remorse is for sissies

the i-love-new-orleans rant that follows is probably wildly inappropriate, in light of the fact that i'm allegedly here to "be with my family" and "honor the one-year anniversary of my grandmother's death..." but to be fair, i'm doing most of the drunken parade watching and frantic po-boy eating flanked by willing-accomplice parents (thus fulfilling the "spending time with my family" requirement), and the ceremony tomorrow will not be presided over by a rabbi or anything remotely resembling a rabbi, so much as by 6 to 10 denim-clad, vaguely solemn family members who are too busy grumbling about the bone chilling 40 degree temperature and supressing their smoldering resentment about various things to think, much less say anything meaningful about my recently departed grandmother. and i definitely pick eating, drinking, and hollering over playing tech guru for my parents. for one thing i don't really know enough about computers to be anyone's guru, and for another, even i can tell that their computer is jacked.

it's been an interesting mardi gras. post-katrina new orleans is more of a shrine to itself than it has ever been, well set up for a suddenly nostalgic ex-pat to the midwest like me. local microbrew is cheaper in any restaurant than a bottle of miller lite is at the avereage chi-town bar, and my parents have been eager to parade me through the various new eating and shopping establishments, where i've had my fill of fried oysters and post-storm satirical t-shirts (i.e. "new orleans, it's not beautiful being easy"...). speaking of parades, within an hour of my arrival i was headed to muses, the all-woman parade, armed with a squeeze bottle full of southern comfort (i misinterpreted my mother's disdainful looks as "why is my daughter an alcoholic?" when in fact she meant, "why can't you just fill your backpack with beer like a normal person?"). there we found my good friend lining up with the other pussyfooters, a crew of 30+ year-old marching dancers, flanked by their, ahem, pussyhandlers, all pissed off and excited because their rival crew, the cameltoe steppers had stolen their trademark colors (i swear i'm not making this up). the beauty of girl parades is that everyone catches lots of stuff without much self-degradation... not the case the next night at hermes, a more standard parade, where my father watched, fascinated, as i successfully sauntered up to the floats, again and again returning with armloads of light-up loot (the quality of mardi gras takings has improved markedly in the last few years - it's not even worth taking if it doesn't blink or have lip gloss or isn't a beer coozy). i'd feel bad about getting so blatantly tanked in front of my dad if he hadn't taken a shot of whiskey before we left the house.

as i was driving around, frantically in search of the krewe of o.a.k.s drunken meandering through uptown (picture a big elaborate pub crawl) so that i could once again march with the pussyfooters, remembering my former tradition of once a year debaucherous hook up (after said pub crawl) with my old middle school crush, it dawned on me that the most interesting aspect of all this year's mardi gras love fest has been recollection of a distinctly different era in my life - a time that was thinner, drunker, and, um, sluttier. i'd be more ashamed if it didn't make for such an impressively nostalgic romp around the city with my old friends, to the tune of, "omg did i ever tell you what i did after that party?"

new orleans: you could feel guilty, but why?