MC Horoscope

Thank you, Leonard Cohen.  I am drinking to you.

Leonard Cohen sings Suzanne.

Will do, Sam!

We really enjoyed our dinner at Galatoire's November 3! I had the pompano. So fresh and moist and tasty! My wife had redfish topped with lump crab meat. We were in the downstairs area. Waiter was Billy Fontenot, quite a jolly fellow (with relatives from Ville Platte, of course, headquarters of the Fontenot family in Louisiana. BAM, cher!). I wore a jacket and tie and was a bit overdressed. Most men had jackets but not ties, FWIW.

The next day was Friday. We saw what looked like homeless people holding places in line outside the door for lunch walk-ins. At 10:00! Yikes.

The way I am using the terms Cajun and Creole in this context is that Cajun is from the Acadiana area two hours west of New Orleans, with Lafayette as the hub, including the parishes of Lafayette, Vermilion, Acadia, St. Martin, St. Landry, St. Mary, Jefferson Davis, Calcasieu, and Cameron. For the purposes of this discussion I am not including the Cajun bayou and riverside parishes that include Terrebonne, Lafourche, St.  Charles, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, St. John, St. James, Assumption, etc. I am just not familiar with how gumbo is done there. I am using the term Creole for gumbos I have had in New Orleans, such as at venerable old time restaurants like Galatoire's and Brennan's, or what I would call nouveau Cajun-Creole restaurants like Commander's Palace or KPaul's.

I prefer the consistency shown in the video I narrated above. To me the New Orleans Creole gumbos I have had are overwhelmed by the flavor of roux or even filé powder, which I did not add to the gumbo in the video. I am not too experienced with using filé at all. But many people from my area do add it table side at the last minute. My family did not use it, did not care for the taste or the way it thickened the gumbo.

There is another use of the terms Cajun and Creole that applies to music in Louisiana. The same instrumentation (accordion, fiddle, guitar, triangle or drums) can be either Cajun or Creole. Creole music is more syncopated than Cajun, but the standard repertoires of both Cajun and Creole music overlap a lot. Two steps, one steps, and waltzes, and sometimes blues known as slow drags. In the really old time music it also included polkas, mazurkas, contredanses, and other dances lost to time. Zydeco music is a more recent descendant of Creole music, originating roughly around the 1950s. The term zydeco itself was coined by a musicologist from Houston. The black French speaking people of the area I am from refer to themselves as Creole. The white French speaking people refer to themselves as Cajun. It is rare that a white French speaking person from that area refers to himself or herself as Creole, no matter whether the ancestors in fact came to Louisiana from Acadia (Nova Scotia) or directly from France before the Acadian expulsion, or even Spain, Germany, or other countries.

It's complicated, and not made any clearer at all in my opinion by Wikipedia.

I post tthis from my Twitter account, but it's shorter:

"Chicken and Sausage Gumbo - Cajun Style"

Here's a 1:45 file from Facebook, but you must be a friend to see it (it's not my file):

"Wonderful Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, Cajun Style, from Lafayette Parish"

In a matter of a few days on my just now vacation I had gumbos from Galatoire's in NOLA, Brennan's in NOLA, Shuck's in Abbeville LA, Soop's in Maurice LA, and my sister's house in Lafayette LA last Sunday.  Sister's was tops, of course, then Soop's. Then Shuck's. Then Brennan's. Then Galatoire's.

If I may paraphrase the Louisiana state motto, it's Union, Justice, Confidence (no matter how stupid things look right now).

ETA you might be able to see the longer video now. It's on the Facebook page of my wife. I don't have my own Facebook account. She let me post to her account this time. I reset it so that not only her Facebook friends can see it but more generally.

If you're superstitious like me, you also did not like the umpire's bad call strike 3 on Puig and refusal to get help from an umpire in better position to see if Puig checked his swing. I'd rather have gotten Puig out clearly on a strikeout or grounder. What happened just made the Dodgers mad and gave them some juice!

(If nothing else, at least I demonstrated how superstitious baseball fans think!)

Seems like the Lerners should buy their own radio station like Snyder of the Redskins, and TV network like Angelos of the Orioles. And dedicate it to coverage of the Nationals. Saturate the airwaves, and that'll go a long way toward building fan loyalty. IMO the MASN deal is not even as bad for building loyalty as the radio domination is.

This is our year! I feel good! (Knew that I would)

Shrimp ball banh mi sandwich for lunch today. Delicious! Jalapeno and cilantro on the baguette. The shrimp balls transported me home to a memory of something I haven't had in years, Cajun garfish boulettes. I don't know what's in them. Some garlic. Some I don't know what.  Don't see it mentioned on the website. Hope they serve it again soon.

Buck Wheat!

"Stanley Dural, Jr. - Founder of Buckwheat Zydeco, Dies at 68" by Jon Pareles on nytimes.com

He was a jolly guy! I had the pleasure of introducing him and his band, Ils Sont Partis (They're Off!), at the Twist and Shout club in Bethesda, in French! He got a kick out of that and said I could introduce him any time he came to town! He was a big draw at Twist and Shout 1 and 2 and the Tornado Alley. A natural progression from Clifton Chenier's blues to Buck's soul and Rhythm and Blues base. I even remember him playing organ in Clif's Red Hot Louisiana Band when Clif was getting sick. What an entertainer! One of us? No, he was one of a kind!

A 36 disk set of concerts in 1966, coming out in November.

"Bob Dylan - The 1966 Live Recordings" on amazon.com

It's sometimes called a copyright dump when you do this mainly for the purpose of re-establishing your copyright claim on creations whose terms would otherwise soon expire. Put it back on the market for a short while, and keep it under copyright for another 50 years (or something like that). No one thinks there's much of a market for this, though it's a good deal at under $4 per cd, from what I have been hearing.

I don't have a background in Latin, so I wonder if the word "venial," as in a "venial sin" versus a "mortal sin," is related.

A strange thing happens to me when I watch Ford movies. In several of them --Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, off the top of my head -- he projects such a sense of community that I almost come away feeling lonesome for these neighbors and friends of mine from the old days, until I remember I was never a part of those communities at all, they are fictitious.

One of the highlights of The Searchers, for me, is the scene where Ward Bond comes to Ethan's brother's home and swears Ethan and Martin into the Texas Rangers to go after the Comanch, as they pronounce it. The scene of them eating home made doughnuts and drinking coffee just makes me so homesick and lonesome. I could recount such scenes in the other Ford movies I mention too.

1 hour ago, jca76 said:

Check out the wine bar specials!  I am not sure there is another place in town that does so well with super seasonal ingredients, often with little more than high quality olive oil and a health sprinkling of finishing salt.  And they change so frequently that we could go back in a day or two and have an entirely different meal -- and probably will.  

Is this menu different from the small plates and pizza specials menu they circulate at the tables downstairs? If so, do you have to sit at the bar for it?

We were thinking of returning real soon to splurge on the seasonal goodness of the small plates and desserts!

Yeah, I know my family's neighbors and relatives in Lafayette and Vermilion parishes etc. are stripping their floors and dry walls and fighting flooding and mold, but it's never too early to ask the important questions like "What will this mean for our CRAWFISH next season?" Bravo! That's a concerned food culture.

"How Will  Flooding Affect Crawfish Season?" by Johnny Morgan on theadvertiser.com

28 minutes ago, jdc said:

If it is a county garage, it should be free after 7 PM and all day on weekends.

I don't think it's a county garage. I've had to pay on weekends. It must be the garage for the high rise apartments there, with some spaces open for the general public. In other words, you don't need a permit. There's a machine for taking payment by credit or debit card. Doesn't take Parkmobile or MobileNow.

Yes, it's a pay garage.

Didn't know they were 15 minute meters. Probably for Crisfield pick up, as you say.

If you are heading south on Georgia Avenue to Crisfield take a right at the street just before the restaurant. There's a parking garage and on street metered parking.

Tomato weekend! Hope it's just the first of a few. August is such a great month in this area! Love the tomatoes, corn, cantaloupe, cucumbers, crab, watermelon, and peaches etc. you can get this time of year. Squash.

Made Lidia's tomato sauce with "suffocated" eggplant with Romas from our garden. So good!

Cherry tomato pizza at Inferno Pizzeria in Darnestown, MD. Thanks Chef Conte!

Alfred Portale's roasted tomato risotto with more of our Romas. Really turned out well. You could taste a bit of every ingredient in the end: onion, garlic, coarse salt, ground black pepper, bacon, cream, Parm Regg, thyme, basil, chives, etc.

More Cajun music fun:

This is Nathan Abshire on accordion, Thomas Langley on vocal, and Dewey and Will Balfa on fiddles doing the old cowboy Rex Griffin's great tune The Last Letter. His version is titled If You Don't Love Me. Warning: This is singing through the nose. It's not for everybody, but it fits well with French (Cajun) and country music.

http://www.npmusic.org/IfYouDontLoveMe.mp3

My transcription:

Pourquoi toi tu m' traite comme si j'sus juste un ami?
Quoi c'est j't'ai fait pour toi d'être aussi different?
Mais si tu peut pas m'aimer comme t'es supposé
Et si tu m'aime pas, chère, j'voudrais q't'm'laisse les tranquille

Mais moi j'peut pas donner tout linge j'connais t'as d'besoin
J'peut pas donner l'argent j'connais que ton couer desire
Mais si tu veux m'aimer comme j'connais t'es supposé d'faire
Si tu m'aime pas, chère, j'voudrais q't'm'laisse les tranquille

(My French is NOT pretty high level, but I can understand Cajun French better than standard French. Pretty sure I nailed it this time.)

Nathan Abshire (1913-1981) was known for playing elements from all sorts of music with that improbable diatonic 10 button French accordion: blues, country-western, black Creole, polkas, hymns, jazz, etc. He was originally from Gueydan, Louisiana, a small town in my home parish of Vermilion, but he stayed most of his life in Basile, LA where he was a nightly attraction at dancehalls in the 1950s. Never for a lot of money. The town of Basile got him a job overseeing the town dump until he died. He gave us Cajuns way more with his music than he got in return, that's for sure. Sounds like the life story of those old blues guys in the 1930s. Thomas Langley played drums and sometimes steel guitar for Nathan's band, the Pinegrove Boys. Langley did other great country western tunes including Tramp on the Street and Nathan did Hank Snow's I Don't Hurt Anymore. Somebody did Johnnie and Jack's My Conscience is Clear (What About You?) in French and called it Tout les Soirs. The Cajun musicians of the 30s-70s drew heavily from country western music, but not so much anymore.

For reference, here is Rex Griffin's Last Letter.

On 7/24/2016 at 11:14 AM, DIShGo said:

After reading rave reviews from critics and seeing "Shane" listed as one of the best films ever made, I decided to watch it, with high expectations. I was disappointed. It seemed corny and dated, and several of the actors seemed miscast to me.

Am I missing something? I realize it was filmed in 1953, and a lot of Westerns that have come along since may have been inspired by it, but I recently saw "Stagecoach," filmed 14 years earlier, and I think it is a much better film.

Yes to Stagecoach! I love westerns too much to pick a top one, or five, or even ten, but Stagecoach is right up there for me, not Shane. I like elements of the Shane story better in Pale Rider with Clint Eastwood, Carrie Snodgrass, Michael Moriarty, and Sydney Penny. I like the supernatural element in Pale Rider.

Good review:

"Pizza CS Review: A Salute to Naples on Rockville Pike" by Tim Carman on washingtonpost.com

For me currently I like the flavor of their crust the best out of 2Amys, Comet PingPong, and Pizzeria Inferno. Best tomato sauce for me is currently at Pizzeria Inferno. We have some good pizzas to choose from!

That tied the room together!

Love this one or not, and I do, Coen brothers' movies are so quotable!