Dupuis: Mardi Gras

Dinosaur Float!

Honestly, I hate Mardi Gras, beads thrown at my face at outrageous speeds, people screaming in my ear, walking EVERYWHERE, and never a place to use the bathroom, but out of all the Mardi Gras I've been to, New Orleans is the best. Usually I hate having to stand for about an hour at parade, jumping up and down for a bead I could get for 50 cents, but something about these New Orleans parades just got to me this year. Maybe it was the beautiful floats or the personalized beads to match each float, but whatever it was, I had fun. I think people having fun because it is a long drum-roll until you catch those beads that you were screaming for, for the past half hour. Even when you catch one, you get greedy and just want more and the drum-roll begins again. It is like when the Joker is throwing money at the people of Gotham and talking about their greed. And the people throwing the beads know they are torturing the people below but that is what is fun for them, they are the tricksters of the Mardi Gras world, that is why they wear masks. Like when Beetlejuice takes advantage of the Maitlands because he knows they will do anything to get the living (beads) out of their house (in their hands).  I never understand what happens when you catch that one bead and then you just want more, I guess it just makes you feel good about yourself, like somehow you earned those beads and no one takes them from you...until the person next to you says the beads were going to go to them until you stole them, and then they try to take them from you. Even then, it is a weird bonding experience with you and  your friends, because you know next year at Mardi Gras you will be saying, "Remember last year when that crazy person tried to take my beads from me!"
I just think the tradition of Mardi Gras has been ruined. Originally Mardi Gras is about letting loose before we have to give up things for Lent, but now it has become a marketing scheme. You need money to but the beads for the float; you need money for the float; you even need at least ten dollars to pee in a business on the parade route. I just think the Mardi Gras tradition has strayed from what it used to be, or maybe I do not enjoy it because I am not Catholic and do not give anything up for Lent. But maybe I do not like it just because I do not like parties.