Note to our blog readers:  I am very excited to post the following announcement, which will appear in next week’s edition of Gambit Weekly.  I add my personal congratulations to Kevin and join all my colleagues at the paper in welcoming him to our Gambit family. — Clancy DuBos

Veteran journalist, blogger, novelist and playwright Kevin Allman joins the staff of Gambit Weekly next week, taking the helm as editor. He replaces Clancy DuBos, who will remain on staff as the political editor. DuBos co-owns the paper with his wife, publisher and CEO Margo DuBos, and is chairman of Gambit Communications Inc.

“I’ve read Gambit Weekly since I came to town in 1993, and I’m really pleased and thankful to be offered the opportunity to join the paper’s editorial team,” Allman says. “New Orleans in 2008 is an exciting place and time to be a journalist. There’s great work being done at the city’s papers, on its TV news and on the local blogs, and they’re working together in interesting ways — some ways that are actually ahead of the rest of the nation in their hyper-local focus. I’m looking forward to suiting up and joining the fray.”

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Photo by Jonathan Bachman

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Yowza, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this, but the Hornets have started a special pre-sale for tickets this morning. Why don’t I pay more attention to Facebook initiations?  Double-super-secret info after the jump

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Palin Bingo. Fun for the whole family!

The Democrats clearly have the best rock stars.  Not just Obama and Kennedy, but real life rock stars.  How cool is it to be Obama and have Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen on your side?  Joel and Springsteen are teaming up for a one-night-only event at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York on October 16th (the day after the final presidential yawn-tastic debate).  Tickets are $500 to $10,000 with proceeds going to the Barack Obama presidential campaign.-

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For those of you booking your JetBlue flight to New York to camp out for these tickets, take comfort in the fact that even if you can no longer afford the $10,000 ticket and you can only stump up $500 and sleep on a friend’s sofa - at least you will see the concert of a lifetime (err…unless you caught Madonna’s Re-Invention show in 2004).   Console yourself with the fact that, sure, you will not get front row seats, but you will get to see a great show.  And for a good cause.

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Now, pour a glass of wine and apply that same logic.-Imagine you are a wine maker for a top Bordeaux chateau – let’s say at Chateau Petrus where your wine regularly fetches $1,000 a bottle upon release  and easily five times that in good years or after the wines have been cellared for a bit.  This is a great gig if you can get it, but you are also limited.  You  likely have production limits.  You cannot vary the profile.   And so your creativity falls victim to your own success.  Unless, that is, you can keep your current job while producing a different wine under a different label.  You can utilize those same years of experience and expertise, the same terroir and the same shiny new equipment that those $1,000 bottles of wine pay for, but you can have a bit of fun.

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photo credit: Gary Hershorn, Reuters
The cliché juxtaposing Wall Street and Main Street was killed yesterday, beaten to death by Washington, D.C., legislators after a long period of overuse by presidential candidates and television pundits. The actual age of the cliché was unknown. The Wall Street/Main Street cliché is survived by two prominent catchphrases, It’s a Free Country! and It Is What It Is, and several lesser-known dependent idioms.    

After seeing the entire structure inundated with floodwater from Hurricane Ike’s storm surge, it seems incredible that Middendorf’s Restaurant is preparing to reopen on Wednesday next week.

But sure enough, owners Horst Pfeifer (pictured at left last spring) and his wife Karen announced they will resume their normal business schedule less than six weeks after all the buildings that make up their Manchac seafood landmark were flooded by four feet of lake water.

A team of volunteers helped the Pfeifers get Middendorf’s second, newer dining hall in shape to return to business, and that will reopen first. Karen says they still must decide their plan for the original building, which is a more complicated proposition because of its age. Here’s the latest, directly from Karen:

Please know that our goal is to continue with the tradition of Middendorf’s, not only the food but the ambiance and décor. Cypress wall, cypress knees, etc., etc. will all be a part of the rebuild.”

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