buy provigil in india The Krewe of Chaos were supposed to roll after Muses last night, but somehow they got in front of Muses and when turning the corner of Magazine and St. Charles, one of their floats broke its “wagon tongue” – the hitch between the tractor and the float (the float is carried on a 130-year-old wagon built to carry cotton bales). The wheels of the float got all twisky-tee under the carriage, which according to onlookers nearly toppled the whole float, which would have been a major catastrophe, killing onlookers and riders. As usual the New Orleans response to this kind of snafu was complete bewilderment. It took nearly an hour and half to move the float, paralyzing the parades behind it (but by the special protection of the Saints the leading band of the Muses parade got halted right in front of a bar).
http://dkarim.com/up.php The result was an ample opportunity to observe. The Chaos parade had marvellous satiric floats, about the major topics of New Orleans news. Ray Nagin figured prominently, pictured with an assault rifle, from one of the more notorious photos of him where he leveled an M-16 at his police chief and grinned at him for the cameras. One was of the Archbishop and all the churches he has put up for sale – one of those bitter pills that the people of New Orleans, God bless them, refuse to swallow. (I refuse to accept that these solidly built tax-free properties really require hundreds of thousand of dollars apiece for yearly maintenance, but then again, Catholic Churches don’t disclose their finances, so who can tell?) A personal favorite was called “Makin’ Groceries,” headed by an image of former U.S. Representative William Jefferson, the infamous man found with $90,000 in his freezer. “There’s a perfectly honorable explanation,” he apparently said, and then did not offer it. The float featured his grocery list, which involved making payments to family members. (“Making groceries” is the local idiom for “buying groceries.”) The sex life of Christianist David Vitter was another favored target. And there was the “Gulag Gustav” attack on FEMA, along with the “Ray Nagin Special:” when Hurricane Gustav struck Galveston, Nagin told the people of Galveston they could come to New Orleans, and invited them to ask at the hotels for the “Ray Nagin Special,” which was precisely nothing: he had worked out no plan.
After Chaos came Muses, which really is one of the more beautiful parades. It is, like Krewe du Vieux, also a celebration of sexuality, though this one is more a celebration of the Ewig-Weibliche (the Krewe is all female, with about 800 members). The parade was led by the Big Easy Rollergirls, who must surely be one of America’s last surviving roller derby operations. The general pattern was float, marching group, float. The marching groups were memorable, including several groups that celebrated the membra feminilia and their possession thereof. My personal favorite was the Rolling Elvi, a group of 75 Elvis impersonators tribute artists riding scooters, who were received everywhere with thunderous adulation. There were also beautiful neon butterflies, with a curious grace of movement, carried through the air by men dressed as caterpillars.
The floats were variants on a James Bond theme, labelled overall “Muses 009: License to Swill.” They represented a specifically female view of experience, however, with floats about weight problems (“For Your Size Only”), divorce (“Diamonds Are Not Forever”), marrying for money (“Golddigger”), and cosmetic surgery (“Her Majesty’s Secret Services”). But there was also a lot of political commentary. The “From China With Love” float tossed “poison Barbies” and lead-paint toys. “Thunderball” commemorated the Catholic Church’s architectural self-immolation, the float painted with half-demolished churches and wrecking balls. “Latino Royale” drew attention to the Hispanic colonization of New Orleans. “Golden Guy” mocked the messianic cult of Obama, and “The Man With the Golden Card” reminded the crowd of another Nagin scandal, when it was revealed that he had put tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of expensive dinners with his wife and friends on the city’s credit card. My personal favorite was “The World is Hot Enough,” about global warming, followed by a bayou band and people dressed as Louisiana wildlife, and another float “Fry Another Day” (this Krewe is known for its environmental activism). The bathtub float (mentioned in another post) is a staple, as is a giant float of a high-heeled shoe.
The float riders tossed to the crowd an astonishing amount of materiel, from plush toys to footballs to light-up beads and earphones to beach sandals and tote bags. It was hilarious to see the riders dumping their treasures on the insatiable crowd. The combination of sexuality, size, personality (after all, there are also innumerable people dressed in costume everywhere) and satire make this a beloved parade, and you could feel the crowd’s delight in the whole. Kids were dueling with their plush spears and laser pointers, while the adults were heaping necklaces on each other and dancing in the streets. We spoke with plenty of people in the crowd, but the two most interesting were a woman who philosophized on the existence of all of this in the soul of every person (“it’s in all of us, whether we admit or not, it’s there”) – more or less my new Pauline philosophy of participation – and an artist who had been a primetime speaker at this year’s Democratic National Convention.
This after visiting the grave of Vera, burying Muffy the cat, and enjoying another gorgeous spring day here in New Orleans. It just seems unendingly rich.
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