Marlow & Boats on Mardi Gras
Editor’s Note: I got two updates on the rites of Spring this week and felt they were worth sharing with those friends who, in the famous words of Key West Conch Republic crooner Michael McCloud, who are still “freezing their asses Up North.”
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(This is Michael and some tourist in better climes and times than today as the snow melts and the slush deepens).
Marlow had these words about the Mardi Gras South Carolina:
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“Here in Savannah as the weather finally seems to be saying that spring is coming with temps in 70s, I offer some draft summary bullet points of this week in review:
Game of Thrones is about to start again, which will make sorting out the losers in the Swamp much easier. Spoiler Alert: they’re all losers.
A neighbor got caught by his wife watching porn when her car connected to his phone’s Bluetooth.
Luke Perry died and Alex Trebek has cancer. Social media are sad. Meanwhile no tears shed for 1,000,000 incarcerated Chinese Muslims.
You can be rich. Or you can be well-endowed. Trying for both will kill you.
Death to bad big tech. Don’t post the drunk naked pictures on FaceBook anyway.
What did I miss?”
I had to write him back immediately, since this falls into a Fat Tuesday king of thing: “Marlow, Never activate the bluetooth on the family car. As to billionaires and reconstructive surgery, this is a family blog so I don’t normally put the genital enhancement issue in the forefront. But there are exceptions, of course. Between the take-over in the House by the “Newcomers” and the rest of this social nonsense- hate crimes against oneself, you know- it has been pretty crazy here, even down in the thickets and placid pastures of Culpeper.
According to the Speaker of the House, we are supposed to call what used to be illegal aliens “newcomers.” I guess it was like then they declared it was “Climate Change” and not “Global Warming.”
Today, we are melting the climate change that fell yesterday and prevented a relocation to Big Pink in Arlington. The only thing I recall from Mardi Gras (Boats calls it “Mardi Grais” and I naturally defer on matters of spelling to real Cajuns. The only sign of it I saw up here in Virginia was winter coats and some odd smudges on the foreheads of unusual people. Not like that in the Big Easy:
Mardi Grais Update from Boats
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‘We just finished another Mardi Grais. Observing this annual ritual for more than half a century, I’m still mystified, but I’m beginning to understand.
Watching the entire town go totally dysfunctional in terms of productive activity for about a week makes me wonder how our ancestors ever built such admired architecture.
Orleanians love art. The Rex organization , the oldest Mardi Grais “Krew’s” full name is the “REX SCHOOL OF DESIGN.”
So, after more than a half century of looking at Mardi Grais, and the architecture, and enterprise of this great port city I have come to some tentative conclusions:
1. Drunk naked people can never start wars.
2. Drunk naked people who get caught up in wars can’t sustain hostility.
3. Drunk naked people can’t get much accomplished.
4. Stone sober people tend to get hostile over time.
5. A lot got accomplished here despite great numbers of periodically drunk naked people.
6. The getting drunk and naked part is regulated to Mardi Grais season, The Jazz Fest , St. Joseph’s and St. Patrick Combined holiday / Parade (only known to happen here) . Bastille Day, and Halloween.
The rest of the year is available for productive activity, even work (Well known to be the curse of the drinking class).
7. Since obviously the natives take time off to be productive, tourism has become our most important industry; not our most lucrative. That would be oil and gas, port industries, and chemical plants.
However, it is important because the drunk naked people you encounter between the above listed events which only take up about 90 days of the year are mostly our tourist guests, without whom our prolific watering holes and eateries couldn’t survive our clothed sober spells.
Most natives of New Orleans and the surrounding Bayou country don’t even think of these things. I think I am curious about them because of spending my early childhood in Houston, and living as an adult at times in other parts of the world.
I was born here in New Orleans, but moved with my family at six months of age to Houston when my Dad was offered a job at the Houston Post and he didn’t want to bump the older guy with older kids who occupied my Dad’s pre war job in New Orleans.
I was only six months old when we moved to Houston. I wasn’t an accomplished walker and couldn’t see over a bar, so I wasn’t ready for the early childhood training of most natives of New Orleans.
When my family finally moved back I discovered I had dozens of strange but wonderful cousins, and a French speaking grandma who was determined to wean me off my monolingual English habit. I was constantly told that I was “French” but for years my nick name was “Tex.”
Despite a career that gave me the opportunity to travel some of the world and to work in other American cities on a prolonged basis, I kept gravitating back here and am now retired here.
Despite my official native status I don’t think I’ll ever make a full fledged “Who Dat”. But everything about this surreal place is just so damn interesting and entertaining its easy to over look the negative stuff. Really, periodically drunk naked people are all right once you get used to it.
“Boats”
Copyright Marlow, Boats and Vic 2019
www.vicsocotra.com