Recently in Things New Orleans Category
Cox, the New Orleans cable TV carrier, and WWL, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans, are in a high-profile pissing match with each other. Thankfully, this has no impact on CrabAppleLane because we have DirecTV and get WWL over the air. Subsequently, I have a limited grasp of or interest in the financial aspect of this issue. My interest is in the community service both of these companies provide. What WWL has to say. For whatever reason, Cox has much more to say about it. The thing about this is that WWL is the number one station in New Orleans and has been for a long time. They were on the air after Hurricane Katrina. They are the designated emergency broadcast channel for both TV and radio. From my seat in the bleachers, it looks to me like Cox is dealing from strength and is the one issuing threats. They may lose a handful of subscribers but WWL would lose a lot of advertisers if they were taken off of the cable menu. If Cox drops WWL, they will be doing the community a disservice. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. I think the two sides need to just quit playing around in their own media and resolve this. They need to be talking to each other, not the community. If you’re in the Cox/WWL broadcast area, I’d like to hear your views, especially if you’re a Cox subscriber.
To all long-suffering Saints fans: The two guys who scored touchdowns against the Bears Sunday night, Marques Colston and Reggie Bush, are babies. They should be scoring touchdowns here for a long time.
Saints schedule next year not all that conducive to gaining home field advantage.
Home: Falcons, Panthers, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Rams, Eagles, Jaguars, and Titans.
Away: Falcons, Panthers, Buccaneers, 49ers, Seahawks, Bears, Texans, and Colts.
CrabAppleLane has a favor to ask of their readers: Vote for Drew Brees as the FEDEX Express Air Player of the Year. He is an excellent candidate and Children’s Hospital in New Orleans is a wonderful facility that is financially struggling since Hurricane Katrina.
Quote of the Day
We're a young team. We're going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to get better as a team. And hopefully, we'll be at this point again.
Deuce McAllister, New Orleans Saints
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "There are people around the country who have been heard to ask why we can’t just let it go and get on with things. They regale us with stories of a terrible flood or tornado, a fire or other, and how they didn’t need help at all. Some even decide to play a numbers game, noting death totals from whatever disaster, as if this somehow “proves” we are simply a bunch of unmotivated whiners who insist that someone else clean up the mess. In response to these Cliff Clavins of the world, I would like to present some pretty stark figures:"
A throwback ... kinda sorta ... as per an earlier conversation about how gasoline is served in New Jersey. This picture was taken the day before Thanksgiving and is a rather rare sight in Louisiana. I don’t think it’s a case of anything but a station owner not bothering to change the sign. In the days when Louisiana gas stations were trying to convert their customers from Full serve to Self serve, the Self serve pumps were 2 to 4 cents per gallon cheaper on all grades of gasoline as an incentive. Not the case here. The prices were identical. In the 10 minutes I was here, not a single vehicle pulled up to the Full serve island. There was only one attendant and he was pretty busy with the 3 or 4 customers that were here that day. Not sure how he would have managed a Full serve customer. Also not to mention that the customers that are 30 and under probably don’t even know what Full serve is. For those in the Metro New Orleans area, this is the Chevron station at the intersection of Severn, Airline, and Metairie Road and these are some old stomping grounds of Patsy’s and mine. Is it still called an intersection when it involves three distinct streets?
Quote of the Day
The sun goes down, and I go in.
Marguerite Oliver
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "That would be the man who didn't call me back, who apparently has a pathological fear of my particular phone number. Absent an official explanation, I can only conclude that the Saints, beloved as they are in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, are being done a disservice by those charged with disseminating information about the team."
FWIW, the team has never been anything but bad with the media. -Rob
Happy Memorial Day
Except for being extremely hot, it was a lovely day in New Orleans on the Mississippi River this afternoon. We decided to visit the Aquarium of the Americas today along with everyone else in the world. You’d have thought it was a holiday. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did in spite of the overwhelming crowd.
That’s Patsy’s sister on the right up high feeding fish and waving to the kids and her brother-in-law on the left down low doing the same. They're both volunteers. You pass through that tunnel as you enter the Aquarium of the Americas and the fish and turtles are all around you. We hadn’t been to the aquarium since the year it opened. It is truly a marvel right on the Mississippi River.
These guys and gals are the star attraction. They were made famous recently. They’re kept behind glass as you can tell.
We got to go inside because we knew two of the divers. :) These two turtles were rescues.
The plan was to walk from the Aquarium to the Riverwalk and get lunch but only two restaurants in the Riverwalk were open and they were wrapped up solid with people standing in line. We went somewhere else. We passed the fountain both ways and I stopped to get a picture. That’s the Cajun Queen in the background.
I’m asking for guest blogger volunteers for the week of June 3-10. I’m going to take that week off from blogging. If you’ve never blogged before, here’s your chance to see what it is all about. If you use different blogging software, here’s your chance to see what the latest Movable Type version does. If you already blog, here’s a chance to do something different and shamelessly plug your own blog to maybe some different readers. I’ll be around to lend technical support for anyone who wants it. If you’re interested, email me for details.
101 days until football season...........................
Quote of the Day
It hasn't been too often that I've heard kind words about me and my situation. ... It's really an uplifting feeling to be in this kind of environment.
Ricky Williams, CFL Toronto Argonauts
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "I arise naturally at the crack of dawn on a weekend, but it’s a job in itself to drag my sorry ass out of bed Mon-Fri."
CrabAppleLane will celebrate a three day Memorial Day weekend for the first time ever starting tonight. The universe aligned itself so that I could take Monday off. My office works on Memorial Day as do a lot of offices in New Orleans. It's the holiday most of them traded in to get Mardi Gras Day off.
104 days until football season...........................
Quote of the Day
I firmly believe I am innocent of the charges against me as I've said from day one.
Ken Lay, Former Enron CEO
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "I guess everyone has a set of morals they live by... I never would have expected parking tickets would have an affect on one's love life. :-)"
I was on one of the bridges over City Park Lagoon yesterday finishing my lunch when one of the Park’s Ugly Ducklings swam over and proceeded to thoroughly intimidate the turtles. The closest one retreated completely inside his shell just after I snapped this. I’ve seen one hiss at a nutria until the nutria backed away and they're not nearly as timid as turtles. The swans rule this lagoon with an iron fist.
City Park Lagoon. I’m not sure who’s tending to City Park right now. It’s either volunteers or a skeleton crew. It needs more attention but it's still beautiful.
118 days until football season...........................
Quote of the Day
It's best to leave on top. Not many players in the NFL get a chance to do what I'm doing today and walk away from the game happy. I can live the rest of my life happy.
Jimmy Smith, Jacksonville Jaguars
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "When the year is about to pass on, to die, our lives seem more transparent. When the sun is shining, as it is now, and when the cherry trees and the dogwoods are dumping flower petals like snow showers, as they have been, it’s hard to believe that we won’t live forever."
Katie’s is one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans. It’s in an area of New Orleans known as Mid-City. I worked in that area for almost 20 years. Katie’s food is very good and the place has that neighborhood charm that is from another time. On the same street one block over is Liuzza’s. It is also one of my favorites, has very good food, and is equally charming. It is good to hear that Katie’s is rebuilding. Haven’t heard anything about Liuzza’s yet but I will surely check into it when I get back to the city. I miss both of them. If you find yourself in New Orleans in the future, give them a try. They are not touristy. Both are reasonably-priced, not too fancy, and mostly frequented by locals. Eating good food in comfort is one of my favorite things to do.
Decided to snap a few photos when I got home last night. I get home right at sunset these days.
The blue ginger I planted about 10 years ago survived Hurricane Katrina. One of the many things I have to be thankful for.
I think I'm going to leave that arching pine tree like it is for a while. It’s not worth the trouble to save it. As you can see, it is one of many. How do you suppose Katrina plucked that one pine tree and bent it over while leaving the others in this photo alone? They're all about equal in size.
Quote of the Day
New Orleans will come back bigger, better, stronger. It's now important for people to reconnect with each other.
Tony Imbraguglio, Katie's Restaurant
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "A memorial to the Ninth Ward was placed on the Claiborne Avenue neutral ground near the Industrial Canal Bridge by artist Jeffrey Holmes."
We hear about traffic congestion all of the time. We hear about the by-products ( Lost productivity, delays, road rage, etc..... ) all of the time, too. MSNBC and I talked about it briefly in October 2003. I said at the time that I thought I brought the average up then. Not sure I still do. Why spend any money or, more importantly, time studying the problem instead of just addressing it? The I-10 in New Orleans has been over-traveled since it was built. There, no charge. It is true now. It will be true ten years from now, too. Improvements to other arteries into the city have hardly made a dent in the I-10 traffic. The mother of all boondoggles, the Earhart Expressway, hasn’t relieved the I-10 at all. That project was studied, started, abandoned, studied, started, abandoned, and finally built to some stage of completion about 10 years ago. It was first proposed in the 60s. I have traveled that 3-lane highway from New Orleans, where it ends, to Harahan, where it begins, at mid-afternoon without seeing a single other vehicle. Yeah, that was time and money well spent. Improvements to I-10 are underway and are causing congestion. They will prove to be inadequate when they are finished. That much is a certainty.
From the learn something every day department: I learned today that there is such a thing as a " corporate blogging consultant ". I don't know what that is but I'd like to know what it pays.
Quote of the Day
I would be really disappointed to think that CEOs couldn't blog
Debbie Weil, Corporate blogging consultant
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Also, I have the Fox Soccer Channel. Now when I'm wide awake at 3am, I will have something to watch."
That would put me back to sleep. -Rob
French Quarter Fest is this weekend and I hope to be able to spend some time down there. I love the French Quarter and that festival. Local restaurants (Most French Quarter restaurants are pretty expensive) set up booths offering samples of some of their signature dishes and sometimes even things that are not on their menus at all and at very low prices. All of the dishes run $3-4. For about $20, you can sample five or 6 restaurants. Lunch entrees at Muriel’s, for instance (I’ll frequent this place when I win the Powerball), start at around $12. We got a got a goat cheese ravioli last year for $4 from Muriel’s booth. It was out of this world. I’ll be looking for their booth this year.
Got an email just now from Michael Holden. In the body of the email, it starts
Hi, My name is John,
Is it Michael or John? It got through my spam filters. Another enlargement ad.
The dryer won Round One last night. The heating element was not the problem. The guy at the supply house checked mine (Very nice of him. He was under no obligation to do so) when I brought it in to make sure I got the right new one. Discovered the real problem last night so I’ll be at the same supply house today. I wouldn’t consider going anywhere else now.
Today’s BOTD compliments of KiwiFruit.
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: “1. My acquaintance is not really a robot! She has feet, not casters."
