Hang on a sec. Just gonna dial up AreTheMonumentsDownYet dot com. Probably still in limbo and... whoah, okay.
New Orleans officials can begin the process of removing the statue of
Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle and three other monuments
at the center of a long-running, city-led effort, a federal appeals
court ruled Monday (March 6).
In the ruling, the three-judge panel with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court
of Appeals found that the groups trying to block the removal of the
monuments, Monumental Task Committee and the Louisiana Landmarks
Society, failed to present a case that contained a legal argument that
showed the monuments should stay up. The court wrote that the groups
relied on two legal claims, "both of which wholly lack legal viability
or support."
I last took a good look at the Lee monument a little over a week ago when our float passed (Tivoli) Circle. I only had a second to take a picture. I was a little bit busy at the time. But I did take a moment to think about how ridiculously long the process of getting them down has been.
It's been so long, in fact, that earlier in the season I found myself sighing at monument floats in Druids and Chaos. It had started to seem like such old news. Can't these guys just let it go?
But then I remembered the specific subject matter in question which is all about.... not letting it go.
Well it looks like the time has finally come now. When can we get started?
Mayor Mitch Landrieu's
office said that a request for proposals will be issued within the next
day to obtain bids for a company to remove the monuments, which will be
stored in a city-owned warehouse until it's determined what will happen
to them.
Oh boy. Well let's hope all the bidding contractors make sure they've got their auto insurance up to date. As for the monuments themselves, why not just give them to these parading krewes since they love them so much? They could each make one into a recurring signature float. We'll give Lee to Chaos, Davis to D'etat, and Beauregard to Druids. The Liberty Monument, of course, will have to be dragged down St. Charles each year to the Comus Ball where Erroll Laborde will curtsy to it thus signaling the end of Carnival for another season.
Menckles gave me a new camera for my birthday last year and I've been giving it a workout this parade season. I'm going to try and share some of my favorites along with some parading notes here in the coming days. But right now we're kind of in the thick of things so we'll leave it alone until we're all snowed in or whatever on Monday.
Meanwhile here is that one float in Krewe D'Etat everybody got a kick out of.
I agree with them about Nyx being this year's "most improved" parade and said as much a few weeks ago. As many people already know, Nyx was basically formed to accommodate the very long list of women on the waiting list to be in Muses. The list was apparently so long that now there are actually more riders in Nyx than there are in Muses.
Statistics compiled by The Advocate
As far as their other Gambit picks go, I'll have to think about those. I've got a ton of notes and photos from this year's Carnival and do hope to post a review of sorts this week. If I have time. I never seem to have time for anything anymore.
Gambit seems to have liked D'Etat more than I did this year. I thought they were good. It's a very entertaining parade and one of the wittiest. But their politics is sometimes just so retrograde that it cancels out the fun a bit. For example, here's their "Hillary is ugly" float.
And, hey, Hillary is pretty terrible. But maybe let's find a way to say that that isn't quite as misogynistic.
This isn't to say they didn't do some fun stuff. I liked their "Under the Influence" theme. Most of their floats were pretty funny. I snapped this picture of their Rob Ford float with my phone and tweeted it out.
The next day it got a bunch of retweets from people in Toronto lamenting that their brand had been kept out there. Speaking of which, D'Etat, Muses, and Chaos all did OPP floats. Each one featured Ray Nagin in prison somewhere on the float.
Something else about D'Etat that was not their fault in any way but which I still found disappointing was that when the Dancing Rob Ryans passed by us, they happened to not be dancing.
Great idea, though.
Gambit also named Chaos as "best night parade" in a tie with D'Etat. I got to watch Chaos come out of its den and then assemble along with Babylon over by their formation area on the corner of Magazine and Napoleon. Seeing the parades come together and march away like that is a different experience from seeing them arrive in front of you at full steam so they're difficult to compare.
But I can say that Chaos's John Georges float was one of the best things I saw all year. Here are some pictures of that.
Anyway, like I said, there's more but it will have to wait... hopefully not too long.
The Skeleton Krewe dropped off a Krewe D'Etat bulletin with us. Here is an unfortunately lidded Clay looking it over.
And they say print is a dying medium.
My favorite D'Etat moment was the Garland/Heebe themed float. It featured such oft-mumbled Garland quotes as "Maybe I'm just not smart enough" and "Can't someone explain this to me?" Naturally, I have no photo. I did manage to get these shots, however.
Bobby Hebert
The, now it seems, obligatory "Ain't Dere No More" theme
Earlier, the Hermes floats were staggeringly beautiful. Taking their theme from Persian literary forms, Hermes proved itself once again the krewe most likely to send parade-goers scrambling to Wikipedia.
Anyway, like I said, the parade looked gorgeous. But don't take my crappy photography for it.
Morpheus was a re-run of several floats we'd seen already in King Arthur and in Nyx.
This one, for example, was float 18 in Morpheus.
But was the title float during King Arthur.
This is perfectly normal, of course. But really the parades with re-rerun floats and lightweight theming should probably roll during a daytime or mid-week slot and not anchor the schedule on the second Friday night.
Meanwhile, it's Saturday afternoon and raining. This doesn't feel like an Endymion year to me... although we may take a look at Chewbacchus. While we're waiting, here are some riddles to ponder.
First, last night was my first encounter with one of these sign-toting preachers this far Uptown on the St. Charles Avenue parade route.
Determined to roll as scheduled, Krewe of Endymion officials took extraordinary measures late this week, going so far as to wrap their massive Mardi Gras floats in plastic and position them in lineup formation inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Endymion president Dan Kelly said officials can now move the floats to the staging area as late as 3 p.m. Saturday. The city will allow the parade to start as late as 7 p.m., he said.
Last night I was asked if granting Endymion use of the Convention Center for float storage at the last minute... apparently for free... was a new practice. If so, can other parading organizations request this special favor should they need it in the future or is only Endymion so privileged? Or if the club is being charged for use of the space, how was that arrangement arrived at? Does the club have room in its budget for an emergency expenditure like this? Anyway, I didn't have an answer to that so I'm taking a page from Garland's book and asking if maybe someone can explain it to me.
It isn't hard to guess that while we're knee deep in Carnival season, you're not going to see much here other than occasional drunken exclamations and crappy photographs. Here's a bit of what's been going on the past few days.
Thursday's cancellations moved Muses to Friday meaning there would be four parades that night on what was still a cold and damp Uptown route.
Fortunately, I had time to prepare during the day so, Thursday night, I pulled another wild hog roast out of the freezer and brined it overnight. Here it is all dressed up with cumin, paprika, oregano, thyme, onions, garlic, potatoes, bacon... um... some other stuff.
Add a little beer and some lime and orange juice, throw it in the oven around 10 AM and come parade time, it should look like this.
That should keep the folks warmed and well fed as they trudge in and out from the cold and mud of a long evening of Carnival.
Hermes might be the prettiest parade of all. The floats are elaborately designed but not stuffy. They could pass as either a super-huge "old line" krewe or a super-artsy Superkrewe. I'm afraid my blurry night photography can be a little hit or miss. My best looks at Hermes were of the the signature float above, this blurry float,
And this blurry flambeaux carrier.
If it helps, keep in mind that my actual vision is usually about this blurry during the parade anyway so these shots are fair approximations of my memories of the event. Some of those border on the nightmarish such as when the Skeleton Krewe arrives at the head of Le Krewe D'Etat.
I was disappointed in both the Krewe D'Etat and Muses parades this year. They are known as two of the most witty and satirical krewes but I thought the theming was a bit uninspired Friday. D'Etat's political commentary was mostly driven by parting shots at Ray Nagin which, already, seem a little passe. There were some base celebrity gossip items (Tiger Woods, John and Kate) which strike me as irrelevant material. Finally, a few of the floats such as one depicting ACORN appeared to be informed mostly by the FOX News side of things. The Saints float featured a prominent representation of Tom Benson. I really despise this business of glorifying the owner in a triumph that really belongs to the players and to the city. But a lot of these krewe people tend to identify with ownership for the most part so I guess this was to be expected. On the bright side, I really enjoyed the Dancing Buddy Ds.
Muses' theme was "The Muses' Guide to Love and Romance" The floats were a string of trite "women be different from men" cliches that put me in mind of this Athenae rant about a similarly stereotype-ridden Dodge commercial. It's a shame to see the creative talents of these two Krewes so badly misused. Typically I enjoy both parades. I especially like the numerous marching clubs Muses incorporates into the procession. Here are the Camel Toe Lady Steppers,
The Pussyfooters,
And the 610 Stompers trying to get crunk as the parade speeds up unexpectedly
These are all very creative people and I love that they take their creativity to the streets every year to help us celebrate. Some years, though, the parades serve to remind me how little I have in common with the Krewes' membership.
I think the Muses krewe members, like the Krewe D'Etat members are comfortable with this kind of banal humor because they're typically the sort of people who are comfortable with their station and are reassured by its associated humdrum. The very act of joining a club is, after all, a calculated attempt to improve or cement one's status and fortune through contrived interaction with a group of similarly desperate social climbers. It's the same as what I said about John Georges' decision to join the Tulane goat-fucking society. They're all aiming at the same phony idea of success through the act of joining a club. Some clubs have their members show off their worthiness by parading through the streets in silly costumes. Some have their members do funny things with goats. And some, it turns out, wear silly costumes while parading their goats through the streets on mule-drawn carts.
Either way it's all part of the same exercise.
So that's the bad news, I guess. The good news is, you don't have to be in the dumb club to be a part of Carnival. For that all you have to do is get out in the street and play. Which is what I'm about to do right now. But first a few techniques for optimizing your chances at catching stuff. One, just be generally awesome like I am. I got this cool sword at Endymion last night which I'd love to show you but there's no time to add a photo now. Two, wear an appropriate shirt. This one seems to be the winner this year.
Note: She's worn it to every event and hasn't washed it yet.
Three, wear an appropriate hair color and maybe someone will throw you a glittery shoe.
Failing all of that, just keep drinking. Seems to be the catch all solution anyway.
