Pork & Beads Benefit

I'd never been to it before -- indeed, I'd never even heard of it before, but there's an annual fundraiser for Bridge House called the Cochon Cotillion or the Pork and Beads Ball. held at Blaine Ken's Mardi Gras World across the river. (Bridge House is a resident facility that works with alcoholics and drug abusers to gain sobriety and productive lives. Since the 1950s, they have only had men as clients, but now with the new multilevel place they're in the process of building on Earhart, they will be adding a floor for women.) It's an extremely worthy cause, one dear to Big Man's heart, with his 19 years of sobriety. So we were pleased that a band he works with told him this was their regular gig, and even more pleased to learn that band members could bring spouses and partners to the event.

I went online to see what one wears to this event and learned that "costumes or tacky clothing" was the suggested attire. For those still at sea, there were helpful photos of participants at past Cotillions. Colored wigs, feather boas, and funny hats seemed common choices. Big Man had it easy -- the band members were to dress in black -- big deal. I was the one with decisions to make. My selections were complicated by the fact that the benefit featured all you could eat food from some premier New Orleans restaurants, so I didn't want to put on anything too binding. Eventually, I settled on kind of a Pirate Queen thing with a mask but no wig or hat.

I always enjoy going to Mardi Gras World, seeing up close and at rest the fancy floats and figures that usually go by too quickly at Carnival. But most of the time I'm there for MOMs, which is a completely different milieu than the Cochon Cotillion (enough said about that!). Inside the main room, different tables were up around the periphery, each table representing a different restaurant or caterer, with selections like shrimp remoulade, Cajun pasta, alligator burgers, Creole Country Store sausages, spinach salad with pecans, potatoes au gratin, fruit salad, even pizza and hot dogs (I didn't waste calories on that, believe you me!)

For dessert, there were several varieties of bread pudding, cupcakes, and an unbelievable array of jewel-like tiny pastries by a new pastry chef Uptown, a young woman who looked Philippine-American. They were AMAZING! I had to physically restrain myself from just hanging out there and eating like a, well, like a little cochon.

One thing that might seem strange (MIGHT??) was that this was an open-bar event. I mean, only in New Orleans, right? would there be a benefit for an institution promoting sobriety where there'd be so much drinking. It was weird enough, even for us, that two of the emcees mentioned it from the stage. ("Where else but New Orleans could you get this drunk in the name of staying sober?")

A prominent feature of the Cotillion is the annual parade, leading of course to its other nickname, Pork & Beads. There's a king and queen and court, there's an actual high school marching band, and lots of bead throwing, even dubloons (but these were actually chocolate coins from the Magazine Street chocolate shop, Blue Frog. Yum!) I couldn't get myself interested in more beads -- which I'd only have to drop off at Sophie Gumbel anyway -- but I did enjoy watching the parade and seeing the costumes people came up with. (Lots of pig themes, natch, and lots of references to current events.)

Then I saw someone I thought I knew, and in a flash I realized I only thought I knew him because his famous face was so familiar. It was James Carville, and then I saw his wife Mary Matalin as well. Wow! I wanted to run up to them and say, "Y'all helped inspire my marriage!" because Big Man is a Republican and I'm a congenital Democrat. When we'd get into verbal scuffles over politics when we were dating, we'd say, "I wonder how Carville and Matalin handle this?" and we eventually figured out that they probably decide not to keep on talking when they have an impasse. (We don't know that for sure, we just made it up. But it does work for us.) I didn't interrupt the parade to tell that, and later I couldn't find them. Oh well. Next time I run into them in this small town, I'll tell them.

Since Big Man and I had to arrive before the Patron Party at 7 pm, and I was so sun-struck from the Riverfest earlier in the day, I conked out pretty early and retreated to the van until Big Man was free to leave. Next year, I'll devise an even more comfortable costume, and maybe invite a sister or a friend to go with me so I'd have somebody to talk to while Big Man is on stage.

But it's a terrific good time in a great cause -- not to mention the irony!