I know people who live in other parts of the country often shake their heads at Southerners and think we’re lazy. We really aren’t. Things just have to move at a slower pace down here because it’s too damn hot, and especially in our coastal cities, too muggy, to run around like mice hamsters on crack. I think it’s because we do approach life a little slowly that we give more time to conversation and storytelling, and those are things I treasure about being a Southerner.
You’re probably going to get weary of all my NOLA babbling, but there’s just SO MUCH I want to talk about, not to mention SO MANY PHOTOS. I’m spreading it out over many posts as I take breaks from writing, plus there’s a lot to process. The speakers I heard at Saints & Sinners were lovely. The parties were fun. Just hanging out with (alphabetically) David, Lisa, Marika, Mark, Shannon, and Tim (and sometimes Dash!) was amazing. We talked about family, friends, books, writing, traveling, feelings, experiences–it was funny and serious and enlightening. The party at Pat and Michael’s with Greg and Paul and Marika and all the other guests was also good conversation. I met so many new people over my five days, and there are some of them I want to talk about in more detail.
In addition to all the good conversation, some of the things that I enjoyed about being in New Orleans with Lisa (Midwest) and David (Northeast) were:
Hearing David mimic their tour guide, who seems to have put on quite a show as he escorted them around New Orleans. Clearly, he was a man who made the most of a captive audience.
Seeing Lisa eat her first grits. (And the grits are good at the Clover Grill!)
Watching them come to regard palmetto bugs in the true Southern way: as simply another pesky fact of life and better off ignored.
One day on a little walk around the Quarter, I came across a lovely example of how life…
imitates art…
Over the next few days, I hope you’ll kick back and be patient with me as I continue to ramble. OH, and before I close, apparently someone understood why Shannon was confused by the picture I posted of Famous Author Rob Byrnes in a previous entry. Like Shannon, this person also spotted FARB in Jackson Square and managed to get a picture to forward to me.
As Granny H used to say, “I swanee, I just don’t know what to think…”
I look forward to your “ramblings” about the trip. I told Shannon just today that i expected ya’ll to all talk about it for weeks. I also think I took a picture with that same statue two years ago.
One of my literature professors was original from the San Fernando Valley. She said that how the culture was there was that work was a part of your life, rather than the focus of it. She made a joke about how the people of Michigan tend to be obsessed with being focused on work, or on being productive all the time. She joked that she realized when she was doing stuff on the weekend that required a lot of effort instead of relaxing that she had finally became a Michiganian!
There was this friend of mine who I went down to Ann Arbor with a couple of times to goof around in addition to me picking up information about the graduate program in history at U of M when I thought I might go there some day. (Ha!) Anyway, I was about to strangle him because he just about ran down the sidewalks as we were “strolling” about town. He explained to me that this was customary in New York to walk that fast! Jeez! Talk about mice hamsters on crack!
I used to be a lot more Type A, work work work, go go go, than I am nowadays. Maybe this was the combination of where I grew up and my high strung personality, but I really don’t know to be honest. I belatedly learned that there is more to life than running around like a chicken with its head cut off. When I was in grad school, I saw the negative side to being a Type A personality. You had all these Type A’s together, reinforcing this insane idea that you have to work/be productive every second of the day or else you’re committing some sort of sin. Yuck!
““
The police could use him in an interrigation room. “OK! I’ll tell you everything I know! Just shut up about FEMA and HUD!!!!!”
(OK, I spelled interrogation wrong-sorry.)
And I also want to say that I will never get tired of your NOLA ‘babbling’ and/or pictures. Keep them coming!
By the time you get all the pictures posted people are emailing you, you may be able to put out a coffee table book: The Many Faces of FARB.
and then to calm them down, they can have daiquiris in a giant cup.
You forgot to say that famoid authors don’t get sent to the flue factory
sorry glue factory
I can’t wait to read each and every entry about the trip!! And especially see every photo.
I’m sorry now that we didn’t take the full day tour; a few more hours with Bobby the tour guide and I’d have had enough material for a full act.
“I hate FEMA even more than my wife’s momma!”
Hahahahaha!!!!!
Another full act, you mean? After all, you do have the airplane act already. (If you ever need a change from writing and the travel business, David, you could always make your fortune in stand-up.)
Oh! I have a picture of me sitting next to that statue in the same pose…
…You’re really making me miss New Orleans! I didn’t get to go last summer because of when we decided to leave Pensacola. And I don’t get to stop by this summer because Rhon and I are flying. But I may go fairly soon with another friend when she has to go to Hammond on family business.
Oh, those Clover Grill grits. That’s what love itself feels like.
Thanks again for sharing yours with me, Mark. (You’re not getting my cold, are you?) You do a wonderful job of fixing them up. Made this Yankee think they tasted mighty fine.
Mmmm . . . Clover Grill. Of course, the times I’ve been there I’ve been so drunk they could have fed me egg shells and coffee grounds and I’d have liked them. I also usually visit Mother’s, NOLA, and Central Grocery (for the muffuletta)
These FARB photos are getting me worried. That’s two jobs he had to work while visiting N.O. Should we be taking up a collection for him?
-Crash
Mother’s was really good when we last visited.
Should we be taking up a collection for him?
What a great idea. Send the money to me. I’ll make sure he gets it.
David, Shannon and I had a muffuletta (or as David calls it: muffuluffagus) at the central grocery, and it was delicious.
So pretty 🙂
One day please will you explain the “in joke” about Famous Author Rob Byrnes?
Famous Author Rob Byrnes knew only at the last minute that he would be unable to attend the conference.
Or so he said.
There seem to be a number of photos of his name badge being worn in various New Orleans locations. Along with being a Famous Author, perhaps he’s a master of disguises and was really there all along.
Ah, I need to go further back with this…who *is* FARB?
FARB = Famous Author Rob Byrnes. Rob is the author of several gay novels including THE NIGHT WE MET, TRUST FUND BOYS, and most recently, WHEN THE STARS COME OUT. Rob began writing for Kensington roughly the same time that my writing partners and I did (as Timothy James Beck).
Rob has a popular blog (it’s listed in my sidebar), and the “Famous Author” tag is his way of gently poking fun at himself and indeed at all of us niche authors who’ll never quite make the A List in the Big Literary World. But we don’t bother with that because we love what we do.
My writing parter in New York, Timothy Forry, has met Rob, but Timothy J. Lambert (my now-in-Houston writing partner), Jim Carter (my California writing partner), and I never have. Timothy J. Lambert and I were looking forward to doing so in New Orleans, but Rob was unable to attend the literary conference there. Thus we are giving him crap via his name badge.
Now we’re hoping to meet Rob when we go to NYC at the end of this month. Rob’s latest novel is nominated in the same category as TJB’s SOMEONE LIKE YOU, gay male romance, for a Lambda Literary Award. We joke that should Rob win, we will make a big dramatic diva scene in protest. But actually, we would be thrilled for him, as we feel great affection for him.
FARB calls Timothy J. Lambert “teej” and me “Becks” and that is why I occasionally refer to myself as Becks.
Hope this helps clear up my many vague references to FARB! He’s a good sport about all the teasing I direct his way.
Aha! All is revealed!
This is fun…and with so much affection 🙂