The Highs:
– Went to the opening night party for DesCours, and while none of the sites were open, a piece installed in the DesCours HQ promised good things. So did a conversation with architect Gernot Riether, who showed me photos on his iPhone of his piece, a pod-like structure in a corner of a French Quarter courtyard. The installations are open nightly from 6-10 p.m. until December 12.
– Saw Houston’s Light Rock Express bring back the days of bad mustaches and polyester shirts in the Kingpin Friday night, then went to Tipitina’s for Supagroup, who were as hard and tight as they’ve been in years.
– Hung out and watched a “Dear New Orleans” shoot Saturday night outside the Kingpin. Robert Fogarty’s love photos to New Orleans/fundraiser for Evacuteer takes on a life of its own as people get caught up in the buzz of watching people pose for photos with messages to/about New Orleans written on their hands or arms. By the end, I had the sense that if he let booze work its magic, he’d have people posing with writing on other body parts before long. The success of the event, though, was that people were so into watching and participating in the photos that they threw fives in his fund-raising box with complete casualness. Unfortunately, shots from that night aren’t online yet, but here are some samples.
– Watched the Saints win.
The Lows:
– How the Saints won. In today’s T-P, it sounds like Sean Payton and the team are pissed off about the penalties and sloppy play, but how about the way our offensive line was whipped all day long by the defensive line of a then-2 and 9 team that had failed to pressure quarterbacks all season? It’s obvious that Brees was looking long all day because, as passes to Jimmy Graham and Robert Meachem showed, the Bengals’ DBs were helpless, and I recognize that such plays require linemen to hold their blocks longer and puts more pressure on them, but they just can’t collapse the way they did and contend seriously in the post-season. Last year’s team rarely played down to the level of its opposition; this year’s team has done so frequently.
