Two Cans and a Stick
As Jackie said during our lunch break in real estate school last week, that's all you need to have a parade in New Orleans.
There were seven parades in the metropolitan New Orleans area last weekend celebrating St. Patrick's Day and St. Joseph's Day. I suspect both are used by their respective communities, Irish and Italian, to justify getting drunk and kissing all the pretty ladies. Of the three parades I saw, two never really finished because the participants were completely trashed by parade's end. One float even threw beads soaked in formerly ingested food (you get the *
ahem* drift). The one parade I did see that did not become a drunken slouch through the steamy streets had as its starring attraction the tossing/hurling of 2-3 lb heads of cabbage. It's OK when you see them coming at you, but nothing's scarier than having everyone around you suddenly scream "
DUCK!!!!!!" and you don't know where the incoming missile is coming from. One cabbage shredded itself all over our drinks as it hit the iron fence in front of Anne Rice's party house.
That parade used Mardi Gras floats with shamrocks plastered on them to denote the parade's theme.
Not to be left out, the Mardi Gras Indians paraded, too, on a day they call
Super Sunday. Two parades for them.
I see there's an Irish-Italian parade this coming Sunday in Metairie.
I got the cans, who's got the stick?
