Ready to rock

If you look carefully at the picture (or click it to enlarge it), you'll see insulation above, ahead -- just about anywhere you glance.

Our building inspector, Ron, saw the same thing Friday morning when he signed off on the insulation.

After he left, Arnold and I high-fived and planned for paneling and sheet rock next week.

But the island was ready to rock, too. Since Fantasy Fest was starting to kick into high gear, with Duval Street closed and other streets at gridlock, the guys (like the rest of the island) started the weekend a little early.

- ■ -

The food festival was in full swing, and compared to past years there were lots of women wearing paint and little else in daylight. Across from the AIDS Help booth, a guy clutching a Bible was talking about sin and damnation, and a conservatively dressed Cuban woman walking by near me called to him, good-naturedly, "You need to have a drink and calm down."

"Oh, I don't drink!," he called back, horrified.

The woman laughed and kept walking. "Poor guy," she said to me.

What he really needs is to get laid, I said to her.

She laughed again. "I'm sure he doesn't do that either, but just like the drink it would do him a world of good."

- ■ -

As I came even with St. Paul's, I heard some organ music over the din -- the lunchtime concert. So I wandered in and took a seat along with a few dozen others.

The organist was finishing up something gentle -- I think by Durufle -- and the congregation sighed and rustled between pieces. Then he launched into the grand Toccata and Fugue in D minor, played with excruciatingly strict cadence. I closed my eyes and saw the mathematical march of notes across the page.

Method amid the madness.