I was working in Louisiana. It was a bad deal. But-
Louisiana was amazing. I would get out of my truck while "Mardi Gras Mambo" was playing to go & eat red beans and rice with a pork chop & sport peppers, served by 300 pound ladies with 100% gold teeth. "Poke Sallet Annie" played the minute I left seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time. "Nicky Hoeky" would play - whenever. I would eat a gator po' boy in a place with cable spools for tables and Shaquille O'Neal's shoe in a glass box. It was like a steaming, spanish moss covered movie set.

Then it was Mardi Gras. It's not like anywhere else in the US when this happens. Green Gold ad Purple everywhere - like some new holiday in another dimension. Being gripped in the fever of events, I sent a King Cake home to my family, and I guess I didn't explain fully that there was a little golden baby baked inside and that whoever got the baby would have good luck.

After my family consumed the cake and I asked by phone, "Who got the baby?" my wife commenced to search through my smallest daughter's soiled diapers for it - because there wasn't one.........or was there?

Luck. Funny stuff.

Number one is: "No writing on the walls."
Number two is: "Obey all rules."

Hi-YOP-pah-Hah!