Annie de la Dolce

Want a cure for the post-holiday blues? Move to New Orleans

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio was pretty cool. We have the possibility of having a "white Christmas" (which is akin to seeing a unicorn in New Orleans) and it gets pretty damn cold... so it actually feels like what Christmas is supposed to feel like. You know, like in the movies. As a kid, you love the snow. As an adult, lots of people grow to hate it because you have to drive in it, clean it off your car in the mornings, shovel it and deal with it. All you hear is people complaining about it, yammering on and on about it all day.

I was never one of those people (until about January 2nd). I was always like... yea snow! I'm twelve years old! Look how puuuurty! I'm gonna take pictures of all the ice and crazy stuff!!

See?

This is from a few years ago.

Snow is really cool at Christmas. But after Christmas? It starts wearing out its welcome. January and February are dreary months up north. It's grey. It snows. It sleets. After New Years, there is nothing to look forward to except spring... and maybe Valentine's day if you're into that sort of thing (i'm not).

Holidays? GOOD. Post-Holidays? BAAAAD. Here's how the holidays used to go for me:

October:  Pretty leaves! Dress up and party, it's Halloween! (my fave holiday)

November:  Thanksgiving... a holiday centered around pumpkin pie. Awesome! And pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks! HEAVEN IN A CUP.

December:  Birthday (PRESENTS!), Christmas (PRESENTS!)

This house is decorated like how I FEEL during Christmas.

It was like, you'd get addicted to holiday-ness, everyone celebrating, being happy to BE ALIVE, MAN... with Christmas being the climax of seasonal cheer and goodwill towards men.

But after you kiss someone on New Year's Eve, sing "Auld Sang Lyne", drink a bottle of champagne and wake up with the worst headache of your life on January 1st... what do you do when you don't have anymore holiday heroin? When there's no more "A Christmas Story" on constant loop anymore ... when there's no more cute holiday commericals like the one where Hershey's Kisses play "Carol of the Bells"?

After you drop all of your New Year's resolutions within a week? What do you do?

You get the post-holiday blues, man.

But all of this changed when I moved to New Orleans.

When Christmas decoractions come down, the Mardi Gras decorations go right up.

Believe it or not, people around here will tell you that it's their favorite time of year, which up north is akin to someone telling you that they love getting the flu.

You barely have enough time to long for the warmth and glee of the holidays... because Twelfth Night comes, the beginning of Carnival season.

Before you know it, the Krewe du Vieux parade is strolling down the street.

And let me just tell you... that Mardi Gras might just be one day, but people down here celebrate for like, a MONTH leading up to it.

By the time the actual day comes around, you're like... really?! Even MORE DRINKING and MERRYMAKING??!!

So, happy Carnival season! Krewe Du Vieux is coming around the corner and it's time to start overdosing on King Cake. I'm ordering my favorite kind today (apple/goat-cheese from The Cake Cafe). 

It's time to look forward to parades and to get excited about catching cheap plastic beads and plastic cups (or fine china). It's time to do a few push ups in order to be ready to pounce on those people trying to catch your shoe at the Muses parade or coconut at Zulu.

So if any of ya'll up north start getting the Jan/Feb blues, come down and visit!! New Orleans will cheer you the hell up!

Jazzfest and the art of music festivals...

I've come to find in my experience that there are usually two kinds of music festival-goers. The first kind is the person who loves music. The second kind of person is someone who likes to go for the spectacle... and to get as messed up as possible.

At the New Orleans Jazzfest, mainly what I saw were the former. People who loved music.

My first music festival experience, the Carling Festival in Leeds, England... most of the people were like this:

Carling Festival/Leeds

My friend Irene and I had been traveling in Scotland and stopped in Leeds for what sounded like the most amazing line-up of all time. And don't get me wrong, we had fun. We had more fun than you should be allowed to have... but there was a different vibe.

Music festivals are set up so that you can't see everyone you want to see. During some point there is going to be a time where two bands you love are playing at the same time and you have to choose. It seemed like the English kids got around this by crowding into a tent, fighting their way up front and then bailing on the band as soon as they played their hit radio song... to run over to another tent to hear that band's radio hit. I remember being baffled as an area packed with people would become bare... just me and my friend and a few other people... and the band still very much playing on.

I kind of felt bad for the bands.

But on the upside of the Carling Fest... we got to sing Blur songs (one of me and Irene's fave bands ever) on a pleasant English evening along with thousands of people, all of whom knew the words. It was an experience that you wouldn't be able to have over here... because not that many people like Blur and they'd never be able to headline a U.S. festival. That's the best part about music festivals... the unpredictable amazing and unique experiences.

There are also things about the English festivals that make me not want to go back. People had a penchant for filling up what seemed like hundreds of water bottles and throwing them around the crowd... like we'd do with beach balls in the U.S., or glow-sticks/necklaces at a Phish show. And you never really knew what was in those water bottles.

I also remember that weekend, there were a lot of trash fires. The kids would gather up the trash (Carling cups, water bottles, paper food plates etc...) and would make mini campfires in the middle of the main stage area. Security would put them out... but then more would just pop up. It was kinda crazy... Americans would freak out about that kind of thing. It was definitely kind of lawless... a weekend of anarchy.

After that I went to Bonnaroo for a few years... but I'm not sure that I ever had that much fun. I think I would trick myself into thinking that I was having fun because I'm not much of a camper. Every year got worse. It's like a marathon... it really sucks while you're doing it, it's really hard... but at the end, looking back... it's very rewarding. You think to yourself... I just saw Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine in ONE weekend. I am awesome.

My friend Irene at Lollapalooza (and an awesome band known as the Raconteurs).

But the time you spend baking in the sun all day... the time you spend fighting crowds... the time you spend looking for friends who combined mushrooms with MDMA the night before and have seen no sign of them for hours... the time you spend waiting for some diva rapper (Kanye... I'm looking at you) to come out on stage... makes you wonder if it's all worth it. And of course, as you look back... hell yeah it was worth it.

You do it so you can witness moments that would never happen anywhere else or at any other time. The unique moments. Like the time I saw Bonnaroo's 1 a.m. superjam set starring John Paul Jones, Questlove and Ben Harper. They played Led Zepellin tunes into the night. I could have died and went heaven.

Or for the times that you get to sing along with your friends to your favorite Radiohead songs (like that one year at Lollapalooza, with fireworks over the Chicago skyline)... tear up as you watch Thom York perform "Fake Plastic Trees" ... "If I could be who you wanted, if I could be who you wanted... all the time".

To someone who loves music, to someone who loves a band that much... you'd stand a little heat to be able to have that moment. There is nothing, absolutely nothing like the energy of a main stage crowd listening to songs that people grew up loving, thousands singing in unison under the stars. To a music nerd... it can be a religious experience.

But as I get older... and the more attached I get to hot showers and comfortable beds, just the mere thought of something like Bonnaroo makes me exhausted. It makes me ask myself... do I really want to do it again?

The answer is... only if I have a proper bed to sleep in at the end of the night. And only if that bed isn't very far... or at the end of some kind of crazy public transportation.

So, Jazzfest was perfect.

It was more than perfect, it was downright pleasant. My dude and I just rode our bikes into Bayou St. John, met up with some friends and enjoyed some tunes.

And the thing that I noticed about Jazzfest straight away was that this was a gathering of music fans... and not just people who liked to get as messed up as possible for a weekend.

And the food was amazeballs. We had some crawfish enchiladas that were out of this world. You want to know the way to a dude's heart in New Orleans? That would be crawfish enchiladas. I'm not sure that I've seen my dude more enthralled with a plate of food.

And yeah, it was hot. But you push through it. It's just something that you do for the music if you love it enough. You get sunburnt. You pay 5 dollars for a beer... all so that you can sing along to "Reptillia" by The Strokes with your friends.

Here are some Jazzfest highlights:

This was my first Jazzfest so maybe I was the only one amused by this? "No street vending" signs directly across from people selling lemonade, beers and jello shots?

My fave sign. Jazzfest parking, $297,000. Comes with a free house.

The thing I hate most about music festivals. Port O Potties. I think I've developed an irrational fear of them since watching Jackass. This is why I don't drink much beer at festivals... I hate using these things. Dudes get drunk and don't care where they aim. The sun beats down. I'm gagging just thinking about it.

Me and my dude watching Mystikal. And I never thought I'd string those words together in a sentence. Again, it's the unique moments ;-)

"Strummin' da bass".

Notice the difference?  

What were some of your Jazzfest highlights? or music festival moments of unique awesomeness?

 

Yankee's First Crawfish Boil (UPDATE)

**Update

My fiancé works out of town for several days out of the month and he pretty much missed all of Mardi Gras. He'd text me every once in awhile... "Ya'll goin' parading tonight?"... and I'd say yes (I had a great night at Muses), or I'd say no (I was paraded OUT, no Bacchus for me)... and he'd text back, "Have fun, luv". But I knew deep down that it was killing him inside.

On Mardi Gras day I woke up early with my neighbors, sat on our porch, drank bloody marys and watched people parade down the street, dressed up in crazy costumes (my fave was a flock of men and women dressed up like the Black Swan). I have to say that it was all insanely fun, but there was a big part of me that really missed my dude, and I felt bad that he was stuck at work.

When he returned home (on the day after Mardi Gras, poor dude) he mentioned that his friend "knew a guy" that could get a good price on crawfish... so we thought, since he had to miss all of the awesomeness of the parades and parties, why not throw together a cool crawfish boil and really get down... yeah?

There were a few people responsible for this thing; my neighbors (an awesome couple from Colorado) myself (a northerner, from Ohio), and my fiancé (born and raised in Louisiana)... and none of us had actually thrown a crawfish boil... also, we (and when I say "we", I mean "I") only had a vague idea of how to do it.

At first I figured, hell... all you need is a big pot and some live crawfish, yeah? But then you discover that you have to (duh) get a burner, propane tank, some kind of paddle to stir the crawfish, tons of sausage, vegetables, seasonings, special plate things, newspaper, etc. There was also the little fact that we didn't have a proper table to eat at. You see, we haven't been in our new house for that long... and we hadn't gotten around to buying patio furniture/miscellaneous crawfish items.

When everything was said and done, our crawfish boil was an awesome time. Everything went relatively smoothly considering the short amount of time that we spent planning it and our total lack of boiling skills. My fiancé printed off a bunch of crawfish boil recipes from the interwebs and studied them. Our neighbors bought the pot/propane tank... Fiancé bought over 100lbs of crawfish **(and by that I mean) SPLIT BETWEEN 20 PEOPLE YET PHYSICALLY WENT TO BUY THE CRAWFISH, BOUGHT (or rather, HANDED OVER THE MONEY, rather gently) AND HAULED ALL THE BAGS BACK TO OUR HOUSE AND THREW THEM IN OUR BATHTUB), his sister bought a ton of sausage, potatoes, veggies and spices... and I bought miscellaneous stuff like salt, tray things, soda, corn etc.

My neighbor ended up building a table out of a scrap door that was left at the house when we moved in. It turned out to be a really nice table. As for the newspaper... while dining at Bacchanal, we just took a huge pile of Where Ya'ts/ Levees/Gambits.

The only glitchy thing that happened was, one of my fiancé's friends came up to me and said that something was wrong with the propane "regulator"... and I had drank enough Abita Strawberry that all I could think to say was... "You want to listen to some Warren G?"

Out came the duct tape and all was good.

So here are the top 10 things I learned from my first attempt at co-throwing a crawfish boil. I'm sure that most of these things fall under the "duh" category for seasoned veterans of The Boil, but for a virginal yankee like me, these are some things to remember.

1. A 36 quart pot full of water takes a long time to come to a boil... might want to start a bit earlier so guests are not sitting around for an hour and a half.

2. The sun sets. Invest in some proper lighting for the courtyard.

3. Invite more people. Some of the people you invite will inevitably not come and therefore not eat all of the crawfish that you estimated for them... and you get to either peel all that extra crawfish later yourself or feel totally horrible when you throw the poor little guys out (of course we peeled all of our extras... promise).

4. Hide Fiancé's iPod. I swear I'd have a good playlist going and then all of a sudden I'd hear something that I knew he'd put on. The boy can't NOT be in control of the music. I'd play the Stones, he'd put on the Beatles... I'd play the White Stripes and he'd play the Dead Weather. AHHH!

5. Have someone at the party that knows what they're doing. All I've gotta say is God bless my fiancés sister Kelli for the guidance, and God bless our friend Aaron that attended and just so happened to be an expert at the fine art of crawfish boiling (he knew how to "regulate").

6. Write down a solid list of things you need. We had to go back to the store a few times to get stuff we'd forgotten (like a paddle). I hate going to the Walmart on Saturdays, much less three times on a Saturday. It might as well be the ninth ring of hell as far as I'm concerned.

7. If you drink enough Abita Strawberry, you will kill your appetite and therefore render the crawfish boil kind of pointless for yourself... since you're not really all that hungry.

8. I'm still not brave enough to eat the whole tail... vein and all. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to not think about what that "vein" is, but that time has not yet come.

9. Leftovers can be awesome (even though it's a chore to peel all those suckers). It's a great time for a foodie like me to experiment with some new stuff. I tried out some crawfish mac & cheese, which turned out pretty good. I adapted my dish from Emeril's recipe, substituting leftover sausage for the pancetta and a package of "italian cheese blend" instead of spending 30$ on gruyere and fontina cheese... I mean, I love me some expensive cheese, but not when I'm experimenting with leftover crawfish.

 

10. The second leftover recipe I tried was "crawfish bread"... I had kept hearing about this but wasn't sure what it was. Do you bake crawfish into the bread? Do you grind crawfish up into a paste and spread it on bread like paté? I found a recipe from the brilliantly named crawfish.com, and it seemed pretty easy. Put some yummy crawfish stuff between halved french bread pieces and bake... but in the tradition of Walmart being a horrible disappointment, they were totally out of french bread (sacrilege!) when I went to the store.  So instead I bought a loaf of something vagely italian looking. I don't think the bread was sturdy enough... so everything just ended up falling apart when it came out of the oven. Though I gotta say, even though it didn't look all that pretty, it tasted really quite good. Next time, I'll def get the french bread. Thanks a lot Walmart.

As far as the experience goes... after all was said and done and the boil and the evening was winding down... I thought of that Kurt Vonnegut quote, "'I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

Yep. If that wasn't nice I don't know what the hell is. I've miraculously managed to make some amazing friends in my short time here in New Orleans and to fall in love with one of the most amazing dudes I've come across in this lifetime. It's gatherings like these, crawfish boils, that brings everyone together for the communal experience. Eating, drinking, being merry. Chillaxin'. Boilin' some crawfish.

Southern Decadence 2010. Part uno.

Oh, Jean Lafitte, what would you have thought about your beloved city's celebration of Southern Decadence? New Orleans is normally a city with the ghosts of pirates such as he walking down the streets... but not this weekend.

This weekend we had GaGa.

And Decadence. Also known as... "Gay Mardi Gras".

 

When you walk under the balconies of Bourbon street on Labor Day weekend, one doesn't normally hear the typical "Show your tits" chant... though they don't discriminate. One would probably hear something else pertaining to boy parts. 

It's an interesting change of pace. 

My first Southern Decadence weekend was several years ago, pre-Katrina. I was still in college and had a nice long weekend. Mollee, my ole travel buddy, happened to have a few days off in a row, so we went down on a whim. We booked a hotel in the Quarter without checking to see if there was anything special going on.

**Me n Mollee. We had a bit of a stint across the pond as well. I need to get back there... Sorry, I've been hit with the travel bug with no way to quench it... I have to fill my new house with furniture, not buy plane tickets to exotic locations.**

ANYWHO. When Mollee and I arrived at our French Quarter hotel we looked around and started to wonder why we happened to be the only chics in the building. And then at second glance we started wondering why we happened to be the only STRAIGHT people in the building.

It was a surprise. A cool one definitely... but certainly a surprise. WE LOVED IT. We had the time of our lives... and for the next few years we tried to make it down for Labor Day. Us straight chics. And we recruited other straight chics.

One year, in 2005 to be exact, we had all planned to go down for Labor Day yet again, this time the bestest best showing yet. We had like, 6 straight chics going... but that didn't happen. Katrina happened. We of course, changed our travel destinations at the last minute... but I'll always think about that lost weekend and what happened. I mean, I can't really grasp it... I didn't live through it. And there are really no words, at least... no words that I can say in this particular post about this particular subject from this particular Ohioan. 

2010 was a good one though. 5 years after, the city is strong and the Decadence weekend continues to grow.

The costumes for the parade are always my favorite part. Every year has a different "theme"... with this year being "Leather & Feathers." And let me just tell you, I definitely saw a lot more leather than I saw feathers. In the heat. Leather in the heat. I'm not really sure that I want to think about the ramifications of that equation.

 

The parade starts up at The Golden Lantern, which it has to be said, has the best bloody mary I've ever had.

The Grand Marshall seemed to be Marie Antoinette. Ushered in by gladiators. Of course. Like one does.

 

That could not have been comfortable. It was like, 95 degrees that day. And humid. It's the f'ing swamp. Sometimes I walk around these streets and wonder what the hell people did before the advent of air-conditioning.

There were several peeps with a "BP" theme... these dudes being the "BP bees"... and there is my lovely neighbor/friend Holly.

"Mother Nature" was hanging out and offering to give us her "gift"... which we politely declined. Also, for some reason, Mother Nature seemed to be going "Beiber hunting" after the parade... Ew? What do peeps SEE in that kid?? I don't get it! I mean, he's no Jordan Knight ya'll!

Of course, there has to be the southern belles.

And a band. It's not a parade without a band. 

And I saw quite a few peeps on leashes.

These queens were my favorite though. I loved the blue hair... and they looked like they were having the most fun that anyone ever had. 

And here's a yankee and a confederate general. What you can't see from this picture though, is that good ole Robert E. Lee wasn't wearing any pants.

My first Southern Decadence parade was a crazy experience. I had never seen anything like it... I had never even been to anything like a "Pride" parade up until that point. Oh what a difference a few years and a gay roommate/Will&Grace situation will make. The costumes impressed the hell out of me. And they still do.

But now that I've been here for awhile and I've seen some of the amazing spectacles and events that New Orleans has to offer, none of this seems crazy to me anymore. It all seems pretty normal and cool. And I LOVE THAT about this town. It's flamboyancy. It's whimsical-ness. The fact that just around the corner there's always some crazy event that you can dress up for and get creative with. 

And I love Decadence. It will always have a special place in my heart even though I am not a gay man ;-) It's got a lot of memories attached to it. 

Which leads to... Decadence Part Dos:  New memories... (so as to not make this particular blog post into an f'ing novel)....