Beads, beads, beads

"Show us your chest! We'll give you these beads!"

Wow. It's hard to imagine how this line of logic makes any sense in the world that we live in today, but for some reason, in a crazy place called New Orleans during a crazy time called Mardi Gras, you can see all the chest you want for the low, low price of... plastic beads.

If you haven't been to a Mardi Gras celebration before, you might think that the beads are just some decorative thing. Or that people just wear them for fun. Well I'm here to report back to you (sad students who were stuck in the cold this past Mardi Gras weekend) that these beads are not worn just for fun. Beads are the very currency that fuels a bubble-economy of nudity, alcohol, and... well... nudity.

Let's backtrack for a minute here and realize that Mardi Gras has not always been the "Girls Gone Wild" material that it is today. According to local sources, Mardi Gras has roots in the concept of "inversion." Apparently the tradition of the festival is that the rich would parade throughout the city, throwing out money to the poor. This is still seen today in the "family-friendly" parades featuring floats and marching bands.

The floats are beautifully decorated and are riding on them are white guys wearing masks. These drunks represent the "rich people" of the traditional Mardi Gras. They throw beads -- "money" -- to the fans at the parade -- "poor people." This setup puts a ridiculous premium on beads. These things are objectively worthless -- granted, some are more elaborately decorated than others -- yet thousands of people in their right minds line up to do anything to get them. Meanwhile, the bead economy here is really controlled entirely by these drunk white guys, so the beads are getting disproportionately thrown out to drunken white girls with shapely bodies.

Anyway, after each float comes a marching band. If you enjoyed the film "Drumline," then you would surely enjoy a Mardi Gras parade, which is more like "Get The Hell Out of the Way Before This Trombone Hits You In The Head." The parade-watchers all crowd onto the parade route for the beads, and are all then forcibly pushed back in order to avoid being impaled by drum sticks and sousaphones. So each marching band is staffed with Large Persons whose only job is to push people out of the way. The bands are really impressive and it's easy to see that the high school kids in them love the attention. Well, they might be loving it for the first hour, but I'm sure they've had enough after finishing the eight mile parade route. They sadly don't have the luxury of getting wasted on a moving float -- instead they are underage and have to blow their brains out on a baritone on foot all night long.

These floats and marching bands of the family-friendly parades are an amazing cultural spectacle rivaled only by the extremely family-unfriendly scene downtown during Mardi Gras. Rack up some beads at the uptown G-rated parades before heading to Bourbon Street because the plastic bead is mighty strong currency when you're downtown.

The Bourbon Street scene needs alcohol like a fat kid needs cake -- borrowing and altering a 50 Cent lyric. If you catch the Bourbon Street scene before 1:00 a.m. when the alcohol has not yet sufficiently diffused into the livers of all crazy people in attendance, then there will not be much to see. However, after all of those Hurricanes and Hand Grenades drinks have made their way to the decision-making centers of the brain, the Bourbon Street scene basically becomes a beads-for-breasts trade market.

From afar this makes no sense. But when in the middle of it, it is pathetically natural. You know the setup because you've seen commercials for "Girls Gone Wild": men drunkenly roaming the streets with their necks permanently craned up to balconies that are filled with women who are just a beads-throw away from lifting their shirts. Packs of men just wander around trying to make eye contact with unsuspecting targets up above and do anything to get the millisecond reward of a flash. "Doing anything" usually includes throwing beads up to the balconies but is more likely to include the chanting of vulgar demands.

The truth is that this transaction is not far from the usual college party scene. Most college male idiots are wandering around basically willing to offer up whatever "beads" they have in exchange for momentary pleasure. Whether these "beads" are paying for dinner, dancing for a night, or putting up with hours of small talk, all is in the great hope for a flash of something special at the end of the night.

Mardi Gras is certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that is worth the trip. Whether you're in it for the beads, the Hand Grenades, the breasts, or the twisted parallels to real life, go out and grab yourself a ticket to New Orleans next February. You'll fly down with excitement and anticipation and return with a sore neck and a suitcase full of now-worthless plastic beads.