MARDI GRAS 2006
By: John Dardenne

Stumbling and drooling you fall towards the piss and beer soaked gutter of Bourbon Street. Breaking your fall are the augmented and exposed breasts of a woman old enough be your grandmother. This festively painted bosom acts as a New Orleans air bag as you plummet to the ground in a graceful move natives call “passing out.” Mardi Gras 2006: A SUCCESS.

Columbus resident Jake Homely explains his first Mardi Gras experience while stuck in traffic on Ash Wednesday morning. “Raped, ashamed, and hung over, I begin the long drive back to Ohio wondering how much it will cost to remove the silver stud off my urethra. My friends in the church group are never gonna believe this.”

The festivities offer a safe haven for underage drinking, cross dressing, and child exploitation. That’s right, you see some demented parents actually use their small children to get more beads. The unwilling and ignorant accomplices are dangerously hoisted onto tall ladders to appeal to the parade thrower’s drunken sense of parenthood. This tactic works surprisingly well because “the little kids are just so damn cute” according to Jack Mahoney, member of the Bacchus float shaped like a dildo.

In New Orleans, thanks to clever planning from Spanish and French architects, overaged men can hang from multi-story balconies getting power trips as they beg under-aged girls to show their breasts. From these positions of impunity, it’s not uncommon to hear the command, “Show your tits!” And from the ground level, it’s not uncommon to hear the response, “Fuck you grandpa!”






Later a man calling himself "Lord Wanghole" declares his love for anal sex while he urinates in a small child's bag of beads. I see him, intoxicated far beyond the bounds of reason, I smell the New Orleans excrement ambrosia, and I marvel at the diameter of that old woman's nipples. I am at Mardi Gras. I am home.