Thursday, November 10, 2016.
My Work Versus The Universe.
I am in a dark mood, one exacerbated by the joviality of woman I love, who is flying high today. I give her all the room she needs for that. My exit strategy for times like this is to dive deep into my work. Problem is, there is so much work awaiting my urgent attention that getting something done means turning to the next thing. This can be depressing if I let it be. But having to fight it is yet another task to be addressed.
Mary Ann is leaves tomorrow morning for Washington D.C., where she and our daughter Mary Leigh will pack up all of ML's furnishings from her dissolved apartment, and move to ML's new apartment back here in New Orleans. After weeks of looking, they just sign onto an address, pending my inputs on the lease. The rent is thirty-one times what I paid monthly for my first solo apartment, but I'd better not think about that too much.
The radio show is hard to launch today. I guess everybody is still preoccupied by the Chicago Cubs' World Series win. Yeah. That must be it. The calls finally start coming in at around four-fifteen, and we have a better-than average program. Our dinner special of the day is at Ralph's On The Park, where a guy named Tony tells us that they have a complex appetizer of beef cheeks. Sounds good. I like the mileage we're getting out of these daily reports.
I thought I'd go for dinner to Cuzco, the new Peruvian restaurant on Ferret Street. I thought--and then I gave it up. Trying to drive on Jefferson Avenue is close to impossible, as the eternal rebuilding of the uptown drainage system continues.
Plan B is to visit Bistro Orleans in (ironically) Metairie. They run frequent commercials on my radio show, so I need to visit now and then to find out what's going on. My dinner begins with grilled oysters with sizzling butter and far too much bacon. Although bacon is a great flavor match for oysters, this would have been a better use of exactly same ingredients if they had turned them into oysters en brochette. It also would be a nice contrast with Bistro Orleans's many other oyster dishes. The oysters themselves were certainly big enough to accommodate that under-served classic.
Now I have a cup--but it amounted to a bowl--of oyster-artichoke soup. That is as fine as always. I follow it with a perfectly-made, old-style stuffed crab. Not a crab cake, which has to be mostly crabmeat. Instead, it's a well-made stuffing with a lot of crabmeat, jammed on top of a real crab shell, not the metal kind. Excellent.
I once again forget, when I ask for a dessert of bananas foster, that Chef Archie Saurage actually flames it tableside, and with amazing skill. The flames flicker from a skillet the chef is holding in his right hand, while he has the ice cream and bananas in his other hand, and when he unites the two contents, there's a quick lick of flames again.
I am getting good at persuading bands into letting me sing with them. When I open Bistro Orleans's front door, I hear a trio playing in the bar. It's led by a deft jazz guitarist named James Easter. With him is a fellow playing the upright bass, and a lady singing standards very well. After they play "I'll Be Seeing You," I tell them that the song was the closing theme of Arthur Godfrey's long-running daily radio program, and it also was the closing music of Johnny Carson's last Tonight Show.
[caption id="attachment_53089" align="alignleft" width="228"]
James Easter Jazz Band.[/caption]
This breaks the ice. I have already put a Hamilton into the jar to show my appreciation. The girl singer asks, "Do you have any requests?" I raise my hand and say "Autumn In New York." The song has been running around in my head for the last few days.
"I don't know all the words," she says.
"Well, I do!" I say. James says, "This will be a first. Nobody has ever walked up from a table and sung with us." We do it. I goof up a few lines, but I make up alternate lyrics so I can keep on going. Nobody notices but me--I think. The other customers in the bar say they like it. Two of them know my secret identity.
"How about another one?" asks James. We do "There Will Never Be Another You," which I nail.
James Easter and his ensemble play at Bistro Orleans Thursdays and Fridays. Very listenable, they play mostly standards. My favorite music.
As I write this, I think of something else that would have caught his ear. Next time, I will tell him that I was delivered from my mother's womb by another jazz guitarist. Dr. Edmond Souchon was not only a well-known obstetrician, but a much-recorded jazzman.
I feel much better as I cross the lake. I have the best night's sleep I've had in quite a few days.
Bistro Orleans. Metairie: 3216 West Esplanade Ave. 504-304-1469.
