On Mardi Gras In "The City"

I hate that shit.


I could really end the entry right there but I am MUCH too verbose for such laconic fare. I would rather wax romantic about AAAAAALL the reasons why I hate Mardi Gras and AAAAAAALL the ways I was reminded this most recent carnival season.


1. PARADES: I'll be damned if I stand out in the elements on my feet for HOURS begging some boozed up white man for some beads that he's gonna throw RIGHT OVER MY ASS at some silly equally sloshed white girl who is classless and desperate enough for attention to show him her tits. And those damn babies up on people's shoulders?!?! My GOD I hate those kids. They are FOREVER dropping beads and stuffed animals and cups and shit on my head with their stupid little baby hands that have yet to achieve the level of fine motor skills necessary to manipulate such cumbersome items. THEN there are those avid Mardi Gras goers who are willing to go to war over worthless trinkets which they are absolutely POSITIVE that some masked man 10 feet in the air and 10 feet away promised to them by way of a universal pointing system that for whatever reason we have accepted to be accurate and precise. Bitches knockin over MY drink so they can scrap for some pink and white string of manufactured bullshit that they can sport around their necks for the next 14 hours then somehow lose while they drink to excess and lose their self-respect on Bourbon Street. The whole while a firestorm of stray throws rain over the crowd putting MY head in danger of being pummeled by a six-pound pack of beaded horror. No thank you. You can keep your 20 cent beads, sir. I'd rather sit at a quiet bar with an able, well-read bartender and learn something about life that I never knew before while I self-medicate.


2. TOURISTS: I hate you. Stay out of my way. I don't care that you and your husband have been coming to Mardi Gras since 1993 and you LOVE New Orleans. Don't ask me about my "Katrina Story" because I don't care to tell it. That shit was way in '05. We're getting over it. You should too. That is all.


3. PARKING: Looking for a parking spot during Mardi Gras is the equivalent to spending an enternity in Hell sitting on a sharp rock with Gilbert Godfried rambling in one ear and Bobcat Goldwaithe wailing mindlessly in the other. You can circle the same 10 block area for an hour before you find one sad tight little spot that you just might get ticketed (or worse booted) for. If you're in the car by yourself (unlikely) then you may be able to at least find some peace through quiet mediation; but if you're packed deep (which is the usual Mardi Gras transport scenario) then you will have what seems like a thousand voices in your ear criticizing every choice you make behind the wheel. There will be the ones who know everything you're doing wrong and won't hesitate to comment on it (LOUDLY) at every turn. There will be the ones who just want to be "let out" so you can be endlessly inconvenienced later with the impossible task of FINDING ONE PERSON DOWNTOWN IN NEW ORLEANS DURING MARDI GRAS. There will be the genius who knows a great place we can park but it's a 10 mile trek away from the parade route. (Shut up. You're not helping by making the dumbest suggestion ever.) Then there will be the complainers. The ones who want to know why we're even down here anyway and why can't we just go somewhere that ISN'T on Bourbon and get drunk. (This would be the role I play.)


Once you finally grow tired of the chatter, snap at everybody who had a FUCKING opinion and just want to be out of that damn car already, you decide that you will have to settle on parking in a corporate lot where the prices border on utter in-fucking-sanity. The hunt isn't even as bad as how much you pay to get out of that bitch (at which point I would pay ANYTHING to be rid of the pandemonium characteristic of Carnival in the city). At those prices they may as well yank out my uterus and let me bleed out! You stay at a parade for four hours and they want you to drop a car note just for the pleasure of parking in some ducked off concrete lot where the spaces are so precariously close that you literally had to SLIDE yourself out of your vehicle and the attendant looks like the type of dude to have your shit stripped by the time you get back if he wouldn't just pay some Mardi Gras ho to get some hot nasty $40 strange in the back seat of your shit.




4. DRUNKS: I'm not talking about the respectable kind like myself who sit at a bar and pleasantly get wasted. I mean you staggering, drooling, vomiting, pissing, slurring, publicly humiliated drunks who use Mardi Gras as an excuse to be asinine. Don't bump into me because I am NOT sympathetic to your condition. I will knock that Huge Ass Beer/Hand Grenade clean out ya fuckin hand.


5. TOURISTS: I know I said that already but I really REALLY can't stand them. Especially when they drive their own cars to the city because when they're rolling all slow and shit down Canal, Poydras, Peters, St. Charles, etc. and don't know which streets are one ways or where they can make U-turns or where they can't make left turns, I can't help but be overwhelmed with the urge to shoot out their tires. Go home already and take a damn cab next time. Fuck a budget. You supposed to be on vacation.


6. TRAFFIC: It's horrible. OVER.


The moral of this story is... I don't do Mardi Gras because I am no fan of large crowds of people and the impositions they bring with them. While scores of others relish in such nonsense, I am not so amused. Therefore, in lieu of participating with complaint I'd rather seek higher ground until all the Bacchanalian antics die down and the city is back to normal with its senseless murder and infrastructural decay.