Bests and worsts of Carnival 2010

Conquests with colorful parades
Not so fulfilling as they make them seem

I like posting things with lots of bullet points. I think this is because it's a cheap way to throw a bunch of thoughts up somewhere without having to connect those ideas with actual writing. Anyway here's some random crap about Carnival.

• Best Parade: Certainly the most memorable parade was the Lombardi Gras Saints victory parade. But that really should be considered its own event. I got some great pictures and will probably put them all in a separate post. The most disappointing parades were Krewe D'Etat and Muses for reasons described in a previous post although we managed to have a lot of fun there anyway. Bacchus was great if for no other reason than that they decided to go with a more timely celebrity monarch than usual. But, as usual, I have trouble remembering most of Bacchus. So this year I'm going to surprise myself a little and say my favorite parades were Hermes, Proteus and Rex. In a year when nobody did anything special, at least these three managed to deliver what you expect from them. I was pleased to notice that Rex is still throwing their classic cheap non-glossy plastic beads we thought they were phasing out. And maybe it was just the daylight but the Rex floats really did look amazing.
  
  
  
  
  
  



• Worst Parade: Druids. A lot of people like to pick on Oshun but at least it rolls on the first Friday and, in that slot, serves as a modest opening act. Druids presents a humdrum parade on the Wednesday night before the big weekend. This year, I learned something interesting about this parade. Turns out it's actually sort of intentionally crappy. The members all belong to other Krewes and Druids is their excuse to be irreverent for the sake of just being irreverent. Which is an attitude I can seriously get behind. But I still don't see why this gets them a night all to themselves on the schedule. When I wrote about Druids last Thursday, I noted that the parade calendar had become too condensed toward the end of the week. There are enough parades to have at least one every night. At the very least, Muses should go back to Wednesday and headline that evening.



• Best Crunk We knew there would be numerous renditions of "When the Saints Go Marching In" as well as "Halftime: Stand Up and Get Crunk" from the marching bands this year. They did not disappoint. I tried to record as much of it as I could, but I'm not always very quick on the draw with the camera so the only videos that are even presentable are this from St. Mary's
  
  
  
  And this somewhat better sounding version.
  
  
  
  I'm sorry I didn't get the name of the second band. I think they were from out of town. And I was too busy talking to strange masked persons at the moment to go find out.
  
  



• Worst Crunk In the final weeks of the football season, there emerged a knock-off Saints-specific version of "Halftime" featuring a cloying "Blaaaack and Goooollld to the Suuperbowl" whine over the original track. Everybody bought a copy. And then blasted it out of every car window, float, or streetside sound system within five miles of any parade route for two weeks. During the season I wrote that New Orleans would never ever get tired of hearing "Halftime". This version of the song has proven me wrong. I want to murder those responsible.



• Worst Carnival Tech FAIL Last year, WDSU introduced an innovative use of Twitter with its Parade Tracker service. The station placed vehicles at the head of each Orleans Parish parade from where someone would tweet its progress along the route. Additionally, GPS devices inside the vehicles mapped the parade's location in real time on WDSU's website. It was the breakthrough hit of the season.
  
  This year, the service wasn't quite as reliable. The GPS did not always function properly making the map less certain of a tool. That in itself wouldn't be so bad since most of us rely more on the live tweeting to track the parade while we're out at the route. But the tweets themselves were far less reliable this year. They were less frequent, originated from random spots along the route, and were, at times, comically uninformative. Sometimes they were not specific enough to be of any use.
  
  

  Okeanos is rolling down St. Charles Ave.

  
  
  Or not specific and with poor spelling. (This is my re-tweet of a post now apparently deleted from WDSU's stream)
  
  

  Okay now you're not even trying RT @parades Toth is now rolling.

  
  
  At times they referred to intersections which do not exist.
  
  

  Oshun is rolling on Prytania and St. Charles. WDSU Parade Tracker is sponsored by Party City.

  
  
  The good news here is that there are so many people on Twitter now that, if you're following enough of them, you can get an idea of where things are anyway. But Parade Tracker is a great idea which should be improved next time around.
  
  The bad news is if you were trying to use Twitter from the parade route and you're on T-Mobil or AT&T you were often shit out of luck no matter who you were following. (Or at least that's what I've been told. I'm on Verizon and didn't have much of a problem) AT&T says their network was overloaded. Currently this means they'll have to invest in upgrading their infrastructure if they want to continue competing. But what they'd like to do is simply restrict access more tightly. It's one of the reasons telecoms hate net neutrality.



• Best Weird Moment: Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu appeared in one of the leading floats of the Krewe of Orpheus Lundi Gras evening. You'd have to have a good eye to spot him, though, because he was one of a few riders inconspicuously standing below the featured guest, long-forgotten pop star, Taylor Dayne.



• Best Only-in-New-Orleans Moment Saints head coach Sean Payton also rode in Orpheus. When his float stopped in front of us for a moment, the coach got down off of the float with the Lombardi Trophy in his hand and allowed himself and the trophy to be mobbed by the onrushing crowd. When it was time to move again, Payton returned to the float unharmed. This just would not happen anywhere else.



• Best Parade Food First of all, I gotta say that we made Endymion this year and it was the best experience I've had at that parade in over a decade. We caught it just accross from Mandina's at Cortez Street. It has been a long long time since I've been in an Endymion crowd that let everyone move freely from front to back as they pleased. Everyone shared. Everyone had a great time.
  
  
  
  When you can actually participate, Endymion is a lot of fun. Everything is big and loud and garish, and as long as it's accessible, that's exactly what you're looking for on the Saturday night before Mardi Gras. This reminded me of why I loved Endymion so much as a child. I hope we can get as lucky next time.
  
  Oh and Mandina's sells a limited menu of plates and sandwiches out the back window. I had a plate of perfectly cooked-to-order fried chicken. Must remember to do this again.
  



• Worst White People Okay so I, like a lot of other people, like to go back up in the neighborhood on Mardi Gras Morning and watch the Indians do their thing. I even manage to take a few pictures and videos. Examples below:
  
  
  
  
  
  In the video the chant is the well-known "Let's go get 'em" On the day of the NFC Championship, one of the many second lines I found downtown was singing this on the way to the Superdome. It gave me goosebumps. I love this city. I love Carnival. And I love taking in as much of the spectacle of the day as I can. But I try to keep a respectful distance. I try not to get in the face of people I don't know. I try not to interfere with a scene I didn't have a hand in creating. I try not to be this guy.
  
  
  
  It's Mardi Gras day. We're supposed to be out in the street getting rowdy. Sure we bring the camera, but some people, it seems, are out directing their own personal feature films. There's a certain type of hipster who specializes in attaching him/herself to things that other people have created and making it all about him/her somehow. Recently I've noticed a lot of these types hanging out on Dryades street on Mardi Gras morning. It detracts from things a bit.
  
  Oh one more thing. Yesterday, I noticed the term "The Gras" being thrown around in reference to Carnival season. This must stop and it must stop now.
  



• Best catches Well I had a football thrown by Reggie Bush glance off my fingertips. Not quite as bad a drop as Bush's muffed punt in the NFC Championship game but still I could have said I had done something if I had caught it. Menckles is a doubloon freak and makes a point of collecting one from each event she attends. She had to barter for a Drew Brees Bacchus doubloon but by God she managed to get a hold of that damn thing. I mentioned this in a previous post and promised a picture but she's locked it away somewhere for safekeeping and... I'll get to it sooner or later.
  
  King Arthur was chucking these on the day of the Superbowl. Pretty neat, I guess.
  
  
  
  And, of course, somebody got a shoe.
  
  



• Best hippie shit I was pretty hammered at the time, but I thought the marching groups that came down St. Charles between Thoth and Bacchus were pretty cool. The Noisician Coalition produced unusual marching music from electronic sirens and homemade percussion instruments.
  
  
  
  Some people followed dispensing free wine from boxes. (I didn't get a picture. Was too busy drinking Franzia.) And then this.... I don't know what this was.
  
  



• Best Overall Moment We had a pretty good set-up for Endymion thanks to easy access to nearby parking and bathrooms. But, after the parade, the traffic is going to be a bitch no matter what so there's no reason to be in a rush. While most of our group went to wait things out in the parking lot, Ros and I just stood around drinking beer in the middle of Canal Street.
  
  
  
  We watched the people scatter and then stayed while the crews cleaned up around us. Then we stayed and watched the traffic. We saw some guys almost get arrested for trying to drive through police barricades. We gave directions to fellow stragglers trying to get down to the Quarter. People riding in the back of pickup trucks hooted and hollered at us. Other motorists honked and waved. Mostly we just stood around drinking while the world moved around us.
  
  This is what Mardi Gras is all about to me. It's not about rushing to some specific place to see any can't-miss event. There's no ridiculous admission fee. You don't have to get dressed up and perform for anybody. It's just an opportunity to stand around in the street talking to people doing nothing in particular while random absurdities happen around you. Every year there comes at least one moment in the Carnival season where I'm fully aware that this is exactly what I'm doing and this year, this was that moment.
  
  We must have been out there nearly forty-five minutes before one of our party came back out from the parking lot to lecture us about how inconsiderate we were being. People were waiting for us, she told us. Waiting for what? Waiting to go, but go where? She was in a hurry to go downtown, I guess. But all we were going to do when we got there was stand around and drink and do nothing. We were standing around and drinking and doing nothing right where we were. We figured the downtown nothing would wait for us. We tried to tell her this but she didn't get it.
  
  She's still young and a recent transplant so maybe she'll learn better but, that Saturday night, during the most divinely perfect moment of Mardi Gras loafing around, this girl was standing there complaining that our laziness was keeping her from getting something done somewhere else. We were drunk so I guess we were a little rude in telling her to fuck off. Are we married to you? Are we sleeping with you? No? Why do we care what you think? Something along those lines anyway... and laughing the whole time. Not us at our most gallant, I guess.
  
  A few days later the local press was full of feel-good stories about the Great Post-Lombardi Gras Golden Age we've supposedly ushered in. One of the high points of the Golden Age is supposed to be the so-called "Brain Gain" flood of young ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs... people like our young friend from Saturday night... coming to live with us and show us all how to be better people. I wonder, while they're busy doing this, if there will be time for us to teach them something about the exquisite joy of doing nothing on a busy night. And if not, will it be as easy for us to laugh and tell them to fuck off?

And that's Mardi Gras. Now we just have to summarize a city-wide election and THE GREATEST FOOTBALL GAME OF ALL TIME and we'll be all caught up, I guess. But, as always... no hurry.

Tension makes it
Transition breaks it
So let's don't chase it
Let it rest a little while

Here's a cool video from the best rock album of 2009.