Laissez les bons temps rouler!

(in case you didn't take French: Let the good times roll!)

It's Mardi Gras! (again, for the non-French, Fat Tuesday)

Guess who has the largest Mardi Gras celebration after New Orleans?  That would be St. Louis.  And after Saturday's parade/debauchery/drunkenness/fabulous clothing/beads/extravaganza, I can tell you - it's the truth.

Alas I have no pictures, but let me paint it for you: my oldest cousin on my Dad's side (J, I'll call her) has been going to Mardi Gras since she was in high school.  Currently, she is 32.  So that's 16 years of honed expertise on how to do Mardi Gras well.  Naturally, I called her to get the lowdown, having been at college and unable to attend in previous years.

After preparing as per all of her suggestions (dress warm!, bring libations or pay for them here, the parade starts at 11, bring a purse for all stuff and by stuff I mean extra liquor or cigarettes, seriously wear long underwear we're gonna be outside all day, and MOST IMPORTANTLY if you're not drinking beer, bring a cup), I rock up to her house around noon.  My uncle drives us, (J, J's husband, E, and his cousin, D, and myself) because god knows none of us are driving home.

We drive towards downtown and get out of the car while still on the exit ramp.  It's time to get our drink on.  E and some of his other family are flipping a house right where all the action is, so that's where we set up all our stuff (the booze and food).  There's a Johnnie on the Spot, since the house is basically an empty shell waiting to get refurbished.  The port-a-potty is important.  You cannot quite fathom how important until you are standing in line behind 20 (drunk) people waiting for one of the john's on the street, and your (also drunk) bladder is bursting.  I paid $10 for the private port-a-potty in the fenced in backyard of the house, and that was the best, albeit the only, money I spent all day.  (Besides the .83 cent gas station cup I drank out of all day.)

If this is only the second largest Mardi Gras, I cannot imagine New Orleans.  It was packed.  It was like being in a club, but you're outside standing on a street corner with 300 other people and a heavy base is pounding a familiar song you are all singing as you're slithering through the crowd following the coat in front of you as you're trying not to lose the one who's following you, all the while scoping out the best, coolest beads and whether or not that guy is drunk enough to give you his if you just ask and scoping out the guys too because the ones that have propositioned you are just not up to your Mardi-Gras-make-out standards, or at least not yet, but maybe after you finish the drink you're holding if he hasn't disappeared to chase another tail by then.

It was like getting up to pre-game for a football game, except not quite as early and there is no stupid game to feign interest in, you're there to see the parade.  Not the actual parade, because that ended an hour ago, but the people parade: the green, purple and gold costumes; the beads that range from just colors to crawfish to duckies to boobs to plastic shot glasses to penis whistles to Jagermeister bottles; the super drunk and stumbly people; the chicks that will show their tits for beads, because they are drunk if not already stumbling; the old, wrinkly people who are partying just as hard as you; the little brown dog, who is also decorated in his finest beads...

Needless to say, by 8:30 pm, when we were picked up by my uncle at the same exit ramp we were dropped off at, we were all blitzed out of our minds.  I had copious amount of water and the best tasting Imo's pizza (it's a STL pizza place, kinda legendary) and passed out in my cousin's basement (on a bed, I wasn't that blitzed.)  And, thanks to the magical properties of Imo's pizza, I wasn't too bad in the morning.  E, my cousin's husband, passed out before the pizza arrived, and was hurting the next day.  (I did have a little headache but nothing too awful after 8 hours of partying.  The trick is to start off slow- then you can keep partying till it's dark out and not have Roxie's words to Mason running through your head (why do you do this to yourself?) the next morning).

Anyway, my purpose in telling you all this, was not to make you unbelievable jealous or ashamed that you have such a lush for a friend, but to let you know that the Saturday before Mardi Gras next year, you should join me.  Excited?