New Orleans, LA: City of Jazz

Day 1: 

I arrived in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon. After picking me up from the airport, my family and I went to check out the Destrehan Plantation, one of the most well-preserved plantations in Louisiana. 

It was interesting to see how the plantations were run and what the quality of life was like (for plantation owners as well as slaves). All the employees were dressed up in historical costume, which was adorable, especially if you were our guide, an old lady who seemed half-bored by her presentation but knew an inordinate amount of information about anything and everything related to the house.

 

According to her, there will be a movie coming out called Twelve Years a Slave (also a book!) that was shot on the plantation. So that's cool.

 There were also chickens, which was unreasonably exciting. 

We may or may not have gotten beignets Thursday night at Café du Monde. Maybe it was Friday. Either way we got beignets and they were delicious and messy and delicious.

Side note: One of the great things about Louisiana for a (semi) French speaker is that everyone kind of almost speaks French. This means that in words like "café," companies and people actually understand where to put the accent and what an accent even is. Pro-tip: If you want to NOT look like an idiot, don't use an apostrophe like an accent ( cafe' or Renee' ). Better just to exclude the accent altogether. But if you want to actually do it right, here are the rules: In English (or words English stole from French), the accent is probably an accent ague, or forward slash, above an E, not beside it. If there are two Es, it goes above the first E. Renée. Café. Probably the only time you will use the accent grave, or backwards slash, in English is in Shakespearean poetry, when you pronounce the -ed at the end of words to add a syllable, as in "slashèd" (pronounced SLASH-ehd as opposed to one syllable SLASH'd). Got it? Good. Just a little lesson for you.

Sorry, I am both an English and a French major, so these things are real problems in my life. 

Moving on. Heh.


Day 2:

On Friday we woke up and hopped on the Natchez Riverboat, a windy Mississippi lunch cruise aboard an old-style steam-powered (or something?) boat (think Mark Twain).

It was quite neat (and windy). We ate soul food and learned some things about the Mississippi and its banks, such as that every one second, the river deposits one million gallons of water into the Gulf. That's a big freaking river.

After the boat, we chilled, walked around, looked at the farmer's and flea markets and all the shops, and generally explored the city. Everything there is named Jackson, for Andrew Jackson I guess, which made me chuckle.

A little later on we went on a mule-and-carriage tour led by a neat and knowledgeable local lady, who showed us everything from the French Quarter sights to the "ghetto" to Frenchman Street.

We learned that the area is called Dixieland because the original Confederate mint used to be in New Orleans, and the first note they printed was a ten dollar note. Because it was Louisiana, though, they printed the English word Ten as well as the French word Dix on the notes, but the English-speaking Americans pronounced dix phonetically instead of Frenchly, so they started calling them dixies, and Louisiana became Dixieland.

Later on we went down to Frenchman Street, a more local, musicy place (much cooler than Bourbon Street, although with just as many drunk people). We ate dinner at a cool place called Snug Harbor and then went to look at the nighttime art market next door.

 

And I saw this neat sign. 

  

AND I got this amazing poem, written by fellow English major David, one of several Poets for Hire on Frenchman, who would write poems on any subject for whatever price you thought they were worth. 

"The Life of an English Major" 

You will live inside the words of other, rooms without walls, a universe without boundaries, stories that pull around your neck like a scarf on a cold winter's night.

You will be one of a dozen who still appreciates a library.

Books will be your great love, and men will fall short of your romantic expectations.

Grammar mistakes on social media sites will drive you insane.

You will be sensitive to the thoughts of others. 

You will ask a lot of questions and be unsatisfied with most answers. 

Your life will be an endless source of storytelling material.

Then we went to listen to music at The Spotted Cat Music Club, where my Dad (naturally) started talking to these two British guys, a filmmaker and an aspiring chef, who are on a mission to taste food across America so that the chef can open a restaurant back in England. They were funny and interesting guys, and the filmmaker is from Falmouth of all places.Weird coincidences.

Day 3: 

On our last real day in NOLA, we went on an airboat tour of the bayou. We saw lots of marshmallow-eating alligators and even got to hold two-year-old Amy. 

We also learned that Spanish Moss can be processed by boiling it and removing the gray bark. Once removed, the plant looks like strands of horsehair and it quite strong. They used it to stuff furniture and car seats (horsehair furniture). 

I also thought it was interesting that they have managed to garner a population of over a million alligators, who were on the very first endangered species list, by stealing their eggs and hatching them at a specific temperature that allows for the correct proportion of males to females. They then notch their tails to mark when they were born and release around 15% of them back into the swamp, about 1600 gators. The rest of them go towards alligator meat and leather.

After that we took Austin to move into his hotel/home-for-the-summer, dropped off Gena at the airport, and went to see Star Trek Into Darkness, which was awesome. 

And that was it!

March Madness (which in my life, has nothing to do with basketball, or whatever)

This has been my face for the last month. 

So it's been a long time since I've posted. What have I been up to? 

To be honest, I don't even know. Work. Work. Work. Class. Class.  Phi Sigma Pi. Class. More work. Phi Sigma Pi. Being sick. Work. 

It's been just a little bit insane. 

But you know, I've actually done some cool stuff in amongst the stress. Let's see. 

I went to Denton 35 Festival, which was pretty cool (if crazy). Unfortunately, the first night I didn't go for very long, but then the next night it rained--a deluge like no other--and the thing was pretty much cancelled. Then the next night, I saw a couple cool bands, but I had a fever so I left early and missed the truly awesome stuff. This is my life. 

Then it was Spring Break! This meant my dad's and brother's birthdays, and this awesome otter cake my mom made. It was as delicious as it was adorable. 

Unfortunately I had to work all through Spring Break, and it never really felt like a break as I was sick and busy the whole time, but at least there was....

 MUSE CONCERT!!

It was unimaginably epic and spectacular. AAAAAAAGH! Still can't believe how cool it was. 

This is the Cellular Device Nebula located in the American Airlines Constellation, as seen from Section 318, Row H on planet Earth. 

This past week since being back at school has lasted years. 

There are a curious number of misplaced chairs around campus...Hm.

A couple days ago a balloon man came to Honors for an event! He made this beautiful octopus as well as many other spectacular balloon shapes. And I had many balloon sword fights. I won them all. >:D 

(not really)

Yesterday Jackson and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art, which has free general admission right now. We saw all kinds of old art, including a mummy and some very neat artifacts from ~2500 B.C. I wish I remembered more about each of these specific pieces, but I don't. So here, look at some pretty old stuff. 

This is a phoenix (Japanese?).

This is a weird little dude (Mesoamerican?). 

This is definitely Roman. 

This is ancient Indian. The detail here is amazing!

Then today I went with a bunch of Phi Sigma Pi people to paint pottery at Time to Kiln. I made this:

The colors look really ugly in the picture, but this is the color scheme inspiration (which I stole from the Internet, of course: design-seeds.com -- an awesome site) 

So hopefully it will turn out looking something like that. 

My "Big" (read: mentor-type-person) in Phi Sig, Erin, made a lovely mug!

She's awesome. 

 Then I got sushi and went to a bunch of meetings and bought some chocolate and studied management nonsense and now I'm writing this blog. Whoopee! You're all caught up in my life now.

Have some things!

A Jackson wearing a fringe-ful coat, next to a flower tree!

A turtle cartoon, made in times of boredom at work!

A Sheldon the Tiny Dinosaur cartoon!

And a cartoon by my brother about winning Olympic archery! I hope you don't mind me sharing this, Austin, because I think it's fantastic. 

Have a wonderful day and a glorious, chocolatey Easter! 

Life Update

So not much of the "exciting" variety has been happening the last couple of weeks. Mostly studying and Netflix and half-price sushi. But here are just a couple of things because I haven't posted in forever.

The guys played possibly their best show at one of the most awesome Open Ranges yet. 

I went to see my mom's beautiful new pedestrian bridge open up to get the students to the stadium, which was pretty awesome.

\

I explored the tailgating labyrinth with all of these people (AKA, basically every frat boy and sorority girl at UNT). 

And I got to watch the nationally televised football game from the (incredibly nice) President's box, even though I only stayed for about 90 seconds of the action playing. 

 

And finally, I got to watch George Watsky perform his famous spoken-word poetry on his tour, which was seriously incredible. I was also impressed by the spoken-word talent here at UNT. Such a cool art form.  

Watching Watsky, it really hit me what kinds of things my generation is doing for culture. Thirty years ago, a twenty-two-year-old kid like George Watsky (who's an Emerson College grad, by the way) wouldn't get the chance to travel around for a living, performing original poetry for college students and getting paid for doing it. But because of the Internet, because of the sheer power of YouTube, this kid--and many others like him--are exposed to millions and millions of people, opening up a whole mine of new audiences with an inexhaustible hunger for new art, new words, new opinions and perspectives. Maybe one in a thousand people like spoken word poetry. Maybe that's not enough to give it a location-specific home. But today, location is irrelevant. Our networks connect us instantly with everyone in America--in the whole world--who share our tastes, which gives small-time artists a chance they never would have had in any other time. 

I just think that's so cool. 

Day 5: Amsterdam, City of Water, Brothels, and Fine Art

You are probably not aware that a normal Dutch breakfast always includes sprinkles. In fact, our hotel breakfast gave us the option of six different kinds, all in little boxes to spread on your bread: milk chocolate bits, milk chocolate shavings, dark chocolate bits, dark chocolate shavings, colorful bits, and smaller colorful bits. In order to keep with local customs, I ate a breakfast of kiwis and milk chocolate sprinkles on a baguette. And it was surprisingly lovely. :)

After breakfast we caught the tram into town and visited the famous Reijk Museum, home of many many Rembrandts (and a lot of stuff by other people, none of whom I recognized--not that I am an art connoisseur--but a few of whom I liked) including The Night Watch, which was gigantic and vaguely cute. My favorite part, though, was a small exhibition at the end about etchings. I thought they were beautiful and intricate and masterful and a lot more interesting than the paintings, in my opinion. There are some pictures of my favorites below. Also, an amazing doll house made in the 18th (?) century. (Again, sorry I can't put them throughout the post...basically the only drawback of mobile blogging.)

After that we went on a canal tour of the city, and we had a very nice captain who definitely had the humor of the Dutch - very dry and quiet, so it takes you a second to realize that it was a joke, but hilarious in a laugh-to-yourself-for-hours kind of way. We saw all the oldest parts of Amsterdam this way: many beautiful houses (including the narrowest one at 1 meter wide! Look for it in the pictures below!), the mayor's house, the oldest bridge, the smallest canal, the view of one of Monet's paintings, electric smart cars that you can rent hourly, and a lot a lot of adorable houseboats. We also went our to the bay and saw a recreation of a 17th century shipping vessel built voluntarily by unemployed people and a bunch of 100+ year old sailing ships, one of which our captain lived on and sailed. It was really surprisingly interesting.

Then we found Rembrandt's house, which he lived and worked in for fourteen years, and at one time was Holland's biggest art studio. They had refurnished it based on documents from his time to look just like how he had it (or pretty close, at least). The walls were covered in paintings and there was a room full of random artifacts - shells and swords and busts and African things. They had a demonstration of how he did his etchings and one on how he mixed his paint and set up his canvas. Still, I really loved the almost-complete collection of Rembrandt's etchings at the end. His portraits are especially beautiful, and some of my favorites are below.

Next we...well. Our destination was the Old Church, the oldest building in Amsterdam, built in the 1100s. But the problem was that the Old Church is right in the middle of the Red Light District. This should strike you as ironic - a gigantic, grand church marking the way to the brothels from the very edge of the city. Walking through it was very intimidating; every building was fronted with glass doors covered in curtains, which would occasionally be drawn back by women in various shades of barely-clothed making awkward eye contact with everyone who passed by. The square was full of about 75% male, most of them tourists coming to gawk. Most of the locals, male or female, just walked by, shaking their heads and smiling at the women. I felt weird - it's obviously such a man-oriented kind of place, not at all somewhere I ever want to be, but it was interesting to see. You know, in general I am a believer in an It's-your-life philosophy, i.e. you can do whatever you want to yourself as long as you don't affect people around you. If those women want to be prostitutes, fine, whatever, they have the right. They're not the part that bothered me, though I wonder why anyone would choose that life. But there's something creepy and vaguely sick about people coming and staring and pointing and laughing at these women who are displayed behind windows like merchandise. It's just...ugh. :-S

Oh well. It's all part of the experience, part of the city of Amsterdam. I'm glad I saw that side of it too, though thankfully not in too much detail. And maybe this isn't something that I was expecting to post about in my blog, but hey - if you want to travel vicariously with me through Europe, you're gonna get the bad right along with the good just like me. So deal with it. :)

Oh, and also, we went to the best freaking Italian food restaurant ever - Lo Stivales d'Or - where I ate olive bread with herbed garlic butter, cheesy endives, and the most perfect spaghetti carbonara ever. So yeah, if you're ever in Amsterdam... :)

Now, to Berlin!