Noteworthy in Nola » Nola Nuts

Preservation Hall Hot 4: St. James Infirmary

Tess — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:02:09 +0000

This is pretty amazing- I haven’t stopped to count how many references there are for things past and present around town, but it’s well worth a look n’ listen.

Also, a good reminder that it’s been too long since I’ve been to Preservation Hall…

HT to Michelle for passing it on.Similar Posts:

Why we Stay, Pt II

Tess — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:08:45 +0000

Why do we stay in New
Orleans? Part 2
By Charles Burck, Special to the Beacon
Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 September 2008 )

According to news reports we heard while battened down in our home for Hurricane Gustav, some 10,000 of us had stayed behind — less than 5 percent of the city’s population. Hmmm, don’t the Hell’s Angels call themselves the 5 percenters? Do we stay because we’re closet outlaws?

We now break from our regularly scheduled post to note that the St. Louis Beacon has emailed to request I take the piece down. I assumed that as Charlie had donated his time to write this, it was public domain, and having left their website addy there would be sufficient.

Apparently not, so my bad. Apologies all around.

Link to full text of part II here.
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Getting back to normal/ “Why we stay,” pt I

Tess — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:06:52 +0000

Okay, so Gustav and Ike have both moved on, and while we keep our eye on the tropics and Texas in our minds, I want to pass something along that Charlie wrote in the 24 hours following Gustav.

Link: St. Louis Beacon

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Krewe of Boo

Tess — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:54:49 +0000

Blaine Kern, love him or loathe him, is the creator of 90% of the Mardi Gras floats in the city and is a larger-than-life local character. He calls himself “Mr. Mardi Gras,” but in the last year he’s expanded into Halloween, creating a huge haunted house that was voted one of the top 5 in the country.

Well, this year he’s taking it one step further, creating the Krewe of Boo, a club and parade to roll on Halloween to benefit the first responders in New Orleans. They had several of the floats out on the floor when I brought our company over to Mardi Gras World, and I have to say they’re pretty cool…

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You really can’t be out of touch for a single weekend…

Tess — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:37:18 +0000

…cause you never know what you’ll totally miss.

How did I not know about this?

Monday night I stopped at J’anita’s on Magazine for some kickass bbq and they still had these notices on the counter.

An ‘erotic art rock n’ roll circus?’ The mind boggles. And, flipping it over to read the description of the planned activities, the mind…boggles some more:

Glory holes for all ages? And what, pray tell, is an “Ariel act?” Is the little mermaid going to come out and perform for the Erotic circus? And even assuming they meant ‘aerial’ act, I can only imagine what sorts of body parts were flying around on the trapeze.

I googled it to try and become enlightened. There’s a livejournal entry from one of the artists and not much more. I guess we’ll just have to wait a year and see if it’s an annual event.Similar Posts:

Saving us from ourselves on Bourbon Street

Tess — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:33:56 +0000

Aside from the bars, music and expected craziness on Bourbon Street, there are often those trying to save us from ourselves. Some are quiet, and want to talk calmly to you about your transgressions and win you over with the peace of Christ.

Some are there to hold prayer sessions in the middle of the street, volubly praying for them what knows no better.

But for sheer entertainment value my favorites by far are the out-and-out loons.

Let’s see who’s going to hell on the aptly named “Krazy Korner:”

(BTW, I do so love that the one guy took the time to alphabetize his list. Apparently OCDers are safe from the fires of hell.)

It really is an interesting list…

Some are straight forward- idolaters, abortionists, adulterers, and the blanket label “fornicators”- these are all to be expected on the express lane to hell.

But others…not so obvious. Sports nuts? Did some football widow come up with that one? And they REALLY don’t like Catholics- they make it onto both banners while agnostics, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses only make it once each. Pill poppers? What, any pills or just specific ones?

Why is it that I think they feel anyone not in their group to be a ‘luke warm Christian?’

But the one that gave me pause was “revelers.” Does God have something against revelry in general? I don’t remember that one. Plus it seems we’re getting on shaky ground here…after all, they were having a damn good time doing this out in the middle of a party zone. Couldn’t they, in their sad little way, be considered to be reveling?

Just a thought.Similar Posts:

Crowley, Louisiana

Tess — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:46:11 +0000

On our brief tour through southwestern Louisiana, we stopped in Crowley while we waited for a crawfish place in the next town to open for dinner. Charlie actually would have liked to tour a rice farm and/or processing plant (it’s a guy thing), but there were no such immediately apparent establishments.

Instead, we just drove around. It’s a nice little town with some interesting touches.

This certainly got my attention more than a typical neighborhood watch sign.

The streetsigns are still in both English and French…

And then we ran into this odd car. Charlie got went to take a closer look, and saw the owner was sitting under his carpark, repairing his accessories. It’s something that was put together for a charity, and he drives in all the parades. He’s always accepting donations- both for the car and for the charity.

What most surprised me was a) How many commercially recognizable items there were (likely from Happy Meals and suchlike) and b) How many vaguely naughty ones there were. Ah well. I guess we all contribute our own unique talents.

We left behind $5 for the car and $5 for the charity. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.
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St. Patrick’s with the Uber Goddess

Tess — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:20:20 +0000

The St. Patrick’s Day parade was this Saturday, and I’m just now getting around to the photos-but not becuase I got so drunk I couldn’t function.

Seriously! No laughing! I’m mildly embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a single drink the whole day. I didn’t even watch the floats this year. Instead, I functioned as the gang’s facilitator, thus having the title of Uber Goddess very kindly bestowed upon me. (Accent charcter was throwing off some browsers, so I have to be umlaut-less, I’m afraid.)

Hey, you bring a bunch of guys extra beer and beads and their ‘goddess’ standards aren’t as high as they might be, what can I say? There’s no chance of it going to my head, though. I’ve got a 16 year old, remember. I told her about it and she laughed so hard I thought she was going to pee herself.

I volunteered for duty, but hadn’t really considered a few basic things:
1) It was HOT. Low 80s, but it was the first hot one of the season and seemed traumatic.
2) Beads are heavy.
3) Beer is heavier.

It was, of course, a hell of a fun day. Too much was drunk by (almost) everyone concerned, and the guys looked great in their kilts- Charlie’s going to have to get one for next year. At least the kilted ones had a little ventilation going on…lol

Here’s the gang that Chris Horrell has gathered in front of St. Alphonsus’ church before they set out.

Lots more photos after the jump, and also in the main gallery.

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NOLA projects, con’t. ( a long rant. Sorry.)

Tess — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:32:53 +0000

Well, I’d thought I might go down and see the progress down at CJ Peete today, but there isn’t any.

First there was a stop-work order put in place until the City Council fully approved their demolition. Okay, fine- that should’ve been done previously, anyway. It’s the law, go for it.

But now there’s a letter on Bush’s desk to stop the work, and I could scream- largely because I’m pretty liberal overall, and these people give liberals a bad name.

I mean, really. Do these people look to you like they have day one experience in the realities of the most notorious public housing projects in the country?

(pic courtesy of the T-P)

No, these are not the displaced poor. They’re the children of affluent parents (Loyola students, y’all- $37k a year) who want to feel like they’re helping the world.

I get that, really, I do.

But when you look around at your protest, in your jammies and your Santa hats, don’t you wonder why the residents aren’t there with you? Don’t you look at the decay and wonder who in their right mind would want to live there? I guess your prof hasn’t shared the horrendous crime stats with you, or the even higher teen pregnancy rates within them.

Here are some facts.

These buildings were condemned pre-Katrina- they’ve been sitting vacant, open to the elements for years now, rotting away.
Even without that rot, these buildings are a mess- they contain asbestos, lead paint and every other nasty thing the rest of us have pried out of their homes long ago
Almost NONE of the protesters are from here- they’ve come in at the behest of a few local professors who are stirring the pot.
These profs do not, have not, will not be residents of these hellholes.
98% of these protesters were not, have not, will not be residents of these hellholes.
There are hundreds of immediately available section-8 housing units within the city. Anyone eligible to live in these projects can waltz in and have a unit tomorrow.
They would cost more to repair than replace- and if each unit were put back just as it was, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people to fill them.
This is a big one, and not one you’ve likely heard, so I’ll shout: Brand-spanking new, cleaner, greener public housing is going up in their places. Larger individual units in mixed- income settings- no more ‘warehousing’ of the poor, as has been the standard.
I do think that some of the buildings themselves- the oldest ones- should be preserved, They were well built and are architecturally significant- but most of these were built later and with little concern for aesthetics. The history of the city loses nothing and gains everything, since the new housing is going to emulate the historical styles of the neighborhoods.

I’m not even going to touch the issue of housing the homeless there- they might be better off on the street, for one thing- at least the sky won’t fall down on their heads.Similar Posts:

Speaking of funerals…

Tess — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:10:38 +0000

Had one to go to yesterday, sadly, for my friend Jazz’s uncle. She cared for him, bringing him food and generally running errands.

Naturally, it’s all really sad, but…he was 85. He died surrounded by his big family, and you can’t do much better than that.

So. The service:

First off, there are the programs- before moving here I’d never seen anything more elaborate than Mass & Prayer cards, but these are a different animal altogether. I had a pile of these dropped on me last year when I was asked if I could put together a program for a neighbor who’d died. I tried to change the format a bit to…um…condense. I was kindly (but in a brooking-no-nonsense tone) told to get it back on track and make it look similar (but better, if you could, because, you know, people notice).

Things you’re likely to find in a program: The full obit, many photos of the deceased, including in their coffin, long long lists of relatives left behind, texts of psalms, personalized poetry.

Here’s that first one I did- pretty typical, overall. No coffin photo, though. (Thankfully.)

Then, there are the souvenirs. Not so much with the older generation, but the young ‘uns often have memorial tee shirts and/or dogtags.

The services are very personalized- even though I was there in support of my friend, having never even met her Uncle, I left there feeling like I knew him- and although it wasn’t the case in this funeral, you often get to hear the bad with the good:

“He was a menace on the road when he got that Alzheimer’s but refused to stop driving.”
“She never did know when it was time to stop eating.”
“As long as his temper wasn’t up he would do anything for you.”

There’s usually a choir complete with an Amen Corner- and they do get down, sometimes rather unconventionally. Yesterday I actually took out a pen to write down the lyrics to one of the songs (I don’t think I can actually call it a ‘hymn.’ ‘hmmmmm,’ maybe…). I knew that if I didn’t write it down, then look at the words there as they sang the refrain, I would either forget or decide I’d imagined it*:

Can’t nobody do me like Jesus.
Can’t nobody do me like the Lord.
He’s my friend, my friend.

And everybody talks to you. And hugs you. Yesterday, an elderly man came up to us and introduced himself as Charlie. After offering his condolences (awkward, since I didn’t actually know the deceased), he informed us that he was 77, and he’d been playing the organ since he was 7. Every phrase was punctuated by a huge smile, made especially sparkly thanks to his golden grille.

Boy, oh boy, did he play. He didn’t want to stop- Charlie did each song in his own way, and added a little organ solo at the end of each one, complete with a Little Richard-esque arm-waving flourish at the end.

A little more than two hours later and it was over. played a song I first heard in the Steve Martin movie “Leap of Faith,” and thought it was just part of the screenplay. Nope, turns out it’s a real song:

Hey, Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want
Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want
Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want
You can call Him up and tell Him what you want

His line ainâ€™t never busy, tell Him what you want
His line ainâ€™t never busy, tell Him what you want
His line ainâ€™t never busy, tell Him what you want
Go on, call Him up and tell Him what you want

*Possibly the most amazing thing was that when I Googled the lyrics, I discovered that there are several songs with that phrase.
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