New guests stop by every week on Happy Hour. This week meet:

• Gabrielle Cavassa – jazz singer/songwriter.
• Arthur Franz IV – inventor of Mardi Gras Madness, a board game that doesn’t actually require a board.
• Deborah Oppenheim – taught in the New Orleans public school system for 30 years and escaped with her sanity by switching schools every 7 years.

Jazz singer/songwriter Gabrielle Cavassa broke up with the guy she was dating.

Gabrielle Cavassa on Happy Hour

When they got together a month later – for that ridiculous “closure” we’ve heard so much about – he gave her the ammo for a vicious, cutting song about what a kind, loving, genius he’d turned into since they split. He even told her that he’d gotten so smart that he listens to podcasts now.

We realize we’re on thin ice here, suggesting only pretentious jerks listen to podcasts, because obviously you’re so smart you do listen to podcasts, but nobody in their right mind would claim this is a podcast for smart people. Although we do have smart people on it, like for example Arthur Franz IV.

Arthur Franz IV on Happy Hour

Arthur is the inventor of Mardi Gras Madness, a board game that doesn’t actually require a board. It’s a card game in which you play the part of a Mardi Gras parade-goer and the object of the game is to collect as many throws as possible. For $25 it looks like a good investment in drinking for those long nights between parades when you’re dreaming of streets filled with people having fun and forgetting the misery that is our daily lives. Or is it?

Do you believe most people go through life relatively confident and happy? Or that most of us are “riddled with debilitating self doubt?” If the latter camp, the captain of your ship is Andrew Duhon.

Andrew Duhon on Happy Hour

Although, ironically, the song Andrew plays on this show is one of the quirkier in his pantheon. It’s a new song called, The Castle on Irish Bayou. If you live in New Orleans and you’ve driven east on I-10 toward Slidell, you know the place.

Deborah Oppenheim on Happy Hour

Deborah Oppenheim taught in the New Orleans public school system for 30 years and escaped with her sanity by switching schools every 7 years. These days she’s the founder of an organization called Look Before You Open, a non-profit whose mission is to save bicyclists’ lives by educating drivers and passengers on how to open a car door. There’s actually a safe technique called “Opposite Hand Reach.” (That’s also the method Arthur would use to get out a submerged helicopter, and that’s a whole other story.)

Happy Hour at the Maple Leaf

It’s New Orleans Happy Hour is recorded at the iconic Maple Leaf Bar in Uptown New Orleans. Photos by Jill Lafleur.

There’s more Happy Hour Mardi Gras Madness here.