13 Things on Thursday That I Already Miss from our Trip to Fat City!

One: Lump crab and alligator cheescake from Jaques Imo's. Holy. Mother. Of. God. This was by far the most bizarre and delicious thing I've ever eaten. Ever. ever.

Two: Sweetbread Appetizer at Bayona's. I saw God. God said You think this is something? Try Jaque's Imos!

Three: Pravda. The hip-ass literati lounge decorated in prewar commy art, and Absinthe curia. They played the Cocteau Twins and served us Absinthe with no prattle or disdain. Arty yet homey. Loved it. And they made the best dirty martini in the quarter. This was a martini so dirty it was served with a pair of panties and a call from your wife. Absinthe, by the way, is . . . drifty.

Four: Koops. If you're a waitress or a bartender and your joint is closed and you just want some good food, a beer, and no bullshizzy, go to Koops. Two of the bartenders who'd served us at other places walked in while we we there after the quarter had shut down. It was cool. And rabbit and oyster gumbo? God.

Five: The infinite jukebox. I'm hanging with my girl arguing tequila with a dishwasher from the Marriot listening to Filipino Box Spring Hog, then Cake, then Waterboys, then . . . the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars? It's like a giant iPod that plays any song you want but also tries to get you to play video poker.

Six: Soul Rebels. They pointed their trombones at my wife and sang Getcha Booty Down Low. For that alone, I adore them. They are a HIGH ENERGY BAND. They could make baptists dance.

Seven: Rebirth Brass band. I've wanted to see this band for so long I almost cried when they got on stage. The ultimate New Orleans band (with Soul Rebels on their heels). They own the Maple Leaf, they shake the roofbeams, THEY MAKE STUFFY WHITE PEOPLE DANCE LIKE JAMES BROWN! You got to understand how to see Rebirth. At 10:30 at night they were just getting the barbeque going in front of the club. Around 11:30 they finally got started and just blew the roof off the place. By 11:35 the little hall where they play had gone from maybe thirty people evenly dispersed like a checker board and enjoying the odd cool breeze to A FRIKKIN VIBRATING DRUNKEN MOB 300 STRONG, SWEATING, MAKIN' OUT, GETTING IT ON. It was divine.

Eight: Pat O'Brien's. I know it's a cheesy tourist thing and is pretty much the Space Mountain of New Orleans but damn is it fun. I'm such a music snob that when Phil Collin's comes on the car radio I'll kick it out of the dash board. You couldn't PAY me to play a Billy Joel song. But three minutes and four Margaritas into Pat O'Brien's and I'm scream-singing Piano Man and throwing money. But beware: They will keep serving you booze until you die. NOBODY GETS THROWN OUT OF Pat O'Brien's! I got so drunk I started requesting Gilligan's Island Incidental Music, Mutant Ninja Turtle Fight Song, and Mendelssohn's Concerto in G Minor which did not make the real-estate-saleswoman-cum-lounge-singer laugh.

Nine: Alvin, the professional drink tray soloist. Look. It's impossible to explain. Pat O'Brien's has two great big copper clad dueling pianos between which a man stands with a drink tray covered in quarters. He has huge thimbles on all his fingers and at some point the piano players say Take it away Alvin! and he DOES A SOLO on a DRINK TRAY. It's just stupid and insipid and clearly a gimmick for generating tips. Here's how you tip him: You roll up a dollar (I saw a guy throw a 20) then get his attention then throw the dollar-ball which he catches on the tray and the room goes crazy. It's just. . .stupid. I know it's silly as all get out but I had the most fun tossing money at this guy and just digging on the fact that somewhere in the world there's a guy making a living playing a drink tray. And, here's the weird part, HE'S NOT THE FIRST ONE! THIS GUY did it first (We saw him in 2003).

Ten: The Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches every night at 10pm at LaPavillon where we stayed, dripping in splendor. The place is ornate, gilded, and flush with Louis 14th antiques. They treat you like landed gentry, turn your bed down at night, wear those safari hats and open the door for you and it's just rock star luxurious. But every night at ten oclock they have a tiny buffet table with cold milk, hot chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Old men in sear sucker suits and little old ladies in chiffon dresses and trust-fund leveling diamond necklaces were elbowing me out of the way to stack these free sandwiches in their arms and go back to their room. But, after a night of professional Margaritavilling, those sandwiches hit the spot.

Eleven: Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. Another silly tourist trap. Whatever. They make KILLER margs and Brint Trenor plays there twice a week and he frikking smokes a slide guitar.

Twelve: All the naked chicks. I can't say enough about the importance of high quality public nudity as a means to boosting tourism.

Thirteen: Drunks touring Bourbon street at two in the morning--with their kids. Here I am smoking a cigar and drinking a MaiTai on the street at 2 in the morning giggling uncontrollably at the collection of nearly nekkid wimmin hanging out the door of a strippers club and I'm looking at the pictures on the facade of the place which are lurid and pornographic and I hear 'Daddy, I'm tired' and I turn to my right and there's a guy AND HIS WIFE AND KIDS looking at the very same damn porn I am. And people question MY parenting skills!

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

13 Things on Thursday about Being a Parent that You Should Think About

One: You are an idiot.

Two: Your opinions are to the wisdom of your eleven year old boy as paleolithic man is to an astronaut.

Three: The only reason one should learn higher math is so that when your daughter asks you to explain a trig formula, you can confidently pronounce the answer from the back of the book.

Four: However; you never understood quadratic equations, you never will understand quadratic equations, refer to number one.

Five: The only truly effective parenting technique so closely resembles good-cop-bad-cop routines that you will begin to take notes during Law & Order.

Six: You will discover--from their vocabulary--the only time your children listen is in the car.

Seven: Sympathetic magic is real. When I took my toddler son to the Sanford Zoo in Florida, he was distractingly fascinated by the three toed sloths, standing rooted to the walkway for twenty minutes staring at the immovable animal with a look of divine grace. I thought he was farting. Eight years later, I understand: he'd found his God. Three toed sloths in our neighborhood race past this kid, elbow him out of the way, and say 'who's the slow kid?!' I'm not lying.

Eight: The D.A.R.E. program isn't to keep kids off drugs, it's to keep parents off drugs. Think I'm lying? Just wait until you're at Buffalo Wild Wings ordering a Newcastle and your kid says "Beer is drugs, Dad! You're takingdrugs! My dad takes drugs!" The waitress said "I'll bring you an Iced Tea," with a wink. I tipped her $20.00.

Nine: You are made out of money. It doesn't matter that you bought the kid an xbox three sixty. You also have to buy him the wifi connection, xbox live account, Gears of War, Rock Band, and a spare guitar so his friend can play bass with him for fourteen seconds before they toss the whole rack on the floor and go out to glue scrap cardboard to their bike-forks so their spokes will rattle, thereby playing with garbage for an hour after you dropped nearly 7 bills on a video game system that could pilot the space shuttle. 

Ten: You will experience the urge to kill. (Refer to number nine).

Eleven: You will face the dilemma of birth control pills with candor and resolve. Even when they are prescribed by your daughter's ob/gyn who swears your daughter doesn't need them for actual birth control but to control the random and overwhelming effects of her orc horde. You will repeat this respectable raison d' acclaim to yourself like a holy mantra as you drink fistfulls of martinis in an effort to erase the barely perceptible evil grin your daughter was trying desperately to suppress as you were thusly schooled.

Twelve: You will learn not to post stuff like that on the internet because as much as you're Googling her dates before they go out with her, they're Googling her which means they're Googling you, which means your stupid tell-all blog is their number one stalker's reference page. Dumbass.

Thirteen: You will learn patience. Not by some kind of hallmark afternoon special hands folded treacly bull caca. You will learn by the daily practice of forward thinking. Every time your kid trips over their brand new bass guitar, their Ps3, their fortress of Anime, or their library card while succumbing to the mind-numbing effects of tween/teen sudden-loss-of-constant stimulation, while nearly fainting from it while muttering their hive-mind/Borg mantra 'I'm so booooored'. While that happens you will not erupt with WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE ; nor will you throw a book at them; nor will you tell them they'd be less bored if they'd try to clean their lair for three minutes; nor will you sigh dejectedly, throw your hands in the air and surrender your wallet.

No.

You will do the following Tantric exercise, recommended by the ceaseless research conducted at the Death By Children Institute for Parental Sanity: close your eyes; envision yourself standing on the sidewalk as your youngest child packs his very last bag into a rusty clunker on his way to college three or perhaps ten thousand miles away from you. Smile warmly, appear happy/sad, crinkle your crows feet as much as possible. Now, envision yourself reaching back and patting your back pocket wherein lie two round trip tickets to an all inclusive trip to Vegas.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Recipe # 9,356. Dirty Martini Grenata and Admiral Byrd Popscicles

Summer is here and summer means it's time to try again to make the world's greatest Popsicle. I had a mango and chili Popsicle two years ago that I'm still smacking my lips over. I've been trying to find that mysterious Mexican Bicycle Ice Cream guy ever since. And last year's nearly world famous pickle juice Popsicle was so bizarre and delicious I'm still getting emails about it. So today I moved forward. I'm making Popsicles for grownups. Why should I be forced to endure cherry bomb sugar blast rainbow pops and frozen Spongebob on a stick when I can make my own spectacular sub zero masterpieces? My first two attempts are in the freezer: a Frozen Dirty Martini and what I'm going to call an Admiral Byrd: Earl Grey tea and raw sugar. I can't wait.

Here's the recipes: Admiral Byrd Popsicles. First, get a popsicle mold. Don't be cheap and use Dixie cups--what's the matter with you? Get a cool mold. Second take some raw sugar and mix it with equal parts warm water. I used a heaping tablespoon of unprocessed sugar. Big spankin' brown grains. Third, make some earl grey tea. Use the good stuff, loose leaf, let it steep THREE MINUTES, dammit. THREE MINUTES! Strain, mix in the melted sugar, MIX IT WELL and pour it into a couple of molds. Freeze (duh).



Now--make a dirty martini. Don't be cheap and use crap Vodka. Be a man. Use Belvedere.

Here's how you make a good martini: two shots vodka, half a shot of Vermouth, a generous shot of olive juice. Pour it over ice, put on a good song. Shake the shaker like a mofo. Shake it through half the song. Shake it until a thick layer of ice forms on the outside of the shaker. Shake it until your fingers turn blue. Shake it until your arms are paralyzed. Now strain it into a chilled martini glass with three big fat olives--oh, wait. I mean pour it into a Popsicle mold with a couple of olives. Big fat ass olives that barely fit into the mold.

Rigorous testing in our secret underground testing kitchen reveals that Belvedere vodka is very monkey corvette dance routine (hic!) and even slightly hot redhead psycho Disney movie (hic!) (Hic!). Sorry. (You should've been there when we tested the tequila pops . . .)

The Dirty Martini does not freeze well because of all the vodka. It will be more like an Italian ice: a grenata. So run som hot water over the mold and pop it out into a bowl. It tastes like a fnorkin dirty martini. I wish it would freeze because it tasted awesome. I had nine of them and I love you man. Sheriushly. I luuuuuuv you maaaaaan. I .... I think of us more like brothersh (hic) than . . .

[three hours later]

The Admiral Byrd does freeze and is, in my humble opinion, the greatest Popsicle ever. I highly recommend it and you should send me money now.

Next, maybe a bloody mary pop (on a celery stick). With aspirin.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Thursday's 13 Things Things on the Internet That were There. On the Internet.

1. Long Awkward Poses
2. Mr Nice Hands
3. Get Down with your Bad Wookie Self
4. It's Kaleidescopic.
5. Tick Tock Spock
6. Cool New Vacation Spot (pssst: it's MARS!)
7. Isabella Rosselini does porn (for bugs).
8. Finally.
9. How I'm spending my retirement money?
10. Best. Ice cubes. Ever.
11. Training for baby sitters
12. O.M.G.
13. What it might be like if we weren't so fixated on Family Guy.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Recipe #5: Pepperoni Pancakes

You start by offering breakfast to the 537 tweens and teens bivouacked in your abode. After they shrug, as if the effort to speak their thoughts aloud is too much for them, as if the arduous mechanics of sucking in air and expelling it in such a fashion that it may communicate something is beyond the scope of their hive-mind ennui, as if the words f a willing and competent chef are like the indulcent tones of a facks moh dehm, a 2oth century relic of low baud telephonic comm service--after that, feel free to interpret their collective disregard as "Please, sir, make us something truly and indelibly hideous!" Make them this:

1. Bisquick in the usual fashion.
2. Add sliced pepperoni.
3. Cook.

Serve with syrup and the option of a little red sauce.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Mission Accomplished

The father and son fishing trip is perhaps one of the classic moments of fatherdom. The Roon and I were fortunate enough to b invited to one by my friend and political antithesis, Dave Haynes, Republican Committee Chairman, CPD Sergeant, and talk radio superstar. Dave's family rents all the cabins at Sunset Bluff Resort every May and has a fishing weekend.

Fishing is more than a sport, fishing is a kind of religion. Its rituals are ancient and the man who pays them due regard is participating in an ancient and honorable ceremony of petitioning the earth for sustenance. Should he pronounce the sacred words correctly, should he furnish himself with the proper instruments of his office, should he perform the illustrious dance with the proper form then he will be rewarded and the earth shall give up her bounty, the robust and filling, mysterious small-mouth bass; and the man shall hold it against the palm of his hand and appeal to the gods of the water in the time honored fashion and with the following proper oration: Jesus Snot Barking Christ in a Hat Basket, I didn't drive five hours and pay $900.00 to catch more bait! And then ceremoniously throw his Shakespeare rod and reel into the weed choked briny depths of Lake Hamlin, Michigan.

Fun on a father-and-son fish camp vacation is hampered by several obstacles, not the least of which is the bizarre and unexpected skill possessed by one's son in knotting his fishing line, mid cast, in the wind, into a perfect model of an Amazonian jungle spider's massive web, large enough to catch a man (which we proved). How Roon managed this on nearly every cast is completely outside the scope of science. But, like in a cartoon, I'd set up his hook, his bait, the bobber, turn around a gently place my Rapala with the grace and precision of a man comfortable with his place in the world, turn back to the kid to find him entrapped in a monofilament cocoon.

There s an etiquette and a collection of best practices associated with fishing that can easily be translated for the man who, like me, hasn’t fished in a long time and who, like me, is about to embark on a weekend excursion among a group of uncles and brothers and sons and nephews who’ve been fishing this lake since Sinatra was on the radio and the first lesson is this: watch where they fish.

One of the draws of Sunset Bluff is that the cabin cost includes a boat, a nice open topped Boston Whaler aluminum john boat with a 9 horsepower outboard motor hanging off the back. We woke the first morning, fled our cabin to the dock where ten or twelve guys are all standing on the docks and the banks fishing worms. There were a couple of guys in their boats but they weren’t going anywhere. Their boats were still tied up, fishing off the back of their boat three of four inches from the pier. Me and Roon jump in our boat and take off across the lake.

Aaah, the open water! Spray in our face, wind at our backs, lures lodged firmy and irretrievably in the carpet of weeds that lie thick and mocking in every direction on Lake Hamlin just three inches below the surface of the water, the ping of your son’s lure catching on the keel of the johnboat, where it will dangle like an inverse trophy hood ornament, a badge of your lack of paternal instruction, throughout the trip.

About six minutes into the weekend, Roon and every other 11 year old child, threw their arms into the air from sheer exhaustion. They were bored and they needed guns so while we were getting our fishing licenses at Wal Mart, I talked Dave into letting the kids get air soft guns.

When I was a kid, I remember the Titanic task of begging my mom to let me have a BB gun. My mom would say “You could put an eye out with those things,” and I’d shrug, staring of at the rack of high powered pellet guns, shiny black and lethal as hell, and say “Yeah--barely.”

And air soft is a wimpy version of a BBgun, molded out of high impact plastic to look exactly like an AK 47 or a Glock, the pistol most favored by drug dealers and Gary Busey. The producers finally started making them out of clear plastic so the neighborhood watch people would stop calling in their kids as gangbangers. They fire little plastic pellets that can hardly hurt you and probably would merely give you permanent diminished sight, not total blindness, not like a BB gun.

Not sixteen seconds after opening the passage, homeboy had already had his gun confiscated for pointing it at one of the grown men in the cabin—all cops—who wholeheartedly disapproved of the toys, especially their propensity for filling the damn things by, apparently, tossing all 15,000 bright green plastic BBs into the air, hoping a few might make it into the ammo slot. By 11:30 one of them had shot the other in the leg and both guns were on top of the fridge and they were sulking around the property. Bored.

But some rights of passage are vital and must be endured. Most vital, on a father and son fishing trip, is the entirely unnecessary profitless run. This is a trip by boat at a time when even comatose fishermen know that no fish in their right mind would get off their warm lake-bottom bed to eat a lifeless worm dangling from a rig transmitting our every word like a loudspeaker into the black water beneath the boat.

It is vital that this trip be undertaken under threat of rain, when it is far too cold to even creep slowly past an open kiln, much less fly across the open water of a deep water lake in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. (Not many people know that Lake Hamlin, in Mikasoukee, means “dress in layers”).

But we did that right of passage. Four of us, Dave, Connor, Nate, and myself, in a tiny rowboat with an 8-horsepower engine (and by horse we mean dead horse and by dead horse we mean a three legged, diseased, malnourished ancient asthmatic dead horse) cutting a deep wake across the very center of the lake. Boats flew past us, barely touching the water, their keels just slicing through the very tips of the whitecaps, their Ray Bans following us in silence as they skimmed by, the look on their face the same look you give to someone limping to a four way stop in a purple 1973 Gremlin.

We got to the furthest edge of the lake, dropped anchor, and began fervently casting in all directions, the water cool and perfectly clear, calm as glass in the little cutaway glade we found, the bottom riddled with shallow pans of fish beds. We were silent, studious, our lures and bait in the water for all of, I don’t know, three maybe four seconds before Roon start reeling furiously.

“They’re not biting, let’s move.”

After getting his lure snagged on the anchor rope, and after getting mine snagged under the boat and onto Nate’s line and after a beaver swam up to stare at us with that same Ray Ban glaze the pros were using out on the open water, that there but for the grace of God go I stare FROM A BEAVER Dave and I chucked it all and raced (I’m exaggerating) across the lake to a waterside restaurant and order fish baskets and beer. We’re all puttering along toward the docks under a gray sky and the waves are low mounds, the reflection of the clouds like silver jewelry on the surface of the water and just as I’m thinking that, Roon notices it too and he says “Dude, this lake has excellent graphics!”

Later, after docking the boat, we saw that nearly everyone who had elected to stay at the docks had caught enough fish to feed Bolivia. We all took positions on the ends of the docks and dropped our bait in the water. I watched as mine drifted all the way back from the middle of the slough to just in front of me, a shaft of setting sunlight gilding the worm just a few feet below the surface and by some miracle, two fish, a bass and a northern, spun their slow motion front fins and idled up to my bait and I swear to you I SWEAR they looked at the worm, looked at each other, and shrugged.

About that time, Roon got a bite and reeled in a gorgeous 2 pound bass and his inner cave man perked up and said hey, wait, that’s kind of cool, and Roon got bit by the fishing bug and we stayed there until it was so dark he couldn’t see his bobber anymore.

The next morning when the insane bird that kept flying into my window every morning had finally committed birdicide and I finally crawled out from under the blankets, Roon was gone. I found him down on the bank with his rod, my rod, and someone else’s rod, working all three, eyes on the bobbers like a bird of prey. He caught a couple of bluegill and we took the boat our one last time for the hell of it. Roon road silently in the boat for like ten whole minutes before he finally spoke and I braced myself for the inevitable, for him to say I’m bored, or this is better on x-box, or fishing is gay, but instead he just says “This was pretty cool, dad.”

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Derp

It occurs to me that I don't blog nearly as much as I should.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.