Everything I Need to Know About Life I Can Learn From Four Days in South Louisiana

1. Contrary to popular belief, six year old children are actually quite capable of deftly maneuvering gallon jugs of J&B and, because of that, make most excellent bartenders. What's even better is, they'll never cut you off. Louisianans really understand the value of giving a child a job.

2. If you happen to find yourself at the bleak outer reaches of New Orleans, say, somewhere at or near a Comfort Inn on the corner of Idaho Avenue and Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Kenner, never fear. You are in actuality only about five minutes and a $4.78 cab ride from a night of merriment, courtesy one fully operational Daiquiri Chef and, another block down the street, the venerable Harbor Seafood and Oyster Bar, where six bucks and a little bit of patience will earn you one dozen of the plumpest, juiciest mollusk critters known to man. So I ate about sixty bazillion.

3. Don't bother buying cookbooks. Make sufficient rounds to friends and family and eventually you'll score enough recipes to ensure the luggage handlers at the Southwest ticket counter a hernia all over again. Moi, I came back with a few good ones. Like my mother-in-law's swear-to-Gawd, 100 percent fool proof, money back guaranteed microwave praline recipe. I know, huh? Microwaved pralines? But I couldn't tell the difference. And since I loves me some pralines something fierce but have to be in just the right mood to make them by scratch (i.e., stone cold sober and paying military precision-like attention to what I'm doing) I will definitely be making up a batch of these in the near future and posting the results on da baking blob. Just as soon as I run these extra ten bazillion pounds off Moi's ass.

4. Speaking of which. You know how nobody walks in El Lay? Well, no body runs in South Louisiana. At least not on purpose. Even though they're situated at sea level, a condition guaranteed to shave at least 34.75 seconds off whatever per mile time marks your usual trudge and, if employed as a regular method of exercise, allow one (Moi) the ability to ingest an extra couple slices of pecan pie after each meal with hardly any caloric gain. But no. I guess these people figure they get all the cardiovascular benefit they need lifting the following: Beer bottles. Forks. Guns.

(Oh, and for anyone who's wondering: eight days later and da dawg still stinks.)