As Mardi Gras Season Begins, Krewe Du Vieux Spills Laughter

The Mardi Gras parade season is getting under way in New Orleans, and for a region that weathered the massive environmental, political and economic implications of the BP oil spill, a little laughter isn't such a bad idea.

Of course, disaster is nothing new to the Crescent City, and yet year after year the inhabitants display a remarkable ability to keep on partying. This Saturday, one krewe (a social club that revolves around its Mardi Gras parade) started the season, just as it does every year -- weird. The Krewe du Vieux are New Orleans' carnival pranksters -- every year they do a parade, usually a very profane one, making fun of whatever politicians or disasters that wreaked havoc on their city that year.

"There's no situation that doesn't improve from taking a moment to step back and laugh a little bit," former krewe captain and poo-bah of publicity Keith Twitchell told AOL News. "Shed off some tension, maybe clear your head, maybe fog your head, but either way you go back to it with a fresh perspective."

Highlights from this year's parade included the sub-krewe Spermes' float, which was themed around a slightly altered version of HBO's "Treme," and Sarah Palin driving a sled in the "idiot-a-rod" race with none other than Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as the lead dog. Another sub-krewe, the Krewe Mondu, imagined New Orleans in the year 2025, broken off from the mainland.

"It appears that toplessness is standard in this island city," reads Krewe De Vieux's in-house publication, Le Monde de Merde. "Whether this is due to global warming or the omnipresent beads is unclear."

Other highlights, published in Monde de Merde, are not entirely fit for republication.

Of course, the BP oil spill featured heavily into this year's parade. The combination of government corruption, general ineptitude, mass confusion and near-apocalyptic implications presented a perfect target for the parading pranksters.

BP CEO Tony Hayward made more than one appearance, both as a crafty, smoke bomb wielding ninja and his alter ego Tony Haywimp. Twitchell went as a gigantic oil-eating microbe -- the logic being that if the microbes had really been eating as much of the oil as some people suspected they did, they would have grown gigantic.

While they've become an oddball among the larger super-krewes in the celebration, in many ways, Krewe Du Vieux is the most traditional of the Mardi Gras krewes. Not only do they make their floats themselves and pull them with mules once they're ready, but their satirical bent carries historical significance as well. For centuries, Carnival has been a time when social distinctions melted away and lower classes had the chance to poke fun at the powers that were.

In 2005, Krewe Du Vieux, like the rest of the city, faced what seemed like an insurmountable challenge. After Katrina, some people thought that the parade would have been in poor taste -- just as some people thought about Mardi Gras itself. But between George W. Bush, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, Krewe De Vieux had its pick of satirical targets that year. And for Twitchell, not rolling would have been like giving up.

"We were the first parade to roll after Katrina," Twitchell said. "If we don't preserve our culture, why save any of the rest of it? I think we did a lot to make people feel better, even just for one night."

This year, the Krewe had a less tragic disaster to deal with, but there will likely be hard times in New Orleans' future again. And whatever comes their way, Krewe Du Vieux will make disgusting jokes about it.