Super Bowl Sunday

04 FEB 18

I know I know. I already posted once today. But it's Super Bowl Sunday! And there are Mardis Gras parades today too! Can't ignore all that goodness. 

If you all didn't know, besides the big game, there is also a Mardis Gras parade today hosted by the Krewes of, get this, Barkus and Meoux! LOL!! Not even joking! It's a parade with animals. Dogs, cats, even bunnies are welcome. How funny is that?! 

Official Krewe of Barkus webpage

Anyways, enjoy your Sunday, whatever you are doing today! I'll be cheering for the Patriots, since the Saints didn't quite make it. But they had a great run and a lot of great games this year including that heartbreaking last play of the Saints' season. 

Big shout out to my kiddies, all of them. Ari, Michael, Jacob and Katie. You are in my thoughts both day and night. Always. Yep, even while watching football and animal parades. 

A Story is Born - Winter Lords Come Calling

28 JAN 17

How are new stories born? Well, sometimes they come to us in dreams...and that is what we have for today. I woke up with the most fantastic dream in my head a few mornings ago. I rolled over and quickly wrote down what I could remember as fast as I could. The full dream sequence slipped away before I got very far, but I should be able to do it justice when I get done writing the story. Below are my original notes with additional developments and annotations afterwards:

The Lord of Winter visits the Summer climes. Burst this and that. Iguanas dropping from the trees. But at the end the southern lords give him the chilly reception kneeing him in the cold and turning a cold shoulders at him.

That's it. Now, granted, I was still partially asleep when I wrote that! 

But I can remember some of the dream and the influences are easy to see. I visited my sister up in the cold north. Me, a southerner headed up. Maybe that is what starts the story, an invite from a visitor from the south and the Winter Lord wants to come down and see what all the fuss is about. We've had some cold weather here in Louisiana and I was concerned about burst pipes, which has happened before. The iguanas falling from the trees in Florida was very memorable from a few weeks ago in the news. They are cold-blooded and the chilly weather made them seem dead, but they were just unable to move. Crazy, uh? That got me to thinking what other changes would happen around the bayous and other southern locations when a big polar mass comes swooping down on us. With some editing, the basic story idea becomes this...

The Lord of Winter visits the Summer Lands. After getting a visitor from the south, the King gathers his lords and ladies and decides to travel to the fanciful lands to see the sights the visitor talked about. As his caravan heads south, the weather changes ahead of him, announcing his coming as surely as a full parade of trumpeters. A small foreshadowing of his impending visit should be here, maybe a flock of black birds unexpectedly heading further south to get away from the impending chill. The appearance of unusual white birds traveling south with the cold. "There's a Killing Frost coming..."

Freezing winds whistle through the castle, under doors and through the windows. Not burst pipes, but do wells freeze? Will have to look into that. Maybe some wizard's beakers of odd fluids and such freezing and popping like cans of soda in the freezer. Make a funny in here about how come Uncle's favorite stash doesn't expand and spill, Ah...it's alcohol that's why! Maybe not Iguanas, but some other type of reptile dropping from the trees. And alligators in frozen bodies of water, with just their snouts out to keep breathing. That actually happened too. 

The Southern Lords pull out all the stops to make the Winter Lord feel welcome, but they are just not used to the air conditioning! They prefer fans!

While it would be a cool turn of phrase to have the Southern Lords give the Winter Lord the 'cold shoulder' and maybe that is still in there as a mini-climax to an issue, I think in the end maybe I will have the Southern Lords celebrate the departure of Winter with a festival and tie that into how an annual Mardis Gras type of celebration comes into being. Maybe come up with some way to say goodbye cold hello warmth in a simple phrase like Fat Tuesday. Fanciful costumes and a parade of floats in the manner of the Lord of Winter's caravan signal the end of the unwelcome climate and the return of warmer days. The celebration is not Mardis Gras, the focus being more a 'goodbye' to the cold and welcome to warmer weather than religious, but there will definitely be a lot of Mardis Gras elements in there. Sure, why not? Keep the same colors? Too easy I'm thinking. A blue for Winter should be in there perhaps. So perhaps Blue (for winter), Gold (for summer) and Green (for prosperity).

So, that's all the story development for today. Keep an eye out here occasionally for further story development and then of course buy the story when it eventually makes it to market! 

Picture for today is from the interwebs... not one of mine.

New Orleans

10FEB17 New Orleans, what a magical city. I'm down here again, and I just love this place. So much to see and do. The birthplace of Jazz. Took some good pictures, at least in my mind. :)

I can now cross off Mardi Gras in New Orleans off my bucket list. We had ringside balcony seats for two parades on Saturday. Krewe du vieux 2017 and another one that followed right along. A good two hours plus of craziness and political satire. Crazy to say the least. Links to some pictures are here, and I will add a few pictures to this post as well.

Krewe Du Vieux 2017 at Mardi Gras.com

Krewe Du Vieux 2017 with list of subkrewes from bestofneworleans.com

Had one really crazy encounter on the Green line trolley. A crazy lady with a gallon of what I hoped was water. She was a bigger black lady, maybe in her early thirties, late twenties, who suddenly and without warning shouted "COMING OUT!" Then she picked her bag up high and slammed it into the aisle, in an attempt to clear the aisle mayhap, but she missed her 'stop' with all the people in her way toward the exit. Then she got angry, told everyone in no uncertain that she was mad, profanity, etc... and then the trolley lurched, throwing her into a few other patrons on the crowded trolley, and then the seas parted to let this woman off. Everyone clapped when she was off.
We saw her on the side of the road later that same day as we rode the trolley back. No pictures of her though.

Andrew Jackson Savior of New Orleans

Of course I spent quite a bit of time at Jackson Square. This is just before sunrise. The weather was wonderful.

 We bought fudge at a place with singing servers. These apples looked delicious!

This was behind the St. Louis Cathedral at Jackson Square. The Church sign denoting a Quiet Zone, covered in very loud graffiti spoke to me. Such a clash of cultures.

 
 This decorated car was truly a sight to behold. Not sure how much Mom would appreciate the shoutout on the back window. It was decorated with BIC lighters, money, shards of various types, figurines and animal horns. The Fleur De Lis was on the hood (the bottom left corner of the picture is the windshield), I especially like the face peeking out of the bottom right hand corner!

Typical French Quarter. Building with iron railings on the balconies. My wife was thinking of drawing something like this scene, so I took the picture. She is very talented! I don't think I would have the patience to draw something so detailed.

A detail of the iron railing next to the place we stayed at. Came out nice I think, as a background image.

 Coop's Place, across from BB King's. The two guys staring at the menu swayed slightly as they read. Or should I say tried to read, they were at it for quite a while.

A little art corner off of Decatur Street. Lots of stuff going on right here, including a lady in a corset selling little Lego people.

A restaurant we passed while walking. Reminded me of a French cafe.

The Cabildo and a portion of the St. Louis Cathedral off of Jackson Square.

Another shot of the Cabildo. These were taken as the sun was rising.

Jackson Square with the cathedral and Cabildo in the background. The Square used to be called the Plaza de Armas during Spanish Colonial times.

 The backside of St. Louis Cathedral as the sun rose.

 Andrew Jackson, the Savior of New Orleans. The position of the clock in this picture reminds me a rather gross joke about a guy who looks like he can tell time by weighing a horse's balls in his hands, but he is actually moving them out of the way so he can look at the church clock across the square.

 These trees look like they almost spell out something!

Detail of a resting place in Lafayette Cemetery #1. Life growing from a place of Death.

 This resonated with me. A fire company, whose motto was Ready at the First Sound, has (or had, not sure if they were still in business or not) a place for firemen to be buried. Very powerful that they have a place for those who served together to be together again. Makes me think of being buried in a military cemetery, mustering one last time with my brothers and sisters in arms.

One of the floats from the Krewe du Vieux. Great floats, great satire. Donald Trump as Humpty Dumpty sitting on his wall that he wants to build to keep Mexicans out. Behind the Statue of Liberty is a Presidenting for Dummies book with the header of It's Harder than it Looks.

Trying to capture the dancers from so far off was hard. They moved so fast!

 I bet this guy took some great pictures. I like the composition of this piece.

Another float from the Krewe du Vieux. Julian Assange Wikileaking in Public! Hilarious!

Joan of Arc statue. Very severe look on her face. Great craftsmanship.

Focus is on the Mardis Gras mask in the upper left corner. Early revelers below, heading...?

 Early morning picture of the fog rolling over the Governor Nicholls Street Wharf building.

A paddle boat on the Mississippi. Clouds parted just enough to let some sun shine in.

Spiderweb with some dew. First time I have taken a picture like this, Switched to the macro lens. It was actually a bit of a juggle as this picture took place right before the previous one. I turned around, saw the clouds parting and the boat going by and had to quickly switch lenses and settings.

The wall around The Joint, a BBQ place featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Glass shards along the top of the wall providing cheap security.

The inside of the restaurant. Great food. The BBQ sauce was thin but flavorful.

This moment I loved, and I hope the picture does it justice. It was very early on a Saturday morning. I came around the corner of the St. Louis Cathedral, heading back to Jackson Square, and I glanced down at some steps leading to a side door of the church and I see Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s book about the Dresden fire-bombing (among other topics). We are studying World War II in class this week and the book just lying there, angled just so, on the church steps, in the dew-filled morning air, sent a shiver through my spine. Who was reading it? Why did they leave it here overnight? Was it some altar boy, sneaking off for a read in between masses? Or the church head, contemplating mankind's evils done to other men? Whatever the true story is behind the tableau, I left feeling pensive, wondering if the universe was sending me a message. I hadn't discussed the Dresden firebombing. Maybe I should.