Food, Plays, and Kleenex

It’s official. I am sick. I’m hot and sticky, hacking and drippy, and all around miserable. My friend D. has given me five packets of this stuff called “Emergen-C” which is like a mega-overload of Vitamin C and some kind of B vitamins. I’m on the second doze (the stuff tastes like baby aspirin), so let’s hope it works. I cannot afford to be sick until, oh, Tuesday when I don’t have to be to work until 5ish p.m.

Last night, however, I had a pretty good time. We started out by dropping a few bucks at the Harrah’s Casino, just down the street from the hotel. Well, I dropped 5 bucks but ended up winning $30. (More on this later) We moved on to the restaurant in the Loew’s Hotel – the Cafe Adelaide. I had a very nice blacken redfish for dinner, along with a five-tomato salad and Bananas Foster Bread Pudding. Oh my god, it was heavenly. The place also had a pretty cool bar with decent drinks — I had something called a 20th century cocktail and then a  Prytania St. Punch. Of course, by the time we were done eating, we were a little late for the beginning of our play.

Fortunately, the ticket girl let us in when there was a break in the action. And, we weren’t the last ones in, so I don’t feel too, too bad. The play — The Breach — was excellent. The set was very minimalist, but it really worked for this play which entwined the story of a family stuck on a roof, with a man who lost his wife to be and was (at one point) floating into the Gulf, with the story of a New York reporter who was trying to get the story about rumors of dynamite on the levees. At the end, when the cast all took their bows, I was like — “Holy crap, it felt like there were more than six actors in this play.” As for the set: it actually included water that they sloshed around in all night. Phew! That has got to be uncomfortable. My friend made a comment about fungus; I made a comment about getting electrocuted when the water splash on the footlights. Of course, I had to ask my theatre-oriented friend about one of the characters: I couldn’t figure out if she was despair, or representative of Katrina, or a voodoo goddess from the seas.  D. said that she was “water” so I think we’ll go with her answer.

We stopped back at Harrah’s were I ended up losing all my winnings in the penny slots. I told The Coach that I made a donation to the “Harrah’s rebuilding New Orleans Fund” — which he thought was a real charity. LOL! What an idiot!

By the way, the Coach is now 4-0. And he was still complaining because they didn’t win by a convincing margin. Actually, they were down 14-0 at the half, came back to 14-14 and were at their own 40 yard line with a minute left when the Head Coach called for a 60 (or 70 – I forget which) yard pass on a 4th down. The Coach said the man had testicles the size of Bowling Balls. Hey, whatever works.