It's A Celebration

One can only imagine the beautiful chaos that is New Orleans today. With Mardi Gras the week after a Super Bowl VICTORY, I'm sure it's been a non-stop party for my fellow Louisianians. And here I am, stuck on this miserable coast.

But at the very least I can be there in spirit. Many of you may remember my extensive journals from the last time I was back home for Mardi Gras, but my recaps failed to include a vitally important Mardi Gras tradition, that of the King Cake. And luckily, thanks to my family, I'm able to partake in the King Cake tradition once again.



I was talking to one of my law school buddies who went to Tulane, and he was telling me how he didn't much care for King Cake. I was shocked and appalled, and after careful inquiry, I realized the reason why--he had only had the crappy version that you get at the local grocery store. He had not had the experience of getting a fresh cake from a bakery, where they take special pride in this dessert. Growing up, during the Mardi Gras season, I looked forward to getting the weekly treat that one of my classmates would bring in, indulging in the icing and cream cheese and cinnamon and strawberry, always hoping to find the little plastic Baby Jesus, the most glorious of all the forms of Jesus, and looking to be King for a Day.



Thank God I'm still not living down there, because I'd be an even greater fatass than I am now. I got the cake on Friday, and after a few days of eating moderate slices with Mr. Zhuang, we were left with nearly half a cake and staleness looming large; we bit the bullet today and ate the rest of the cake, letting Fat Tuesday live up to its name. So how was your Tuesday?

Pinch The Tail And Suck The Head

Nic Ouzo's look at The Mardi Gras That Was has now reached it's merciful conclusion. We appreciate you sticking around for this lame attempt at upping the PostCount.

The amateur Mardi Gras party-er assumes that everything leads up to The Big Muffuletta on Tuesday. This is why the amateur has not yet achieved professional status, because they are dead wrong. Sure, you would assume that since the whole thing is called "Fat Tuesday", and it's all about blowing your load before the tyranny of Ash Wednesday arrives, that Tuesday would be Where It's At (bottles and cans people, clap your hands).

The truth of the matter is that everything shuts down at midnight on Tuesday, because every one has to go back to work on Wednesday (the 8-day weekend is enough, and besides, ). Plus, we are of the philosophy that if you can't go all night, you shouldn't go at all. So Tuesday is all about nursing the World's Biggest Hangover, which amounts to chilling out on the couch, and in this year's case, watching the Super Tuesday coverage (and then waking up the next morning and cursing the idiocy of Massholes and Surfer Dudes).

And crawfish. Eating lots and lots of crawfish.



Because that's what I missed most about Life on the Bayou. I mean, in general, the food is excellent, because people down South aren't afraid of embracing things like "taste" and "flavor". So eating a couple of pounds of boiled crawfish seasoned to perfection was quite a fitting end to a wild weekend.

And because I'm terrible at planning things, here are a few leftover observations:

FEMA shirts are hilarious My favorites included "FEMA: Find Every Mexican Available" and "FEMA Evacuation Plan: Run, Bitch, Run!". It was a nice change of pace from the general tacky/obnoxious tourist shirts, though I did enjoy the one written upside down which implored those that if they could read said shirt, to please tip the patron back onto his/her barstool.

I'm not comfortable with taking pictures of the Naked Cowboy But mentioning him now gives me the opportunity to mention his fantastic lawsuit. No matter how hilarious an awkward picture of the Naked Cowboy with old Asian ladies may be, I still didn't feel like getting my own personal copy. And as many people will attest, I am totally comfortable with my sexuality, so that wasn't it. But it does lead to the fact that

I am a terrible photographer Yeah, sorry about that. If only I could have had Rasheed, our intern, come in and do lighting for me. Or if I attempted to figure out how to use the camera at some point before I started shooting.

It's always fun to talk to crazy fundamentalist Doom Prophets and it takes a shitload of alcohol to get me drunk. If ICE 101 is not involved.



So that officially wraps it up for my giant travelogue. I hope you enjoyed reading along, and I hope I didn't incriminate myself at any point in the process. For those of you interested in exploring the entirety of my shitty photography, here is where you can see pretty much all the photographs I took (but be warned, this set is PG-13. If you want more graphic, file a formal request through an e-mail, you sick pervert). Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to make plans to head back next year.

Where We Learn How Close To Death Our Intrepid Hero Was

Continuing a feature that's rapidly losing popularity, Nic continues his travelogue of his time spent living it up during Mardi Gras

I'm going to be upfront about this: the zaniest shenanigans of my trip have already been told. So if you're reading this hoping for more tales of cunning plans and crazy capers, I'm sorry to inform you that you will be highly disappointed. But if you just have a morbid curiosity as to what it's like hanging out in the Big City, well, you'll probably be disappointed too. That's just the kind of guy that I am.


We took the morning off to recover in Baton Rouge from the antics of the night before, and believe me, we needed it. Fruits were consumed, Tylenol was taken, and sleep...occurred. But Cajuns are hearty folk, and that afternoon we were ready for another day of living the high life. After all, I'm pretty sure the state motto is "We'll drink you under the table--then drive your ass home". It's either that, or something about "Sportsman's Paradise" or "Shoot a Nutria From the Back of a Pickup Truck", I can't remember. So we headed down to Metairie for a good ol' fashioned family parade.

Now, the thing about the family parade is that there is far less flashing than on your standard parade route (but that doesn't mean it's totally absent). The upshot is that there is no barrier from the floats, so you can wander up to them and assault the people in parade. It's really a fantastic situation. So, after a stop at the Rally's (you have to love a fast food joint that features a burger called "The Big Buford"), we were ready to get some more beads. Well, after we got ourselves a 64 oz. Hurricane and hit the convenience store for a couple of fifths of vodka (God bless you Louisiana, and your hard alcohol-selling Circle K's).



In the buildup to the parade, I talked to a couple of Boys in Blue, most of whom had been shipped in from around the state just for the weekend. We get to talking about various strategies to handling the unruly (the one rule of Mardi Gras is basically "Don't be a jackass"; beyond that, they're not going to hassle you), and dish about the various celebrities that had shown up (like how Hulk Hogan was seen with a very young blonde lady who was not his daughter). We also get the scoop that it wasn't a particularly violent holiday--except for the shooting at the Endymion parade. Our more observant readers will realize that this was the exact parade that we went to; not only that, the shooting occurred right where we were hanging out (Canal and St. Charles). We apparently avoided catastrophe by about 15 minutes; then again, considering the overall volume of the entire festival, chances are we wouldn't have realized that a shooting had occurred unless we were ourselves hurt.



Eventually the Zeus parade rolled around, and we had ourselves a merry look at The Capitals of the World. Mainly this involved people dressing up in various feather/sequin combinations that in no way evoked any notion of national dress, but no one was looking for a history lesson on that day. Though I was pleasantly surprised that the Death Star sent out some representatives this year. But you can only take so much culture, so we hit the road once again for the French Quarter.


Now, there isn't much more to relate about hanging out on Bourbon Street. We sampled a variety of beverages, ranging from the Keystone Light of my college days to some kickass German imports that this Specialty Beer Hall had on tap, to daiquiris and Jaegerbombs. But I did get a chance to talk to some of our Spiritual Protest friends, mainly trying to convince them that it was kind of stupid that they followed a denomination of Christianity that was about 8 splits away from the original, and how retarded it was that they were attempting literal interpretations of the Bible when they weren't looking at the original Greek of the New Testament. But nothing was as awesome as the guy that had a sign that listed the 20 things in the area that were leading us straight to hell, ranging from the usual "homos" and "whores", but including the temptation of "Loud Women". I cannot begin to do justice to the rambling idiocy that was the reasoning behind it, so I'm just going to leave that to your imagination.

The only other story I can really tell is my attempt to follow Rule No. 1 of Bourbon Street. That involved trying to find a bar that would not force us to pay for a drink, or at least had open bathrooms. I had never needed to use a bathroom so much in my life, but was saved when we found an out of the way dive, only to be confronted by An Unholy Terror. Anyone who has seen the movie Trainspotting remembers "The Dirtiest Toilet In All of Scotland"; well, I found its counterpart in New Orleans. Except that it was only a urinal, and people had conveniently ignored that fact. But I was able to satisfy the ordeal with great relief, with the price being I had to hold my breath for about five minutes.



It's really hard to convey the go-go nature of the Street. Think of the best fucking frat party you've been to, except there's a thirty percent less likely chance of date rape. It's a whole lot of fun, but there's still a whole element of fear--you're goddamn right I had a hand on my wallet the entire time. On the other hand, my mind was often more concerned with taking in the sights and sounds. And enjoying smoking cigars while walking the streets with a beer in my hand. And really, isn't that what life is all about?

Of Functional Health Units and Holy Hand Grenades

Or: I've Made A Huge Mistake...

Continuing my look back at the weekend that was...Mardi Gras 2008


I left you guys with a quick look at Bourbon Street, which is essentially the soul of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. As a sleazy 70s porn producer would say, "it's where the magic happens." If you've heard any fantastic tales about the debauchery of the holiday, chances are these stories took place on a select few blocks of La Rue Bourbon. And sure enough, that's where we spent the entirety of our Sunday. Before I continue, I should teach you the Rules of Bourbon St.:

1. Don't Pee On The Street The cops allow just about anything, so it's a good idea to at least let them have this one ("laissez les bon temps rouler" officially replaces "To Protect and To Serve" for that weekend).

2. Don't Sit On The Street Because people tend to violate Rule No. 1. Assholes.

With those rules in hand, you're pretty much set for a quality weekend of partying On The Holiest of Streets.


So I woke up on Sunday morning, in the same clothes from the previous day's festivities. And because it's New Orleans, we decided "fuck it", and went out without changing. I mean, who's going to complain about our potential smelliness? The bums? Unlikely. So we decided that we needed to ease into the day, and that meant a quick stop for some alcohol. Everyone talks about New Orleans and their famous Hurricanes, but the official drink of Bourbon Street is the Hand Grenade. It looks like a bong that the Ninja Turtles would use, tastes like the Slimer version of Hi-C, and features a grenade shot on top of the ridiculously copious amounts of alcohol already present in the drink. It would be the strongest drink on the strip, except for a couple of places that feature a Knockout 191 (yes, that's 191 proof), and since I wasn't in the mood to get date raped, I felt satisfied with my choice of Hand Grenade.



While we sipped on our beers and Hand Grenades, we encountered a truck that had a couple of dudes tossing what looked like to be free Gatorades. In fact, it turned out to be some sort of Detox drink, one of those hangover cures you're likely to find at your local 7-Eleven. We grabbed a few, then hit up a local restaurant for some of that down-home Cajun cooking that I had missed so much over these years, which meant one fucking sweet Shrimp Po' Boy for lunch (and there you were, thinking that a Po' Boy was just a random Creedence album reference). Not only were we provided with very necessary fuel for future alcohol consumption, but we got the chance to analyze the scientific benefits of our Urban Detox. There was a fantastic bar graph, pictured here, that showed that it helped alleviate hangovers and nausea and potentially cancer, because it contained so many "functional health units".



Since it was still early in the day, we decided to go to a fantastic shithole bar for some cheap alcohol and that famed New Orleans ambiance. That's The Abbey for you, which has a nice Dixieland funereal vibe going for it. In between meetings with an angry Polish/Greek and an old man with a nose covered in c-c-c-c-cocaine, we talked to the band, which featured a singer from Portland. I'm telling you, Portland musicians are fucking everywhere! Though the finest musical performance went to a local guitar/violin/tuba sidewalk trio, who played the most kickass version of "Stairway to Heaven" you'll hear.


After a quick stop at a cafe serving some authentic absinthe, it was time to partake in the more standard Mardi Gras fare. Which, in one word, can be described as "overindulgence". For this fellow right here, that involved a rack of test tube shots and the body parts of various hostesses at a Bourbon Street club. Frankly, there were a few scandalous photos taken that might prove compromising if I were currently running for office, but you weren't hearing any complaints from me at the time (though my mouth was otherwise occupied). But tough shit for you folks, because those photos aren't currently in my possession. So you'll just have to let your imaginations wander as to what it was exactly that I was doing.


It was at this point (about 54 shots later) that our female companion decided that it was a good time to get bodypainted. Not being one to complain, we ended up at a little place that was able to provide such a service. While waiting for the services to be rendered, we struck up a conversation with a retired Army colonel who's now a private security contractor in Afghanistan, and ended up spending the day with him and his newly-bodypainted ladyfriend. As you can imagine, walking down the street with these two lovely ladies provided quite the commotion. No joke, this was the top attraction on Bourbon Street, and I spent the afternoon providing my services as a bodyguard (even if I wasn't exactly sober). I had my head on a swivel, but you couldn't really ask for a better job. Actually, I'm more concerned about the photos from these events--if you see a fat Greek guy in a goofy pink foam Captain Morgan's hat next to some beautiful ladies, well that was me. I fear my eventual appearance in a Girls Gone Wild video.

As for the rest of the night, it involved a lot of drinks, and a lot of bars. In between various stops and shots, we managed to watch the majority of the Super Bowl, but had to make the trip back to Baton Rouge once the Giants gained the lead in the fourth quarter. Of course, we missed the best part of the game, but considering everything that happened before it, I'd say we made a fair tradeoff. Plus, we got to enjoy the replay of the game, so it really worked out well in the end.



While this certainly was the craziest day, that's not all the tales I have, so keep tuning in for more this week. For those of you who just hung around hoping for the pictures of the bodypaint, for shame! We are a blog of standards! If you want them, you're at least going to have to e-mail us. Come one, we have standard practices to follow.

Welcome To Louisiana: Home Of The Drive-Thru Daiquiri!

I have promised for some time to detail my exploits from the Mardi Gras weekend, but I am faced with the problem of my own pure incompetence, at least when it comes to writing (and as you will soon see, my photography can also be charitably described as "utter shite"). Sure, I could give brilliant random anecdotes that the other co-authors of this blog are sure to appreciate (and would certainly go into far greater detail than I would otherwise here), but to turn it into an actual narrative for other people to follow seems like too great of a challenge. But I never back down from my promises, so here we go folks.



Baton Rouge is a fine city, if you don't care for aesthetics or things to do (which makes it like 99% of the other cities in America). It even has a couple of decent family-friendly parades, and I had seen my fair share of those growing up. No, this trip was about venturing into the belly of the beast, to bear witness to the Mardi Gras of Legend, and that meant hurtling along like a silver bullet across the bayou into the madness that is New Orleans. With me on this journey I had two guides, my friend Garrett and his girlfriend Michelle, and without them I would have been lost, and probably mugged. Word to the wise: Find yourself a native before embarking on such a trip of your own.



We began the festivities in a way that all such journeys should began, and that's in a dive bar. This was right next door to the titular Drive-Thru Daiquiri establishment--we would have partaken in such spirits, but to tell you the truth, the line was too long for us (the fact that it was 11:30 in the morning on a Saturday apparently meant nothing to those in a quest for lubrication). We slowly got into the spirit of the occasion, drinking cheap beer and shooting pool to a soundtrack of Zeppelin and Floyd, which starting the previous night when we saw their respective tribute bands, would provide much of the music for the weekend. Eventually we made our way into the downtown area onto St. Charles, where we stuck around waiting a parade to start, getting our drink on at The Avenue Pub and WhiskeyDix. I sampled the world-famous Hurricane beverage and also a shot of the local favorite, Grand Marnier, promptly getting toasted. We then spent the rest of the daylight hours playing on the pornographic video game machines, choosing to focus our energies on the "Spot the Difference between the Naked Ladies" game (and for full discretion, this was more heavily driven by the female contingent of our crew).



We grew restless, and with a call of "fuck it", we hit the road to try to hit the French Quarter before the parade rolled through. To do this, we walked directly through the parade route, because we have no use for your silly things like "rules"! We played football with little kids, did some line-dancing in the street, had shit thrown at us from balconies, and generally had ourselves a good time as we attempted to find a bathroom/find Bourbon Street. We met up with some local firemen en route, and that's where we got the word as to the real reason the parade we had been waiting for had been delayed--Kevin Costner was stinkin' drunk. So drunk, in fact, that he had gotten injured mounting his float, and that's no good when you're the GRAND MARSHALL. So Tin Cup was holding everything up, as they attempted to sober up his sorry ass.



Eventually we made it to the famed Canal Street, and we settled in and watched the parade. There are floats, and then there are Endymion Floats. I had seen my fair share of parades as a Baton Rouge native, but nothing as elaborate as the standard New Orleans affair. We settled in, caught our fair share of beads, enjoyed a few [ahem] smokes, and generally engaged in some standard-fair debauchery. By the time we decided to call it quits, I was decked out in enough beads to look like the Greek Mr. T. Which is fantastic, because in New Orleans, beads are legal tender. I was wading in Hard Currency, folks. Beers are on me!



We then made a push to get to the heart of Mardi Gras, La Rue Bourbon. To say that the street was a sea of people would be an understatement--if you could see actual street, you were lucky. It was just a wash of moving heads, beer cubs, and neon signs. Oh, and the occasional chorus of "Show us your tits!!!" and the response that was appropriate for whatever decision was made. We also were met by Concerned Souls, who wanted to ensure the safety of our everlasting souls. And I'll give them the last word for this journal, and will show you exactly what they were up against tomorrow.



You have to love the self-righteous, folks.