The Mardi Gras Jitters

The other night I had a dream that combined the spirit of Mardi Gras with the fitful mood of hurricane time. I was holed up in what seemed like turn-of-the-century immigrant tenement housing, and a family-owned business, a pork store or something--with the cast of the Sopranos. I was myself but also fulfilled Meadow's role in the family--the daughter. The building had two stories, with some kind of balcony overlooking neutral ground that resembles the one on Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, though in the dream we were supposedly located on Esplanade Avenue. There was a storm coming, but everyone's behavior was a weird hybrid of excited carnival-goers and citizens wary of a hurricane. For example, everybody was riding out the storm. They had set up couches and beds and dining room tables on the neutral ground, sort of in the same fashion folks do to wait for Endymion. Some of the family would sleep out on the neutral ground. But throughout the dream, we were very afraid, and made sure we were always together. I always would turn to "Christopher Moltisanti," my cousin, to make sure the door was properly bolted. We had a couple dogs that would escape every now and then and I'd have to chase them down. But we were also afraid of people coming for us--looters, in a way. There was a lot of waiting around ;we'd sit on the balcony and look out over the avenue, waiting for something. There was also a junkie alligator hanging around the corner, shooting up. At one point Christopher stole his stash, but said he wouldn't use it, because what with its former user being an animal, he might catch worms. And there were ghosts of characters who'd died on the show, acting like living people, because they were still alive to certain members, something told me.

I don't see the dream as foreboding, so much as just an anxiety dream. But it's interesting the way my mind fused all these elements of New Orleans together--the nervous anticipation of the chaos of carnival with the fear of the unpredictability of a hurricane; wild creatures loose, personified to be no different from crazy, unhinged humans; and the trapped feeling of a family living in the slums, with no option but to stick together. New Orleans, beneath all its levity, will always have the underlying potential for nightmare scenarios.

All this Coffee is Making me Drowsy

I've decided these coffee shops are really devised to hide you from the day. Their awnings shield you from streams of sunlight. You can see leaves rusting in the oak trees, and hear buses lugging from stop to street as you would in bed those last early morning hours of sleep. The lamps are always dim, and everyone is silent and alone. (Thank God it's not a social scene, with everybody pretending to be reading in between sneaking looks to see who else might be doing the same. But that must have been another time, of catholic school girls smoking on the back patio, shivering with fall excitement before that night's football game. Really?)

Let me get the context straight: I go on weekdays. That means the 5-11er crowd. No wonder we lack the energy of those who stop in early for an iced coffee and pastry treat before their 8 a.m., smoothing still wet strands of hair, taming wind-tussled coats; or the relief of the afternoon crew, neatly inking in that morning's crossword, chewing on their cigarettes like straws. Time is different to us. We content ourselves with caffeine, the drug that speeds up the insides of the sedentary, inducing an illusion of movement. And then we sit all day, trapped inside our heads, while outside, lights change at a busy intersection, and boys play basketball across the street.



I am drawn to Magazine Perks because of how it is juxtaposed with Ms. Mae's, a sober fox hole in which to wait out the daylight hours before ducking next door at the acceptable hour. A way of life carved out of commercial space. One little piggy went to the coffee shop, one little piggy went to the bar.

When I lived In Spain, some of my favorite bars were operating coffee shops during the day. You'd hang out, enjoy the free wireless with a cappuccino or espresso, and then as the day waned, the vibe would change. A dj would start spinning, a new crowd pack in. This conflation of day and night, the pensive and celebratory, business-as-usual and festive, could only exist in a culture of moderation, in which business-men sip small glasses of beer outside the work place at the break of siesta, and you have to specify "cafe americano" if you want more than a dose of espresso. Here, we could never combine the two. Can you imagine Ms. Mae's as coffee shop, Jim and that other guy (what's his name? the tall disgruntled one?) pouring cups of joe to a crowd of readers and quiet conversationalists? The only joe they got is in the cigarette machine. And Mae'd come by around happy hour to usher in the drinkers, bade the thinkers good evening? Turn on the game and the jukebox.

So here, the coffee shop is wedged in next door to the 24-hour bar, revealing ours as a culture of accepted extremes. Separate, but equal. With a festival nearly every weekend, we are used to bouncing back and forth between the lenton and the carnivalesque.

Though sometimes, it does feel like we're just killing time until the next party. Mardi Gras is 44 days away. (Sounds far, but it isn't.)



A view of Mae's from the day.

Hornets Beat

Now I know sports journalists like to keep their language as spry and bouncy as Chris Paul's footwork, but I don't think "Hornets Beat" is the right title for nola.com's hornet's blog. Yaddida mean? Especially after games like last night's; nobody wants to see a poor performance advertised with such empty-brained enthusiasm the next day! As though that outcome is expected. "Hornets Beat" duhhh, pour me some coffee. Now "Saints Beat" I can see...no, just playing.

A Good Davis

Matt Davis loves when a good "book" falls in his lap.

http://www.new.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=42756139197&h=R6idM&u=kuikT

Hot Reads

New Orleans: where there are no celebrities, just your friends.

http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-12/1231309300208240.xml&coll=1

"You actually read The Odyssey on your own, just for fun?"

Come on nola.com, print the picture of the young literate stud!!


Modeling Agencies: for Matt Davis's head-shot, see today's Times-Pic, paper copy.

Let's Go to the Coffeeshop--YAH

Rainy Saturday. I feel dizzy, Sumatran dark roast won't fix me. Old men sit outside on the benches and yawn, erudite or bemused? It's impossible to tell.


Ballzack and Odoms watch Youtube videos of themselves on their blackberries, in between free styles a la jay and silent bob. Ur, except double the Jay. Is that what this is? Illusion of a sophisticated hang, because of Amsterdam and the French salon? But really, no different from the stoop or the Quicky Mart. I want to ask them what rhymes with "the girl in the overalls," but hope it's already come to them. Slacker musicians rise late, dabble in notepads. What's with the Ole Miss grad in pink polo loud on the phone trading stocks? Smudged fresco of horses arace, but nobody studies the bill here. Rue de la Course and Fair Grinds get it wrong, though Degas would've painted it so. Boredom looms at the track around the corner, believe me. Internet's down and it's just as well, so insouciant I am with my words.

How do the dogs feel, to measure their lives in coffee spoons?

New Orleans: Where there are no celebrities, just your friends

Ballzack, aka Rami Sharkey, and I now know each other. Yep. From the restaurant and the coffeeshop. Though I'm still too shy to introduce myself to Adam/Odoms.

Sigh. I used to say that these two were the exception to the rule.
Who to look up to, now that the Gods roam the Earth alongside you?