My pre-Halloween adventures in New Orleans

My blood is too thick. Before I left for New Orleans it was too thin. So it goes with balancing warfarin in your system. One week you’re high, the next week you’re low.

Since I had to limit my drinking, perhaps the sludge is due to what I ate while on my short vacation: a couple po' boys, a foot-long sausage sandwich, a pound or so of tater tots, a bacon cheeseburger, gravy tater tots, an Italian Hoagie, New Orleans style French Toast, ham and eggs, a small pizza, a chili dog, tuna sandwich, more ham and eggs, barbecue brisket, ice cream, and, just because it exists, a deep fried burger.

That heart attack on a bun is served at Tuckers on Magazine, near the World War II Museum. Story goes, the bar was owned by the last official murder before Hurricane Katrina hit. The evidence and paperwork disappeared during the storm. Go figure.

Maybe it will turn up in the shotgun shack on Magazine I saw with junk piled out in front. It seemed abandoned and ready for a match but for the fact there was an old lady out in front trying to get a cat to go back inside.

Back at Tucker’s I ate the half-pound, stuffed with cheese delicacy after a two-hour walk on my last day in town down Magazine to Decatur to the French Quarter. And yes, the Fats Domino song, Walkin’ in New Orleans, was playing on the iPod in my head.

I intended to return to Second Skin there to see if anything was on sale, but, as you might expect for a leather shop, it didn’t open until noon. Before the weekend, me and my buddy Maitri went there to look for a whip for her lion tamer costume for the Halloween party at the Howlin’ Woof.

Second Skin had them – starting at $70. I learned it’s pretty damn expensive to be a leather boy. Shorts are $300. Harnesses for your well oiled chest are at least $150. And you should see the size of some of the apparatuses people stuff up their orifices.

So Maitri found an $11 model at a shop that sells naughty cakes, penis shaped candies, and an assortment of vibrators. I suppose you could use the vibrator to stir the batter, so to speak.

Coincidentally, we saw Joe Gannascoli, the actor who played gay mobster Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos, in front of a French Quarter cigar shop. Vito was outed after being spotted all leathered up at gay bar. Hmm.

We did see a guy at the party who might have bought his outfit at Second Skin. He seemed to be in his 40s, and I would describe him as not fat, but husky and hairy. Perhaps you will have luck finding him somewhere in the Craig’s List personals.

The thing is, nobody should go bare-assed in chaps and a cod piece, no matter how fat or skinny. It’s just not sanitary for yourself or for those who might sit where you sat, especially given the recent outbreak of staph infections – not to mention you have to be extra good at wiping.

Mr. Funny Pants was not as disturbing to me as a woman with a hookah taped to her head. She was dressed as Medusa and walking around offering pot hits to strangers - accompanied by an odd little man painted statue white who was really furry so it looked like some sort of moss was growing on him.

Full disclosure: I did wear a kilt to the Saturday bash. Since I was in the Big Sleazy I wore a pair of “body armor” shorts with boxers over them underneath. I know it breaks tradition, but nobody needs to see what I have to offer unless it is by mutual agreement. Still I was disappointed that only one person, a woman in a Boston Red Sox hat (which explains a lot), asked if I was shortless under the tartan.

I was supposed to be a blood clot – make that a bloody Scot, which is a long way to go for a joke. And in front of Fahy’s Saturday, I posed for a photo with a guy dressed as a Hassidic Jew, and my pal Derick who was Huey P Lion (the Kingfisher)(tamed by his wife), which does seem like a the start of a joke my dad would tell.

Derick had a good costume, good enough to excite a plushy or two – though I thought his mane looked way too Rod Stewart from the back.

Fahy’s is owned by a former Chicago cop, which made me feel at home. Over the weekend, middle aged women there found me attractive enough that two of them accosted me, one sitting on my lap and patting my bald head, the other grabbing my leg in a frisky way. It’s nice to feel wanted, even if it involves others wearing beer goggles and me being in a kilt.

Perhaps the ladies recognized me from my brush with fame Friday night. At the Voodoo Music Fest in City Park where I won bingo during the New Orleans Bingo Show set and was taped and probably will wind up another object of ridicule on You Tube. That’s to say, I signed a waiver.

The New Orleans Bingo Show is a Tom Waits sort of post modern burlesque carnival act, all done up in red and black and brought to you by Citi. The band has a cult following in its hometown. They actually play bingo during the set.

One dopey Asian guy from New Hampshire called “bingo” first, but he didn't have all the right numbers and an actor in a fez put a dunce cap on the kid’s confused head. So wouldn't you know it, I was the next chump. I tried to pass my card to a pal, who, instead called out that I had the right numbers.

Standing at the lip of the stage I reluctantly hoisted my 210 pounds up and into the action. I copped a Chicago attitude when they called out the numbers. I wanted to tell the short black host wearing white face that in my hometown when somebody says he wins, he wins. Know what I am saying?

I think he got the hint anyway, so I played along with the shtick, even put my aviator sunglasses on for effect. The guy in the fez came up to me with the dunce cap. I shot him a cop after a rough shift look, promptly took the prop away from him and tossed it upstage.

When they confirmed I had the right numbers, I took the sash and beads with which they adorned my Notre Dame hoodie and tossed them into the crowd. Then I threatened to remove my shirt. Knowing that the glare off my belly would blind half the crowd, I tactfully refrained.

Despite a dearth of booze in my system, when they asked me join the cast in a victory dance, I purposely moved like a drunk fat white man at a wedding reception, which is sort of like Dancing Bear on Captain Kangaroo meets the gopher from Caddy Shack with a little Fred Flintstone thrown in for good measure.

Channeling Homer Simpson, I gave a half moon (to go along with the full one outside the tent) as a tease, because pasty Irish ass can drive an audience to unnecessary adulation, if not riots.

Ask Bono. He’s an Irish ass.

What can I say? I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was residual stoopid from seeing Lez Zeppelin, the all girl cover band performing the cock rock classics to a crowd with silly dads and kids young enough to be Robert Plant's illegitimate grandchildren.

Either way, it was sort of fun being a slightly menacing doofus. And it balanced my good deed for the trip which was helping a teacher from New Hampshire check homework papers from her three 6th grade classes on the plane ride south.

The song goes that everybody plays the fool, but I played along on my terms, thank you, even getting a chance to do a spit take with actual Irish whisky which is the dream of every Celtic immigrant, really.

Speaking of immigrants (nice segue, eh?) on the way back to the airport, the cab driver was from Algeria by way of France, where he had been a teacher.

He gave it up because the students were way bigger jerks now than when he started. So he came to the states, was driving cross country truck routes for a chemical company and living with his family near Detroit. On a run about five years ago the semi broke down outside New Orleans, and he liked the area so much he told his wife to bring the kids south and took up cab driving.

Me, I boarded a plane back to Chicago where I am still spinning my wheels.