12/26/11

From Burlesque to Bingle

A New Orleans Story

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12/19/11

Football's Most Illogical Cliché

Now is when you hear it the most

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12/12/11

Dashing Through the Fog: A New Orleans White Christmas

Fog at Christmastime, when the earth’s warmth mingles with the cool crispness of the air, is such a seasonal factor in the United States that it even provided the premise of a song. It was a foggy Christmas Eve that made the glowing properties of an outcast reindeer’s nose useful to his employer’s delivery service. Because of the fog, the reindeer went from being laughed at, called names and denied participation in reindeer games to going down in history.

Other than having made the career of one reindeer, there is not much good to say about fog - except in New Orleans, where it accounts for the closest we usually come to a white Christmas.  At its most picturesque, the puffy haze from the river, as it runs alongside the French Quarter, creeps...

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12/05/11

My Favorite Christmas Song

For Lisa Layne, September 27, 1989 would mean more than just her 27th birthday. She was standing at the microphone at Nashville’s Masterfonics recording studio. Nearby were some of the town’s finest studio musicians prepared to record a new bluesy Christmas song. The recording would be listed under the name of a retro rock and roll band that originated in New Orleans, Vince Vance and the Valiants.

As the tape began to roll, a funky, but melancholic saxophone solo introduced the tune until the point when Lisa Layne leaned into the microphone and began to sing:

Take back the holly and mistletoe
Silver bells on string
If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus
I would ask for just one...