Ashes to ashes...

...dust to dust.

And so begins the most important time of year on the Catholic calendar, Lent. When I was subjugated by the faith during my early years I recall spending a lot of time considering what it was I was going to "give up" for Lent. In honor of J.C., sacrifices were to be made so that His disciples could empathize with all of the suffering endured for our Salvation. Given my young age during my personal bout with the parochial education system I usually came up with the same list each year; soda, 2 hours of cartoons per day (vice my usual 3), and then some form of candy that I didn't really indulge in anyway -- even at a young age I was a master of loopholes. Ahh, youth. Of course I still find my old joke of now giving up Catholicism for Lent to be endlessly amusing. My defense being that while most Catholics only observe Lent for 6 weeks, I on the other hand sacrifice year-round. Again, I am the only one in my family who finds this funny.

So like any good lapsed Catholic I went out and acknowledged the beginning of this period of piety by celebrating Mardis Gras. What a concept. Only the church could have driven its people to prepare for the faith's most important Feast by cramming as much mindless debauchery as humanly possible into a 24-hour period. Then again, in North Arlington the concept of Fat Tuesday is pretty tame.

For the second year I attended the Clarendon-Courthouse Mardis Gras Parade which is as quaint and family-friendly as it gets. Oh there were beads and drag queens and colourful costumes but there was also an absolute dearth of open containers and bare breasts. Really it was just a few hundred people happily lining Wilson Boulevard while kids ran around berserk trying to collect as many beads as possible. After watching the Ballou High School Marching Band process by (the irony not being lost on me that the band from the most underfunded and dilapidated school in Southeast was out entertaining one of the wealthiest school districts in the nation) I experienced the surreal epiphany that I may have at that moment been standing on Main Street, USA. Welcome to Magic Kingdom.