Enola Gay

Joan of Arc had a heart.

Sometimes, you just have to be what you are.  If it isn't beef or ham, you can bet it tastes like chicken.

Have I mentioned I'm a big Big Freedia fan?  Someone is listening to "Rumpshakerz" in their car at the traffic light in front of my house.  I am doing what comes naturally.  If you've got it, shake it like you mean it.

Enola Gay:

Big Freedia

I'm told Big Freedia (pronounced Frida) is going to be on the Jimmy Kimmel Show tonight.  I won't be able to catch it.  If you aren't able to either, here is a Big Freedia video.  The skyline is New Orleans.  If you've been here long enough, you know where the exterior shots were shot.

Jazz is more popular in some quarters of the city.  Bounce is bigger in others.

Ursuline Concord

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us!

From Hollygrove to Holy Cross, New Orleans glows.  The city radiates a magical aura from the bend in the river to Pontchartrain Park.  The sun rises in the east, a flower blossoming.  The sun sets in the west, locked away in a tomb.  If you can get from the West End to the Lower Ninth Ward in an evening, you will be back again the next day.  Desire is a state of mind that has nothing to do with Florida, but plenty to do with sunshine and retiring from the concerns of the workaday world.  

Sweat it out with Sweetheart.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor.  Sweetheart statue.

As we like to say in New Orleans, "Our Lady of Prompt Succor, hasten to help us."

If ever there was a city that could help itself, it is New Orleans.  The ties that bind a community together are tight.  Superhuman vision, and a finely attuned ear, make all the difference between a comedy and a tragedy.  Five times out of six, if there is a funeral, there is sure to be a parade.

Burger King Home Delivery

Burger King Home Delivery.

According to USA Today, the nation's thinly entertaining paper of record,  Burger King is attempting a bid to capture the home delivery segment of the hamburger market.

Out of the bunker.

Cheryl Blossom: Lifeguard.

My life bears no resemblance to two thirds of the plot lines in the typical Archie comic book.  In New Orleans, though surrounded by water, there is no beach.  The few people who swim off the batture... the current carries them away forever.  There are no lifeguards in New Orleans.  There is no drama.

The Great Jewelry Armoire Debate

Some links do kiss and tell.

"Why do you call it a jewelry armoire?” he asked.  “You could just as easily call it a jewelry cabinet, or a jewelry chest, or a place to keep your jewelry.  Whatever it is, it is a fine-crafted piece of jewelry storage technology.”

She said, “I like to say jewelry armoire.  It makes me happy.”

It was easy for him to see what made her happy.  Her jewelry cabinet was a chest of jewelry treasures.  It was the perfect jewelry box, with tiered jewelry storage.  There was a ring drawer.  There was a drawer for bracelets.  There were necklace hooks in necklace cabinets.  There were bangles racks.  There were plush, contoured earring mounts for stud earring storage, hoop earring storage, and dangle earring storage.  Her jewelry armoire has space for navel rings, nipple rings, and any other jewelry an elegant lady may own.  An elegant jewelry armoire is more than a thing of beauty.   

Keep jewelry in a stylish jewelry armoire.

She studied her face in the armoire mirror.  She was pretty in pink.  She opened a ring box drawer and chose a ring from the velvet-lined cushions.  She chose her earrings from the armoire earring cabinet.  She opened the velvet-lined bracelet drawer, and considered the diamonds, but she turned to the bangle tree.    

An elegant, wall-mointed jewelry armoire is a lady's best friend. 

“I like to say jewelry chest,” he said.  “Jewelry cabinet works for me, too.  Sometimes I think Best Jewelry Cabinet should be a proper name.  But if you like your jewelry armoire, I like it too.  I see why you like it.  Your jewelry armoire is beautiful.”

She looked at him.  They kissed.  The armoire mirror saw it all.

New Orleans dreams

New Orleans in a shot glass.

They say Hollywood is a dream factory.  I see why.  For different reasons, in very different ways, I think New Orleans, Louisiana is a dream factory.  Living here, day after delightful day, I feel untethered from the reality that rules every other place I've lived.

I spent some years in Naples, Italy, an outsider speaking only English, in a city with more than a million inhabitants, that has only one McDonald's and two Chinese restaurants (when I lived there, least).  Different rules applied to life in Naples.  Different rules apply in New Orleans.  It is a world like none other.  The rest of the world is out there, it just doesn't matter very much.  A living city is a microcosm.

When I hear a trumpet player keeping himself company along his, or her, long midnight walk home, I hear the heartbeat of a living city.  It sings.

I spent a few years in Boston.  That city calculates and studies.  I've lived in Queens, a part of a city that schemes to make a buck.  I've lived in Newport, Rhode Island, a place apart, that stuns with its beauty.  I've was nurtured and came of age in New London, Connecticut, a place where no one visits, unless they mean it.  I've lived in Chicago, and there was nothing wrong with that, except the weather.  I've lived in Houston, and I never want to go back.

I live in New Orleans, now.  I never want to live anywhere else again.

I live, alive, in New Orleans, without a care in the world.  New Orleans incubates dreams.  It fledges dreamers when they are ready to soar between Riverbend and Hollygrove, between Bayou Sauvage and the slippery shores of the mighty Mississippi River.  If an idea has legs, it will be able to swim.  New Orleans is a dream factory filled with small entrepreneurs looking to mint something more than coin.  It a city in which dreams come true.

Another day in New Orleans

Is it right or is it wrong?  It is too close to call.  While I often go about my daily routine to the tune of Yaketty-Sax, I can't say that this song is appropriate for all occasions, except when it is.

A day in the life of Whalehead King.  Balaenius Rex!, 

Roscoe Conklin "Fatty" Arbuckle.

Roscoe Conklin "Fatty" Arbuckle

They called him "The Prince of Whales."

I believed the champagne bottle story of his downfall until recently.  Like many things, it is more complicated than a telling anecdote.  Everyone has a story, but we don't always write it ourselves.

He had a real name, and it wasn't Fatty.  Rest in peace, Mr. Arbuckle.

Legion of Four

Which one is Element Lad?

Limbo is where unbaptized infants go when they die.  Sophie Wright told me this, this morning, while we were smoking cigars at the bus stop on the corner of Magazine Street and Napoleon Avenue.  We sat on the bench, in the shade of Ms. Mae's awning.   The oaks in the neutral ground dripped from the fog.

I keep saying, "Balaenius Rex!"

If this isn't a New Yorker cartoon, I'll eat my hat.

Don't you find it strange that you don't notice something till it's obvious?  All day I found myself writing 2010.  It wasn't until this afternoon that I realized my autonomic nervous system is more than a year off.  It is 2012 as I write this.

I met a woman named Farrah today.  I said it was a popular name, for babies, when I was a boy.  She said she was named after her grandmother.  I said I wasn't that old.

My house guests departed this afternoon.  They had stayed for nine days.  Lovely folks, they kept me from my usual armchair.  Seven days separated from fine furniture makes one weak.  I put my feet up  on an ottoman.

I was thinking about how Istanbul was once Constantinople, and old New York was once New Amsterdam.  New Orleans has always been New Orleans.  The city's history is silent until it gains its name, then it sings.  New Orleans is a city that begins by being true.  It is forever-new in a way that is eternal.  It is what it is, like nowhere else.  The women look prettier, and the men seem smarter, in New Orleans, Louisiana, especially at night.

How do you illustrate the passage of time?  If life isn't like an S. Kelly cartoon from the Times-Picayune's editorial page, I'll eat a dozen Gulf oysters, puttin' on the ritz, just the way I like 'em.  Between Calliope and Thalia, there is Erato.  I was sitting between two ladies at the Two Muses, on Frenchman Street, two days ago.  A night can move in strange directions in 2012 AD, you only have to wish it hard enough.  I can't tell you more without switching to a romance language in la Nouvelle Orleans!

Another kind of comic art.

It isn't always easy to live a day in the life of Whalehead King.