need to see another goddamn episode of "Emeril Live" again. I'd love nothing more than to see him in his restaurants every night, giving his personal care and supervision to the food and to his New Orleans customers, who should be coming first right now. Besides, they probably have more than enough episodes of "Emeril Live" to rerun every day for the rest of our lives. Do what you do best, Chef. Cook. They'll come back, and the city will too. UPDATE: Michael rips Rose's column to shreds in the comments, reposted herewith:
Thanks for posting that. I'm really glad to hear all this, and glad that it's about as much bullshit as everything else that comes out of the Post. I was loath to quote more of the Rose article, as it seemed so over the top. (Man, if Rose is running all this based on something a gossip columnist only thought she overheard, then building a smear campaign on it, he's screwed.) What you've described having heard from locals who actually work for him bears little to no resemblance to what keeps cropping up in local media, which makes me wonder what they've got against him. I'm also glad to hear he's back in the kitchen full time, and I hope this means that the Food Network stuff is over for the foreseeable future. Last time I dined at Delmonico was on August 6, 2005 -- about three weeks before Katrina. It was fabulous. (I'll post pictures soon.) We'd also struck a deal with Chef Shane for him to cook us a special all-pork menu next time we were all in town together, and I really hope we can still pull it off. [ Link to today's entries ]
Life in New Orleans. This email was forwarded to me from Mary, and before that from her sister Deb; I don't know how many forwards came before that. I don't know the author, Karin Giger, and I hope she doesn't mind my posting this. I think it deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible. Someone should forward it to every politician they know, and to the White House. A fair bit of this I already knew from family and friends in the city, but you may not be aware of some things, like nearly nonexistend 911 service, slow police response, and a shocking dearth of hospital beds. Katrina hit over five months ago, and this is the State of the City. As Mary put it, "This is the sort of thing that people should be marching on D.C. about, POUNDING on doors, demanding aid. This is a major American city? Do the Libertarians really think life is better if we just have private fire and police departments? Are they willing to go and live in New Orleans this way? We need to talk levee repair, yes, but this sort of thing SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED."
Thank you, Karin. Now ... copy, paste and start forwarding. The new House majority leader. Via Steve M, this was posted at the weblog of the National Jewish Democratic Council, entitled "Ten Things Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner". I'd scratch out the word "Jew" from that title (and yes NJDC, I know you're speaking to your specific demographic) because every American should know this, period.
Lest we forget, this is the guy who once passed out checks from big tobacco on the floor of the House. When he walks into the House gym, everybody swivels their heads and says, "Good lord, would you look at the size of that guy's taint! As one of NJDC's later entries said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." The Cindy Sheehan arrest. Undoubtedly you've read about it ... anti-war activist Sheehan was invited to the SOTU by a member of the House and was removed, arrested and held for over four hours simply for wearing a t-shirt that said, "2,244 Dead. How Many More?". Around the same time, the wife of a Republican congressman was removed (but not arrested or held) for wearing a t-shirt saying "Support Our Troops". There are, of course, major First Amendment issues at play here. Several excellent points were made by Glenn Greenwald, beginning with why the arrest was disgraceful:
This, sadly, terrifyingly, is nothing new, from a president who made people sign loyalty oaths to attend his campaign rallies, and whose stooges refused entry to said rallies to Americans who happened to have a peace symbol bumpersticker on their cars. He goes on to point out that "self-correcting blogosphere" doesn't seem to be able to self-correct terribly well over on the right:
The examples he cited were, sadly, typical. Finally, at the same link he reminds us that if we needed any further proof that the odious Michelle Malkin is "one of the most un-American, liberty-hating, disturbing creatures around," he cites what he describes as a "rancid" post of hers in which "she calls for Rep. Lynn Woolsey to be barred from inviting anyone to such speeches in the future because someone she invited wore a t-shirt which was critical of The Leader." This is, sadly, typical of her gorge-rising extremism. (I've omitted his link, because I will never send traffic from here to her site, just as I would never invite you to wade in a latrine pit.) Bush creates cabinet position to coordinate scandals. From The Onion, via Kos. Heeeee.
Finally, we've found something good in the SOTU. It's what they've really needed all along. [ Link to today's entries ]
Photo of the day. Johnathan Rice, at Club Spaceland, Silverlake, last Tuesday, January 31. 
He was superb. Jazzfest is on! Like we didn't think it would be. I had faith all along. However, it was just a couple of days ago that it was offically announced that the 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is taking place on its usual dates, April 28 - May 5, 2006. 
So far, the only artist announced on the roster is our beloved Fats Domino, who is also the subject of this year's Jazzfest poster, painted by local artist James Michalopoulos. (The poster's great, too, but ... well, I know Michalopoulos love to paint the Quarter, and I do love his paintings, but I kinda wish the painting had featured Fats in front of his well-known home in the Lower Ninth Ward. I guess maybe 'cause his home ain't dere no more -- it's standing, but ruined -- and the Quarter's going strong, it makes sense. Still ... well, I'm gettin' one anyway.) I've also heard some inside information that the Dave Matthews Band and Jimmy Buffett will be there (ho-hum, but whatever gets people in the door and spesnding money). Also, for the first time, there's a presenting sponsor: Shell Oil. I suppose this means that we'll keep hearing it announced as "The 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, presented by Shell." As much as I viscerally react to such a thing, the truth is that this is the only thing that's making it happen this year. "In light of the great financial challenges of presenting the 2006 Festival on the grand scale everyone is accustomed to, we simply could not have produced Jazz Fest without unprecedented corporate support from Shell, who becomes the Festival's first-ever Presenting Sponsor," said Quint Davis, the fest's longitme producer/director. It's at the Fair Grounds as usual, but there will be some changes this year -- only 10 stages instead of 12 (okay, that's cool) and they're eliminating the Thursday from the second weekend (um, not as cool, as I always loved that Thursday, which was more geared toward locals, but okay). Quint has reportedly been talking to huge mainstream rock acts to act as draws for crowds, which has always to me seemed antithetical to the spirit and roots of Jazzfest, but again, this year, whatever we can do to get live bodies to the Fair Grounds, fair play to ya. Rumored names have included The Rolling Stones, U2 and Bruce Springsteen ... man, I have to say, I'd love to see The Boss there. Or Bono doing a duet with Aaron in the Gospel Tent. (Quint, of course, says don't believe any false rumors unless you hear them from him.) That's all well and good, but my main concern is to get as many New Orleans musicians back and on the schedule as possible. What about all the gig-to-gig jazz players? What about all the gospel choirs, many of whom undoubtedly lived in neighborhoods that were devastated? (I remember the Crownseekers being from the Westbank, so we can hope they're all okay.) I don't really care who else is there, as long as we get as many local musicians back as possible. And I don't care how many people are in front of that stage or how long I have to camp out in front of it, I wanna see Fats Domino. Get your ticket in your haaaaand ... you gonna go to New Orleans ...RIP, Bucktown. Now for the depressing news of the day ...
It's so goddamn sad ... The Cocktailian, and more. In today's edition of Gary Regan's fortnightly column, the Professor, our cocktailian bartender, whips up a prizewinning drink where sherry turns pears into pearls ... sherry, tequila and pear liqueur, that is. (Mmmm. That sounds good.) Gary's also got a new article in the current issue of Wine Enthusiaist about updated classic cocktails, in which some bartenders are "breathing new life" into old chestnuts. While I don't think that longtime and wonderful classics like the Sidecar are in need of mouth-to-mouth, some of these look pretty interesting. Sona Restaurant in West Hollywood adds a bit of maraschino and a dash of Angostura Bitters to their Sidecars, Prime Grill in Manhattan adds a pony of pomegranate juice (the trendy new cocktail ingredient) to their juleps, Zengo Restaurant in D.C. muddles a cucumber with their Mojito, and Dylan Prime in New York boosts their Collins with a little Limoncello. The wackiest (and perhaps most fascinating) is described at the end of the article, and I'll let you find that yourself. Hey, it's no wackier than my friend Michael's bacon-garnished Martini, which he says is actually pretty darn good. The Music Game for February (Pt. 1)
I guess we'll keep it up until All right Lance, you know how our game is played! I turn on my iPod and set it to random shuffle. I then write down the first line of lyrics from each of the first 25 songs that come up. (Instrumental pieces, and most songs that give away the title in the first line are skipped.) Y'all then guess the title and artist, and I then strike out songs as they are correctly identified. As usual, don't worry too much about the artist if it's something that's covered by multiple artists. Another pretty good batch ... a couple of them might be pretty difficult, except perhaps for at least one semi-regular reader who lives in Galway. (Hiya Brendan!) Hey, maybe I'll even have something for whoever guesses the most songs. And awaaaaaay we go ...
Now, where did I leave that year's supply of Lee Press-on Nails? Cartoon of the day. In this morning's email, from Audrey. Sad but true. 
Grow. A. Goddamn. Spine. [ Link to today's entries ]
Forty-three minutes. What is the state of our union? Well, among other things, a major American city lies in ruins after the worst natural disaster in American history, 80% of its homes having been rendered all or mostly uninhabitable. 70% of its population is still displaced. Homes, lives, businesses have been uprooted. Its importance to the culture and economy is without doubt; its future is uncertain. How long was it before the president of the United States made even an oblique reference to this situation in the State of the Union address? Forty-three minutes. Before he got to New Orleans, he spent about the first 1/3 of the speech on the war, launching right into 9/11, terr'r, terr'r, terr'r. He brazenly defended his illegal warrantless wiretapping program, too.
Illegal warrantless wiretaps could have prevented 9/11? Um, not quite.
Conveniently leaving out the fact that he authorized this action to specifically bypass the secret court that had been specifically establishesd as a check on presidential surveillance power, in which a judge must be convinced that there's reasonable cause to surveil someone, that the president is not just surveilling anyone he wants, and these judges almost always say yes.
What about the surveillance data the FBI has gathered on tens of thousands of innocent Americans who have nothing to do with Al Quida? While he might be not be terribly concerned with domestic freedom, he's keen on freedom abroad:
"What about China?!" I demanded of the radio. Ah, we can't mention China -- America's banker! -- in that context these days. I'm glad he got to all the really important things first, too:
"Human-animal hybrids"? Human-animal hybrids?! You've got to be fucking kidding me. I wasn't aware that one of the most grievous and imminent threats to America was that we're in danger of turning into a big Island of Dr. Moreau. Forget Osama, we're apparently about to be besieged by Hyena-Swine and the Pig Lady. "To go on two legs is very hard. Perhaps four is better, anyway." Watch out, or the 44th president will call himself Sayer of the Law. Forty-three minutes. After all that. After human-animal hybrids. Heaping insult upon injury. And it was done in this context:
Actually, abortion rates were at a 24-year low under President Clinton, and have risen steadily under Bush. But then he goes on ...
Let's see ... crooked politicians, eww-icky-queers getting married, wayward children, hundreds of thousands of American refugees from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and sick people. As the NPR anchor pointed out last night, one of these things is not like the others. I don't suppose Mr. Bush has watched "Sesame Street". Several minutes later, he finally mentioned New Orleans by name:
Well, two actual mentions. A little less oblique than before, but still passing mentions. And then there's that $85 billion again, the money he talked about in the press conference, something that "those people down in that part of the world" had better realize is "a lot." Anybody seen any of that, by the way? Stronger levees, too, already? As Da Po' Blog mentions, that amount seems to include $18 billion in "flood insurance and other assistance". Um. "I didn't know that paying out flood insurance claims was optional. I just assumed this money was coming anyway, being that people with flood insurance pay every month to have it. Even though Congress had to vote to allow FEMA to borrow the money, I don't count this as money appropriated by Congress. So, if that is where Bush gets his extra $18 billion dollars from, I don't buy it." The initial reaction in New Orleans? Not so good.
Nothing about coastal wetlands and barrier islands either. George Bush doesn't care about New Orleans, Louisiana or the Gulf Coast, and his mere passion mention of the destruction of a major American city, displacement of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the disgraceful lack of effective federal response to the disaster verges on criminal. Oh, and the Democratic response? Not one word about New Orleans, only this: "Our federal government should serve the American people. But that mission is frustrated by this Administration?s poor choices and bad management. Families in the Gulf Coast see that, as they wait to rebuild their lives. Americans who lose their jobs see that, as they look to rebuild their careers. And our soldiers in Iraq see that, as they try to rebuild a nation." (Oh, and that was only one of two passing mentions of Iraq.) Well, screw y'all, too. Steve M. summarized the address in email last night:
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America. (If I had played any of those SOTU dirnking games, I'd have been shitfaced in the first five minutes.) More from Da Po' Blog here, here and here; from Oyster (do NOT miss his post ... here's an excerpt:)
More from Schroeder, Ian, Michael at 2 Millionth, The Rude Pundit and the Washington Post, which lists the inaccuracies in the speech. More reactions from NOLA. Superb political writer John Maginnis:
James Gill, in a Times-Picayune editorial:
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, in the Times-Picayune:
One has to wonder if David Vitter and Bobby Jindal actually listened to the same speech, or perhaps they don't exactly have both feet in the reality-based community. The 18-and-1/2-minute gap, redux. The ghost of Rose Mary Woods is still with us. Via Josh, we learn that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has learned "that many e-mails from Cheney?s office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy." I'm sure it was accidental. (Psst. Make it look like an accident.) Arnie's broke! From today's Los Angeles Times:
Aw. Poor thing. Bless his heart. (Time to make Terminator 4 or Maria's going to have to go back to work.) January Looka! entries have been permanently archived. [ Link to today's entries ]
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That chart, dozens of pages long, is absolutely indispensible in my kitchen (and apparently in the kitchens of many
professional chefs as well), listing compatible flavor match combinations between myriad ingredients.
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