Random Acts of Kindness and 3 Birthday Meals

My birthday celebrating started early this year with a dinner at John Besh’s Domenica with old friend Richard Dreyfuss and his lovely and amazing wife, Svetlana. Over the 25 years we’ve known each other, Richard and I have worked on 3 movies together, collaborated on a Katrina relief project and he even wrote the foreword to my book, Know Small Parts: An Actor’s Guide to Turning Minutes into Moments and Moments into a Career. The menu from Executive Chef Alon Shaya, 2015’s  James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: South award winner, provided a delicious take on some traditional Italian dishes as well as offering show-stoppers like the Squid Ink Tagliolini with blue crab & herbs. We finished the meal with 3 beautiful and decadent desserts selected by our charming server, Cristina. Each dessert was decorated with a chocolate birthday banner. We were there for hours enjoying fabulous food and great company with perfect service. I’m definitely going back for that squid ink pasta dish.

Louisiana Rain

Though the news has been slow to cover it, you may have heard Louisiana is suffering the worst US flooding since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. This is not Katrina (for too many reasons to list) but it is devastating and it’s not even close to over. Here’s a partial listing of places to make donations of goods and/or money. Reminders from my mom – when donating undergarments, remember that many people need larger sizes and remember to buy hair care for every ethnicity.

Irma Thomas’ Mother’s Day at the Zoo

For 31 years, Mother’s Day has meant Irma Thomas and The Professionals at Audubon Zoo. I’m not a mother so I wasn’t privy to this time-honored ritual until this year, when we accompanied 2 mother’s to Audubon Park for brunch at the Clubhouse Café followed by an afternoon at the zoo. The oak-shaded Clubhouse patio was filled with families, many with small children dressed to make their mothers proud. Indoors, there was an ample spread of all-you-can-eat breakfast delights from the design-your-own-omelet bar to bagels and lox as well as local favorites like a creamy mirliton soup and grits & grillades. The dessert table was crowded with festive cakes, mousses and pies. 

L.A. Celebrity Sitings

This week, I traveled back to Los Angeles to attend to some things for my upcoming part in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Though I was thrilled beyond compare to be embarking on that journey, it was bittersweet to be leaving NOLA in the middle of Mardi Gras.

Evergreen Plantation on MLK Day

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I visited the beautiful and still functioning Evergreen Plantation, a privately owned sugar farm that offers walking tours. Built in 1790 and located on 2200 acres on the River Road with neighbors such as Oak Alley and Laura’s Plantation, the estate is best known as “the most intact plantation complex” in the south. The grounds holds 37 buildings, including 22 slave cabins. Touring a plantation is an odd way to spend MLK Day but it was a good day to reflect on what has come before and where we are now.

Working Girl

Last June, I blogged about some of the differences between my career in Los Angeles and my career here. With smaller parts and even smaller trailers, I said that it’s been humbling, but not humiliating, to work here. Actors don’t like to jinx good times by talking about them but I don’t want to waste an opportunity to share something I keep finding to be true.

Southern Decadence (someone left their gay out in the rain)

While my phone rang repeatedly with calls from loved ones fearing for my safety from tropical storm Lee due to overzealous and tourism-damaging reporting, I enjoyed a Labor Day weekend in the French Quarter during the largest gay event in New Orleans,Southern Decadence. Just like you don’t have to be Irish to enjoy our St. Patricks celebrations, you don’t have to be part of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community to enjoy the parades, outdoor concerts and shear spectacle of Decadence.

Vieux To Do

Vieux To Do is 3 festivals in one, the Creole Tomato Festival, the Cajun-Zydeco Music Festival and the Louisiana Seafood Festival. The Creole Tomato Festival is an over 20 year tradition showcasing the French Market, our country’s oldest city marketplace (1791). In addition to the super-tasty locally grown tomatoes, there are stages with live music, an air conditioned enclosed tent for cooking demonstrations and a parade I apparently missed.

Mardi Gras Wrap-Up 2011

To sum up the entire season, Carnival Historian and float designer, Henri Schindler said it best, whether you’re a parader or a viewer, “It never ends. For the entire year, you’re either preparing for it, experiencing it or remembering it.” Louis Armstrong, who led a storied life said it was his lifelong ambition to be King of Zulu. And, as for me, Mardi Gras has always held a special place in my heart because of a photo I’ve cherished since I was a child.

Oil and Honey

I can’t take the lying anymore. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be an adult and survive the disillusionment of  Watergate and Vietnam and the racism and sexism exposed during the Civil Rights movement. Maybe disillusionment is a relentless part of being a grown-up, no matter what the era holds. I only know that I’m sickened by all the hysteria over a community center being built blocks away from Ground Zero, 24% of Americans believing their Christian President is Muslim, and phony rape allegations being leveled against the Wikileaks guy when there are REAL problems going unaddressed.