New Orleans art museums have cool hot deal

It's sweltering in the Deep South right now but all that heat comes with a perk – at least one in New Orleans. If temperatures hit 95 degrees or higher, the Helis Foundation and FOX8 will pay for your chance to visit three cool — literally — museums in New Orleans. Called "Art and A/C," the program does have a few requirements:

1. It must be at or above 95 degrees
2. It's open only to Louisiana residents and residents of Hancock and Pearl counties in Mississippi.
3. You must prove residence of those places with an ID.
4. It's available only at the Odgen Museum of Southern Art, the Contemporary Arts Center and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

To gauge the outside temperature to see if this free tickets to cool museums apply, visit the FOX8 Live weather page or visit the New Orleans Museum of Art's Facebook page.

Chere Coen is a food and travel writer who loves weird and unusual things.

Drink a bit of Hoodoo at Jackson's Cathead

The South is often a dichotomy, or as Jimmy Buffett once said, there's "a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning."

Take Mississippi and alcohol. Mississippi has long been known as a state not quick to legalize its spirits. It was the last state to repeal prohibition — in 1966! But now, there are plenty of craft breweries popping up all over the Magnolia State, and its first distillery, Cathead, produces a chicory liqueur called Hoodoo.

"The name Hoodoo pays homage the black magic and mysticism brought to the Southern United States by immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean," the distillery claims on its website. "Elements of the Hoodoo tradition are deeply embedded in Southern culture, especially blues music."

Original Hoodoo bottle

Makes sense for a distillery named for the Mississippi compliment given by blues musicians to artists they respected. At least that's what the owners claim. (We always thought of catheads as biscuits, but what do we know?)

"Mississippi artists and musicians went on to use 'Catheads' in many forms of folk art, as a way to pay the rent and share their legacies," the website reports.

Visit Cathead Distillery in Jackson and learn more about the company's vodka, including its flavored varieties: honeysuckle and pecan. Cathead also produces a moonshine and two types of gin. Most of the ingredients used in their spirits are acquired locally, including the pecans that are left to seep into the vodka and then tossed to very lucky Mississippi pigs. 

But back to that delicious Hoodoo. The original bottle was long and sleep with original artwork as its label, including a very cool red gris gris bad above the musician's head (see photo left, above). The bottle was too cumbersome for bartenders, our tour guide informed us, so they moved the spirit to a more pourable container. 

Tours are offered at the top of the hour 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays and 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays. The cost is $10 but that includes four tastings at the Cathead Bar and a take-home shot glass, not to mention the popular Cathead sticker ("Cathead Vodka, Support Live Music") that are seen on cars across the Deep South. The enormous space is also open as a bar with lots of fun games to enjoy, plus the distillery hosts private events and public ones, such as the Sept. 16, 2017, Cathead Oktoberfest.

Chere Coen is a food and travel writer who loves a good bottle of Southern spirits.

Films to get you in the mood for the total eclipse

Little Shop of Horrors

The Total Solar Eclipse will be Monday (Aug. 21, 2017), darkening the skies from Oregon to South Carolina. And if you aren't lucky enough to be in the path of totality, you can still spot the eclipse in partial form throughout the United States.

But don't wait until Monday to get in the mood. Here's a fun list of movies to watch that include a total eclipse.

1. Little Shop of Horrors. This 1986 musical horror comedy directed by Frank Oz (think Miss Piggy) is a film adaptation of the off-Broadway musical comedy by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (think Disney) based on the low-budget 1960 film of the same name, directed by Roger Corman (think "The Pope of Pop Cinema"). The 1986 film stars Rick Moranis as a nerdy shopkeeper who discovers an unusual plant during a total eclipse and begins raising the plant that ends up feasting on human blood. Other stars include Ellen Greene, Steve Martin, Christopher Guest and Bill Murray. Here's the fun scene in which the eclipse appears.

2. Delores Claiborne. This 1995 thriller based on a Stephen King novel stars Kathy Bates as a wife who's abused by husband David Strathairn. The film revolves around her daughter, who reluctantly returns to a New England island to clear Delores (Bates) from the charges of killing her employer. But then there's that time when Delores really did something bad during a solar eclipse. Left: That's Kathy Bates watching her drunk husband attempt to watch the eclipse. If you want to see the part with the eclipse, click here. But be warned, it spoils the film.

3. Ladyhawke. Matthew Broderick stars as Philippe Gaston, known as "The Mouse," who meets Captain Etienne of Navarre who has been separated from his love, Isabeau, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. They have been cursed and Navarre takes the form of a wolf by night and Isabeau a hawk by day so that they can never be together except for a brief moment at dusk and dawn. Only during an eclipse will spell be broken. See the trailer here.

4. Apocalypto. This pre-Columbian film set in the Yucatan and Guatemala around 1511 is directed and produced by Mel Gibson and told entirely through the Yucatec Maya language. The main character is captured and brought to a high Mayan city to be sacrificed but a solar eclipse and the superstitions surrounding it save him. See that scene here.

5. Pitch Black. I have not seen this film but had to include it after hearing the premise on NPR. Here's the description from IMDb: "A commercial transport ship and its crew are marooned on a planet full of bloodthirsty creatures that only come out to feast at night. But then, they learn that a month-long eclipse is about to occur." Leave the lights on for this one. Here's a scene that will give you the creeps.

Want more? The NPR podcast I mentioned deals with hot eclipses that are used in movies to denote plot changes. Hear "In Movies, a Solar Eclipses Means Change is Coming," here.

Cheré Coen is a food and travel writer who loves the weird and unusual, including in films.

Flying Violins, ladybugs and Cajun culture in hubcaps: the Robert Dafford murals of Lafayette, Louisiana

Flying Violins

Robert Dafford is a legend in Lafayette, Louisiana, a muralist who has traveled the world creating hundreds of pieces of public art in magnificent ways. Walk around downtown Lafayette and you’ll see his paintings everywhere.

Take the “Flying Violins.” I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dafford for a DeSoto magazine feature (on Southern murals, coming up in October) and learned how he came to paint this mural I have walked past for years. In 1988, before the spring’s annual Festival International de Louisiane, in which musicians from all over the Francophone world — including Louisiana — visit Lafayette for several days of fun, Dafford was asked to paint a side of a downtown building. He chose to paint violins emerging from a swamp scene.

Till All That's Left is a Postcard

“I conceived it as a symbol of Cajun music leaving the swamps and flying out into the world,” Dafford said.

The mural represents the universality of music, an art form that pushes past the barriers of politics, language, and business, Dafford explained.

Other “Flying Violins” murals have been painted in sisters cities in France, Canada, Belgium and England, and several more are planned.

Other Dafford murals in Lafayette include:

 

Till All That's Left is a Postcard

“Til All That’s Left is a Postcard” -  Corner of Jefferson Street and Garfield in downtown Lafayette.

Dafford’s vibrant mural includes birds, dragonflies and other creatures escaping the Atchafalaya Basin from the encroachment of development. He painted this mural in the 1980s when people talked of developing Louisiana’s massive river drainage swamp that’s home to numerous wildlife.

Ex-Garage

“Ex-Garage” – Corner of Jefferson Street and E. Vermilion in downtown Lafayette.

This mural on the side of Jefferson Towers reflects what used to be in this spot, a parking garage. Dafford pays homage to those old cars but paints local chefs, musicians and other “Cajun characters” into the bumpers and hubcaps.

“Stereo Prairie” – 201 E. Congress St. 
This mural decorates the side of the Children’s Museum of Acadiana and includes other artists Herb Roe, Sherrie Bennet and Chris Confor.

The most recent Dafford mural to Lafayette graces City Hall (705 W. University), which used to be a Sears Department building. Like most of Dafford’s murals, the series of paintings tells the story of Lafayette’s origins and the people who called Acadiana home, including French, Spanish, African and Native Americans.

“We have international roots,” Dafford explained, adding that today’s city attracts and honors international partners. “Lafayette has always been and will always be international in its intentions, aims and goals.”

Want to know more? Check out “The Public Art of Robert Dafford,” written by and illustrated by Philip Gould, published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.

Cheré Coen is a food and travel writer who loves public art that tells a story.