FULL DISCLOSURE: That picture above is of Morris Peterson being interviewed yesterday after his miracle bank shot — the one that made it to SportsCenters Top Plays. But I’m using it now because it has a lot to do with what went on with practice today (including at the end when he kept me hostage for 15 minutes as he looked into my camera, said “SportsCenter, this is for you” and proceeded to miss a dozen full-court heaves).

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When they let the reporters in, the team was wrapping up a full-court 5-0n-5 scrimmage, the most noteworthy aspect of which was the players’ jovial nature about it all — you’d a thought these players were getting ready for a mid-January game, not Game 1 against the defending champs. When practice ended, players scattered about with a handful heading to the far basket to repeat Mo Pete’s bank shot.

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The new “Ralph Brennan’s New Orleans Seafood Cookbook,” reviewed in this week’s Gambit, is destined to be a hard-working cookbook. Though it was published in the elegant format of a coffee table book, this weighty volume is clearly intended to be used in the kitchen where its thorough advice on seafood selection, handling and preparation will be invaluable to those who weren’t necessarily brought up shucking oysters and catching redfish.

But there is a small narrative element to the book as well, and right up front the lead author and restaurateur Ralph Brennan shares a few stories about his own upbringing in the city’s most important restaurant family. In particular, he provides a touching account of childhood romps through his extended family’s original restaurant, Brennan’s on Royal Street, and a succinct assessment of the quarrel that has famously divided the family since 1974.

During an interview, Brennan shared more about those young experiences at the family restaurant in the 1960s, when his aunts Ella and Adelaide Brennan would take him out on day trips.

“My aunts were the right age, I was the right age, and we would have a lot of fun together,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »

“A woman who police believe to be Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” was found dead in Florida Thursday, according to Tarpon Springs police.” - CNN.com

Is late night t.v. too late for you?  Just in case you missed it, Jindal on Leno: