St. Patrick Cemetery- Crosses at Dawn
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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything cemetery related over here- it’s all been going up at the Graveyard Rabbit site, so if you’d like to see more, that’s where to find it!
Nutria teeth
By · CommentsWe headed out to the bayou on a day that was supposed to turn sunny but never did, and on overcast days, particularly early in the morning, everybody and everything tends to sleep in.
Except for this family of nutria who were out foraging. And yes, with nutria, ‘foraging’ means ‘destroying everything in sight.’ Nutria are just eating machines, gnawing their way through the ecosystem, causing ungodly amounts of damage- it’s estimated that they are currently impacting 20,300 acres of marsh.
They look very much like beavers, but with a rat tail and bright orange chompers.
The beasts were intentionally introduced to the area in the 1930s as a source of fur, but the public didn’t like its feel and it never caught on. Their meat is bitter and unpalatable*, so nutria have no natural enemies and they breed like rabbits, in litters of 3 or 4. Hunters had no reason to bother to go after the animals until a bounty was instituted in 2005, paying $5 per nutria tail brought in to prove the kill, though it’s hard to know if the program has really helped very much.
So, yeah, they’re awful. Except, you look at the babies, and they don’t look like evil incarnate:
There’s a new movement afoot to try to make nutria fur fashionable. After all, there are those who’d like to wear fur, but can’t justify the cruelty- here you get to have your fur and feel like you’re helping the environment, too.
* Recipes for nutria meat tell you that you must soak the meat in brine a minimum of 24 hours to make it edible at all- and recommend 3 days in the salt solution if possible. How many people are going to be bothered?
Krewe d’Etat – High Priest Escort
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One of the reasons d’Etat’s one of my absolute favorites (other than their scathing wit, of course) is their embrace of the old fashioned grotesqueries. In a time when everything has got to be perfectly scrubbed and lovely it’s nice to have a bit of the flavor of what it was originally about. A little danger, a little mortality reminds you to really enjoy the fun on offer.
More d’Etat here.
Saints victory parade
By · CommentsWords cannot express how amazing this was. It was freezing, nobody cared. It was mobbed, everybody was thrilled. It was phenominally loud, noone expected anything different.
Cars waited for three hours in traffic to get into and out of the city-crowd estimates were 800,000+, pretty amazing when the metro population is around 300k. School bands from all over the state had learned to play Saints anthems and the players themselves were having a fantastic time.
When it was all over the Saints disembarked at Mardi Gras World and disbursed to all points. Drew Brees actually headed to a local dive that’s right around the corner from my office. Sigh. If only we’d known. He hopped behind the bar and took over, ultimately teaching the crowd his chant:
Is he just the nicest, most down to earth guy ever?
Bless you boys. It’s a great time to be in Nola!
The Saints Superbowl Spell aka the Tale of the Candle
By · CommentsNew Orleans has been all Saints, all the time for weeks now. It didn’t matter that looking at ESPN or SI just told us how outmatched we were, and the question wasn’t whether we’d win, but only how much we’d lose by.
Spirits remained high anyway. A parade was scheduled for the Tuesday afterward and we were going to show up and have a great time, regardless. The boys fought hard and we loved ‘em no matter what.
Still, it would be nice, wouldn’t it?
So when I saw this prayer candle I had to pick it up (click to read the full text): 
I showed it around, everybody got a kick out of it, and I forgot it.
For our viewing party we’d booked a lane at the Rock n’ Bowl, packed up far too much food and headed out to watch the game with several hundred of our compatriots. We were at a bar, ready to steady our nerves or drown our sorrows as needed and (very inexpertly) roll a bowling ball when we just had to look away. At the last minute I tossed the candle into the bag as a joke. There was no way they’d let us fire it up at the lane, but it’d be a laugh anyway.
And things were tense. We’d fought our way back to being only one point behind- 16 Saints/17 Colts. But going into the 4th Quarter things were kinda quiet at the rowdy RnB. With only six minutes left to go, a chick at the next table asked if we might light the candle. People had been coming over to look at it there amongst the Popeye’s chicken boxes and say how funny it was…while still stroking it hopefully. “Sure,” I said, “Can’t hurt, and if they come tell us no we can just put it out.” A lighter was immediately produced and it flared to life:
And everything changed. Just like that. Less than minute after it was lit Shockey got his touchdown, and it was allll over. Things were so crazed that I somehow thought the play being reviewed was the original touchdown, not the 2 point conversion. Momentum was on our side, and when Tracey Porter caught that interception and ran it all the way it was bedlam.
Here’s a highlight reel of the game- skip to 3:40 for what I’m talking about. How funny that of the entire highlight film almost half is footage from the last few minutes of the game:
(By the way, Shockey’s face when they replayed it? The man’s a beast. A glorious, primal, asskicking beast. He’s a treat to watch for sure, and I was wearing my “Hey Shockey Way” tee. )
Now, do I think it’s all thanks to the candle? No, of course not.
But then again it couldn’t have hurt, right?
NFC Championship Game
By · Comments(oops. I just realized this never got moved out of drafts. Publishing now, though late. Mea Culpea.)
Last week Charlie and I lucked into seats at the Prytania Theater for the big Saints-Vikings game. This was huge. It was the first time the game was being shown at a movie theater in New Orleans and we just happened to show up to watch a movie the night they put the announcement up.
The Prytania is the last single screen, independently owned theater in New Orleans. It rocks. The owner’s always around, wearing his crazy ties and keeping his eye on everything. The balcony is small but cool, and an old organ still sits up front, beside the screen.
They’d decided to open the theater up for a viewing of the big game on the huge screen- for free. They were under the impression that as long as they didn’t charge they weren’t violating any rules, but since then the NFL has stomped on them, which is utterly ridiculous. They’ve hit them with a cease-and- decist order among other things and things aren’t looking good for a repeat for the Superbowl.
At any rate the Prytania hadn’t ever taken as much abuse as it got that night with stomping feet, screaming and running around. The Who Dats shook the walls.
And when they won? forget it.
At that point it was decided we should head down the the French Quarter and see what it was like. Not surprisingly, it was like this:
This place is going to be insane for the next two weeks. More insane, I mean. Come for a visit if you can- the real party’s gonna be here, not in Miami, and surely not in Indy.
Phunny Phorty Phellows & Twelfth Night
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(Okay, so Twelfth Night was a couple of weeks ago. I’m catching up now.)
The Phunny Phorty Phellows kick off Carnival season in style- with a streetcar ride, tossing beads as they go. I hadn’t gotten out to see them on their ride before, and was surprised that they don’t set a slow, maximizing sort of pace, but the typical “now you see us, now you don’t” streetcar speed.
There weren’t huge crowds for this one, but they always had people around because drivers on St. Charles Ave would see them, do a quick whip around, get ahead of the streetcar, park, and run over.
I have to say, they looked like they were having a hell of a good time:
Men in Dresses Parade
By · CommentsI just don’t know about Mardi Gras this year; it seems so…well, so small next to the Superbowl.
Think about it: we have Carnival every year, but this is our first Superbowl in 43 years. To call things ‘a bit crazy here right now’ might be the understatement of the century. Add to that next week’s election where no matter who wins their last name will NOT be Nagin? Forget it. Might as well leave an Out-of-Office message for the entire city, telling people we’ll be back…oh, say around French Quarter Fest.
Today’s insanity was the Buddy D parade. Buddy was a legendary sportscaster in the city, as long suffering a fan as ever there was, and he once said that if the Saints made it to the Superbowl he’d dance in the streets in a dress. Buddy died in 2005, but his memory lives on and so today, one week before the big game we held a parade. Several thousand people showed up in the cold, almost all of the men in drag, everybody thrilled.
More photo & video at the T-P here, including a great shot of the crowd- it really was massive.
Schools are closing the Monday after the game, on the assumption that the parents aren’t going to be mobile, one way or the other. A judge has postponed a trial because he can’t seat a jury due to Saintsmania (his word- apparently now an official legal term?). Of course, win or lose, we’ll have a post-game parade, too, not to mention who-knows-how-many impromptu parades over the week.
Okay, so we’re a little…um…overly enthusiastic. But tell the truth… don’t you wish you were here?
