Heart and Soul: Two Sisters, New Orleans, LA

In our travels, we have employed two methods of exploration: our own system of trial and error, and the recommendations of trustworthy locals. In Baton Rouge, we asked three security guards at the Louisiana State History Museum where to track down some good Southern cooking.

“What are you doing here?” they laughed. “You have to go to New Orleans!”

New Orleans was indeed our next stop, so we jotted down their suggestions, including a soul food restaurant called Two Sisters. On a dreary afternoon in New Orleans, we sought the gastronomic comfort of the Two Sisters. The restaurant, squeezed in the middle of a residential neighborhood near the Tulane campus, is inside a building that appears more suited to house a family than a family business. It is not until you step inside and taste their food that you realize the home-spun charm is the wonder of the Two Sisters - it is less like a restaurant and seems more like a kitchen table. 

The menu includes soul food favorites like catfish, fried chicken, and ham hocks and even items that might seem off-putting to the average diner like pig knuckles, chitlins (listed on the menu as “chitterlings”) and turkey necks. We ordered the oxtail and the smothered chicken, recommendations per our waiter, who didn’t flinch when we asked what the absolute best thing on the menu was. Some restaurants - the TGI McFunster’s of the world, as Anthony Bourdain calls them - the server, when asked which entree is the best, will twirl her hair and say, “Well, I dunno, they’re all amazing!” Not here. When we asked, “Which is better, the smothered chicken or the fried chicken,” the waiter said, without even a blink, “Smothered.” So we ordered it.

Smothered chicken.

The chicken arrived steaming, melting off the bone, and swimming in homemade gravy. The meat is so perfect you can’t help but wonder how long it’s been cooking and what kind of sorcery was involved. The warm gravy, while copious, is mild enough to let the real flavor of the chicken reveal itself. The entree was served atop a giant portion of sticky rice, alongside gooey macaroni and cheese and butter beans. They also give you a brick of moist cornbread, in case you find yourself still hungry after the platter of food.

The oxtail, a traditionally Caribbean dish that has made its way into soul food kitchens, was criminally tender. Expect to get messy as you will want to clear every, tiny morsel of meat from the bone. The self-conscious need not dine here.

Oxtail dinner.

The sides are as impressive as the main dishes, a bragging right not afforded to every restaurant. Two Sisters is the kind of place to be adventurous, because everything is good, and what is dining if not an event to experience something out of the ordinary?

Two Sisters is busy and not for those demanding luxury or overattentive service. It is incredibly popular among the locals for both its incredible food, almost unholy portions, and low prices. If you’ve got the patience, and don’t mind not being your waiter’s center of attention, it is completely worth it.

O, Come, All Ye Faithful: Elvis Presley's Birthplace, Tupelo, MS

The Elvis Presley Museum (no photos allowed inside)

This article is dedicated to our good friend Harry Sewlall, one of the biggest Elvis fans in the world, and certainly one of the biggest Elvis fans in South Africa.

If there is a cultural religion unique to American history – a source of devotion, dedication, and discipleship that can almost entirely be traced to happenings on American soil – my vote would be for Rock and Roll. As a New Religious Movement of the 20th Century, Rock and Roll is a syncretic religion, with obvious influences from other belief systems (Blues, Folk, Country, and Gospel), but with its own set of leaders and prophets.

Before our journey to Tupelo – which in itself is a nice little town, one that with its three local universities would most likely have retained its hip vibe with or without the presence of Elvis – I was among the rock history purists who balked at the idea of this greasy-coiffed hillbilly being the inventor of rock and roll. But no more, for I have seen the light!

Before I really begin flogging this metaphor to death, (and with comparative religion being one of my pet interests, I know very well that I could,) I will quickly jump to my conclusion: Elvis, for a segment of the population, is revered as a Christ-figure in our cultural landscape. Some of the more dedicated make pilgrimages to his tomb at Graceland, to where he did most of his early preaching in Memphis at Sun Studios, and also to his boyhood home in Tupelo.

The Lyric Theatre, a former Vaudeville venue where Elvis performed on a return visit.

The Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum is set on a gorgeous piece of land just off of the main drag, with several unique exhibits. The first is the actual home where Elvis was born and subsequently spent the first 13 years of his life. A two-room shotgun house, recreated with period furniture and with wallpaper that is consistent with a few photographs taken inside the house, Elvis came from startlingly humble beginnings.

Across the pavilion, which Elvis had commissioned to double as both a museum and a park, is the Pentecostal Church the Presley family attended in Elvis’ youth. The church originally sat about half a mile down the road from the site, but in 2008 the Museum gathered the funds to pluck the church out of the ground and haul it to their park. Inside the church is a unique video presentation, where three screens come down from the ceiling, projecting a surround audio-visual experience of a typical Pentecostal church service. When we were there, a busload of senior citizens were visiting as well, and their reaction to the experience was similar to the awe of a child seeing Disneyworld.

Inside the museum itself is a massive gift shop. It has a lot of the usual Elvis ephemera – cookbooks, lunchboxes, t-shirts – but it also features every single one of his movies, a large number of complete concert and performance anthology DVD’s, and nearly every album Elvis released during his lifetime – although that awful Having Fun With Elvis On Stage album, the one that features only Elvis’ onstage banter between songs still has yet to be digitized. (On the one hand, this is probably for the best, but then again, I do have a morbid curiosity about it – the album reached #130 in the rock charts in 1974, and perhaps more disturbingly, hit #9 in the country charts!) Beyond the gift shop is a theater that shows a dramatized account of Elvis’ time in Tupelo. Shot locally with amateur actors, the end result is professionally done and actually boasts some great performances.

The actual museum gallery is roughly the size of the gift shop, a bunch of glass cases containing many of the physical artifacts from Elvis’ youth. With the help and generosity of a childhood friend-turned-collector named Janelle McComb, the museum also features items from Graceland and even some gifts given to her by Elvis himself. When we got to the exhibit featuring Elvis’ gator-skin shoes, his fur coat, and the church-meets-crushed-velvet aesthetic of Graceland, I turned to Alexa and said, “He lived like someone who won the lottery!” With his roots in extreme poverty – his father even spent time in jail for check forgery, altering an amount paid to him in an effort to pay of his debts more quickly – Elvis is the rags to riches story. He may have lived extravagantly, but it seems less like, say, The Great Gatsby and more like the scene in The Jerk when Navin Johnson makes his fortune.

At the middle of the pavilion is a statue of 13-year-old Elvis, clutching a guitar and clad in overalls, with a circle of plaques and engravings that detail major life events during Elvis’ time in Tupelo. Furthering the religious connection is a chapel on the premises, another component of Elvis’ plan for the site. Although it was closed, it was a modern-looking chapel with gorgeous stained glass windows. There are also markers placed by two separate Mississippi institutions, one honoring the history of Country music, the other honoring the Blues.

This duality of Elvis’ musical influences, of both white and black musical traditions – made obvious by the film, the church experience, and the museum gallery – shows why he is so relevant to the history of Rock and Roll. It doesn’t matter that he never wrote a song, that he was not a virtuoso musician, or even that he was a good-looking fellow with shaky hips. One need look no further than his first single, released on Sun Records, “That’s All Right, Mama” backed with “Blue Moon Of Kentucky.” Elvis took Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s blues tune and injects it with some country swagger on the A-side, and on the flipside gave Bill Monroe’s mournful ballad a jumpy blues background. It is that marriage of two seemingly disparate musical styles that gave us Rock and Roll, bereft of racial politics and who-did-what-first-ism.

Although I may still balk at Rolling Stone’s rockist white-boy assertion that “That’s All Right, Mama” was the first Rock and Roll record – such a statement only serves to generate debate, prompting the public to buy their publication, or at least bring traffic to their website – but my position on the lad responsible for the record has definitely evolved for the best. 

Praise Elvis!

I Come From Nowhere: The Georgia Guidestones (Elberton, GA)

The Georgia Guidestones

If a miniature Stonehenge, built with money provided by an anonymous donor, with an enumerated list of rules for a better planet, and built out in the middle of nowhere in rural Georgia is not American Weirdness at its finest, then I don’t know what is.

Some of our best suggestions have come from locals. Our friend Travis, who plays in a bitchin’ little rock combo out of Atlanta called New Terminus, said our trip to Georgia would not be complete without a visit to the Guidestones. The drive out to Elberton from Atlanta was roughly two hours, taking us through a part of the state we may not have otherwise explored, with lots of hills and small towns that still have some retention of their past – due in no small part that there aren’t a lot of Walmarts. (Yet.)

The Georgia Guidestones are shrouded in mystery, having been funded by an anonymous person (or possibly group of persons) using the synonym “R. C. Christian,” in late 1979. R. C. Christian hired the Elberton Granite Finishing Company to construct the monument. The town of Elberton is billed as “The Granite Capital of the World,” with plenty of local businesses providing some credence to that claim. The Guidestones were debuted to the public in the spring of 1980, and it has been a source of conversation, intrigue, and controversy ever since.

The Guidestones, in Swahili and Spanish.

There is a lot of astrological detail that went into the construction of the Guidestones, as well. Science was never either of our strongest subjects, so rather than try to explain all of the work put into the Guidestones’ construction, here is a link for those interested.

As the pictures here illustrate, the Guidestones are presented as four massive tablets, with text on both sides in eight different languages: English, Arabic, Swahili, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. 

Chinese and Arabic, with Egyptian Hieroglyphs up top.

Atop the four tablets is a four-sided capstone, with inscriptions in four ancient languages: Babylonian cuneiform, Ancient Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyph, and Sanskrit.

Ancient Greek

Sanskrit, with Hebrew and Hindi below.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Cuneiform, with English and Russian below.

The Guidestones present ten modern commandments and rules, with an accompanying in-ground tablet that proclaims, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason.” Presented with commentary, here are the commandments laid forth by the Georgia Guidestones:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

And we are already off to an awkward start. This seems to be the one that rustles people’s jimmies the most, and it is easy to see why. I’m just as much of a misanthrope as the next guy – maybe even more so – but 500 million is not a large percentage of the planet’s estimated population, which is roughly 7 billion. In order to reduce down to that number, we’re going to need a lot more wars, drone strikes, superstorms, and famines. Wait, what’s that? Oh, global leaders are already working on it? Well, then, great!

2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.

This one makes far more sense…though that last part lends itself to a potentially disturbing interpretation. I am a strong advocate for people not having offspring they cannot afford. The first step to eliminate this problem? For a segment of the populace to stop believing that some celibate old guy living in a palace in Italy has a direct phone line with the Creator, let alone has any right telling men and women what to do with their private parts.

[Gets off soapbox]

Now, for that second part – that is pretty nebulous wording. On the one hand, encouraging physical fitness is a good thing, and with the suggestion of “diversity,” I am all for intermarriage across faiths, cultures, and races. On the other hand, this can be read as advocacy for eugenics. No, thanks.

3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

The concept of a global language – or a global anything, as we’ll discuss later – is one that tends to bring out the conspiracy theorists, loudly pounding their New World Order drums. I tend to favor a more optimistic viewpoint of this, seeing the creation of a global language as an effort to break down cultural barriers and increase understanding among people. That said, I also recognize that it would be impossible to implement, let alone mandate, as has happened before in previous attempts to do this with Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua.

4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.

This one I like and can immediately get behind: you can still have your pet subjects, be religious, and connection to your own culture, only don’t be a self-righteous dick about it. Perfect!

5. Protect people with fair laws and just courts.

Here is another rule that I think can be as dangerous as it could be beneficial, given it falling into either the wrong or right hands. It is too vague – what makes a law “fair,” or a court “just?” The Code of Hammurabi was at one point considered the cornerstone of justice. In some countries, Sharia Law provides their legal code. Hell, the Bible – including all of its passages in favor of slavery, sexism, bigotry, and capital punishment – is still supported by members of the Right as their preferred law of the land. Too nebulous, this one.

6. Let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court.

Sovereign nations maintain their autonomy, but disputes are resolved in what we can presume is a “just court,” rather than by killing one another or seizing land. This basically outlines what the United Nations was intended to be – but isn't  Assuming that this world court would be fair and just in the truest senses of each word, this is a good rule.

7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

Yes, please.

8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

Another vagary, this time urging people to find the pragmatic middle-ground between concern for themselves and for their communities…maybe? This one is too obscure.

9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.

A fine example of stating a lot with a little: favor the best things in life, while also finding spiritual satisfaction.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

The Guidestones end on a great note. As the dominant species on the planet, we have a responsibility to take care of it and all of its inhabitants. (Did I mention that we both voted Green Party in 2012?) This one, along with Rules 4 and 7, are the rules that have the most immediate and practical validity in the present day.

My overall impression of the rules presented is mixed. I find myself agreeing with most of these, though several of them are too nebulously worded to provide any actual guidance, and then there is the first – and easily most controversial – rule, the one about maintaining a population. The idea that our global population be decimated, down to roughly one-fourteenth of its present number, is simultaneously impractical and (in the age of neutron bombs) disturbing.

Naturally, it is that first commandment that has generated much discussion. Noted conspiracy theorist, Anti-Semite, and sentient slab of raw beef Alex Jones featured the Guidestones in a movie he made about how the world’s elite is conspiring to enslave us all – an event that, five years and counting, still has yet to happen. In it, Jones claims the Guidestones were funded by the Rosicrucian Order. 

The Temple of the Rose Cross, 1618 illustration by Theophilus Schweighardt Constantiens

The Rosicrucians were an ancient hermetical religious order that is now extinct, but according to the likes of Jones and other gadflies whose actual aim is separating the gullible from their money, they’re one of the great shadow organizations pulling the world’s strings – along with the Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, the Skull and Bones Society, the Bilderberg Group, the Freemasons, and the Rothschild Family. (By the way, that is a total of seven secret organizations who all somehow manage, individually, to run the world. Or maybe they’re conspiring together. Or perhaps it’s an alliance thing, like Survivor. Or, perhaps, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, these imaginations only exist in the imaginations of the imaginer!)

The unknown identity of R. C. Christian provides ample cover for Jones’ loony allegation about the Rosicrucian Order. It is a classic case of Bertrand Russell’s Teapot – because we can’t disprove the bullshit, the other side can claim the possibility of being right. Another conspiracy asshole named Mark Dice claims R. C. Christian is a member of the New World Order and belongs to “a Luciferian secret society.”

I hate conspiracy theories and the demagogues who propagate them. It is upsetting to see otherwise smart people exhausting their faculties and resources to wage an argument that is, to use the antiquated British phrasing, pure codswallop. Jones, Dice, Glenn Beck – and forebears like Hal Lindsey and his Late, Great Planet Earth in the 1970’s, not to mention countless doomsday types throughout modern history – have proven to be little more than a moneymaking sideshow distracting from actual societal ills. There are real conspiracies hiding in plain sight – the Keystone Pipeline, corporate welfare, and the power of Super PAC’s, to name three – and I am just as ready to finish writing about these dopes as I am sure you are of reading about them. The only reason they bore mentioning is that in 2008, the Guidestones were vandalized and spray-painted with graffiti.

Thankfully, Elbert County owns the Guidestones, and this was quickly removed.

“THE ELITE WANT ALL OF US DEAD – SEE #1!”

“YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED – JESUS WILL BEAT U SATANIST”

“DEATH TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER”

“NO ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT”

So what we have here is obviously somebody who buys into this notion that the world’s wealthiest and most powerful interests, someone who also thinks that the Georgia Guidestones were planted to openly display the manifesto of this top-secret New World Order. Idle hands are one thing, but this is a case of someone with a very idle mind.

Oh, and then there’s this one, just for good measure: “OBAMA IS A MUSLIM.” Just to repeat what I said earlier, the Guidestones were erected in 1980, when that Kenyan Marxist President of ours* was an undergrad at Occidental College (or so the New Illuminated Rosicrucian Masonchilds would have us believe!). So there’s that.

For anyone reading who still has any lingering concern that the Guidestones are some sort of document with great influence over the fate and future of humanity, I end with this anecdote:

As we walked around and snapped photos of the Guidestones, a two-door jalopy from the early 1980’s with North Carolina plates pulled up. The driver was a fried old hippie with the hair of an early 20th Century composer and the beard of a Unabomber. He got out of his car, wearing torn-up jeans and a tattered Hawaiian print shirt with nothing underneath. In his backseat and trunk was enough stuff that it was safe to assume his car doubled as his home.

“Hi there,” he said, getting out of his car. He was barefoot, and his nails were overgrown.

“Hey,” I said. “The Guidestones are pretty cool, have you ever seen them before?”

“No, this is my first time. I would have come yesterday, but it was raining.”

At this point, the drifter began to remove his shirt. Alexa and I began moving towards our car.

“Yeah, it’s great weather today, though,” I said, maintaining, thinking maybe the dude was just getting some sun.

“Sure is. I’ve been wanting to come here for a long time,” the drifter said, beginning to unbutton his pants.

Conversation over. We were in the car and zipping away ten seconds later.

*To dispel all doubt, paired with the fact that the irony mark has yet to become a standard button on computer keyboards, I should add that I firmly believe our President is who he says he is. It’s Alex Jones that I’m worried about.

Absence? What Absence?

So, maybe you have noticed, maybe you have not, but we have not been posting as frequently as we should. In our defense, we covered the entirety of the South - Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, and then virtually all of Florida - in less than a month. Our speed and pace did not allow much time to stay caught up with writing.

However, we have been taking notes everywhere we've been, from the Georgia Guidestones (coming soon) to New Orleans to one of the locations that inspired the entire American Weirdness project itself! After our journey through the South, we returned to New York City for a friend's wedding and just finished a leg through the Mid-Atlantic region, heading on into New England.

Expect more content, and on a more frequent basis.

Sin In My Heart: Delia's Chicken Sausage Stand, Atlanta, GA

We are both fans of restaurants that specialize in one item, stylized a hundred different ways, whether it is mac n’ cheese, ramen noodles, or rice pudding. On the last day of our visit to Atlanta, our hosts, Vickie and Travis, took us for a farewell lunch at one of Vickie’s favorite places, Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand. It is a tiny roadside shack near Little Five Points, one of the hipper neighborhoods in the East Atlanta area.

Unlike many local joints that shut their doors when the sun goes down, Delia’s caters to the late-night crowds that flee Little Five Points bars at closing time, looking for a post-party snack...or, let’s not kid ourselves, munchies.

Their handcrafted sausage, made from locally-sourced, organic, and hormone free chicken, is served on freshly-baked hoagie rolls with toppings like jalapeno peppers, fiery mustard, and diced onions. For diners steering clear of meat, the restaurant offers a vegetarian variant of all their sandwiches.

We started with a sandwich called The Hot Mess, an aptly titled serving of link sausage smothered in chili, cheddar cheese, jalapenos, and their top secret “comeback” sauce. (Still not sure what exactly they are coming back from, because it kind of seemed like they are already there.) True to its name, The Hot Mess is a drippy little sucker, so be sure to have plenty of napkins, a bib, and possibly even a poncho on hand. That said, get your hands messy, because this is a delicious dish! The meat is well-seasoned with a good texture and kick, while anything drenched in chili and cheese is destined for greatness.

The Hot Mess. Ooey, gooey, sloppy goodness.

We also picked a trio of sliders called 3 Hot Chicks: one meatball, teeming with zesty marinara sauce, one slaw, a classic southern staple, and one super spicy, piled high with jalepeno peppers and our favorite of the three. For a side, we snagged their potato wedges, drizzled with a rich, creamy cheese sauce. Did we mention you’re going to need napkins?

Three Hot Chicks. Tasty ladies.

Because we secretly have a death wish, we split an order of the Double D Delight Sliders, chicken sausage patties atop grilled Krispy Kreme doughnuts, dolloped with cherry cream cheese. The description alone is enough to induce cardiac arrest but we figured it was one of those “never again” kinds of meals. The spicy chicken sausage married seamlessly with the sweetness of the cherry cream cheese and grilled glazed doughnut. It was as shameful as a heaping plate of fried butter or whatever slop they serve at the Texas State Fair, and one with mixed reactions: Alexa called it a “sinful guilty pleasure food,” while Alex, who has eaten everything from a Nepalese meat-hash made from goat parts to a Polish soup made from duck’s blood, could barely do a single bite. “I can’t do something this flagrantly unhealthy,” he said.

Proceed with caution.

Despite the seeming gut-busting qualities of the Double D Delight and the potato wedges, chicken sausage is healthier than sausages made from red meat, lower in cholesterol, fat, and calories. Provided your order isn’t sandwiched between two grilled donuts or slathered in liquid cheese, you may actually find yourself eating something healthy - and loving it!

Savannah Smiles: Savannah, GA

In all it's charming Southern splendor, Savannah is an old world city of gorgeous, pre-war mansions, dotted with parks filled with Spanish moss-draped trees. Enjoy our photo essay!

Forsyth Park, Savannah's largest green space.

Confederate monument in Forsyth Park. 

The bus stop where Forrest Gump told his entire life story and ate half a box of chocolates.