NEW ORLEANS I

Finally sifted through all the pics from New Orleans.

A lot of these photos are mine but some are Ryan's - not like you care but I promised him a photo credit.

Weather the first day was nuts. We drove out to this place called Middendorf's which is right on the water. With the wind chill it was freezing. I'm not really cut out for freezing.




Went to see Jason Marsalis and his boys play some jazz at Snug Harbor.




People down there are serious about sports, like extra serious. Everyone was wearing Saints shirts. In fact someone told us that after they won the Super Bowl, a lot of people took 2 weeks off of work to celebrate.




This is Mister Larry (that's how they refer to everyone in the South). Anyway, he took care of us and showed us around while we stayed down there.


Mister Larry owns a giant Drapery empire. This is a shot of us touring his warehouse.




People eat these crawfish all the time. Not Matt and I, but other weird seafood eating people.




The legendary Camellia Grill. Good spot for lunch.


Had an hour to kill before dinner one night. Decided to play some craps. In Vegas we call Ryan "GoldenArm". Here are 1,500 reasons why.


Dinner at Mother's. Best baked ham in the world. So says the sign out front, Joe Montana, Johnnie Cochran and The Crocodile Hunter.


And finally, handling some business back at the mobile office.

GOING BACK TO CALI

THURSDAY


Matt, Ryan and I woke up at 4AM and flew back home.

Landed at LAX around 9 and drove back to Newport. Dropped some stuff off at my place and then headed straight to Chipotle.


Went by Paper Source at South Coast Plaza to pick up a couple things for work.


Then we printed a few million things over at Kinko's.


Grabbed some equipment from Samy's.

Around 4PM we drove back through LA traffic up to the Burbank Marriott.


We shot a video for Iron Horse Jeans inside the hotel.

Wrapped the shoot around 7, then drove back to downtown.


Hit up the ID Agency Open House. We used to have an office with these guys in Long Beach. It was good to see all the old crew and their new place. Plus we ran into our boy Matt from Rogue Status.


Went back through Studio City, picked up some takeout on Ventura Blvd. and crashed back at the Marriott around midnight. All in all it felt like a pretty productive 18-hour day.

FRIDAY

Woke up early and went out and worked at an event with Iron Horse all day.


Hung out with Matt Leinart,...


... Scott Baio,...


... and Tamra from The Real Housewives of Orange County amongst a few others.


Afterwards we grabbed dinner at that new Culver City BJ's and unfortunately caught the Thunder's dismantling of the Lakers.

FLICKS

Few random shots from the past couple days.









Weather and food were good. Flying home in a few hours and we have a million things to do in the next 2 days.

Don't worry, we'll catch some sleep on the plane.

BAYOU

Getting a few things done down south this week.

Searched for gators all day today. No such luck.

Besides that, a lot of jazz, crawdads, king cake, street cars, po' boys, gumbo, turtle soup, sno balls, beads and beignets.

Tomorrow Lebron's coming to town and then we fly home Thursday at dawn.

More photos to come - stay tuned.

LAX/MSY

Packed for the trip this morning.



Picked up REWORK yesterday. This is the new 37signals book about productivity, business philosophy and the future of the world as we know it.

Caught both the Villanova and Rafael Nadal upsets on TV. Wasn't too upset about either one.

Then Matt and Ryan drove up from San Diego and met me at my place.



Grabbed some gelato at Fashion Island.



Departed from LAX. Matt and I took care of some business on the plane - then I slept for a couple hours.



Woke up in New Orleans. Beignets from Morning Call.

MADNESS

Let me be honest - I don't even watch much college ball.

But of course I filled out a bracket - because, let's face it, gambling (on random things none of us know anything about) is America's favorite pastime.

Photos via ESPN


So I was trying to get some work done this morning but then the Robert Morris/Villanova game went to OT and started to get ridiculous so I had catch the ending. RMU played pretty much out of their mind until the final play. I still don't understand how they failed to get a decent look at the buzzer but Nova really lucked out there.



Then a couple hours later this guy from Murray State put a dagger through Vanderbilt.



It's this type of unpredictable game ending drama that makes the tournament so undeniably compelling. I can see why "experts" estimate that March Madness costs the US economy $1.8 billion in lost productivity.



Anyway, at least my boys in Kentucky handled their business tonight. UNC didn't even make the tourney this year so I had to pick a new squad to pretend to follow.



It's crazy because these guys are now scheduled to play Wake Forest in New Orleans on Saturday night but I don't think Matt and I can catch it because our flight comes in too late. Such poor planning - believe me, this is the last time I let Matt book the airline tickets.

INDIAN WELLS

So I went out to Palm Springs for the weekend to watch some tennis.

Actually I went out there on Friday and took most of the day off work but don't tell Matt. So anyway, Friday night they had that charity match for Haiti when Agassi and Sampras got into it but my boy Robert and I missed it because we were hanging out back at the hotel and casino.

Saturday morning we woke up and made a few calls looking for tickets. This was the first weekend of the tournament and somehow it inexplicably sold out. Tennis, as I'm sure you know, is not at all popular so I'm not sure how that happened but the criminals on Craigslist were asking $100 for nosebleed seats to Saturday's day session.

We decided to head out to the stadium without tickets, or a plan, and I figured we would work something out somehow. Then we hopped in the hotel elevator and met Mike.



Mike's a season ticket holder from San Diego. We chatted for a minute and he offered to get us into the event.

So we skipped breakfast and followed him over to the stadium. Robert had all these samples from last week's Anaheim Health Food Expo so we ate a bunch of random antioxidant Acai chews and such for breakfast on the car ride over.


Ok, the gummy worms did not come from the Health Food Expo - I bought those myself from AM/PM

So we get to the venue and the surprise that Mike failed to mention was that he happens to own the best seats in the stadium.


Front row, inside the coach's box.

Svetlana Kuznetsova's mom was sitting in the row behind us screaming at her in Russian the entire match.



Anyway, around midday the moron tournament directors scheduled the Andy Roddick/James Blake vs. Andy Murray/Some Other Guy doubles match on one of the smaller, outer auxiliary courts.



All seating on these outer courts is unreserved and they only hold a fraction of the people that the main stadium court can. We waited almost an hour to get seats and there were thousands who didn't get in at all, including this Sports Illustrated supermodel chick.



Anyway, good match though. Roddick and Blake took it in straight sets. Then we headed back over to Stadium court to catch Rafael Nadal.



Sitting that close and watching someone like Nadal was insane. It was really an unbelievable experience, and it was so much better because it was a gift from this random stranger who decided to take care of us like his own family. Of course we offered him cash and to buy him food and everything - but he wouldn't accept it. And in fact, he not only got us in for the day session, but he gave us sunscreen and blankets and when he left after the Nadal match he handed us his tickets to the Saturday night session as well.





As you can see, we sat a few seats down from all these guys in Rafa's camp. The one on the end is Uncle Toni of course. My favorite part was in between points when Rafa would glance at his box and I would yell out my own coaching tips to him. I think it would've been more effective had my Spanish been less rusty.



You're sitting so close that you feel like you can literally call the lines just as well, or perhaps even better, than the linespeople. I was secretly hoping to catch one of them slipping and yell out my own call or advise Rafa about a potential lines call challenge but the opportunity never really presented itself.


Look how snuggly Robert looks. I'm not really going to criticize him too much - it got windy and we ended up sharing that blanket for longer than I'd like to admit.



Anyway, we ended up deciding to duck out before Djokavic played in the night session. So on our way out, we climbed to the top of the stadium and gave Mike's tickets to this mother and son who were freezing up in the 500-level bleachers. The gesture felt really good - especially since the alternative we considered at the time was to scalp them outside the box office and make $500 cash - but in hindsight it's abundantly clear that we made the right choice.