We don’t have any plans tonight. It’s a little weird. Neither of us has family here, and only a couple of friends. At this point I would say we know six people in New Orleans, one of whom I’ve actually met only via phone.
Moving to a new city is not all fun and games, even if the new city is New Orleans. This morning we waited for the dishwasher-repair guy to arrive. Then I spent a long time on the phone with BellSouth arranging for an additional phone line. After that there was shopping to be done at the Winn-Dixie. And hovering in the background: a hangover.
We are about 70 percent unpacked, I think. I’ve been saying this for days. That’s because once you’re 70 percent unpacked, you can stop. You’ve got all the useful stuff out, and you know where to find all the un-useful stuff–a big tangle of extra stereo wire; a 1986 paperback called The Making of Miami Vice, by Trish Janeshutz and Rob MacGregor; that sort of thing–if you happen to need it, which you never will. So on a day like today I really ought to just finish unpacking. I think I’ll go for a walk.
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I’ve been walking around our neighborhood a lot, just wandering back and forth to the grocery store or taking the dog out for a stroll. There’s no logic to the architectural styles. But you notice two things. One is that the houses are sort of built high, and often there’s a big, massive, marvelous staircase of some sort leading up to a porch and a front door that might be three feet or even six feet off the ground. This, of course, is because it can flood here in a really serious way. The second thing you notice is that the yards, the steps, the porches, the areas in front of the house are often just covered with plants in big pots, and statues, and chairs, and things. Just strewn all over, as if they were indoors and protected, as if nothing could ever threaten them, not man or nature. These yards and porches are often incredibly beautiful. And in their way, they seem to me a pretty convincing manifestation of pure denial.
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Now it’s about 6 in the evening and it’s clear that I’m not really getting any unpacking done. We’re leafing through the paper instead. Says here two men arrested for firing weapons into the air on New Year’s Eve are now out on bond. Meanwhile, one of the five people hit by falling bullets that night remains in Charity Hospital.
I haven’t said anything about food, and of course everyone knows that New Orleans is a great food town. I don’t really have anything new to offer on the subject of excellent local food, but I can offer this: The other night, one of our half-dozen New Orleans acquaintances discoursed for us on some local bake shop or other that’s well known for poundcake and advertises that it ain’t called poundcake for nothing ‘cos there’s a pound of butter in there and further advertises that it might be good to Try It Fried!
There you go. Fried poundcake.
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The actor Philip Michael Thomas played Ricardo Tubbs, sidekick of Don Johnson’s character, Sonny Crockett, on the popular television drama Miami Vice. The show was so popular that Thomas managed to convince someone to let him record an album. But that album, Trish Janeshutz and Rob MacGregor reported in 1986, “is just one facet of Thomas’s five-year plan, EGOT. That stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, the awards he has set out to win for his performances in TV, on record, on film, and on stage. He wears a gold medallion emblazoned with the letters as a reminder of his goals.”
Can you imagine? Do you think that’s true–he wore a medallion that said EGOT? Does he still have it? I don’t think he won any of those awards; in fact I’d be surprised if he was even nominated for any.
I should return this book to the guy who loaned it to me. I think this is the third time I’ve moved it.
Well, anyway, it sure is getting late. E and I have made some plans after all. We’re going out to eat, then heading over to a bar in Uptown to see some jazz.
Tomorrow will be more productive.
Today’s theme has been: denial.
