insightful observations and cogent commentary on all the really important things in life ... and some of the less important things
Friday, April 29, 2011
Just a Quick Note....
Pictures of many of the sculptures on display are posted in my on-line photo album.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Best Breakfast Ever!
139 South Cortez Street
(one block off Canal Street, in Mid-City)
OMG! This place was fantastic!
Community garden |
The pancake was the size of the dinner plate on which it was served. It was overcooked ever so slightly, a pardonable sin, given the perfection that awaited me in everything else. The peanut butter flavour was subtle, and it's my own fault for ruining it half-way through, when I had the wild notion that maple syrup might somehow add something to this culinary treasure. Still, the chocolate flavour was in no way impeded by my rashness, and it carried me through to the pancake's proud end.
What's that mean? |
Monday, April 25, 2011
Fine Diner. Giggle.
3116 I-10 Service Road East
Old Metairie
Before starting for New Orleans this week, I spent some time poring over the list of the top restaurants in the city, hoping to pick maybe half a dozen places to try. I ended up with 19 on my list, including this place, which I found nestled into the parking lot of my hotel.
Louisiana restaurant inspections have been removed from the State's web site for "technical reasons." |
You know how everybody thinks New Yorkers are rude? They're actually not, they're regular people, but their ways grate on my Southern sensibilities, and after a little while I grow uncomfortable in their continued company. This little group of Orleanians impressed me the same way. From their reactions, I could tell that they were all perfectly at ease with each other; but the words that come to my mind to describe their way of dealing are "attitude" and "lip." It was exactly that way when I lived here, as an adult, back in the mid-80s, and I thank God I had the good fortune to move away as a child, in time to learn a less sarcastic and caustic way of dealing, even if I don't always use it. These restaurant employees were all perfectly polite in dealing with me and the other customers, but if I'd've worked there I'd've popped somebody in the mouth before too long. Probably that smart-ass blond guy in the kitchen.
Once I was finished with the red beans and rice (which, by the way, was better than at The Big Easy Cafe -- much more like what I remember from my youth, with a creamy thick sauce), I decided to try the bananas Foster ice cream cake that had been offered to the guy with the toast. A sign on the diner's door advertises Blue Bell Ice Cream, so I expected it to be pretty good. There was banana ice cream and pecan chunks topped with whipped cream and served over a sliver of generic cake and what appeared to be pie crust. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as it looked, nor was it as good as I'd hoped.
To be entirely fair, the City Diner seems to have built its reputation as a top restaurant largely on the strength of its breakfast fare. So maybe I'll come back one morning before I leave, and check that out.
Accustomed as I am to prices back home, I expect that the prices at City Diner are considered low by the locals. They're not bad. Maybe they're good enough to get excited about, if you live in a place like Metairie.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Where's My Equal Protection?
Lindsay Lohan, the celebrity famous for being famous, is getting "an opportunity." On probation for ... oh, who knows what? ... she was brought before a California judge this past week for the fourth time in a year. This time it was for felony theft, following her walking out of a Los Angeles jewelry store with the goods around her neck. The necklace she took was priced at somewhere north of $2,000.
The judge in the case chose to assign the wholesale value to the necklace, making the matter a misdemeanor, with significant consequences to Lohan's probation. Now she can be put back on the street to do her important work in movies; word is, according to Associated Press, that the non-star is to portray the wife of mafia don John Gotti in some upcoming schlockbuster.
It's not like this judge has done Lohan any favours. All she gets now is a few hundred hours of community service, which will allow her to bring a camera crew into the county morgue and the women's shelter to document her ordeal. We will be treated to carefully scripted and rehearsed scenes of Lohan talking soulfully to the camera about how the dead bodies and abused women around her have affected her outlook on life, how their troubles have redounded to her own maturing understanding of herself. Kind of like those semi-celebrities on Dancing With The Stars when they talk about the obstacles they've surmounted to dance with Tony Dovolani or Chelsie Hightower.
See, if the judge had sent Lohan to prison for more than the few hours that her last three arrests have earned her, think of how that would drive up the box-office value of Lohan's name. What an imaginative advertising department could do with that!
But instead, she'll just have to limp along with her "opportunity" to be filmed doing meaningful work slopping out the autopsy tables.
Of course, we're all equal before the law; I know I read that somewhere. I suppose some would say it's just an aspirational statement, but suppose it actually is the law. That means that wholesale value, or some other lesser value, should be the scale by which such things are measured when thieves make off with your stereo and your iPad, not the exorbitant price you paid Best Buy and Apple for the goods.
I later learned that, while her arrest for stealing the necklace had been reduced to a misdemeanor, she was, at the same hearing, sent to county jail for four months for violating parole. She actually served about a month before she was released because of overcrowding at the county jail.