PZB: I sure am tired of hearing about the Beaujolais. I hope it goes away soon.

CdB: You should not be allowed to live.

zia_narratora ate at the Green Goddess and created this fabulous comic. Chris' hair cracks me up, but then it often does in real life too. At his old restaurant, the Downstairs, he once got a phone bill addressed to "Cliff DeHair." I still haven't let him live that one down.

I'm reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, whose books I always find interesting. In Chapter 3 he discusses unconscious biases as measured by Implicit Association Tests (IATs). You can take a bunch of different IATs at http://www.implicit.harvard.edu , but the one Gladwell describes in most detail is the Race IAT:

I've taken the Race IAT on many occasions, and the result always leaves me feeling a bit creepy. At the beginning of the test, you are asked what your attitudes toward blacks and whites are. I answered, as I am sure most of you would, that I think of the races as equal. Then comes the test.

Basically, you have to sort black and white faces and positive/negative words into two categories, then sort them again paired with "good" or "bad" concepts. For instance, you have to sort words like hurt, evil, and glorious into the categories "European American or Good" or "African American or Bad," then reverse the pairings: "African American or Good" and "European American or Bad." Supposedly most test takers of either race take significantly longer to sort the second set of pairings because they are biased to associate African American and bad, even if they don't consciously feel that way. Malcolm Gladwell, who's half black, was mortified to learn that he had "a moderate automatic preference for whites." He comments:

[O]f the fifty thousand African Americans who have taken the Race IAT so far, about half of them, like me, have stronger associations with whites than with blacks. How could we not? We live in North America, where we are surrounded every day by cultural messages linking white with good.

Well, I wondered. As far as I'm concerned, I don't live in North America. I live in a small northern outpost of the Caribbean that is, at most, a neglected protectorate of the United States. I am a white person living in a majority-black neighborhood and city. I find myself in way fewer all-white or mostly white environments here in New Orleans than in any other place I've ever lived or visited, except Jamaica and maybe London. Aside from Chris, most of the people I see and speak to on a daily basis are black. If I see white people in my neighborhood, it means potential disruption: volunteers (good/neutral) or lost tourists (neutral/bad). I'm pretty selective about the cultural messages I get: I watch no TV except sporting events (which have a large black demographic); I read the Times-Picayune (which has a significant black readership); many of our local political and cultural readers are black. I didn't feel I'd been inoculated with the white=good virus. And according to the Race IAT, I haven't: "Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American." Which is exactly what I predicted before I took the test. Gladwell says you can't fool the test or answer to make yourself look better. I don't know about that. I do agree with the statement he makes a few pages later:

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means we can change our first impressions ... by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions. If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way -- who would like to have a set of associations with blacks as positive as those that you have with whites -- it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren't betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort.

Which is true, obviously, of any minority you want to feel more comfortable with: people of other races, queer people, trans people. And which also makes me wonder: what would the Race IAT scores of black New Orleanians look like? How much would they vary by neighborhood, income and education level? Does white privilege allow me to romanticize somewhat, influencing my score? Chris and I can live in Central City more safely than many of our black neighbors: we're perceived as having money and influence because we're white, and to some degree, we do. The criminal element perceives us as too much trouble to mess with, and there's truth to that too. Black-on-black crime is by far the commonest type of violent crime in New Orleans. Other white people sometimes wonder how we "dare" to live here, but the truth is that our neighbors are probably in far more danger from each other than we are from any of them.

Here, after annoying web-based delays, is the Times-Picayune review of The Green Goddess. Three beans, which is what we expected. I believe the food deserves four, but the atmosphere and service aren't there yet, so it's a fair rating. Even better, restaurant critic Brett Anderson appears to get the inspiration behind Chris' cooking: The chef has logged more than enough time in restaurant kitchens to be excused for having lost enthusiasm for the craft. But if anything is clear after eating at The Green Goddess, it is that DeBarr still believes his chosen profession offers a life rich in possibility.

Which is why we're living this life years after I begged Chris to never, ever open another restaurant. Life might be simpler if I'd managed to fall in love with a guy who was content to work on someone else's line forever, but I suspect it would be less interesting. As well, Chris is obviously so much happier and more interested in things since opening the place that I'd have to be a combination of Scrooge, the Grinch, and Selfish the Shellfish* not to support him in his quest. I'm bad, but not that bad.

As for the criticisms, I agree with some, take issue with others. Chris' twice-baked potatoes are great, but only when he personally makes them; nobody else seems able to make them any good at all. The numerous fans of the buttery-delicious Spooky Crepes, though, will be surprised to learn that they "exist primarily to show off the breadth of the kitchen's culinary knowledge." I don't believe Chris engages in that kind of culinary posturing -- he leaves that to the shark-fin-soup guys -- but even if he did, hello, huitlacoche is fucking delicious. It's still a bit alarming to many New Orleans diners raised on traditional ingredients, though (never mind that diners elsewhere are horrified and disgusted by the humble crawfish), and I'm hoping Chris can help ease them into a knowledge of its true nomminess.

At the end of the day, I'm waiting to hear from the folks who predicted that Chris would never be able to make it in the New Orleans restaurant world because he was so burdened by my drugged-out, has-been, sacred-cow-disliking ass. Evan? JoAnn? "Justine" from "Belgium"? Any theories on how the impossible came to pass? ... No, didn't think so. Sucks to be you.

I'm only sorry that Web readers can't see the accompanying photo of Chris juggling sweet potatoes in Exchange Alley. Why did he juggle sweet potatoes for his Serious Chef Portrait? Because he just had to.


*An obnoxious shrimp who was the antihero of several bedtime stories my mother used to tell me, perhaps suggesting an uncharming component of my childhood character.

There's an excellent 3-bean review of The Green Goddess in today's Times-Picayune, and I was going to link to it and comment on it here. Unfortunately, nola.com (the site that hosts the T-P online) is, as they say, borked. (Does that word mean what I think it means? Hope so.) Watch this space, as I expect they'll get it together eventually. For now, I will only say to my one true love: I told you to quit bothering with that stupid lemon parfait.

Not doing much this year because I need to finish cleaning up. Housesitters arrive tomorrow, and we leave on Monday! I have the pumpkins lit, though, and am giving out candy. Frankie helped me greet the last bunch of kids. I picked him up for them to pet, and one of them -- ten years old at least -- said, "I never petted a cat before." This made me sad.



If I'd known the smiley one was going to come out looking so much like Ernie, I'd have gotten a football-shaped pumpkin and made a Bert one too. Or is it just me?

I'm sitting on the sofa buried in cats, preparing to unearth myself so I can go make a cat chart for our cat/house sitters. Do you see a pattern here?

While exploring this tantalizing site, I learned that the Netherlands' current, conservative government apparently wants to make it illegal for the coffeeshops to sell cannabis to foreigners. There's a stereotype of the typical pot tourist: they're usually young males from the UK or another European country; they come for the weekend, stay in a cheap hostel, get wasted on beer and cannabis, maybe have sex with a prostitute, and go home without having spent significant amounts of money (though it must add up). I wonder. Surely there are others like me and Chris, older travelers who appreciate the wonderful weed but also love other things about the city, who spend money on restaurants, museums, and shopping as well as high-end (pun intended) cannabis, who know how to behave ourselves reasonably well, who don't fall in the canals or get arrested or have to have ambulances called for us because the weed was too strong. If you're such a traveler, this might be a good time to plan a trip to Amsterdam. Maybe we can make a showing. Codgers On Cannabis (COC), dammit!

On a lighter note, I was amused on that same site to see people (at least facetiously) betting on who could smoke the most weed. Uh, that would be me, and if there really is serious betting anywhere, I might have a new career on my hands. I have been occasionally matched but never surpassed.

About half of me is already in Amsterdam and I find it hard to concentrate on anything that doesn't have to do with the trip. Which is probably just as well, since I have at least two weeks' worth of stuff to do to get ready for it. A tendril of depression tried to creep in yesterday -- maybe you won't have as much fun as you think you're going to, you never know, it could happen -- and I booted it right back out, then went and bought some plants to keep myself cheery. Purple petunias, mint, curry, and cauliflower. Planted all of them today, and am feeling it badly in my legs and back now, so I will end this and return to my heating pad.

(ETA: Reading Rembrandt's Portrait by Charles L. Mee, Jr., an excellent biography that also paints a vivid picture of the seventeenth-century Amsterdam art world. Recommended.)

Bravo to Mondo Bizarro for taking a fresh look at Central City. It's impossible to ignore the poverty and crime here, but it's also important to remember that this neighborhood has contributed a great deal to New Orleans culture. Several of the placards are in my immediate neighborhood, and I plan on going out to find them, dial the numbers, and hear the stories soon.

I've spent most of the evening drooling over my new Amsterdam guidebook (new coffeeshops! New restaurants! Much more!). Also got Frommer's 21 Great Walks in Amsterdam, even though we usually have a good time just wandering aimlessly. And I just ordered our tickets for Museumnacht, a wonderful event we've been wanting to return to since we happened across the first one in 2000. I can't wait to find out if the ancient cycads in the Hortus Botanicus are still having sex. They had been doing it for three years when we last saw them.

Twenty days until we get on the plane. Twenty-one until we touch down in the city we've been missing for nine years. Three weeks. 504 hours. But who's counting?

Amsterdam has always represented various types of freedom to me. I first traveled there in 1994, after attending a horror festival in the suburbs of London. Yes, I admit it freely, I went for the pot, and I smoked great sticky green delicious gobs of it ... but I also found a city in which I felt more comfortable than any other besides New Orleans, and that had a lot to offer besides good, (sort of) legal drugs. I can't really tick off a list -- "art, music, flea markets" -- though it has all those things and more. It's the feeling a city either gives you or doesn't, the ability to live in a place for a little while instead of hovering tentatively on its fringes. To use the word the Dutch use, it's gezellig, a word I've seen variously translated as cozy, comfortable, laid-back, easygoing. Amsterdam is all those things, or at least it was just shy of a decade ago. One of my strongest memories of that first trip in '94 isn't of the girls sitting in windows in the Red Light District or the first legal pot I smoked. It's of sitting in my favorite coffeeshop (Goa, on Kloveniersburgval) at the golden hour that sometimes lingers in Amsterdam between winter daylight and full dusk, realizing I was free to be here simply because I wanted to be; I had come here to this city entirely under my own power, earning the trip with my own work and money, and had found a place I loved. (This was also the first time I had traveled on my own, something I urge everyone to do at least once in their lives. It helps you realize what you're capable of.)

I tried to visit at least once a year between 1994 and 2000, sometimes alone, sometimes with Chris. Then money got tight, and my work went in a direction that didn't inspire European publishers who'd previously marketed me as a bleeding-edge horror queen to fly me over on press junkets* anymore. What with one thing and another, nine years passed. And now it's our twentieth anniversary, and we realized there was really nowhere else we could go, nowhere we'd been happier together or laughed more or had purer fun.

Over the last few days, as I started to get excited about the trip (terrified too, but never mind), I realized Amsterdam now represents another kind of freedom to me, seemingly small but very significant when you have chronic pain: the freedom to go anywhere in the city and do anything I like, for as long as I like, without having to worry that pain will drive me back to the hotel. When the pain comes (and it will, as we like to do a lot of walking), all I have to do is duck into one of the coffeeshops that are on every other corner and partake of one of the world's safest, tastiest painkillers.** As long as you avoid big fratty/chavvy tourist joints like The Bulldog, most of the coffeeshops are relaxing places (if not always quiet ones -- though the exposure to young people's music of today will be educational, I guess). It's impossible to overstate how happy this makes me. For once, we won't have to curtail our fun because I'm tired and hurting. I get so sick of that shit. Most of the time, when I try to "go out" and "do something," I can't enjoy myself as much as I want to, and I feel like a killjoy even though Chris would never treat me like one. Long before I'm ready, I stop having fun and start thinking about my everfucking spine and sciatic nerves. That won't have to happen on this trip.

My dear, sweet, honest-to-a-fault mother does not understand our Amsterdam trips. "All you do is sit around and smoke marijuana! You could do that at home!" Yeah, but doing it here can make it hard to do anything else. Also, the difference between even the best available here and the varieties available there is like the difference between your corner-store beer cooler and the world's finest purveyor of liquors and liqueurs, in terms of both variety and potency. In Amsterdam I can (I hope) have something resembling an able-bodied person's vacation. We will walk and look and laugh and eat and go to museums, and I will not have to hurt much or think much about hurting.



*Except my French publisher, Au Diable Vauvert, who has supported the Liquor books wholeheartedly and only wishes I would return to Paris to help promote them. I'm sorry, ADV! Maybe this trip will help me get over my terror of traveling to places I can't immediately get home from.

**In my essay "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (2000), I stated that, as much as I liked pot, it had few or no painkilling properties for me. This, of course, was the result of my being hooked on Vicodin at the time.

I was dismayed to hear from greygirlbeast that Livejournal is "on life support" because of newer, shinier social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. I'm no longer on Facebook, but I've been having way too much fun on Twitter (as @docbrite, if you didn't get the memo). Obviously I need to get my ass back here more frequently. So here, for old times' sake, is a stupid LJ survey. It's called "The Self-Esteem Meme," and I picked it because the phrase "self-esteem" never fails to amuse me.

( I feel good about ME because I'm the best ME I can be! )

Well, that eases my mind considerably, even if I did have my first oh-my-God-I'm-leaving-my-home-and-my-cats-and-my-city-and-going-5000-miles-away-soon panic attack today.

txtriffidranch! Look! I have a pitcher!



There are some small gnat-type insects floating around in the bottom, so it is hunting.

Thanks again! The Medusa's Head is doing fine too, though still small. Tiny toads are living in its catch pot.

Just a reminder: Because I'm in the process of cleaning out/remodeling my office (yeah, yeah, I know I've been in that process for about two months now; it's a big job and my stamina isn't the greatest these days), I haven't been using my computer as much as usual. Which is stupid, because it's a laptop -- i.e. designed for carrying around -- and if I don't want to hang out in my chaotic office, I should just go get it and bring it somewhere else, as I've done now (I'm posting this in bed). Instead, when I do post anywhere these days, it's usually on Twitter because Twitter is more easily accessible from my iPhone. I hope this won't continue to be the case once I get the renovation done, but for now, come see me @docbrite. (You don't have to join Twitter in order to read tweets -- something I didn't realize before I joined.)

Yesterday I went to afternoon Mass at Our Lady of Prompt Censure. That isn't its real name, but I don't want to hurt the feelings of any parishioners who may be reading; there are some good people in the congregation, but it is far too conservative for me. We listened to a homily called "Jesus Is Not Politically Correct," all about how if you've been divorced you are an adulterer and if you've had an abortion, well, you're just fucked. Then we sang a hymn that sounded like "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" (which, to be fair, is a great song ... but the associations are unfortunate). Now I know by my Catholic calendar that this is "Respect for Life Weekend," and the weekly Scriptural readings are about marriage and family. I don't criticize the priest for discussing the topic assigned to him, but Father Pat at OLGC would have found a way to talk about them without trying to make his flock feel sinful and small.

In other OLGC news, members of our and St. Henry's parish councils are meeting with the new sheriff in town, Archbishop Gregory Aymond, later this week. Regardless of the outcome -- and I don't kid myself that he's going to put anything back the way it was -- there seems to be a relief in much of Catholic New Orleans, and certainly in my heart, that Hughes the company man/pedophile enabler is gone and a native New Orleanian who seems like a kind and reasonably humble man is in the office. (Office? Is that what you call it? Not sure of all my Catholic terminology.)

I have an Oriental Shorthair eating the screen portion of my laptop, so must close.

(GEAUX SAINTS!!! 4-0!!!!!)