#mardigras

Mardigras, tutelary god of the Andouilles in Rabelais' Pantagruel, Book IV. A great grey hog with long wings like a windmill, having scarlet plumage like a flamingo's, garnet-red eyes, emerald-green ears, topaz-yellow teeth, a marble-black tail, diamond-white goose-like feet, wearing a golden necklace and crying Mardigras, Mardigras, Mardigras.

In English this has been translated as "Carnival, god of the Chitterlings", but Mardigras still gets the idea across.

MARDI GRAS

My last Mardi Gras in New Orleans was 2020, and it was complicated. I didn’t go out on MG day, but I did get to see my favorite parade, Bacchus, on Sunday. Gavin and I, who were just good friends then, rode our bikes after to get burgers.

This year I was able to go back and close some cycles for myself. We got into town on Sunday, caught some of Bacchus and just soaked up the experience of Mardi Gras. Then we met new friends to see the Lundi Gras parades, Proteus and Orpheus. Proteus had an epic mythology theme, and Orpheus had lines from Shakespeare as themes for their floats. Just gorgeous, both of them. Gavin saw two of his best guy friends right beside us, and so he reconnected with them. One has a successful restaurant that Gavin helped get up-and-running, and the other is a developer who Gavin has done lots of different work for. Both of these men looked at Gavin like they had huge crushes on him, and got starry-eyed talking about how long they had been friends. I know it was what G needed.

Then the developer asked what we were doing right now: “I bought this recording studio… wanna meet me over there?” We did and it was amazing. I think G is gonna help him make sense of it. See the pics. I think it was owned by Donnie van Vandt.

Mardi Gras day was perfect. One of my grad school besties lives in NOLA now, so we picked him up and took him out to the walking parades. We organically ran into my parade director friends and rolled with them for the rest of the day. There were bathrooms and food and hydration when we needed them. We had a fine time and were home by 4:00. Then we went to a recovery crawfish boil yesterday and got home late.