Posts Tagged ‘carnival’

Ah, there’s all kinds of references on the floats this year about Nagin’s impending exit.

Honestly, doesn’t Carnival seem kind of like an afterthought this year? After weeks and weeks of election & Superbowl buildup? What could be better than what we already received? The mayoral race was starting to get nasty- I can only imagine how ugly it would’ve been like if we’d had a Mitch/Troy runoff.

And with Nagin opening his fool mouth on WBOK, trying to stir up racial tensions (again:shock), plus that asshat Riley lying on the same station about Councilperson Head calling him the verboten N-word in emails I just didn’t know what to expect. Of course the email couldn’t be produced (as it doesn’t exist) but with how much Stacy’s been targeted these last two years it was hard to say just how the numbers would fall.

But within half an hour of the polls closing it was clear that both Mitch and Stacey were going to take it in a walk. And now there’s not much left to do but laugh at the floats as we wave buh-bye to Nagoon, trying very hard to make the door hit him in the ass on the way out.

Actually, there is one more thing to be done- get up early tomorrow for the Zulu parade to boo Nagin as he rides by on his horse. It’s the last time we get to do that!

Whoo hoo!

More Hermes photos here.

One of the reasons d’Etat’s one of my absolute favorites (other than their scathing wit, of course) is their embrace of the old fashioned grotesqueries. In a time when everything has got to be perfectly scrubbed and lovely it’s nice to have a bit of the flavor of what it was originally about. A little danger, a little mortality reminds you to really enjoy the fun on offer.

More d’Etat here.

(Okay, so Twelfth Night was a couple of weeks ago. I’m catching up now.)

The Phunny Phorty Phellows kick off Carnival season in style- with a streetcar ride, tossing beads as they go. I hadn’t gotten out to see them on their ride before, and was surprised that they don’t set a slow, maximizing sort of pace, but the typical “now you see us, now you don’t” streetcar speed.

There weren’t huge crowds for this one, but they always had people around because drivers on St. Charles Ave would see them, do a quick whip around, get ahead of the streetcar, park, and run over.

I have to say, they looked like they were having a hell of a good time:

Or, possibly this isn’t an actual, general-purpose drag queen, but just drag for Mardi Gras day.

This came from a big lot of slides from 1964 and thereabouts that did include some Carnival photos, so, even back then, anything goes on Mardi Gras day.

So I don’t usually do things like this, but I bought this goofy hat to put on the weiner.

He took it pretty well, really. He’s used to having shirts on when he’s cold, so I guess he figured he’d just go with the flow.

Sammy, however, wasn’t so excited about it.

And Bianca made her thoughts clear on the matter right off. We decided to skip her.

(No animals were harmed or even seriously annoyed by this silliness, which lasted less than 5 minutes, and now they’re safe for at least another year. )

Ah, the best of times, the worst of times: Mardi Gras.

Actually, that’s not really fair to Mardi Gras; my problem wasn’t with the holiday, it was me not being able to get out of my own head and just go with it. Try as I might, I couldn’t quite get off the misery merry-go-round* that I’ve been on since deciding to close the business.

Even so, the good outweighed the bad by a long shot, most importantly because Charlie’s oldest daughter came down for a few days and they got to hang out. It was a first, and she discovered that even the most dignified big-time New York designer will jump around for some Muses schwag:

Duty called, and Caitlin had to go home on Sunday, but she got to see a bunch of the big parades and hopefully she’ll be back with her sisters in tow in the next year or two, and then we’ll get to drag them along on a float, looking goofy with the rest of us:

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*my mental carousel horse goes up and it’s all “Wow, I get my house back, I’m going to write, yay!”, but then inevitably the horsey comes down and it becomes “failure failure failure.” Apologies to anyone who got to deal with my intermittent mopishness: blech.

Life in NOLA contains many wonderful things, but the roaches ain’t one of ‘em.

We’ve got great big 4 inch suckers that fly, and they’re out and about now. Trust me, you haven’t lived until the bug you’re approaching with a rolled up newspaper flies at your face and you run off screaming like a loon. Good times.

So what else is there to do but celebrate this lovely local problem with its own bead? I want to jump in the shower just looking at these. But clearly somebody put some thought into them- even the beads in between the roaches are…skeevy.

I haven’t had a kid kid at Mardi Gras in years- Alison’s worked the entirety of Carnival the last two years, so I haven’t seen her at all, even though she hardly qualifies as a kid anymore.

But the girls were excited to find out that we have a Costume Box- I think it’s mandatory that if you live in New Orleans, you have a place where all the odds and ends go so that the next time you have go make something out of nothing (you’d be surprised how often that is), you’ve got a base to start with.

Marisa glommed onto this hat- and it is quite the hat- and wore it to the parades. Alison stole it back briefly, and I sighed wistfully, thinking of when she wore it to try and catch the float riders’ eye and snag the best beads.

I had to look for evidence, and there it was.

2005:

2008:

I generally sort of roll my eyes at beads that feature breasts in their various forms. They’re often rather anime-ish- a sort of cartoon stripper taken unawares by her state.

But these. What to say about these? More than the item itself, I love the box. I give you “The Breast ball with I Love You Sound- Squeezable mimi<sic> ball:”

It’s a stress ball, basically. But the person who needs this added little tip is definately under far too much stress: Read the rest of this entry »