Here’s a reason to go to Metairie: Saints wide receiver Robert Meachem will appear at the Lakeside Mall Macy’s (3301 Veterans Memorial Blvd.) on Monday, Feb. 15 at 11 a.m. The first 300 people to purchase $40 or more in licensed championship apparel at the department store will have the opportunity to meet Meachem and receive autographed commemorative medallion beads. If last night was any indication of the crowd Saints players can draw, you might want to get there early.

Prediction: Everyone in New Orleans will have seen this video by tomorrow. It’s Drew Brees, after yesterday’s amazing Saints parade, stopping at Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar in the Warehouse District to lead the team’s fans in a cheer:

…which is why, I think, people are so fond of this year’s Saints, Lombardi Trophy or no: they seem like good guys, real people, the sort of “celebrities” New Orleans likes — accessible and unaffected.

It makes me wonder what would happen if we had a mayor who did the same thing, a mayor who didn’t walk around surrounded by bodyguards or drivers or whatever. A few months back, I was in a restaurant in the CBD when a certain mayor came in to eat, surrounded by a phalanx of entourageurs. He breezed through the dining room, a suit in the middle of men in other suits, and disappeared into a back dining area while the citizenry looked up, registered the moment, gave one another Meaningful Looks, and looked down at their plates again.

What if we had a mayor whom we saw on a Sunday afternoon, walking around Audubon Zoo with his kids, wearing a baseball cap and an old pair of jeans? A mayor who took lunch meetings at Domilise’s or Liuzza’s or the Parkway? A mayor who popped into Snug Harbor late in the evening, maybe with his wife, and squeezed into a table like the rest of us? A mayor who showed up at Le Chat Noir for a play or concert and stood in line at the podium, waiting to pick up his ticket?

Maybe even a mayor who, after toasting Rex on Mardi Gras, walked from Gallier Hall into the Quarter, maybe shaking a few hands along the way, but going to Royal Street where he could watch the Society of St. Ann as it streamed in from the Marigny, walking through Jackson Square to see all the costumes and listen to the bands, stopping at the Bourbon Street Awards to share a laugh with the drag queens, going on to the Blacksmith Shop to grab a beer or the Quarter Master or the Verti Marte to get a bottle of water, a mayor who believes he’s one of us and takes the same small pleasures we all do in just living in New Orleans?

It’s not impossible. If we have a star quarterback, a Super Bowl MVP, and a Sports Illustrated cover guy who finds it not only important, but imperative, to walk into Lucy’s after being cheered by 800,000 people — why couldn’t we have a mayor who has the same priorities?

Or … do we?

Edited to add: Another cameraphone view of Brees at Lucy’s:

It takes some doing to kerfuffle both the readers of the Daily Kos and, say, Michelle Malkin, but Audi managed to do it during last night’s Super Bowl with its “Green Police” commercial. Here it is:

In precis: Cheap Trick sing a version of their insanely catchy “Dream Police” retitled “Green Police,” in which Americans are busted for using incandescent lights, requesting plastic bags at the grocery store, not composting orange parings and a host of other infractions. At the end, an Audi driver sails past a Green Police checkpoint while a title card appears: “Green has never felt so right.”

The problem is that in our black-and-white, liberal-and-conservative, spell-it-all-out world, no one seems to know whether Audi was making fun of the eco-conscious, or cheering for the eco-conscious — and without that spelled out plainly in Big Capital Letters, those on both sides of the issue could agree on one thing: They didn’t like it. (For similar suspicious, puzzled reactions from polar opposite ends of the eco-spectrum, go here and here. Bonus points if you can count the number of people who say some sort of variation on “I’ve got as much of a sense of humor as anyone, but…)

So what was the intent of the commercial? To get people talking about Audi, of course. And by that standard, it was a success. Did it make me want to buy one? No, but it did make me want to get a copy of Cheap Trick’s greatest hits.

Edited to add: Now CBS News is weighing in on the puzzlement:

Environmentalists weren’t sure whether to celebrate or denigrate the spot. Grist magazine’s David Roberts writes that at first blush it seemed like an appeal “to angry white men with the same old stereotype of environmentalists as meddling do-gooders obsessed with picayune behavioral sins.”

“The more I’ve thought about it, though, the more [that] interpretation just doesn’t quite fit,” he goes on to say. “The thrill at the end, when they guy gets to accelerate away from the crowd, turns on satisfying the green police — not rejecting or circumventing them, but satisfying their strict standards. The authority of the green police is taken for granted, never questioned. If you’re looking to appeal to mooks who think the green police are full of it and have no authority, moral or otherwise, why would you make a commercial like that?”

Conservatives also seem to be split: While Newsbusters writes, seemingly approvingly, of the spot’s “futurist vision of environmentalism running amok,” Bob Ellis called it an “downright offensive” and “presented with too much seriousness to be taken any other way than as approval of such Gestapo tactics.”

And sometimes a car commercial is just a car commercial.

It would be nice to think you might get these shoes at the Muses parade on Thursday. Terence Blanchard and Robin Burgess already have the shoe on the right, which they received yesterday, before second-lining on St. Charles Avenue after the Super Bowl. The original picture of Fats Domino and Drew Brees from last year’s Domino Effect concert is after the jump. Photos and shoes by Erika Goldring.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you STILL haven’t decided where to watch the game…

OR if the mere suggestion of crunk-azz brass band music before during and after the victory of the Saints Superbowl win is enough to curl your toes and make you chuck all other ill-plotted plans…

OR if you live downtown and wanna catch the the game close to home but not in the home and are looking to keep it hood simple…

OR all of the above…

Then the Goody’s on St. Claude at Louisa is what’s popping today, tonight and every Sunday night.

Opened last Thanksgiving weekend, Goody’s is the new jumping spot downtown. The restaurant bar, launched by Stooges Brass Band trombonist Garfield Bogan, features weekly performances by the Stooges and is home to the second line and brass band community as well and Bogan’s motorcycle club the Tru Riders’. The club also hosts regular poetry nights and has plans in the works to bring in other music acts such as the Baby Boys Brass Band. “New Orleans don’t really have live music on the strip,” says Bogan. “We’re about to bust the strip wide open.”

For the colossal WHO DAT! game today, Goody’s is serving free red beans and rice and fried chicken and featuring a Saint’s themed Black and Gold rum cocktail and music sets by the Stooges. The kitchen is also serving its full menu of creole soul food which has been characterized by regulars as “off the chain” (the crawfish pasta and the onion rings are the items customers were making the most noise over).

Above is a clip from a weekly set (now moved from Thursdays to Sundays at 9pm) by the house band known known for creating the most fun performances on the second line parade route. Stooges got the good good - now on the regular, stationed at Goody’s Restaurant and Bar 3200 St. Claude Ave. (504) 470-9000. Kitchen open 11am-9pm daily except for Tuesdays

We could tell you about our parade coverage (complete with pocket maps); about David Winkler-Schmit’s reporting about the Books for Prisoners program; about Clancy DuBos‘ memories of the political gadfly ‘Hippo’ Katz; about Noah Bonaparte Pais covering RJD2, Q&P Maritime Ball, Festival of the Rising Sun, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Screaming Females and the B-52’s; about Ian McNulty’s profile of the Vietnamese bakers putting their own spin on king cakes; or about our monthly health and wellness supplement, H+W.

But we all know what’s consuming us this weekend. “Glory Bound.” Do it, Aaron and Theresa:

Erik Proseus, the clever weatherman at MemphisWeather.net, worked up this forecast for the weekend:

NOAA – 01 Feb 2010 1035 EST

Outlook for the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico

Hurricane Whodat is predicted to make landfall on the South Florida coast in the vicinity of Miami on 7 Feb 2010 at approximately 2200Z (5:00 PM EST). This extremely powerful hurricane is expected to produce damaging Shockey waves and Category 5 Brees. Reports from shipping indicate that this unstoppable storm has blown a huge flock of Cardinals all the way to Arizona, and that it has sunk a replica Viking longboat, the Brettigfǻvren. Livestock, in particular young horses, will be in severe danger of being decimated….

It goes on from there. Read it all.

More national food press today, starting with The New York Times weighing in on the perfect Super Bowl party snacks. Their suggestion: fry up a batch of your own cracklings (get it? pigskins?), and writer Kim Severson goes straight to an unimpeachable source, Donald Link of Cochon Butcher, who provides a recipe for the home cook who can’t quite bring him- or herself to pop open a bag of Fritos at kickoff.

Over at The Wall Street Journal, Pervaiz Shallwani writes about newfangled cocktails, starting with a science-fiction Sazerac prepared by Chicago’s Lord High Poobah of molecular gastronomy, chef Grant Achatz:

At most bars, the Sazerac is a simple mix of whiskey, bitters and a touch of sugar. In the hands of Chicago chef Grant Achatz, the classic cocktail turns into a deconstruction of flavors: Peychaud bitters are made into pudding dots, whiskey is transformed into gelée and the “drink” is served in an edible syrup-poached kumquat.

“It’s the size of a thimble,” Mr. Achatz says. “It’s got all the classic components of a Sazerac. But you’re chewing and it’s fun.”

Note to Mr. Achatz: don’t even try serving that at a Super Bowl party. The only thing we’ll be deconstructing around here this weekend are the Colts.

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Screen grab taken from NOLA.com

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You know, I’ve had my fun taking jabs at NOLA.com and their (lack of) diverse online content, but I must say they are doing a bang-up job covering all things Super Bowl so far. Well, at least I thought as much until I saw them use a four-month-old photo taken by Jonathan Bachman on their front page (thumbnail on the bottom left-hand corner). That is, how you say?, bullshit.

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Of course, upon further examination it becomes apparent that the photo they stole from us is really a screen grab from a Saints tribute video that stole the photo from us first. Yes, that totally absolves a major metropolitan newspaper’s Web site from running an unaccredited photo from a credentialed photographer on their front page. Totally.