Grasshopper.
I am reading an interview with Pat Boone today. The weekend is my favorite day to read the Wall Street Journal. There is more food for thought. I need more food for thought today like I need another salad at Budsi’s. Budsi’s is unlike any other Thai restaurant I have been in, in these good, old U.S. of A.
This is what Pat Boone has to say in today’s Wall Street Journal, in an interview with Matthew Hennessy, “If cannot plan on success in the entertainment business. If you do plan it, it’s too easy to sell your should to try to get there. And you’ll regret that your whole life.”
Mr. Boone is 88.
The last time I consumed a grasshopper, the cocktail, I was in Thailand. It was as unlike a grasshopper in the United States. These two grasshoppers were as unlike as the Thai bamboo salad at Budsi’s is unlike the Italian salad at Mandina’s.
I ate plenty of unfamiliar things one night in Bangkok.
I do not need to tell there is no bamboo in any of Mandina’s salads because there is none. There is not any bamboo close to Mandina’s for blocks and blocks until you get to Mrs. Corsair’s garden on Cleveland Street.
I have never consumed a grasshopper in its insect definition, though, I do enjoy watching grasshoppers. The way they groom their hard-shelled, multi-faceted eyes with their front legs—I could watch that all day for at least twenty minutes.
I understand we will should be eating bugs in the future because we cannot sustain something-or-other for very much longer. Children are the future.
Aside from the Wall Street Journal, I am reading an interesting article about the future of work. I rarely read anything online, but, being a content provider versus a consumer. I do not want to talk about it, but he had me with employment distribution a hundred years ago.
We live in an amazing world and tomorrow will bring its own set of pleasant surprises as well as predictable, petty disappointments. All I need to do is walk to either my left or my right when I leave my front door. I will be greeted by both.
I am merely providing food for thought if you are lacking any this holiday season. I have not finished it yet. I think I am far enough into it that I doubt you will be spoiling the ending for me. It is yet to be written, anyway.
Only New Orleans was pretty much the same one hundred years ago, most of it, anyway.
There will always be an Antoine’s, the way there will always be a Tujague’s and Sbisa’s. You now know the three oldest restaurants in New Orleans.
Sometimes, we get to be teachers. Sometimes, we get to be students. Yesterday, I was taken to school on New Orleans’ connection to the grasshopper cocktail.
We should dive in into this grasshopper and get this party started. It is Christmas in New Orleans.
Do you love someone? I am not suggesting that you set them free. What I am suggesting is that you give them a paid subscription to this newsletter. Imagine a month, or—better yet—imagine finding a little New Orleans in your inbox on a fairly predictable basis for a year. Make just about every day special for somebody you love.
If you tell me you do, I will mention them by name somewhere within the paid part of the narrative. As you know, I can work anything into the narrative, somehow. I usually just start a new paragraph.
Have you ever given anyone the gift of regular doses of what it is like to live in New Orleans? How I pass my time is not for everyone, but, you know you know someone who will be very appreciative. We all need something to talk about.