Of course, there’s plenty of fine whiskey to be had in local watering holes and eateries. Some of you may assess the whiskey situation at any given locale as I do — by asking the bartender, “Do you have single malts?”
Those who are willing to travel a ways for a whiskey experience that’s bound to be at least a bit more varied may want to go to Kenton’s, which just opened in New Orleans. Times-Picayune reviewer Brett Anderson wrote that Kenton’s describes itself as “an American whiskey bar” with “an affinity for bourbon.”
Kenton’s has 150 labels of whiskey on its list.
It’s also a restaurant. Anderson thinks Kenton’s is basically a seafood restaurant, although customers can order such dishes as braised pork shoulder and rib-eye in oyster sauce.
House specialties include wood-roasted oysters, fried grits, skin-on speckled trout fillet and slow-smoked trout. Anderson thinks it’s all a matter of creative variations on traditional southern cooking.
Anderson’s verdict: “It is the best new place to eat in New Orleans this side of Shaya.” Of course, you can just go there to drink.
Louisiana Has Finally Made It!
Headline from the March 1 edition of The Daily Advertiser: “Lafayette Costco to open March 17.” No word yet on whether the Costco will replace Lafayette or merely complement it.
Move The Staff Out Of The Glass House
Since Gov. Bobby Jindal thought of nothing but the White House, he was never very vocal about state Treasurer John Kennedy’s repeated claims that Jindal’s budgets included wasteful contracts.
Well, there’s a new governor in town, and it’s starting to look as if he might not want to be anything but a governor. Gov. Bel Edwards’ people — mainly his Republican administration head Jay Dardenne — recently wondered out loud why Kennedy had a $370,000 contract to house staff the state could house for just $70,000.
Kennedy got caught this time. But he responded like a politician. He said he’d move his staff into the cheaper office if — to use the Advocate’s word — “enough space was available.” A good politician will always get that “if” in there. You or I would probably just say, “Of course, they’ll move.”
There’s a great back story behind this. The Advocate found out the state’s Office of Facility Planning and Control knew about Kennedy’s $400,000 contract and had been asking Kennedy for more than a year why he wouldn’t use the much cheaper office space. Hmm. Why would it take somebody more than a year to explain why he had a state contract that appeared to be wasteful? Beats me.
Kennedy’s running for the U.S. Senate now, and is leading in the polls. Of course, it’s probably too early for those numbers to mean much or for us to know whether Kennedy’s embarrassing contract will come back to haunt him.
In case you’re having a memory lapse, the old adage goes, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” — or something like that.
How Will We Ever Raise Revenue?
Aside from Super Tuesday, Louisiana’s big political news has been the special session — the Legislature’s epic effort to avoid facing the challenge of a $900 million budget gap.
As the special session approached its close, Times-Picayune columnist J.R. Ball wrote about a report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. According to the LLA, Louisiana now has all the following tax exemptions: 79 for personal income tax, 192 for sales taxes, 23 for severance taxes, 53 for corporate income tax, 37 for corporate franchise taxes, 15 for gas taxes and 28 for economic development.
I make that out to be 432 tax exemptions. LLA comes up with a total of 464 tax exemptions in Louisiana. At any rate, the La. Legislative Auditor says that if all the money from all those exemptions had been collected in 2014, the total would have amounted to $8 billion. One year’s worth of collections would have been enough to cover all the budget gaps in Jindal’s last term, with enough left over for sweet potato casserole at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
The Real News
I guess loyal readers of Up Front — AKA “Up Fronters” — know that when I use a headline that reads “The News,” I’m being tongue-in-cheek. I always mean that the stories in The News section are about silly stuff that should never have been reported at all (much less by the likes of CNN or The New Yorker or Google News).
But this time around, things are a little different because we do have a really big, important news story to cover. It came via office email from Garren James, founder and CEO of Cowboys4Angels. James just informed the Up Fronter — and thousands of others, probably — about a crucial news event relating to the prominent personalities Matthew Paetz and Lea Michele.
James informed the world that he’s “upset” that “Matthew is getting a bad rap for his recent break-up with Lea.” And why would Matthew get a bad rap, he wonders, when he was “one of our top requested men”?
“One of our top requested men”? What does that mean? Well, I’m sure it’ll all be clear in the end.
Anyway, James is “upset” that “the friends of Lea are saying [Matthew] was just some opportunist.” Of course, all of us should always be deeply concerned about what any given individual’s friends are saying, right?
James swears that Matthew, who was called “Christian” when he worked for Cowboys4Angels, was “an extremely straight forward [sic] man with intelligence, class and elegance …”
Elegance? I probably shouldn’t have written this much without looking up cowboys4angels.com. Let me just Google it and see what it is.
Oh, boy. Turns out Cowboys 4 Angels is a male escort service! The site promises to provide “Straight Elite Male Companions For Women.” I guess I assumed such places existed. But I never assumed they’d be blanket-emailing magazines all over the country. What the hell? I keep thinking of DiCaprio’s recurring line in The Wolf of Wall Street: “The real question is: was all this legal?”
I made up my mind to unsubscribe from the Cowboys 4 Angels emails as soon as I could. I mean, the guys on this site don’t even look like cowboys. Hell, one of them wears a tuxedo. At least part of the time.
But before I could unsubscribe, I, naturally, had to find out what happened with Matthew and Lea.
A quick search informed me that Matthew had just “ghosted on” Lea. “Ghosted on”? What does that mean? I’m learning all kinds of stuff with this story.
According to the authoritative In Touch magazine, “ghosted on” means leaving your girlfriend (or boyfriend) “all of a sudden and without warning.” Things have changed. When I was young, “ghosting on” was called “leaving without warning,” or even just “leaving.” But “ghosting on” is better. Of course, back then, when a person left without warning, it wasn’t reported in the news.
Anyway, In Touch’s story reported the jilted Lea had been willing to “forgive Matthew” and “didn’t think he should be punished for his past.” What past? His past as a male escort? Well, what could possibly have been so bad about that?
James says Matthew is such a good guy “he even started helping myself” — James means “me” — “train new men for my company.” James says Matthew always met “the ultimate goal for a male companion,” which “is to just bring a smile to a woman’s face.” As for what the goal of a male escort is, bringing a smile to a woman’s face isn’t necessarily the first thing that would have popped into my mind. But then again, I’m not in the business.
In doing my research for this story, I learned what Matthew now does for a living. He’s a “life coach.” What a coincidence! That’s what I am too! A “life coach.” I just don’t make as much as Matthew. And I don’t get tips.
The Funnies
All the following are from the movie Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, 1941:
Secretary: Some day, you’ll drown in a vat of whiskey.
W.C. Fields: Drown in a vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?
Fields: Ah, those clouds look just as fleecy as … clouds.
Turk: I am troubled by insomnia.
Fields: Insomnia? Oh, I know a good cure for it.
Turk: Yeah?
Fields: Get plenty of sleep.
Ouliotta: No, the only game I’ve ever played is bean bag.
Fields: Bean bag? That’s very good. It becomes very exciting at times. I saw the championship played in Paris. Many people were killed.
Fields: [Desperately trying to persuade his niece to stay in school] Don’t you want to be smart?
Gloria: No, I want to be like you.
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