The Barryfest Chronicles

I think that you can tell a lot about a city by the way it rings in the New Year.  Minneapolis, for example, is a fun enough time but not really anything to write home about.  Chicago, on the other hand, offers plenty to do but your options can be limited by the bitter cold winters and spotty public transportation system.  And then there is New York, which is more or less a crowded, expensive theme park.

While especially apparent on the last day of the year, I think the statements above hold true for their respective cities at all times.  So, after getting intimately familiar with New Orleans over the past 12 months, I cut my holiday family time short to make sure I could test my “New Year’s Eve as a microcosm” theory down in the Big Easy.

Now, New Year’s Eve is nothing if it is not another excuse for revelry.  And when it comes to revelry, if you give New Orleans an inch, in one magnificent swoop she will take a mile, your favorite watch and every clean pair of tube socks you’ve got in your top drawer.  Luckily, she will return them before you know they are even gone.  New Orleans is sneaky like that. Read the rest of this entry »

My brother has lived in New York City for almost a year and a half now, and this has given us two or three occasions to engage in the Manhattan version of our favorite shared pastime: walking around a major metropolis without the trappings of a destination or an agenda.

The starting point of our trip is usually determined by where we want to catch lunch and we head out equipped with nothing more than a comfortable pair of shoes and a good sense of direction.  No cabs, no subway, just two dudes who haven’t seen each other for a while running wild on the public thoroughfares of a big city. Read the rest of this entry »

There we were, taking the gritty-as-shit alternate route to Louis Armstrong Airport – forgoing the interstate, with its road construction and rush hour induced bottleneck circa the Causeway Blvd. exit, in favor of the scenic drive through the blocks of shotgun houses and tire shops in Hollygrove and then past the endless row of seedy motels on Airline Highway – when I had my second favorable encounter with the nefarious group of “musicians” know as Coldplay.

The first time I listened to this band with a smile on my face was over three years ago in East Troy, Wisconsin.  A variety of factors, not one of which even remotely having to do with the band itself, led me to purchase a ticket to see England’s softest rockers at Alpine Valley Music Theater during the waning days of the summer before my senior year of college.  And through another set of circumstances, again completely unrelated to the group of hacks crooning sweet nothings into the cool August air, I was breaking out into fits of hysterical ecstasy towards the end of the first set. Read the rest of this entry »

When you’re drunkenly balls deep in a plate of cheese fries at F&M’s on a Thursday night, it is easy to forget that there is a lot more to Louisiana than New Orleans.  This is the “Sportsman’s Paradise” for chrissakes, and I’ve been down here for almost a year and have not actually done anything even remotely “sporting.”

To remedy this, I spent the weekend at Fountainebleau State Park with a crew of brave souls willing to endure some good old fashioned outdoor living in what could easily be the coldest weather any of us will see all year.  Yeah, the winters are pretty mild in southeast Louisiana; but the fact that the mercury doesn’t dip too far below 40 degrees over a 12 month span doesn’t make those 40 degree gusts any toastier when they are whipping across your campsite.

But the trip was a blast, and when I wasn’t gathering firewood, complaining about non-Kosher hot dogs, smoking Natural American Spirits, slugging persey bottles of Charles Shaw, pounding packets of BC, dancing on top of a picnic table to Rilo Kiley, tossing hard-boiled eggs into Lake Pontchartrain, or freezing my dick off after passing out in a tent with no pillow or sleeping bag, I engaged in my new favorite pastime: hypothesizing about whether or not Chinese Democracy is going to be any good. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, September 6 at approximately 10:45 pm local time I made it back to New Orleans after a week-long odyssey that took me to Meridian, Birmingham, Richmond, Tenafly, New York City and Chapel Hill before I finally returned to the Crescent City.  I would call it a “tour de force,” but during my travels – and the 45 hours I spent in a car over the last week – I became convinced that the term “tour de force” is thrown around way too liberally these days.

I am not quite sure what led me to this conclusion, but when you are on your second 5 Hour Energy shot of the evening and considering whether or not an America’s Best Value Inn right off I-85 in Virginia is far enough away the from the meth country of greater Appalachia to safely rest for three and a half hours without worrying about someone breaking into your car and stealing your checkbook, external hard drive and passport, fact-checking your own internal monologue is not high on your list of priorities.

I think it is best that the term “tour de force” only be used to describe one of two phenomenon:

1. A road trip that spans multiple countries, not just multiple cities
2. A colossal rock epic the likes of Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla,” Electric Light Orchestra’s “Living Thing,” the B-Side of Abbey Road or Spacehog’s “In The Meantime.”

But anyways. I set a new personal record by doing four loads of laundry today, I will be returning to work tomorrow, and it appears that this “Ike” character will be twisting into Texas by the end of the week (of course, he hasn’t gotten a taste of angel dust yet), so I hope that I will not be checking the “Riding the storm out” category in any blog posts in the near future.  And I also hope that the next time I am racking my brain for a new category name, I don’t go with an obvious allusion to a terrible REO Speedwagon song.

All in all, my first evacuation experience was – dare I say – almost entirely positive.  Sure, I was freaking the fuck out for the first 48 hours, and I had to purchase six tanks of premium gasoline at this summer’s outrageous prices, and I ate nothing but fast food for what seemed like an eternity; but this last week has been pretty fun and exciting.  I’m more well-traveled by exactly five US states, I gained a new appreciation for the beauty of major cities in Alabama and I got to see at least six of my favorite people while in New York.

But most importantly, I got caught up on over a month of neglected podcasts while on the road.  In addition to listening to the latest editions of This American Life, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, and The B.S. Report with Bill Simmons, I finally got a chance to dip into the five episodes of The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling I downloaded after seeing it name-dropped in Vulture a few weeks ago.

It is awesome.  I could easily (and very possibly may) devote an entire post to the genius of Tom Scharpling.  Until then, let me say this: without The Best Show, I do not think any of what went on over the last week would have been possible.