Okay, finally! The Looka! Cocktail Index is now complete. Well, caught up, that is. Every cocktail post from 10 years of manually coded weblog has been tediously and painstakingly imported into WordPress (with the exception of two or three really shitty recipes for boring vodka cocktails from the old old days, and if you want those you’re going to have to obsessively dig for them).

The running total so far: 315 cocktail recipes in the index, plus 49 51 more that are multiples within a single post. We haven’t yet figured how to get the AZIndex plugin to create two separate index entries that point to one post; Marleigh’s waiting to hear from the developer. When we do figure it out, that’ll bring the cocktail index up to 364 listed recipes. New cocktail recipe posts will be automatically added to the index.

Despite the tedium I really did enjoy going through all those old posts again, and there are some drinks I forgot about that we’ll now revisit — that’ll be fun. Enjoy randomly clicking through them, as there are tons of things you won’t find in cocktail guides, like original recipes by our bartender friends near and far. (Oh, and there’s one joke in there, but it’s pretty obvious.)

I truly apologize for the barrage in your RSS feeds. I thought that backdated posts wouldn’t show up in the feed as new, but of course, WordPress had to make me look like a jackass and feed them anyway. I’ve gotten some good feedback, that some of you enjoyed seeing them go by, at least. I hope it wasn’t too bad for the rest of you. Posting will now resume at its previous intermittent rate (i.e., when I feel like it and when Wesly finally gets around to another one).

Wow … I think this weblog transition is actually kinda almost done.

Last night I cheered until my throat was raw.

The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl!!

I just want to keep saying that.

The New Orleans Saints have won the Super Bowl!!!!

A friend reported from home that the French Quarter was “one big screaming beery orgasm.” Yeah you rite!

“It meant so much more than football,” said Bruce Nolan in the Times-Picayune.

It meant victory for a recovering city that in some places still bears the dirty water lines of Hurricane Katrina. Victory for people who lived two years in trailers. Victory for new post-Katrina friends who fell in love with New Orleans rebuilding it. Victory for New Orleanians cheering in exile from Alaska to Miami. Victory on Facebook and on Twitter. Victory on Bourbon Street, on Caffin Avenue, in Chalmette, in Lakeview and St. Tammany.

Not only that, Mitch Landrieu won the New Orleans mayoral election on Saturday, in a landslide of 66%. The countdown begins to May 31, whereafter C. Ray Asshat is exiled to the Land of Nod forever.

Not only that, it’s the last full week of Carnival, and Mardi Gras is in nine days.

This will be a very good nine days.

Today’s agenda:

1) Get up.
2) Make a pot of Community Coffee & Chicory.
3) Chill Abita Turbodog and Purple Haze.
4) Heat red beans.
5) Wait for the Super Bowl to start.

In the meantime, here’s a song to listen to, which comes from my old 1983 45rpm single. Sung by Aaron Neville, it’s “Who Dat? (History of the Saints)”, the one I posted the lyrics to the other day. I’ll leave it up for a few days. Listen, sing along, and …

WHO DAT!!!!!!!!!

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I’m sure Buddy D and Ashley are watching the game together.

In case the NFL hadn’t noticed, we’ve been singing and chanting “WHO DAT!” for years, and the first Who Dat song came along in 1983, basically a version of Aaron Neville singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” with a chorus of football players chanting “Who dat sayin’ dey gonna beat dem Saints? WHO DAT? WHO DAT?” … comme ça:

Better than that was a new song based on “The Saints” but with new lyrics, written and produced by Carlo Nuccio. I’ve got it at home on a 45rpm single but unfortunately I can’t find that anywhere in a public place where you can listen to it. Here are the lyrics, and extra points go to those who can get the references without clicking the links:

Oh when the Saints first came to town
When The Great McNutt and Morgus was around
When interest rates just had one number
That’s when that Who Dat fever came to town

Who could forget old Archie Who?
And who dat kicked twice as far with with half his shoe
And Willow Street could not believe the numbers
That came to scream and shout and whoop.

Do you recall dem Aints? Now that’s a drag
80,000 people all wearing bags
Yeah 80,000….did you hear that number
If they could just beat Atlanta I’d be glad.

Then one day along came a Bum
With some ideas that seemed to work where he come from
Well I’ll say this, he did improve the numbers
We thought for sure our day had come.

They had these rumors going round
It said dem Saints was gonna leave dat Who Dat town
But the Who Dats came out in numbers
They sure turned that idea around.

Now the Who Dats are dancing again
They do the Benson Boogie every time they win
Now everybody’s singing WHO DAT!
They know they’re gonna boogie again.

Because the New Orleans Saints are winners!
Now everybody sing along.

Oh when the Saints go marchin’ in
Oh when the Saints go marchin’ in
Oh I wanna be in dat numbah
When da Saints go marchin’ in …

WHO DAT SAYIN’ DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS!
WHO DAT! WHO DAT!

Now Carlo Nuccio has given us a new Saints song, “Glory Bound,” with the stupendously fabulous Theresa Andersson on lead vocals, with Aaron Neville once again providing the “Saints” chorus. It’s available from the Louisiana Music Factory, or via download from CDBaby or iTunes. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the song will go to the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, providing health care for hundreds of uninsured New Orleans musicians.

Preview the song below, and have a look at the official video:

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Just back from another visit to Houston (my stupendous nephew Thomas just turned 3!), and as is my wont it included a visit to one of my favorite bars, the stupendous Anvil Bar & Refuge. It was an even rarer treat this time, as my sister got to come with me — I hadn’t gotten to take her to a bar since well before the kids were born, and my brother-in-law kindly volunteered to stay home with the kids (the fact that he had to work from home that night was a factor as well). “It’s 7:15 and I’m driving away from my house with no children, and going to a bar!!” It makes me happy to facilitate the occasional boozy evening out for the mother of a two-year-old and a three-year-old.

On my previous Anvil visits I got to hang out with bartender/co-owner Bobby Heugel and have him take me through Anvil’s always challenging and exciting menu. This time Bobby was in South Africa, happily swilling Pinotage and having a well-deserved vacation, and behind the stick this was Justin Burrow, one of the other Anvil crew who I finally got to meet at Tales last year. Justin took great care of us on a busier-than-usual Sunday night, as he and his crew accommodated not only the usual locals but the entire cast of the touring production of “Miss Saigon,” who are performing in Houston at the moment and who descended on the bar en masse.

The first drink on the new seasonal menu that caught my eye was the one with the most unusual mix of ingredients — Batavia Arrack, Strega, Falernum and lime. Wow, now that’s a combination I hadn’t thought of, and I immediately ordered one. My sister said, “The only one of those ingredients I’ve ever heard of is lime!” whereupon Justin very kindly poured a little sip of each ingredient into a glass for her to taste, “a deconstructed version.”

If you’re not familiar with these ingredients either … Batavia Arrack is a sugar cane-based spirit also made with fermented Indonesian red rice, and is a basic component of Swedish Punsch. Strega is an Italian herbal liqueur with over 70 herbs and spices (the yellow color coming from saffron), and falernum is a sweetining and flavoring syrup originating in Barbados with flavors of almond, ginger, clove and lime. It’s frequently non-alcoholic, but this particular incarnation, John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum, is 11% abv. Melissa tasted each one … “Ooh, that’s funky,” to the arrack; “Wow, that’s really complex,” to the Strega; “Um, I’m draining this – you don’t get any” to the falernum. Hmm, guess I’ll have to buy her a bottle.

Justin explained that they had been doing inventory at the end of the year and there was an excess of arrack, Strega and falernum, and they wondered what they’d do with it as none of the drinks on the Anvil 100 call for them, and the current seasonal menu didn’t either. Justin started mixing, using the Last Word as a template, and lo and behold … they worked together beautifully.

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