This is disappointingly not so-called "Becks-style" blogging for this hour on a Saturday night.
Also, I was at Mardi Gras in 2002 and 2003. There were some "Hooray! Titties!" moments, and I would otherwise describe it as interesting.
Answer the obvious question, Becks.
Becks would do well to answer, Dear SCMTim…
God, I miss New Orleans. I was never there during Mardi Gras, but travelled down to visit often enough. One of my dearest friends teaches (or rather, taught - the school is a National Guard barracks since the flood) poetry there and the emails I get from her now just break my heart. So much gone, so quickly, and the rest of the country just seems to have moved on.
This week I heard from another friend who had been a musician there for the past dozen or so years. He had evacuated up to a radical faerie compound in Tennessee just ahead of the flood and now has started over in Brooklyn. It's hard to imagine him living anywhere but New Orleans; it was really a perfect fit. But, y'know, no jobs to be had.
It's all just so sad.
Sorry to disappoint, w/d. If I start drinking now...
Do you have to ask, Tim? Of course I flashed a time or two. But, as I implied in the post, in my day it was sweet, innocent, and wholly within the realm of what Good Girls did during Mardi Gras.
To put the Mardi Gras debauchery continuum into perspective, we [almost literally] ran into one of our [male] professors giving a random anonymous guy he'd just met a blowjob on the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann my sophomore year.
radical faerie compound
This could prompt any number of questions. Not sure what the obvious one is.
It's where you compound the radical faeries. If they take a liking to you, they might even compound you.
I find it funny/sad the links to "something nice" are to three bucks of plastic crap. Flowers and a dinner, my ass. Which is not being shown to drunken strangers for less than $20 in goods and/or services.
If not, you can expect a confounding
Wow! There are almost 20,000 Google hits for "radical faerie". I thought it was an Apostropherism. Apparently no:
To attempt a short description, from one faerie's perspective, the radical faeries are a queer tribal nation sharing affinity in the spiritual underpinnings of non-mainstream sexuality and heart-centered relationship. We are historically and primarily gay men (many of us proudly seize the name "faggot"). And many who do not fit, or choose not to accept, these stereotypes also identify as radical faeries.
8 - Yes, but what the girls are flashing for now works out to about 10 cents each, which is even worse. And it's not really about the beads, it's about the guy. Flashing was an acknowledgement that he was cute and charming and the beads were a token of his appreciation. And, unlike today, the exchange was not necessarily an end -- if he managed to charm you sufficiently for you to flash (a process that often took an hour or more of flirting) phone numbers were usually exchanged and future plans made.
For more than a couple of decades, Nola has been #1 on my list of Remaining Major American Cities I've Not Been To And Most Want To Visit.
For a long list of reasons, from my love of cajun and creole food, to the architecture, to the history, to the local cultures, to the accents, to the plain old uniqueness.
I've been to some 40 or so of the states, and generally to at least one or two of the major cities of each. Not Louisiana and New Orleans.
I'd gladly trade several other states and cities I've visited if I were offered the choice.
(Other states I've not been to, in no particular order: Hawaii, Alaska, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Oklahoma. That's it, although, really, also Texas, since all I've ever done there is sit at DFW airport for 6 hours, so that really shouldn't count; but I've spent at least a day in all the rest (not airports, real country and towns and cities), and usually at least a weekend, and mostly at least a couple days more, cumulatively.)
Only one trip off North America, though; not out of choice, however, remotely.
Anyway, it's nice that I can still someday see the French Quarter, but it just really won't be the same as it were, will it?
And, really, I'd happily trade those four days in Nashville, or the two months in Phoenix, or that exciting visit to Boise, or the thrills of either Kansas City, or....
Actually, come to think of it, I've been to Oklahoma City, too. But 1974 was a long time ago, and it was pretty damn forgettable.
To put the Mardi Gras debauchery continuum into perspective, we [almost literally] ran into one of our [male] professors giving a random anonymous guy he'd just met a blowjob on the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann my sophomore year.
The obvious question here is, how do you know that the blowjob recipient was a random anonymous guy the professor had just met? Did he share details of the encounter the next time class met?
Touché. The "random, anonymous" part has always been our assumption based on the reputation of the location and the vibe of what we observed. Still, the facts remain: (1) professor (2) blowjob (3) public streetcorner. Fortunately, my friend's prof and not mine.
This reminds me of the joke about the engineer, the physicist, the mathematician, and the zebra. No, really.
You're right about the crap necklace thing. I would only flash if promised one of those fancy pearl kinds.
(LHF?)
I would only flash if promised one of those fancy pearl kinds.
I hear black pearls are, uh, more copious.
(LHF?)
Doesn't get much lower, really.
18:
You would flash for a pearl necklace? I thought, ahem, pearl necklaces were somethign given after the flash. Or do I have the mechanics wrong?
I hear black pearls are, uh, more copious.
Yeah, I wore them alot in the 90s. Now I like them less cultured. IYKWIM. AITYD.
Doesn't get much lower, really.
Easy to tell how much you care, Apo. I wanted to tell you, though, that I made a lot of dough playing poker one night, while listening to that Zappa record.
I had it on in the car Friday morning when I was taking my kid to school and when it got to the point where the dog says, "The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe," I saw the lightbulb go on over his head.
"Is that where the stuff on the top of your website comes from?"
"Yeah, it is."
"God, you're weird."
The thread linked in 3 is Standpipe at Bridgeplate's best.
25 - That's the part where I'd backhand the kid for not reading your About page.
Also: You might want to check and make sure that was indeed a lightbulb over his head, and not the interior car light. The door might be ajar. Could be a problem with the mechanism.
Hey, we're all a little bit mechanist.
Or it could be that same light that's been dawning elsewhere.
SB, either someday you're going to have to retract this, or I'm going to keep taking credit.
Either way, there's some great stuff in that thread.
Fuck, broken link in "this". Also, I can't flat out admit what movie I'm watching right now, so let me say, "I need a hero."
So do you think this year's tourist-free and generally atypical mardi gras will be much less of 'fleshfest'?
So do you think this year's tourist-free and generally atypical mardi gras will be a bit less of a 'fleshfest'?
People, people, people, don't listen to Becks. Flashing is for dumb tourists and drunk college students. It's confined to the French Quarter, a part of town most locals avoid like the plague during Mardi Gras. This is not what Mardi Gras is about.
I'm living a block off the parade routes now. The first round rolled yesterday. Yep, it's smaller than before. Five krewes rolled by in an hour. We all expected to be there the entire afternoon. There aren't enough high schools to provide marching bands and the cops are making the show run on time.
Let me tell you what Mardi Gras is all about. Tonight I'm going down to Tipitina's, where the Mardi Gras Indians hold regularly practices that are open to public. The Indians are a tradition in the African-American community. Each year, the Indians hand-sew elaborate costumes, and on Mardi Gras day they march through the neighborhoods and sing. A lot of the New Orleans funk beats come from the traditional Indian songs.
As you might have heard, we got a little water down here recently. Lots of the black folks haven't made it home. But every Sunday, people are driving from as far as Houston for the Indian practice session. They work on their dances and chants until 11:00 p.m., and then they drive back to Houston again. Mardi Gras is that important to them. That's what it's all about.
Sorry to rant on Becks on her own blog. The culture of New Orleans is wonderful and weird. Most of us who live here love the city with a passion normally reserved for people. We're worried about the survival of that culture, and we want the world to know what this place is really about.
Happy Mardi Gras! More parades will be rolling a few hours.
Actually, Frolic, I think we agree more than you think. The stuff you describe is what makes Mardi Gras special and makes the emphasis on flashing in recent years even worse -- it overshadows a lot of cool stuff. The most fun I had each year was in the Garden District, not the Quarter, where things were more geared towards the locals (which we considered ourselves, although I'm sure real locals wouldn't have considered us that). The wide variety of traditions and weird stuff going on is what made Mardi Gras special and it would really be diminished if the trajectory continued and it kept becoming more and more about the flashing. (I guess that was one of the points I had hoped to make more eloquently but then got off on a rant instead.)
I'm glad to hear it's a good Mardi Gras this year, even if it's so much smaller. I hadn't thought about the lack of marching bands -- that would be weird. Damn, those marching bands were in a league of their own.
You can tell from the typos that I'm still suffering the effects of afternoon drinking.
Good for you! My biggest regret is that I never saw Zulu. Every year, we'd say we were going and every year we'd be too hung over/still drunk/passed out on the floor of someone's apartment to make it since it's just so damn early and not on the main route. Never got a coconut.
Oh, and don't worry Frolic, if this site is for anything it's for abusing the bloggers. That's what we're here for.
Glad to hear that we agree. Hope I didn't sound too cranky.
We're all a little nervous about how the media will cover Mardi Gras. Can't you see the cutting between parades and devastating in the Lower 9th?
You'll be happy to know that a marching band led the whole parade. The schools don't have enough students for a full band, so the big three catholic schools, St. Mary, St. Anthony and St. Xavier, combined to form the MAX band.
It put a tear in my eye to see them march by.
Someone had a sign that said "Thank U 4 Paradin'." Yes indeed, we've never needed it more.
31: Did you just call my kid a marblehead, eb?
If you get Anderson Cooper down there, and get him to show some nip, New Orleans will be saved.
I got a coconut last year. It has a proud place on my mantel.
I'm bummed that I'll have to miss Zulu this year. For the first time ever, they're bring real Zulu warriors from Africa to march with them. That is going to be a sight.
Maybe they'll be able to do that again.
And if this talk of coconuts makes no sense, check out this photo from last year's parade:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frolic/4512079/in/set-20483/
41: I'm guessing, by the properties I seem to remember being inherent to rubber and glue, that if I did call your kid a marblehead, I actually called myself one.
If flashing is central to Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras is in trouble, b/c you can get people to flash their tits at you on the internet just by asking.
But of course what I meant to say was that, like the sun that lights us all at different times around the world, the same light that dawned upon Marblehead may have appeared over your son's head.
When are tv shows on in Marblehead anyway? Certainly not at the same time as in New York!
There are almost 20,000 Google hits for "radical faerie".
As a measure of relative influence, though, there are almost 48,000 hits for "my hovercraft is full of eels".
And speaking of bad Mardi Gras decisions...
I once saw a guy painted like an elephant. He did some impressive hands-free trunk puppetry.
The picture you linked is far more disturbing, though.
hands-free trunk puppetry
Wowie zowie! Was it... prehensile?
Was it... prehensile?
It was able to grab her attention.
Speaking of such things -- does anybody here know of a modern artist who has used his member as a paint brush? Better if he has based his career on this as gimmick, but also if he has just happened to paint one particular picture this way.
Unsurprisingly, Paul McCarthy has.
Also, I suppose Warhol's piss paintings would count.
A friend of mine has a Mardi Gras story from the early Eighties, involving having left her Tulane dorm on Friday before Mardi Gras and not having returned until Ash Wednesday. In the interim, she had lost track of all her clothing other than shoes and panties, and was dressed in replacements, including a Soviet navy hat acquired on board a Soviet sub, and a French Foreign Legion belt acquired in some manner that she couldn't recall.
I hear stories like that and think of how comparatively pitifully dull my college years were in comparison. Skinny-dipping in Walden Pond was about as exciting as it got.
Well, the last time I was at Mardi Gras was when Becks was still in diapers (and out of necessity, too!) and GGW wasn't even a gleam in a producer's eye, but I do, in fact, recall witnessing a great deal of flashing.
I also recall, with great affection, the Zulu parade (my coconut disappeared, never to be seen again, at a pina-colada party the following fall), hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's (co-owned by a fraternity brother of mine), dinner at Court of Two Sisters and an impromptu meeting with the late photographer Johnny Don/nells (quite the Budweiser fan, he).
What happened during Katrina breaks my heart. What happened afterward was a crime.
[ed: Googleproofed by Becks]
Speaking of Mardi Gras decisions, does anyone remember the U of C's Lascivious Costume Ball? It dated from the 60's. You could get in free if you were naked. My then-girlfriend and I got in free in 1980; I went as a pictish warrier (I have red hair), so I painted myself blue. The whole thing was discontinued a year or so later.
So you ruined it for everybody, huh?
I love Court of Two Sisters, Lex. That used to be our treat - once a year we would splurge on brunch there (which, at $21 in the '90s, seemed like a fortune for us poor college students). Johnny Don/nels is actually pretty good friends with my aunt. He gave me a tour of his studio once. Nice guy.
[ed: Googleproofed by Becks]
Actually, now that I think about it, we didn't meet Don/nels at Mardi Gras, but when my family visited New Orleans a couple of summers prior to the Mardi Gras I attended. My sister Jane, then 10, struck up a conversation with him as he was out on a balcony (or fire escape, something like that) and we were walking past on the street below, and he ended up inviting my whole family (mom, dad, me and 3 sibs) upstairs to his studio. We sat there -- a family of perfect strangers to him -- rapt, for a couple of hours, drinking his Budweiser, listening to his stories and looking at his photos, including the original of the one that ended up being used on the Lyndon B. Johnson stamp. He sent us on our way with a ton of good wishes and two of his photo books, autographed. My mother still has them.
To me, it was even cooler than meeting The Police.
Also, I referred to him as "the late," but there's a reference here to his having been alive, albeit decamped to Fort Worth, Texas -- possibly permanently -- as recently as a couple of weeks after Katrina. So that's good to know.
[ed: Googleproofed by Becks]
I missed your reference to "the late" JD, Lex. Yes, he's alive and well. My aunt forwarded me an email she got from him a couple of weeks ago. He's back in NOLA and has reopened his shop.
Your story about him calling down to you from a balcony and then inviting you up is amusing -- that's exactly how my aunt first met him 20 years ago.
Also, Lex, I went back and Googleproofed the JD references. I really don't want that aunt finding this site. She fears for my soul enough as it is.
Lord, Lex, that Jane could get anyone talking. I'm just pleased she started out early and right!
We're leaving tomorrow for MG in Lafayette/Mamou/NOLA - woot!
Becks: No problem.
KJ: You talk as if you know Jane well. :-) Enjoy MG!
Hey somebody deleted the awesome comment spam! Geez you guys, this was one of the best ever.
Speaking of such things -- does anybody here know of a modern artist who has used his member as a paint brush?
Hey, look! (mildly NSFW)