Lacey Crisp? I kind of love the earnest sheriff describing the import of having hair hanging over your eyes.

My favorite bit is when they describe some Internet quiz as having any import.

My favorite bit is when they describe some Internet quiz as having any import.

"You can get points by cutting yourself or wearing black..."

I kind of love the earnest sheriff describing the import of having hair hanging over your eyes.

That's the point where I wasn't sure if this was real or not...

"You can get points by cutting yourself or wearing black..."

Or by crying!

I am listening to Jon's show and just came by to ask him where he found the clip. I should have known...

Jon Parles of the NYTimes has been reporting from Mardi Gras. I kind of love this bit. It's the New Orleans that I know.

**********

For me, the giant official Mardi Gras parades tend to blur after a while. Only a few hold on to carnival's satiric bite. Most have bland themes--gee, the circus--as they strive to impress crowds with the elaborate decorations of their floats and the generosity of what's thrown from them.

But New Orleanians aren't about to let other people do their parading for them. While the big krewes mount their spectaculars, Mardi Gras is also defined by countless informal parades thrown by gaggles of friends who name themselves krewes, make their own costumes and set out on spur-of-the-moment parade routes, traffic or no traffic. It's a great city for wordplay: the official Bacchus parade is spoofed by Barkus, featuring dogs, while the historically black Zulu is fondly echoed (and used to be directly followed) by Julu, which was started by the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars.

I was led by locals to Monday's parade by the bohemian Krew du Poux, who had gone all-out on costumes in a ghoulish mode. A scary clown with a larger-than-life head wielded a giant mallet. Little Bo Peep carried not just her crook but a sheep. Someone with a wagon was rolling around the new dwarf planet Eris, about six feet in diameter and painstakingly textured and painted. Someone else was riding around in an Uncle Sam hat on a cart holding a giant carrion crow and a tombstone for New Orleans, described in the epitaph as dead from neglect. Another crow wheeled around at one point on a unicycle. Of course there was a band, oom-pahing away in a Kurt Weill-Tom Waits style.

The parade ambled along nearly deserted streets, from the Upper Ninth Ward into the Marigny district, until it came to one that was more like an alley. Someone kept a lookout for the police. Out came shopping carts turned into bumper cars, with shock absorbers made from tires; one was painted with the words Bumper Bummer. Volunteers climbed in, other volunteers pushed, and as the band played a relentless drumbeat, a full-scale demolition derby began, ending only when one last cart remained untoppled. The krew's leader called for another round, and another; the contestants shrieked threats at each other; a spectator chanted "Kill! Kill!" A woman fan-danced amid the vehicles. The clown bopped people with his mallet.

There was humor in the competition; there was also anger and unfocused bitterness. New Orleans has always been a haven for arty misfits with a taste for decadence. In post-disaster New Orleans, they also have a taste for catastrophe: in sorrow and in rage, but also for the thrill of it.

More New Orleans like I like it by Pareles.

**********

DAY 3 | 02.18 6:30 P.M. At the Maritime Ball

Down a dark alley, behind a grocery store on a weedy main street in the Ninth Ward, a tiki torch was burning to announce a show at the Spellcaster Lodge, the home and performance space of the keyboardist and songwriter Quintron and his wife and bandmate, Miss Pussycat.

It was the annual Maritime Ball, an event they have held during Mardi Gras weekend since the 1990's--part house party, part proudly eclectic hipster showcase, and one of the few places anywhere to hear rap, punk, chamber-rock and Quintron's own keyboard-driven music on the same bill. In New Orleans, of course, people danced to all of them.

Quintron moved to New Orleans in the mid-1990's as part of an influx of artists into Bywater, a low-rent district on the higher ground in the Ninth Ward. The Spellcaster Lodge was slightly damaged but not destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Now it has been spiffed up as a lounge/club with two small stages and a disc-jockey booth.

Shiny plastic, something like a shag carpet, that is used for Mardi Gras floats covers the walls in ripples; the ceiling has glitter in it. Set into the walls are life preservers and little aquarium-like dioramas, like one that has a rock band made out of pine cones. Hundreds of people, many in costumes, soon arrived to pack the place. Keeping the maritime theme, Quintron wore a sailor suit; Miss Pussycat had an aqua dress appliqued with octopi.

Quintron's Hammond organ, probably the only one in the world mounted behind an automobile grille with a Louisiana vanity license plate spelling QUINTRON, was on a stage along with his Drum Buddy, a custom gizmo that sounds like a drum machine crossed with a theremin. But that performance would start later, around 3 a.m.

First came the Herringbone Orchestra, an unlikely sextet -- accordion, euphonium, harp, bass clarinet, cello, drums -- playing chamber-rock, New Orleans-style. The pieces circled through three or four chords, with crescendo variations and inner details emerging something like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The New Orleans extra was the swing: some tango, some waltz, some oom-pah, making the Minimalism not just arty, but earthy. Also on the bill was the Overnight Lows, a punky hardcore band from Jackson, Miss.

But the crowd was there for Katey Red, a transvestite rapper in a red dress and a blonde wig who was all rhythm and raunch. It was bounce music, the low-budget, lowbrow New Orleans hip-hop that's so sex-obsessed it's almost pure comedy; it also allows New Orleans rappers to vow, "We gon' bounce back."

Katey Red had a few verses about 9/11 and a post-Katrina rap, but mostly bragged about being a gay prostitute; "Put my money on the dresser" is one of the few lines quotable here. Onstage, Katey Red led syncopated crowd chants as a CD played, everyone danced and shouted and there was pure, uproarious New Orleans call-and-response: "Ya ya, ya, ya-ya ya."

And then came Quintron and Miss Pussycat. Their self-named "swamp tech" wanders the last four decades of keyboard-driven rock, from garage-band organ stomps thorough motoric 1970's German rock through the pulsating punk Minimalism of Suicide through electropop, not to mention a little bit of lounge polka. Mr. Quintron cranked up his Hammond organ, pumping out chords and drones, shouting like a rocker who loves old R&B and trading chants with Miss Pussycat in songs like "Swamp Buggy Badass." His Drum Buddy -- which gets its rhythm patterns by using light sensors to pick up rays from holes punched through what looked like rotating coffee cans -- generated whizzing, swoopy sounds along with dance beats.

A woman in a tutu twirled onstage, her arms arched overhead. Miss Pussycat shook some glitter-fringed maracas. And the dance floor at the Spellcaster Lodge did, as one song put it, "the shake and bake."

(continued...)

( continues...) It didn't end there. After the set, Mr. Quintron and other local musicians put on red-and-white marching band uniforms -- emblazoned with a 9 and a cat -- and picked up horns and drums to become the Ninth Ward Marching Band. Although the Ninth Ward has become synonymous with the city's worst devastation, the marching band long predates that notoriety. Quintron started the group soon after he settled in New Orleans; it couldn't exist anywhere else. At 4 a.m. in chilly weather, they were going to parade to the French Quarter playing classic rock songs. Not me -- I needed some sleep before the rest of Mardi Gras.

9th Ward Marching Band

along with his Drum Buddy, a custom gizmo that sounds like a drum machine crossed with a theremin.

When I was at SXSW a few years ago, he had a table hawking the Drum Buddy. It was very cool, but too expensive ($999.99) for what it was (IMO).

t edit Oh -- here\'s his web page: [link]

That Pareles guy does alright for a NYT cult-stud guy. And I'm glad y'all enjoyed the link! I got it from a another online forum and nearly died when they started talking about the online quizzes providing kids with bragging rights.

nearly died when they started talking about the online quizzes providing kids with bragging rights.

I know! It\'s like, they never heard of Purity Tests?