Four Parades in Half as Many Days

1. ‘tit R∂x

My original assumption that this parade would have something to do with dinosaurs (since ‘tit is pronounced is tee. French. I will never comprehend you.) was misguided. In fact, ‘tit means small. (There’s actually a whole story behind why it’s an ∂ in the parade’s name, and not an e, as well. Apparently Rex is the king of the Mardi Gras parades and they, quite literally, sued the little guy to protect their “brand”. You can read all about it if you’re so inclined. Am I being biased in giving you ‘tit R∂x’s account, maybe, but like I said, they’re the little guy. Who doesn’t root for the underdogs? Anyway, this parade’s name is obviously very complicated in a lot of ways.) So, ‘tit means small and this is a small parade. The floats are built on shoeboxes and pulled down the street. The parade got started a hour late because the patrol car that was supposed to escort them didn’t show up. Eventually they got sick of waiting and paraded along in the bike lane while cars continued to drive past them. Shortly after they set off their escort vehicle pulled up behind them and no one was quite sure how to proceed. There were regularly sized marching bands dispersed among the floats, like there’ve been at all the other parades, but being full-sized humans they seemed a little bit out of place. Their music and energy seemed too expansive for this collection of little jokes and tiny swag. (A comic book; a sandbag; a plastic man in a bag with a map featuring Centennial Olympic Park–which seemed like a rather peculiar coincidence.) The floats whizzed by, despite the deliberate pace the people pulling them walked at. Being as small as they were it was hard to catch their cleverness before they were gone. There were still a lot that went over my head, but after my crash course in New Orleans current events post-Krewe du Vieux I at least knew who Roger Goodell was and a few more reasons not to like the Times-Picayune.

2. Chewbacchus

This parade was obviously fantastic. I’d been hearing rumblings about it all week. Like when I was in More Fun Comics on Oak Street eavesdropping on a discussion of the political machinations, or lack thereof, the krewe that put on the parade engaged in around where Peter Mayhew would do a signing. Or when I was down the street in Zotz and heard that there were Doctor Who krewes. I seemed to find myself in places where this parade was being discussed–like sitting in the clothing optional pool at the Country Club and learning that the person who’d engaged me in a conversation lived with someone who marched in the parade–I have no idea why this was</sarcasm>

I quickly gathered that the way to get the people in the parade to pay attention to you, and hopefully throw you things (this was the first parade where I desperately wanted people to throw things to me. There were tribbles!) was to call them by the name of the character they were dressed as. An Amy Pond not only responded to her name when I shouted it but also came over and drew five hash marks on my hand, telling me, “Silence will fall.” I spent the next two days carefully guarding my hand from soap and water and explaining with glee what it meant to anyone who even glanced at it. My role within the group of people I’d been watching parades with was reversed. They asked the questions, and I explained the jokes; trying to edit down an explanation of what Torchwood was to a relevant five second sound-byte. They probably didn’t need to know it was an anagram of Doctor Who. But surely they wanted to know that this person was dressed up as Bad Robot, an emblem that’s responsible for both Star Wars and Star Trek now. Surely they needed to know that tribbles were born pregnant. (But maybe not that they’re “bisexual.”)

Like the ‘tit R∂x parade that had come before it, Chewbacchus was over far too quickly. I was high on the feeling of discovering there are other people like you in the world. Even if you’ve always known it, it’s reassuring to actually see it. Like going to the Waystation in Brooklyn, seeing the Chewbacchus parade in New Orleans made the city graspable, approachable, sympathetic, in a new way. It’s always nice to find your people.

3. Carrollton

I went downtown to see the Barkus parade (a bunch of dogs in costumes, riding floats, being pushed in carriages by people in matching costumes, etc.) and then thought I could be super efficient and clever and see the Carrollton parade, walk to where Barkus started, watch it, and then loop back around to where I’d been for Carrollton to see King Arthur. I underestimated exactly how slowly the parades moved. So I missed the dogs in costume, but I’d seen a few of them wandering around Armstrong Park, waiting for their parade to start, and that had felt like almost more animals in clothes than I could take in a day already.

Carrollton was almost entirely different from all the parades I’d seen so far. Even parades as disparate as Krewe du Vieux and ‘tit Rex shared a similar cheeky energy. There were floats about gay sex and paraders stopped to talk to friends they saw along the route. The floats in Carrollton were huge, pulled by tractors. There were barricades up to keep the crowds off the parade route. There were cops stationed every ten yards or so. The sun was still up. I don’t know whether these factors were the reasons this parade felt so much less satisfying than the ones I’d been to up till now. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’d picked a viewing spot miles away from where the parade started, and it felt like by the time bands and dance crews and assorted other marchers reached us they were tired. They’d spent all of their energy back at the beginning of the parade, when things were still new and shiny and now they were just trying to get to the end. I don’t blame them. It was a long parade route. I probably wouldn’t be able to keep a smile plastered on my face that long.

King Arthur

I started walking backwards along the parade route. There was a bit of a gap between the end of Carrollton and the beginning of King Arthur, but there didn’t seem to be much difference in theme between the two parades.

I sat on a wall and watched more floats roll by. There were two that people chucked Mardi Gras beads back at. I wanted to know more about this phenomenon. Did other parades do this? Did those beads get used again? Why would you throw those beads back so quickly after you’d begged for them so hard not ten minutes ago? I’m still having some sort of mental disconnect about Mardi Gras beads. (I blame it on being raised by a mother who managed to instill such a sense of environmental guilt in me–the hippie version of Catholic guilt–that at four I had a freak-out when I was given my ice cream in a cup instead of a cone) I’ve got a little more than a week left. Maybe I’ll figure out the psychology of them before the season is out.

I nodded off for a little while and when I woke up floats were still going by.

The Inception float. Somewhere on this float is a miniature representation of itself. We have to go a level deeper.