Lombardi Gras

Covering Mardi Gras is kinda like being in a bar fight. The surging crowd, the airborne alcohol, the flying elbows, and that’s just the grandmothers. Add a big silver football and 53 newly minted world champions to the mix and you’ve got what locals are calling Lombardi Gras. It’s a party of biblical proportions and only a team owner with his hands high over his head can part the Black and Gold Sea.

Whodats from around the country converged on the city below sea level to celebrate their team’s first Superbowl victory and thank the players who brought it home. But nary a bare breast was to be found. The WhoDat Nation ain't your ordinary Mardi Gras crowd, and this was Dat Tuesday.

The blogger formerly known as Turd was in that number as the lowly, street-level live camera at ground zero as 800,000 of his closest friends jumped and shouted for cheap plastic crap falling from the heavens. But mostly, people doused lens and lens-meat alike in exuberant, spittle-filled clichés as they cheered the state's new heroes.

Street-level Mardi Gras day is tough enough when you not tethered to an overstuffed logo-van, try strolling through the throng to the safe side of the barricades with Chet Dimplechin on one wire and a surly truck on another. It ain't pretty.

Now, take away the barricades and put yourself in the middle of the action. Turd says they took no prisoners, unless you count the kid Chet stiff-armed getting to Reggie Bush and the pregnant woman he clothesline with his mic cable running for local Superbowl hero Tracy Porter.

For veterans of the Beer-and-Vomit Fest like Turd, it's all in a day's work, and to think, he gets to do it all again next week.