happy mareh iraq!

predictive text is a funny thing. an inconsistent know-it-all, you might say. like that girl in your third year women, power, and politics tutorial who was pretty smart but said "like" way too often to be taken totally seriously. "female circumcision is, like, not an issue we can rightfully condemn from a western standpoint." something like that.

anyway- predictive text. for all the convenience it offers the scribe of the text, it is undeniably frustrating at times. "tell of he you are going to be good tonight." i'm sorry? i think you meant "tell me if you are going to be home tonight." predictive text does not know that i am named brian and prefers to tell me that my name is asian. it offers a unique signature, that's for certain. "love, asian."

the reason i bring this up is because it was mardi gras here this weekend. mardi gras is the australian gay and lesbian festival- down under pride, one might say. i was texting home to my friend chad to tell him that it was mardi gras and my cell phone told me instead that it was mareh iraq. well if you say so. i found it funny, if only because my phone seemed to think the average australian would write mareh more often than mardi. mareh isn't even in the dictionary- trust me, i looked! what one earth is a mareh?

so anyway- mardi gras. this saturday night past sydney got its glitter on to celebrate thirty years of mardi gras and i was there, smack dab in the middle of it all, to see how sydney's biggest tourist draw stacks up against toronto's big gay street party. here are my main observations- musings, if you will:

- toronto pride and syndey mardi gras are like night and day- seriously. while the toronto parade kicks off under the blistering sun at 2pm, the sydney parade doesn't start until the sun sets just before 8pm. this means that the parade begins and ends with fireworks, people feel justified in wearing glow bracelets, and there is no shame in drinking right from the get-go.

- speaking of drinking- any rules about public consumption of alcohol seem to fly straight out the proverbial window with the arrival of mardi gras. i have never seen so much unabashed public drunken tomfoolery in my life- and i went to theatre school, so that's saying quite a bit. everyone is drinking. in the streets. and rambunctious. and sloppy and a bit wild, which is somewhat surprising for a city that has a reputation for being so well behaved. i saw two men nearly end their own lives by getting into a shopping cart at the top of a very tall hill- that was also a road- with moving traffic- and ask a third friend to let go and let them careen downwards to what i can only imagine would have been a very painful end. a policeman stopped them. thankfully. though i won't pretend i wasn't the tiniest bit curious to see what would happen.

- the parade was fine, but like the parade in toronto once you've seen one you might as well have seen them all. there's only so many times you can cheer for the lesbian ladies lawn bowling association (i'm serious). and dykes on bikes are- shockingly- still dykes on bikes here. and topless men dance in wee shorts. and kylie minogue plays on repeat. people cheer for the anglicans for equal rights for differently-abled transsexuals and boo for the conservative politicians trying to show they really care. but where sydney really does have toronto beat is in the choreography. every marching group- anglicans, lesbians, and all- have choreographed dance routines to take them through the entire parade route. there are many things in life that i love (entertainment weekly, my family, brown sugar, and folding laundry to name a few) and chief among them is a good old fashioned choreographed dance routine. factor in cheering crowds, flashy costumes, and the occasional rhythmic gymnastics ribbon and it's almost better than the finale of bring it on. almost. toronto needs to get its act together and tell the peel region pflag chapter to start practicing their steps- june will be here before we know it!

- the thing that struck me most of all was how much of a mess mardi gras made. i have never seen so much garbage on the streets in my life- empty bottles, cigarette packs, abandoned milk crates people had stood on to watch the parade, flyers for the newest ultra club, free condoms, snakes and ladders, filing cabinets, seventeen pairs of tap shoes, and a well-thumbed copy of erica jong's groud-breaking 1973 erotic novel "fear of flying." more or less. but the city streets were gross and made me feel quite sorry for the maintenance workers faced with cleaning up after hundreds of thousands of careless revellers. i made sure to throw my bottles in the recycling thank you very much.

and so mardi gras came and went. i ended up in a bar on oxford street where i somehow bypassed the $30 cover charge to dance with some uber-hipsters. we're talking studio 54 meets those club kids who used to go on jerry springer in the mid-nineties. playsuits and headdresses and face paint and all. they played, among other things, "that don't impress me much" by shania twain. and that don't impress me much. i missed the last bus home and so walked across the harbour bridge under the stars. i slept in on sunday morning.

bottom line- choreography? good. public drinking? i ain't too mad. messiness? well now, let's get it together.

funnily enough this is pretty much how i feel about britney spears as well.

happy mareh iraq!