Saturday Night in New Orleans

After we returned from the Jazz Fest and cleaned up some, it was time to call a cab and head down to the French Quarter. And wait. And wait. And call again to check on the cab, to be told they'd call it again. And wait. And call back to ask how long it would be for the cab to get there. And be told, "Look, it's Jazz Fest, we're busy," and be hung up upon. And realize the cab was never actually going to show up. This is why I hate "calling a cab". (But have little problem with "hailing a cab".) I'd much rather take public transportation than have to depend on one of those undependable companies to show up. Just so the search engines can hear me, that's United Cabs of New Orleans. We called for a taxi, one didn't show up. Draw your own conclusions.

So I drove the rental car (still no flats) into town. It wasn't that hard to find parking, although driving constrained me from enjoying too much of the New Orleans spirit. By this time, we were starved, so we followed our guidebook to Cafe Maspero. It was a nice, inexpensive way to experience New Orleans cuisine. I had jambalaya washed down with some beer, and then we were off on our walking tour of the French Quarter.

It's clear that the walking tour in the guidebook was never really meant to be done at 11 or so at night, but we pressed ahead. The Spanish architecture was really neat, but after a while we grew tired and wandered over to Bourbon Street. Wow. I don't know what I expected, but what I got was "World's Biggest Frat Party." Uh, pass. So we stopped in a voodoo shop, then wandered home, leaving the post-midnight revelry to those more dedicated than us.

Jazz Fest

Saturday morning (the car still sans flats), we got up and headed to Jazz Fest. We parked at City Park, 5-10 minutes from where we were staying, and took the shuttle in. Apparently parking near the Fest is pretty atrocious, so this was a good idea. When we got to the fairgrounds, it was time to head for the most important destination -- the food. Our food tally:

• Fried Gator Po Boy
  
• Crab Stuffed Shrimp
  
• Gator Sausage Po Boy
  
• Crawfish Bread
  
• Mango Ice
  
• Fruit Salad
  
• Fried Green Tomatoes
  
• Crawfish Remoulade
  

Oh, yeah, there was music too. We listened to the Soul Rebels Brass Band, who had a unique rendition of Wham!'s "Careless Whisper". We caught a bit of Los Hombres Calientes, but were really too far away to hear them very well. Then we wandered over to hear the tail end of "Süroit of Canada w/ Hadley Castille" -- Cajun music. Later, we heard some torch songs (Little Jimmy Scott) and some folk music, before ending with the Wallflowers.



OK, I know it's somewhat cheesy (although not as cheesy as the crawfish bread -- mmm, mmm) to go to Jazz Fest and really only be familiar with the Wallflowers. (For those of you who aren't, it's an alt-rockish band fronted by Jakob Dylan (pictured above) -- yes, Bob's son.) But you know, that's what I know, and now I have a little bit more exposure to other types of music.

From Baton Rouge to New Orleans

Greetings from New Orleans, where we arrived yesterday for Jazz Fest. Which, of course, meant we flew in to Baton Rouge. It's pretty expensive to stay in New Orleans during Jazz Fest -- almost as much as Mardi Gras. But fortunately, we're staying gratis. Unfortunately, it's also not cheap to fly into New Orleans this weekend either, so we had to go with Baton Rouge. Also, unfortunately, we were priced out of my preferred airline, so we ended up on Delta. That wasn't so bad...the miles will transfer, but it did mean sitting in the back row. On the plus side, this is the first "1-stop" flight I can remember being on where they didn't announce a plane change.

After navigating the under-construction Baton Rogue airport, I got the car (Oldsmobile Alero -- thank you Avis Preferred) and it was off to enjoy the great state of Louisiana. We were hungry, so we looked in the guidebook for places to eat in downtown Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, the Avis map had us taking exit 1C off I-110 to get to downtown, and as far as we could tell, that exit didn't exist. So we were on I-10 and looking for places to eat near LSU.

Unfortunately, the maps we had didn't help us locate the place the book recommended near LSU, so after driving around and around the LSU camps (I had forgotten how poorly college students drive -- maybe it's just college students in the South -- they also don't make great pedestrians), we headed to our original destination downtown.



That would be Poor Boy Lloyd's, where we had (what else?) po' boys. I had a catfish po' boy, which I believe duplicated my only other meal in Louisiana -- when Ben & I drove across the country in '93. The food was great, and the very friendly and vaguely inefficient service reminded me I was back in the South.

Driving to New Orleans provided the sort of lush scenery you don't get in the Mid-Atlantic, along with a general feeling of swampiness. A couple of miles out of Baton Rogue, the car started beeping at me and I noticed a "low tire pressure" light on. Uh-oh. The car wasn't pulling to either side, but it wouldn't if I had a flat on a rear tire. So we went to the next exit and pulled into a gas station to check the tires.

There was no gauge either at the gas station or in the car, but the tires looked and felt full of air. Close enough. Hey, it's a rental car; I'll go out this morning and see if there are any flats.

We arrived at our hosts' at around 3:30 in the afternoon, chatted with them for a while, and then I was ready for a nap. After the nap, it was time for dinner, which featured crawfish. I don't think I've ever learned how to eat crawfish, but if you know how to eat crabs...well, I guess it doesn't entirely help, except for the general experience of breaking open your food to eat it. I did not get into the full Louisiana spirit of sucking the crawfish head, but hey, one step at a time.



After that, I was a bit too tired to head out and do anything -- getting up at 5:30 after a long week will do that to me, so it was off to bed to conserve my energy for today's trip to Jazz Fest.

Baseball

I went to see the Orioles lose to the Indians last night. It was cold and pretty empty -- though there were 2-3 times more people than there were at the last Twins game I was at. Despite my recommendations, we ended up with upper box seats -- the seats themselves had a good view from the first row of the upper deck, along the 3rd base line. But go to a night game in April in Baltimore, and it's significantly colder than it is at ground level -- which is pretty cold to start with.

This is the first Orioles game I've ever been to, I believe, where Cal Ripken wasn't playing. I assumed he was hurt; it turned out he was benched.

Plane Truth

The headline on this CNN.com story is "Near-miss preceded plane collision, Pentagon official says."

Further elaborating, "A Chinese fighter passed as close as 3 feet to a slow-moving U.S. spy plane before the two craft collided, sending the Chinese jet into the sea and the U.S. plane to an emergency landing in China, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday." Well, duh. It also passed as close as 2 feet, then 1 feet...and then you had the collision.

This is what we mathematicians call the "Intermediate Value Theorem".

(Yes, I know if you read the bottom part, it explains that the "near-miss" refers to an approach prior to the one involving the collision, but you shouldn't have to read that far into the story to figure out what's going on. And don't get me started on whether a "near-miss" is the same thing as a "near-collision.")

Brush with Greatness/Brush with Stupidity

Last Saturday night, five of us went to a taping for an HBO comedy special, thanks to a friend in the business. I was really confused about what was going on, but we showed up, milled around for a while munching on free food until they called out for "guests of the production company." Woo hoo, that was us. We must be in the front row. In fact, we were (though they later moved us back a little bit). Still wasn't sure what was going on -- there was a sign on stage saying "Welcome [Something] High Class of 1981". Huh.

Fortunately, we ran into the parents of aforementioned friend, who clued us in. This was going to be a series of sketches by a number of different comedy troupes. Most of them I hadn't heard of, although I had heard of the Groundlings. Many of the sketches were less than inspiring, but some -- such as Australia's Umbilical Brothers -- were downright entertaining. Hopefully the less entertaining ones will end up on the cutting room floor.



But then it was time for the final sketch with The Kids in the Hall. Out wanders Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald. Not to take anything away from Kevin McDonald, but I found Dave Foley 20 times funnier than anyone else in the room. He was joking around before and after the sketches in a genuinely funny manner that few people have.

After some forced laughter for the laugh track, we were on our way. We decided to head to Fado for a drink. As we rounded the corner of the building the taping was in, I heard Martin say, "It's Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall!" Sure enough, there they were. I don't know what came over me, but I started to do my best "Teenage Girls See the Beatles" shrieking. I figured a) I would never see these guys again and b) I was far enough away to be non-threatening. Everybody was somewhat amused/vaguely embarassed.

So we wandered over to Fado, which was fairly packed with people watching the Maryland/Duke basketball game/debacle. Fortunately, there were seats available as long as we were OK with not being able to see the TV. In fact, there were two tables tucked into the corner. So we claimed one, sat down and ordered our drinks. A couple minutes later, who sits down at the table next to us than -- the Kids in the Hall. So I did see them again, and I was not nearly far enough away to avoid feeling pretty darn awkward.

You can also read another take on the evening's events that's slightly less Jon-centric.

Muvico

Went to Arundel Mills last night for the first time. It's this huge "outlet" mall at Rtes. 295 and 100 in Maryland. I got a good deal on a ski jacket at Sun & Ski Sports -- all their ski stuff was on end-of-season clearance. They had a treadmill-like thing that you could "ski" on, but I declined their offer of 15 minutes for $7. Somehow, it just didn't seem the same.

Then we went to Chevy's for dinner. The fact that they didn't have a table ready was annoying until we went into the bar and discovered that they had trivia. I ended up playing a pretty decent game of Spotlight, and getting to #1 on the bar's high scores at the game. Then again, after only being in for 3 questions (out of 15) of the previous game (Triviaoke), I was #9. So it's not a trivia hot spot.



By then it was almost time for the movie. We went to see it at the Muvico Egyptian 24. First of all, Muvico is a pretty silly name for a movie theater chain. It's a Florida company that builds these mega-stadium theaters. Ever since I've started going to theaters with stadium seating, I've gotten to be a bit of a snob about them and am willing to drive further to see movies there as opposed to anywhere else. Somehow I became under the mistaken impression that O, Brother Where Art Thou? was playing there. When we went to buy tickets, we were disabused of that notion. So, we got tickets for Down to Earth, a movie starring Sam Neill about the Apollo moon landings and the attempt to get an Australian satellite dish to help televise it.

At this point, you may be saying, "Jon, don't you mean The Dish? Isn't Down to Earth that lame Chris Rock remake of Heaven Can Wait?" Well, smarty-pants, you're a step ahead of me, as we discovered when the opening credits started to roll. Oops. Not wanting to subject ourselves to what we were fairly sure was going to be a not-so-thrilling movie, we slunk out.



And changed theaters to Chocolat, which was just starting. Thank goodness. All in all an enjoyable movie about a woman who opens a chocolate store in a small village in France in 1960 and upsets the town's existing social order. I guess the one thing that bothered me about the film is that it seemed to be proselytizing the transformative power of chocolate -- which is really silly, if you stop and think too long. (So don't.) The movie grasps for profoundness, but in the end is really just...sweet. Which is fine with me.

Why I Don't Watch Baseball Much Anymore

"There's no sense in rooting for a total loser, so let's cross the Twins right off the list. If you already are a Twins fan, well, that's your cross to bear, and you can't expect the rest of us to join your lonely crusade."
--Hugo Lindgren, "The Free-Agent Fan", Slate.

Greenville, South Carolina

I just got back from a weekend at the SERMON conference in Greenville, South Carolina. (SERMON = SouthEastern Regional Meeting On Numbers) This is my 8th straight SERMON; I'd have to rate it 3rd in terms of location behind the two in Charleston.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy the town that much. I had been in Columbia, South Carolina the previous weekend, and didn't expect Greenville to be an improvement. (Columbia ranks #5 in terms of SERMON locations -- it hosted in '98.) For some reason, I flew in Friday morning, even though the first talk wasn't until 4. I hopped into my rental car (a Mitsubishi Galant -- this Avis Preferred thing is paying off) and drove off in search of adventure.

In truth, I expected to end up at the mall watching a movie to kill a couple of hours. But as I drove around, I followed the signs to the art museum. Well, I thought, this might be mildly amusing. What are they going to have here, that I can't see much better back home in DC? Well, as it turns out, 24 watercolors by Andrew Wyeth. This was a much more impressive museum than I expected. I also enjoyed the Casselli exhibit. Other than that, they mostly had Southern works, mostly realist. I also looked at an exhibit by Nancy Grossman. "Grossman is best known for her sensual and often brutal wooden sculptures of heads, wrapped in black leather skins and adorned with spikes, guns, zippers, and masks." Uh huh.

Then I drove downtown for lunch. It has a really nice downtown. Main Street is lined with a lot of nice restaurants and vaguely interesting shops (perhaps more interesting to those who shop more than I do). Later that evening someone described it as what Athens (GA) would be like if inhabited by adults. I check into my hotel, the Hyatt Greenville and relaxed for an hour before heading out to Furman.

Things I learned about Furman this weekend:

• Their sports teams are the "Paladins". To a D&D fan like myself, this was pretty cool. I tried to go to the bookstore on Saturday to find some nerdwear, but it was closed.
• One of their cheers is "FU once, FU twice, FU three times, FU all the time!"
• They provide rides to get students safely around campus, to local drugstores and other places. They chose to label the flyer giving the times for this as "Escort Services Schedule". If it hadn't been for my respect for public safety, I would have taken it.

The conference was nice. The talks weren't as interesting as they were last weekend, but it was good to see friends from grad school (as well as various profs).

Sunday, after the conference was over, I broke out my skates for the first time this year and skated around the Furman campus for a while. I was a bit unsteady. I'm not sure about the transference of any physical skills from skiing, but I think mentally the skiing has helped -- I know better how to identify areas for improvement, take appropriate risks -- and of course, I re-learned the fact that when I'm not paying attention, I end up on my butt.

A good weekend, but I'm looking forward to being home for the next month.

More Travel

I've also updated my travel page with maps showing where I've been in North America and Europe.

The maps come from the CIA World Factbook, so I know they're in the public domain. I used an editor to add blue dots where I've been. As with the travel page, the maps are a work in progress.

Stats

I found out that my web hosting company provides me with stats on things such as which pages of mine are getting the most hits. Teddy's page is getting more than twice the hits as mine! I hope he doesn't let it go to his head. So I cleaned up the page, updated Teddy's age, and shrunk the file size on some of the pictures so it'll load faster.

The most popular back issue of this weblog is Viewer Mail, presumably because it contains the phrase "Lisa Bangert", which gets searched for a lot from the UK. Hmm, I guess this issue will now soar in popularity.

It's gratifying to see that my math pages are getting a number of hits.

Korea Pics

I now have 20 pictures from my trip to Korea on-line here. Enjoy.

Travel

I've started a travel page. It still needs a lot of work, but right now it contains a list of most of the trips I've taken in the past 8 years. Boy -- I get around. I think I may be missing a trip to Wisconsin in there somewhere. I'm linking to write-ups of recent trips -- maybe this will inspire me to go back and write about trips of yore.

Goldener Adler

I just got my hotel information for my May trip to Innsbruck. I'll be staying at the Goldener Adler hotel. I was impressed that the place I stayed in Korea had hosted Clinton and Gorbachev. The Goldener Adler has hosted Mozart and Goethe. Advantage, Austria.

March Madness Update

I'm tied for 2nd in Ben's pool, one point behind Ben (hmm). I'm in the 97th percentile overall on Yahoo!, which is pretty darn good. My main concerns in the next round are the fact that I've picked Wake Forest and North Carolina to advance, and they're both already out. Darn that ACC. Fortunately, all my Final Four teams are still alive.

Free Tacos for Everybody

This is hilarious.

"Taco Bell is offering a free taco to everyone in the United States if the core of the Mir space station hits a floating Taco Bell target placed in the South Pacific."

March Madness

Well, so far so good. Take a look at my brackets. I got 11 of 16 right last night, but more importantly, the only second "winner" to go down was Ohio State. And I picked them to lose to Duke. That puts me in a 4-way tie for 3rd (out of 13) in Ben's pick set.

Afton Alps

Last night I went skiing at Afton Alps. It was an interesting experience, different from other ski places I had been to, and a great deal of fun.

I drove less than an hour east of the Twin Cities to Afton Alps, which is right on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The first thing that was "different" was that instead of parking and buying a lift ticket at a ticket window, I bought it at a kiosk as I drove in -- like I was entering a park. I drove around until I found a rental shop -- as it turned out I drove right by the nearest rental shop, a mistake that I would come to regret.

I went into the "Meadows" rental shop and marveled at the fact that I was the only one in there. I leisurely picked out a spot to fill out my rental form. When I was done, I looked up and noticed that about 50 middle schools students (completely unsupervised) had entered the shop, pushing, yelling and giggling like middle school students do. I quickly moved towards the front of the line with my completed rental form, but about ten kids (savvier than I) were already there, filling out their forms while waiting in line. (To be sure, it made no sense for me to do the same when I thought myself the only one in the shop. Eventually I made it to the front and went over the counter to get my boots.

I told the guy I wore size 11, and he handed me some boots which I tried on. Well, I tried to try on. My feet wouldn't even fit in the boot. Maybe he was so overwhelmed he automatically grabbed boys' 11 shoes; I don't know. So it was back into the boot line to get boots from a woman who apparently was more careful selecting boots. Then I picked out my skis -- 170s again. Upon reflection, I think I may have gotten type II skis. Oh, well. Then ended up working. I then picked up my poles and waited in line to check out. And waited and waited.

The middle school students were taking a lot of time getting out of there. I was reminded of what the world looked like through middle school eyes. "Snowboarding is better than skiing. Skiing sucks. I've never been downhill skiing a day in my life." Fortunately, that was met by a perceptive, "Then how do you know you wouldn't like skiing?" which stunned the other party into silence and, one can hope, a bit of reflection.

When I was 3 or 4 munchkins from the front, a rental shop employee took pity on me and pulled me out of the teeming masses of prepubescence to check me out. Escape! It was 5:00, and I was hitting the ski slopes.

If you look at Afton Alps' trail map, you'll see it's fairly large -- at least compared to the other places I'd been. That meant that I had to figure out how to get from where I was to other parts of the hill. I started out in the lower left in the Meadows area and skied "Susie's Meadow", "Daisy's Meadow" and "Maggie's Meadow". My confusion was amplified by the fact that "Mary's Meadow" has been replaced by a half-pipe -- a fact not reflected on the ski maps. After a few of these runs, I was ready to head somewhere else -- but how?

I overheard a father asking his kids if they wanted to ski on another part of the mountain. I listened closely to hear how they were planning to ski there. Nope -- Dad was bringing the car around. Well, that wouldn't do. I tried again; this time I skied on the other side of the half-pipe and picked up "Mickey's Meadow" -- a blue slope. Gasp. Well, I made it down by skiing fairly slowly. The worst part of it was the ice patches that had developed in the middle.

I was away from the area I started in, and a few more trips down I tried skiing over to the next lift. That brought me "Polly's Powder" and "Ruthie's Meadow" -- more green (beginner) slopes, if the names didn't give that away. Eventually I made it to "Paula's Pass" (or was that "Patti's Pass") -- a blue, which I took down to the other base lodge. I was running into trouble because I didn't have much cash in my pockets and the food courts didn't take charge cards. I'd have to head back to the Meadows to my locker -- but not before skiing down "Christina's Trail" and "Nancy's Nursery" (again, more greens). The big lift to "Lisa's Lane" went over an interesting variety of terrain. Apparently during the summer they have golf there; it was somewhat disconcerting to see a ball washer sticking out of the snow.

After a little refreshment, I headed back out and tried out most of the same slopes again. Still, I hadn't made it to the "Highlands" area, and I wanted to try more blue (intermediate) slopes before I was done. I cut across to "Renee's Ridge" and then was on "Dawn's Highlands". Uh-oh. It was late (almost 9), I was getting tired, the slopes were icing up, it was dark and this was a steeper pitch than I was used to. So I skied very slowly down to a lift at the bottom. Thankfully I made it without getting clocked by one of the skiers and boarders whizzing down "Bernadine's Highlands".

Then the question was...what would I do when I got to the top? The trail map was confusing. (At one point, I was looking at it, and a member of the ski patrol came over to give me directions. "What are you looking for?" "What's that slope there?" "Hmm; I don't know. Let me see your map.") I decided I would definitely head back to the Meadows by going left. I did so and got to the top of what I later figured out was "Britta's Run". The slope was fairly dark, the chair lift there wasn't running, and there wasn't another person around. But heck, there was no "trail closed" sign, so it was down the hill. I eventually found my way back to the top of "Renee's Ridge" and by keeping left of that made it back to the Meadows. Whew.

It was definitely exciting. I skied almost all of the green trails there and worked a handful of blues into my day. I worked on controlling my speed and started getting better at completing my turns. I definitely improved at being able to come to a stop on an incline. The size and variety of terrain whet my appetite. I'd like to go to one of the bigger ski areas. But it's getting late in the season, and my travel plans lean towards South Carolina, so we'll see...

Some of these are disturbing...

I'm #5 on Yahoo! for "Egyptian Rat Screw".

...and #6 on Google for "rat screw".

I'm #3 on Google for "dali autumnal cannibalism".

I'm #34 on Yahoo! for "dungeon women".

I'm #7 on Yahoo! for "convention freaks".

I'm #10 on Yahoo! for "sling bikinis".

I'm #34 on Yahoo! for "NUDISM MISS".

Disturbing Search Requests

This article at the Village Voice points to a site called Disturbing Search Requests.

So I'm not the only one who gets people looking for Katie Couric Soles (though what's disturbing about this is the same search turns up someone with a Katie Couric obsession and a foot fetish) or Cthulu pictures (which helpfully makes me realize I've misspelled Cthulhu).