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possums in stmartinville
i can't believe i'm even saying that this is the edited version, but it is. The other version has some private things on it that i'm not publishing, but isn't it enticing that i'm even saying that?
It's a family owned cajun cooking place nestled deep within the heart of the swampland nowhere that is acadiana, most specifically the area between new iberia (where i grew up) and St martinville (where i lived for 9 months last year working on that record label.) The place is owned by a man named Possum Bertrand and my connection with this place is a bit of wack synchronicity that can most easilly be associated with living in the small world small town environment that is acadiana louisiana. This was my first oppurtunity to eat at possums but i've been connected to the family that owns it for many years now and in many different ways.
when brandy (the girl i accompined) and i showed up at possums I immediately got the phone camera out to take a picture of the sign. It's got a picture of a possum on it that looks suspiciously like an old walt kelly character who's name i forget, but not enough to be the same possum, they might be brothers though. When i lived in st martinville i used to live in st martinville i used to pass this place when ever i drove to new iberia, but tonight was the first night i've eaten there.
I'm going to give you an obligitory picture of the exterior of the building. It looks like a little bit of a nice quaint home like hovel. The rule is, the less glitz the better off you are tummy wise.
when we first arrived we were led to the bar
in the smoking section
where jasmine (the owner Possum's daughter) and Lou (owner of the Caffe cottage and Possum himself were waiting and smiling and ordering cocktails. I had a budwiser and a glass of water. We sat at the bar and possum told a story about a meditating experience he had earlier that afternoon. He said that he was listening to the "soundscapes" station on the digital tv. He said that soundscapes plays new age music but if you called it new age all of the religous fanatics would come out of the woodwork to denounce the work of satan so soundscapes will do just fine." He meditated by repeating the word Jesus over and over again in his head and as he drifted off into the medatative state he found himself staring at the back of jesus's head and then the head of jesus became a knot in a huge tree that stretched up to the sky and the tree was full of branches. He said, that was very profound but he couldn't quite figure out what it meant. Then just as suddenly he said "but a knot is a begining of a branch right? and jesus is like a branch of god like we are all branches of god, if the tree is going to heaven and had no knots it wouldn't be so good. It's better to let the branches expand and go all over." I thought it was a profound couple of minutes especially for st martinville (only joking.)
That's possum, He's awesome and paid for my meal, He owns this place and named it after himself or he got named after the restarunt, i'm not too clear on the either way or of it.
We sat at a big round table and the best juicyiest fried oysters and fresh onion rings were on the table. I ordered a dish called the puff n stuff which is named after HR Puff N stuff So give it up for the sid and marty kroft refernce. Let me try to tell you what this dish is all about. 16 layers of this ultra pastry flake crust with the cheese sause and crabmeat crawfish and shrimp with the 16 more layers on top baked in the sweetest cheese sauce. I dare you to be able to eat half of it without the cholesteral patrol coming to beat you over the heads with billy clubs made of carrots and celery stalks.
The Puff N Stuff is fucking delicious (pardon my vulgar american) and i am very concious to only eat half of it so i can give the other half to Monty (my roomate.) he described it as a seafood hot pocket and i shook my head. He is from north louisiana after all.
the meal was on the house (AWESOME) because we were dining with the daughter and the Possum himself. but if i would have paid i would have done it at the cash register here.
The owner wanted me to take a picture of this poster which is for the nighmare festival in arkadia louisiana (where bonnie and clyde where shot down) this poster is possum related and kind of strange and dark.
This is the wallpaper on the bathroom wall, I looked at a bunch of this tonight so you should see what it looks like.
if you are in this area you need to go check this place out, it's homey and real and the food is the ultra bestest. If you are a tourist, this is not a trap, it's hidden treasure, You need to go here and feel just a little bit authentic. cause this is as authentic and real and true and awesome as these restarunts get. This is my favorite restarunt in St Martiville. In lafayette it's something different.
that's
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Possums in St Martinville.
It's a family owned cajun cooking place nestled deep within the heart of the swampland nowhere that is acadiana, most specifically the area between new iberia (where i grew up) and St martinville (where i lived for 9 months last year working on that record label.) The place is owned by a man named Possum Bertrand and my connection with this place is a bit of wack synchronicity that can most easilly be associated with living in the small world small town environment that is acadiana louisiana. This was my first oppurtunity to eat at possums but i've been connected to the family that owns it for many years now and in many different ways. His daughter Jasmine bertrand was the girlfriend of one of my older brother's good friend's toby daspit, who with the help of my mother designed and taught the first african american oral history class at New I beria senior high. Jasmine's little brother Ian was not only the semi(iguess) off and on guest of the girl that was my date but ian was the first person to ever get me high off of marajuana when i was 15 years old. So i was having dinner with Brandy who was the owner's son's girlfriend for an outstanding periood of time, the owner, his daughter that i knew back when i was in grade school through my older brother's best friend and the owner of the caffe that i hang out with. Brandy and I are seeming to be moving in an affectionate sexual direction in our relation ship on a slow even pace (we've been getting into the traditional goodnight kisses,) but this meal with the family of the ex or maybe not so ex or whatever's family was a little odd, but it seemed to go very smoothly. I think most of this paragraph will be in the private version of the post.
when brandy and i showed up at possums I immediately got the phone camera out to take a picture of the sign. It's got a picture of a possum on it that looks suspiciously like an old walt kelly character who's name i forget, but not enough to be the same possum, they might be brothers though. When i lived in st martinville i used to live in st martinville i used to pass this place when ever i drove to new iberia, but tonight was the first night i've eaten there.
I'm going to give you an obligitory picture of the exterior of the building. It looks like a little bit of a nice quaint home like hovel. The rule is, the less glitz the better off you are tummy wise.
when we first arrived we were led to the bar
in the smoking section
where jasmine (the owner Possum's daughter) and Lou (owner of the Caffe cottage and Possum himself were waiting and smiling and ordering cocktails. I had a budwiser and a glass of water. We sat at the bar and possum told a story about a meditating experience he had earlier that afternoon. He said that he was listening to the "soundscapes" station on the digital tv. He said that soundscapes plays new age music but if you called it new age all of the religous fanatics would come out of the woodwork to denounce the work of satan so soundscapes will do just fine." He meditated by repeating the word Jesus over and over again in his head and as he drifted off into the medatative state he found himself staring at the back of jesus's head and then the head of jesus became a knot in a huge tree that stretched up to the sky and the tree was full of branches. He said, that was very profound but he couldn't quite figure out what it meant. Then just as suddenly he said "but a knot is a begining of a branch right? and jesus is like a branch of god like we are all branches of god, if the tree is going to heaven and had no knots it wouldn't be so good. It's better to let the branches expand and go all over." I thought it was a profound couple of minutes especially for st martinville (only joking.)
That's possum, He's awesome and paid for my meal, He owns this place and named it after himself or he got named after the restarunt, i'm not too clear on the either way or of it.
We sat at a big round table and the best juicyiest fried oysters and fresh onion rings were on the table. I ordered a dish called the puff n stuff which is named after HR Puff N stuff So give it up for the sid and marty kroft refernce. Let me try to tell you what this dish is all about. 16 layers of this ultra pastry flake crust with the cheese sause and crabmeat crawfish and shrimp with the 16 more layers on top baked in the sweetest cheese sauce. I dare you to be able to eat half of it without the cholesteral patrol coming to beat you over the heads with billy clubs made of carrots and celery stalks.
The Puff N Stuff is fucking delicious (pardon my vulgar american) and i am very concious to only eat half of it so i can give the other half to Monty (my roomate.) he described it as a seafood hot pocket and i shook my head. He is from north louisiana after all.
the meal was on the house (AWESOME) because we were dining with the daughter and the Possum himself. but if i would have paid i would have done it at the cash register here.
The owner wanted me to take a picture of this poster which is for the nighmare festival in arkadia louisiana (where bonnie and clyde where shot down) this poster is possum related and kind of strange and dark.
This is the wallpaper on the bathroom wall, I looked at a bunch of this tonight so you should see what it looks like.
if you are in this area you need to go check this place out, it's homey and real and the food is the ultra bestest. If you are a tourist, this is not a trap, it's hidden treasure, You need to go here and feel just a little bit authentic. cause this is as authentic and real and true and awesome as these restarunts get. This is my favorite restarunt in St Martiville. In lafayette it's something different.
that's
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Caffe Cottage
The caffe Cottage is a place that i am at right now. I spend a lot of time here. This place is a haven for misfits, artists, outcasts, alcoholics (recovering and otherwise) and freaks. It is located on the corner of Hyman and st mary lafayette Louisiana. I'll come and plug my macintosh into the wall and siphon the free wireless internet and drink copious amounts of coffee with chocolate and the occassional beer. There is little activity in the sleepy town of Lafayette, one gets plenty of oppurtunity to sit around and bullshit or do nothing.
this is the outside of the caffe, It is what you see when you first arrive.
here is the front counter where one of many beautiful girls will serve you beverage or food (reasonbly priced? you wish!) .
here is one of the many identical booths within the caffe. i chose this one because of the painting above it. It is a painting of a females unkempt pubic hair area. The black part near the bottom is covered with nasty wire and filthy dust. the dust is a result of all of the filthy cig smoke that the misfit customers chain inhale. Someone wiped off the dust recently and the painting lost a little of it's mistique. ahh, cest la vie.
next is a picture of the seedy bar area known as the "cantina." This room is extra dark and extra shady, shifty, nasty. It's best to avert your eyes when sitting there and just look at the pretty lady serving you alcohol. she gets prettier the more you drink, but not any nicer. that's not true, some of the girls are very nice if not competent.
next we move to the rear of the building where we find the pool table. It is almost as if playing pool on this table reduces your ability level 10 fold, or maybe just all of the players around here suck. Anyway, in the nothing town of Double L (lafayette Louisiana ) many an hour and many a quarter is spent wasted on pool games at ye ol caffe.
and speaking of wasted quarters, here is the video crack machine. It is not uncommon to see people get zombiefried feeding the crack machine coin after coin after coin, playing such games as quiz and naked lady find the difference on the picture. Occasionally i will get sucked into the crack for a few dollars. I am grateful that the crack machine is only for amusement and not for gambling like a video poker machine (however it is not uncommon to see a group of 12 steppers playing poker for small change.)
this is a picture of the couch where much time is spent hypothisizing and High Prophesizing, mackin and smackin, scroungin and loungin. It is a very comfortable couch but truth be told the cushion had to be flipped due to vomit (tsk, tsk.)
This is the Caffe Stage, where I have performed lots of times and seen lots of shows. I have done Drum N bass MCing, Stand up comedy, Open Mike nights, acoustic guitar country singing, hip hop rap talking, religous preach speaking and endless other forms of performance stuffy stuff. Virtually Millions (or dozens) of bands, local and otherwise have enertained and irritated crowds (such as you might call the scraggly gatherings of no more than 150 people "crowds.")
finally, this is Lou. He owns the caffe and gets little respect from his customers. People express affection around here with snarls and unkind sarcastic comments, and smiles and kind genuine comments. Lou walks around the caffe with his dog, smiling or not smiling. He will get pissed off if we play hacky sack and likes to flirt with the various ladies. he is possesive of the caffe slave wenches. here is an example of the lack of respect that lou gets. A customer who shall remain unidentified just told me that insted of purchacing the 4 dollar whiskey and cokes customers (including himself) will purchase a dollar twentyfive regular coke and provide his own whiskey and a greatly reduced cost. but shhh, don't tell. Here's lookin at you Lou.
the bathrooms are filled with interesting and stupid graffities and later i will do an entry on the graf here at caffe but that's later, this is enough for now.
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earthship.tv
I guess the ultimate highlight of the whole visit to LA had to be "insider's look" i got at the fabled entertainment industry. I was in LA for 2 days. On day one I just took random busses to random places, so on day 2 when the guy I was staying with said "so do you want to be dropped off at the subway station?" i said "couldn't i just follow you around and see what you do at work?" he said "sure, i don't see a problem with that."
Kendrick works at Earthship Productions, home of eartship.tv Earthship is james cameron's production company that specializes in 3D IMAX documentarys. being a cameron company of course they made a movie called "ghosts of the titanic," and everybody was talking about the special cameras that go underwater to look at the sunken wreckage. When i was in the earthship offices i saw several people sitting at AVID video editing stations working on various moments of underwater footage, telling me how much better avid is than final cut pro.
after a few moments around the earthship office, me, kendrick and kendrick's supervisor attil started driving all over LA to accomplish a variety of tasks. these travels would bring us to a camera equipment wherehouse, a backdrop painters studio, and back and forth along hollywood blvd. I helped these kids load a truck full of lighting gear and grip stuff and for that the company bought me diner at some swank restarunt with fine girls everywhere.
I took some video of all of the places i had been, (secretly when i was told no cameras allowed.)
kendrick, like me is a native of a small town (well everything is a small town when compared to LA's 12million people) I think he put LA in the best terms that i could understand.
"there's 10million more people, so it's like 10 million more times the RANDOM! You know?!" (contorts face wildly)
-------back in time---------
the first day i was in LA, I just took busses until the drivers kicked me off because the line was over. I ended up on santamonica blvd (after dark the tranzzies come out, eek.) I went into an internet cafe and called my friend. He had a readthrough for some tv show pilot where he was the voice of GOD, so he had some other friends come pick me up and take me to their place in North Hollywood. This was a husband and wife and third friend (a girl who's a proffesional brander?) they took me in and offered me something to drink. I wanted water and they said they didn't have any water. I said "tap water's fine."
The male was like "are you sure? I don't drink the tap water out here."
I said "i drink Louisiana tap water, it can't be too much worse."
The wife then said "i don't know what he's talking about, of course he drinks the tap water, That's what i make the ice cubes out of."
then i saw the husbands face drop. I laughed for a long time.
-------------forward in time------------------
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LA and SF (an observation)
People in Los Angelos and San Francisco are very health concious, but with different attitudes and foci about said healthy lifestyles. In san francisco good health is just one further step on the enlightened (if flaky) SFian's road to wellness. Vitamins and organic produce and no steroid injected chemical infected meat or dairy are joined with whatever is the latest health food fad (ginger, oat bran, avacado, beach nut squash) to create an overal stylistic diet desigened to promote life well into the next century. It's all very clean and organic out here. In Los Angelos people seem to be healthy out of fear. They talk about concequences and prevention. Everything they eat and do is not to promote positive wellnes but rather to ward off cancer and heart disease. LA has 12 million people and about 6 million cars producing a huge volume of thick nasty carbon monoxide laden soot smoggy smog that everyone who lives there has to breathe all the time. No wonder people are so paranoid about health issues, just being where they are is a serious cancer risk. Every breath could mean death. I can see how oxygen bars can be so popular out here.
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Halloween
I spent halloween in our state capitol for the second year in a row. I went to visit an old friend from highschool, william winters 3. Thursday night was a house party and friday was a "baton rogue street party." It was the carlotta street party. There was a big crowd of people wandering around a residential area getting fucked up wearing crazy costumes. I counted 6 alexes from a clock work orange. I didn't really know anybody, but i ran into about 5 people i know from lafayette who were also in baton rouge for the carlotta st halloween party. I flirted shamelessly with most every girl i met. It was fun.
baton rogue is a strange town. It's bigger than the town i live in and has a bunch more money. Things look clean and sleek like a big city. There is less individual vibes and more of a general identity to the town. This afternoon as i was leaving i saw people gathering for an lsu football game and there were thousands and thousands of people i drove by who were all basically identically dressed in purple and yellow. it was a little spooky like the brood. I am not so used to such mass conformity.
I've had more ideas about this whole tv show this weekend from doing a bit of people watching, so i'll probably write a few more scenes into the art section of this blog.
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Examine Local: Artomsphere.
we payed a show back in april at artmosphere called hit the deck. It was a pun because record players are called decks and the place where we played was a patio deck. this was our flyer
this is what i thought immediatly after that show.
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jesus christ.
here's a tip to all the show playing dogs
anyone who suggests playing a show from the decks on a deck should be decked in the mouth. It's all about the vibrations of anyone trying to move or speak violently disturbing the needle of the record player and the several drunk dj dudes stumbling all over each other, crying about something or other begging the dj for forgiveness or trying to take one of the two mikes to try a little more of the way non pg-13 style hynikin bru rap. Next show i play i'm inside a cage with a tazer.
It was a fun show though. I wish we would have videotaped it. That would be funny to watch.
hit the deck my ass. They paid us tho. And we do it again in 2 weeks.ffice ffice" />
__________________
i don't think we'll get to play artmosphere again anytime soon what with the problem with slim and whatnot, but i think we have a few other venues in town ready to go soon. I don't even think artmosphere is that great a place to play what with all of the problems with any kind of loud noise that they have, that and the fact that the bar is on an open road where anyone driving by blaring a system out of their car will drown out the music on stage.
artmosphere is kind of a funny place. It's a combination bistro/bar/live music venue/art gallery. The lady who runs it is very disorganized and has little idea of what's actually going on. The younger kids who work their put alot of worried frantic effort in to making the place a sucsess. The place is so flighty, it's hard to understand how it's been open this long.
They do have wonderful wraps with ranch dressing. But that's about it.
I think i may be being a bit too negative. Tiffany (a girl early 20's) who got the gig for us this week, manages the pace is very nice, and has a lot of heart and hope and sold a painting there for $250, so who knows what is possible? A bunch of people i know and like work over there. I hope it works, but something needs to happen for it to work. I don'd know what that is.
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