Tonight Oshun braved the horrible weather and down pour and started the Carnival season out all alone. The mob of Cotton Candy Vendors, the upbeat NOPD and umbrellaed krewe all made an appearance and the statement that despite the wet weather, Mardi Gras 2008 will go on.  Hopefully we will have better weather for Saturday. 

UPDATE- the cancelled parades have now been rescheduled:

Uptown

Pygmalion- Wednesday, Jan. 29 (will follow Druids)

Westbank

Cleopatra- Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 6:30 p.m. — route diverted through Terrytown

Metairie

Excalibur- Monday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.

Atlas- rescheduled to follow Excalibur

Northshore

Eve- Monday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m

Tomorrow night the City Life will debut its new single, “White Elephant,” at Carrollton Station alongside homeboys Fay Wray. The guitar-driven track, an angular post-punk rocker with happy feet that bears striking resemblance to Franz Ferdinand’s “The Dark of the Matinee,” is easily the top horse in the emerging quintet’s impressive stable of restless-leg dance anthems. It’s perhaps my second-favorite NOLA rock song of the moment.

Now, I have yet to witness the City Life do the “Elephant,” but it would be tough to imagine the band — or any local band, for that matter — topping the live rendition of “Ernest Borgnine” put on by Antenna Inn. The latter, a nine-piece jazz/rock outfit, has its shortcomings, nearly all of which revolve around its proclivity for emo vocals and overblown poems (see: “The mind is a crazy thing/But only when you listen to it”). It’s hard to find fault with the group’s onstage product, however, which at times borders on a sonic orgy and is always a study in glorious excess. Read the rest of this entry »

Rolled upstairs from the Blue Nile Wednesday to hear the Naked Orchestra for the Open Ears series. Open Ears is trombonist Jeff Albert’s weekly series of wild music that can feature everything from jazz blowouts to string quartets. Jonathan Freilich’s Naked Orchestra was only an 11 piece, but it played its heart shaped ass or ass shaped heart out. The band played two tunes twice, but the variations in each made it like you were looking at it with different tinted glasses each time. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, my Monday through Friday mornings typically follow the same pattern each day. Jump out of bed at least ten minutes too late, find the least-wrinkled clean clothing closest at hand, knot my hair into what I pretend is an intellectual/indie librarian look and wash my face. I feed my puppy, rush him the dog park for ten minutes, come home, make some toast (and coffee if I’m lucky to have the time) grab a fistful of vitamins, kiss the boyfriend who still hasn’t opened his eyes, and run out the door to work, arms flailing and scarf flapping behind me as I scramble to make sure I’ve got everything I need for the day in my oversized bag.

And if I’ve got my act together, I might just jump into the car with enough time to catch the morning news on NPR. Oh, how I heart NPR. Every night I vow anew to get up early enough to actually catch the programming part of the station. But I never quite make it. Read the rest of this entry »

To any Southerner, last Krewe De Vieux Saturday felt insanely cold. Inhuman. 60-degrees at least. Later someone told me 29-degrees. My god, where am I?

I felt cold on the inside as well, this being the first Mardi Gras event I’d ever attended solo, without Mizzy, my girlfriend of six-and-a-half years. We broke up finally, this New Year’s Eve. I’m unready for Mardi Gras like this. But assuming I would live, I forced myself onto my bike. Everything would be OK, I hoped. I would surely crash into some friends to distract from my woes. Pedaling past Marky Park from Bywater down to Mimi’s in the Marigny, I definitely noticed I’d forgotten my gloves, but a pint of $7.92 whiskey from Schiro’s would help combat the air, and everything else. Read the rest of this entry »

by Sam Winston

Is it surprising that Lil Wayne got arrested again? That there’s a lack of healthy food choices in New Orleans? That new inspector general Robert Cerasoli is having problems with the city bureaucracy? No, no and uh, no. Not even a little bit.

Unmanned aircraft to take on weather missions off our coast. Now that is surprising. Especially since they were NOT allowed during Katrina rescue missions. The unmanned aircrafts the military use are so precise they can redirect missiles in mid-flight to hit a certain person and not another standing next to him or her. Now they’ll be used for collecting hurricane data off our coasts.