Tulane Tailgating Season May Commence

Come Aboard, We're Expecting You.....

Don't you worry cyberfans!  Mrs. Hullabaloo has got this Isaac thing all under control.

So today Coach Hullabaloo boarded up the house and I went to my office to pack and raise things  up. A vertical evacuation of my wares, if you will.  Athletics dispatched the Greenwave Football team to Birmingham so that they can continue practice before Rutgers.  I kind of think that was a dumb move to exhaust the team by trapsing about the countryside and driving back through a tropical storm. But nobody asked me my opinion.

Anyways, I had so many pressing items on my checklist to tend to to prepare for the approaching hurricane. Starting with this...

Putting decals on new serving pieces.  Too cute, right?  I found the blue bucket at Homeport in Burlington, Vermont.  And I think I picked up the white utensil caddy at Target....

and then I completed this....

Updated floral arrangement (which, I'm thinking I might add some cute penants or something to give it more height). I do love this vase so.  I comissioned it from Cindy who runs a traveling monogram tchotckie business at the wholesale gift shows.

Yes, these projects were dire. I couldn't just leave them unattended.  Tailgating starts in less than 5 days.

Hurricane Schmurricane!

Tablescaping for Football Season

I would love to post more pictures from our tea to show you all the fabulous tablescaping we did, but I am waiting for the Tulane photographer to finally release all of the images. So in the meatime I'll post some pictures of cute things I have been inspired by this pre-season. This cookie bouquet featured here, was lovingly commissioned and purchased by Preacherman's wife for our tea.  All the TU sports are represented, it was the cutest thing.

Great News! Coach Hullabaloo and I FINALLY got our season tickets.
 

Better late than never ya know.  It's not like Tulane Football season could like actually begin without us.

Of course, nothing can ever happen in my life without an appropriate dose of drama.  And yes, it took a childsized temper tantrum from me to get what I wanted, ha!  I wonder if I should go park myself in a certain office at Gibson Hall and have another throwdown tantrum and see what happens? 

My friend, whom I'll refer to as Ace's Mom, is involved with another very lovely organization at Tulane that has to have their guest lists reviewed by Gibson Hall.  Of course, their events are held at the exquisite Zemurray Mansion in the gated Audubon Place donated to Tulane for the use by the president of our fine institution. So you don't want unsavory elements being given open access to the most prestigious addresses in all of New Orleans.  But I wonder if Gibson Hall actually knows who I am and that I spout off on this blog the way I do.  Cause when I found out that their guest lists were reviewed, I was amazed I was ever let in over there!  Me, who called out Schott Cowen for attempting to feed us fuzzy math at the Newcomb Alumnae Board meeting in January 2006. (yes indeed, and he even asked me if I was insinuating that he was a liar. well, yeah, I was. but whatever, we're finally getting an OCS so I'm over it.)

Anyways, back to my story: what happened was that we, Coach and Mrs. Hullabaloo, received this in the mail initially.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can imagine my reaction.  Here I had been watching all my twitter and facebook friends post lovely pictures of their season tickets full of envy that they got theirs first.  I'd run home every afternoon to check our mail only to be disappointed and wonder where the hell mine were and what was taking so dern long.  Then I get a text from Coach Hullabaloo with the picture of the plain tickets.  Son of a Biscut(!) did I fly off the handle.

So Coach and I both whined like whiny babies to Justin at the ticket office and after at first offering a consolation pair of the pretty season ticketholder sheets, but blank, he changed his mind and offered to reprint ours from scratch. I would think so, ya know.  Don't want me bitching about the egregiousness of this situation on my blog or something.

So y'all - 12 days and counting!  Tulane Tailgating season begins!! Hoo-ray Hoo-ray Varsa Varsa tee-ay!

And y'all, Nell found these perfect TU inspired plates at Sam's!

Listen, men have their fantasy football leagues and whatnot and we women fans worry about the tailgating nest looking fabulous. Because men think that parties just spontaneously happen because thinking about and planning details makes their brains hurt.  But honestly, I just can not understand those random women who find football season annoying or who don't understand what is going on in the game.  What is wrong with your DNA woman?!! 4 chances to complete 10 yards! Air game or Ground Game! First Down means you Move the Chains! So with that I bring you some of my offseason inspiration. and some delicious recipes that I can't wait to have.

Cuteness from an Ole Miss function attended by my adorable friend Miss Glitter, which served as inspiration for our football tea.

Which speaking of Ole Miss, I have quite the quandry: traditional banana pudding which is always delicious or Nutter Butter banana pudding? Lawd have mercy, how genius was this idea?!

NUTTER BUTTER BANANA PUDDING
straight from Southern Living

3 cups milk
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 medium-size ripe bananas
1 (1-lb.) package of nutter butters or peanut butter sandwich cookies
2 cups sweetened whipped cream
Garnishes: crumbled nutter butters, dried banana chips, fresh mint sprigs, caramel

Whisk together the milk, eggs, sugar and flour in a large saucepan on the stove to make pudding. Med-low heat.  We don't want burnt pudding now. Whisk that sucker for 15 to 20 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in butter and vanilla until butter is melted and combined.  Put the saucepan on ice to cool.  Pay attention to it every once in a while and stir it until the pudding is chilled throughout.

Take your serving dish and make alternate layers of pudding, bananas, nutter butters with the final layer being pudding. And then top this mound of magnificence with whipped cream. Possibly drizzle with caramel if you want to really sprout some horns.  Before serving sprinkle the top with crumbled nutter butters, dried banana chips and fresh mint sprigs.

At homecoming last year, Preacherman brought the most awesome banana pudding in the history of the world.  It was sooo good y'all I wanted to scream.  Here's the recipe:

PREACHERMAN'S NANER PUDDING

30 Vanilla Wafers
3 Ripe Bananas
Vanilla Pudding (below)
Whipped Cream (below)

Alternate layers of pudding like making a pudding lasagne.

Vanilla Puddding ingredients
1/3 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a saucepan, combine the sugar, corn starch and salt. Add milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until mixture thickens. Add vanilla and continue to cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

Whipped Cream ingredients
1 cup heavy whipping cream
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract  (knowing Booty Judy, she might suggest spiking this with banana liqueur! hmmmm....not a bad idea.... )

Chill a small mixing bowl and your mixing beaters by putting them in the fridge till cold. and y'all this was no average banana pudding, so you must follow every step of this copiously. With your chilled beaters and bowl, beat the whipping cream until it just begins to thicken slightly.  Don't mix too much because it will turn to butter as has happened to me on many ocassions. Fold in confectioners' sugar and vanilla; Mix until soft peaks form.

Another cute tablescape from the Fresh Chicks Design blog....

So how cute is this superbowl placesetting and tablescape from Denise over at So Many Tables?

She's got some other major cuteness there too, so I added her to my blog roll.  I will totally need to give her honorary Southern-ness for her clever and adorable themed tablescaping.

Also, just LOVED, loved this place setting from A Big Story blog.  Seriously, why can't I find some of these cute things at the dollar store when I go?

BROCCOLI AND GRAPE PASTA SALAD for the ECU game
adjusted from Southern Living

1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
half of a 16oz  package bowtie pasta
1 pound fresh broccoli
1 cup mayonnaise
third cuppa sugar
third cuppa diced red onion
third cuppa red wine vinegar
salt n peppa
2 cups seedless red grapes, halved
8 cooked turkey bacon slices, crumbled
maybe some chopped green onions and some shredded carrot if you want
perhaps some crumbled blue cheese might be fun here too

Toast your pecans using the method of your preference (oven or stove).  Keep an eye on them, or you can run the risk of burning them like I have been known to do.

This nex step is also real hard: prepare pasta according to package directions.  While your pasta's a'boilin, chop up your broccoli, separating the florets from the stems.  chop up the stems as finely as you can, and chop the florets into small pieces too. Or if you are lazy and impatient like I am - toss the broccoli into a food processor and be done with it.

Next up, whisk together the mayo, sugar, vinegar, salt n peppa.  If you are super pressed for time or just want to do a semi-home made thing, I think you could probably use poppy seed dressing or marzetti's coleslaw dressing just the same.  Add broccoli, hot cooked pasta, and grapes, and stir with dressing to coat. Cover and chill, about 3 hours. Add crumbled bacon and pecans just before serving.

The Karma of a Football Fan

So just wouldn’t you know it!?

Last week Mrs. Hullabaloo and some awesome Tulane fan-ettes got together and put us together a rockin’ afternoon tea to welcome the wives of the new football staff to New Orleans.

I’ll post more pictures soon, I promise!

It was an absolutely dee-lightful afternoon, a “great success”, with much merriment enjoyed by all.  Funnily, one of the wives mentioned that she knew when she walked in that she would just loooove us because we served Sweet Tea Vodka right alongside actual Earl Grey tea.  We love traditions and all here, but who doesn’t want to kick things up a notch?

I loved, loved meeting all of the wives, but wouldn’t ya know that I particularly enjoyed having the pleasure of meeting the daughter-in-law/wife of a coaching family I had mentally and in writing ripped to shreds for embarrassing us. And whose husband I have held minimal expectations in potentially leading us out of our Football Egypt.  I completely admit that I have prematurely arrived at this infantile opinion, without actually knowing a thing about his coaching philosphy, his body of work and based solely on where his stops have been prior to Tulane.

Anyways, I was all prepared to have this preconception of her based solely on marital affiliation, but she was simply just the awesomest, and genuinely seemed like someone that I would befriend immediately in real life.

Sigh, just my karma!

So I stand (or write ...oh, whatever) before you as a fallible human being with opinions who may be proved wrong, incomplete, controversial, what have you.  There. I have heaved this boulder off of my chest.

What’s more: in addition to having this karmic intervention, G-d also sent down another calamity to offset the loss (sniff! There just aren't enough tissues for my purple and gold tears!) of TAFKATHB. TAFKATHB?  The Athlete Formerly Known As The Honey Badger. He’s unfortunately got all up in the weeds ya know. har har!

Lawd, I just laughed and laughed in the Clearview Bed, Bath and Beyond last week.  Now stuck with all their displays of skunk pillows, skunk decor and skunk plastic crap from China.  Talk about one upping Les Miles’ grass eatin’ ways.  Peggy even came up with the most hilarious and clever of all retorts on TAFKATHB if there ever was one:  Cause Honey Badger TOKES What He Wants! Get it? Ha! genius, right?!

Well, now we, in the Greenie Dat Nation, are in mourning and eating our words.

 

Lawd. Trent Mackey, done got himself wrapped up in an entire heap of unbelievable crud right off the heels of TAFKATHB coming back down to reality that he cannot even have the option of going to McNeese. As a failed drug test in the NCAA means you can’t play nowhere. For a year. Of course that now means that Glenn Guilbeau and whatsit other commentators are breathlessly speculating/pressuring that Les Miles now has to take TAFKATHB back in a year because just what kind of message is this signaling to other New Orleans area recruits that if they break NCAA rules, Red Stick will just turn their back on them and choose instead to uphold the spirit of the rules and collegiate sportsmanship.  The nerve(!) of Les Miles for having a modicum of responsibility. (I swear on my cats this line of reasoning was expounded post-mortem on WWL for hours upon hours).

Anyways, so back at our glass ranch: I preface my discussion of Trent Mackey’s tribulation by saying that I don’t know nothing other than what is being generated in the gossip mill. That and what is being reported on breathlessly by Miz Nunez in the Sometimes Picayune.  But believe you me, I tried.  I worked all kinds of angles on getting the nitty gritty on that burglary.   I pressed every single one of my contacts in the undergraduate population at Tulane, including some who are friends with players.  I even know a work study student worker at TUPD. and No Ma’am, there was just no cracking that burglary story at any level.

I guess, um, spouting off the way I do on this blog would um limit my access to insider information, ha! Quelle dommage....

And ya know, it was some kinda top secret situation going on because I even had players’ moms ask me what I knew.  Information about the incident was just sketchy at first because the robbery was believed to allegedly be targeted at a “football player” and instead this poor co-ed got picked on instead, but there was not a peep out of anybody about any further details.

Meanwhile, everybody in Uptown is scared out of their wits, new students are twittering their concerns, etcetera, etcetera.  So of course, the players mommas panic about their children being potential targets and with kids these days who never answer their phones, return voicemails or generally keep in touch with their parents just results in parents then panicking even more.  And unfortunately, #1 gossip queen here, had nothing.

So. I really have nothing to add to the discussion on Trent Mackey other than I hope and pray that this is some messed up situation of the alleged perpetrator just talking out his mouth to take the heat off himself and that Trent Mackey has indeed not just thrown away an NFL career and a Tulane degree for $500 or whatever it is that this senseless stupid burglary netted.  And if it is the other way around, I hope and pray that some maturity is rained down onto his misguided soul pronto in order to move on with his life in a successful and peaceful manner. Amen.

Which to all of you haters who may bring up Toney Converse, or Lawrence Burl or Ray Boudreaux – here’s the deal.  Toney Converse, from what I have been told, had a pretty crappy home life and when Tommy Bowden left, he lost his support system at Tulane and just fell into a spiral, left school all together and then got caught up.  He used his time in the penitentary wisely and has, as far as I know, used his time constructively and even had a work out with the VooDoo recently to resurrect his athletic promise.  Much love and angels to Toney .

Ray Boudreaux was defending himself and his cousins from a group of bully gangbangers who were harassing them.  He sought help from law enforcement and bouncers and nobody would pay no mind to what was happening to him and his family.  So he did what I think probably 99% of the male population would have done under similar circumstances. or At least what the bumper stickers on the trucks of certain haters say they would do (see “Peace The Old Fashioned Way” or “We Don’t Dial 911”).

 

What’s more, Ray didn’t drag a U.S. Marine out of a car for honking at him in a parking lot and beat in his head with his foot.  The worst thing about the Ray Boudreaux situation was that he had a completely incompetent lawyer who somehow managed to have the actual footage of the entire ordeal tossed out of evidence on a technicality.  Because if you actually watch everything, and not just the tragic ending, you can see plain as day what the situation was. So much love and angels to Ray.

Lawrence Burl on the otherhand – I just roll my eyes at this and whisper a prayer for his guidance to the straight and narrow.  Here’s the son of a former New Orleans Chief of Police (yes, indeed. the top dog at NOPD), who was on the National Honor Society (my chickens, even I didn’t attain this lofty goal), who had a full ride to an elite Southern Ivy, and athletic promise, who allegedly decided to drive around Uptown, under the influence, in a busted up truck without plates, proper headlights, a dirty scale, a gun, and bags of cannibis.  Now that is what you call serious lack of judgment.  So, “next man up!” is what I gots to say here. And please, use your time wisely to hopefully get it together in the future.

As a side note: Do y’all know that I’ve had to bail Coach Hullabaloo out of O.P.P. twice?! Well, I’m being overly dramatic here.  No bail was actually ever needed or necessary.  Coach Hullabaloo had stupid outstanding traffic infractions that for whatever reason were deemed to be on the level of high crimes and misdemeanors by NOPD. But which, nonetheless, scared me to no end and caused me to place hysterical sobbing phone calls to well-placed friends who then placed additional phone calls to the levers of power in order to arrange for Coach Hullabaloo to be released before he was ever even processed.  Yes, I went through this twice and more than enough embarrassment for this lifetime, thank you very much.  Coach Hullabaloo does indeed have some hilarious stories (which are funny now) about characters he encountered during his sojourns at the O.P.P.  And as a seasoned professional of incarceration, he even figured out how “not” to get processed by pretending to go to the bathroom while they were moving groups along from the general intake holding area into processing.  So he was always cycled back in with a “fresh batch”, if you will, until he got fetched to be brought out to liberty. This knowledge came in quite handy for the second time he got picked up.  Y’all this is not a joke, I am serious!

Anyways, this “next man up!” attitude is sadly, kinda like our mantra in the Greenie Dat Nation these days: Erleens Darkwa has a high ankle sprain, Michael Pierce didn’t make grades, and we practically have to pull some random peoples off the street to play Center because we can’t seem to keep nobody on the offensive line.  or Defensive line neither. Lawd, let us pray.

Y’all such is the hand which G-d is dealing us.  It’s none different or worse than what other gridiron calamities we’ve had to trudge through. Same thing, different season.  But at least we can have ourselves some cocktails, some good friends, and y’all ..... I have to tell you that Angel and CJ Johnson are the most chipper peoples on this good Earth.  They are just delightful people! Angel Johnson’s  mom came to our tea in the most a-dorable white church outfit with this gorgeous white hat.  It was the cutest thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of admiring!  So I, thankfully, do not envision Coach Johnson turning around and shifting blame to the fans for our losses.

My biggest beef about our personal tragedies, though, is that the ULL chickens are all justa high fiving themselves and heaving sighs of relief that they have dodged a bullet with Mackey out.

Because ya know they just wanna make the following results a distant and hazy memory:

1997: 56-0, The Greenies. yes ma’am. fifty-six to nothin. at their house.

1998: 72-20, The Greenies.  At this game, Coach Hullabaloo and I started chanting “We Want 80!  We Want 80!” har har!

1999: 48-32. The Greenies.  Now y’all. I am positive that I was fully lubricated with Superdome Bloody Marys for this game, but I honestly can’t remember how this score got so close.  I do remember throwing Mardi Gras beads after each touchdown, or maybe that was the year before?

Anyways, I am fully prepared for the bullying that will inevitably ensue at ULL tailgates because you know with their "epic" bowl win, they’re now like a completely unstoppable juggernaut. or something. The House of Hudspeth. As a matter of fact, I think we should just not even bother showing up and give all them cajuns little tiaras for being so awesome in every way.

Not.