celebrazzi (celebrations-paparazzi) These glamourous celebrities, Opal Masters of Covington, Louisiana, Rona Conners of Plantation, Florida and Marsha Naquin-Delain of New Orleans, set the tone for The Lazarus Ball benefiting Project Lazarus. The Thursday night Halloween 27 kickoff at the New Orleans Museum of Art was Black Tie Optional this year, and was rated as one of the very best Thursday night kick-offs for the four day circuit party extravaganza in its history by Ambush Magazine. The New Orleans Museum of Art was the elegant backdrop for Thursday's The Lazarus Ball kicking off Halloween 27: Famous, in New Orleans in grand style. Halloween co-chairs Dustin Woehrmann and Jerry Q. Fredieu present the prestigious Paul Plauche Award to Toby Lefort for his outstanding efforts on behalf of the Halloween in New Orleans (HalloweenNewOrleans.COM) organization which puts on the four day event each year benefiting Project Lazarus. Buzzy's Boys & Girls' (William J. Fanning Foundation) Marty Curtin, Steve Tregre, Inge and Todd Scurto, Koo Gaffney and Rodney Manko joined Art In The Hood Auction and Dinner hosted by Cutter's in New Orleans. Every October, the bar presents Art In The Hood benefiting Buzzy's Boys & Girls. This year an astounding $6,600 was raised including a $2,500 donation from TJ Maxx according to Cutter's bar baron Mac McAll. Since 2003, and including this year's total, the art exhibition has raised over $27,600 for the popular HIV/AIDS charity. For additional information visit CuttersBar.BIZ or BuzzysBoysAndGirls.ORG. The Gargoyles won top honors as the Best Couple Costume at Halloween 27: Famous hosted at Mardi Gras World East Bank in New Orleans. Thousands packed the convention space for the spectacular main event of the four day weekend. Costumed revelers traveled in from throughout the United States and from around the world. Past Halloween circuit parties have raised over $4 million for Project Lazarus. For more info visit HalloweenNewOrleans.COM. Will Page joins Benefit For Life organizer Darrin Ferris and Thomas Bruneau at 4 Seasons in Metairie raising $1,636 for NO/AIDS Task Force. With over 50 raffle items, donations and an all star cast this first time out event was a huge success. Watch for an even bigger and better event next year. 6 The Official Mag: AmbushMag.COM November 9-22, 2010 Official ficial Gay Mardi di Gras Guide GayMardiGras.COM
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the "official" dish...from 4 Lords of Leather and the Louisiana State Museum acquire archivally appropriate supplies to house the archive. The event will also celebrate the 40 th birthday of Louisiana State Museum Curator of Carnival Collections, Wayne Phillips, who is a Baron in the Lords of Leather. The event will take place upstairs at JohnPaul s. The $5 donation at the door will provide attendees with delicious food supplied by Mona Lisa. There will be birthday party games and confections from the Kupcake Factory with Mardi Gras-style babies inside a select few cupcakes that can be traded for door prizes from Dunn & Sonnier Flowers & Antiques, the Plant Gallery, Jäger Haus German Restaurant and Bar, A-OK Men s Gear, and the Louisiana State Museum. Casual attire is appropriate for the event. For more information about the Lords of Leather, please visit www.lordsofleather.com. For more information about the Louisiana State Museum, please visit http://lsm.crt.state.la.us. Call for Musicians! French Quarter Festival April 8-10, 2011, Deadline Nov. 15 French Quarter Festivals, Inc. (FQFI) is now accepting applications for local musicians interested in performing at the 28th annual French Quarter Festival, to be held April 8, 9 and 10, 2011. Interested performers are encouraged to access the application online at www.fqfi.org. The deadline for application is November 15, 2010. The 2011 festival will feature over 250 hours of great local music across 18 stages throughout the historic French Quarter. In 2010, over half a million people attended French Quarter Festival. In 2009, French Quarter Festival was voted Best Festival six times. French Quarter Festival showcases Louisiana musicians, exclusively, with genres including traditional and contemporary jazz to rhythm and blues, funk, brass band, folk, gospel, rock, reggae, Latin and classical. French Quarter Festival s Entertainment Committee makes the final selection of local and regional artists who will perform at the largest free festival in the South. Louisiana musicians (both union and non-union), are encouraged to apply. Nonunion musicians may apply after securing a performance sponsor, (union musicians can do this also, but it is not necessary). The performance sponsor compensates the musicians directly for their French Quarter Festival performance, in return for publicity and marketing benefits offered by French Quarter Festivals, Inc. Members of the local Musicians Union may receive compensation for their performance from the AFM Musicians Performance Fund, a major sponsor of the festival, if selected to perform at the festival. To download an application, or for more information about the performance sponsorship, visit the FQFI website: www.fqfi.org and click on the word application at the top of the page. To request an application by mail, contact Entertainment Manager Greg Schatz at 504.522.5730 or via email at greg@fqfi.org. French Quarter Festival is produced by French Quarter Festivals, Inc., (FQFI) the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which also produces Satchmo SummerFest and Christmas New Orleans Style. New Orleans Fringe Festival is a Wild Week with Five Days of Theater, Nov. 17-21 How wild? Sea-monster aerialists, revolutionary cabaret, lab science rock-n-roll run amuck, theater-in-a-truck, a Chinese poetry and washtub band, a freakshow with real freaks, industrial-strength butoh, border-war stories, the Weinermobile, bicycle clowns and bingo drama, puppets and fetishists, gorgeous dance in a crumbling church, and a teeny tiny train that you have a ticket to ride...the complete lineup and schedule for New Orleans Fringe Festival is available at www.nofringe.org. Tickets are $8 with the one-time purchase of a festival button ($3), and a 5- show pass is $30. One ticket is good for any one show. Tickets are available online at www.nofringe.org before the festival, and during the Festival at the venues or at the Free-For-All Tent on the corner of Press and Dauphine in the Marigny. Can t decide what to see? Come to the free Fringe Peep Shows, Wednesday, November 17 and Thursday, November 18 from 5-7 pm to see previews of many of the shows at the Fringe and enjoy free NOLA Brew and Old New Orleans Rum. Louisiana groups are pushing all performance boundaries: Revenge from the Deep Water is an aerialist circus arts scifi fantasy, Music for Supervillians is an FreakShow Deluxe @ New Orleans Fringe Festival insane lab rock n roll musical by the Consortium of Genius, Lead Paint Libretto is a musical rock comedy with puppets and dance about the insanity of deadly lead paint, Du Fu, Mississippi by ArtSpot combines the poems of an 8th Century Chinese poet with an old-time washtub bass band, Shut Up & Fly is Asia Rainey s fluid and powerful spoken word story of three generations of women, N.O. Soul is a satire of when all black people go missing on Super Sunday, and Dream of the Marionettes from Lafayette is a burlesque musical with human puppets. Plus many more local artists. 8 The Official Mag: AmbushMag.COM November 9-22, 2010 Official ficial Gay Mardi di Gras Guide GayMardiGras.COM Counseling and Psychotherapy Couples, individuals, communication skills, coming out, relationship issues, grief and substance abuse. Gay therapist for Lesbian and Gay Issues. We care. We understand. A Counseling Cooperati tive 504.836.0000 3001 Fifth St. Metairie, LA 70002 David Wagner, PhD, LPC, NCC, CHT Visiting groups are coming from all over, bringing their own flavor of Fringe. Highlights include Tit8lou from Switzerland/Italy in their bicycle clowning show Duo Roccoco, FreakShow Deluxe from Los Angeles is ultimate sideshow with chainsaws, lightbulbs, needles, knives and body parts. In For Kingdom and Fatherland a Pakistani-Norwegian Muslim comic tells her hilarious, moving story, Bombs, Babes and Bingo from Fayetteville, Arkansas is strange, dark twisting plot that never ends the same way twice, 52 Man Pickup features the outrageous sexploits of Desiree Burch from New York City, The Truck Project is a roving theater in a moving truck, and from Northern Ireland comes Don t Go Back to the Dreamhouse [continued on 10] Duo Roccoco @ New Orleans Fringe Festival
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the "official" dish...from 8 a cabaret about revolution in the 1930s set to bawdy, catchy tunes. Dance is a special feature at the Fringe, with the gorgeous and vulnerable duet teeth in Home Made from Portland, Oregon. FREEFALL returns from New York City with lie, lay, laid, accompanied by local band Why are We Building Such a Big Ship. The Divine Feminine by Chard Gonzalez Dance Ensemble of New Orleans, Bayou Butoh from Natchitoches, Louisiana performs at the Old Iron Works in conjunction with MultiSpecies SWARM, Trail of Tears from Birmingham Alabama, and The Tale of Mephisto a comic satire by local group International Theatre Laboratorium complete a tremendous dance lineup at the Fringe. This is just a taste. For the complete lineup, visit http://www.nofringe.org/ shows_2010.html. The Festival organizes six performance venues at grassroots theaters and unusual spaces in the downtown neighborhoods of the Bywater and Marigny, including the Skull Club, Shadowbox Theatre, Den of Muses, NOLA Candle Factory, Church on St. Ferdinand, and Party World. There is also the Bring Your Own Venue option where artists organize their own spaces. In total, 22 venues will be presenting over 150 shows during the Festival. New this year will be a full schedule of free kid s activities, called Family Fringe, at the Fringe Free-for-All Tent on Saturday and Sunday, November 20-21, 11am-5pm. Family Fringe will feature a range of free kids arts activities, including improvisation, crafts, open-mike for kids, Nola Rising Paint Party, puppet shows, drum circle, double dutching, and The ReUse District Art Yard. The eccentric GoodChildren Fringe Parade will be rolling down St. Claude from Poland Avenue at 2pm on Saturday, November 20 to the rhythms of the GoodChildren Marching Band and to the steps of performers and neighborhood types alike. Spoken word is being brought to the forefront at a new free Fringe event involving several generations of New Orleans most accomplished spoken word artists. Called Bam Bam Boom! Baby Boom!!, this free-to-the-public evening at The Maison at 508 Frenchman Saturday, November 20 at 7pm and again at 9pm. The Fringe is a 501(c)3 non-profit that was founded by local arts organizers to nurture fearless theater in New Orleans and to benefit artists, venues, neighborhoods and local businesses. This program is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. This program is supported in part by a Community Arts Grant made possible by the City of New Orleans. The grant is administered through the Arts Council of New Orleans. Sponsors: Louisiana Division of the Arts, Arts Council of New Orleans, City of New Orleans, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, Bywater Neighborhood Association, Whole Foods Market, Bernard Productions, NOLA Brewing Company, Old New Orleans Rum, NOLA.com and a host of local businesses and individuals. Louisiana Breaks Top Ten for First Time in History in Business Climate Rankings Site Selection magazine released its annual Top State Business Climate Rankings. Thanks to a successful year of business development wins-many in Greater New Orleans-Louisiana placed ninth best in the United States, up from its ranking of 25th in 2009. The recently released ranking is the highest mark to date for Louisiana; it is also the first time Louisiana has appeared in the top 10 in the 18-year history of the publication s rankings. Our rise in the rankings reflects the progress we ve made as a region and a state, said Michael Hecht, President and CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc. Over the last year, companies have made major investments resulting in significant job and wealth creation for Louisianians. Since January, we have seen several businesses such as Blade Dynamics, Globalstar, Folgers, Atlantic Metrocast, and The Receivables Exchange commit to creating nearly 2,400 new jobs in our region. Site Selection bases its rankings on two sets of information: 50 percent of the calculation is based on a survey of site selection consultants and other corporate executives who decide locations for major business development projects, and the remaining 50 percent is based on quantitative measures primarily linked to the national Conway Data New Plant Database of new and expanded business facility activity. Louisiana ranked seventh best on the executive survey and ninth best based on quantitative measures. Validating our efforts, half of the calculation for this ranking takes into account the feedback of site selectors around the nation, said Hecht. We have been committed to building and maintaining relationships with partners in the site selection and corporate real estate 10 The Official Mag: AmbushMag.COM November 9-22, 2010 Official ficial Gay Mardi di Gras Guide GayMardiGras.COM industries to continuously promote the Greater New Orleans region as a place to live and work. With our state ranked seventh on the survey, it is clear that we-and our local partners-are succeeding. This terrific news is a reflection of Louisiana s continued economic progress during a difficult national economic period, said Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret. Our dramatically improved ranking is in large part the result of our recent business development successes, as well as our aggressive marketing efforts focused on closing the gap between the perception and reality of Louisiana s business climate. While we are pleased with our progress, we are not slowing down we are going to keep working hard to strengthen Louisiana s position as the emerging economic powerhouse of the South. The improvement in Site Selection s rankings is the most recent item in a long list of accolades received by the state. In August 2010, Louisiana earned the first-ever Most Improved State designation in Pollina Corporate Real Estate s rankings of top states for business based on its improvement from 2008 to 2010. In July 2010, Louisiana FastStart was ranked the best state workforce training program in the country by Business Facilities magazine. Southern Business & Development magazine named Louisiana Costate of the Year for the second consecutive year, also in July. New Orleans Photo Alliance Announces Winner of Inaugural $5,000 Clarence John Laughlin Award The New Orleans Photo Alliance (NOPA) is pleased to announce the winner of its first annual Clarence John Laughlin Award. Juror John Wood selected Charles Grogg as the recipient of the $5,000 award, which was established to recognize and reward a fine art photographer who is creating or has completed a significant body of photographic work. John Wood writes: Charles Grogg s photographs are hauntingly beautiful. And they are strange. But they are strange in a way that most strange photographs are not. There is no violence, no brutality, no shock, except the shock of authentic art, that shock that forces a viewer back again and again to look at them and keeps them as fresh on the one hundredth viewing as they were on the first. What pulls us back is a resonance that is at once both fresh but also familiar, new but not unknown. We know all the things of Charles Grogg s world, but we have never seen them before in such combinations. And we have seldom seen them rendered with such beauty. See Charles Grogg s winning portfolio, John Wood s entire essay and the complete list of finalists at: http:// neworleansphotoalliance.org/grants/cjl_award/2010/ The Clarence John Laughlin Award was created by NOPA to support the work of photographers who use the medium as a means of creative expression. It honors the life and work of Clarence John Laughlin (1905-1985), a New Orleans photographer best known for his surrealist images of the American South. The Clarence John Laughlin Award grants one $5,000 prize annually to a photographer whose work exhibits sustained artistic excellence and creative vision. John Wood, Editor of 21 st Editions, served as the inaugural juror. The New Orleans Photo Alliance will present the award to Charles Grogg on December 4 th during the fifth annual PhotoNOLA festival. Charles Grogg (b.1966, Gary, Indiana) is an American contemporary artist and photographer. He resides in southern California where he produces fractured photographic images printed in platinum and palladium on handmade Japanese washi which are restitched into whole images and frequently feature tethers, sutures or other three dimensional productions. The resulting images focus on issues of growth and restraint, hesitation and power. His images have been published widely in fine art photography periodicals internationally. To see more of Grogg s work, visit his website: www.charlesgroggphotography.net The New Orleans Photo Alliance was formed by a diverse group of photographers in 2006 to foster community [continued on 12]