NO part 1: two incidents I like

I have lots to report on the New Orleans trip, but most of that is waiting for me to have time to manipulate the photo imagery. In the meantime, there are just two things I can't wait to tell you about.

1. When I was checking into the conference, I was recognized. I went to the registration desk and said "Hi, my name's DuBose, first name..."
   

   The guy running the "A-D" section looked up, excitement splashed across his face. "Mike?"
   

   "Um...yeah."
   

   "Oh, hey. It's great to meet you!"
   

   (was he really talking to me?)
   

   "I saw you give a talk in Hartford, and I use some of your ideas."
   

   This floored me...mostly because it took me a few seconds to remember when the hell I was in Hartford. "Was that for the American Studies Association," I asked.
   

   "Yeah. You presented on Captain America. There was also some guy who did something on Batman."
   

   This is when I was sure that the Hadron Collider must've ripped a hole into the space/time fabric and sucked both me and this guy into this world from totally distinct and different dimensions...because I presented with two very big scholars in the field on this panel (the late Lawrence Levine and Janice Radway)...and I'm the one he remembered? Not to mention this was in 2003.
   

   But he seemed like a nice guy, so we talked for a few minutes. Eventually, we exchanged business cards (which took the form of a nice ceremony that pretty much inverted the scene in American Psycho...we were comparing how cheap were our respective cards), and I hope to have some conversations with him in the future.
   

   The whole incident was pretty surreal, though, and it was the first time anyone's ever talked to me out of the blue who was a fan of anything I've done. You can bet that this a story I'll be repeating widely and often.
   

2. We spent a lot of our night time in two bars. While me, the spousal unit, and two friends were on the road, another friend (still in NO) called us to tell us that the bartender of Molly's on Toulouse told him "You're not really tourists...you're more like travellers."
   

   I like that.