That was a nice weekend. Very laid back, which is just what I like in a weekend. Honestly, it's what I like in a week, as well. Went into Long Island on Sunday, to spend the day with my mom (it was her birthday on Saturday - which both of the other men in my family forgot. I blame myself - definitely meant to call and remind them, but then it slipped my mind. Which sort of comes up huge because I once again get the title of 'Favorite Son,' but also totally sucks because who forgets their mothers birthday? [Dr. Bromberg, I'm looking in your direction... Oh, and since you're reading this - those Coupling DVDs were the funniest things ever. Thanks a lot]).

Sorry about that folks. I wanted to write a few more things about Mardi Gras today, to kind of give you an idea of what the whole thing was like. I don't know how deep into it I'll get, as it was a week ago and the memories are fading fast (the brain cells which are storing them can go any minute).

One of the things I liked most about the trip is that it had a theme to which it stuck. Any prolonged experience that can perform that task, whether a pleasant or unpleasant experience, gets extra points for having a well-developed sense of aesthetics. Mardi Gras, for example, had as it's theme indulgence and debauchery. From start to finish, really. The first thing we did after dropping our things off at Neils apartment in uptown New Orleans was go to the bar on his corner. On the way to the bar (less than a fifty foot walk), we were greeted by a group of (well-mannered) crackheads, and saw a guy leaving the bar get into his car, toss up on the sidewalk, and drive away. It really did a fair job at setting the tone for the trip.

Each of our days there exhibited a similar structure. We would sleep pretty late in the day, roll out of the house anywhere between 1 and 3PM, and go to lunch. After lunch (which would invariably be a great meal at a shady looking restaurant - one seafood place we went to had great crab cakes and a seaside view of an area that had been hit by a hurricane some years back and not cleaned since. Another place [which had some seriously good Po'boys] was marked by the facts that your meals were thrown to you from behind the counter, and the waitresses all wore t-shits that read "I got crabs.")

After that, it was off to the parades. Like any standard parade, they consisted of bands, floats, and not infrequently dispersed torchholders who walked with bandannas over their faces and to whom you were supposed to give money (which I assume was to support the Krewe which put on that days parade, but as far as I know could be going to support neo-French Imperialist guerilla actions in the Cote d'Ivoire. I erred on the side of caution). Perhaps the most unique part of a Mardi Gras parade is the tradition of 'throws.' Every float that goes by is staffed by a bunch of people, most of whom are tossing things to the onlookers (most commonly the beads which we commonly assiciate with Mardi Gras, but there were some other things. Cups were not infrequently thrown to the crowd, along with small stuffed animals, and on one notable occasion, a toddler. But it was mostly beads).

And after the parades, it was off to the French Quarter (more or less. Parades usually ended at around 6 or 7, and we wouldn't end up getting to the quarter until 10 or 11, but I'll be damned if I know what we were doing in the interim. I have a funny feeling it rhymes with "Mackery"). Specifically, Bourbon Street. This is the Mardi Gras about which your mother warned you. The tightly packed mass of people, all of whom are drinking heavily and taking their clothes off (or trying to convince someone else to take their clothes off). It's here that the really interesting socio-economic aspects of the party come into play. You'll recall earlier I mentioned the 'throws' that parade onlookers grabbed from passing floats. Well, as it turns out, these are not only cheap pieces of plastic jewelry - they are also a serious commodity in the Quarter. When offered enough of them, countless women (countless through sheer volume, not through lack of trying, believe you me) would perform some fairly lewd acts, including behavior that would garner an R rating from the MPA (I saw very little that would justify an NC-17 rating. Which isn't to say that sort of thing doesn't go on at Mardi Gras, just that I wasn't going to the right parties).

There were probably some events of note that I should mention, but I'm having trouble remembering many of them. I could talk about the dog that ate my paperback copy of Good Omens, but that just upsets me too much. Or the fact that walking around New Orleans for a week wearing a pair or nerd glasses has really made me want to start wearing glasses for good. But that stuffs mostly not interesting. Took some crap from Ton the ther day about writing blog entries that have nothing to do with my apartment, so I think I'd like to get back to that. In any case, talk to you all later.