Looking For the All-Western Channel on DirecTV

Mr. King is usually the only person at the bar who can see the screen on the bar’s front corner TV.  Aside from the bartender, everyone else either has their back to the TV or they have it in the corner of their eyes.  The bartender can see the TV, too, from Mr. King’s angle, head on, but she often has things to do at the times when Mr. King is at Frey Smoked Meat Company.  

Mr. King knows, however, from times he has stayed too long at Frey Smoked Meat Company, that, after he usually leaves, there is an hours-long lull, when everyone keeps themselves occupied with busy work or with hen partying at the opposite side of the bar from where Mr. King sits.

Mr. King wants Sophia to find a channel that is all westerns.  

Sophia hasn’t told Mr. King this, yet, but, she doesn’t want to do this, and this is only the second day that Mr. King has wanted to talk about it.  Sophia knows that Mr. King will want to discuss this new all-western project for at least the next week and she was already tired of pretending to be interested yesterday.  Luckily, Sophia is going on vacation tomorrow and she knows Mr. King will have forgotten about it by the time she gets back.

Sophia hasn’t told Mr. King this, yet, but, she thinks that if he wants to watch old westerns, which he isn’t even going to pay attention to, anyway, then Mr. King is the person who should be scrolling through every single channel on the TV menu to find this imaginary all-western TV channel.  

Mr. King says, “I would think it would be a fun thing for you to do when you don’t have anything else to do.”

Sophia doesn’t say it, but she thinks it to herself, “And, what do you have to do, Mr. King?”

Mr. King says, “It could be either all westerns or a wrestling channel.  I think it would be nice to watch wrestling, too.  Maybe we’ll learn something.  I’m not asking you to scroll through every channel.  Just stop when you find a western channel or a wrestling channel.  It could be anything that starts with “w”, just not the Weather Channel.  We can see the weather out the window.  There’s no point in watching the same thing twice.”

There was no point in watching the weather channel on a New Orleans day.  Every New Orleans day is beautiful in its own way.

When it is time for you to visit New Orleans, you should stay at La Belle Esplanade.  You'll be able to meet Mr. King yourself, in person.

La Belle Esplanade is the perfect place to stay in New Orleans.  #1 in New Orleans, #2 in the U.S., #16 in the world.  All those TripAdvisor reviews can't be wrong.  Visit New Orleans in technicolor.

Then, Another Thing Happened in New Orleans.

Then, another thing happened.  That's the way every New Orleans story unfolds.  Another thing always happens in New Orleans.  Another thing happened in New Orleans, yada, yada, yada...

Every New Orleans day is part of a jumble.  Nobody can remember the exact order of events, it all happens so fast.  Every New Orleans day is full of shiny distractions and tempting diversions.

Every day in New Orleans is like living in a kaleidoscope.  It is impossible to keep track of everything----minutes overlap with memories.  The only people who have a predictable day in New Orleans are dead people.  New Orleans is that kind of a city.  New Orleans is full of life.  New Orleans is full of beautiful, vibrant, kinetic, inspired, hurky-jerky life.  

KNO-LNO: Know New Orleans---Love New Orleans.  

To know New Orleans is to love this wonderful city we call home.  More and more, KNO-LNO tattoos are being ordered in the tattoo parlors on Broad Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Galvez Street, and everywhere in New Orleans East.  Know New Orleans---Love New Orleans.  New Orleans loves you.  KNO-LNO.

Everyone who knows New Orleans well speaks the same language.  It is a language of love.  Everyone who loves New Orleans has something in common with everyone else who loves New Orleans.  New Orleans is an easy city to love.  The more you get to know it, the more you will love New Orleans.  Then, another thing happened in New Orleans....

I know you want to know what it was that happened, but, I can't tell you now.  It is a tale best shared in person over chicory coffee.

Good memories are made in New Orleans every day.  The best New Orleans memories begin every morning at La Belle Esplanade.

Then, another thing happened in New Orleans, today.  The Roman Candy Cart came down Esplanade Avenue.  It was like Easter in January.  You should have been here.

Pretty Mid City New Orleans

In a New Orleans state of mind, even the angels dream of living in Mid City.  Mid City is very pretty.  Pretty Mid City, New Orleans, as the kids say, nowadays.

When you live where you belong, there is nothing better than that.  It takes more than a village to raise a child right.  In Mid City, all children get a good education and they see examples of responsible adults everywhere they go in the neighborhood.  

Pretty Mid City New Orleans is the most wholesome of all of New Orleans' neighborhoods.  This statement is debatable, of course, depending on what kind of life you want to lead and what kind of life you want your children to lead.  Mid City encourages love of neighbor and getting along.  Mid City isn't Eden, but, in a lot of ways, it is edenic.  You will find more innocence than corruption in Mid City.  That's what I've found, at least.

No matter who you talk to, everyone in New Orleans wouldn't mind living in Mid City---that's true if they live in the Lower 9, in St. Maurice, in the East, in Milneburg, in Lakeview, in Gert Town, in Pidgeon Town, in Black Pearl, in the Irish Channel, in the Warehouse District, in the CBD, in the French Quarter, in Bienville Basin, in the Tremé, in the 7th Ward, in the Marigny, in the Bywater, in Desire.  Everyone who is familiar with New Orleans more than a tourist is, they love Mid City and they like to spend time there.  It really is nice to live in pretty Mid City, New Orleans.  Home is where the heart is.

Mid City is where it's at.  Mid City is like Central City except it is downtown from Canal Street.  New Orleans neighborhoods are like a box of chocolates.  Visit a different New Orleans neighborhood and it will be an adventure in camaraderie.  Love thy neighbor.    

Nothing bad ever happens in Mid City.  I can't remember the last time someone someone delivered bad news or gossiped or was feeling blue.  Let me think about it....   Nope.

We usually talk about the next pot luck supper or, in season, the next crawfish boil.

Endymion is the best of all the Mardi Gras parades.  If you disagree, you're wrong.  Pretty Mid City New Orleans is prettiest on Samedi Gras.

The Dispersed of Judah Cemetery is in Mid City, between the Hope Mausoleum and Saint Patrick Cemetery No. 2, on Iberville Street.

You never know what you'll find in New Orleans when you walk around any neighborhood.  Mid City, New Orleans, though, that's a different world, the way the City of New Orleans, itself, is a world all it's own.  

You will find plenty of people who will be your friends in Mid City.  I know.  I'm one of them.

Have a great New Orleans day today, wherever you happen to find yourself!

New Orleans Dumpster Match

I don't know what it's like where you're from, but in New Orleans, where I live, a dumpster match is a totally hardcore fight.  The winner takes all the glory.  If you've never seen a New Orleans dumpster match, you've spent too much time in the French Quarter, though dumpster matches happen in the French Quarter, too.  French Quarter dumpster matches usually happen late at night.

The way someone wins a dumpster match is that they force their opponent into a dumpster, and, then, the winner closes the lid over the loser.  Case closed.  We have a new champion.

Most of the time, the loser gets tossed, unconscious, into the dumpster.  The most humiliating way to lose is to be forced to crawl into the dumpster so that the winner can close the lid to keep the garbage in the dumpster.

There are variations on the most humiliating way to lose that make it even more humiliating, so most people would rather either win or be tossed unconscious into the dumpster.  Especially for what happens next.

Once the winner is declared, the audience gathers around the dumpster and pounds on the sides, hooting and yelling unkind words the whole time.  Nobody would want to be awake for that.

Then, a brass band will start playing and everyone but the loser will join in a parade, dancing around the neighborhood with the winner dancing behind the brass band and shaking everyone's hand as the parade winds down the middle of the surrounding streets.

The parade gives the fight's loser the chance to crawl out of the dumpster unobserved, to go home, get cleaned up, and live to fight another day.  The parade also gives everyone else something to celebrate.  If there is anything a New Orleanian loves, it is something to celebrate with a parade.

A New Orleans dumpster match is like cockfighting, but it's legal.  

Everything is legal if the police don't catch you, of course, but NOPD takes an easygoing live-and-let-live approach to organized dumpster matches.  Unlicensed gambling is illegal in Louisiana, but no one has ever been arrested for placing a friendly wager between friends.  It's like horse racing.  As long as no one gets shot, the police don't pay too much attention to dumpster matches unless they really get out of hand.

Dumpster matches rarely involve gunplay.  That wouldn't be sporting.  While blunt weapons are allowed, barehanded wrestling techniques learned in high school and martial arts learned from the street are the most common forms of combat.  

In New Orleans, dumpster matches are a longstanding tradition, like red beans and rice on Mondays, or, praying in seven churches on Ash Wednesday.  

In one dumpster match I was lucky enough to see, one lady pulled the wig off another lady and she threw the wig in the dumpster.  The wig-less lady was so upset she jumped in the dumpster to get it and the other lady closed the lid.  That was behind the Family Dollar on North Broad Avenue.  Lucky for the loser, that dumpster is always mostly full of cardboard and plastic instead of food like the dumpster matches that happen behind restaurants.

The second of five dumpster matches I've seen behind Five Happiness, the Chinese restaurant on South Carrollton Avenue, was a doozy.  The kitchen had just emptied a few five-gallon pots of spoiled lo mein in the dumpster when Jacques knocked Jamie's head on the pavement and knocked Jamie out.  Into the dumpster Jamie!

The smell of all that old lo mein and the other trash woke Jamie up and he scrambled out of the dumpster covered with the stuff.  He looked like a swamp monster.

If you've never been to a New Orleans dumpster match.  Ask around.  Maybe your Uber driver will know where to take you.

After a really good dumpster match, a good place to go is Dat Dog, either the one on Magazine Street, the one on Freret Street, or the one on Frenchman Street.  It just depends on what neighborhood you're in.

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 LA BELLE ESPLANADE.

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