Last Sunday around 9 am, I got a phone call from Melusine and the Marquis, who were in the midst of what sounded like a fine drunken morning frolic. (They're in New Orleans; I'm in San Francisco.)

Apparently, from what I gathered in between slurred boisterous cackling from Melusine and insistent queries about whether I knew any details about Lady Miss Kier's demise from the Marquis, the Marquis had just been finishing off his graveyard shift as bartender at the Hideout on Decatur when Melusine came in and ordered a sidecar. Well, after Melusine had imbibed three sidecars and the Marquis had imbibed who-knows-what, Melusine and he decided to call up everyone they knew to inquire about Lady Miss Kier.

Now I, ignorant of certain music trivia, had no idea who Lady Miss Kier was. I was informed forthwith she was the singer for Deee-Lite. "Oh, yeah, Deee-Lite. I know who that is. Haven't a clue about your singer, though. Never knew what the singer's name was before," I replied. "Enjoying a nice post-Isidore Sunday morning, are we?"

That they were.

I talked to them for quite a while until Melusine realized she was too drunk to talk anymore and hung up. Melusine likes to call me from her cell phone when she's in bars. This can be most fun. She does not make a habit of frequenting the bars that early in the morning, let me add, but -- hey -- it's been a weird couple of weeks there -- what with hurricanes/tropical storms Isidore and Lili having contemplated visiting their city and all...... so, I guess, it tends to really skew one's routine.

About an hour after that phone call, the phone rang again. It was a collect call from the New Orleans jail, where Sami is currently residing for a wee spell. Sami is a friend of the Marquis' and Melusine's whom I met and befriended on my last visit there.

He happened to mention that he'd just heard Florence Henderson had died.

"You're kidding? I hadn't heard about that," said I.

After we hung up, I looked online at the Reuters and AP feeds to see if there was news or some details on that. Never found any. Just some very strange jailhouse rumor?

Is this what they do in New Orleans in between hurricane warnings? Contemplate celebrity demises?

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A few days before that, when I was grocery shopping, I bought a pound of crawfish (they were pre-cooked. frozen, and thawed -- as that's usually the only way we get 'em out here). They don't usually have 'em and the price was good. I told the fishmonger I was buying 'em in honor of Isidore the Hurricane (as the day I bought them was the day it was supposed to hit land somewhere).

Just as I was finished cooking 'em for Laszlo and I, Ferret showed up on my doorstep and the sight of them scared him away after he scrounged my cigarettes and used my phone. I enjoyed scaring him with my swamp bugs (Procambarus clarkii).

As I sat down to eat my lunch, I turned on "In Search Of ..." and the episode was one about swamp monsters in Louisiana bayous.

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Enough with the synchronicity from down south already.

It makes it almost seem like all of this must connect somehow, but damned if I know how it does.

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