Thursday, October 21. Surrounded By Audis And Katie's Food, A Radio Comedy Show. Shuckee Duckee. One of the many influences on my radio show is Arthur Godfrey Time. That show ran seven days a week on the CBS radio network from 1945 to 1972, and was so wildly popular in its early years that it made Godfrey the first really big star on television. He was personally a reprehensible egomaniac--a trait that sank his television career. But he stayed on network radio long after all other radio variety shows were gone, and with good reason. He was funny, and he developed a unique empathy with his listeners. He did all the commercials himself, and made you believe everything he said. He also had barely enough musical talent to perform with his excellent house band, a very good male pop singer, and guest performers. He interspersed interviews with the music. It all sounded a lot like A Prairie Home Companion, but in a much older style.
I went through a strong Arthur Godfrey period about ten years ago, when I found fifty of his old shows. That's a tiny percentage of the thousands he did, most of which were not recorded. I've moved on, but every now and then I feel an Arthur Godfrey current running under the show. Today was one of those days. We broadcast did the show from New Orleans Audi. Scot Craig, the co-owner of the recently-reopened Katie's in Mid-City, was there cooking up food samples for anyone who dropped in. Which was more than usual. He spent a lot of time with me on the air. So did Van Bohn, who manages the dealership. We got a good palaver going, and the people standing around listening were giving us the laughs you need to make something that might be funny definitely funny.
Scot is more concerned than he should be about what I think of Katie's. He was particularly disturbed that I found Katie's roast beef poor boy less than recommendable. He told Mary Ann that he agreed with that assessment, and that I needed to come back and try the reworked version. As long as he was here with me on the radio, he made a roast beef especially for me (everybody else got Cuban sandwiches). And I have to say that he got it right this time. I ate most of it, and I avoid eating while I'm on the air. (It goobers up the vocal cords.)
Mary Ann's sister Christine is in town. She lives in Maryland outside of Washington, D.C. She hosted our family when we were evacuated there for several months after Katrina. Christine also just ran for U.S. Congress with a platform that Mary Ann--who became her campaign director--could get behind.
Mary Ann called all her other siblings (there are six of them) and convened a dinner at Drago's. Two large round tables were shoved together to accommodate them all. Round tables do not shove together very well. They would have been better off sitting at two tables and moving around, but I wasn't around to give that advice when they arrived.
Fresh from the radio show, I was in a joking mood. Nobody else seemed to be, and later Mary Ann chided me for disrupting the conversation. I have no status within my own family, and even less within Mary Ann's.
And here came the dozens and dozens of char-broiled oysters. They were as big and plump as the ones we had on Sunday at Drago's downtown. Tommy Cvitanovich sent out a bowl of something new: char-broiled mussels. He had done this before, putting the mussel shells on the grill the way he does oysters. But he refined the process by using a metal basket full of mussels over the grill. This came out good, too. Although I think Drago's may have finally maxed out the number of dishes to which it applies the garlic-parmesan butter than make its char-broiled oysters so good.
The next course filled the table with fried seafood platters, seafood pasta, and shuckee-duckees. The latter is a pair of grilled duck breasts served with oyster pasta. Good dish, but that roast beef poor boy I had during the radio show got in the way of it. It's a portion big enough for two anyway.
I finished with Drago's enormous apple cobbler. That was big enough for about four people, and I didn't even have the ice cream. It looks funny but tastes good to a cinnamon-lover like me.
After dinner, Jude and Mary Leigh went off somewhere they weren't surrounded by people their parents' age. Mary Ann, her brothers Lee and Tim, Christine and I adjourned across the street to Puccino's for coffee. I didn't even bring up the matter of the Morning Call, across the street. No matter how traditional and good the old café au lait and beignet house may be, it's far below Mary Ann's cleanliness threshold, and that trumps all issues of excellence of food and drink for her.
I nevertheless managed to make Mary Ann angry with me anyway. The conversation shifted to political questions. Mary Ann and these three sibs (though not two others, but they weren't here) are united by the kind of beliefs that Fox presents as news. It seems to me that an honest intellect would want to hear another side of some of the opinions that came up, but that's one of many things about which my wife and I don't agree. "Everything you say is like a bomb thrown in the middle of a birthday party," she says, overstating things by quite a lot. I finally did what she wanted me to do: sat there and kept my mouth shut. One has to choose one's battles.
Drago’s. Metairie: 3232 N Arnoult Rd. 504-888-9254.
