New Orleans Business Trip 1(Click For Pics)
Alright, lets start in the beginning, which is a good place to start. I went to New Orleans last week to meet with some new clients who for some weird reason, want the toad to make their site. I ride down there with Merritt and her mother. Merritt is one of those people that I would kill for, I can never pay her and her mother back for driving me here.
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I learned a valuable lesson the night before about taking xanax before packing. Not a great idea. Thank you Tarrance for helping me pack. I’m so lucky I got down here and actually had clothes and not just a bag of socks and a t-shirt. Anyway, I eat half a bar before I get in the car with merritt and her mom. About halfway down there the shakes start. I walk in and buy a 6 pack of Miller Light and drink one in the bathroom, while staring at myself in the mirror shaking my head in disgust. I walk outside with my beer, carefully hidden and Merritt’s mom walks in the gas station to pay for the gas. I pound a 2nd beer in the parking lot and jump in the car.
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We drive through Gulf Port which basically the pictures tell the update. It looks like fucking Baghdad. Just concrete slabs where people once lived and worked. It’s mind blowing to wonder what kind of power that mother nature can muster and point like a fucking bomb.
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We get to our hotel which I have picked out. Except substitute the word hotel with “crackhouseâ€. This place is rough. St Vincent’s guest house on magazine. Just imagine a hotel run by alcoholics and Katrina victims. People have been here for weeks and have been drinking for weeks so they are all really friendly. I wake up Saturday and see a bunch of floats on Magazine. They are all dressed in green. Oh St Patrick’s day is this week, I get it. Im shaking pretty bad so I decide it’s time to walk to the store. I grab a 4 pack of Mickey’s, one of my favorite beers, which always reminds me of new Orleans. I’m walking back to my hotel room when I pass a group of gutter kids. Now for people who don’t know about gutter kids in new Orleans, just close your eyes and imagine. These people just live on the streets, out of their backpacks, usually drink and do drugs and just live dirty. There are 3 of them, one in long hair and dreads, older fellow, one who is a younger guy, and one, Laura, who is the hottest little gutter punk I’ve ever seen.Â
She asks me if she can have one of my beers. I say sure, if I can hangout with them for a while. I can sense an update when I see one.
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Let me spend a few minutes describing her. Combat boots, camo pants, an Olde English t-shirt and a bandanna. She’s wearing a bracelet made of M16 rounds and a do rag. She’s got the whole gutter chick package, backpack, skinny dog, lots of scars on arms. The real deal.
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Four beers later, we’re walking to the French Quarter to meet my great friend Bruce. He calls me and asks where I am. I say we’re walking and will be there soon. He asks what I mean by “weâ€. I just say “you’ll seeâ€. My new gutter friends sit with me under the overpass and smoke a cigarette with me. My new girlfriend Laura walks to a ditch and pees. I am now in love. Her dog, which is named Azrael, brings me a rock. Like a rock rock, a piece of concrete. I throw it. He runs and brings it back. Wow it’s like a homeless Marla. I play fetch with her dog while Laura relieves herself and I talk with her “friendsâ€.
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We finally get the Quarter and I make my goodbyes. This is when it gets weird. She grabs a magic marker and writes my cell phone number on her pant leg. Then she runs up and kisses me on the neck. Like a long slow kiss. Bruce is like “wtfâ€. We go have lunch and I rant about the wtf afternoon I’ve just had.
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Bruce and I wander around the quarter while I drink myself into a coma. We find free books. Nothing like stumbling around the quarter with a Dreamweaver 4 book that you just got for free. Bruce got a O’Reilly Javascript book. Wtf.
I end up at Lizzy and Nick’s house. This is like the 3rd time I’ve walked to their house and harassed them while drunk. I hangout over there ranting and raving about websites and webdesign, handing them folders and explaining that i’m “big time” now because i have a accountant, a assistant and a answering service.  I dial my office line and let them hear the answering service. We all leave fucked up messages with them in the most ghetto accent we can muster. It must suck answering the phones for me. Once a week they get drunk toad screaming into the phone OMG I NEED TEH WEBSITES!%@#$!11.Â
I wake up the next morning hungover. Surprise.
The next day I hangout with my super best friend, Swede. Swede takes me out to lunch in the quarter and after we’re finished eating another gutter kid walks up and asks if he can have our leftovers. We say sure and he starts chowing down. The waiter comes out and gives him a to go box and says he’s gotta go. I ignore the urge to say “DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT MAN IS, THAT’S THE NEXT KURT COBAIN!â€.
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Swede and I next visit the record store. I pet the dogs at the store and Swede buys a enormous amount of vinyl. We continue to drink and I wake up in my shit hole hotel room again.
We had back to Upton and my phone rings. I answer it with my business name since it’s a 504 number i don’t recognize. It’s Lizzy…she says she’s visiting Memphis this weekend and wants to know if i wanna hangout. I tell her I’d love to but I’m New Orleans. I just happen to be bar near her house. True crackhore universe alignment.
Monday my lunch meeting gets moved so I decide to walk back to the bom, a really great dive bar. I sit there and drink and talk to the sexy bartender for about 10 hours. I meet lots of new people. I get 2 beers bought for me and play I dunno how many games of pool. I walk to Lizzy and Nick’s apartment and rant about websites and crackhore before their yawning makes me feel guilty enough to walk back to my ghetto hotel. I pick up dinner, which is beef jerky and peanuts. This is really sexy, I drop the beef jerky, pick it up and eat it. Off the sidewalk on Magazine. I guess I have aids now.
So my homie Bruciedog gave me a screenname of a girl named Michelle. I msg her while i’m sitting alone drinking at Sip and walk to Lee Bom Tom(sp) on Magazine. This is another certified crackhore.com nola drinking location. It’s dark, they have a wild turkey pool table and all the bartenders are hot and will hook you up if you are as cool as me(lol). I start to walk back to Le Bom Tom when they say they are at Ms Maes. I walk in and find them based on what their myspace pages look like. Kat, Michelle and i get totally oblitrated on ms maes $1 well drinks. Go there, get drunk, tip your bartender. Magazine and Napleon, for the win. We leave there
I’m trying to write this like week and a half long update in one update so those who are Nola bound and see errors in the timeline, you can eat a dick. I was drunk the whole time, you’re lucky i can remember any of this so don’t feel too offended.
Anyway, i leave one of my meetings and get a cab to the french quarter. Then the hunt for wireless starts. I walk into hotels and get denied cuz im not a resident, no internet for toad. I ask the concierge where i can get free wireless and he directs to me a coffee shop on a street i can’t recall. Very yuppie tho. I sit and squat at a coffee shop after paying $3.50 for a budweiser(they had free wireless) and i work for about 4 hours. I love this about my life. That i can buy a can of beer and then spread my paper and laptops over a table for 6 hours and open my webdesign business in a random coffee shop. They finally tell me to leave so i walk from the french quarter to a bar/beer seller on Magazine. This is seriously like a 6 mile walk. I stop and buy a $7 daquri which is honestly worth every penny. I continue walk down Magazine and finally get to Sip. Sip is my favorite place to drink. If you ever go to Nola you need to visit my homies at Sip. They basically work like this. You walk up to their giant cooler of huge beers but their prices are hungoverly cheap. Like $1.25 for a import that would cost you $5 at a normal bar. The people there are super fucking cool. Like crackhore cool. They have a dog Brutus who you can see below. Anyway, I buy a few Flying Dog beers and begin to get hammered. I love Sip because it’s close enough to the Rue coffee shop to where i can fufill what honestly is my favorite thing in life.
Sitting on Magazine, getting hammered by myself on super cheap awesome beer, blaring Triple Six on my tablet and meeting new people. Michelle calls and asks if i want company. She finds my drunken ass still sitting on the sidewalk, staring at the beautiful women that new orleans has to offer. We leave there and head to Reginalla’s(sp), a great place for pizza. We eat and head back to her place. Thats when all hell begins to break loose. Lets just say things go up everyone’s nose(not drugs) and things go into balloons(also not drugs) and i sit down at her friend’s computer.
Let me back up a second and describe Michelle’s apartment. Imagine 2 girls and a guy all living in 2 bedroom apartment. He has all his stuff in the living room and all of Michelle’s stuff was given away by her asshole landlord after Katrina so she has about as much as furniture as i have brain cells. Her living room guy is in MS doing something and no one is in any condition to drive. I find his media drive which has more mp3s then jesus. I start blaring Portishead NIN, Radiohead and anythig else i can find that defines my life. Michelle can’t be pleased but she’s polite and says “wow you like nin huh?”. THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE *RAWR FASE* Michelle works at a hospital and she takes my temperature. Since i kissed her the other night it appears that i have caught this weird viral flu she has. She gives me a handful of pills and tells me how often to take each one and says drinking on them is okay because she’s been drinking on them and she’s fine. I love medicine. I drink most of her codiene cough syrup and pass out. My fever and drug binge all spiral into a great sleep. The problem is Michelle and Kat have 5 fucking cats. 5, not 4, not 3, but 5. There is basically a gang battle going on in her apartment with cats. This isn’t a big apartment either, like i hear the cats knocking over the trashcan roughly 7am. Lots of hissing. It’s like Iraq. I have no idea why they are fighting but it’s fucking with my post hangover sleep. The cats have broken out into complete civil war and i lay there on the couch wondering why i didn’t stay at Lynn and Dylans. But i have no cab money to get there last night so i’ve made my couch and i need to lay on it. 5 cats, just imagine it. Kat was telling me she was at the SPCA and said she almost made it a even 6 cats because they don’t think they have enough. Whats really kinda weird about their place is the cats are eventually going to take over this apartment. All the cats eat with their paws instead of just chowing down like normal cats. This is because they have so little food so each cat gets a paw full and then backs up and eats then goes back for another pawfull. Kat and Michelle realize that the cats are evolving and will soon start making tools and weapons. Then they will realize how to open cans of cat food and Michelle and Kat are going to get murdered by the “pride” of cats or locked out of the apartment when they realize they no longer need them to survive.
I wake up on Michelle’s couch with a hangover that would make god smoke pot. We run to the store for me to buy some food and some wine for the trip and then i roll back to Lynn and Dylan’s to pick up the rest of my stuff. I have to use google maps to get us there which is always a mistake in New Orleans so we end up putting probably 100 miles on Michelle’s car. I’m positive her and Kat both hate me and will never talk to me again. I am a master at overstaying my welcome. It takes like literally 20 minutes to get into their apartmentbuilding and get to their apartment. I grab my stuff in my arms and run back to the car. They drop me off at the train station and i pack my shit into my bags in the parking lot.
I have a long history of missing trains so this is a major win for me. I am so relieved that i actually made it to the train station.
I immediately start to make small talk with a nice black girl and her 2 friends in the train station. I dunno why i look for black people to talk to but it’s just a memphis instinct i guess. They come over the PA and say that the train is full and that every seat is going to be filled. This is really bad for toad because i’m terrified im going to be opening my bottle of wine on the train next to some southern baptist family who isn’t going to appreciate my drinking non to much. Luckily i find my M town homies on the train and they let me sit next to them. After we pass Hammond i pop my bottle of wine.
This is pretty racist but everyone starts talking about where they hail from. I’m talking about orange mound/cooper young and a few of them start talking about north, south and east memphis. I start to get a little worried that a possible gang war is about to break out and im going to have the best update ever. Luckily everyone finds common ground(triple six, bbq, etc) and all is well. I drink about half my bottle of wine and pass out. Laytoia wakes me up around 7:30 for my “dinner reservations” in the dining car. I stumble over there and realize i just need something from the lunch car. I’m not paying $18 for a meal 2 hours from memphis. I make probably the biggest sin in my life and order some amtrak hot wings. They really weren’t that bad. I’m serious. Microwaves were a great invention.
I drink about half the bottle while talking to Latoyia(sp) about everything from webhosting to valerie to the girl i met in new orleans. I talk this poor girl’s ear off. She’s a junior in millington who doesn’t do drugs and drinks rarely. So you can imagine the 2 hour wine induced crackhore.com spoken word rant she gets. I doubt she will ever forget me.
It gets better. I finish my bottle of wine and someone these kids came up and and start talking to me, like 9-12 years old. I start telling them about how my hotel room was haunted. They ask me tons of questions. As im getting off the train one of the mom’s comes up and thanks me for entertaining her children. I laugh like “lady you need to take better care of your kids”. This is like the 3rd time ive had children come up to me on a train while i’m drunk. I need to stop being so friendly, i fucking hate people.
We get halfway home when Levi calls. Him and Rachel and his friend were just hit by a drunk driver and they need me to come pick them up in Rachel’s car. I drive her car over and pick them up. Thank god they’re both okay.
 Anyway, I’m back now and i miss it already. Hate this city, hate my life here and can’t even put into words.
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