cracklins and pies

The only things to get in Krotz Springs are cracklins and speeding tickets. Fortunately it was only the former for me today on this research trip. That and a boudin ball from Kartchner's Grocery got me rolling.


My destination was Lecompte up near the middle of the state. It has pies on all its insignia solely because of Lea's Lunchroom, the center of the Louisiana pie vortex. Somebody needs to turn this sign into a t-shirt quick.


The general. It's like a Wayne Thiebald painting come to life.


The specific. It's like what sweet potatoes dream about being.


The town has a typical Louisiana history. Like, I'm surprised there is not a parenthetical in there saying "(not that Thomas Jefferson)". Unless it is.


It was gorgeous and iconic out there in Acadiana. This is coming back across the Krotz Springs bridge, floating on a clowd of cracklins and pies, into the autumnal bosom. Love it here.

party

The Tedeschi Trucks Band, Revelator
Otis Rush, Otis's Blues
Buddy Guy, Blue on Blues
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

• I could listen to Susan Tedeschi do ahhhohhhwaaahoooo blues inflection 50x in a song and love it. Problem is, she does ~60x on every song on Revelator. The album is smooth as God's own artisan bourbon and it did get the bathroom scrubbed but I don't know that is the highest praise I can give a record.


• Otis's Blues, though, I was into every micron of that one. Anyone know who the female singer on "Maybe the Last Time" is? Blues aficionados can probably ID her from a mile away but I will cozy up to my ignorance. The Internet seems devoid of this crucial bit of info.


• I sent my query into the cloud, or to the hive - which is it when you ask Facebook? I was talking social media and Spotify and digital stuff at that party last night - do not let that detail besmirch the image of a "party"; there was beer and girls there too - with a couple professorial types - if one is an adjunct, can one consider oneself in that type? The conversation turned to tenure, which is outside whatever professorial purview I might claim. Anyway, someone said, "yeah, but aren't all these websites fads?" and yes, they are, but the information strategies aren't.


• One fellow traveller thought the singer in question might be Little Walter. I thought it was a woman. I mean, generally, all those Little guys can rock a mean falsetto, but some spot checks through the Little Walter catalog confirms it ain't him. I'm going to eat some black eyed peas and see if the answer doesn't appear to me.


• Turns out it was not even Otis Rush on the album. The song is Big Momma Thornton, the rest of the record is Muddy Waters and B. B. King. The Internet proper was all wrong, but the Internet improper through crowd sourcing got it right. Like I said, it's the strategy that matters. This crowd sourcing, even though it was among people I knew in real life, would have never have happened without the connective tissue of Facebook. And I'm already tired of this point. Maybe that's why I don't get invited to very many parties.

This year's night

• White Light Night! Mid-city Baton Rouge has a number of these artwalk things throughout the year - there is a "Hot Art, Cool Nights", another "lights" of some sort I think - all in the past trying to be a thing. I go, I like walking around at night and lemon squares and mini sandwiches more than the next guy, and take it for what it is. This year however, it crossed a bridge into becoming a Thing. There was more to do within walking distance from my house than I was able to take in.
  



• At one point I was attacking a free clamshell of jambalaya while Maya and her friend were attacking fresh spun cotton candy outside the neighborhood vintage record store while a surf band tore through "Apache", and the promise of navigating the place involved a second batch of jambalaya.
  



• I will from this point measure the breadth of a civic event by the number of jambalayas on offer. This year's night, a two-jambalaya success with a chi-chi law office open house shrimp salad bonus allotment. And bite size pecan pies. Nice work, Baton Rouge!
  



• At that stop, some artisan had a table of little clay balls on which you were instructed to Sharpie the cause of your psychic distress and then hurl it at a wall. Very satisfying. Maya went with "mean people", for truly they do suck as the ancients once declared.
  
  
  



• Then I went back out by bike past the food trucks and the gallery gatherings devolving into back patio debauchery to a party at a friend's great house in the adjacent neighborhood where social and professional circles overlapped around a fire pit and a vintage ice chest and a crockpot of hot chocolate and people I don't see enough and some I know secrets about and writers I like and sweet drunks I didn't already know and and and... I like all these ands. Sometimes I struggle to find five things to fill the bullet holes of a post; it's kinda awesome that my sleepy old neighborhood did it for me.
  
  I will start today with jalapeño cheese bread from Ambrosia and a second pot of coffee and see what today holds.

the best

The BEST + jalapenos from Louie's.

Betty Wright and the Roots, Betty Wright: The Movie
Of Montreal, the controllersphere
Caribou, Andorra
Liquid Liquid, Liquid Liquid
Los Campesinos!, Hello Sadness
Lucky Dragons, Rara Speaks

Have the best weekend!

do anything

Sukie is on alert for any encroachment on our scene by The Man. Photo by Maya Cook.

Wednesday:
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
The Avett Brothers, Carolina Jubilee
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Yuck, Yuck
The Tallest Man on Earth, The Wild Hunt

Thursday:
Laura Viers, Tumble Bee
Nektar, Retrospective (Deluxe Edition)

• The main reason I love Oasis and Oasis-sourced product is that they take that moment when you are alone in your room or car or shower and put some dumb lyrics together (e.g. if I had a gun/I'd shoot a hole into the sun) and strum on a tennis racket and have your eyes closed and all and turn that into the real song. I like how he can end any couplet with "for you". As if there's any other reason to do anything.
      
• My Zooey Deschanel-heavy post from yesterday was prematurely published and quickly obscured from view, should you be wondering what happened to it. It was an experiment in making this blog do more than it already does, whatever that is.
  
  Edited to add: and now I think I overlaid previous post with this one. That's OK, this one is better.
     
• OK, me and my insomnia cozied up with an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman last night. It was a satire of soap operas from Norman Lear, the guy who basically laid the template for the modern sitcom. MHMH is weird as hell, almost abstract in its stilted sense of drama, its hyper-flattened comedy. And it was on every day in the markets that would carry it. Dig the "Chicken Soup" episode.
  
  
       
• I remember my parents watching it. MHMH is like Beckett and like the Jeffersons all at once, which makes me want to explore how Beckettian the Jeffersons actually was. I mean, what was with George always walking on the English neighbor's back? The maid that never cleans? Was the Jeffersons an anti-colonial reversal thesis with a laugh track and fantastic leisure wear?  Was the Void just outside those sliding patio doors?
      
• Also,  Sherman Hemsley was pretty out there himself. I've posted this before but it's worth rereading how the TV star brought English out-rock band Gong to L.A. to do some sort of project involving installing flying teapots on Sunset Boulevard. Also worth reading for the descriptions of Mr. Jefferson's drug lair.
  
  Inside the front door of Sherman’s house was a sign saying, ‘Don’t answer the door because it might be the man.’ There were two Puerto Ricans that had a LSD laboratory in his basement, so they were really paranoid. They also had little crack/freebase depots on every floor. Then Sherman says, ‘Come on upstairs and I’ll show you the Flying Teapot room.’ Sherman was very sweet but was surrounded by these really crazy people.
  
  Here he is working a dance to prog rock band Nektar into the show. Because he wanted to, again, as if there is any better reason to do anything
  
  

get your hipster doomsday cult on

Photo by Maya Cook

This weekend:
Atlas Sound, Parallax
Korpiklaani, Ukon Wacka
Goatwhore, Eclipse Into Ages of Black

Monday:
Grinderman, Grinderman 2
The Kills, Blood Pressures
The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of The Understatement
Julian Cope, Autogeddon
Faust, Faust IV and Something Dirty

Tuesday:
Composers Quartet, Elliott Carter: String Quartets 1 & 2
WU LYF (World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation), Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

• Monday: I am having an exceptional author day. I saw the final sketch of the cover of this book and started laying groundwork for what will possibly be the next and maybe possibly another. I feel oddly anthemic and triumphant inside, like how this sounds:
  
  
  Faust, "Something Dirty"
       
• This week I'm gonna use photographs Maya took over her weekend of being grounded. I might outsource the whole Visual Arts Department to her.
     
• The Age of Understatement by the Last Shadow Puppets makes me want to stage a bullfight in a record store. Provided one can find a record store. It might be easier to source the bullfight.
  
  
  
  Honestly, I've never really given the Arctic Monkeys the time of day  - mostly because having one dude with first name of Alex and another with the last of Cook means they bung up my ego-Googling  - and know naught of the other band whose member comprise the Last Shadow Puppets, but this record has my number.
      
• Tuesday: Man, everybody on my network is suffering this morning, like the shit planet is in retrograde and spawning off shit comets aimed straight at us. So we'll get covered in shit from outer space! Big whoop. No reason to ruin Facebook over it. Just get your hipster doomsday cult on and revel in it.
  
  
  World United! Lucifer Youth Foundation, "Split It Concrete Like The Colden Sun God"

the world is not so boring

Mì Xào Tôm, Bò Hoặc Gà, Egg Noodle Stir-fried W/ Bean Sprout, Vege, and Beef, Shrimp or Chicken Meat, also known as #100 from Pho Quynh

plus


a medio litro of Mexican Fresca from La Morenita Meat Market

plus


This weather! Earlier today, Maya was outside playing with the hose as yellowed leaves blew off the trees and whipped around her.

is not helping this situation


Articles waiting to be written.

Plus, the world is so interesting, and used to be one where we as a mass entity were nominally interested in it. I was reading these mid-70's articles from the Robert Palmer collection Blues & Chaos while not writing these articles and saw where "Glamour called [Terry Riley's In C] 'the global village's first ritual symphonic piece'" Now, either Glamour is a lot hipper than I give it credit, or the interests up in their high cotton readership have changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Was this profile about hippie/Indian/drone composition next to the multi-page treatment of watches?

But then, one of the things I had to write today was about this


Korpiklaani, "Louhen Yhdeksäs Polka"

So I suppose the world is not so boring now either. This other article involves injecting a turkey with pork fat before you fry it, meaning I have nothing to complain about.