NOLA Day 2- Gris Gris, Gumbo, and Grenades
Today started with a trip to City Park in the Mid City neighborhood. The park was just stunning with more of that hanging moss, winding trees, and stone statues. We fueled up for the day by going to a coffee shop called Morning Call. The coffee shop is all about creating a real old-timey newsstand vibe. It's located in a beautiful hundred year old casino building, it's cash only, every server is wearing paper hats, and they make a damn good old fashioned New Orleans coffee.
From there it was only a short walk through the park to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The museum made a pretty amazing first impression before we even got inside, with a massive sprawling sculpture garden. There were natural lakes, fountains, and a wide range of artistic styles from classical to contemporary. They had some pretty big names from just about every recent generation of artists including Renoir, Jacques Lipschitz, Rene Magritte, Allison Saar, and Rodin. It was all exceedingly cool and, in a nice stroke of luck, it had been raining all morning but stopped just in time for us to really get to enjoy walking around. Also while we were enjoying the art and the gardens, there happened to be a group of adults with developmental disabilities on a day trip there. Both my sister and I have spent most of our adult lives working with the developmentally disabled in some capacity, so it put big smiles on our faces seeing this group being out and about having a nice outing together. There was also one guy with Down Syndrome who was way faster than everyone else in the group so whenever he was waiting for them to catch up he'd just start dancing. He was awesome.
While there were so many great pieces, my personal favorites were Blue Dog by George Rodrigue which you can't tell from my picture but is actually three repeated images of the dog in a triangle in all three primary colors; an abstract sculpture of two sitting figure by Lynn Chadwick that reminded me of the robots from my favorite ongoing comic book, Saga; and lastly this jaw dropping piece by Do Ho Suh called Karma that features a standing figure with a seemingly infinite tail of progressively smaller seated figures stretching up 23 feet in the air above him. Each figure is as detailed as the last no matter how small they get, so it's really something to behold.
Inside the museum the artwork continued to be excellent. There was a really cool art project happening all over the city called Prospect 4, that brought cool contemporary artists in from around the world and put them up in venues all over NoLa. We happened to be catching the very last week of it, and the artists they got were all so hip, creative, and talented and for me at least I got excited whenever I saw a Prospect 4 logo anywhere we went.
One of these artists, named Barkley L. Hendricks, started off our museum visit today with a series of very stylized portraits in the lobby that combined photorealistic representations of Black men and women with striking abstract backdrops. You also can't tell from the photos, but they were impressively large as well which really sucks you in. His use of colors was also super interesting, and created really interesting moods for each of his paintings.
The next thing we looked at was the early European art wing, with a pretty solid collection of Medieval and Renaissance pieces. Lots of lush backdrops, religious symbolism, and horribly misshapen babies.
My personal favorites from this section were a painting of Apollo and the Muses by Maerten van Heemskerck (not how pissed off the one cherub in the middle looks at having to work the organ bellow); a painting of a bunch of fish that looks oddly surreal; a painting of St. Francis by El Greco that had his signature dark backdrops and ghostly figures; and a painting called Death Comes to the Banquet Table by Givoanni Martinelli that looks like a pretty normal dinner scene until you catch the skeleton entering from the right and totally pranking everyone.
They also had one room that was all really old paintings of saints plus two last pieces by Barkley L. Hendricks that used really metallic paint and suggestive images of fruits. Kind of a "one of these things is not like the others" situation, but I like that the curators have a sense of humor.
The next room was all Southern Landscape, which really captured the beauty of the bayou (and at least one very mischievous dog). I liked that these artists looked at very functional wooden shacks and saw something lovely.
The last room on this floor was all decorative arts, with some pretty furniture, Faberge Eggs, an insanely intricate cabinet, and for some reason a painting of a monk balding less than gracefully. What home could be complete without one of those?
The second floor was probably my favorite because that had all the modern and contemporary paintings as well as more Prospect 4 artists. The first wing had a lot modernist pieces focusing on abstractions, cubism, and surreal representations. The cubism and surrealism always does a little bit more for me than pure abstraction but there were some pieces that clicked for me for whatever reason. I do like that when art reaches a certain level of abstraction the subjectivity of viewing it becomes even more obvious when it's just sort of in your gut whether or not you like it.
My personal highlights for this section were: an abstract but beautifully colored landscape of The Ice Hole, Maine by Marsden Hartley; some slightly yonic mountains by the great Georgia O'Keeffe; a really dreamy abstraction by William Henry Stevens that for what even reason I see a lot of images in; a Picasso called Woman in an armchair; a painting by Rene Magritte where the french word for Dream is written in giant stone letters on a barren landscape; a spooky forrest with hidden faces and figures all over the place by Max Ernst called, for some wonderfully baffling reason, Everyone Here Speaks Latin; and two paintings of ladies by dude Joan Miro that I'm sure the ladies who inspired them weren't completely thrilled about even if I think they look awesome.
When you leave that wing, you are then immediately greeted by a gigantic golden Log Cabin which sort of stands out. The piece is a sculpture called America by an artist named Will Ryman, and it is made of actual logs painted with actual gold resin, Inside various consumer items, ranging from bullets to iPhones to jewelry (all also painted gold), are arranged in intricate lavish patterns along the walls and gold chains and shackles are strewn all across the floor. To me this represents the more complicated and challenging history that is actually inside the more idyllic history we like to present for our country, but even without any interpretations or pretensions on my end a giant gold cabin is a cool thing to just stumble into on the second floor of a museum.
Next up came three more Prospect 4 highlighted artists. The first artist was a Cuban artist Alexis Esquivel who made brightly colored paintings that blended pop art use of celebrities and surreal backdrops with really skilled representational paintings. His paintings seem to have a real joy to them. My personal favorite is the one in the middle where Obama is wearing an orange suit and is just dancing in a garden.
The next artist was probably my personal favorite of the entire museum. Her name is Njideka Akunyili Crosby and she's just so damn talented in a so many mediums. Her pieces are mixed media and feature combinations of painted figures and backgrounds with elements made from collaged and painted photographs and newsclippings. Looked at from a distance the pieces are cohesive scenes and you might not even notice the collage element, but when you get up close it imbues the works with additional thematic resonance (besides just the impressive vision needed to make them fit in so seamlessly) as the collaged images either add a larger world context or a more personal one. She really blew me away.
The next Prospect 4 artist was Xaveria Simmons who also works across a wide variety of media, making cool abstract photographs, paintings, and doing performance piece. I liked her photos a lot but her main installation was an absolutely massive piece called Rupture which featured a scrawled politically charged text poetically discussing the concept of reparations that takes up an entire wall.
Sort of tucked away in a peaceful little alcove around the corner from the prospect four people was a sculpture called Wing by an artist named Lynda Benglis. She calls it a "fallen painting" and it was designed sort of like a three dimensional Jackson Pollack as she would spill out liquid polyurethane, let it harden, and then cast it in Aluminum. It's really but I like the way it extends out of the wall like you almost expect it to still drip, but instead it's just some random event frozen in time.
From there we looked at the more recent European works from romantic and Impressionistic times. This wing had a cool mix of paintings and also decorative pieces which got pretty ornate in those days. I think this was probably the best wing for conventionally pretty art.
My two favorite pieces here were a painting of a scene from Greek mythology by Charles Joseph Natoire with the incredibly freudian title The Toilet of Psyche and a beautifully understated painting of a girl and some flowers by Edgar Degas.
The next section of the museum we went to had the last two Prospect 4 displays, this time focusing on photography. The first of these two displays was really incredible to me, and it featured a collaboration between two artists Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad. Gill took beautiful black and white photographs of rural India, but then Vangad really elevated them to sublime levels by painting over the photographs using a traditional Warli tribal painting style. Warli painting is characterized by simple pictographs and geometric patterns and the way Vangad weaves these paintings in and out of the photographs creates a really spectacular visual. It's cool to see a very old art form being used in fresh contemporary ways, and it does add a stamp on authentic Indian culture and pride onto the sometimes other-ing form of photography.
The last prospect 4 artist was named Dawit Petros and he did a cool thing where he would take photographs of people covering their faces with framed paintings. I liked it and it goes to show you how far reaching the influence of television's picture-in-picture function really was.
Next up was a special exhibit called Personalities in Clay and focused on Modernist ceramics. We're talking unusual visuals, unconventional materials, and weird shapes galore, and I loved every second of it. It combined my love of surrealism with how constantly impressed I am at three-dimensional art because I have no clue how it works. I've literally seen ceramics demonstrations, but I still don't really understand how people do it.
In the hallway they had a shockingly elaborate silver trophy presented to an actor named Joseph Jefferson. It's really beautiful, but I have to say I think the Oscars are a teensy bit more portable.
The next special exhibit focused on contemporary Japanese ceramics and upped the "How the hell do they even do that?" factor even more. The pieces combined traditional techniques and themes with modernist sculptural practices like abstract expressionism. I am also 100% sure that nearly all of these pieces defy physics in some way shape or form. They were amazing.
My favorites from this exhibit were a pieces called Budding Wind by Zenji Miyashita that uses really beautifully light color shadings to give the impression of a a mountain range at sunset; a piece called Layers by Yukiya Izumita that looks like it would collapse at any moment it was so delicatley balanced; a piece called Listening to the Waves by Takayuki Sakiyami that was made of clay but sculpted to look like it had been woven from yarn; and lastly a piece that I'm pretty sure was supposed to look like a flower bud but instead just really really looks like a butt.
On the third floor was their collection of ancient art from around the world. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there because I was getting tired and hungry, and my sister was getting really upset, as an anthropology major at how little cultural information they gave about each piece. They were all just sort of lumped together.
I do think it's impressive though that ancient cultures had their own representations of Newt Gingritch.
There was another special exhibit on artwork by Bror Anders Wikstrom, who was one of the most famous designer of Mardi Gras floats. His specialty was bringing in elaborate and lavish fantasy and mythology elements. The artwork was super impressive so I can't even imagine how cool it must have been to see these things in motion.
And last but not least was a small room of contemporary native american textile art. I was really impressive by how many complex shapes and designs the artists were able to weave into their materials.
After some heavy duty museum going, we were pretty hungry so we got a Lyft to bring us back down to the French Quarter. The restaurant we had wanted to go was randomly closed on just Tuesdays so we decided to go to a place our Lyft driver recommended to us. On the way there, we took a short cut through the Bevolo Gas and Electric Light Museum where they have a workshop that aims to preserve the art of old fashioned lantern making. It was easily the most beautiful and informative alleyway I've ever gone down.
For lunch, we went to a restaurant called Oceana Grill. Our driver raved about the chargrilled oysters. I had never seen anything like them before but they were pretty incredible. They were grilled still in the shells and then drizzled in a garlic cream sauce and sprinkled with parmesan and romano cheeses. It was an explosion of tasty flavors, with a much nicer texture than raw oysters. My sister even bent her vegetarianism in the pescatarian direction to try one. To top it off with another NoLa tradition I got a seafood gumbo, which had a spicy tomato base, fat gulf shrimps, crawfish, and whole crab legs. It was a beautiful soup.
After our meal, we went to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 where Nicolas Cage built a pyramid crypt that he intends to be buried when he eventually dies in some inevitably insane way probably involving castles and snakes. Unfortunately the Catholic church insists that you pay $20 per person to just get into the cemetery so we said, "Screw that noise." When we were walking away from cemetery we stumbled across this cool beautiful grotto which checked our weird religious artwork box at no cost at all!
Our next stop was the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum which has the really cool distinction of being in the building that used to belong to America's first licensed pharmacist. The building was absolutely gorgeous with every effort taken give the appearance of a real old time pharmacy complete with vintage herbs, machinery, and even a soda fountain counter. I knew that soda fountains had been in pharmacies but I liked learning that they were initially really functional to give pharmacists competitive edges at having better tasting medicines.
Along the walls and shelves were exhibits highlighting the history of pharmacy. These included authentic medicine bottles (semen in this context referring to the latin word for seeds, meaning plants not random dudes), some wonderfully market cocaine for chidlren's toothaches, horrifying early syringes, a list of the medicinal values of common plants and herbs, opium tampons (yikes!), and one of the oldest known toothbrushes in the country made out of bone with pig hair bristles. It all is very fascinating, but also makes you super grateful to be alive now instead.
Through the back door was really pretty courtyard and garden where the pharmacists would have grown the ingredients he needed back in the day.
On the second floor of the museum was a special exhibit on the history gynecology, obstetrics, and urology (all the medicine for naughty bits). The OBGYN equipment in particular looked completely terrifying and if that don't give you empathy pains for the historical plight of women I don't know what will. The tools for problematic pregnancies literally included something called a perforator which was used in last ditch efforts to essentially stab through the women's stomach to crush the fetus' skull in situations where the baby would be stillborn but the birth might kill the mother otherwise. It was pretty damn gruesome. Luckily the urology stuff was pretty funny in a very sexually repressed kind of way.
The star of this exhibit though was this doctor trying way way too hard to sell butt plugs. He says they basically cure everything, which for him I'm sure they did. You've gotta read that description.
The next special exhibit was one of the largest collections of vintage eyeglasses and spectacles. These were really cool as works of art, but I gotta admit I don't see the point of glasses without ear hooks unless you are a wolf trying to convince german children that you are their grandmother.
The last exhibit on the second floor was a fun one and all about the historical uses of alcohol in medicine. The funniest part here was the story of patent medicines that claimed to be cure all elixers. They did make people feel better, but that was because they'd be almost 80% alcohol sometimes. This actually led to the earliest version of something like the FDA to crack down on these dangerous quackeries. There was also a cabinet of different folk hangover cures which was interesting but probably not super effective.
Lastly, back on the the first floor they had a cabinet of outdated and frequently insane medical practices. The funniest one by far was that rich people wanted to be fancy so they had their pills plated in gold and silver. These metals aren't broken down in the stomach so their desire to show off led to them never actually getting the medicine and sometimes dying. The most shocking thing to see was lead nipple shields, which were thought to be soothing to the mother and good for the baby. Yes at one point lead breast milk sounded like a great idea. The things that were shocking because they actually worked were a trepanning drill and bezoars. Trepanning was one of the earliest forms of treating severe head trauma, and is very little more than very strategically drilling a whole into people's heads. Desperate times, desperate measures, but at that time when technology was limited it was the only way of draining fluid and reducing swelling of the brain. Bezoars are stonelike objects found in the bellies of goats, which people used to think could cure you of poisoning. Incredibly, they actually can remove cyanide from your system which totally blows my mind.
After the museum, we went to check out the nearby St. Louis Cathedral. Unlike the cemetary they didn't charge admission and it was one of the most stunningly beautiful churches I've seen in the country. I don't like giving the Catholic church my money, but I do love their architecture.
At this point, it had been a few hours since our last coffee so I was fading fast. We stopped at the nearby Spitfire coffee to rest and recharge. It was a tiny little shop, very snug and cozy, known for having some of the best coffee in the city. I decided to be fancy and got something called Las Tres Floers which was a Latte with Lavender Milk, Orange Blossom Syrup and Rose Petals, because I couldn't even really picture what that would be like. It was really good with a strong espresso flavor layered with pleasant floral notes. Plus it was just dang pretty to look at.
Fully recharged, we noticed that we were not taking full advantage of New Orleans' lack of open container laws so we made a beeline for a bar called Tropical Isle which is home to one of NoLa's signature drinks: the Hand Grenade. It comes in an ridiculous novelty glass, which is fun and nobody knows what the full recipe or the final alcohol content is The known things though are that it tastes like melon, it absolutely has grain alcohol in the mix, and it is super strong. The dangerous thing is because it just tastes really good and sweet like melon, you will not notice how strong it is. You might even be like my sister and proclaim how disappointed you are that it's not even that strong as you stumble off a sidewalk. She will deny this, but it absolutely happened. I am always fascinated by the desire of tipsy or drunk people to convince other people that they are neither drunk nor tipsy. I'm not saying that I didn't get hit by the drink either, I just wasn't trying to hide it.
We took our hand grenades out on the town and got into some of the mystical elements of New Orleans. We popped into Marie Laveau's house of Voodoo which is a cool little shop filled with voodoo dolls, elaborate statues of different mythical beings, incense, and souvenirs. It was a little touristy but I thought it was fun, and they had live tarot card readings in the back room which was neat. We didn't do one though, because we wanted to be masters of our own destiny. Unfortunately the shop didn't allow photos, but the outside window display gives a pretty good representation.
Next up we went to the Historic Voodoo Museum. The museum starts with a live demonstration and orientation by the Voodoo priestess at the front desk. She explained a little bit about the origins of Voodoo in that it is not magic, but a blend of African and Haitian Religious practices with Christianity. Non-religious folk magic is considered Hoodoo which is an important distinction. The actual museum was mostly artwork, photographs, and symbols associated with the history of Voodoo. If I'm being honest this is right about where the hand grenade really started kicking in so my memory and my photography gets a little bit blurry.My favorite fact that I do remember was that young Louie Armstrong used to make spending money by selling Red Brick Dust to prostitutes to help protect them from Hexes. Speaking of Louie Armstrong the whole time we were there the musical selections playing were a really excellent mix of classic New Orleans songs about voodoo.
My favorite thing though in the museum was this effigy of the Rougarou who is sort of like a voodoo werewolf except he takes the form of an alligator which is only a million times scarier.
After the museum we went to see Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, an over 300 year old bar that used to be the go to hang out spots for pirates including its current namesake, Jean Lafitte. The bar was very crowded and dimly lit and we were already decently buzzed so we didn't get a drink but it was cool just to see a little bit of pirate history.
As we were leaving the bar, we saw a dinosaur walking down the street so, you know, someitmes dreams do come true.
At this point our bellies were rumbling again so we walked to a place called Port of Call, which is a nice ittle tavern that supposedly has some of the best burgers in the city. My sister's vegetarianism wouldn't bend so far as to try the burger but they had loaded baked potatoes so she was able to join in me the serious comfort food train. My burger was pretty stupendous with mushrooms, cheeses, and a big juicy patty. You can't go wrong with a good burger done well (not well done though, that's gross). I also got a half baked potato as my side so I can confirm that they blow most people's french fries out of the water. To wash all that down, I got an Abita Turbodog which is a really good brown ale from one of NoLa's favorite breweries.
From there we started making our way to where the open mic would be, which was just a little bit outside the Ninth Ward. Along the way we stopped at a place called the Orange Couch for some more coffee and for me to get some writing done. I think the coffee must have been needed because I started falling asleep right there on the eponymous orange couch. Luckily it was very good coffee and it brought me back.
The open mic was at a place called Bar Redux. It was a really cool little bar, with one of the friendliest bartenders I've ever encountered. Luckily for our nerdy selves, he was also well versed in Phillip K. Dick books and we got to geek out a bit before the sign up list was out.
The actual mic was on the outside patio which was really cool because the weather was just about perfect. It was one of my favorite mics, because there was a decent audience of non-comics but it still felt like a small and intimate space where all the comics kinda played off each other and got silly.
My favorite comic of the night was a guy named Johnny Azari, who basically gave a text book course on how to do an "offensive" set. It was incredibly well-crafted. He started by making a bold claim that "so white people should probably all kill themselves". This is bold because it gets the audience's attention immediately, but it also potentially puts them on edge. He then smartly immediately walks it back from the most extreme stance and says, "obviously not all white people" to ease the audience into a false sense of security for "we need white women, because I for one wouldn't want to live in a world without sluts". It's good because it's a shocking line but because it's tamer than the initial stance it makes the audience laugh comfortably without him actually sacrificing his hard edged voice. Once they've laughed early in, they're now basically hooked and he allows himself to take things to surreal filthy heights ending with John Mayer impaling himself with a black dildo to absolve all white guilt. On paper, I'm not sure I do it justice without Johnny's precise delivery, but I think I've illustrated that while a lot of people think "shock humor" is the easiest comedy to do it actually takes a lot of craft to get it right without losing your audience. It's also important to note that as dirty and silly as it gets, the bit doesn't punch down and the core concept of reparations and race relations is actually really meaningful even if his solution to the problems he address is inherently comical. Basically what I'm trying to say is it was a really good bit. Also a fun fact about us being outside is that when he started going on about John Mayer, you could hear a passerby go "Whoah" which killed me.
Some other highlights for me:
Andy French- I lived in Montana for a while. Here I look like a regular straigh white dude, but I was the gayest Black dude in Montana.
D.C. Paul- A gay guys sashaying away is like getting a document notarized. That shit is official.
My own set went surprisingly well tonight, because I did almost entirely new material or material I hadn't done in a while. I tried to read the room though, and I figured they would like jokes about social issues and relationships more than my sillier material. It was a gambit that payed off, and a bit I have about Flavor Flav did way better than it's ever done before. To be fair, I've mainly done that joke for older white crowds in Boston, and this was young diverse crowd in New Orleans so I think people actually got the references I was making which sort of helps the bit actually land. Still it was really comforting to know that at least in theory I can still think on my feet and write decent new stuff.
Favorite Random Sightings: Ideal Mart; Thou Shalt Not Park; The Great Frog; Suds Dem Duds Laundry; DJ Windows 9000; Bathroom graffiti that just said 2Dads!
Regional Observation: The No open container laws are Wild. I feel like it would crazy being a police officer down here.
Jokes of the Day: Nothing, so here's one from the internet
At school, Little Johnny's classmate tells him that most adults are hiding at least one dark secret, so it's very easy to blackmail them by saying, "I know the whole truth." Little Johnny decides to go home and try it out.
Johnny's mother greets him at home, and he tells her, "I know the whole truth." His mother quickly hands him $20 and says, "Just don't tell your father." Quite pleased, the boy waits for his father to get home from work, and greets him with, "I know the whole truth." The father promptly hands him $40 and says, "Please don't say a word to your mother."
Very pleased, the boy is on his way to school the next day when he sees the mailman at his front door. The boy greets him by saying, "I know the whole truth." The mailman immediately drops the mail, opens his arms, and says, "Then come give your Daddy a great big hug!"
Song of the Day:
