Hear ye a statement of the obvious

Let it be known that to fill one's weekend with Fest, sans unday, tis folly. Where is the time to rebound from mild sunstroke? To bounce back from the ill-timed (double) round of crawfish sacks n' beignets? To repent over-texting one's coordinates? Needless to say, a punday is of no help in these matters. Only an unday will do (and a Corpse Reviver No. 1.)

drink recipe dart (try this festival season)

*


Corpse Reviver No. 1

1/2 Brandy
1/4 Calvados or Apple
Brandy
1/4 Sweet Vermouth

Stir well with ice and strain
into glass.

*

tag in

wearable assemblage art by Cree

and a brinish tear rolls down my round face, drops to floor

swagger at the tables, watch the coup round thee

march to my door

Chump Day

So as with everything I'll have to pay back my 2 consecutive Jazz Fest Undays with three consecutive "Chump Days". What's a Chump Day you're asking? Well it's very narrowly defined. Back story: I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time since Katrina. I was a bit cocky with the doctor telling her that my mom has a mouth full of cavaties but I've always been lucky and only have had a few. Well.... as you can probably guess I have some cavaties. SIX! She said it was normal for not having seen a dentist in some time and told me to schedule three appointments because she wouldn't be able to do them all at once. I promptly scheduled three appointments on three consecutive Wednesdays at the end of May. So those my friends will be my Chump Days (on hump days no less!). And being the good Catholic that I am not I have rightly guilted myself in believing that because I championed my Undays I am being punished with Chump Days.

A little more about the Unday

I don't mean to brag but I think I have the Ultimate Unday. This upcoming weekend (and next) I have off Saturday, Sunday and well, an Unday. The unday is the ultimate because it follows a serious weekend of festing (did I just use "festing" as a verb as in "I will be festing"? Eww). Yeah, but it's true. Somehow (without requesting) I have off BOTH Mondays following the fest. And you know what the rule is kids. A monday off following a full weekend off= UNDAY! That's the name of the blog and that's what I'm blogging about right now. Ah the exhiliration!

*Again this is not a gloat, just a simple observation. Then again isn't the nature of Unday a little gloaty? When someone is granted an Unday they sort of having bragging rights. You don't just keep such information to yourself. You spread the word of Unday and the power thereof. It is what we all aspire to have (atleast) so it's obtainment should be celebrated! So should an exacta Bunday and the now newly designated Punday. Shout it from the hills (or the bayou in this case). UNDAY! UNDAY! I've got an UNDAY!


**This Unday sponsored by Patti at Port of Call. Thanks Patti!

We Simply Love Todd

Today is Todd Appreciation Day, bitches!

And Coda Cola

( that 's Gabriel's Name Dish )


Broccoli Rob
Janine Jam
Taco Brett
Jose Tomato
Lemon Cissy
Ketchup Todd
Egg Omelet Patricia
Christie Hoagie
Julie Birthday Cake
Jeremy Shrimp
Jan Pie
Dr. Bob Snails

The April Birthday People

Has candlewatt power

(for Todd on his birthday)

As the blue moon hangs pink
over the new time home,
the bean can on the desk
rings for you
to follow your bliss into
another year of being.

No traditional lane system here
just a scheming for a dish served
on a day off beamèd directly
to your nightstand

which bends to bantamweight plays
limned with pens
objectionable to daily learning —
something about Section 650
being “off the grind,
high above the grid, avec plaisir”

& your style,
objecting to a concept
as gnarly as, say, the bloody clovis,
but willing to entertain & dissect
it all into a night’s fisty knot
which can be yet defanged to
a shirt-bright spinnaker,

fenagled into a pyjama pants bunday dance party,
bowling the boat of those most among you
onto a sparking, undiscovered shore.
Such as only you could properly rock
your rainbow afro of truth be torch
and skypaint and firestarter there.




16 April 2009 B r e t t & J a n I n e


***********************************************************************************

For Julie on her birthday


Because you’re one of the people
that cause the flag to get raised
and sky scrapers to become nicely
hand-sized so we don’t have to
surf the ledge, a communal clink
is hereby put out across the loudspeaker yard
& oer the land as boisterous witness
to your presence.

It’s nigh mellifluous
& laden with intelligence
turning champagne bottles into bowling pins
& hoffing sessions into Fellini-esque grandeur.
Because you are the Miss that we love to sass
all the way to the wine bank and back
something about swaying & rock n roll
should be noted here
because being Queen for a day (& only one!)
entitles you to be the bad ass momma you are
times eleven.

You’ll always be warm and delicious to us,
your friends, through rough water, Wilco bleeps, beaches and Gras.
The gathering storm is a good one.
It means all your friends are coming together to roll the spiral bunting.

19 April 2009 Brett & Janine

Set your Jazz Fest Calendar...

I know we all have our own J.F. agendas, but as we approach the fest I wanted to share my #1 pick: Chuck Brown, Sunday May 3, 3:00, Congo Square.

The "Godfather of D.C. Go Go," Chuck's best known song is probably "Bustin' Loose". The man is now in his mid-seventies, but as you will see in the video below, he has not slowed his roll. Hope you'll join me.

La Nouvelle Orleans: 504 4Ever (Or, Until We Sink)

Peeps and Undies,

my writer/editor Philly friend Gretchen has posted today a lil' article (more like a LOVE proclamation) about this fair city I wrote for her travel-y/food-y new site. Unfortunately, it's on MySpace, so unless you're a member you won't see the accompanying pics (I am not, and I wasn't able to). Gretchen apologizes promises to migrate to better digs as soon as she is able.

Since some of this blog's contributors were quoted in the letter, I thought it was only fair to share.

Love and FQ Fest,

Tats (indisposed at home with a hula hoop and tea)

Lazy Quatrains

Hey, I'm no poet. So you know that when I see a chance to get my verse on, without having to actually "write," I'm on it. I came across a rhyme generating website during the course of business this week - http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Poem/ - so I gave it a whirl. You supply the first line, and the computer does the rest.

This one goes out to the plus-sized hat models:

Slosh(ed) models compete in a triathlon of shellfish
Pundit plots of putrid poetry
Are you blueish?
When by shapes my words are known, I try

Slosh(ed) models compete in triathlon of shellfish
On this salty, swampy, sumptuous eve
"Thanks!" They replied "I'll rhyme orange with fish!"
One's heart would be a sticky sieve

Slosh(ed) models compete in a triathlon of shellfish
Carving out a pernicious void
And kick stealthy strokes like the Flemish
And drowning in dreams, as I can't avoid

Slosh(ed) models compete in triathlon of shellfish
But oh I must now take my leave
Beautiful music emerged -- no blemish
I took liberties I SHOULDN'T have

druncle

druncle or drunkle - n. An uncle with a drinking problem.

ex. The family reunion took an edgier tone when druncle showed up topless.

Let the Fatholicking begin

It's Holy Week. Two of our fellow Undayers are in today's metro section of the Times Pic. Squint and you can find them beneath the heading "Thoughts of Sacrifice". And nothing says sacrifice like gogging down a couple of bottles of wine!

Matine, Good Deeding -and- Humpday Angsties

Some of you already heard this around the campfire, but Johnny T. and I escorted Ms. Matine, a 94-year lady, to her St. Bernard church down the road for Palm Sunday mass.

Jonathan also has a garden in the back of the church, where "we" (mostly Johnny and Ana Helena (friend of Ben), despite my landscaping resume) planted a few new additions after mass and the subsequent visit to Matine's house.

To rudely splice in the umpday angst -- I've been wanting to write about this/ haven't -- and the thing is, it seems as you gravitionally go toward a new weekend, it becomes less possible. Hump be the last stand methinks.

In any case, I highly recommend a trip to St. Bernard with Jon Dan Travvy to check out his Adamic (pre-kickout) handiwork. I was feeling like a representative of ASCO Sunday morning after the Saturday crayfish berl indulgences, and almost didn't make it. Through my child-memory mind I also remembered the Palm Sunday mass as eternal, so it seemed quite daunting. But as we process ed in to the church with palms, we were hit with a yellow light like a sun vitamin. The church itself is very un-baroque, and seems more like a country Baptist church than the typical Catholic offering. The reader lady's Chalmette-inflected passion play was also quite nice.

You're probably wondering how J., A-H, and myself got tasked with this. The answer is that Matine typically goes to church with her granddaughter Monique, a friend of Jonathan's. She was in Florida. Cue the replacements.

Matine lives in a replacement house on the site of her 'cane-capsized former house. It is a pre fab of sorts, but has porches, and still has the barn out back where Matine and family members weathered the storm, which had to be sawed open by rescuers. The saw job is still there for the seeing. There's a new raincatcher for to serve fresh rainwater in the kitchen. Monique lives on the property in a railroad container car, in some post-K, Cajune-M.I.A shotgun of sorts, with a geodesic hut and chicken wire fence attachment to that for her dog.

Ms. Matine served us chicory coffee after church and it tasted great (good-tasting homemade chicory coffee, as opposed to Cafe du Monde, is a feat I've never been able to master).

If there was a cartoon cutaway of my belly (skipping tarny-soul view) at this point it would have shown nothing but the communion wafer and the coffee, to be joined later in the garden by one of Ana Helena's chemically delicious green swedish fish.

It also turned out - as the promised storm was nowhere, and the powerful nearer-to-Gulf sun beat down - than Ana Helena was friends in Alaska with a couple - Rocky and Destiny (a whole nuther tale) - than I was friends with in Savannah, GA.

We tried to go into Rocky and Carlo's (no relation to Rocky and Destiny) on the way home, but it was blue-closed old style. We stopped at a convenience store and I got to add an apple Hubig's to my near-empty belly, along with some Zapp's and Chex Mix from the car friends. Vitamin Water then. This the new loaves and fishes. We were all in such a good mood at this point - I even thoroughly (say in Arabi inflection) enjoyed checking out a picture of Ana's 20-month old daughter - everything seemed like a feast. The wind spiced the world nicely through the open windows of the Pathy [Pathfinder] as we toured through the oak-columned road, wheeled along the edges of the Chalmette Battlefield, and went past the yet-floodskanked planted helicopters of the old Jackson Barracks on the way, ultimately, back to the Ninth Ward where Ana Helena was scheduled to give Ben (believe it) a massage.

And then all was later recounted, spun, and examined on Judy's deck that Sunday night, just upstairs from the scene of the rubdown.

Johnny and I were so pleased with the day's events that we even threatened/ are threatening to go to the St. Bernard church's walking of the Stations of the Cross on Friday. Is this Church Slumming or are - we - for - real?



**************


In other notes -- I watched CLOVERFIELD last night. As someone who went through the Poseidon Gras that was Katrina and lived before that in NY, it was a weird experience: a perfect house blend of the hurricane and 9/11 disasters. I actually liked the movie a lot: much better than what I expected. It could just be, however, that scenes like friends getting separated by escape copters hit some deep place. Last night I ended up with dreams far more diabolical than the movie, and then near morning woke with laughter because Marc Robinson had decided to rename himself "Va-necknuts" [I'm sure that's not how he spelled it - I assume an umlaut was involved].

Balance

I've had an Unday dream for some time now. It's truly the missing ingredient in a balanced existence. Most important though, Unday will give us the time needed to equalize after Dome & Willy afternoons.

$30 a day wine habit?

uh, I made the mistake of looking at my bank account today and saw that T & I spent $120 at Cork & Bottle over the course of 4 days last week.

I'm guessing this doesn't top all time C&B consumption, but it gave me some pause.

At this rate, I really do think they need to consider some frequent buyer program. Can we earn "slugs" with every purchase until they amount to a bottle? How about one of those buy ten get one free cards they punch? Or something. I mean, damn, we are some loyal customers.

On the plus side, I never got a hangover.

2 hours off

Is this blog on Greenland time?

Options

Anyone want to go see "Midlife, The Crisis Musical"?
As Jaime Patterson once said, "I'd rather eat my own hair"

x

birthday son was composed by Julie, Janine, and Brett

Birthday Son

(for Frank Sherlock on his birthday)


Sent down the Schulykill in a reedy basket
to uni-gog the guttering grid,
dark nighties lifted up in your honor
stick on the fork of the upside-down metro
polis. Yowza, the calendar says
to rescue a stranded worm.
We'll hold a fresh minted caterpillar
in abeyance for you, along with a heavy
stack of mid-city money. It's nearly funny,
you at 40 when so short ago
we had the Poetry Kingdom alock
in the Figure 4. Waiting the arrival
of near death we rejoice in its coming.
Your cake seems to be wearing black socks.

Blog Logistics

This blog is pissing me off. I have just, for the second time, lost a post. The first time I lost a post, I hadn't signed in properly. I wrote a response to a comment from MosquitoKiller because the blog gave me a comment box in which to respond, but then I couldn't post my comment because I had not signed in. I copied my text, signed in, but when I tried to paste it, I found that the process of signing in somehow erased what I had copied. When I clicked back, attempting to retrieve it, it had vanished.

Just now I responded to another posting from MosquitoKiller and clicked the preview function to check over my comment before posting. I found a phrasing I wanted to change, but one cannot edit in the preview function. I didn't see an option to return to the edit mode, so I clicked back and lost my text again.

Perhaps I'm blogtarded, I'll cop to that, but I don't understand why the logistics of blogspot have glitches that email does not.

Humpday

When I worked in offices I always used to hate the term "Humpday" (Wednesday). As in, "Hey guys guess what... it's humpday!" Humpday of course refers to the middle of the week. Going over the heinous hump to get to the better side. It always just made me think of two animals in the wild humping or two gross people in South Philly doing the nasty.

In Philadelphia humpday meant going for cocktails at some lame bar named "Rouge" or "Firm" or "Velour". But in New Orleans on humpday we have music in the square! I attended last evening with some girls from work. I haven't been in a long time. It was fun. There were alot of young urban professionals which I forgot New Orleans had. They were dressed in pumps drinking Abita and listening to The Bucktown Allstars. My friend Margaret was trying to soak it all in. She is a native of New Orleans who will be moving to Brasil in 6 weeks. She doesn't know when she'll be back so she's embracing all that New Orleans has to offer. She turned to me and said, "This city is so great. This doesn't happen anywhere else". I told her she was right. In Philly a gathering like this would be a big deal. It would only happen once or twice a year. People would get really drunk and there would be atleast a few fights.

But I digress from my inital thought- humpday. Humpday is great in New Orleans. So much better than anywhere else. I saw the utterly handsome Scott Fajita (SAINTS!) walking around like a normal person. He fit perfectly well into this humpday scene. The whole thing got me thinking about how us human beings delegate our days. We really just want to have fun. The weekend is the prize. The Unday is to be determined. Humpday is the vehicle. What's next?

Bayou Bridge, 1 April (sighting)

Alex Chilton rounds the bayou
in his ratty Volvo
missing a hubcap and hair with amigo
window-down
alaughing all the way