Showing posts with label Mardi Gras. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mardi Gras. Show all posts

Friday, February 21, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Carnival in the bunker


Just because you're hunkered down in an apocalypse bunker in the Trumpian States of Amerika, that doesn't mean you can't spruce the place up a bit and celebrate Mardi Gras.

Let's just call Carnival time the bright spot between secular, never-ending Lent and religious Lent plus the ongoing secular, never-ending Lent in this national vale of moonbattery.

That's where we are on this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

But . . . the music's great, the music is fine, and the music on the Big Show (one hopes) will get us through every form of Lenten mortification.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

Period.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Robert E. who?


Way down yonder in New Orleans, Mr. Mardi Gras thinks it would be a fine idea to rename the former Lee Circle (as in Robert E.) as Mardi Gras Circle . . . in the name of unity and fraternity.
 
Especially, no doubt, fraternity.
As New Orleans celebrates its tricentennial, it is worth noting that Mardi Gras has been an essential part of the city’s history for more than half these 300 years. Street masking and private balls occurred in the late-1700s. In 1857, the Mistick Krewe of Comus presented the first organized Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans.

In 1874, 10 years before the Robert E. Lee statue was erected in New Orleans, Rex paraded past the area, then known as Tivoli Circle. For 142 years, families have gathered in harmony to enjoy hundreds of Mardi Gras parades that have passed the site. For decades, the city erected official parade-reviewing stands at the circle. Today, all 34 New Orleans parades roll past this location.

The name Mardi Gras Circle would not invite the public controversy that naming the landmark after an individual surely will: “Why Tom Benson Circle and not Fats Domino? Allen Toussaint and not Leah Chase? Andrew Higgins and not Pete Fountain?”

Finally, Mardi Gras Circle would fill a long-standing need for a monument in downtown New Orleans that commemorates the city’s oldest and largest local festival and world-class tourist attraction. Visitors to the city are amazed that as important as Mardi Gras is to our image and our economy, there exists no monument to it other than a fountain on the lakefront, four miles from downtown where the parades roll. Mardi Gras Circle could itself become a tourist attraction.
METHINKS Arthur Hardy and the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Committee are on to something big. Real big.

That is all.

Saturday, February 06, 2016

3 Chords & the Truth: Play me somethin', Mister!


Throw you somethin'?

You want me to throw you somethin'?

All right, I'm gonna throw you somethin'. Can you handle what I'm gonna throw you?

It's Mardi Gras time, and we're gonna throw lots at you on the Big Show. And you can even keep your shirt on.

We may be partying, but we're not louts.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

And jockamo fe-na-nay.


Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Do not adjust your set . . . or your meds


There is no problem with your computer. The cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is real, and originated at WWL-TV in New Orleans.

If the station's anchor team is going to have to keep breaking into Mardi Gras parade coverage with reports of mass shootings every year, maybe it's time for them to costume themselves as journalists.

That might tend to lessen the whole Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vibe.

Then again, maybe we should go ask Alice. When she went through the looking glass, it could be she ended up in the Crescent City.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Throw me some Kevlar, Mister!


Oh, New Orleans! You just can't help yourself, can you?

The Mardi Gras parade shootings just keep getting worse every year. Now the city's hoodlums are shooting babies and the cotton-candy man.

THE HOT-LEAD ROUNDUP is courtesy of the Times-Picayune:
Six people were injured this afternoon after a shooting spree broke out along the St. Charles Avenue parade route near Second Street, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

Listed in serious condition are two men, both around 20, who were shot in the abdomen, according to Jeb Tate with New Orleans EMS.

Four others were listed in stable condition. They include a 1-year-old boy with a graze wound to the back; a 17-year-old girl shot in the thigh; a 50-year-old woman shot in the elbow, and and 30-year-old man with a graze wound to the thigh.

All appeared to be innocent bystanders in the area for the day's Carnival parades, said Deputy Chief Kirk Bouyelas.

The violence broke out about 1:40 p.m. on the lake side of St. Charles somewhere between the neutral ground and sidewalk. Truck parades continued to roll down the street as several dozen police officers this afternoon worked the active crime scene just steps away.
OH . . . AND HERE is the money quote from the story, courtesy of a witness: "There was an ambulance that was picking up a guy off the street and people didn't even stop vying for throws."

Every year, Mardi Gras is followed by Lent. And if the Big Easy can't somehow, someway get its s*** together -- and laying money on
that would be an even worse investment than financials on the stock market -- the City That Care Forgot will just as surely become the Ghost Town that Lent Won't Leave.

Enjoy all the junk you caught as people lay wounded all around you.

Lord, have mercy.

Monday, February 09, 2009

Let them eat . . . Oh, my word!




It's Carnival time again in New Orleans, and this is what I can show you, courtesy of the Times-Picayune, of the satirical Krewe du Vieux parade that rolled Saturday night through the French Quarter.

This year's theme: "Stimulus Package." If your mind is in the gutter contemplating that, you have a fair-to-middling mind picture of the parade. But it's probably too tame.

I'VE SEEN the photo streams of Krewe du Vieux 2009, and I'm here to tell you that the Picayune's video report was highly sanitized. Let's just say that what the krewe's floats depicted -- graphically -- in chicken wire and paper-mâché would mean speedy arrest for anyone who tried it in any Bourbon Street bar or strip club.

In Omaha, the floats would be enough to earn someone a trip to central booking. And if any kids were along the parade route, krewe members could expect getting hit, too, with contributing to the delinquency.

In New Orleans, though, Krewe du Vieux is considered satirical and ribald. No more, no less.

ONE THING, THOUGH. If a bigger-than-life depiction of "Fannie Mae" performing fellatio on Mr. Monopoly is merely "ribald," and an equally gigantic instance of statuesque anal sex falls under "satire," you'd have to figure that obscenity is a phrase devoid of meaning in the City That Care Forgot.

One other thing, while I'm at it. You have to wonder what kind of city New Orleans might be if its "cultural elites" put the energy and money they just expended on paper-mâché beejays into things like education and civic improvement.

You also have to wonder what Our New Economic Reality has in store for such a place . . . and such people. After all, all Marie Antoinette wanted Frenchmen to eat was cake.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Mardi Gras . . . here and there


THIS IS MARDI GRAS in New Orleans, with the Golden Band from Tigerland (that's the LSU band for you infidels) marching in Rex, the grandest parade of Carnival.

THIS (left) is Mardi Gras in Omaha, where people call it Fat Tuesday, for they are infidels.

No one is parading in Omaha. That's because it's snowing, it's 21 degrees, the wind is blowing like a son of a gun, and the snow is drifting all over.

My big Carnival fun has been shoveling the walk and driveway. Maybe I'll try shoveling again while drinking beer.


THEN AGAIN, the @#$&*!$ bottle probably would freeze to my lips.

On days like today, this Louisiana boy soooooooo wants to go home.

Friday, January 25, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: It's Carnival time

Eat, drink and be merry, for Wednesday after next starts Lent.

So, on this latest episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, we're picking up where this week's Four Songs left off . . . and we're partying in New Orleans. Well, at least virtually.

Down in the Crescent City, they're working up to the Big Finish of Carnival time -- Mardi Gras. (That's "Fat Tuesday" for the Gallic-challenged among us.) Now is the time when you make a little more merry than usual as we fast head toward Ash Wednesday -- Feb. 6 this year -- when the six weeks of Lent begin.

Lent, basically, is a time of penance for Christians, a time when we take stock of the Important Things and show that we're reallyreallyreallyreally sorry for all the really inventive (and mundane) ways we've managed to royally screw up the past 12 months. And then we try to do better, as we head for Easter, the great feast celebrating Christ's victory over death -- the happy ending to Good Friday, the day our sins got nailed to the cross with our Savior.

At least, that's the game plan.

ANYWAY, on today's Big Show, count on hearing aural goodness from Shawn Mullins, Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles, Billy Bragg, Professor Longhair (a.k.a. Henry Roeland Byrd), The Meters, Zachary Richard, Dr. John, Ingrid Michaelson and too many more to clog your browser with here.

So, I guess you'll have to tune in, er, download the show. 3 Chords & the Truth, that is.

Come and pass a good time, cher!

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Countdown to king cakes


King cakes. Yum.

But only between 12th Night and Mardi Gras. Eating king cake during Lent -- or anytime else, for that matter -- is just so very wrong. The Associated Press tells us all:
In New Orleans people have always known what king cake is and when you should eat it.

These days that certainty is fading. Once a seasonal treat with a certain taste and texture, king cake is now eaten any time of the year by many non-traditionalists, and it takes a variety of forms.

For years, families in this city celebrated the arrival of Carnival season with king cake — an oval-shaped pastry that commemorated 12th Night, the day the three wise men were supposed to have arrived with gifts for the Baby Jesus. The season for king cakes would last through Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday ushers in Lent.

That’s as it should be, said Mardi Gras historian Errol Laborde. Like oysters, Creole tomatoes and crawfish, things are better at the proper time.

“No king cake will touch my lips before 12th Night or after Mardi Gras,” Laborde said.

For years after the early French settlers brought the tradition to New Orleans, king cake was a plain bread-like pastry topped with purple, green and gold sugar.

But, to the dismay of the traditionalists, these days king cakes can be many flavors and shapes and available all year round.

“I’m a purest,” said cookbook author Kit Wohl. “I believe king cake should be what it’s always been, plain and with a baby, but now people have gilded the lily. Now they can be made with stuffing, it can be sweet or savory.”

Some traditions remain. Each king cake contains a token, now its generally a pink, plastic baby, but it was originally a red bean. The person who gets it is supposed to supply the next king cake.

Although New Orleans is the king cake capital, many cities that have a Mardi Gras tradition have bakeries that produce some version during the season. That has meant more business for people like David Haydel Jr., 32, whose family has been baking in New Orleans for three generations. “It gradually expanded out through whole season and now, with the internet, we do king cakes all year.”