Face Of New Orleans

Hey kids, here’s my three creations for a coffee bar during Tales (Thursday-Saturday, 9AM-11AM). You’d be foolish to be anywhere else.

Wood, Earth, Spice

1 oz Gran Duque D’Alba

1/2 oz Cesar Monterrey Silver Tequila

1/4 oz Marie Brizard Orange Curaçao

1/4 oz Velvet Falernum

3/4 oz Lemon Juice

1/2 oz Simple Syrup

Shake and Strain into a flute, add 1 1/2 oz Seltzer.

Taurus

1 oz Gran Duque Alba

2 1/2 oz Hot Milk

2 dashes Pechaud’s Bitters

1/4 oz Crema De Alba

1/4 oz Marie Brizard Apry

Put all ingredients in a pre-warmed mug. Dust with Filé Powder.

Swindler’s Whistle

1 1/2 oz Cold Espresso

1 1/2 oz Gran Duque D’Alba

1/4 oz La Fée Parisienne

2 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters

1/2 oz Simple Syrup

Shake and fine strain into a cocktail glass.

Tonight and tomorrow afternoon I’ll be at the Superdome with The Roosevelt assembling sazeracs. Come out and play.

Em and I will be on WIST AM 690 New Orleans, tomorrow 4/18 at 10 am CST. You can listen to their stream if you’re not in the area at http://www.wistradio.com/page.php?page_id=8069. I’ll be talking about, you guessed it, liquor.

Those of you that have ever been to New Orleans have, no doubt, come across Abita Amber. It essentially replaces Budweiser in most places that serve draught beer. I wouldn’t say that it is an especially great beer, but it has enough going on in it that makes it quite enjoyable.

On the other end of the spectrum, Abita has hit us with a one-two punch of hops in their latest brew: Jockamo IPA.

Much more robust than their amber, Jockamo has a nose of cherry and birch with a silky mouthfeel. This one is excellent a bit warm, not super frigid like most beers are served. The bitterness it presents is quite pleasant, not overwhelming like some IPA’s and barleywines can be.

For those of y’all that are uninformed, it takes its name from the song Iko Iko. Something that’s also fun about the name is that you can replace “fin année” with IPA and the rhyme still fits.

Be sure to enjoy this one sittin’ by da fay-o. It’s truly delicious.

Photography by Emily W. Kincke.

Alright childrens, gather ’round, cause its story time. Once upon a time people went to this mystical land called New Orleans…….and I forgot the rest, because I DRANK IT. Man, Tales was amazing. When we arrived, I noted one thing: its like a D&D convention for drunks. So many wonderful nerds all in one place at one time. The most challenging part about the whole ordeal though, was, have you ever gone to school drunk? Remember how hard it was to maintain throughout the day, just wishing that lunch was coming sooner? Well, Tales was no different. We were served delicious drinks all throughout the day and night, but we actually had to maintain a high level of intellectualism at the same time. I mean EXHAUSTING. I do have to say though, it was hands down, the best time I’ve ever had in my life. For those of you playing the home game, the picture I’ve included is one of many, this one being from a party at Loa at the International House Hotel. A really neat thing occurred to all of us that evening, two thirds of the attendees were bartenders. Unreal. There are plenty of other photos in the gallery. Have a look-see and catch up on what you may have missed or just reminisce.

I do have to say, the only thing that could have made Tales even better was if O’Flaherty’s was open again….a man can dream.

Photography by Emily W. Kincke.

An open letter to our government: Please, neglect New Orleans, further than you already have. I beg you, try to make the city flood to 20 feet. I realize you may be confused and a bit angry at this request, and that is understandable. The reason I deplore you to do so is that, eventually, you will get tired of trying to squash us out. Because, you see dear officials, we can’t bury our dead 6 foot deep like everywhere else. Most people will tell you that because of the city being below sea level, the caskets float from the soil, but they are misinformed. Their bodies just miss the taste of good red beans and rice too much. So please, wear yourselves out on trying to break us. It should prove humorous for us to watch.

As I sit here at 6:34 AM on a Friday, I am not in Austin.  I am currently on Vets highway back when New Orleans used to actually get cold.  My fingers are cold because I’m running around grabbing beads and doubloons off the ground.  And everybody seems to be trying to figure out Who Shot The La La.  I can’t seem to figure it out myself, but I do know it was a .44.  This trip to my homeland is all due to the worlds most wonderful cocktail: the sazerac.  Sipping and inhaling this libation takes me from wherever I am and puts me back in old New O.  I can smell the old wood bars and the diesel tractors and hear the din of Canal Street.  I feel the people banging on the side of the float absolutely demanding the beads on the top rack behind me, ya know, da shiny ones.  I truly understand why New Orleaneans refuse to leave.  Because we don’t fit in right any other damn place.  Not to say I fit in anywhere, but at least people talk right back home.  Ah well, I’m back in Austin now, the spell has worn off…..for now.

So I finally got my Tulane ring back. It’s super preddy. I’m currently using Xgl with compiz, and for those of you not in the know, compiz is, as the hipsters would say, dah r0×0rz. 3d desktop is the ONLY way to fly. I can’t wait until it’s more worked on and becomes the standard. The thing that makes me laugh so much is that the new windows, vista, is going to have some of the same effects as Xgl/compiz. However, you can run the open source version on damn near anything, whereas vista will require a spaceship to open up the applications menu. And people WILL pay for this crap when better things have been available for free for years before. Barg. Just barg.

As a small p.s., I have a stable blog on my website at http://kincke.com. I’ll occasionally post stuff there in addition to my livejournal.

It’s cold in New Orleans. I use the term cold loosely, but for this city, it’s cold. It’s running about 63°F here tonight. It turns on the electric mixer for my soul, which is not a good thing given all what’s going on with me lately. It’s 4:21 AM here and I’m still not asleep. Incidently, my server has been running for 33 days and 3.5 hours and couldn’t be happier. I have felt so bewildered lately. I drive to class and come back. Go to lab and come back. I don’t learn anything and I feel nothing during class. One, I suppose positive, note happened the other day though. I realized why I haven’t done well in school. I don’t enjoy the things I am being made to kick into my skull, so I do it just well enough to get by. Mind you, none of this is done consciously, that’s what makes it so much more fun. In the same vein as Sinatra, I did it “my way.” If this makes any sense, I think my head wants to be able to become a physician, a great physician, and stand above all else and prove that all the pain that this system has caused me was in vain.

I just want to feel like I’m home. One of the nights at the ER Tracy and I got to discussing places to live and somehow I mentioned that I felt like New York fit me right. He told me that I would get along very well in New York, which made me happy in comparison to most of the other comments I’ve received in response. Most of people’s retorts are something along the lines of “why the hell’d you wanna live there?” Which makes me laugh coming from New Orlenians. My mother made some wonderful comments about “my grandkids are gonna have that New York accent.” Which made me play some Coffee Talk scenes in my head. “I’m getting all vaclempt.” But I digest. Not all is bad. We had a great pizza from none other than New York Pizza and we’re leaving for Fort Worth to househunt in about a week. That is somewhat crazy in and of itself. I’ll leave you with these words of wisdom:

Don’t hate yourself in the morning — sleep till noon.

Dr. Meado

Well, my last year at Tulane is winding down, I don’t want to do any work for my lab classes (which is all of them) and to crash down on any fun I’ve been having lately, I found out recently who the speaker(s) at my graduation are going to be………..George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton. It’s almost as if the energy of the universe figured out two of the people that I would LOVE having at a pseudo-important event and replaced LOVE with DETEST. Barg. Just fucking barg. On an actual positive note, we’re planning the trip to Fort Worth to pick out our rental house. It’s gonna be so cool to actually have a house complete with fence and puppy. It’s also going to be rather strange not being in school and drawing blood for a living. I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming year being that I won’t have the overlying guilt complex of “If I’m studying, it should be for my current classes,” which I don’t do and because of that guilt, I don’t study anything for med school. (In best Fat Bastard voice) It’s a vicious cycle. So yeah, things are looking up now that I’m almost done with the hell of the uselessness of undergrad. I don’t think I’ll know what to do when I don’t have to go to class………….maybe enjoy life for a little bit?