The other Jewish Elvis in Cajun country

Today I had to go the mall to ask our newspaper's weekly man on the street question. The question? What are you going to do for Lent? Need I say more?

Trying to detox after two straight days of Mardi Gras drinking I went to a party tonight thrown by a local Republican political operative and had just two courtesy beers. That was a mistake.

Sadly, I was sober when the guy with the shitty goatee and flammable hair started talking about how he would only drive an SUV and then went into a story about how his wife had brought home a Toyota Prius one day and he had refused to drive it on principle.

It got better.

We were talking about an interracial couple and he quickly chimed in with, "Well, what do they say? Once you go black, you never go back. Ha ha." After furtive glances were exchanged between me and my friends he actually managed to top his earlier statements.

He started talking about how Bobby Jindal lost the Louisiana governor's race because he is Indian (which is true) and then suggested that state Republicans really should have done more to back a white candidate so they would have had a better shot to win.

I nearly fell over, but gained my composure enough to slip out and key his SUV.

God I wish I had.

Saturday was Spanish Town Mardi Gras. I know I've explained this before, but bear with me as I briefly explain it again. Spanish Town Mardi Gras is a great fucking party. The neighborhood is small, probably 5 blocks by 5 blocks at the most, but more than 100,000 people jammed the streets for this parade/booze-fest. And it was awesome. There were so many obscene costumes, I was very proud of our little hedonist enclave in the heart of conservative Puritan country.

I rolled out of bed at about 8:30 and by 9 a.m. I was dressed for the occasion (one more reminder: our neighborhood color is pink, our symbol, the noble flamingo): I had soccer shorts with a two-tone square pattern shades of pink and orange I didn't think existed. On top I had a bright pink shirt with silver trim and my t-shirt was bright yellow. To top it off I wore pink sunglasses and bright pink floral shoes with flamingo print socks.

I left my house dressed like this with hammer and sickle flask (compliments of Matt and from the former Soviet Union) and a cold beer in my hand. As my good friend, the gay, Republican, editorial writer put it: "Youre the gayest straight guy in Spanish Town." And, you know what? That's fucking right. Bay Area represent.

I started pulling off my flask filled with straight vodka at 9 a.m. and didn't stop until midnight. It was beautiful. We just went house to house in the beautiful south Lousiana 70 degree February weather drinking, eating and frightening children.

Later on in the night things get fuzzy. I apparently punched a guy in the head after I warned him not to touch my ass again, but otherwise things went smoothly. All I really remember is eating a lot of jumbalaya, getting a lot of beads and drinking on my friend's porch.

The next day (today) I had to work. It was ugly. As my hangover started at midnight, you can imagine how terrible I felt at work.

But, I then put the "alcoholic" in "functional alcoholic" by shanking off my hangover and going to a shit-kicking, bayou bar tonight with some friends. This bar is great. It gives a big fuck you to East Baton Rouge Parish (where I live) by only opening on Sunday nights to siphon business from East Baton Rouge, where our fascist blue laws make it illegal to open bars on the Lord's day.

So we went to the Alligator Bar, a place which begs the question, "How many antlers are too many on the wall?" (the answer, of course, is there are never too many antlers on a bar wall). Needless to say, it's a great bar. So I spent the night drinking and dancing with married women to a bar band that knew exactly what to do as a bar band: play straight ahead rock covers that people will know the words to and dance to. As I predicted early in the night, they closed out the bar with "Sweet Home Alabama" and I sang every word exuberantly.

And Mardi Gras season isn't even over: I'm going to New Orleans for Fat Tuesday. Please soften the blow for my parents if I don't make it.

Tuesday night I got my first taste of Mardi Gras, ending up in Uptown New Orleans with a group of Tulane medical students. It was there I learned the art of bead catching: don't stand next to your friend's hot, blonde girlfriend as she will tend to get the beads.

We staked out good spots along the parade route, opened our backpack/cooler and went to town on our beer at about 6 p.m., me with my stylish "feedbag" (Feedbags are a Mardi Gras necessity: the parades tend to be at night, and your hands get cold holding on to your everpresent beer. Also, a beer in one hand is one less hand with which to catch beads. The feedbag tackles both these problems: it's an insulated beer sleeve that you wear around your neck. Awesome.)
Needless to say, by 9 p.m. I was a very exuberant Mardi Gras participant. It was about that time the parade ended and I, a photographer friend of mine, and a medical student who we were staying with went to a diner and had the ultimate south Lousiana meal. I started with an appetizer of alligator pie, shared a heaping plate of butter-covered crawfish that looked back at you, had a sausage po-boy for an entree and washed it down with beer from Abita Springs, LA.

After we rolled ourselves out of the restaurant we picked up my friend's little sister and her undergrad friends, hit a bar and continued to drink. After that I vaguely remember talking to an Australian student about Aboriginal politics in his homeland and simlutaneously wanting very much to vomit but being unable to.

This was actually just a Mardi Gras warm-up: Saturday is the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, at which I will begin drinking from my new Mardi Gras beer helmet around 9 a.m. and Tuesday is Fat Tuesday. Pray for me.

I helped write an obituary article last night and, as I was putting it together, I realized that my goal is to have Bill Lynch's obituary when I die. I suppose that sounds morbid but I don't think of it that way. The man lived an incredible life, made a difference and everyone I talked to last night who knew him said he was basically a state deity. Worth a read:

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/021604/new_lynch001.shtml

The other night I covered a parade which was, well, covering a parade. It's Mardi Gras season here in south Louisiana and the beads are flying (though the boob count is still at zero, subject to major revision after I go to New Orleans on Tuesday). The usual elaborate floats rolled through downtown Baton Rouge last night with music blaring and lights flashing. Then, I saw the best, most understated float of the night: a fat guy on a John Deere wearing full duck-huntin' camo with a big American flag hanging off the back. That was it. Perfect. I fucking love this place.

The other night I went out with some colleagues to a swank two-story bar called the Spanish Moon. There we threw back some drinks and listened to a band described by my friend (who knows the lead singer) as "you know, lesbian folk rock shit." When the singer shouted to the crowd, "Is anyone here gay or bi?" and a roar went up, I felt like I was back home.

Sufficiently buzzed I decided it was time to defend The Advocate's honor on the pool table (I am an excellent pool player between four and seven drinks into the night and notably worse before and after). When I arrived I knew my mission was of utmost importance, as my opponent was some douche bag in a CCCP shirt. Oh, a hammer and sickle, how very counterculture of you.

So we got down to business, images of Red Dawn and Rambo III in my head as I mentally wrapped myself in the red, white and blue, sinking every shot in remembrance of 9/11. Toby Keith provided the soundtrack and then, suddenly, it was 1980, the Lake Placid crowd was going crazy. It was down to the wire in a back and forth game, "USA! USA! USA!" And then the dude scratched on the 8-ball. But I feel it was my intense patriotism that unnerved him and caused him to falter at the crucial moment. America had dodged another bullet.

Today I got off my fat ass and went to the gym for the first time since I got here, the weight of 3 months of Southern cooking telling me, "No," with each stride I took on the treadmill. On the television in front of me a classic episode of Saved by the Bell was playing in all its closed captioned glory. A balding, middle-aged man walked in, looked at me and asked if I was watching.

"No," I lied.

He promptly turned it to Fox News. Welcome to East Baton Rouge Parish, one of the most conservative regions in Louisiana. And one that apparently doesn't appreciate fine programming.

This issue is a little old, but I thought worth talking about. A couple weeks ago I showed up on the scene of a police shootout. A 16-year-old kid stole his parents' car at gunpoint and led police on a high speed chase through Baton Rouge. As the police approached his car to arrest him he shot three of them (they all have since recovered). Meanwhile, the cops surrounding this guy unloaded on him with their 9mms and left him paralyzed with a tube down his throat.

I got there a couple minutes after the shit went down and it was nuts. There were about 60 cop cars there, all of which had been tearing down streets and highways en route to the scene. While on the scene people who were on the road during the pursuit came up to me pissed off at the cops. So I wrote it down. There was a crowd of about 50 people and everyone I talked to was mad so it went into the article. This was compounded by the cops' public information officer telling me "I'm not telling you anything" to start her briefing on what went down. Consequently we had little on the cops but many citizen complaints in the article.

The cops had a shit fit. I got 16 e-mails on that one fucking article, 14 negative. Someone actually wrote "remember 9/11." I even got called out on local radio. Then I wrote the follow and mentioned that the cops kept speeding down the streets with lights and sirens blaring several minutes after they had announced over the police radios that the situation was under control and the suspect in custody. Now they tend not to return my phone calls.

Fortunately my bosses defended me and actually loved my coverage. Though it's made covering cops a pain in the ass for me, it's opened up a lot of questions about pursuit policy, how to approach a vehicle with an armed felon, etc.

Just wanted to clue you in to a story from my life that doesn't involve booze.

Having said that, the other night I was in a bar with a fellow reporter and we sat down at a table with our pints of Guiness only to discover two full, mixed drinks on the table. We thought little of them, figuring their owners would soon be by to collect them. Ten minutes and a pint of Guiness later, the drinks were still there. We looked at each other, nodded, each grabbed one and downed them. We are terrible people, yes, but the rufi really helped me get to sleep.

So it was my birthday Sunday and I rang in the big 2-3 with a bang, or at least a stiff drink. Saturday night was the Spanish Town Mardi Gras Ball, basically a kickoff to Mardi Gras season for the neighborhood I live in, Spanish Town. The neighborhood bird is the flamingo and, fittingly, the neighborhood color is pink. As most of you know, I am all over theme parties and this was no exception. I walked in to the ball with a light pink blazer over a hot-pink collared shirt, bright green tie, a pink, sparkly bolo hat, transparent pink sunglasses and pink, floral sneakers. I was a fucking pimp.

It was brilliant. I then proceeded to drink several glasses of a mixture of tequila and triple sec (and nothing else) and was very confused when a cake was brought to me at midnight. I think I actually asked, "What is this for." When I realized I swayed and stumbled in appreciation.

So I spent my birthday battling a hangover and drowning my sorrows in barbeque and football.

Speaking of theme parties, Joe, of blogs-linked-to-Heath's-brilliant-blog fame, has reminded me that January 31 marked the one year anniversary of the famed Eurotrash Party, at the late, great 632 Radcliffe house (the house Ben, Max and I lived in/destroyed our senior year of college for anyone who is confused). Everyone was decked out that night and Club Eurotrash was the place to be. I think my friend, Stan, put it best when he asked the next day, "Heath, dude, what did you put in that sangria, acid?"

If I remember right (ha ha) I blacked out by about 8:30 p.m., right about the time the first guest arrived. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on who you talk to) I did not pass out and still had time to play the part of Uwe (that's oo-vay), the gay german clubber, and participate in the Club Eurotrash dance which Ben, Max and I spent a week perfecting and mere minutes drunkenly fucking up.

The next day I came into Ben's room and apologized profusely for missing the Eurotrash Dance. "No, Heath, you were there. You kind of fucked up, but you did it."

It truly was one of the greatest, drunkest nights I can vaguely remember and I encourage everyone to go to Joe's site and check out the link to the Eurotrash photo album. And I can explain the Smirnoff Ice, really...