"The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house." - Jeff Foxworthy

Through a sea of marching sub-krewes, on the night of the great Krewe du Vieux parade, attentive students of Carnival may spot the sub-Krewe of Sperm holding long wooden sticks topped with white tadpole looking things reminiscent of long-gone Mr. Bingle leering from the Canal Street wall of Maison Blanche (now the Ritz-Carlton Hotel).

Next, the sub-Krewe du Jieux passes high stepping to Carnival music played with an ancient Eastern intonation that makes "If Ever I Cease to Dream" sound like "Hava Nagilla." We wave to Andrei Codrescu, poetic King of Krewe du View, and head off to find a bar with Al Johnson on the jukebox singing "Throw the baby out the window, let the joint burn down… All because it's Carnival Time!"

Mardi Gras 2002 is February 12. The Season is seemingly endless. Thank the Lord for another best-ever Carnival and to Hell with the anti-flesh religious, from the Taliban to the Republican.

One morning, recuperating atop Squalor Heights' carpets, I looked at blue sky through tall dormer windows and saw two brown pelicans, Louisiana's state bird, flying in tandem. They disappeared behind slate roofs over by The River but, in my mind, I continued seeing them swooping along inches above the churning, muddy waters searching for fish dinners served without additives. They flew in single file, if you can speak of two birds as single-file.

The Bayou State's own bird was once killed off by chemicals flowing freely from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico - a disproportionate discharge of which originating in Louisiana. They were reseeded from Florida eggs planted on Louisiana's barrier islands. The islands are said to now be so full of brown pelicans that some folks want them removed from the endangered species list. The same folks, I expect, who want the endangered species list itself removed. Because? A little noticed quirk of the law is that if you pollute unto death a non-endangered species you have possibly broken no law. Killing off an endangered one, however, is quite clearly illegal.

Last year there was but one pelican hanging around downtown by The River. This morning there are two. Surely it is too early to open the spigots and pour molten crude oil on their little webbed feet.

This year's Carnival is further blessed with Super Bowl high-rollers, a befuddling City election, basketball Hornet stings, and Martin Luther King Day. On M. L. King Day, I met an old friend for breakfast at the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the train station. She was overnighting between trains from Illinois to California. After eating, we exited onto Poydras Street through the former Mobil Oil Building. Further down the street empty office buildings continue mutating into hotels, though the tourist flow dwindles. Surely the Hornet's sting will keep'em coming, ya-boom, ra-boom, ra, ray, boom! And we already have a new stadium next to the Superdome that can handle more luxe-box trade than the Mayflower Madam.

The City's business is increasingly tourism and sports. Even Carnival had to adjust itself to make room for the Super Bowl. We have become an adult Disneyland fuelled by minimum wages, where once a prosperous port stood. In this New Swamp Order, an amazing political plot causes hotel taxes levied on the fleeting tourists to be used to pad sportbiz's fat purse, while citizens walk on broken sidewalks. "This is New Orleans, sugar," L. A. Norma says, "If you want Hornets to sting you here, you got to pay them."

Norma (reswamped from her Los Angeles trip) met us on the corner by City Hall. The three of us climbed atop the berm in Duncan Plaza to watch the parade. We saw politicians galore, and heard the Saint Augustine High School's Purple Knights, http://www.purpleknights.com/ fresh from their successful trip to the Rose Bowl. It isn't possible to hear Saint Aug's band and not know you are listening to the gene pool that gave us Buddy Boldin, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Blue Lou and Danny Barker - to name five out of five thousand. How lucky the life lived in New Orleans listening to this music.

Later, Norma sat in the front dormer at Squalor Heights watching a cream colored Rolls Royce turning the corner. "Look!" she exclaimed. "There it is again." She had seen this same Rolls before leaving for California. "I know that is Bob Dylan." It could have been the entire Krew du Vieux going round the corner by the time I lifted myself from the floor and looked down at the empty street. "Did you see the pelicans?" I asked. "Yes, but this was Bob Dylan!"

My Illinois friend boarded her train speaking of dark John Ashcroft recusing himself from the ENRON investigation because… well, you know why.

"But did you know," asked Norma, "that he also recused himself from the Presidential Pretzel investigation on the grounds that he, too, is twisted, salty and hard to swallow?"