And this is a random homeless pirate at the convention's HQ, the Hotel Monteleone Carousel Bar. Musing on his bar's constant rotation -- barstools and all -- the bartender said, "Just because the room is spinning, doesn't mean you're drunk". But if you look up and see a pirate, hopefully you are.
Between the boozeworking (boozy networking...maybe?) and the buccaneering, me and a Nola-first-timer coworker escaped to hit some local spots I hadn't visited in a decade. We took the St. Charles Trolley all the way to the end, then worked our way back. This is Marvin from the Camellia Grill:
After somehow convincing the entire diner to praise a piece of butter-drizzled fried pecan pie with a chorus of "MMMMMmmmmm", Marvin described my chili-drowned breakfast thusly: "This is an omelet. Other places serve...egg contraptions".
Standing in line to get into the Grill, we met a gay couple from Amarillo: an older, bald man man with a daughter on her way into college and another already graduated, and a much younger, pocket-sized, wryly quiet type who'd presumably come out without embarking on marriage/children first. Turned out me and the older guy both knew the same a prominent Amarillo family, me because two of the younger members were at UT with me, and him because everyone in Amarillo knows that family.
"Those guys were wild as hell, and they didn't even drink," I said of the two I knew, who used to launch homemade potato-guns at neighboring houses, the spud slicing one way or the other like an easily distracted bazooka shell. "Did you know that story about that crazy old guy they had the family feud with kidnapping one of them and..."
"Locking him in a chicken coop at gunpoint?"
"Yes! That was amazing." Everyone agreed it was amazing, except the younger boyfriend, who for some reason was weirdly interested in getting to the Nola zoo. "I just want to see the monkeys", he said, smiling...well, kind of creepily. I think if he actually witnessed a high school kid getting locked in a chicken coop by a shotgun-toting crazy old rich guy, he'd stare at the hapless prisoner for hours, but hearing the story just bored him.
Moving down St. Charles: We stopped at antebellum-mansion-turned-hotel The Columns for spiced-bean-garnished Bloody Marys. This guy was sitting at the bar barely working on a term paper about why England and not France waged the more successful Industrial Revolution; he and the bartender were Tulane classmates, and the bartender was supposed to help him write the thing, but I'm pretty sure that never happened. The kid told me that one time at Snake and Jakes, he's seen a guy at a table also working on a term paper, and doing speed, so hey, relativism.
The young woman 2nd from left is Lauren Bourgeois. On the asses-to-elbows trolly back to Canal Street, she spontaneously belted out "The Greatest Love of All" in its entirety -- totally nailed it, though not in a way that encouraged other passengers to sing along, which I think Marvin from Camellia would disapprove of. But she was very very nice. Turns out she was in town from Houston with her mom and other assorted ladies to try out for American Idol, where her diva streak should serve her well. She's still a high schooler, so if she believes strongly enough that children are the future, it'll hopefully become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And finally, this is Toni Kucoc, partying in the Absinthe House. He'd better sober up if he's going to sign with the Heat.
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