“Alejandro!”
I was really trying to stick to weekly updates, but it’s just been a very busy time – exactly what we were hoping for when moving to New Orleans.
When I left you a couple of weeks ago, we were getting ready to drive to Baton Rouge (about an hour and fifteen minutes) to see Alejandro Escovedo at the Red Dragon listening room. Kenny drove over, we enjoyed our Francolini’s sandwiches that I had picked up earlier in the day, and then took our places on a comfy couch for the show. What a fantastic way to see a show. The only downside – I had to drive over a hour back home. Next time, we need to stay the night. Here’s my favourite song from the evening, “Down in the Bowery.”
During the week, we joined the New Orleans library. This is housed in a beautiful mansion on St Charles Avenue. The family that owned the house donated it to the library. It’s starting to feel like we’re locals.
I made another stab at a pizza in the smoker. It turned out reasonably well and Jack seemed to enjoy it.
On Thursday, the Bush girls had a book signing at the Garden District Bookstore, just across the street. Kenny came over to observe the scene. There was a long line of mothers and daughters when we first visited, and I was able to convince McD to go back over when the line died down, and pick up a signed book for Francesca.
Friday was Boys’ Night Out. We had dinner at Casa Borrega – a really good Mexican restaurant, which happened to be across the street from the boxing gym where “Friday Night Fights” was housed. Denny’s carwashes sponsor the event and so we had four ringside seats. The event was poorly managed, with way too many people, so we didn’t stay too long. We’ll need to get Denny engaged for some improvements.
I suggested a road trip on Saturday and Diana was all in. We drove over to the Mississippi Gulf coast and had lunch at Bay St. Louis. The oysters were amazing – I ate three of them, so you know they had to be good.
We thought this carved “Angel Tree” on the boardwalk in Bay St. Louis was very clever.
The drive down the coast to Pass Christian was not what we expected. Beautiful white and clean sandy beaches, and huge mansions by the beach. Apparently many affluent New Orleanians have second homes there. It’s very pleasant to be able to reach the beach in just over an hour. It would have been around eleven hours from McKinney.
I met Kenny and Thom at Cooter Brown’s to watch the Saints game on Sunday, leaving at half time to come home and watch the Cowboys with another blowout win.
We flew to Austin on Monday for my quarterly Board meeting. Diana accompanied and we had a delicious dinner at Este on arrival. The seafood is so fresh and delicious. We started out with the rainbow trout ceviche with grapefruit sauce.
Through some kind of weird synchronicity, the painting in the elevator lobby on our floor at the hotel was of Alejandro Escavedo.
The Board meeting went very well, and so we celebrated with a snack at Clark’s oyster bar, and then dinner at Emmer and Rye. I loved the tapas tasting menu, while some other members of the Executive Committee weren’t so excited. The highlight for me was the wagyu tartare.
Thankfully, we left plenty of time to get to the Austin airport on Wednesday morning. What should have been a twenty minute drive turned into a ninety minute drive due to an accident that closed the freeway. We were much more fortunate than Damon who took almost six hours to make the same drive.
Denny and Anne met us for Happy Hour at Costera on Thursday – always such good food and drinks. Andre Darlington was doing a book signing across the street after Happy Hour. Denny joined us to hear him talk about his new Christmas Booze and Vinyl book. I was able to get my Booze and Vinyl book signed.
I asked the gentleman standing next to me if he knew what the arrival cocktail at the signing was. As he answered me, Denny realize he was an old boss from HP – Shelton. He lives just one street over from us and invited us back for a drink. What a beautiful house, and maybe Diana’s best shot at having a pool to use in the summer.
Saturday was another busy day. We had a nice walk around the neighborhood and then attended a Laurel Street porch musical concert. Mahmoud Chouki is a very talented musician from Morocco, now living in New Orleans. His band was very, very good. Here’s a sample:
Kenny, Kara and Lynn met us and I’m not sure anybody really enjoyed the music as much as I did. I would describe it as Middle Eastern jazz – a bit of an acquired taste. I’m not sure there’s anywhere else where you can just show up with a folding chair and listen to music on somebody’s porch.
That’s Patois restaurant on the right, one of the first places that Diana and I enjoyed dinner together in New Orleans. I thought Mahmoud’s saxophone player was great:
As if we hadn’t had enough music, we splintered into a couple of groups – one (D’s mostly girls group) off to dinner at Café Degas, followed by Connor at the Old City Jail. The other (Kenny, Denny, Tres and me) down to the House of Blues to see Zebra. Never heard of them? I hadn’t either. Led by Randy Jackson on guitar and vocals, the trio has all the original members from 1975. They sound a bit like Led Zeppelin might, if they were from the southern United States.
Denny and I enjoyed a Tiki bar snack before the show and were fortunate to have VIP access as the show was completely sold out and very busy. I chuckled at the guys around me who knew every word to every song. All a matter of where you were when.
Diana’s group waited a while for their show to start and enjoyed the venue. Their dinner at Cafe Degas was a success, with Diana really enjoying her soft shell crab.
Now I’m enjoying what I hope is yet another Cowboys blowout win over the Carolina Panthers – it’s off to a good start.
I finally finished “Be Mine” by Richard Ford. This was one of the best books that I’ve read in a long time. Frank Bascombe is such an excellent character, and this one alternated between laugh out loud funny and heartbreakingly poignant.
I have a ton of dog-eared pages in this book that I was going to share, but I should focus on the Cowboys game. They’re off to a slower start than I was hoping for, but seem to be picking up speed. Here’s the online review:
“Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway.
Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives—sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent—Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank, in typical Bascombe fashion, faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days.
In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on displays the prose, wit, and intelligence that make him one of our most acclaimed living writers. Be Mine is a profound, funny, poignant love letter to our beleaguered world.”
The new Chris Stapleton album seems to be very good – I’ve only listened once. Some new sounds, like 70s Soul or R&B.
How about this version of one of my favourite John Prine songs – very creative:
And here’s another creative cover:
I remember listening to this in Mad Hatter’s on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh during the Heriot Watt years. They had a video screen for the songs and this one had Bruce pulling Courtney Cox up on stage.
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and compassion for all.