This place is the birthp(a)lace of Cajun cooking, which makes
Chef K-Paul the Homer of New Orleans cuisine.
K is the initial of his wife, who passed away 11 years ago.
She used to run the floor here. Since her passing, Chef K-Paul
has spent less time in the kitchen, and more on tour.
Sheila, Jennifer, Chris, and Nicki, who brought the bread, served
us.
The Caesar's is disappointing. The romaine has been soaked too
long. The dressing is on the sweet side, which is unusual.
The turtle soup is tasty, but we are concerned that the snapping
turtle is an endangered species. Still, if Suttree eats turtle
soup, then so too should Spineless Books.
Rob Swigart was born in Cincinnati. He remained there until
he had finished his undergraduate degree, working for the Cincinnati
Inquirer.
Dirk explains the Cincinnati cow: one of the most refreshing
and unusual news stories of 2002.
SPCA is 24 years old. Dirk teaches there. Rob's mother used
to be on the board there. Lorien applied there, but moved to Cincinnati.
Rob used to live at 1001 Celestial Street in Cincinnati.
Swigart met William Burroughs at a conference in 1981 put on
by psychotic Italians.
He was invited on the basis of Little America.
Filets are served. The Debris Sauce is aromatic.
The board unanimously approved William's unwritten business
plan. As is. Without amendments. Or codicils.
Both an oxymoron and a dinosaur. (Perseverance. That's the name
of the press.) When you marry an oxymoron and a dinosaur you get
a curmudgeon.
Rob's hotel room in New Orleans was a "dump." The
hallway ceilings on the way to said dump were so low you wondered
how you got trapped in a submarine designed by a dwarf. Or for
a dwarf.
Much discussion ensued about the size of William's HP Jornada
keyboard upon which these minutes were recorded. Rob made the
universal "It is to vomit" hand signal when the Windows
CE OS was mentioned.
The secretary in no way vouches for the veracity of these minutes.
There is much that has not been recorded.
What do you get when you cross a Unitarian and a Jehovah's Witness?
Someone who knocks on your door but doesn't know why.
This was the joke that officially closed the first official
board meeting of Spineless Books. The appropriateness of this
should be apparent to all. Just substitute Spineless Books in
the place of the person answering the door.
Have you thought about grants?
I've thought about grants a lot, said William.
Problem solved, declares Rob. Next?
I used to be a poet, he admits.
Everyone "used" to be a poet. Those who remain poets,
those who continue to admit they're poets, those are the ones
I admire. When did being a poet become the writerly equivalent
of wearing diapers? I used to have no control over my bowels and
large people had to clean my nether regions. Now I write fiction.
Rob Swigart is, we decided, president, or CFO (Chief Figurehead
Officer), or, better yet MFO (Mere Figurehead Officer)
For the record, at 10:07 CST on March 7, 2002, it was determined
that "Spineless Books rules."
Respectfully submitted,
Dirk Stratton
Secretary
Treasurer's
Addendum:
New Orleans. We chose this city, and the restaurant in particular,
because we believe this is the wellspring of jazz and by extension
Twentieth-Centurylate Twentieth Centuryliterature.
The French Quarter is almost the anti-Manhattan in its lack of
pretense of sophistication. This is not an island, this is the
mouth of a dirty river vomiting up Mississippi silt. A party town.
Upon a sturdy cement foundation of working class Americans a gaudy
balsawood mansion of tourism is erected and destroyed each week.
Jackson Square"the nicest public space in America"is
surrounded by a ring of ad-hoc bluesicians, silver spray-painted
men pantomiming robots for change, jaded and cynical palm readers,
and deadbeats. Tourists outnumber the citizens two to one every
month.
And so I proposed Spineless Books' next major literary undertaking:
Invisible New Orleans. Spineless Books representatives would spread
throughout the French Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods and
give to panhandlers and street performers and merchants dollar
bills stapled to notes reading:
"INVISIBLE NEW ORLEANS. Accept this bill as a commission
and advance against future royalties and compose a poem to appear
in the collection Invisible New Orleans. Mail it to Spineless
Books."
Where can we get funding for this project? Say travel expenses
and $100. ...In ones?
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