Hot Potato

As I sat in Petunias, staring at a monstrous Swiss cheese and crawfish etoufee omelet in the midst of a 5-cocktail brunch, foggy memories of a suave gray haired anchor crept into my barley soaked brain.

The night before, at the intersection of pestilence and public urination (Canal and Bourbon streets) I locked eyes with Mr. Hurricane Emotion, himself, Anderson Cooper and loudly slurred the following words:

"Anderson Cooper, give me some fucking beads!"

To my surprise, he looked at me and tossed me green gold: Krewe of Endymion beads with a smiling, toga-wearing-Roman trinket.

I couldn't stay away. The promise of donning pink trimmed coveralls and partying with the Baton Rouge lured me back to Louisiana this Mardi Gras.

Cooper was on the Heroes of Katrina float during Mardi Gras and my friends and I, who somehow snagged a courtyard apartment in the heart of the French Quarter for the festivities, got front row standing room for the parade, within shouting distance of the prematurely gray dreamboat.

First, however, I went back to Baton Rouge for the underrated Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade. It was like I had never left: as soon as I got to town I was hopping porch to porch, greeted by smiling, drunk, cocktail-bearing friends. The next day we were all decked out in flamingo-emblazoned coveralls (our theme this year: Spanish Town Pit Krewe) and eau de booze. Ignoring the fact that we are all (at least theoretically) adults, we downed cheap beer and jello shots while we demanded beads in a steady rain.

There was a noticeable difference this year. The lush wall of green on each side of Interstate 10 that usually marks the 80-mile drive between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was replaced by a brown tangle of dead trees, many downed and snapped in half. The garbage was piled higher, some already sagging houses reduced to sticks and the gawking tourists fewer in New Orleans (I was only there for 36 hours so my observations were cursory) and the traffic was even more nightmarish than in the past in Baton Rouge, where many refugees still reside.

There was an anger permeating the parades, too, with many floats unflatteringly dedicated to local, state and federal officials but there was also a sense of humor about the hurricane, with some floats poking fun at Louisiana's plight. People are living their lives although it is striking that, six months after the storm, nearly every article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune I picked up was hurricane-related.

Despite the devastation, the gumbo flowed like, well, the drinks, which also flowed, beads flew, tourists puked in public, the quarter reeked of piss and booze and cigarettes and everyone invited you to the porch to get out of the rain and have a beer.