More Mardi Gras Pix

Today I woke up alone in my house for the first time in two weeks...all of our Mardi Gras guests have left, and all is quiet. By the way, this entailed a trip to the airport at four AM. And as you can imagine, there is a good deal of cleaning up to do!

The city sleeps for a few days, observing Lent, and waiting for Saint Patrick's Day and Saint Joseph's Day, both in less than a month, and both huge, festive days hereabouts. The Mardi Gras Indians will parade on Saint Joseph's day, and yours truly will make every attempt to be there!

For those still craving Mardi Gras revelry, here are a few more photos taken on Frenchmen Street and on Decatur Street.

Face painting at Cosmic Debris.

Nice...hat!

Dancers on Frenchmen Street.

Medusa

This spin-the-wheel costume fortold how the spinner would fare at the end of the 2012 Mayan calendar year. It turns out I'll be fine, thanks for asking.

Cowgirl. She is riding a live mule down Royal Street. Yeah, really.

Adorable children.

Only about three or four bands tried playing on the street on MG day. It was way too crowded and way too noisey to be heard. One girl I know went out in costume and played a toy accordion: she was tipped well simply for the novelty. Here are some of my friends trying to busk. They didn't make very much.

Our friends Elena and Josh on Decatur Street, waiting for Cosmic Debris.

More adorable children.

It turns out there was simply no shortage of adorable children.

Her costume is made entirely of candy.

Lauren the sexy pyrate...

From Mardi Gras in New Orleans (and its aftermath), this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.

Parades: Babylon, Chaos, and MUSES!!!!!

The Muses Parade! This is one of the most anticipated parades of the season. An all female Krewe, Muses throws not only beads and small favors just like all of the other krewes: each woman in the krewe creates a custom Muses shoe, and each throws her shoe to one lucky woman in the crowd. Everyone wants to be the special person who gets a shoe!

On a beautiful Thursday evening, Lauren and I, and our friends (about eight in all) set our for Muses, each woman in the group reciting the mantra "I want a shoe! I want a shoe!"

The evening began (for us) with Indian food, followed by the first two parades, Knights of Babylon and Knights of Chaos. Both parades strode up Napoleon to Saint Charles. We stood for a while on the corner of Napoleon and Magazine, part of a huge crowd of parade goers. A few highlights...

The crowd on Magazine and Napoleon. We're in there somewhere...

A Knight of Chaos!!

The Knights of Chaos theme was "Chaos Ball"...

Bead throwing

A baton twirling lovely. I'll write a Blog in a few days about the awesome marching bands in all of the parades.

We then crossed through the huge crowd at Napoleon, and walked a few blocks down Magazine for an uncrowded (comparatively) view of Muses, and of course...

A Tale Of...SHOES!!!

While shoes are always the prevailing theme of Muses, the actual parade this year was titled "Muses Go Shopping."

The shopping float.

Shopping for glowy shoes!

Roller skating Muse.

The shoe knows all...

Shoes, shoes, shoes...remember that the Muses hand make one show each, so they pick one person in the crowd to throw that show at. Stephanie caught a shoe, but the Muse yelled at her "that's for HER!" wildly gesticulating at a woman next to Stephanie. Stephanie dutifully handed over the shoe... This happened frequently, with much heartache to the shoe losers, and elation for the shoe winners! But back to the parade...

Floral Muses...

Awesome librarians!!!!! The one with the pink hair is my favorite.

The Muses Krewe contains several "sub-krewes":

Goose Girl, part of a sub-krewe of huge fairy tale puppets.

The Camel Toe Steppers.

The Bearded Oysters.

Throwing beads from the rabbit float...

A very excited, very beaded Stephanie.

Didn't catch the name of this sub krewe, but they're awesome...

The NOLA Cherry Bombs

There is a happy ending to this tale, good reader. Lauren was one of the chosen! Here, in all of its glory, is Lauren's Muses shoe!

From Mardi Gras, this is Kenny Klein, whose girlfriend has a Muses shoe, explaining it all!