“Boo!”
The New Orleans Film Festival was happening all week, with several events at the historic Prytania theater. Many of us bought tickets to see the “Wild Horse Nine” movie a month or so ago. This was going to be a special screening before the official release. The movie stars Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey, and the preview trailers looked excellent. We were all excited.
Ten of us met at The Husky on Freret Street for a pre-movie dinner. Diana and I split the burger (excellent and much better than I remember) and the grilled romaine salad (close to the one we love at Peche). We finished dinner in time to arrive at the Prytania more than 30 minutes before starting time for the movie.
On arrival we found two very long lines outside – one for All Access Pass holders (folks who bought a pass for all the movies in the festival) and another for General Admission (presumably the tickets we bought).
Finally in the theater we found a completely disorganized mess – the event was way over sold, presumably because more All Access folks showed up than expected and they got in before the people who bought a ticket over a month ago. Poorly done all around.
We got a refund and headed home to watch the Cowboys and Eagles Monday Night Football game.
This was a rare event – a pleasant game to watch for a Cowboys fan. There were several outstanding offensive plays showing just what they are capable of. It’s hard for Tim, a Cowboys fan living in Philadelphia, and he was looking forward to taking Buddy for a walk and discussing the game with his neighbors. I should mention that Buddy the beagle had a birthday this week (how’s that for alliteration)?
Monday night was a full moon – which you can sort of see from this picture:
It seemed very clear when I took it. This resulted in flooding on both coasts from the “King Tide” caused by the full moon and the proximity of the Moon to the Earth.
We talked to Mum on Tuesday afternoon and were telling her about the Mary Queen of Scots/Mary Tudor confusion from last week. An involved discussion ensued with Mum explaining all the lineage and relationships to Elizabeth the First and others. I finished that segment of our call by saying “Well, there’s no chance we’ll get a question about English Queens two weeks in a row.”
Spoke too soon. Up pops, “Which Queen of England is known as the Mother of the Continent because her nine children married into noble families across the region?” I thought I remembered Mum saying that Elizabeth the First had nine offspring and we went with that. Shortly after Kenny turned in the answer, Bill pops up with “I think it was Queen Victoria.” Nic quickly coined that a “tardy epiphany.” Bill was correct:
We had another “tardy epiphany” on “What is the lightest solid element?” I guessed carbon and we submitted that. A minute later Thom said he thought it might be lithium, and he was correct.
The final question was firmly in our wheelhouse. Put these songs in order from oldest to most recent:
- Werewolves of London
- Monster Mash
- Zombie
- Ghostbusters
Several of us agreed on the order and we wagered 20 points, getting it correct for 2nd place:
- Monster Mash (1962)
- Werewolves of London (1978)
- Ghostbusters (1984)
- Zombie (1994)
I should mention that when we hired Bill on to our team, he stated that one specialty of his was pop culture and celebrities. We are weak in that area and were excited. We decided to ignore his answer to the question, “What Miley Cyrus song spent the most weeks at number one?”, going with “Wrecking Ball” rather than Bill’s strong opinion that it was “Flowers.” Tom, quiz master, called us out for having crossed out the correct answer. Maybe we should listen to Bill on these types of questions going forward.
I met Fred at the Columns on Wednesday evening. It’s been a while since we had a chance to catch up. I had reserved a table on the porch to enjoy the amazing weather and there was a very loud band playing for an event upstairs. We met inside in the piano room and had a very pleasant hour and a half blether.
Thanks to Sandi for hanging out with Diana while I met Fred, and to Nic and Sam for drop off and pick up.
Freret Street festival was on Saturday during the day. Kenny and Kara hosted an open house and so we met there and then walked down to sample the events. We were fortunate to time our return home just prior to a torrential downpour. We ran into Lisa and Brian, sporting one of his creations:
I really enjoyed these drummers and dancers from Congo on the walk back:
Kris and Cat were supposed arrive at New Orleans airport around 4:30pm and make their way to our house for 7:30pm dinner at Commander’s Palace. That didn’t work out so well. They arrived on time and then their Uber got a flat tire and pulled on to the shoulder by the fast lane – very silly move. After two hours of trying all available avenues to get picked up, they were able to convince a AAA tow truck driver to drop them at our house. Needless to say, we missed our reservation and will visit Commander’s another night.
In other Halloween news, Sean and Sheri won first place in their costume contest:
And those are home made costumes. And PJ made an adorable Woody:
We dropped them at their hotel in the Quarter on Sunday morning and had a pleasant lunch at Felix’s oyster and seafood house. The Bloody Mary’s were “fully dressed.”
I’m a bit tired and grump and going to skip the Book and Music sections this week.