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Mature Content
This is a record of my once in a lifetime adventure to
Mardi Gras, in New Orleans, Louisiana. I was invited to Mardi Gras by my friend, Rick. We
spent the last weekend of Mardi Gras amongst the party goers. From the time we got into
the plane to the time we left I don't recall that there was any extended period
of time that we didn't have alcoholic beverages in hand. With that said, I'm sure you can
imagine that the festivities of the occasion, as well as the present company, made it an
absolutely awesome and fun trip.
There were a couple of layover flights on the way, and it was cool
for me to finally get out of California to a place other than Las Vegas, Nevada. For
my "first" trip outside of California, I had a blast! And what better way to
celebrate "gettin' the hell out of Dodge", than to throw myself into the
melee
of other anxious people ready to have a great time? I got to stand in Texas and in Arizona
on the way, so my first trip out I actually got to be in three different states!
Very cool for me.
The crowds were very mellow considering that we were crammed like
cattle on Bourbon Street. I'll probably have to write several different articles
concerning the individual stories. (Such as the guy that goosed my bum!) For more info if
you hadn't heard that story and you're dying to know,
email me. It'll probably get the article written
sooner.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Rick,
whole-heartedly for one of the most memorable experiences of my life. From my
experience, Mardi Gras is an event that so many say they would like to go to, and yet so
few actually end up there. I'm thankful and flattered that Rick asked me to join him on
the occasion. Thank you, Rick!
Pictures here are highlights of the event. Enjoy!
Roll your mouse over the photos to view additional commentary.
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Photo Highlights- Mardi Gras 2002 |
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| A view of a balcony of bead-throwers. | The balconies were sometimes just as crowded as the streets were! | |||
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| A float from the Mardi Gras parade on Canal Street. | "Naked Cowboy" was a popular attraction. | |||
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| Rick with his 'hurricane' drink at Pat O'Brians. | A picture of me after a few drinks. No drool. | |||
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I also have stories from the trip. Would you like to read them below?
Mature Content
So this is the bead story of my trip to Louisiana, which mostly consisted
of hanging out on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
Apparently there were several levels of beads on my trip.
1. Common Beads-a
short string of beads like a string of round pearls, in bright chromed colors. To get
common beads one needed to blow kisses, hug or kiss the bead giver, or do a quick flash.
If you had a bunch of the same colored ones and wanted to add a specific color to your
collection, you had to do a quick flash.
My count: 11
2. Uncommon Beads-a longer string of beads usually down to the waist
or down to the knees. Usually round and iridescent like the common beads, only longer.
Short necklaces that were uncommon looked exactly like pearl necklaces in pearly white or
were faceted like disco balls. To get uncommon beads one needed to do a lengthier flash,
usually with a bit of jiggling of the knockers to win those type.
My count:43
3. Fancy Beads
-These beads are super fancy usually with some type of
item attached in the beading such as jesters, rubber ducks, alligators, masks, medallions,
or were heart shaped, star shaped or shaped like dice, etc. They came in just about
anything you could think of. Lots of marijuana plant bead necklaces were floating around.
To earn fancy beads you had to be showcased. A crowd of at least 50-60 people would be
gathered around chanting "show your tits" while spotlights, cameras and video
tapes were going. These beads are expensive in the stores, and came at a high price to
earn, and weren't earned by a simple flash, but as a flashing event.
My count:22
This
is a shot of all of the beads (left) which I arranged by type on my 49ers blanket. My prized
rubber ducky beads are on the left in this picture. A closer view of them is located
below.
These rubber ducky beads (right) were popular amongst the crowd. I had several offers from people to get them which I had to refuse because of my fetish for rubber duckies. Not to mention that they were a gift from Rick that I wasn't going to give away. These are my most prized beads.
On the second
night of Mardi Gras festivities with my buddy, Rick, we went to a restaurant that seemed
to be pretty nice from the outside. When we went inside it happened to be pretty nice on
the inside too. (Way-to-go on picking the restaurant, Rick!
) If I could remember the name
of it, I'd surely recommend it to you. After the Hurricanes and Hand grenades up to that
point I doubt I would know the restaurant if it goosed me.
So we're sitting in the restaurant, with our drinks in hand, and probably at least 2 litres worth already downed, and our server comes up to greet us.
Nice kid. He had the voice and mannerisms of Chris Rock (the comedian guy) and
he looked like a shorter version of Tiger Woods.
Rick and I were in agreement with that and I think the kid felt the need to mention it to us before we even said anything since I'm sure he heard it so much.
We started out ordering a unique appetizer. Fried dill pickle chips
or something of the sort. Sounds bizarre, however they were quite tasty!
A round of shots of
kamikaze's soon followed and we ordered our meal, sharing a cup of authentic
Cajun gumbo
in the meantime. It didn't have okra in it and I asked why. A few Louisianan's that I've
talked to in the past said they don't like okra in their gumbo because it's slimy. The
server said the same thing about okra being slimy in response to my question.
I asked the kid-dude where the best gumbo in the area could be found and
he said "Grandma's Gumbo". We asked where that was located in hopes of trying
some and he said it's at his grandma's.
So much for that!
I can't remember what Rick ordered, and I think I ordered the King Creole.
(I'm not sure). All I know is that the food I was served was so spicy that the veins in my
head were constricting worse than they already were from all of the alcohol and
cigarettes. Now I like spicy food, don't get me wrong...When I'm eating something that's
so
that even the capillaries in my eyeballs were inflamed, I think I've
hit my spice-limit. The food wasn't spicy like a "hot-sauce spicy" where
you sweat, breathe fire and your taste buds melt off; it was peppery spicy that heats up
the center of your brain as if it were hot magma ready to explode and hot steam seeps from
the ears or something. YOWZERS!
I swear that "spicy" was an
understatement to describe the taste of the food I ate at the restaurant that night.
Matter of fact, I don't even really remember what it tasted like because my brain
was going into such a meltdown that I was concentrating on not getting a headache instead
of tasting the food. Needless to say, food is food, and Heaven must be fed, so I
continued to eat what I could. I didn't return the entree for something else because even
though it was killing me, I was trying to convince myself that I would get used to it
since I eat spicy food all the time!
I thought I put a dent in it. It was probably just my imagination. I
couldn't finish the plate.
We didn't take
it in a to-go box either--we hadn't finished our roust amongst the heathen out on Bourbon
Street for the evening, and it would have been a pain to carry around and expect to keep
safe with all of the people huddled in the street for beads.
Kudos on there being food out there that is too spicy for even moì!!! Viva la spice girl!
The Idiot Who Couldn't Keep His Hands To Himself
Dude...I don't know of a woman out there that likes to be goosed by a strange man passing by. Working in the industry that I do, guys will occasionally get this notion that it's okay to get touchy-feely. Especially with my ass. It usually isn't any different when I'm out at a crowded place. Walking Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras was no exception.
On the subject of my buns, I've heard it's nice and all, kind of J-Lo-ish so
I've been told. I can understand that a dude out there would want to reach out and try to
cop a feel. HOWEVER, if it's anything that sets me the fuck off...dude...it's people who
can't keep their hands to themselves. Here's another silly picture of my butt that was
asked to be shown on this site by popular demand...
Don't ask about the beer can at the moment. That's a story in another section. So anyhow, I'm trekking along down Bourbon Street along with the rest of the crowd and Rick by my side after just arriving there. I'm checkin' out how the bead system works, and I ended up getting goosed twice that night.
Soooooo...the next day, I'm trying to beat my previous day's record of 28 or so beads. I also mentioned to Rick that I was going to see just how many times I got goosed in comparison to the night before. I was shooting for less than twice since it was inevitable that it would happen. It always does.
I look up to see the beads that people were dangling from one of the
balconies, and out of the blue my ass gets squeezed by some idiot passing by in the crowd.
Now mind you, it's very crowded so anyone with the nerve to do that can't get away too
quickly. 
At the exact
time my ass was squeezed I reached my hand out and the first person I grabbed by the shirt
was this skinny kid. With the chest-part of his shirt in my hand I pulled him up to my
face where I could give him a piece of my mind since he thought he could grab a piece of
my patootie. He practically put his hands up like I was going to arrest him or
something and I said to him with the look of death, "Do you mind keeping your FUCKING
HANDS TO YOURSELF?!?!?!?!?"
With his mouth open in
shock 
he said, "It
wasn't me!!!!"
I proceeded to throw the dude back to where I pulled him from. He scurried along his merry way, and I continued on with the festivities of acquiring beads for myself. I think my buddy, Rick, was in a state of temporary paralysis over the minimal scene. On my goose count for that night it was the only time a successful attempt was made (or any other kind of attempt for that matter). I didn't have any other idiots try it for the rest of my stay in Louisiana. The nerve of some people!
All over the French Quarter in New Orleans all of the bars served "Hurricanes". The first night on Bourbon Street I was drinking Vodka/Cranberry's and Rick was having beer or margaritas--I think. After seeing this all over the place the first day of the trip, Rick and I decided on the second day that we would have to find out what a hurricane was.
A
Hurricane is a drink mixed with a lot of alcohol. The hurricanes in the French Quarter
came out of a tap, soda gun or soda machine-like thingy when served to the patrons.
Because of this, Rick and I, upon beginning our drinking spree for that particular day,
had no idea what the hell was in these drinks. Come to find out, it has quite a bit of rum
in it among other hard alcohols, including Dark Bacardi or Bacardi 151. Yikes!
Great tasting, fuck-you-up-in-a-heartbeat type
drinks, if you ask me. With the pandemonium going on and having to stay alert on Bourbon
Street, Rick and I weren't exactly traipsing around making zig-zag patterns. We actually
handled ourselves pretty well. That's our consensus, anyway. How would we know any
different?
Since every bar on Bourbon Street served Hurricanes, there was one outlet in particular with a big sign that advertised "Hand Grenades". Followed by the proud statement, "No Hurricane's Served Here!" Well certainly we had to find out what a Hand Grenade was.
Hand grenades came in a
long plastic tube-like container where you could sip the contents out of the top. The
plastic glass had a grenade shaped base with a happy face on it. Hand grenades were also
poured out of soda guns, and the mixture of what exactly it is, was a secret. I think
they almost tasted like lemon-flavored Gatorade with a bit of a twist of something else.
(It's hard to describe). Quite the tasty (and potent) drink as well!
With all of the alcohol consumption going on between Rick and myself, I'm
surprised we weren't zig-zagging or praying to the porcelain god. I'll tell ya one thing,
I had no problem flashing sober, and with a few hand grenades and hurricanes consumed, I
definitely had no problem flashing drunk either.
The alcohol was about average price there. They didn't gouge like some places (cough:LongBeachGrandPrix:cough) do. It made it all the more appealing to drink more!
I was so excited to leave for New Orleans, that I got two hours of sleep before leaving for the trip. Not particularly a good start, but hey, I didn't plan on getting much sleep to begin with. Once we got on the plane the alcohol testing began, and the drinks on the plane aren't bad, I might add. Once we got to our final destination and checked into the hotel, it was time to head out and find some more alcohol to test.
Between eating, drinking, and
acquiring beads, being goosed, photographed, video taped, and shopping on Bourbon Street,
there was truly no time for sleep! It was my first excursion with Rick, and we spent a
good portion of the day flying over there, and we would spend a good portion of a day
returning. As one of those possible once-in-a-lifetime experiences it was cool to party
like it was 1999 over three days and get very little sleep. We got back at about 4am.
I think the first day we slept for about 5 hours or so.
Waking up at about 9am, we were burning daylight, not to mention we were hungry, so we
were "off like bras" to Bourbon Street again for the daytime experience of Mardi
Gras.
There wasn't even time for gaining a second-wind. I think we were both running on pure adrenaline from the time we got there to the time we left.
No sleep for the
wicked...after returning again that evening at about 3 or 4am we were up and running with
about 5 hours of sleep again, packed our stuff and put it in the car, and then headed Back
to Bourbon Street for more alcohol testing and some grub. We ate at Pat O'Brian's and
headed back to the airport with what we had left of our brain cells.
More than 11 hours of
partying each day we were there would be enough to put a rookie into cardiac arrest.
Fortunately, Rick and I were long graduated from being rookies.
Unfortunately, the case of the 'slows' prevented us from making our
departing flight on time. Did we catch any zzz's as we waited for the next flight? Hell
no! On the flight home I think we had a couple more drinks to wean away from the weekend's
binge.
Plenty of time to crash on the pillow and deflate into a flat pancake once we got home!
Statistical Estimates On My Body Parts
My total flashes easily equaled
more than a whopping 65 times.
On two occasions I was gypped out of my beads by someone
else catching them. Of the 22 fancy bead counts I estimate that easily 200 snapshots
of my boobs were randomly taken, and at least 50 people got it on video camera. A
conservative estimate. Of the copies upon copies of the photos probably uploaded, posted,
and forwarded over the internet, the total amount of pictures will increase, and an
accurate estimate will always be unknown.