L'Alliance Française de la Nouvelle-Orléans offers the latest installment in its series of monthly screenings at Cafe Istanbul on Monday, May 27 at 7 p.m. with director Julie Lopes-Curval's 2006 film Toi et Moi. The light-hearted romantic comedy is presented in French with English subtitles and stars Marion Cotillard and Julie Depardieu. Tickets are $5 general admission and free to L'Alliance members. Cafe Istanbul is located inside New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude. More info here.
Ian McNulty's cover story this week, "Movers and Shakers," was all about New Orleans' craft cocktail bartenders, but of course we didn't have enough room to run all the great photos taken by Cheryl Gerber.
Here's a roundup of images from "The Pop Shop" pop-up bar event at Faubourg Wines April 16, and "On the Rocks Jukebox" at One Eyed Jacks April 23.
Tamara Jackson from Silence Is Violence and Mary von Kurnatowski from the Tipitina's Foundation appeared on the WWL Eyewitness Morning News today to talk about the May 23 concert at Tip's for The 19 Fund.
Gambit's nonprofit arm, the Foundation for Entertainment, Development and Education, has teamed up with The Tipitina’s Foundation, the United Way and Silence Is Violence to help the 19 victims of the Mother's Day shooting with a benefit concert Thursday featuring some of New Orleans’ top musicians, including Donald Harrison Jr. leading the Congo Square Nation Mardi Gras Indians, Hot 8 Brass Band, Stooges Brass Band, Bonerama and others. The event is hosted by honorary co-chairs Fats Domino, Wendell Pierce and Harrison.
Tickets to the benefit are $40 in advance and are available online.
All proceeds from the May 23 benefit concert — and all funds raised by The 19 Fund — will be turned over to United Way, which will serve as fiscal agent for The 19 Fund at no charge. Silence Is Violence will coordinate victim services, which will include financial aid as well as help accessing other free and discounted social services from governmental and nonprofit sources.
The woman who is all things Y@Speak, Lauren LaBorde, is donating blood at the Frenchmen Street blood drive, so forgive me for pinch-hitting for her...
The people have voted, the votes have been tallied and the tallies have been posted: Finalists for the Y@Speak Awards, celebrating all the best in the New Orleans Twitterverse, are now live and voting is open.

Some notes:
1) Do not complain. These were your choices.
2) We agree, we agree: "celebrity" is an elastic term in a town where nobody is really a celebrity, but everybody is kind of a celebrity if you put your mind to it. Again, these were your choices.
3) Megan Braden-Perry was nominated in one category, but that was a conflict of interest. Sorry, @MeganDoesNola.
4) See Note #1.
So go vote in the Y@Speak Awards, then join Lauren LaBorde (@laurenlaborde), your charming host Ian Hoch (@ianhoch) and all the nominees at PubliQ House (@FreretPubHouse) June 3 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to see who wins.

Two enormous bloodmobiles — one in neon chartreuse, the other, well, blood-red — stretched down Frenchmen Street from the Apple Barrel to the Spotted Cat this afternoon. The event was called “Frenchmen Street: Roll Up Your Sleeves,” and it was a replacement blood drive for the 19 victims of the Mother’s Day second line shooting in the 7th Ward.
More than 100 people had preregistered to give blood between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m., according to Amanda Chittenden, the Blood Center’s public relations manager. “But the first 12 people we got were all walkups,” said Erica Dudas of the New Orleans Musicians' Assistance Foundation, the group that staged the blood drive.
The event — held in the concrete pad that’s home to the Frenchmen Art Market — was busy from the kickoff, with would-be donors lining up and musicians David and Roselyn serenading the crowd with a song appropriately called “Kiss It and Make It Better.”
“New Orleans has given us a lot,” said Roselyn. “Helping other musicians is just what you do.”
The manpighunt begins:
The New Orleans Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance in locating a stolen statue of a pig in a chef’s outfit. The statue was stolen on the morning of May 1, 2013 during Jazz Fest weekend.
Possible scenario: Swept up in the reverie of a musical weekend, the thieves stumbled upon their new pig friend and invited it to their Hawaiian shirt and straw fedora Bacchanalia. Or, a hooded Chik-Fil-A employee removed the statue as a message — the consequence of slogan copywright infringement. Or, the pig was a witness. To what? We may never know.
Anyone with information as to the location of the pig is asked to notify Detective Robert Stoltz, First District Investigations, 504-658-6012, rfstoltz@nola.gov, 911, or Crime Stoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll free at 1-877-903-7867.

Edgar Caro made his name in New Orleans at his restaurant Baru Bistro & Tapas, where he serves dishes from his native Colombia. The food at his most recent venture, Basin Seafood & Spirits (3222 Magazine St., 504-473-8865), has a lot more to do with his adopted Louisiana home, and also with his partner in the new restaurant.
Caro recently opened Basin Seafood with Tommy Peters, a former fishing guide whose family has for years operated a fishing charter business from Venice, La. Caro was one of their clients, and Peters says he was always impressed by what the chef could do with the day’s catch once he got it dockside— or even before then.
“We caught a snapper one time and he made it into ceviche right there on the boat,” Peters recalls. “It was just four ingredients and it was the best ceviche I’d ever had. We’ve been friends ever since.”
In his commentary tonight on WWL-TV, Gambit political editor Clancy DuBos discussed the New Orleans Mother's Day shootings and Thursday night's benefit for "The 19 Fund," which will benefit the victims. Donald Harrison, Jr. and The Congo Square Nation, Hot 8 Brass Band, Bonerama, Stooges Brass Band and others will perform.

New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl, Final Fours, championship boxing bouts, presidents, a pope, the Dalai Lama and coming in September: The 2013 National Beard and Moustache Championships(Sept. 6-7), the Westminster show of male facial hair. There are 18 categories to medal in, and anything goes except artificial hair.
Germany is home to the World Beard and Moustache Association, which held its first competition in 1990. National Geographic has some good pictures of 2010 competitors. Britain's club has its own impressive competition.
In the U.S., regional groups are cropping up and there are several regional competitions. There is a New York competition, which allows women to participate (and Coney Island has its own competition). There's also a New York beard alliance. Los Angeles has a competition. Missouri has an active hirsute community. There's a club in Philadelphia. Austin. Houston. Bonnaroo has a beard competition this year, and it's got a category for fake beards. The online Beard Club has a links page with a round up of tumblr sites with photos, how to sites, competitions and more.
Update: There also is a local group for those who want to stop shaving and start networking.
The championships in New Orleans are open to men only. There are three main divisions with subcategories: Mustache (Salvador Dali, Hungarian, Imperial, freestyle, etc.), Full Beards (natural, Geribaldi, freestyle) and Partial Beards (Fu Manchu, Muskateer, Amish, sideburns, freestyle, etc.). Competitors are allowed to use various hair products, but from competition photos, it seems that some sort of period costume is a good idea.
Just when pompous period melodramas like The Phantom of the Opera seemed to have cornered the market on serious musical theater, Next To Normal ran off with a Pulitzer Prize, among many other honors. This inventive oddity, deftly produced by Southern Rep, might be characterized as the revenge of the middle class. It’s contemporary, suburban and a maelstrom of psychological torments.
The show is a soft rock opera. Almost all the narrative is sung, and a four-piece band under the direction of Jefferson Turner accompanies the impressive cast.
Bill Walker’s set is a two-level abstract metallic structure, and most of the time, it represents the New York home of the Goodman family.
Wife and mother Diana Goodman (Leslie Castay) has had bipolar syndrome since her son Gabe died 16 years ago at the age of 18 months. Teenage Gabe (Clint Johnson) is one of the main characters, and we realize he is a ghost in his mother’s mind.