Fat Tuesday

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, since I'm dead tired, sunburnt, and sitting here in my underwear and a purple and green Applejack 'pimp' hat that I caught at Zulu. Beat to my socks, in other words, so I'll forgo the usual expository stuff about Carnival, it's traditions and roots in various communities within the city, how, much to the disbelief of visitors schooled on "Girls Gone Wild" videos, it is actually a festival largely for the benefit of children. I write stuff like that every year, and you can read it here: http://vancouverjazz.com/jdoheny/2005_02_01_archive.html and here:http://vancouverjazz.com/jdoheny/2006_03_01_archive.html and here:http://vancouverjazz.com/jdoheny/2007_02_01_archive.html A quick aside: I just this minute looked out my front door and saw a crowd of people dressed like Arthurian royalty walk by. I can hear our neighbor Ms. Vera hollering "Awrite baby! Lookin' good!" Anyway, Zulu was a kick. We met transplanted California bassist Rob Kohler and his family at Jackson and South Saratoga this morning. His wife Michelle proved to be a coconut catching fool, and his kids just loved the parade. My wife Darlene, while she can't catch coconuts worth a damn, always finds some Indians, this time at the corner of 1st and Loyola. The big disappointment of the season was the all-women Muses parade last Thursday. We have a number of friends in Muses and were really looking forward to it. Darlene collects the little shoe bracelet things they throw every year, and last year I was able to snag her the coveted 'shoe' throw (a hand-decorated shoe that is Muses equivalent of the Zulu coconut). I like to think I caught it cause I'm cute, but it was probably just somebody I knew. Hard to tell behind the mask. Anyway, I had a rehearsal that Thursday night that conflicted with Muses. Then the parade got rained out, and rescheduled for friday at eight-ish. We got there at seven thirty, suffered through interminably boring, honky parades like Krewe De Etat and Morpheus, and finally gave up around nine thirty. It was cold. Our feet hurt. The crowds were getting thick, drunk and stupid. We went home. Turned out they rolled at ten thirty. We were so disappointed to miss Muses, it's giant fiber-optic shoe float, and all it's associated walking krewes. I felt like Darren Mcgavin's character in A Christmas Story, after the Bumpus dogs eat their turkey. No shoe float! No Baby Dolls! No Bearded Oysters! No Big Easy Rollergirls! No Camel Toe Steppers! Gone, all gone! Until next year. There's always next year.