Easter Parade in New Orleans!

Like this...


...or like this!


There are actually three Easter Parades in the French Quarter on Easter Sunday.

The first, and oldest, is the Friends of Germaine Wells Parade. Germaine used to own the famous Arnaud's Restaurant and was quite the party girl; she loved a parade and started her own for Easter. She's been gone now for years, but the parade she started is still going on. The second parade is the Chris Owens Easter Parade. Ms. Owens has been performing in her night club on Bourbon Street for decades and she probably outshines Gemaine in the flamboyance department. BTW, don't ever refer to her as a "stripper". she's an entertainer; although she never actually wore all that much on stage, she never took anything off, either. She still looks pretty good. I saw her on stage in her club when she was in her early sixties and she was in unbelievable shape; a body that just won't quit.

Both of these parades, although never populated by the woman of the very best social standing, have become Easter traditions, and almost respectable. The women in the parades wear expensive gowns and colorful hats, the men wear tuxedos, and everyone rides around the Quarter in carraiges waving and smiling at those people who were not connected enough to get a place in the parade. This is so very New Orleans...

A couple of years ago, the third Easter Parade was born. The Gay Easter Parade. It starts a bit later, about four in the afternoon...

It's a lot like the other two; it's mostly tastefully done, people ride in carraiges and floats, the men dress in full fancy dress tuxedos and the "women" are in their finest colorful attire... but it's a lot more fun! Germaine Wells would have loved it, I think! (I had to work that Sunday, (damn! a career in retail!), but Robert took some pics for the journal.)

Once again, Michelle looks fabu!



Michelle seems to have this unerring sense of what to do for costumes... and Robert has been working with her lately on them. She designed the "hat" and top and Robert worked out the bottom of the egg.

Robert and Michelle


And the group that Michelle rode with during the parade..


What a lovely group! Aren't they fabulous?

After the parade has made it's way through the Quarter, everyone mingles about, visits all the various drinking establishments and goes to the many parties and generally has a very good time.

Including the lil' bunny boys...


New Orleans is a very religious town... Catholic mostly, but they don't push it too much. I mean, Lent is only 40 days long, and we have some very wild breaks for St. Patricks and for St. Joseph's days, but when Easter comes, well, it's back to the full tilt party!


My advice... if you are thinking of moving to a city, pick one that is a port city, preferably one that has been around for a while.

You're bound to have more fun.


Next!

Jazz Fest!

My sister and her partner will arrive Friday night and staying for about a week. Not sure which days we will be going to the fest, but so far the weather looks promosing. Jazz Fest is the most amazing musical event; (Bob Dylan is performing at the fairgrounds this year! And there are hundreds of others). It's always amazing; Jazz Fest has become the biggest yearly event in this town, and although there are some stellar performances from people from out of town, the majority of the music is home grown. All the music clubs have something wonderful, the record stores have live performances and the city has free concerts during the week days.

One more big party before the long hot days of summer...



durlx

No visitors for a while..

But lots of stuff happening...

First of all, I should mention that Puddin' died.

Poor Puddin'...


I was going to take her to the vet in the morning because I knew she wasn't feeling well. When I woke up, she was lying still on the floor.

One Saturday afternoon, I had been sitting with my friend Ken at the Phoenix and someone came in and said that a junkie had a box of kittens out front and was trying to sell them. Ken, who worked for the SPCA at the time, immediatly took up a collection of ten bucks or so, and went out and bought the kittens, and then called the SPCA to come and pick them up. Ken was adament about not letting animals loose to breed on the streets; he had seen too much of that and had, at times, at work been the person to "eliminate" the unwanted animals. While we were waiting for the pick up, I picked up one of the kittens. They were so cute, especially this one, and I couldn't put her back down into the box. So, I awoke the next morning with a hangover and a kitten sleeping on my head. Puddin' stayed with me for eight years, and although she was not popular with most of my friends, she was very loyal to me. (She loved luca, btw, much to his dismay!) I am missing her a lot right now.


Other news, less sad.

The new computer is working well and the old one is networked, and with the laptop, there are now three computers available on the network. I must be mad! I don't need them all, but I had to network them just because I could... Occasionally it's useful, but most of the time it's just tech-lust.

Oh, and one more thing... I also got a Pocket PC. I bought it in a moment of weakness and thought, "Oh shit I just bought an expensive toy!", but it has proved useful for work. Appointments, task lists and all, syncs with the desktop, and it does make a great mp3 player... and it also stores and displays pictures. And because it handles Word and Excel documents, I was able to use it for the notes for the talk on cheese that I gave at the...

Home and Garden Show...



Speaking in front of groups is not my favorite thing; I'm not totally comfortable with it, but in a perverse way, I like the challenge once and a while. And to do it on the floor of the Superdome... well, that's special, because it was there that Bryant Gumble actually spit out my fried alligator on national TV! I made Today Show history that day... Jane Pauley really got a kick out of Bryant slurping onto this fried bit of food and saying, "mmmm, this is good, what is it?" and then seeing him spit it out when I told him it was alligator! She gave me a jolly wink! Made her day, I think...

Anyway, the audience tonight was not quite as large... but I did well. Just have to work on my cheese jokes.

I had a good time, I got to talk about something that I like very much and I showed them how to make an easy, quick cheese pasta dish. (One guy said "With all thaaaat cheese, this must cost twenty-five dollars to make!" I told him that it only cost about ten bucks for four really fabulous servings. And I used my new line: "Do you know how much potato chips cost? Well, it's about twelve dollars a pound... " Hehe, I love that fact.

No one eats a pound of potato chips and no one eats a pound of cheese in one meal.

One other cheese fact that I used tonight for the first time: the milk from cows and goats contains about the same amount of milk fat, the milk from sheep about twice that much, but reindeer milk has five times the fat of cow's milk and three times the protien. Very convenient for the people in the very cold climates who need that concentration of nutrients to keep them warm and alive.

Ah, but I get fierce and carried away with my subject! hehe.

I am thinking that that's not a bad thing, eh?

Other news, in general...

My dear friend and neighbor, Robert, has taking up collecting vintage Christmas lights, and with a passion on E-bay! He has this pile of boxes with really amazing things in them...and more to come...

The Final Four crowd was enormous, and drunk and college boy cute.

The French Quarter Fest last weekend was HUGE! I remember when it started... it's grown so much.

I didn't get a promotion that I was up for, but that's probably a blessing...

All in all, everything is all right, but I would so much like someone to come home to...





durlx

A Visit with Uncle Bunny.



My niece came to visit me this week; she's three years old and already a rather dynamic personality! You will have to excuse my if I go on a bit about her... you see, I am her adoring and eccentric Uncle Bunny, (The "Uncle Bunny" thing is a long story... and I might tell it sometime... if you ask me to...).

She was accompanied by her mom and dad, (my brother) and my Dad, (my father); Emma always travels with an entourage.

The first evening they were here it was rainy and nasty so we went to a nearby restaurant to have dinner. It was Saturday night, and there was a short wait. I gave my name to the hostess and we went to sit and wait for her to call us when our table was ready. After about ten minutes, she came over to me and asked, "How do you pronounce your name again?" And I answered, "durlx". She said "O.K." and then walked six steps back to the podium and picked up the microphone and announced "durlx, party of four, your table is ready!" We got hysterical, my bro loves this kind of thing...she could have just told us our table was ready... but she knew how to do her job... This poor thing was not the sharpest hoe in the tool shed...



Lost Bread, pain perdue... we had breakfast the next day at The Coffee Pot, one of my family's favorite breakfast spots. Even though I only go there a couple of times a year with my sister and her lover, or someone else from my family, they always know us and treat us very well; the same waitress always takes care of us. (It's a New Orleans kind of thing...).

After that, we toured the Quarter for a while, doing some shopping and walking. Then, we took a ride on the Canal Street Ferry.



Emma was in rare form...



...and I am not quite sure what is going on here between her and her grandpa... hehe!

* a note here about her grandpa, my dad... he is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and there was a bit of bittersweet about this visit. He has been staying with my bro since Christmas, and traveling with them. He seems to be happy enough, but the confusion is showing up more and more. He asked me a dozen times in two days if "we were still in New Orleans"...

That evening we spent some time at the pool, and the went out to dinner.


The next day we went to the Audobon Park Zoo.



...and they all asked fo you! Audobon Zoo Link

Emma loves seeing animals, and we saw a lot of them! Me, I don't like zoos that much (the animals might be happier somewhere else I keep thinking, and the "science" is a bit theme park, more entertaining than instructional) and I mentioned it to my Dad. He replied, "Yea, they all look bored! They have nothing to do... and they are probably all on drugs!" (His non sequiters are sometimes quite amusing...)

But when you go to the zoo with a three year old, that's who it's all about. And we did have a really good time.

Mom, Dad and Emma...


By the time we finished at the zoo...

...it was getting on towards dinner time. And they all had to move back to the hotel near the airport, so they would be able to get to the airport for their early morning return flight. So we picked up some Popeye's Chicken! Hey, my brother likes it, and he says it is just not as good up north. We stopped at my house to eat it and watch the Simpsons, (my bro and niece's fav show which mom hates, hehe.). After we finished, Emma's mom said, "You should go over to Uncle Bunny and say goodby now because we're getting ready to leave." Emma came over to me where I was sitting at the desk and climbed up into my lap... and just hugged me for two minutes... and then looked up into my eyes... I thanked her for coming to visit me and I told her that I loved her very much... and that every time she looked at the bunny I bought her...(I always give her a bunny every time I see her.. this one was a fairy bunny, it had wings...... just remember to think of me.

She looked at me and said, "I will." And then jumped down off my lap and went on...



She's a very fierce lil thing; she means what she says.

And her Uncle Bunny dearly loves her.




btw luca, Emma was not afraid of Lil Puddin... not at all... hehe!



NEXT! JAZZ FEST!


durlx