A Brian Liu Production

With today being Mardi Gras, more specifically Fat Tuesday, I'm reminded of the fact that it's exactly 15 years ago when I was in New Orleans for my only Mardi Gras experience.

The circumstances of the planning of this trip were of course extremely last minute. Two weeks before we actually left my friend Brian Liu called me up and was like, "Hey, if we go to Mardi Gras this year do you want to come?" These types of plans came together very easily and very quickly for Brian. It was easy for him to connect an idea with execution and rally significant ranks of people to turn a plan into reality. I mean, everyone has PLANS but not everyone can make these plans happen with the degree of regularity that Brian experienced. This was one of Brian's great talents. Within a couple days there was a list of people coming, plans to rent a minivan to get everyone down there and a place to stay while we were there. Another friend of Brian's had wisely decided that Mardi Gras in New Orleans was not for her despite being a resident of the city and had instead planned to be in Houston. Her apartment was therefore available and Brian had arranged for the 6 of us to stay there all week. Myself, Brian, Devon, Jen, Q and Jen's friend whose name has long since receeded into the recycle bin of my memory.

I remember when I broke the news of my week-long absence to the staff at Fifth Colvmn. Jared, Chemlab head honcho and label figurehead, paused and said "Cool, well have a good time, man", not sure whether to give me a hard time about it or not. Brian McNelis, our management guru and music industry strategy wonk was somewhere between pretending to be annoyed and actually annoyed since I was only telling him about this trip a week before it was actually going to be happening. In theory, since I was paid as a consultant I could technically do whatever I damn well wanted without any real resistance from anyone.

It was mid-morning on the Wednesday before Fat Tuesday when Brian and the minivan showed up at my group house on Lanier Place in Washington, DC. With my bag packed I was the last one to be picked up and found a seat in the back for the roughly 18 hour drive to New Orleans. We drove straight through driving and navigating in shifts while others slept. We consumed mass quantities of junkfood and played some of the same CDs (Tragically Hip, Velvet Underground, Deadeye Dick, Cowboy Mouth) over and over again. How we managed to make this trip without an ipod I'll never know. The following morning we arrived in Mississippi dirty and tired and ready for life to begin again beyond the minivan. I felt so relieved to finally be so close that when we stopped for breakfast at a diner just off the highway in Mississipp I hardly noticed the mean, bitter, evil looking residents of this backward state who were giving a delirously tired Brian the evil eye for his being different (Asian) and loud.

New Orleans itself was unlike any other city I had ever been in before. It was old and grand with a unique style and history divergent from the older eastern seaboard cities I knew as well as the newer, culture-less western cities. We found Brian's friend's apartment and dropped off our bags. On this trip we would truly be living a charmed existence especially when you consider how little money each of us had. Q, was an ex-coast guard academy student and had remained in touch with his coast guard friends. With many of them stationed in New Orleans at the time we had a standing invitation to join this group of coast guard servicemen and their families all week long. We were invited to the houses and apartments of various coast guard servicemen and women who hosted us. They took care of us so well that I'm afraid I didn't appreciate it like I should have at the time. Our hosts had cook-outs and barbecues at least once a day to power us through the week. I couldn't belive how this city was willingly shutting down all week to celebrate this holiday. Every day seemed like a Saturday as no one appeared to be working.

The weather in New Orleans was beautiful until Fat Tuesday. The locals remembered that the previous year had also been rainy on Fat Tuesday when they saw the forecast.

For the first time in my life I found myself drinking an alcohol/cranberry juice mix out of a plastic water bottle at 9am. When I first started drinking at this early hour my first thought was that I would get sick not from drinking too much but simply because my digestive system would reject these large quantities of alccohol at such an early hour.

Despite the rain, however, the parade was terrific. Beads flying everywhere from the floats on down to the bystanders. With no real rain gear to speak of our group donned trash bags after we cut holes for the head and arms. This wardrobe choice combined with sloppy drinking helped us end our week in style! By the time lunchtime rolled around I felt beat - but not tired. Dazed, confused and just coasting. Our last coast guard hosted event was in an apartment with a private courtyard in the French Quarter near the end of the parade route (Mardi Gras revelers were encouraged to follow the parade route after the last of the floats had passed). It was a beautiful place and our ranks were finally showing a little worse for wear. After essentially drinking and partying all week with these people and not really seeing any of them in rough shape from overindulgence I was surprised to find that they were finally getting worn out on this day to end all days. I guess that was what one was supposed to do in the days leading up to Fat Tuesday - party hard but with some restraint and then let it all hang out on Fat Tuesday.