Opening Volley
By David Lewis |
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Rats. I got the baby, again.
This is my third King Cake baby in a row, and I have found the little pink plastic curse in nearly every King Cake I have ever sampled. For the uninitiated, it is Mardi Gras time, and finding the pink plastic baby Jesus in the brightly colored sugary breakfast cake means that I have to buy the next one.
Editor-in-chief, David S. Lewis, and his king cake baby
Photo: Christopher Casella
February is a month with many minor holidays, notably Valentine's Day and Presidents Day, the month in which we remember our black brothers' and sisters' fight for civil rights, and the month in which a chubby rodent tries to help us determine how much of the bleak gray Ohio winter is left . . . but for me, Mardi Gras is a delightful reminder of fantastic times I had in New Orleans, the same year vicious storms obliterated the Gulf Coast and initiated me into adventure journalism.
Unlike many of my friends, I get a true pass on Valentine's Day, as my paramour is apparently going to be coerced into a preternaturally tragic coping intervention with a friend going through a break up. This means I get to go Hog Wild for the middle portion of the month, and try to recreate the Crescent City's heady party. Valentine's Day, for many of you, will be more romantic than a brace of drunken strippers in pig-masks punching each other like prizefighters in a barbecue-sauce-filled kiddie pool could ever be . . . but I'll take the Weird. It's so infernally cold and evil in February Ohio that any sort of escapism becomes not only permissible, but completely necessary.
I've always liked a little iniquity; I think it keeps one level. That is the glory of Carnival - it is a perfect excuse for rowdy and excessive behavior, and it comes with a variety of paths to redemption.
I recently talked with Zachariah Baird, who is aggressively trying to claim some sort of legitimacy for his odd little Peach District, and is throwing his own "Peachi Gras" festival on the weekend of February 6th.
"Where are you getting the sugar pigeons?" I asked, referring to the breed of pigeon found in New Orleans beignet cafés; the birds build up crests formed of motor oil and powdered sugar, with older birds sporting veritable afros that appear to be made of soiled cotton candy.
"I don't think those things can survive in Columbus," he said skeptically.
"We do have the secret recipe for hurricanes," asserted Baird, adding that he fully expects Peachi Gras to be a "public natural disaster."
"Everything is in full commotion mode, but we know we are going to pull it off the same way we have pulled together all our other Peach District events."
Thanks to Baird, and all the rest of the PD crowd, for putting on these awesome events. February would be a murderous month were it not for things like Peachi Gras and the World's Toughest Rodeo, which will be at Nationwide on the 13th. Thanks to everyone who is trying to keep the City from sinking into madness and spiritual decay this last month of evil winds and cryo-precipitation. It has been a hard winter for many, and in many ways; homes have been foreclosed and tenants tossed out on the street. Casinos were approved, and now ours might be getting moved, too. The economy has finally started to level out - in a deep valley, granted, but at least we are not still speeding downward in darkness and panic. The respective states of the Union and Ohio have been assessed by our leaders, and while we are all tired, misanthropic, and put-upon, there is a palpable spirit of cooperation in the air. We are rooting for each other, now, and it looks like many of us will make it to Spring, after all. Good luck, everyone, and hold on, just for a little longer.
With love and Squalor,
David S. Lewis
Originally Published: February 1, 2010
