LESSONS LEARNED IN NEW ORLEANS

• New Orleans’ reputation for jazz is drastically overstated. To test my theory that I was hearing very little of the stuff, I began computing a Nelly-to-jazz ratio, based on how often I heard a Nelly song vs. how often I heard any jazz music at all. By the time I left, it was 3 to 1 in favor of Nelly.
• It is possible on a four-day trip to New Orleans to eat a different fried food you’ve never heard of before on every single day.
• If you turn on the TV at 7:55 PM on Thursday in New Olreans in hopes of catching Survivor, you will actually see the end of Survivor. Thankfully, I realized my error before I saw any spoilers. However…
• Having narrowly averted your worst nightmare, if you read your hotel’s complimentary copy of USA Today on Friday morning, you will find out who got booted on last night’s Survivor before you get a chance to go home and watch it on Tivo.
• New Orleans is the host city for this year’s NCAA Women’s Final Four.
• When watching sports in a bar, lesbians can be just as loud as straight men.
• There is a possessive form of the word y’all, which is y’all’s. Examples: “Is this y’all’s first time in N’ahlins?”, “How’s y’all’s visit been so far?”, “Y’all’s accents are funny.”
• Alligators subsist mostly on a diet of marshmallows tossed to them by fanboat tour guides.
• Geography is without a doubt my intellectual Achilles heel. On day two, Greg and I found ourselves sitting in front of a river, wondering which one it might be. My guess: the New Orleans River. Correct answer: the Mississippi. Oh, right. That one.
• Every building in New Orleans has a balcony and/or an enclosed patio. But very often, the hallway that you think leads to the balcony stairs actually leads to the women’s bathroom.
• Go-go boys in New Orleans gay bars are allowed to expose their butts, which still gets boring after about five seconds and which looks just plain ridiculous.
• Speaking of New Orleans gay bars, it turns out the one called Corner Pocket is not a pool hall.
• New Orleans bars are very fond of the dreaded “pee trough”.
• No matter how much alcohol I consume, I can’t get drunk two nights in a row.
• Thankfully, I also can’t get hungover two nights in a row.
• In swamp-infested Louisiana, you might think a clever way to say farewell to someone is to wave and say, “Bye, you!” (Try saying it out loud.) However, the locals don’t seem to find this very amusing.