Recent activities.

Meals at: Cochon (fried chicken livers with pepper jelly, duck and dumplings); Cafe Degas (blanquette de veau); Maurepas (all kinds of stuff, but especially the delicious Spicy Lemongrass Grilled Shrimp with Strawberry Glazed Pork Ribs and Strawberry Crab Kimchee created by a local high school student; and pizza from Domenica, a sandwich from the Milk Bar, and pork-and-slaw tacos from Juan's, and a crawfish sausage with crawfish etoufee on top from Dat Dog. Oh yeah, and the Louisiana Oyster Jubilee, where I ate a few slivers of a block-long oyster po-boy.


At the the Circle Bar I sawFilligar, a very energetic band that could stand to trim their songs a bit. At the the Sugar Mill I saw a pretty rocking show:

The Alabama Shakes rocked the roof off, Michael Kiwanuka is a seriously groovy dude, and I liked Sam Doores, Riley Downing and the Tumbleweeds more than I like most country music.

To nerd it up, I went to "Text, Drugs, and Protocol," an archaeology lecture about medieval medical textbooks. It's easy to think that they didn't know anything in the dark ages, but by accident or not they actually stumbled across some effective treatments. If I get bored and can find access, the Journal of Ethnopharmacology could make for some interesting reading.

The Italian-American Marching Club St. Joseph's Day parade, featuring, you guessed it, Frank Stallone:

And I attended the Irish Channel St. Patrick's Day parade, too. All in all, a good week and a half.

This week in infrastructure.

1) Fire at the Sewerage & Water Board plant leads to drop in water pressure, leads to boil-water order for a little over a day.
2) Building collapses on decent Thai restauraunt.
3) I attended a meeting about the plan to build a streetcar spur along Rampart and St. Claude from Canal to Elysian Fields. Takeaways: still in planning phase; aim to have construction done in third quarter 2015; first step in extending it in stages to Press, then Poland, then the parish line; people have lots of opinions.

Gluttony, late February/early March.

2/22/13: Dinner at Mat and Naddies. Roasted banana and chicken Clemenceau, both delicious.

2/23/13: Pizza from Naked Pizza. Reliable as always.

2/25/13: Lunch at The Bon Ton Cafe. I had the Oysters Alvin, fried oysters over dirty rice, with a beef broth and mushrooms. Also bread pudding. As good as it sounds.
Dinner at Domenica. I wanted to try the lamb ravioli, which I haven't had before, but they were out so I got the stracci again. Still delicious, but so rich.

2/26/13: Dinner again at Domenica. This time I just had the tutto carne pizza. I think I have been a snob about Domenica's pizza before, but it's growing on me. The crust is so chewy and flavorful.

2/27/13: Dinner at The Milk Bar. My first visit to the new uptown location. I tried the Christmas in July sandwich; good, but it doesn't top the Shrimply the Best.

2/28/13: Dinner at Juan's Flying Burrito. Pork & slaw tacos, but not as good as they've been in the past; the tortillas weren't crispy enough, and I forgot to add guacamole.

3/1/13: Dinner at Charcoal's, the fancy new burger place (with a useless website). They have all kinds of meat on the menu: venison, bison, kobe beef, etc. I had a basic beef hamburger with some fixings, and it was pretty darn good. But I won't be going back for a while; the place just opened and there are definitely some kinks they need to work out. The service was slow and they were out of quite a few toppings and sides. Plus, it's pricier than the Company Burger. New Orleans might be at peak burger.

3/2/13: Lunch at Manhattan Jack, a new bakery/coffee place on Prytania. I actually got an apple fritter there last weekend, which was excellent (though not as good as the one I got in Portland from Voodoo Doughnut). Today, I went back to try a sandwich. I got the crawfish roll, which is their variation on the lobster roll. Not as buttery, but I will definitely get more of these.

"You don't give crap to God."

The Archaeological Institute of America, in conjunction with Loyola, puts on a few free evening lectures a year from visiting scholars discussing their areas of research. I've heard talks about Klondike gold rush ghost ships, the spectacle of war in the ancient war, the proper interpretation of Augustus's breastplate on a famous statue, and Viking longships. For the same reasons I try to go to the opera once a year, I think the talks broaden my horizons a bit. This past Wednesday, I went to one on Armenian religious arts and crafts from Istanbul. It ran long, but there were some purdy pictures of some bitchin' needlepoint. And the title of the post is the takeaway line, which the speaker used to sum up why so much fancy and expensive stuff was donated to the Armenian Orthodox church. I just thought it was funny. Next up, "Text, Drugs, and Protocol in Medieval Medicine." I have to go just for the title.

Also, if anyone down here is interested in this kind of thing, they're doing a little membership drive. If they can't get a few more members of the New Orleans chapter, then they'll cut one sponsored talk per year. It's a little pricey, but the magazine you get with membership is really good.

Mardi Gras was a week ago.

It was a good day. Here are some pictures I found on my phone afterwards:

Catch-up.

Sorry for not posting, Mom and the two or three people who read this. Here is an incomplete list of things that have happened in the past few weeks, in no particular order:
Venus in Fur by the http://www.southernrep.com/. Trippy and transgressive and exciting.
Transcendent fried chicken at Willie Mae's Scotch House.
Ludacris:

Food truck rally:

Superbowl:

Walking out of a Bourbon street dive and working with a guy walking in to straighten out the doormat so nobody tripped, and then we both gave each other the thumbs up.
So much king cake:

Everybody getting into the spirit of things:

Watching a parade and commenting that I would do anything for a bag of Zapp's, and then catching a bag of Zapp's from a float.
Morning 40 Federation:

Endymion crawfish boil, the hubris of a nine-component float, and this crazy dude in a turtleneck:

Parades, parades, parades, including a really fantastic roll by the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus.

Carnival!

Sorry about the posting drought. Things have been busy. To catch up, here's a chronological series of photos of pre-Mardi Gras goings-on: The Phunny Phorty Phellows as seen from the Columns, stands going up in front of Gallier Hall, a high school marching band practicing on my street, the float for the sub-krewe I escorted in Krewe du Vieux, and the St. Aug Marching 100 in a parade last night.







And that brings us up to date. Off to the parades!

Miscellaneous from the past few weeks: downed traffic light; state of contemporary fiction; beach proposal; ship passing the Wal-Mart.

Huh.

Took the day off work to putter around the house, bake some bread, do some cooking, and the like. Then just to get some fresh air I took a little jaunt around my neighborhood. Turns out I live a block away from Cleaver & Co., "a locally sourced, whole animal butcher shop in New Orleans, specializing in fresh meat, sausages, and specialty prepared food items." They do classes. I had no idea it was there.