LIVING

The latest lifestyle news from around New Orleans

"Oklahoma!" is many things.

It is the landmark musical that was the first collaboration of Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein, who would become a theatrical institution, writing 10 more musicals for the stage, screen and television. Like the Hammerstein/Jerome Kern "Showboat" before it, the songs for "Oklahoma!" deepened characterization and story. But in "Oklahoma!" Agnes DeMille's balletic Broadway dances followed suit.

Later, in attempting to pinpoint what made "Oklahoma!" a phenomenon, composer Rodgers said, "All the individual parts complement each other." Lyricist Hammerstein said it wasn't something tangible, but the show's "spirit." Broadway historian Ethan Mordden summed up the partnership of the two men in Variety vernacular as "Smart Weds Heart."

Continue reading "Tulane Summer Lyric kicks up things with American musical classic 'Oklahoma!'" »

PEGGY DELAROSA
56, asset merchandise manager

Favorite exercise: Running.
Days of exercise a week: Six.
Diet do: "A well-rounded diet with everything in moderation."
Diet don't: "Depriving myself of anything."
Guilty pleasure: Nutty Buddy.
Exercise benefits: "Physical and mental well-being."
Exercise philosophy: "Make exercise a lifestyle to get the maximum benefits."

Continue reading "The Best Revenge: A personal look at living well" »

Piver says you should also be aware that sometimes the ex wants to continue the dialogue, not so much to process it in a constructive way, but to cling to the relationship.

"Hey, it's not pretty. But we've all been there," she says.

The parties involved need to determine if it's best to keep talking or cut the ties. One way to figure this out, Piver says, is to hold a good intention.

"If your intention is to honor your own heart and what you know to be true, and to prevent more pain in the long run for both of you, your words will land in a particular way. If you have the very same conversation, but with the intention of faulting or blaming the other person, the conversation will have a different tone. The impact is therefore different," says Piver.

Show your true feelings without expecting the other person to respond in any particular way, Piver says.

Continue reading "How to Have a Healthy Breakup" »

Quick -- can anybody tell me how many cell phone subscribers there were in 1985?

Here's the answer: A shade over 340,000.

Fast forward to 2007. Same question -- the number of cell phone subscribers?

You better sit down for this one. It was roughly 255.4 million. And the population of the U.S. in 2007 was what? About 301.1 million.

And to think that one trend-spotter predicted that wireless service would be sort of a novelty, attracting a niche market of about 900,000 by 2000.

Talk about a bad prediction, almost as big a miss as Thomas Edison saying, "The radio craze will die out in time."

Continue reading "Cell your soul: 255 million phones and no one to talk to" »

Like so many free spirits before her, when Maria Shaw, a Michigan native, came to visit New Orleans, it wrapped around her soul, spoke to her in mystic ways, so she moved here part time.

Her work allows geographical flexibility; she is a psychic. Her predictions run weekly in the National Enquirer and Soap Opera Digest, and she has a daily call-in show on the CBS radio network, available in New Orleans only on the Web, at psychiconair.com.

Shaw is hosting the Psychic Fun Fair, Aug. 2 and 3, at the House of Broel on St. Charles Avenue, a weekend of lectures, readings and other events, open to the public. Admission is $10.

I talked with Shaw this week in anticipation of her visit.

Continue reading "The 60-Second Interview: Maria Shaw" »

If happy days aren't here again, nobody told our waiters at Mr. B's Bistro.

Two of them orbited our table at the beginning of a dreary night last winter. As one explained the pampering -- the hot towel, the bib, the garlic-enriched butter -- that accompanies an order of barbecue shrimp, the other filled water glasses, silently waiting for his cue to step in with the punch line: "If you like, we'll even give you a manicure when you're done."

The hospitality was leavened with insouciance all night. "Next round, I'll get you a glass without a hole in it," one of the waiters cracked as he cleared my stemware, having noticed I was outpacing my companions in wine consumption.

Continue reading "Mr. B's Bistro earns three beans" »

The last restaurant review to appear in The Times-Picayune began with a reference to a bad storm. Its name was Cindy, a tropical storm that in July 2005 left New Orleanians to cope for days without electricity. It all seemed like such a hassle: the branches in the streets, the malfunctioning stop lights. Several of the new restaurants on my radar were closed as a result. La Crepe Nanou wasn't, so I reviewed it.

It was what once counted as a crisis situation -- something that affected the calculus I used to determine which restaurants deserve critical evaluation. Soon thereafter, a weather event everyone actually remembers rendered all such formulas useless.

Hurricane Katrina and the engineering failures it exposed altered the way countless citizens and institutions operate. In the immediate aftermath of the levee breaches, it was impossible to imagine covering restaurants as I had in the past. So I didn't. I wrote news stories, features and columns, but no restaurant reviews.

Continue reading "Time to review New Orleans restaurants again" »

Dirty Coast, makers of those down-home, sweet and satirical t-shirts ("Soul is Waterproof," "Iraq Needs a Contraflow," "Onward Upward 9thward") sure have some devoted fans.

Continue reading "Dirty Coast brands its fans" »

Christian Siriano, the elfin wunderkind who blew away the judges on Project Runway's fourth season, released his mini collection for Bluefly.com today, and my first reaction: it's more scarce than fierce.

Fans will not be surprised by what's here - poofy sleeves and skin-tight pants. But the eight pieces, selling for between $96 to $520, have fewer ruffles and flounces than his Fashion Week work, and he generally dialed down the drama for real world customers.

Continue reading "Project Runway star launches mini-collection" »

Kali Ray, the internationally-known founder of Triyoga, will bring her Yogaflow method - combining breath and focus with dynamic and sustained postures - to two local health clubs and a yoga studio this weekend. Also known as Swamini Kaliji, Ray will be conducting all-level workshops, private sessions and a satsang (gathering for knowledge).

See schedule of local events with Kali Ray below:

Continue reading "Yogini Kali Ray bringsYogaflow to New Orleans" »

Children have always loved sing-song rhymes and the popular preschooler pop concert phenomenon has them dancing in their seats.

The Wiggles have been at the forefront of this movement for 17 years, selling out shows in arenas worldwide. On Sunday, they perform two shows at the UNO Lakefront Arena.

"When I was growing up, a long, long time ago, you may have heard some nursery rhymes at home," said Jeff Fatt, known as the Purple Wiggle. "Essentially there was a guy with a woolly dog on his hand, you know a puppet sort of thing, nothing like this, nothing like The Wiggles and the concerts we play."

Continue reading "Little ones can dance, yell and dress up for fun at The Wiggles concert" »

This week in the Food pages, we talk to local experts who take their lunches to work, as brown-bagging is making a comeback in tight fiscal times. Plus, we have great recipes to go in those lunch bags, and lots of tips to make packing your lunch easier. In Cooking Creole, Marcelle's husband is inspired to make rich chocolate desserts, and in Exchange Alley, readers have come up with recipes that duplicate Popeye's Mardi Gras Mustard and, maybe, just maybe, Fisherman's Wharf Pie!

Judy Walker, Food editor

More in food . . .

• Track Judy's travels through Tales of the Cocktail
• Forums: Recipe Swap | New Orleans Dining
• Browse: The Times-Picayune New Orleans Recipe Archive (over 800 recipes)

There are two reasons he has taken a lunch to work at the University of New Orleans for 13 years, chemistry professor Matt Tarr says.

"One reason is, it saves me time, and the second reason is, it saves me money.

"And there's a third reason: If I bring my lunch, I don't eat as much as if I go out. So it can be healthier, and usually is."

Brown-bagging is back, up about a fifth in the past seven years, according to a recent poll by the NPD Group, a national market research firm.

Continue reading "When the going gets tough, the tough pack a lunch" »

Is this IT, the lost recipe for the famous pie from Fisherman's Wharf?

Early last year, Y.S. asked us to help look for a pie recipe, the secret specialty of a restaurant that existed in Biloxi and Ocean Springs. We finally ran some recipes from the Biloxi paper, the Sun-Herald. Now C.K. sends a different recipe, similar to the Amish pie recipe I was told was nearest to the original

Continue reading "Fisherman's Wharf pie recipe turns up; is this the real deal?" »

LITERARY EVENTS

Garden District Book Shop 2727 Prytania St. Steven and Rebekah Hren discuss and sign "The Carbon Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit, " 5-7. Free. Call 895.2266.

Octavia Books 513 Octavia St. Jack Pendarvis discusses and reads from his novel "Awesome, " 6. Call 899.7323.

Continue reading "Calendar: Thursday, July 24, 2008" »

WDSU-Channel 6 anchor Norman Robinson returned to work Monday following a leave of absence precipitated by a June drunken driving arrest.

Jonathan Shelley, the station's news director, said Wednesday that no timetable has been set for Robinson's return to the anchor chair.

Robinson has been at WDSU more than 17 years, and anchored the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts prior to the incident, in which he crashed his vehicle but was not injured.

"He's working on some projects for us right now," Shelley said.

This week in The Reading Life, it's all about reading -- literally -- with reviews of five books about books: Larry McMurtry's "Books: A Memoir," an account of the novelist's life in bookselling; Ammon Shea's "Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages"; Leonard Marcus's compelling history of American children's books, "Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children's Literature"; James Hawes's "Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life"; and Cathy Alter's "Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over."

Susan Larson, Book editor

BOOKS
By Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster, $24)

It's hard to get a read on how much America reads.

On one hand, recent surveys suggest that few American adults read a single novel in any given year, and illiteracy is skyrocketing. In the July/August issue of The Atlantic, in an article called "Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, " writer Nicholas Carr describes the loss of "deep reading." "In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, " Carr writes, "we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas."

And how many times have you heard someone say, "I just don't have time to read any more"?

But, on the other hand, can you find a parking place at the Barnes & Noble parking lot in Metairie? I'm sure that you know someone -- or lots of someones -- who are members of, or are thinking about joining, a book club. Do you know a student who doesn't have a summer reading list?

Continue reading "Five new books on the fundamentals of reading" »

SOLA AKINLANA
12, student

Is it true that you're a bookworm? Yes. I always have a book with me. And I start reading wherever I am: in the car, in the bedroom, at school. I read everywhere. I read when I walk and then every once in a while I look up to make sure I'm not going to hit something. I read in the store if my mom lets me bring a book in. I put the book on the part of the cart where the baby sits -- my brothers are big enough not to sit in there anymore -- and then I read while I push the cart.

Have you ever had a crash? I crashed into a shelf one time in the bread aisle. The bread fell off the shelf but I put it back up. My mom told me that's what you get.

So how many books do you read in an average week? Three a week, maybe. I can finish "Harry Potter" in two days. That was my record: two days for number seven, "The Deathly Hallows." I've read it six times. No lie. Now I'm reading number five, "Order of the Phoenix." I've read that one five times.

Continue reading "Shelf Life: Adventurers in reading" »

"The 13 Lessons" is a revealing, multidisciplinary theater piece about adult illiteracy in our community, told from a variety of viewpoints in forceful and humorous scenes, song and dance.

What could be a dry recitation of statistics comes alive in Lenwood O. Sloan's unexpectedly involving script, culled from first-person oral histories and story circles, and Sh'riff Hasan's adventurous, purposeful direction, in which the play comes off the Ashe Cultural Arts Center stage, taking place around and throughout the audience.

Continue reading "Adult illiteracy explored in Ashe Cultural Arts Center play" »

HOLLYWOOD - The panel interview sessions and evening events that comprise the July Television Critics Association TV Tour adjourned at the close of business Monday for a full day of Tuesday set visits.

After a stop at Warner Bros. to see where "ER," "Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies" are made, members of the TCA bused across town to Fox, for a preview walk-through of the stunning set for "Dollhouse."

Leader of the "Buffy the Vampire" and "Firefly" cults, "Dollhouse" creator Joss Whedon led the tour accompanied by his muse for this new series, actress Eliza Dushku.

Continue reading "TV tour Day 15: Welcome to the 'Dollhouse'" »

Homegrown kids' music quartet the Imagination Movers finish shooting the first season of their Disney Channel TV series this week. On Monday afternoon at the UNO Foundation's Robert E. Nims Center for Entertainment Arts in Elmwood, the cumulative effects of three months of 12 hour days are apparent.

Between takes, "Mover Dave" Poche gobbles vitamins to ward off the first signs of illness. A groggy "Mover Rich" Collins munches on a peach as he tries to shake off his lack of sleep.

But their fatigue disappears the instant cameras roll on the 26th and final episode, "The Treasure of the Warehouse."

Continue reading "Imagination Movers wrap shoot, gear up to sing at Saints game" »

HOLLYWOOD -- Tiki Barber, who played for Sean Payton and beside Jeremy Shockey, said the then-New York Giants offensive coordinator and then-New York Giants tight end had tangible simpatico.

"It was great," said Barber of Payton's working relationship with Shockey, traded to the New Orleans Saints on Monday. "Sean has an ability (to find) the strengths of his players.

"He made me a star, basically, by saying, 'Don't put Tiki between the tackles. Let's do some misdirection so he can get outside and trick some people.' With Jeremy, it's, 'What's he good at? He's fast, so he's a mismatch for a linebacker. He's strong and big, so he's a mismatch for a safety. So let's put him in the slot and let him run some routes every now and then.' He thrived in (Payton's) offense.

Continue reading "Tiki, Cris and The Coach evaluate Saints' Shockey trade" »

HOLLYWOOD -- As Barack Obama prepares to become the first African-American to become his party's presidential nominee, it may seem a bit odd that he is neither the inspiration for the documentary "Black in America" airing on CNN this week, nor is he much of a character in either of the two two-hour installments.

"Actually, Obama is really not part of this documentary at all," said Mark Nelson, president of CNN Productions, during a recent panel interview at the July Television Critics Association TV Tour. "We're not talking about politics and the next President of the United States. We're talking about issues that are affecting lives, whether it be health-care disparity, education, keeping the family together, things like that.

"We made a conscious decision really not to deal with Obama in that sense. He's probably in our documentary maybe 20-30 seconds, where he is talking about where he came from, that he is the son of a black man from Africa and a white woman from Kansas and he has a wife and he has two children and that's who he is."

Continue reading "CNN two-night documentary an unflinching look at being black in America" »

So many seminars, so little time. So many sips, so little capacity.

Those were the problems covering Tales of the Cocktail, where more than 75 events meant tough choices had to be made. In the end, I changed my strategy from last year, and got more out of the seminars by staying put instead of flitting from one to the other. I also visited tasting rooms and went to parties, where locals turned out in force. I kept up with other events by reading www.talesblog.com, where more than 30 cocktail bloggers compiled their impressions.

The most hilarious seminar I saw was Saturday morning's "Potions of the Caribbean: Lost Cocktails from the Post-War Playground." Marleigh Riggins, who writes the blog SLOSHED, wrote that the seminar had "the single best PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen and we learned about the rather dubious ways that sailors acquired rum on the high seas (it involves pickled dead monkeys); the very storied role that Cuba played not only in classic but in tiki cocktails; the flavor profiles native to various Caribbean Islands; and tasted four great drinks."

Continue reading "Mastering Tales of the Cocktail with a clear head" »