I’ve never been to New Orleans, though I always meant to go, and was planning to pay a visit this fall. I started writing a biography of Louis Armstrong back in January, and the time had come for me to pay a visit to Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive
and start trawling through its massive collection of documents and other source material. More than that, I wanted to see Armstrong’s home town for myself at long last. It was mostly a matter of curiosity: I’d been reading about New Orleans all my life, and I longed to put the flesh of first-hand observation on all that I’d learned from books.

Needless to say, book learning is not to be despised. For one thing, it made it possible for me to write the first paragraph of the first chapter of Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong:

To the northerner New Orleans is another country, seductive and disorienting, a steamy, shabby paradise of spicy cooking, wrought-iron balconies, and streets called Elysian Fields and Desire, a place where the signs advertise such mysterious commodities as po-boys and muffuletta and no one is buried under ground. We’ll take the boat to the land of dreams, the pilgrim hears in his mind’s ear as he prowls the Vieux Carr

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated each Thursday. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter, strong language, one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex)

– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter, sexual content, fairly strong language)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content)

– Fiddler on the Roof (musical, G, one scene of mild violence but otherwise family-friendly)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene)

– Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, lots of cutesy-pie sexual content)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Orson’s Shadow (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, very strong language)

– Philadelphia, Here I Come! (drama, PG, closes Sept. 25)

– Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, PG, some strong language)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly)

– Amount paid in 1913 by Henry Clay Frick to Joseph Duveen for Romans d’amour et de la jeunesse, Jean-Honor

At century’s end

Nobody’s holding out for heaven

It’s not for creatures here below

We just suit up for a game

The name of which we used to know

By now it’s second nature

Scratch the cab

We can grab the local

Let’s get to the love scene, my friend

Which means look, maybe touch

But beyond that not too much

Dumb love in the city

At century’s end

Donald Fagen and Timothy Mayer, “Century’s End” (music by Fagen)

Hurricane Katrina bumped into my end-of-the-month deadline glut, meaning that I had to stay up all last night writing–a Commentary essay from midnight to seven, my Friday Wall Street Journal drama column from seven to ten. John Pancake, my editor at the Washington Post, was able to give me a one-day extension for this Sunday’s “Second City” column, which I’ll write in the morning.

For the moment, though, I’m cross-eyed and sleep-deprived, so I’m not even going to try to blog. Our Girl, bless her, has taken over our “Live from Katrina” page, which continues to draw heavy traffic. Me, I’m going to post some pre-written items, then crawl into my loft and seek a bit of oblivion.

See you later.

– Commissioning fee paid to William Walton by Jascha Heifetz in 1939 for Walton’s B Minor Violin Concerto, including two years’ worth of exclusive performance rights: $1,493.00

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $19,589.35

(Source: Michael Kennedy, Portrait of Walton)

“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. To open the mind so wide as to keep nothing in it or out of it is not a virtue; it is the vice of the feeble-minded.”

G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography

Two notable follow-ups to last week’s overpuffed movie post have rolled in. One fills out the story of the time Carmela Soprano met Charles Foster Kane:

Belatedly read your over-praised movie post in which you cite the Citizen Kane scene from The Sopranos. Carmela hasn’t chosen Kane randomly–the film club she has set up is going to go through the AFI 100 Greatest Movies list in order. Which, of course, sets up a great gag in a following episode, when the girls are back together and can’t watch #2, Casablanca, because Tony has taken the AV equipment. Carmela says that she “didn’t feel like watching Casablanca anyway” and someone asks what the next movie on the list is. Janice picks up the piece of paper to read, “The Godfather.” The looks on their faces are priceless.

I’d forgotten the exact circumstances, which much improve the vignette. Thanks to Tosy and Cosh for the rest of the story.

Regarding The Natural, a reader conveys a terrific anecdote from a Michael Farber story in this week’s Sports Illustrated:

Tim Hudson said of [Braves rookie outfielder Jeff] Francoeur, “He’s like Roy Hobbs. I’m wainting for him to come out of the bullpen and start striking guys out, throwing 98 [mph]. Or to start hitting bombs lefthanded.” Francoeur was born the year The Natural hit theaters, but he knows Hudson’s reference is to the guy who goes light-tower at the end of the film. Told that in Bernard Malamud’s novel the tragic Hobbs strikes out, the rookie laughs and booms, “That’s why books suck!”

And that’s why I’m no athlete!