MIKE JEKNAVORIAN National Interviews

DIXIE LONGATE

Country girl Dixie Longate debuts her new show in Fort Lauderdale next month.  Get ready for booze, tales of sordid life, and displays of domestic acumen.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRADFORD ROGNE

By Mike Jeknavorian

Where did you grow up?  In Mobile, Alabama.  I was born and raised there.  It’s a great place to come from, but it’s an even better place to leave.  That’s why I like going on the road.  I can’t wait ‘till this virus is gone so I can go back to not being here.  When you’re not in Mobile, what do you miss about it?  When I leave, I do miss the people, the honky-tonks, and the fact that you can drink from your car, as long as you don’t get caught.  Oh, and Mardi Gras.  It actually started here, you know.  What were you arrested in L.A. for?  I actually have never been arrested in LA.  But I had to leave Alabama as part of the conditions of my parole, so I went to L.A., figuring if Nicole Kidman can get famous and marry Tom Cruise, why can’t I?  We’re both red heads.  Are you still on parole?  Currently, no.  I only see my parole officer socially these days.  Did you have anything to do with the death of your three ex-husbands?  Not according to the court.  Just because you’re holding the ax, doesn’t mean you have used it.  What are you children doing now?  Wynona is looking for a job, because the Hooters where she used to work doesn’t have outdoor seating, since they never got the patio awning fixed after the last hurricane.   Dwayne is making llamas.  Absorbine, Jr. is lying face down on the floor, and has been for a few hours.  He’s three-years-old.  That’s what they do.

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Why did you move from L.A.?  I’d been on the road for so many years with my show, that it didn’t make sense to keep paying the rent in L.A., when I could just move my life and the kids back to Mobile.  Plus, the moving boxes keep my kids thoroughly entertained and busy while I’m gone for months at a time.  Which one of your old jobs least prepared you for what you do now?  I think that everything sort-of prepared me for it.  Cashier at the Piggly Wiggly, collection-plate coin-counter at the He is Risen Baptist church, pole-cleaner at the Snazzy Beaver—I’m using skills from all of those jobs to help me get where I am today.  Did you ever go to the Tupperware headquarters in Orlando?  Of course I have.  Every year I go to the Jubilee.  It’s right by Gator World.  What theater would you love to bring your show to?  I’m hankering to get my show back to New York City, where it all started 13 years ago.  What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during the quarantine?  I’ve been doing Live Facebook Happy Hours several days a week, where I make myself a cocktail and sit and share stories with people online.  It has kept me busy, and has kept people smiling, which is important during this crazy time.  Will you ever retire?  From entertaining, or from drinking?  What’s the weirdest question that a fan’s asked you?  Someone asked me to do a shout-out video for the “Corn Dog Association of Houston, Texas.”  It was different, but it made me laugh.  What other celebrity did you act like a “fan” around?  Do you know who I got so excited by in my audience one night?  Gedde Watanabe came to see the show.  He was “Long Duck Dong” in Sixteen Candles.  I just remember always loving him in that movie.  He was such a source of joy growing up.  I was beside myself that I got to be the one making him laugh this time.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRADFORD ROGNE

What’s the last thing that you looked at online?  The website for ALDO shoes.  What’s the best place that you’ve ever visited?  I have actually had really good luck finding wonderful things about each place I have traveled to while I’ve been touring.  But I have a real love for Texas, Denver and Iowa.  And outside the U.S., I loved playing Australia.  It was a dream come true.  What are you an expert at?  Drinking.  I’m also pretty good at knitting, and I’ve made a blouse or two on the sewing machine.  If God were to take you tomorrow, how would you like to be remembered?  Hopefully people will remember me as a funny, inspiring, no-nonsense kind-of generous soul.  Or they will all just come to my funeral with flasks and shove them in my coffin.  What do you want to live long enough to see?  Affordable top shelf gin.  And a woman president.  Who would you like to be for a day, and why?  Jennifer Lopez, but only during a halftime show.  Do you believe in an afterlife?  I think that we’re lucky enough to be here in the first place.  I don’t want to waste any time here, because I don’t rightly know if we’ll get a second spin around the sun.  Do you think that this is the most amoral time that’s ever existed?  Since I have never lived during any other time, I can’t really judge, because they always leave the good stuff out of history books.  Who or what is the greatest love of your life?  The greatest love of my life is the time I get to connect with audiences after my shows.  I get my yearly fill of hugs every single day.  I wish everyone could feel that.  It’s good for the soul.  What talent would you most like to have?  I wish I could sing.  Singers have the coolest lives.  To be able to serenade someone—and not sound like I was just in a horrible car accident and am screaming in pain—would be a total benefit.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELE HELBERG

If you were a dictator with unlimited powers, what would you do first?  I’d give everyone a Bedazzler.  The world instantly gets better when you Bedazzle things.  What’s something that you learned in life only when you got older?  That booze helps.  What did you learn from your parents?  Good stories to use to get out of trouble from the police.  What’s your best characteristic?  My sense of humor, I think.  I tend to be able to make people smile even in the toughest of times.  How do you enjoy spending your time?  With booze.  What celebrity do you have a crush on?  I don’t know a soul who won’t tell you that Chris Hemsworth doesn’t make their Jesus place all tingly.  Who do you admire?  Anyone who has stood up for what they believe in, even when it’s unpopular.  If you could bring one person back from the dead, who would it be?  Cher.  Where would you go in a time machine?  To the fall of 1976.  It just seems like a ridiculously fun and mellow time.  What would your last meal be?  Mexican food with a giant bowl of chips and guacamole.  What do you worry about?  My toenails getting tougher as I grow older.  What are you afraid of?  Lesbians who run out of markers when they have only six hours to make 100 signs for a march.  If you were a musical instrument, what would you be?  The harp, because there’s a lot more surface area to play with.  Are you more like a sheep or a wolf?  A sheep, mostly because I’m so cuddly.  Ask the FedEx man.

Who depends on you, and for what?  My kids for every damn thing.  My best friend for laughs.  And my momma, because she needs someone to roll her medical bed up the hill when we go for walks, and because she’s a pretty good drinking buddy.  Who are you closest with?  My best friend, Georgia Jean.  She owns the local honky-tonk, so being best friends with her is a win-win.  What would your autobiography be called? Well, I’ve seen stories called “Unstoppable,” “Unbreakable” and “Unflappable,” so I guess mine would be called Un-burp-a-bowl.  What’s on your bucket list?  I want to stay in one of those little bungalows over the ocean that you always see in commercials, but no one really can afford to stay there.  What’s your greatest regret in life?  That I never got to meet Brownie Wise, who created the Tupperware party.  My show is a giant love letter to her.  She changed more women’s lives than anyone else on the planet.  What’s something secretive about you that people don’t know?  That I have to look up damn near every drink recipe online, because I can never remember them.  Where can we see you?  I’ll be doing a brand new show called Dixie’s Happy Hour at the Imax Theater on September 8th and 9th as a fundraiser for Island City Stage.  And you can always catch me on Facebook, Instagram or on Twitter.  Or maybe standing on the cinder block that you left outside of your bedroom window.

 

MIKE JEKNAVORIAN National Restaurants

BRENNAN’S

SHADE-O-METER RATING

2 OUTTA 5 WERKS: “NOT FEELING IT”

What’s Brennan’s?  It’s a creole restaurant in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  The restaurant is known for brunch and for the creation of the Bananas Foster desert.  It was founded by Owen Brennan in 1946, and then re-established in 2014.  The building dates to 1795.

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The iconic restaurant famous for “Breakfast at Brennan’s” is a Creole favorite and has been a New Orleans staple for decades. These classic recipes are sprinkled with both family and restaurant history and seasoned with the original illustrations.

What time did we go?  1:00 p.m.  How was the maître d’?  The mortician/maître d, was, I believe, the rudest and most dyspeptic one that I’ve ever encountered.  We had reservations (of course), and when we went to the reservation area to be seated, the maître d instructed, “You need to wait right here.”  And we weren’t the only party that was subjected to such pleasantries.  Another party was told, “Stop.  You can’t go past this rope.  You have to wait here.”  I also held the velvet rope’s pole in place for the maître d as he silently fumbled to adjust it, and he didn’t even have the curtesy to thank me.  As if all this embalming-preparation wasn’t enough, there was also final shade given at the end of the meal.  As we left the restaurant, we walked right through an empty foyer and right past the maître d, and he didn’t say one word.

What was the décor like?  Fabulous and definitely a high point—it’s one of the few saving graces about the place.  The gouache murals in the main dining room, the Chanteclair Room, display beautiful vintage carnivale scenes of whimsy.

What was the seating like?  There are two indoor dining areas, and one outdoor one.  However, they weren’t seating anyone outdoors.  What was the atmosphere like?  Loud.  What was the crowd like?  Somewhat uppidity, and heavy on locals.  Granted, this was the Friday before Mardi Gras, so it’s possible that the crowd was skewed because of the holiday.

How was the cruising?  None.  The queens are incognito here.  What libations were ordered?  We ordered a Cajun Bloody Mary for $10, and a Brandy Milk Punch for $9.  Were they served timely?  Not really.  They came after the soup, and shortly before the entre.

How were they?  The server claimed that the bloody Mary was rated as one of the “top five” in the city.  It was pretty good, but it could have been a tad bit stronger.  However, the “Marys” weren’t served consistently.  One drink was served with pickled okra, but the other two were denied that tidbit—those two poor Marys.  As far as the Brandy Milk Punch went, it was really nothing more than a glorified White Russian.  But the situation gets better.  When this drink was about three-fourths done, we noticed a chip in the glass and pointed this out to the server.  He apologized for the glass and took it away, but supplied no replacement drink!

What was ordered?  A two-course lunch (seafood gumbo and a creole-spiced shrimp salad) for $29, eggs Benedict for $19, country-fried pork chops for $27, an appetizer seafood gumbo for $10, and pumpkin-seed-crusted redfish for $28.  Was the food served timely?  Yes.

How was it?  Overall, the food was excellent, but not superlative.  The gumbo had oysters in it (a nice touch), but the base lacked sufficient flavor and richness.  The Canadian bacon in the egg’s Benedict was cured with coffee, and it mixed with the egg’s red-wine reduction sauce in a pleasant manner.  The salad had complements of thyme, and the shrimp in it was very fresh.  The pork chop was tasty and high-quality, and the combination of pomegranate butter, pumpkin puree, and kale pumpkin seeds in the redfish was like a delectable and edible fall-foliage display.  But there were also some inconsistencies.  One gumbo had several whole oysters in it, but the other one had just a few measly chopped-up pieces in it.

How was the service?  Not so great.  The server wasn’t so friendly, and he also looked down at the bill to see what his tip was—18 percent, and then he made a face when he didn’t like what he saw—once he thought he was out of eyesight.  What stands out about the place?  Really, only the décor.  That, and I suppose its reputation.

What could be improved?  You name it.  But let’s start with the mortician, and then go from there.  What was surprising?  That the bread that was served at the beginning of the meal was really just a po-boy roll, and it was served on top of a cloth napkin.

Brennan’s is located at 417 Royal St., in New Orleans, Louisiana.  It’s open daily from breakfast to 10:00 p.m.  The restaurant closes for a few hours between brunch and dinner, but The Roost Bar remains open.