Join the Carnival Crew

A CARNIVAL TRIFECTA THAT'LL LEAVE YOU WITH A REJUVENATED SPIRIT AND A PURGED CONSCIENCE OVER THE MISHAPS OF LAST YEAR - IN THEORY, ANYWAY.

WE ALL CRAVE A CLEAN SLATE, SHUCKING THE PAST’S DEAD HANDS, casting off the heavy baggage, our slings and arrows, and memories that keep us hiding near the same old tracks, too paralyzed to leap a new box car. New Year’s resolutions, absent of commitment, disappear in the first headwind.

This is a job for the Carnival spirit.

Even Hurricane Katrina couldn’t blow away Carnival as we know it. The world has known Carnival a very long time. It’s the ultimate moveable feast, fed by colliding cultures, conquerors and the rip tides of religion sweeping people out to sea as they grasp for aboriginal roots.

Carnival echoes the ancient world, including the lingering worship of Dionysus or Bacchus. When damped down, it was periodically rejuvenated by slaves and poor free men, eventually condemned by Rome as a sinister source of vice and revolutionary unrest. (If they didn’t like Carnival, they’d flip their birettas at Mardi Gras.)

Dionysus wasn’t just the God of wine, but of vegetation as a whole – his cult connected to nature’s fertility. He was murdered by Titans, but reborn. His worship, dating back to the days of ancient Greece, generated ecstatic emotional outlet, frenzied revels by women and early theater and standup comedy – all things a man loves for a beginning-ofthe- year jaunt to a foreign destination.

Rebirth, renewal and maybe even a “Get Out of Jail” card: that’s Carnival. Don’t just hit the usual suspects, like Rio or – after its hopeful comeback – New Orleans. Carnival awaits you around the world – from Bolivia, to Puerto Rico, to Martinique, to India – in forms from the homegrown and humble, to the grandiose. At this time of year, it’s the most open portal to local cultures you can walk through.

THE CANARY ISLANDS

JUST OFF THE COAST OF SENEGAL, BUT DECIDEDLY SPANISH, the seven Canary Islands offer a wide array of micro-climates and topographies, from vineyards in lava fields that look like a Folon painting, to beaches formed by wind-blown Sahara sand, to the only remaining prehistoric forest of a type that once covered Europe and north Africa.

Spain’s highest mountain – frigid and icy at the top – is a volcano on the island of Tenerife, where flicks like Raquel Welch’s One Million B.C. were filmed and Mars exploration vehicles were tested.

Carnival is celebrated throughout towns across the islands, the largest in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. They attract “delegations” from abroad, and planeload after planeload of Europeans – particularly Spaniards – keen to party.

What a drag : Warm-up events include picking carnival queens – and drag queens. Cross-dressing is a venerable tradition owing to the symbolic emasculation of royalty, but on Gran Canaria, that contest is of P.T. Barnum magnitude – and lots of music.

Rose-colored glasses : After two warm-up nights of music and days spent exploring the island, the Rose Monday parade on Santa Cruz de Tenerife fulfills pleasures of colorful costumes and fetching gals amid blooming African tulip trees along the ocean. The staging area is like backstage at the circus.

Sardine’s Last Stand : On Las Palmas, known for all-night carnival street parties, I found my way onto a party float in the parade of “mourning” for “the burial of the sardine”. Three weeks of Carnival end with the giant sardine burned in effigy amid fireworks.

NICE, FRANCE

MOST CARNIVALS REACH THEIR FRENZY ON ROSE MONDAY
(Feb. 27), but anomalies make a trifecta doable. Nice Carnival has warm-up parades – beginning Feb. 11 – that impart fantastic, French artistic whimsy before Rose Monday. They target society’s attempts to cope with change.

My Eye’s On You : During one memorable experience, my camera lens caught a shocked woman scooped onto a tarp by a group of harlequins who repeatedly flung her into the air like volunteer firemen gone mad. Behind them, a squad of prying giant eyeballs bounced on long stems growing out of purple robes, with a half-dozen grim reapers, 12 feet tall, huge skulls grinning out from black robes, chasing defendants.

Clowning Around : After the Feb. 18 Flower Parade and Parade of Lights, catch a train to Cologne, Germany, and position early for Karneval’s Rose Monday parade. Dress as a clown – like a million others, many toting small kegs on wheels. It will make you less suspect when demanding a “butzchen,” a kiss on the cheek (you’d want one from a female, we presume), the only command left since 1823, before which demands included requests for money, food and drink, and beatings for noncompliance were sometimes fatal. I attended this carnival a month after the infamous Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Not surprisingly, around the gothic masterpiece – the Koln Cathedral – came a rendering of Bill Clinton, goosing a peeved Statue of Liberty to the crowd’s approving roar, as multiple Uncle Sams, perched atop a padlocked White House, threw candy. German engineering at its best.

This year, the satirical floats following Germany’s recent schizoid election should be a hoot.

BASEL, SWITZERLAND

KILL A FEW DAYS, perhaps skiing in Switzerland’s Grindelwald, on the way to Basel, the pharmaceutical capital of Europe and origin of LSD, touching both France and Germany. You’ll find a short-but-sweet carnival season early the Monday after Ash Wednesday, underscoring the city’s Protestant Reformation roots.

Top o’ the Morning : At 4 a.m., a blacked out city hears the growing crescendo of costumed pipers and drummers, 10,000-strong. Glimmers of light grow into giant gas-lit lanterns painted with satirical images of religion, Swiss politicians and plenty of barbs at our own fearless leader, “Dubya”.

Banding Together : The next night the Gugge bands come forth in costumes, deliberately playing off key after practicing in secret all year, invading bars and restaurants where they hold loud musical court with tubas and trombones gone wild.

Poetic Justice : The final night, satirical poetry in the local dialect is performed in bars and Carnival club cellars. Survive this trifecta without mishap, and you’ll be a new man, ready to win, place or show.