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Who Moved My Muffuletta??

A certain little boy I know turns two today. Being the nice honorary uncle that I am, I decided to visit him and his parents in New Orleans this weekend.
My friend Greg has lived in New Orleans ever since August 2003. He loves it there and has often urged me to come and visit him. With life being the way it is, I wasn't able to get down until this weekend. Having been there now, I'd definitely go back.
New Orleans is well known for a number of things, including two near and dear to my heart: food and drink. It's not as well known as being the place where my best friend lives, or his son, or his son's mother, but these things are just as important to me.
I had to fly to get there. A 2300 mile round trip did not appeal to me with my truck's various questionable parts. Plus the price was about the same either way, assuming I didn't stop at a hotel along the way, or eat, or anything like that.
I've heard it said, more or less, that one gives up most of one's rights as a US citizen to have the privilege to fly in one of our zillions of commercial airplanes. Knowing that brings a box full of knives was out of the question, I traveled light, with a laptop, an iPod, my trusty digital camera, and a few days' worth of clothing.
Naturally, at my home base, I was pulled aside for a more intense examination (maybe they read my comments about our lord and master, er...our president). This did not occur on the return trip, so maybe it was just shitty luck. It was no big deal, standing around in a highly visible area, being examined with a wand. I had no contraband, so that much was good. Even with the heightened security measures which came out of 9/11, I didn't really spend that much more time than I remember in other flights getting from the ticket counter to the gate where my plane would depart in another...oh...four hours.
I don't like to be late for flights for some reason.
The flight itself was something of a triumph of modern technology. One of the good things about having a laptop computer is that you can watch movies and what not on it. Heading to New Orleans, I watched the extended Fellowship of the Ring.
Coming back, I watched Ren and Stimpy.
I don't like airports or airplanes, but flying is pretty cool. Although I kept watching the starboard wing of my plane in silent dread that it would fall off at 35,000 feet, this did not occur.
At any rate, the trip to and trip from were uneventful.
Greg lives in the French Quarter, one of the strangest places I've seen in this country. The majority of the architecture suggests Europe rather than America, giving this particular section of New Orleans more character than just a little bit of local color in the form of crawfish advertisements or po-boys (neither of which I sampled, by the way, being on a strict budget). The rest of the city had enough local flavor to qualify as a distinctive American city.
The Quarter has more than it knows what to do with, as it were.
I heard quite a bit of French while I was visiting, especially during a rather long wait for lunch at the Napoleon House that was rewarded with some really good jambalaya. The French seem to enjoy visiting the French Quarter. Go figure.
My stay in the Big Easy began with a stop at the Mona Lisa restaurant, which had excellent pizza, probably in the top five pies I've ever had, although not the absolute best. Naturally, Greg and I went bar hopping after that and somehow staggered home with the assistance of Snickers bars gleaned from his friend Randy (featured in profile at the far left).
I was nominally in town to go to a birthday party on that Saturday, March 5th. Sure, Greg and I spent a good deal of time and money drinking lots of beer with Randy, who also came to the party, but I wanted to see the boy as well, who turns two today. Ever since he flipped me the bird at the ripe age of 16 hours, he's had me wrapped around his little finger, though not the middle one.
Looking at Max, I can feel anger in my heart at the idea of anyone hurting a child. Sure, some of them are really obnoxious, but we're born knowing only one thing: life. These kids are going at a lot of things for the first time. They need our help and guidance, encouragement, and love. Max reminds me of my little cousin Alex; he's a good-hearted kid, easy to like, quick enough on the uptake, good looking, and small. He and I had a lot of fun, although a good portion of that consisted of him stomping on my groin in the course of play that two year olds will do. I was happy that he started growling cheerily at various people he would recognize. His mother, and for all I know his father, may not approve of that, but I do, and my word counts for something. Doesn't it?
So of course, I took in one or two of the typical touristy type sights New Orleans offers. I saw one of the graveyards with the above-ground mausoleums, and I saw Bourbon Street after midnight. After a woman flashed me from a balcony overlooking the Hustler club, I knew I had arrived. Other women flashed me, of course, but I could have lived without seeing some of what I saw. Plus, I was working on one of those devilishly hard to remember the number of drinks I had buzzes, without which the experience might just have been annoying, what with all the tourists and drunk people. I got a number of odd looks since I was wandering around in a black trenchcoat, but nothing untoward happened to me. I certainly didn't end up in one of these. I hope.
Saturday and Sunday were rather odd, to say the least. Max's parents are divorced now, but they had to spent a good deal of time together at the various Max-related functions, those being a birthday party, a dinner with Greg's folks (at Maximo's Italian restaurant), and brunch on Sunday at a local pastry shop. I've spent a lot of time around these people in the days of yore when Max's parents were married. Seeing everyone together in the new context was a bit odd, although that was mostly offset by the quality of the food we ate. I talked later about this with both Max's parents (on separate occasions, naturally), and they agreed that it was damn odd. Life happens.
To backtrack a little, the party was in Storyland in the New Orleans city park. This particular nook has lots of structures gleaned from fairy tales and what not. We were allotted the whale from Pinocchio, although I was surprised that the little wooden boy was giving a Nazi salute. I just didn't think he was the type to follow Hitler, but then again, he was a new life form, right? Maybe he needed some liver pills, I don't know.
The party had an odd set of vibes going on, between the mother's friends, the father's friends and family, the blissfully unaware children, the devil duck cakes. Combining a divorce situation, Satanic cakes, and storybook Nazis with fun loving kids just makes things kind of bizarre. To make matters even better, the cakes were made with red velvet mix, so that they kind of bled when you cut them open. As I said, strange vibes, but fun was had by all, sort of.
I also wanted to check out the Mississippi River, around which so much history has unfolded. I didn't know that Joan of Arc even made it to the New World, but I knew that I'd like to see the brown waters of America's most storied and impressive river. Seeing it from the air on my departure, with several riverboats in evidence, was every bit as impressive. I guess I really did give a shit.
Since Greg and I knew we'd have Max on Sunday, we took it easy Saturday night and just sort of talked about stuff here, which friends will do when they need to talk. We talked a little bit about personal stuff, about the car I wanted to steal, or the museum that looked so sorry, but for the most part we just talked. And drank some. And watched Ren and Stimpy. Just like old times, when he was my age (some years ago, that).
But when I really discovered that I'd love to live in New Orleans was when I had my first blissful bite of a muffuletta sandwich. I dug up a convenient recipe that I intend to try out one day when I give enough of a rat's ass to fish out my bread maker. That muffuletta almost gave me religion. Never before have I had a sandwich that I loved so much so quickly, although I might have said the same had I tried a roast beef po boy instead. Next time, mad cat, next time. Nonetheless, I liked the quadripartite cylindrical conglomeration of cappicola, salami, provolone, and olive salad on righteously good Italian bread with sesame seeds enough that I tried to make my own. It was close, since I had sliced olives, but not quite on the money.
The beignets and coffee we had after that set things off real nice and proper like. If nothing else, I wouldn't starve in New Orleans. Greg likes the weather, the food, and the quarter. I can see why now. I'll definitely have to go back and bring a lot more money for food and drink alone, since debauchery and excess seem to be in vogue in some parts of the Big Easy, although not all of them.
A good trip, all in all.