Manic Monday #13: Rank

Wow, I haven't done one of these in awhile. But I'm going to try and start over again. Today's word is Rank. My choice is the punk-cowboy musical group Rank and File. This group was formed by the Kinman brothers, Chip and Tony - formerly of the punk group The Dils. Another member of this group was the legendary Alejandro Escovedo. He ended up leaving the group before the release of their third album. Their second album Sundown is considered something of a classic in the genre. The Kinman brothers went on to form Cowboy Nation more recently.

Manic Monday #21: Miss

Today's word is Miss. I really hadn't planned to tie my Mainc Monay post into the past week, but when I saw the word I knew I had to.

Some random things I will Miss about my Dad:

Calling him on the phone and the first thing out of his mouth was always "What do you want?" It was a running joke, I would always answer with something like "a new car," "a million dollars," or something along those lines. He would always tell me it was in the mail to me.

Cooking. He loved to cook. He'd try to get all creative now and than, but most of us are fairly boring eaters, so he couldn't get too creative. We're a meats and potatoe type family.

Watching him in his workshop. He loved to build things. His workshop was a toolman's paradise, he had every type of tool in there that anyone would ever need. He was always happy when he could go in his shop and emerge hours later with a new bookshelf, table or whatever someone wanted.

Christmas morning. Both my parents were like little kids come Christmas morning. I would usually sleep over the night before and they would both wake me up with their excitement. Than after everyone got up we would all gather around the Christmas tree and he would hand out the presents. He would hand them out one at a time, even though we were all eager to get our presents and open them. Sometimes I would just watch as he handed them out, forgetting to open mine, he was having so much fun doing this.

Most of all, I just miss him.

Manic Monday # 20: Seven

For today's Manic Monday the word is Seven. So I found a video of the Clash playing "The Magnificent Seven" on the old Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.

Manic Monday #19: Independence

Today's word for Manic Monday is Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. "

Thus begins one of the greatest pieces of writing. The idea of the Revolution and the winning of our independence from Great Britain was an amazing feat in itself, but I think what happened afterwards was even more amazing.The founding fathers created a government that lasted and grew even greater than they probably could imagine. George Washington stepped down after two terms as the leader of this newly created country. Do you realize how easy it would have been for him to stay on, to basically become the "King" of America? He created the office of the President and set precedents that continue to this day and made sure that whoever held that office realized that he was not a King.

These men that created this country made a government that was free. They were not perfect, they had faults, there were some things that they should have done, but what they did accomplish was so great that it's amazing to even think about. They created a government for a country that was free, that elected a leader every four years, that let it's populace be free. It would have been easy to go another way. To set it up where we were not so free.

To realize how great these men were imagine any of our politicians from recent years in their place and time. Do you think we would have ended up as free as we are today? I don't. And I'm not just thinking of politicians that I don't like, even the ones from today that I admire I wouldn't trust in that situation.

These men created our independence.

Manic Monday: Heat

Today's word is Heat. So for my addition to Manic Monday I give you Joan Osborne and the Funk Brothers doing "Love Is Like A Heat Wave."

Manic Monday #17: Red

Today's word is Red. (And I'm a day late I know. Sorry.) For Red I went with my favorite superhero: Daredevil.

Manic Monday #16: Graphic

Today's word for Manic Monday is Graphic. Lots of ways this word could be used, but I'm going for the term Graphic Novel.
Published in 1971 Blackmark was a science fiction/fantasy story by Archie Goodwin and Gil Kane. This was published as a paperback original and some site this as the first American graphic novel.
Published in 1978 and created by Will Eisner A Contract with God is one of the earliest graphic novels. Eisner would go on to help carve a place for the graphic novel in the comic book medium.Another early graphic novel was The First Kingdom by Jack Katz. It was originally published as individual issues and later collected into a collection of trade paperbacks in the mid 1970s.
Sabre by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy was published in 1978 as the first graphic novel in the newly created Direct Market Sales.
Dave Sim wrote and drew 300 issues of Cerebus the Aardvark and collected the stories in multiple volumes, telling the life story of the earth pig as one long graphic novel.
One of the most important graphic novels to be published was Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.Heartbreak Soup was by Gilbert Hernandez and published in Love and Rockets. The story is set in the fictional village of Palomar in Central American and his writing has been compared to the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Pride of Baghdad is a more recent addition to the line of graphic novels. It is by Brian Vaughn and Niko Henrichon. It is based on a true event when four lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during the American attack on the city.

Manic Monday #15: Green

This week's word is Green. So I thought I'd use Green Day and U2 doing "The Saints Are Coming" for New Orleans.

Manic Monday #14: Silence

Today's word is Silence. A lot of blogs are going silent today in honor of the 35 dead from Virgina Tech. A worthwhile effort to highlight the tragedy and let the world know we mourn our dead. Still there is a but...

This is in no way meant to belittle what many others are doing to honor the 35 slain from Virgina Tech, no matter how you look at it, that was a tragedy.

In Iraq today at least 21 people were killed.

Yesterday 72 people were killed.

I could continue the list, with so many dead for each day of the week. A day of the week does not pass without multiple deaths. We are creating the next generation of terrorists. We see 35 of our dead as a tragedy, they see 35 of their dead as a normal day of the week. The young see their country men and women dying around them, literally hundreds and thousands are being killed and what is the reaction from the country that started this to liberate their country, to bring democracy and freedom to their country, to make their country safer?

Silence.

Manic Monday #13: Sun

Today's word is Sun. I know, today isn't Monday, it's Tuesday. I couldn't help it. I ended up working two shifts yesterday, so that meant being at work like 19 hours straight, which didn't leave me a lot of time to do much else. This is just a fragment of an idea I had, it's not a story yet, but the germ of an idea.


Sometimes he almost forgot what the sun was like. How bright it was, how warm it felt on the skin. Artificial light never came close to replicating the glow of the sun. Now he was used to the shadows of the night.

Living in the depths of the night made one the villain of the story, the brightness of the day conferred the status of hero. That was the formula, that was the status quo. He struggled against the norm, he didn't want to be the cliché. But it was hard.

The blackness of the night had a tendency to creep into your soul and stain it black. Sunlight burned away such imperfections and diseases. He wished he could stay out and watch the sun come up in all its glory. Feel the warmth as the first rays hit his skin and see the world in the starkness of the sunlight. But he was cursed never to experience such things. Years ago the bite of a vampire had made sure that he was destined for darker times.

Yet he refused to go the route expected. He preyed on the guilty and left the innocence their time in the sun. It was a fight, but he was determined that if he couldn't live in the light of the sun he could at least feel like he belonged there.

Manic Monday #12: Tax

Today's word is Tax. The following is an explanation of the Bush Tax Cut.

Manic Monday #11: Snap

Today's word is Snap.

Snap was an electronic musical group created by two German producers. They hired different singers to front the band than actually sang in the group. Their first hit "The Power" went to number two in the U.S. They also had a number five hit with "Rhythm is a Dancer".

Manic Monday #10: Branch

This weeks word for Manic Monday is branch. I've included a few videos of the Wreckers which includes Michelle Branch as one of the members of the group.

Manic Monday #9: Spring

Just going to make this one in. It's been a rough week, sick and still having to work, but I don't want to go into that here. This week's Manic Monday is Spring. It made me think of a story I had written years ago, my homage to the great Ray Bradbury in effect. I've posted the beginning of the story, I'm revising it as I go, it's been a long time ago and while it actually is holding up better than I thought, there are a few corrections I need to make. It's actually one of the first lines I posted in a previous Thirteen Thursdays about hookers. I recycle everything. I hope to finish the story, it's a fairly long one and post it soon.

The Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs Traveling Circus And Unusual Sideshows

It was a special type of day, because it was a special time of year. The day was the tenth, which had nothing to do with it; the month was April, which had a lot to do with it. It was not yet summer, the season was the midst of spring, the icy fingers of winter had been left behind. It was that time of year when the weather was caught in transit; the sun did not burn and the wind did not chill. Rather the sun did what it was created for; the rays of the huge golden orb in the sky provided warmth. The winds that always blew at this time of the year were made of half of the sun's warmth and half of the remembrance of winters gone by. The cool wind was just enough to offset the heat of the sun and make you glad to be alive.

There was more to make this day different, this season of spring wonderfully special. The beauty of the land was highlighted like at no other time. The grass was the color of joy and the sky the color of happiness. The clouds in the sky were big and puffy, they looked more like islands in the sky than an accumulation of water vapor. The lake was as clear and perfect as an unblemished mirror.

Birds sang merrily overhead. The sound of the family of beavers that lived at the other end of the lake reached my ears. Further off in the woods sounded the roar of some wild beast.
It was spring eternal.

Here in the midst of all this beauty and joy I sat with a scowl on my face. With all this life surrounding me I brooded. What was I doing here? I wondered such thoughts for the ten thousandth time since dawn. Alone I was, in a cabin in the middle of the woods by a lake, which in itself was in the middle of nowhere. Only ten miles or so from here as the crow flies was Cowley, my hometown, which was nowhere itself.

This had all started out as a return to the place of my birth. The conquering hero returns home. And that was me, the conquering hero in a nutshell. Local boy makes good the headlines would have read if the people had cared. I had left Cowley poor as beggar and returned as a millionaire. But in the process I had lost something, and I was now on a backwards search through my life in hopes of finding it, whatever it was that I had lost. But Cowley provided only a resting place in my search, and a poor one at that. The people were indifferent to my success and thus to me. All they wanted to talk about was of the years that I had lived there and nothing of the time spent away from the town.

So I had hired a jeep, and a cabin, and came here, in solitude. I was close enough to Cowley in my mind to believe that I had kept my promise to myself to spend a couple of weeks there and far enough away that I didn't have to deal with it.

I sat in a rocker that had been there when I arrived and stared out across the lake. A duck flew down and alighted on the surface of the water and I was glad I was not a hunting man. I watched in something akin to the fascination of a child as the duck paddled around on the mirror surface of the lake. What was so unusual about a duck I asked myself? And I knew the answer lay in the not asking of the question, so I cursed my city breed cynicism.

The wind shifted from the east and the smell of daisies blooming to the west and new smells. Smells that baffled my inquiring nose and yet still managed to make my mouth water with anticipation. Smells that I could not place, smells that I knew but could give no name to. It was then, when I realized that the smells were familiar yet unrecognizable that I placed them. Popcorn and cotton candy, straw and sweat. Smells from a country fair that Cowley was putting on? But I thought that Cowley lay to the North of my cabin. Ah, no matter where the smells came from the memories they brought back were enough to satisfy me. I remembered when I was eleven, or perhaps twelve, and the month was the same as it was now. School was out, which is in itself enough for boys to celebrate, for Easter vacation, but we had more to be glad about. The Turner Five Ring Traveling Circus and Freak Show was coming to Cowley. There is nothing in the world that excites a boy as much as a circus.

It was the first day of vacation and my best friend, Jimmy and I were watching them set up the tents for the show. We could not wait for the show to begin, just imagine five rings! That was always the pride of Mister Turner, that his circus had five rings. What he did not tell you was that the five rings contained no more than the normal three and probably not as much as the average sideshow. The six or seven hours till the first show seemed an eternity to our youthful minds, so we did what any boys would do in our situation and sneaked down among the circus workers. While we were sneaking around we passed a trailer with the door ajar. One look at Jimmy and I knew that he was thinking the same thing I was. Using all the skills we had acquired within our twelve years we crept up the open door and peered inside. It took our eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom the inside of the trailer was, when they did we gasped in shock.

There seated at a dressing table was a man making himself into Leo the Lion Man. My child mind recalled that a few of the circus performers were supposed to appear downtown today and Leo was among them. Thus his early preparations. But Leo was supposed to be half lion and half man, and all crazy; when he appeared downtown he would do so in a cage. As we watched Leo took a drag on a cigar and put it in an ashtray as he applied more makeup. Leo, one of the best exhibits was a fake.

After a minute or so of watching this man apply the mane to his neck we left. We broke and ran, leaving the circus far behind until we came to our favorite hiding place deep within the woods. We sat for long minutes without speaking, the shock had been too great. We were at an age that we openly disbelieved in all the wonders of the circus, but secretly longed for them to be true. Jimmy was the first to speak. “I knew it all along.”

I stood from my chair and rubbed at my eyes. My though patterns were chaotic. I had begun with a pleasant memory and it ended up with one of the worst moments of my childhood, when I realized that there was no magic in the world. I walked down the steps of the cabin and headed towards the lake. My mood was terrible, but the world did its best to cheer me up. The air sparkled and to my trained eye there seemed to be magic in the clouds. Except I stopped believing in magic when I was twelve.

I was watching a duck struggle with a fish as I approached the lake. My gaze was ahead, which explains why I did not see my visitor approach. It was not until I was at the shore of the lake when I heard a sound to my right, the noise of a chicken scratching the ground for food. I turned and that was exactly what stood before me. A chicken.

“You're a long way from home, chickie.” At least ten miles, as far as I knew, there were no farms between here and Crowley. And this chicken did not look wild, she was too well kept to look the part of even a farm bird. She looked more like a pet, she even had a bow wrapped around her neck, and for the life of me I could not understand how a pet had wandered this far from home. Or to be honest who would have a chicken as a pet.

“A lot farther than you think, Bud.”

My thoughts stopped. Any word that I was about to utter died on my tongue. Had this chicken actually talked? No, impossible. I've been by myself too long. Talking to myself and now I'm hearing chickens talk.

“Didn't your Mother teach you any manners? Where I come from it's considered polite to speak when spoken to.”

Manic Monday #8: Chips

He was down to his last chip.

Tony took a deep breath. The noise of the clacking and clanging of the slot machines was a background noise that Tony thought of normal, like the jackhammering noise a construction worker takes for granted, or the constant yelling and talking of kids for a teacher. A waitress walked by and he ordered a drink. At least the drinks were cheap here.

Don't think about Dianne he told himself. She was home, where else would she be? He heard one of the dollar slots hit the jackpot. He could hear the rollup as the machine counted to the win and when he turned to look he saw the candle flashing to alert someone for a hand payout. Damn, he had been on that machine earlier today and now it pays enough that someone has to get a hand pay.

That was his luck today. No luck.

Still his luck had to change, didn't it? You can only have a run of bad luck for so long, than it had to change to good, right?

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to check if he had any messages. Nothing from Dianne. Nothing from anyone. No messages, only a missed call from an 800 number which meant it was probably a creditor.

The casino was busy for a middle of the day in the middle of the week. People were sitting in front of the machines, cranking the arm down over and over watching the display spin and spin to stop on whatever combination the random number generator selected.

Today was rent day, he needed to win some money. Dianne was sitting home waiting for him to come home with his paycheck so they could pay the rent. How was he going to tell her he lost it on the slots? Again. He flipped his phone open again, still no messages. Why hadn't she called him?

The waitress came with his drink. He paid her and left no tip. He needed every dime now, he couldn't afford to leave anything extra on the table. She gave him a “thanks” and moved on. Screw her, he wasn't here to make friends. He was here to win some money.

Tony rubbed at his eyes. They were red from lack of sleep and the cigarette smoke in the casino. What time was it? There were no clocks around and he had hocked his watch a long time ago. It didn't matter, he wasn't going anywhere until he had a payout.

He rubbed his finger over his last chip. It was a ten dollar chip. He wasn't going to waste his time on the nickel and dime slots, that was no way to make money, it was a sucker's game. A ten dollar payout would provide enough for rent and groceries for the week. Dianne would be happy than.

He sipped his drink and looked about the casino. Where to play? There was a carousel of machines towards the back that had been good to him in the past. He remembered winning four hundred dollars there a few months back. Money that had kept him playing for hours, until he went home with nothing left.

Ok, let's make some new luck he thought. Forget those machines in the back. Dianne would be proud of him when he came home tonight with his winnings. She would be sitting up waiting for him and smile that beautiful smile of hers when he came home and handed her his winnings. She would forget all about the yelling and threatening to leave him if he didn't come straight home from work tonight.

He took the last swallow of his drink and put it down on next to an ashtray some old man had stationed next to his machine as he fed it quarters. Tony held his chip in his hand and moved towards a new row of machines. That might have been his last chip but he still had his ATM card.

Manic Monday #7: Click

Just made this one under the deadline. Been a long day and wasn't sure I was going to come up with something. I had the vague outline for this story, but wasn't sure where I was going or how it was coming out. I'm still not sure, it's a little different.



- Click -

Running down the street, sneakers beating a fast paced rhythm on the cobblestones, panting and struggling to keep breathing, arms windmilling at his sides as he trips over an upturned stone and he goes head first towards the ground, screaming “oh shit!” and smashing first his face, blooding his left eye and than catching his right hand and bending back two fingers until they feel like they snapped , shoulder scrapping across the cobblestones and tearing his shirt as his body starts to twist ass over head and his neck feels like it's snapping in half and than he slaps his back hard against the road.

He lays there. Trying to breathe.

- Click -

Dressed in a suit and tie he looks in the mirror and smiles. You look good he says to himself. Damn good. Tonight will be a good night. The ladies will be all over you. He brushes his finger through his hair. Nice, blond, shoulder length it gives him a kind of rock star look he thinks. Too long and he'd look kind of faggoty, which he is quick to assure anyone that even thinks that he's not. He's all man and all he wants is all woman he laughs to himself.

He pulls at his tie, he hates the feel of it around his neck but he knows it makes him look more like a man on the move, someone climbing that ladder of success already three rungs up over the poor slobs below him.

The door behind him opens and he sees an eye looking in at him. “Mom! Didn't I tell you to knock before you just barge in on me!”

- Click -

He's sitting in a bar alone. The darkness makes him feel safer. The anonymity of the place gives him a certain assurance that they do not know where he is. He's been on the run for too long. Everytime he thinks he's one step ahead of them he finds himself looking at their back as they circle around him to move in for the kill. He's tired of running.

The door to the bar opens and the bright light of the outside world invades the blackness to be eclipsed by a body as it enters. He looks up and sees a woman step into the swirling smoke from the cigarettes. Kind of a looker he thinks, long black hair and big boobs in a short dress. Probably a hooker. Does he have any time he wonders, more importantly does he have any money?

She goes up to the bar and orders a drink. It's been a long time he thinks. On the run, hiding like he has, he doesn't have much time to meet women and he doesn't have a lot of money to hire any. His best friend is his right hand when it comes to matters of intimacy. Maybe he has a chance and a little time, maybe he can stop running for an hour or so.

He is thinking these thoughts when she turns from the bar with her drink in one hand and a gun in the other and shoots him square between the eyes.

- Click -

White, all around him is white. It is so white that he sees no distance, no closeness, everything is white, everything is a blankness that invades his mind and makes him want to scream. Nothing. Nothing. And more nothing.

He wants to scream. Does he have a voice? Does he have a body? He puts his hands out in front of him but sees nothing. Where is his hand? It's all whiteness.

Click.....he's running.....Click......he's home with his Mom spying on him......Click......he's hiding but he's found and tranked again....Click......he's back in the lab where he's never really left......Click......where is he?

Who has the remote control that is ruling his life? Click it fast forward, click it reverse, click it to jump from one scene of his life to another.

- Click -

He's an old man hobbling along the path up the hill. He loves this time of year. The sun feels warm on his arthritic joints. Once he would have ran up these hills without a thought, now he can barely manage to hike up the path with his canes. Two canes, one in each hand, using them like a walker which he hates the idea of even having to think of needing.

A young girl walks alongside him. Is she his niece? His granddaughter? He's not sure. His mind is not as sharp as it used to be. Is she one of his captors?

“Tomorrow I might wake up a child. A click and I'm my way through the timeline of my life, not know where I will end up. One day I'm middle-aged, the next I'm an obnoxious teen, than I'm running for my life as a young man....”

The young girl looks up at him. She is walking slowly so as not to leave him behind. She says nothing, merely listens to him rattle on and on.

“I never know how long I will be in one age. I could be this old man for years and than wake up a six year old sitting in the back seat of a station wagon on a cross country trip to visit his dear old grand mother.”

She looks away from him, towards the top of the hill. She wonders if he'll be able to make it all the way to the top, he is an old man, prone to accidents as well as mental mishaps.

“I have no idea why I do this. All I know is that I'm like a ping pong ball ricocheting through time like this. I have no idea who is always chasing me, wanting to capture me and perhaps discover the secret my body possess.”

In the distance three young men were looking towards the old man walking up the hill with the younger woman and started after them. The young woman saw them approaching and reached into the pocket of her top and withdrew what looked like a remote control device for a t elevision set. She watched the three men come closer but did nor say anything.

They reached the top of the hill and paused. He needed to catch his breath even through it was a slow climb and not very steep. She looked back and saw the three men closer and than she t urned and looked at the old man and than she pressed a button on the remote control.

- Click -

Manic Monday #6: Blow

Lots of choices for the word blow. This time there is no story. I decided to use the word blow for the effects of a storm, the winds of a hurricane that blow damage to the city and its inhabitants, Katrina.

Katrina formed in the Gulf Coast on August 23, 2005. Before coming aground it was at a category 5 strength. On August 29 when it finally came ashore in southeast Louisiana and along the Mississippi/Louisiana border it was a category 3 hurricane. Even at this strength the force of the hurricane and the winds that blew severly damaged many cities along the gulf coast. Severe wind damage was reported miles inward.

Before:
After:

Manic Monday #5: Yellow

Today's word is yellow and taking a page from Trav I've written a small story. This story owes a lot to Irwin Shaw's The Girls in their Summer Dresses.

They were sitting in the window of the coffee shop, looking out over the sidewalk. Sara was drinking one of those huge mixtures that looked like it should have come from Baskins Robbins instead of a coffee shop. It even had little sprinkles on it. Joey sipped his black with no sugar and was thankful that they had made it into the shop before the rain.

"I'm so sick of this weather," Sara was talking to Joey but his mind was elsewhere. Walking up the sidewalk towards them was a big yellow blob. All Joey could make out in the rain and distance was a big yellow slicker coming up the sidewalk. It was one of those raincoats, yellow like so many of them. Whoever was in the raincoat had their head bent down, to protect their face from the driving rain.

"Somewhere dry and hot this summer, Joey." Sara was talking about their upcoming vacation that they had not planned out yet. The figure walking towards them slowly took on the form of a young woman. It was hard to tell in the bulky yellow raincoat but Joey got a look at her face as she looked up to check her surroundings.

Sara pushed at a strand of hair that had come loose. Joey had always liked Sara's hair, it was long, past her shoulders and a dark brown that was almost black. He would tell Sara that he was glad she wasn't a blonde, every other woman was a blonde and half the ones that weren't were talking about going blonde.

Joey noticed blonde hair curled out from the woman's head and lost in the yellow of the rainhood. Her hair was very curly. The woman stopped just past the corner, almost in front of the window they sat at. She was looking around, almost as if she was lost.

Sara took a sip of her coffee and reached her hand across the table to touch his. Not quite jerking back in surprise Joey smiled at her and took her hand in his. The woman outside wiped at the water running down her face and looked around. She had a pretty face, still full of a little baby fat, with cute chubby cheeks. She probably wasn't yet twenty years old Joey figured.

The chorus from Beyonce's Listen came from Sara's purse. She reached down in the depths of the huge bag and retrieved her cell phone. Sara's body was lean, there wasn't an ounce of fat on her frame. For her small body Sara had fairly large breasts. Joey always admited that he was a breast man.

In the rain coat he could not see anything of the girl's body. Joey's mind imagined what it would look like. Still a little chubby, with breasts that reflected the rest of her body. The yellow of the slicker reflected the blueness of her eyes. Freckles littered across her nose and just under her eyes and on her cheeks. Joey could see her biting her lip in anticaption.

"It's Mia." Sara told Joey who it was and than half turned from him to continue the conversation on the phone. She held the phone in her right hand and picked up her coffee in her left and took a small sip as she listened.

The young woman looked across the street at something and smiled. She raised her hand in a wave. Joey noticed it was her left hand and there was no ring on her finger. Looking past her he saw a young man on the opposite side of the street wave back to her.

Sara clicked her phone shut. "Mia wants to know if we want to see a movie with them tonight. I told her we'd meet them around seven."

Joey watched the girl turn her back on him and he watched as the yellow raincoat ran across the street and was hugged by the young man on the other side of the street. As he took a sip from his coffee cup and realized that it was cold now he watched the two figures vanish into the rain and the distance.

Manic Monday #4: Celebrate

Today's word is celebrate. Very appropriate for me at this time of the year. And what time of the year is it? Well down here in New Orleans its Mardi Gras time. It's a time that the entire city celebrates.
Mardi Gras is officially only one day. It's French for Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday. But for the people of New Orleans Mardi Gras refers to the entire season, starting on the Twelfth Night and culminating on Fat Tuesday.
If you've never been to Mardi Gras it's hard to explain. I was talking to a friend from up North and he was saying that they had parades too. But Mardi Gras is not just a parade. The entire city shuts down for a big party.
Little plastic beads that cost only pennies become prized possessions to dive for and jump for and try to catch as many as possible and than some. People will walk around with enough beads around their neck that they can't bend over from the weight.
And contrary to what you've probably seen on tv Mardi Gras is family fun as well as more adult oriented also. It depends what part of the city you do your partying in for Mardi Gras. The westbank, Metairie, even parts of downtown are great for families. The truck parades rain beads down on all ages.
The French Quarter is where you want to party if you want to leave the kids at home. This is where you'll see the scenes you've seen in those Girls Gone Wild videos. This is where you'll hear the chant "Show Your ---!" to the girls that want beads.
The parades bring in famous celebraties to ride as their grand marshalls. This year Taylor Hicks rode for one.

Mardi Gras is a time to celebrate. Celebrate life and joy and just pure fun.



CELEBRATE


All the pictures from this post came from NOLA.com Check out their site for more Mardi Gras, including more pictures and videos.

Manic Monday #3: Spike

This week's word is Spike. When I hear the word Spike my mind goes to one thing: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the vampire Spike. So here is Spike: