Listening to a little Pink Floyd

Wednesday:
The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, Egor!
Zombi, Escape Velocity and Spirit Animal
Gianni Rossi, Star Vehicle OST
Franz Frackerhaus, Stories from my Cold War
Pink Floyd, "Lucifer Sam" and "Astronomy Dominie"


Listening to a little Pink Floyd at the end of the day feels exactly like listening to a lot of Pink Floyd all day. It is just more efficient.

Ode to King Cake

Above: 1) The new Oxford American Best of the South issue. Subscribers and public libraries have it already, as might your better booksellers. Or get it here. In it, you will find 2)  an "Ode to King Cake" by yours truly,  about my favorite thing in the world, the king cakes at Calandro's. I particularly like their 3) Mississippi Mud king cake: "They should put the Marquis de Sade in this one instead of baby Jesus." Enjoy!

burning star cores

Tuesday:
The Young, Dub Egg
The Weight, Are Men
The Byrds, Sweethearts of the Rodeo
Bob Dylan, Planet Waves
Jesse Fuller, Jazz, Folk Songs, Spirituals & Blues
Michael Gira, The Milk of M. Gira: Collected Solo Home Recordings
Skullflower, Transformer
Yellow Swans, Going Places
Burning Star Core, Challenger
SUNN 0))) meets Nurse With Wound, The Iron Soul of Nothing

I heard the Weight playing on the sound system at Radio Bar yesterday, the only person in there with the bartender singing along. The Radio Bar is set up that you can pick what to play using the Apple Remote on your phone and can vote a song up. It wash't all that lonely; there were folks on the patio and I was waiting on a friend but still, that is an ideal music-listening situation, being the only person in a bar. There should be a EQ setting on iPods for "Only Person in Bar."

Every song on "Sweethearts of the Rodeo" is perfect. I wanted to hear a drunken shout version of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" on the bike ride over to the bar. Instead I got a Bob Dylan song I can't remember now. I don't know how I missed on knowing there is a SUNN 0)))/Nurse With Wound collaboration album, for they are my two favorite hermetic projects. But yeah, all that. I had more and then I saw these crepe myrtles behind the assembly center and they are louder and bigger sweethearts and have a hotter burning star cores than anything.

supernova of pastrami

The Rachel is a supernova of pastrami. Concentric circles implying the ever-expanding cosmos (waistband) and ripples of plasma that give birth to universes (burps).



The Reuben at Stein's Market & Deli, from structural and culinary standpoints, doesn't suck either. A friend in the know suggests the Kelly, so I'll have to venture that one next time.



Stein's is one of those New Orleans places that is not-New Orleans in nature - somewhere in this Mimmo Rotella masterpiece of a message wall is a sign that chuckles, "Wanna po-boy? Go somewhere else!" - but absorbed into the patois, bent around the curves of the city.



Take this exterior shot: I've been trying to be more conscious of my photo editing lately since I'm going to be teaching it in the fall and it is virtually impossible to get things lined up.



The whole experience is warped space-time, how you have to bend around the crowded aisles and are pretty much forced to brush against every single person in the place. How there isn;t enough seats at the two little tables and you are wondering how you are not going to get Russian dressing all over the car and then in a quiet whoosh, that one yahoo stretched out reading the paper moves on and you can sit in communal victory. And then they call your name and you brush against each one of these people back to the vanishing point where the sandwiches come out.

I"m getting busy on Gas Station Boudin, my next book about hole-in-the-wall South Louisiana restaurants. Holla atcha boy if you know a place I need to know about.

eleven things I like about that kid

Friday:
Joe Bonamassa, Driving Towards the Daylight
Free, Heartbreaker
Chris Spedding, Enemy Within
Roger Alan Wade, Deguello Motel
Bruce Springsteen, Tunnel of Love
Jerry Reed, Alabama Wild Man
Lucinda Williams, Little Honey

In honor of Maya's 11th birthday, here are eleven things I like about that kid making a hair-dryer encaustic out of childish things:

1. She'd pretty much always rather go outside
2. She goes deep on anything that interests her
3. She has to squint to focus on the things that don't
4. She's still willing to go places with me on the outside chance that something interesting will happen
5. She rolls with it when nothing interesting happens
6. She can already do some things better than I can
7. She's totally funny
8. She's totally serious
9. She's not in a big hurry to grow up
10. She's not clinging to being a kid either
11. She's more into being her right now than anyone is about anything

combo platter

Seafood combo platter at Tommy's Fish House (be warned: Cajun midi) in Prairieville. That cole slaw is as good as it looks and the oysters are better. I'm working on my Photoshop/improving skills so any advice is welcome. These are all iPhone photos after they've been light-balanced and color adjusted away from blurry iGreenness, so take pity.

Thursday cont'd:
Happy Mondays, Bummed
Joey Ramone, ...Ya Know?
Pixies, Caribou



Even their gumbo is good. Despite what people might lead you to believe about Louisiana dining, not all gumbos are created equal, in fact most of the time, they feel like perfunctory additions to the menu, a thing out-of-towners feel compelled to order feeding a listless compulsion to make it.  Tommy's could've stood more seafood (though not too much; I don't care for picking things like crab claws or shells out of soup) but the broth was spot on and the okra retaining their crunch. It felt like a conscious dish rather than an obligation.



Jerri's roast beef poboy with debris was on the money, even after hauling it back from beyond the parish line. Maya said, "You have to put this place in your book. I insist." If you insist.

A moment of nostalgia about the Stone Roses

The Stone Roses, "(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister"

Thursday:
The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses 

This bit in the Guardian takes me right to the halcyon days of 1989, trying to get a bunch of normals in a van on some college trip to latch onto my Stone Roses tape, the most normal tape I had in my bag. Jangle was on the wane, ready to be usurped by dance music and grunge, things normal people could readily appreciate. The Stone Roses holds up reasonably well.  I remember one blond girl in the van giving a conciliatory head bob to"(Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister', perhaps seeing herself in the candy floss girl therein. I remember thinking, just hang in there for "Made of Stone" - it's the heavy, wicked song:

Your pink fat lips let go a scream
You fry and melt and I love the scene.

In retrospect, a car crash song wouldn't have soundtracked the magic moment in a crowded van careening down I-10. I was in that phase of young adulthood where you read Crash and wreckage seems romantic, a sensuous abstraction.  "That shit" got switched off by the voting majority and the sugar spun sister dutifully bobbed to the radio, like a normal person. I don't even remember the occasion or designation of the trip. Just that momentary pity nod. That is all the adoration a boy really needs.


The Stone Roses, "I Wanna Be Adored"