The gods smiled on last night’s parades and saved the rain for this afternoon. The crowds and vendors were out on St. Charles Avenue and it finally looked like Mardi Gras. It’s about time!
First came the Knights of Babylon, a traditional parade that uses and reuses floats made almost six decades ago with a mule-drawn King’s float. Walking quickly up St. Charles to meet friends, we walked against the parade and did not get a good look at this year’s King Sargon or the Queen, but managed to catch a few nice beads. Did anyone catch the theme this year?
Next up was the Knights of Chaos, one of my favorites for its artistic floats and biting satire. This year’s theme was Hades – A Dream Of Chaos. One of the trading cards D caught explains the theme best:
“… In a rainbow of satirical tableau roulants, Chaos reflects on the hell of disorder created by the hurricane called Katrina … This tableau could be called “Reconstruction II” as we look with both sadness and humor at events and individuals involved in the devastation on New Orleans and the promise for the future.”
No one was spared – not Nagin, Bush, Blanco, Brown, Chertoff, Compass, Benson, Broussard, the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the national press, carpetbaggers or post-Katrina pork. Some good ones:
– The Headless State: “Once again this float remains decorated in “Blanco” [or white] as a tribute to the lack of state leadership in this crisis.”
– The Pigs Of Patronage: “The Orleans Levee Board in its current form has only political patronage for qualifications, not technical expertise.”
– my personal favorite, The Inferno, with Bush as an “aloof Satan [who] blithely sails his ship of state above, yet removed from, this chaotic inferno.”
More on Muses, the only all-woman parade that rolls Uptown and at night, when this post is updated. The forecast now calls for good weather, i.e. no rain, on Hermes, Krewe d’Etat and Morpheus, some more of my beloved Uptown parades. Can’t wait to see Randy’s floats and d’Etat’s wickedness. More in my next.
