For the past few months, folks in the Faubourg Marigny have been enjoying how well casual Vietnamese food works in the setting of a New Orleans bar. Soon, they’ll get to see how it works in a neighborhood bakery.

Not long after opening this spring, the Lost Love Lounge leased its kitchen space to local chef Chris Reel, who began serving the casual Vietnamese classics like pho, bun and banh mi (pictured above) to the bar crowd. Reel called the operation Marigny Pho and it seemed to be doing well.

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Video Games Live is on a mission to prove that orchestral music and gamers can peacefully co-exist. The tour is the brainchild of composer Tommy Tallarico (cousin to Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler). A tour performance featuring the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra at Kenner’s Pontchartrain Center in April (previewed here) was filmed by PBS, and the show premieres on local station WYES at 4 p.m. Sunday, August 1. The tour features contemporary classical music scored for popular video games including Halo, Blizzard, Mario and God of War. (Watch the trailer above to hear Jamie Lee Curtiss explain why World of Warcraft is better than James Cameron’s Avatar.) Performances combine live music and scenes from popular games projected on screens above the orchestra and add other effects.

It seems there’s always a new ranking — usually created by an esteemed scientific research institution such as Condomania — floating around the Internet that bestows some kind of superlative onto our city or state. In case you’ve lost track of how we’re faring in these rankings, allow me to synthesize some recent findings: the residents of New Orleans and Louisiana are blissfully fat, smelly people with big penises. Sexy, right?

Now we can add “slothful” to that sterling description, thanks to Bloomberg Businessweek’s America’s Laziest States list that puts Louisiana right on top. Louisiana residents, according to the study, typically spend almost nine hours sleeping, three hours watching TV and — amazingly — two hours and 41 minutes working every day. I mean, I know Commander’s Palace martini lunches can go on a little long, but who only works for three hours every day? Bloomberg says the findings were culled from the self-reported data in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey, which means that Louisiana residents are very forthcoming about their sedentary habits. Maybe we’ll top someone’s Most Honest States list one day?

The nola.com comment section for an article about the list is abuzz with readers discussing the ranking. Naturally, racism and other inanities abound.

Now get back to work, lazies! You still have nearly two full hours left.

Sing it, Sharon.

First came Drew Brees gracing the cover of the video game Madden NFL 2010 and now there is this YouTube clip of the Saints repeating as Super Bowl Champions in the video game, complete with victory parade and trip to the White House.
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Now, as my Saints preview illustrated, Who Dats may not be stressed out about the Saints’ upcoming season (at least not compared to years past) so this may be but a blip on people’s radar, but isn’t this city all about superstition? Last year, as my hometown Redskins floundered and the Saints piled up wins, I would spitefully (and drunkenly) make ridiculous predictions about the Saints winning it all, much to the chagrin of every Who Dat (I’m surprised I never got punched). But now the Saints are champs and Brees is on the cover of Madden and there’s a digital celebration of their upcoming repeat.
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How times change.