The Coalition of the Swilling

Damn. What a mess.

But the hotel rooms derserve it. Those whores.

They really are. Charging money to sleep with them. Disgusting, really.

And you never know who was sleeping there before you.

You guys could always go to the hotels that charge by the hour. I don't know that they're much cleaner (Never been in one) but you can at least see who was there before you. That is...............if you really want to know.

You hope they were only sleeping, Cullen.

I have fond memories of an hourly-rate hotel. There is (or was, it's been nearly 13 years) a hotel in the French Quarter called La Del Motel (You have no idea how much time we spent drunkenly laughing at The The Of Motel). There rooms were big flats with two beds and a couch. They charged hourly, daily and weekly rates -- very, very cheap.

Anyway, it was a place me and several friends got together at one summer and spent a lot of time in the Quarter getting drunk and watching drug deals going on from the balcony of our motel room. Good times.

I miss the French Quarter on my youth, Cullen. It smelled better. There was also no flashing, no open drug dealing, no open solicitation, no ticky tacky merchants, and very little crime. There was good old drunkenness and debauchery, for sure, but you had to go inside one of the establishments to see and partake of it.

It's odd, Rob, how we have snapshots of what a place should be like based entirely on our interpretations of what it was like when we were there.

For instance, I grew up all over, my dad being active Air Force, but we spent two tours (with a 1 1/2 year split) in Biloxi, MS. During the last tour I graduated high school and started my way tenatively into the low-end of the work force.

I made my way not-so-tenatively into the French Quarter about every other weekend.

So, my point of view is from that time. There was open flashing, but only during Mardis Gras or Halloween. Now, at least pre-Katrina, I understand that any given night it's like that. Also, drug dealing was rampant, but you had to be quite a few streets off the beaten path to find it.

Small world, Cullen. My Minnesota cousin spent 2 years at Keesler. He's three years older than me so this had to be 1973 or thereabouts. He spent a good deal of time down there, too. Boys in uniform were royalty.

Did he train there? That would have been about the time my dad was going there. By the time I was in the picture, significantly anyway, our tours there were from 1986-1989 and 1991-1994. So, my perspective on the Quarter is from the early '90s. But that was, in my mind, a renaissance of sorts for New Orleans seeing some of the largest Jazz Fest crowds in years and with the emerging popularity of Harry Connick, Jr.

Not at all, hijacker! You mentioned "train" in your comment, which hearkens back to the very title of the thread!

I don't think he trained there, Cullen. I think he trained in Denver but I might be mistaken about that. It was a long time ago and I wasn't keeping up with all of my cousins then.

Back on the track, people!

John Daly is so gross, y'all. While I do admire his tweaking of the oh-so-uppity golf estab (you just KNOW he grinds out his butts before each tee-off), I met him once at a benefit and he is a total lech. Stared at my cleavage the whole time I was talking to him; I was getting an autograph FOR MY HUSBAND good god. My friend Renee (who's single) said he hit on her the whole night, following her around like a hugemongous blonde cloud of smoke and Jack Daniels vapors.

Yes, a lech. He couldn't have just signed the darn autograph and stared at your cleavage when you weren't looking like the rest of us do.

I don't know who John Daly is, but it sounds like his money is going to a place more deserving. Let's hope it gets there faster.