The Junior Junkie: the Baseball Cards of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Beyond

Thursday, February 26, 2015

All the Wallet Card

Is this getting ridiculous?

Wallet Card: Griffey Goes to Mardi Gras Day 5 - Endymion

Welcome to Day 5! Today we see pictures from Superkrewe Endymion which rolled on Valentine's Day, Saturday, February 14th. But first, here's a peek at a little-known Mardi Gras tradition:

On Friday the 13th of February, the Royal Sonesta continued their 45-year tradition of the Greasing of the Poles. They give a big jar of petroleum jelly to four lucky people, and they do a countdown at the end of which they grease up the poles that hold up the hotel balconies. This keeps revelers from climbing up to the balcony which is very exclusive place during the Mardi Gras celebrations.

Fun fact: see the guy in the black hat and Saints jersey standing below the lady in white? That's Saints punter Thomas Morstead. He's the one responsible for the great second-half on-side kick that helped win the Superbowl.

On to Endymion!

Just to show how many people come to this parade, this is a view from the middle of the Neutral Ground (which you might call the median). It is many, many people deep. People camp out the night before to save their spots. Lucky for us our friend Amy lives a block from the route on Canal St. We planted a car full of ice chests and chairs there the night before and caught a ride with friends.

Having a place to stay out on the route makes all the difference in the world.

Canal St. before the parade, looking right.

Looking left.

Man down!

I forgot to put the Griffey in there.

That is country star Luke Bryan, Grand Marshal of Endymion. I've never actually heard of him, but there he is. Check out the float security guy. He was all business.

These dresses are held up by a support bracket in the back which you can kind of see here.

The King of Endymion!

The St. Augustine Marching 100.

Endymion floats are the biggest. This is the title float, and it is three floats long. The largest is ten floats long and carries over 500 riders. On one float. That's more riders than there are in some entire parades. That's why we call them a Superkrewe.

These pictures don't do the mayhem justice.

The final float is loaded with cameras that show the crowd on massive screens. This is a relatively new parade.innovation, and it's a blast to see yourself on those screens. Yes, the Griffey was on there. No, I did not get a picture.

Tomorrow, my favorite Superkrewe: Bacchus.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Wallet Card: Griffey Goes to Mardi Gras Day 4 - Thursday and Friday

Welcome to Day 4! This post is going to include photos from six popular parades: Babylon, Chaos, Muses, Hermes, d'Etat, and Morpheus. These photos were taken Thursday the 12th and Friday the 13h of February 2015. Enjoy!

We could not have asked for better weather in the latter part of the week. It was sunny and 70 degrees all day, and I think it got down to 55 this particular night.

I showed up a little early since I work right on the parade route, and I did a little poking around before the group started showing up. In case you haven't had it, Boudin (pronounced BOO-DEN) is sausage with meat, rice, and spices that eats like a meal. It's hard to slice without breaking it apart but very satisfying.

Sat and had me a nice, quiet beer before the festivities.

As you can see the Bead Tree is just starting to droop.

This is an impromptu "meeting of the courts" between Babylon and Cleopatra. Here you can see the King and Queen of Cleopatra saluting the King of Babylon. It's all very formal and traditional, and it holds up the entire parade for a good ten minutes. Lots of people in tuxes and evening gowns. A rare sight.

I was pretty surprised I got this picture. Luckily I was a few beers deep and feeling very convincing.

This is a flambeau. For over 100 years these guys have been carrying flames along with the parade, accepting coins to come stand by parade-goers and warm them up for a moment. When I was a kid we would throw quarters to them, and they would pick them up off the street. Nowadays people just hand them dollars, but you still hear the clanging of pocket change on the concrete every now and again from the old-schoolers.

Since the mid-1800's, it's been one of the functions of Mardi Gras to poke fun at authority and current events. There's a lot of satire and tongue-in-cheek humor. This is one of the few floats from Chaos I feel comfortable showing. That's big baby Kim Jong-Un riding a nuke in the front.

This one is poking fun at Bill Cosby, and it was not the only one. Here's the back of another Cosby float from the following night's d'Etat parade:

I either didn't get a picture of the side or I deemed it not blog-appropriate. I can't remember.

Look how great the Bead Tree looks on the right. That big ball signals the beginning of the beloved Muses parade, a satirical all-female Krewe with some excellent throws.

We call our group the Krewe of Kondo, and our symbol is the teapot. The reason for this is we have two rules. First, protect the Bead Tree. Second, if you fall off the curb, you have to do "I'm a Little Teapot" in front of everybody.

The shoe is the symbol of the Krewe of Muses. If you know somebody or are extremely lucky, they give you one of their hand-decorated shoes.

The view from our friend's apartment.

Our friends just adopted this little sweetie. It's her first Mardi Gras.

The tree the night after Muses. Developing nicely.

Vietnamese pork tacos.

The U.S. Marine Corps band.

The Great Mogul.

The plural of flambeau is flambeaux.

These trucks roll in front of many parades with a pole to make sure the floats will clear the hundred-year-old oaks that line St. Charles Ave. When it hits a branch, they stop and saw it off.