The fastest fad I've ever seen

Two days ago, Ellie came home from school talking about animal bracelets. She said everyone at her school has them and they give them to their friends, and she asked us to please get her some animal bracelets.

They look like this:

We generally say no when Ellie asks for a new toy that she's seen on TV or at a friend's house. But she said they were only $2 and you could get them at Walgreens and "all" the kids at school are trading them but no one would give her one. That triggered the parental nerve that says you must not ever let your child feel left out, so Greg and I agreed that we would go to Walgreens to look at them and probably get them for her.

When she came home from school yesterday, she had a bracelet. One of the kids at school was handing them out and gave her one. We were about to head to gymnastics, so I said we'd stop at Walgreens and see what these bracelets are all about.

When we got to Walgreens, we saw two kids running into the store with their dad. They were about Ellie's age. Ellie said, "They're getting the bracelets, too." I said, "How do you know? They could be getting anything."

The moment we walked in the door, the girl behind the counter turned to us and said, "Animal Bands are right over there. We have them in two spots." How did she know?! We walked over, and those two kids and their dad were already looking through them.

I couldn't believe it. An instantaneous fad. These things didn't even exist two days ago. It's like millions of tiny convenience store executives climbed onto the pillows of every single elementary school kid on the same night and all simultaneously whispered into their ears, "You must get your parents to buy you rubber bands in the shape of animals! It's urgent! They're at Walgreens for a dollar ninety nine!"

I told Ellie she could have one pack. They come 12 bands to a pack. On the way out, I asked the checkout girl when this whole animal bands thing started. She said, "Oh, about a week and a half ago. We got a shipment of 1,000 in last week and they were gone in one day." What?? A thousand?!?  If they're going to sell that much of anything to schoolchildren that quickly, it should be doses of antibiotics to quell an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Anything else is obscene.

On the way out, I noticed the sign on the door: We have ANIMAL BANDS in stock!!!!!  Written just like that. With that many exclamation points. The sign gave me no choice but to feel intense relief. Thank God. THANK GOD they have animal bands.

The bad news Ellie gave me last night was that the kids in her class were no longer allowed to bring their animal bands to school. Aww...too bad. Today I turn on my computer and this is the front page news story on Yahoo News:

Silly Bandz Bracelet School Craze: School Ban

Now THAT was fast. These things went from not existing at all to appearing on the arms of every single kid in the world to being banned in two days.

Baby birdies

There's a nest in a tree in front of our house, and there are baby birds in the nest! Take a look:

Adorable! There are four of them, I think. They just sit there in the nest with their mouths open, waiting for food. We had to take a lot of photos from many angles, all the while risking pecks to the head if the mommy bird came back, but we finally got these two good ones. Those birds are well hidden in the tree.

Watching Fantastic Mr. Fox while sick

Poor Ellie is sick. She woke up this morning with a stomachache, and it's been getting worse all day. It started out coming and going, so she'd feel better for a little while, and we went and ran some errands in the afternoon. But she's had to suddenly stop what she's doing to sit or lie down at various points throughout the day. She took a nap from 4-6pm and then fell asleep again at around 9:30. Between 4 and 9:30, she hardly moved an inch or said a word. She feels horrible.

So we decided to all watch a movie together--one we'd all enjoy. So we rented Fantastic Mr. Fox from On Demand. I've heard great things about it. Now that is a strange movie. It's stop-motion animation, so the movements are unnatural and the characters talk like they are in a Woody Allen movie instead of like cute animals. Everything about it is disconcerting, and I think it would be even more disconcerting if you are a kid. I think if I watched it as a kid, with it having such an off-kilter style and language that is beyond my understanding, and on top of that if I watched it while having a stomachache and feeling like I might or might not throw up at any moment, I think I would remember that movie vividly. I think it would stick with me for a long time.

I have no idea if it will stick with Ellie and I don't even know if she liked it or if she was paying any attention at all. I'll have to find out when she feels better. It will be interesting to hear what she has to say about it when she's able to speak again.

Roger Ebert said this in his review of Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is based on a book by Roald Dahl: "Like the hero of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," also based on one of his books, the creatures of Dahl's valley seem to know more than they're letting on; perhaps even secrets we don't much want to know. Children, especially, will find things they don't understand, and things that scare them. Excellent. A good story for children should suggest a hidden dimension, and that dimension of course is the lifetime still ahead of them."

Love that summation. Love Roger Ebert. And I recommend Fantastic Mr. Fox. Here are the only two snippets I can find on You Tube:

Last bit about New Orleans

Well, I'm kinda bored with my stories about New Orleans, and there isn't much to say about the last day there. We went to the Aquarium (cute otters and penguins), we walked along the Riverwalk stores (huge mall) and we met Greg at the convention after it was over. It rained intensely, so we were stuck inside most of the day. The highlight of the day was when Lee took us to his favorite restaurant in New Orleans, called Rio Mar. The food was excellent. Ellie was significantly less happy to be there than I was, though. She cannot (or will not) appreciate the delicate flavors of a perfectly cooked fish, coupled with a glass of wine that enhances every bite. Maybe it's because she's seven. I'm not convinced.

So she was very bored and very whiny and her butt was wet because of the wet seats in the cab ride over and she was all around an unpleasant dinner companion. She was lucky that Greg took pity on her and walked her back to the hotel and got her something she wanted to eat from another restaurant. Because when I have great food and wine in front of me, I take pity on no one.

We had to get up at crazy o'clock the next day to catch our flight back, and that was the end of our trip to NOLA!

City Park

Two more quick posts about our trip, and then I'll leave y'all alone about it.

Ellie and I took a streetcar to City Park one of the days. The streetcar goes down Canal Street and it reminds me a lot of Market Street in San Francisco (both the streetcar and the street itself).

We took the streetcar all the way down to the end of the line, which is at the New Orleans Museum of Art. We didn't go in to the Museum of Art, but we did walk around the grounds, which had sculptures to look at. And I did get some pictures!

The first thing we saw were some statues sitting on benches. Here I am with my new boyfriend:

He was okay, but kind of boring.

We also saw a version of that famous LOVE  sculpture:

And we saw an enormous safety pin. Someone left it open, which Ellie and I agreed was unsafe:

[[THIS PART IS NOW CENSORED BECAUSE IT OFFENDED GREG'S DELICATE SENSIBILITIES]]

We played at the playground for a long time, and Ellie had a great time climbing some trees that had forked trunks that were very low to the ground. Here's a section of City Park that's covered with trees. Beautiful.

It would have been nice to see the small amusement park they have on the grounds, but it was closed with no word about why. I'm assuming it's because of Katrina, but I don't know for sure. We decided to head back to the hotel.

On the way back, the streetcar we were on was malfunctioning or something, because the driver made us all get off and wait for the next streetcar. There were a bunch of us waiting on this tiny strip in between the tracks and I didn't quite realize that there is no physical barrier between you and the streetcar so it's up to you to get out of its way. Ellie and I were hanging out on the opposite side of the track from where our streetcar would be and just as some ringing started to enter into my consciousness, a man walked up behind me and said, "Watch the streetcar, miss." I turned around and saw the streetcar, alarm sounding, coming right at me. I jumped out of the way and grabbed Ellie to push her out of the way. It was really close, and it sure didn't seem like that streetcar would have stopped. I thanked the guy enthusiastically and was quite rattled the rest of the way back.

We were exhausted after that, so we hung out in the hotel and watched the Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice, which Ellie fell in love with. Oh, Mr. Darcy!

French Quarter after dark

I got to go out on the town two of the nights we were in New Orleans. The first night, Greg was too tired to go out, so he stayed with Ellie while Lee and I went out to tour the French Quarter.

The next night, Lee was gracious enough to watch Ellie while Greg and I checked out the night life.

Both nights consisted of basically the same thing---walking up and down the streets with hundreds of other people while holding a drink, occasionally yelling "WOO!" at the people around you. And I just don't see the point. Unless a professional sports team has just won a big trophy, it isn't fun to yell "WOO!" at random strangers on the street. There wasn't much bead throwing going on and none of the women were taking off their tops. It was like we were all going through the motions of Mardi Gras, but we didn't have our hearts in it. And I guess that's what it's like there every night of the week.

This is the oldest bar in the western hemisphere.

This is a gay bar that on a different trip to New Orleans Greg and his friend stood out in front of for a very long time before realizing it was a gay bar, even though it was filled entirely with men and there's a rainbow flag in front of it.

It is extremely easy to get drunk in New Orleans for two reasons. First, their drinks are overloaded with alcohol. Lee and I stopped in a spot to get a drink called a Hand Grenade. It's a sugary, super-alcoholic drink served in either a small plastic cup or a big cup with a long neck and a straw. We got the small. The cups all come with a small plastic hand grenade  floating on the top. "You're supposed to keep the hand grenades," Lee told me. "Why?" I asked. "So when you go to the ER, you can tell them how many you've had."

I couldn't even finish one.

The second reason it's so easy to get drunk is because the whole point of being in the French Quarter is to walk up and down the streets with your drinks, finding your way to whatever bar catches your fancy or whatever music calls you to it. You can order a drink in a bar (or the many booze counters along the streets) and take it with you. But you can't bring your drink into a bar. They want you to buy their alcohol, so you'll have to finish your drink (or throw it out) before you can go in. So you want to try karaoke. Well, you've got to finish your drink first. Guzzle it down, sing your karaoke, order another drink, then head to the next place. Oh, you want to hear that great jazz band? Sorry, finish your drink first. Now you can hear the band and order another drink while you're there. Before you know it, you're at Tulane University Hospital counting plastic hand grenades with Mike the Intern.

But what a music scene. Every single place you pass has a band or karaoke and there's often music on the street as well. Greg and I saw a group of guys playing jazz trumpets out on the street, surrounded by a huge crowd of people. They were so good. We also sat at the outskirts of a little outdoor cafe listening to a trio play old timey jazz that sounded so authentically New Orleans. It was fantastic.

The trio. These guys were so good.

After we'd been walking around for awhile, Greg decided he wanted to get a cigar to go with his drink and he asked me if I wanted one. I said I would try a small one, like a cigarillo. So we stopped at a cigar stand. (Yes, they have a tiny store that's basically a cigar counter along the street.) They didn't have cigarillos, but they did have a cigar that was smaller than the others. "That's our smallest cigar," the guy told me. "You could smoke that in 15 minutes." So I decided to get it. He clipped off the end, told me that the only thing to remember was not to inhale, let me take a few puffs while he lit the end of it, and handed it over.

Half an hour later, I was barely over halfway done. It was not a 15-minute cigar.  And I was sick of smoking it after about 5 minutes. Finally I went back and asked the guy if you can put out a cigar and smoke it later. "That's not a great idea," he told me. "It tastes kind of bad when you smoke it again. Like ash."

It didn't taste very good the first time, so I didn't think I would smoke it a second. He gave me a plastic bag to store the cigar in and told me the proper way to put it out. Greg put out the cigar for me and stuck it in the plastic bag and I stuck the bag in my purse. When the cigar was out, I was about done too, so went back to the hotel.

The next day, my purse reeked. It smelled like an ashtray full of horse manure. I was convinced I was going to have to throw my purse out. I let Ellie smell my purse in the hopes that the utter rankness of it would put her off of all tobacco products for the rest of her life. If that doesn't do it, nothing will. And luckily, my purse survived.

The French Quarter isn't really my scene (though the music was wonderful), but I'm glad I went and I'm glad I didn't drink much while I was there.

More lay-tah

Cemeteries

When I go back to New Orleans someday (sans kid), I will check out the cemeteries. I had plans during this trip to go on a cemetery tour, but I hesitated to take Ellie on one and the tours I read about were part of a longer walking tour that took 2 hours. I knew Ellie and a 2-hour walking tour would not mesh. So I didn't end up seeing the cemeteries. I wish I could have. I got a glimpse a couple as we drove by on the bus to the swamp tour and in the cab from the airport, and they are so intriguing.

I still want to talk about them and show you a few pictures from the internet, because they are so unique.

The cemeteries are filled with above-ground tombs, some of which resemble small houses. They are lined up next to each other so they form little neighborhoods with streets in between, and some of the tombs even have fences in front of them. They are known as cities of the dead.

Are they tombs in a cemetery or garages along an alley?

If you're lucky, you get a tomb with a view of a palm tree.

Lovely, isn't it? And yet another reason to believe that there are ghosts in New Orleans. I bet no one who dies in New Orleans ever follows that white light into eternity. After all, when you die you get your own place, hopefully some nice neighbors, and whenever you want to you can float over to Bourbon Street for some dinner and dancing. New Orleans is the best place in the world to be dead.

The reason all these tombs are above ground is because if you dig down just a few feet, you hit water. When they bury coffins, the coffins just float up again. So they have to bury people above ground. And we tourists are mighty glad they do.


But on to our day...