Shrewly Bee

My high regard for the virtues of pizza never diminishes, nothing else is cheesey, aromatic, stretchy AND dog-luring. I once spent a good 3 hours making dinner and half-way through the meal Zeke was saying "Mom, this is good...but tomorrow night, could we have PIZZA?"
By the way, one of the few festivals in America where you can NOT find pizza, hamburgers, hotdogs or fries is the New Orleans Jazz Fest. New Orleanians did not know how to feel this past weekend. In any category where states are ranked, we come in around 46th (and are secretly happy not to be lower). Except in the "Most Obese City" which New Orleans regularly ranks in the Top 3. I went to hear James Carville (political pundit) speak at a local high school recently, and he said that in Washington, when he tells people he's moved to New Orleans, the general reaction is something like "AWWW! That is so NICE of you..." I don't know if the outside world creates the image or if the city puts the image out there...
But this PAST weekend, The Zurich Classic (a golf tournament) had a huge turnout. It is the only golf tournament so far in 2009 that has increased its profit (a lot!) over last year (because as I've mentioned, New Orleans is not experiencing an economic downturn AT ALL, we are always zigging when the rest of the country is zagging...when we were down and out in 2005, the rest of the country was booming...) And then the Hornets (NBA basketball) won their play-off game, the sold-out crowd was estatic, the half-time show was incredible. New Orleans is always so happy to just HAVE professional sports (the concept of "booing" the home team is completely unthinkable no matter how bad they are). The down-trodden mindset just doesn't compute that emotion. New Orleans expects to lose, and is tickled pink when they don't.

And finally the JazzFest, hundreds of thousands of people, 7 stages, great food, great weather, intricate time-sensitive operations pulled off without a hitch. The world was watching and, dare I say it? New Orleans looked good!
I saw Joe Cocker, and had an ironic moment (alone in Pattyland as I so often am...) When he was singing "Ya feelin' alright? I'm not feelin' too good myself"...he really didn't look like he was feelin' too good...
You know how rockers jump on the last note to finish dramatically? I'd say he was getting a good 6 inches on his end-o-song jumps. You've got to be impressed with that.
And what is James Taylor's problem? The guy has ZERO stage presence. His show was supposed to start at 5:30, and he just came walking out and started playing around 5:15, before the intro, do you think he forgot that he wasn't in his den at home? It's sad, because you know he's got to be an interesting guy, Carly Simon, Carole King, grown-up kids, young kids, music legend, the huge crowd was DYING to connect with him on any level, really he could say ANYTHING, like "When I wrote this song, I was eating a meatball sub!" and everyone would love it. But after 25 minutes of saying not a word, he finally said "Any Tarheels out there?" Say what?!?! So many things to excite a Louisiana audience, crawfish, hurricanes, oysters, French Quarter, jazz, ad infinitum...the 7 people in the crowd who knew what a Tarheel was undoubtedly had a nice moment. But in his defense, he just has to say THREE words, like "When you're down"...and involuntarily, enthusiasically, 30,000 finish the sentence they came of age on, and sing "..in trouble, and you need a helping hand.." JT would never encourage it or acknowledge it, never any of that "Cmon! Everybody! Are we having fun yet!" stuff, and that is kind of awesome.
I also caught the first 30 minutes of Earth, Wind and Fire, a group I have been singing along to phonetically for two decades, i.e. "Shinin star for you to see! Wha yo lie ka shrewly bee!" And Sunday was no different.
I ate so much, I had trouble fitting in the musical interludes. The best part is...there's one more weekend! My neighbor will be rolling out the "No Parking!" sign and the orange cones, we have guests coming in from all over the country, and JazzFest, Part Deux starts back on Thursday. It's crazy, but it's this week's slice of my life.

Patty