“The Sacred Heart” crosses the Savannah stage on Carnival Monday afternoon

T-shirts today. Tomorrow we wear the real thing!

See this Flickr photoset for more Carnival Monday photos.

It’s 6:03am here and I’m just in from the Phase II Pan Groove panyard. I was on the Savannah stage with the members of the band when the results of the Panorama competition were announced and they learned that had taken first place for the second year in a row. As you can imagine, all hell broke loose.

Off to bed now. Carnival has indeed begun.

Nikipedia‘s taken charge of making sure we have decent devil tails for j’ouvert this year, and spent the earlier part of today running around to hardware stores and the like buying wire and electrical components (seems we’re going to be illuminated).

But I received an e-mail from him about an hour ago saying that he couldn’t remember the tail-making technique I’d so carefully coached him in last year, and instead of walking him through it over the phone, I decided to dig into my archives for the images above, which are taken from the flyer for a j’ouvert band my friends Gillian Goddard, Robert Young and I decided to produce during a season of insanity back in 1995.

I don’t know who invented the technique, but I learned it from Robert, and have passed it on to several since. The end product (no pun intended) looks like it would be uncomfortable to wear, and men, in particular, usually balk when they first see it. But in reality these tails are extremely comfortable, and within minutes most people forget they’re wearing a wire tail and start prancing around scratching and poking people, until somebody stops them and curls the wire into a less lethal configuration.

Me wearing a tail in 1999

Materials required:
- A length of wire (eight feet will give you a tail of respectable length)
- Enough fabric to either 1) shred and wrap around the wire or 2) make into a long, narrow sleeve (in which case you’d need a needle and thread or sewing machine) into which you insert the wire
- Another length of fabric or cord to wrap around your waist (length will depend on your waist size)

Note: if you plan on wining on somebody, or having somebody wine on you, please make sure and remove your tail first!

Don’t miss “The web make to blog on Carnival day“, Nicholas “Nikipedia” Laughlin‘s take on the Carnival talk in the Trinidad & Tobago blogosphere (and elsewhere) — over at Global Voices!

And while you’re at it check out some photos from C*POP’s rollicking Beach House Carnival party, which took place yesterday.

Suddenly having these idle and random memories of Carnival 2005:

– J’ouvert. Leon with his hair smeared with clay and twisted into two devil horns, Nikipedia with his sculpted into a mohawk, somewhere in Woodbrook. (Which reminds me, I need to get a disposable camera for j’ouvert).

– The ancient individual who came up to us as we were watching fancy sailors in front of Lapeyrouse cemetery and wanted to know if he and I been at school together. Me wanting to make some snide retort like, “Yeah, you were one of my teachers,” or “Not unless you got held back about twenty times.” Me letting it slide because it was carnival, after all, and at the end of the day he was really only trying to pick up Leon. But really, the nerve of him.

– Paramin on Carnival Monday afternoon. Being offered a tour of the church by a Paraminian, which we accepted even though we were itching to go and see the devil competition. . . .

So I’ve finally registered for “The Sacred Heart”, in The Heart That Sings section. I’m thinking the helmet — which is made of metal — might come in handy if it rains on Carnival Tuesday. It rained most of yesterday. It’s drizzling right now, in fact.

Earlier this evening we went to the Savannah to root for “Son of Saga Boy” in the carnival king competition. Nikipedia has acquired a media pass, so I didn’t have to lie to any security guards or NCC officials to get him in this time, and we also found free parking near a row of port-o-lets at the back entrance to the track.

Several costumes were already assembled and on the track, wilting in the drizzle, but in the end it was announced that the competition would be postponed till Friday, as the stage was too wet to for the kings to parade safely. Some people from other bands were upset at the decision, but the Minshallites seemed almost relieved. Many were probably relishing the prospect of their first early night in ages, though more likely they’d be returning the mas’ camp to continue working. Son was fine too, all wrapped up in plastic sheeting like a Christo artwork.

Earlier this month I posted a short item about bloggers being invited to a Caribbean tourism conference in New York, giving it the somewhat facetious title, “Has Blogging Arrived?”. Anybody with a brain knows that corporate cozying is hardly a sign of true “arrival”. It’s when they start trying to shut you up (or down) that you know you’ve become a force to contend with.

All this to say that I just posted an article over at Global Voices about what is very likely the Caribbean’s first blogging controversy. It involves “a blogging policeman, a local newspaper and a witch hunt by an irate constabulary. In — of all places — the mild-mannered Cayman Islands.” It will be interesting to see what effect this incident has on the profile of blogging and bloggers in the region. Or if it has any effect at all.

One year ago today, a little Caribbean podcast was born. . . .

Birthday ‘cast coming later!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to all who have been e-mailing me with suggestions for new Caribbean blogs and stories for Global Voices — your messages play a critical role in my ongoing struggle to stay on top of things in the growing regional blogosphere, and of course it’s always great to hear from new friends.

A couple of the other Global Voices editors also reminded me about the Global Voices “suggest” page, a link to which can also be found on the links bar near the top of the web site, so feel free to send me information via that channel as well.

Thanks again for all your support!

Finally cracked out the package of Haitian Bleu beans my dear cousin Christiana brought me this Christmas, in somewhat belated response to an appeal put out by Delphine way back in February 2005. My partner in caffeinated crime, Mark Franco, christened the Bleu by himself yesterday evening (as I can’t do coffee after 5pm), but I just had my own inaugural swig. As an American friend of a friend (who, incidentally, staggered past me at the Alternative Concept concert on Saturday night with a T&T-flag bandana tied around his head) likes to say when he hears certain Allison Hinds songs: Holy Cow! I take my coffee black with no sugar, so flavour means a great deal to me, and this stuff is smooth and mellow, with just a hint of sweetness.

I was reading the other day that René Préval, the newly elected president of Haiti, who is also an agronomist, played a signficant role in the Haitian Bleu project during his first term as president (1996-2001). According to the Coffee Masters web site:

From 1990 to 1996, the [USAID-sponsored] project spent $5.8 million to help 20,000 farmers belonging to 24 local cooperatives. The project united them into a single federation, which acquired an export license in order to sell the coffee directly to customers abroad. That cut out brokers in Haiti, which increased the farmers' potential share of profits from their coffee, project managers say.

The project helped farmers plant 4,350 acres of coffee. This effort, along with planting new trees on existing plantations, required 5.7 million coffee seedlings, along with nearly a quarter-million plantain plants and 30,500 citrus trees. Because coffee needs moist soil, coffee farmers plant other trees around the coffee to provide shade.

What’s not to like? If you love good coffee and believe that Haitian coffee farmers deserve a break, forgive Coffee Masters the glaring spelling error on their label and get yourself some Haitian Bleu.

The reason I haven’t done a podcast in more than three weeks is that I’ve been too busy taking photos of myself. Or so suggests an article in today’s New York Times Style section which an image of me helps illustrate. The piece also seems to think I’m a teenager, so it might be advisable to take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

I’ve only seen the online version of the article, so I don’t know what size the image is in print, but just in case it turns out to be bigger than a postage stamp and somebody I know sees it and mistakes me for some kind of megalomaniacal narcissist, I figured I’d pre-emptively set the record straight as to how my photo happened to be in the Times in the first place, especially as I’m well aware that there are people out there who believe that things happen to me not because I am slightly charming and have the habit of being in the right place at the right time, but because I spend my time mailing out media kits stuffed with tear sheets and head shots (airbrushed) and cases of premium rum. And that’s my friends and family I’m talking about.

I do occasionally take photos of myself. As Oso said the other day, we’re all vain bastards at the end of the day (though in order to attain Oso’s level of vanity I’d have to take lessons). When it comes to portraits of myself, I am, in fact, one of my favourite photographers — certainly the only one who knows how to choose the right shots and actually deletes the awful ones when she promises to, instead of stashing them in a folder marked “Blackmail”.

There I was, for instance, this past January on a visit to New York, browsing the stacks at St. Mark’s Bookstore in the East Village, when I felt the urge to place the PowerShot G2 on a shelf, set the self-timer and look down into the lens. In the resulting photo the skin on my face looks like it’s being subjected to a stronger than usual gravitational pull, making me look jowly and double-chinned; my pores are the size of 25-cent pieces and the two furrows that form between my eyebrows when I haven’t had enough sleep look like they were carved into my face with a sharp penknife. And have I mentioned the triangle of light on my nose that makes me look like one of the Beagle Boys? Naturally, this would be the one the photo editor from the New York Times who contacted me out of the blue (note: she contacted me) a couple of weeks ago, would choose from my Flickr page.

I suppose I could pretend that looking bad was the point of the exercise. But for that to fly I’d have to look shockingly awful, or do something awfully shocking, like pose nude (in which case I could think of better places to put my photos than on Flickr, and to hell with Creative Commons). Or pose nude with a heliconia stuck between my cheeks (not the ones on my face). Or, if I had the talent, paint myself nude, like my friend Irenee Shaw, and say: “As a Caribbean person, in the light of our historical circumstances, the assertion of my own narrative and presence is important.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

On the Road VI by Carf

It’s a cool, breezy afternoon here in Trinidad, and as I write I’m listening to Christopher Lydon and a bunch of musicians from Brazil and the USA “pulling apart the rhythms” of samba and other Brazilian grooves on the latest episode of Open Source Radio.

Musicians and brazilophiles should get a kick — and Trinis should identify.

Behind the visual, aural and sensual spectacle that is Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival is, as you can probably imagine, a tremendous amount of hard work. This season, I’ve had the opportunity to photograph — not always brilliantly — some of that activity, and upload the results to Flickr.

King and Queen of Carnival Competition Preliminaries – February 17, 2006
Last night found me stage-side at the Savannah for the prelims of the big costume competition, pointing my camera mainly at the activity around the king and queen of  “The Sacred Heart“.

While I was inhaling fibreglass dust and resin fumes last night at Callaloo Company HQ, Francomenz was blogging about the fire that destroyed ten buildings in downtown Port of Spain yesterday, which, she reminded us, was “the capital’s second major blaze in less than a year”.

Which made me check the date of CFR #14, the soundseeing tour of Port of Spain I did with architect Mark Franco shortly after the previous fire (and which remains one of my favourite shows ever): indeed, it was May 4, 2005.

So Attillah’s math is a tad off this morning (she’s asking “how can there be two fires on the same street in less than six months?”) but she raises some interesting points. “In addition to the politicians, we apparently have pyromaniacs on the loose,” says Attillah, “Or could it be some business owners practicing fire-nomics . . .”

Might be time for another trip downtown . . . .

Lifehacker to TTCS OSSWIN CD: Be my Valentine!
The Trinidad & Tobago’s Computer Society’s OSSWIN CD, a collection of open source software, was chosen as February 14th’s Download of the Day by popular productivity site Lifehacker, which was particularly impressed with the TTCS‘s implementation of an innovative web-based interface, “allowing you to browse the offerings and download programs from the source without downloading the entire CD.” The TTCS OSSWIN CD was mentioned in CFR’s last “This and That” entry.

Lizard to CFR host:  Be my Valentine!
Today, for the first time in her life, the host of Caribbean Free Radio had a lizard fall on her. The incident occured on the atmospheric patio of the Diego Martin Pan Institute in Benjamin Street, Diego Martin. The CFR host was eating a salad when “something black” leapt on to her clothing. One of her dining companions, Wendy Warnick of Fairbanks, Alaska, helped brush the creature off the CFR host’s arm on to the ground.

Baby, the Diego Martin Pan Institute’s chef and man of business, told the CFR host that the incident signified good luck. The CFR host, who is terrified of lizards, is reported to have said: “I’m surprised I didn’t get a heart attack, but it could have been worse – this could have been a Teacher Mildred moment.”

UNC to Ato Boldon: Be our Valentine!
Ato Boldon, four-time Olympic medalist and World Championship 200m gold medalist, was appointed a senator today by the United National Congress, Trinidad & Tobago’s opposition party. Nicholas Laughlin, blogger, metal-cutter and editor of Caribbean Beat magazine, is said to be sitting near the phone awaiting his own call from the UNC.

The following is reprinted with the kind permission of my friend Nola Powers, who in any event is sailing at the moment in the Grenadines on a 45′ monohull manned by an all-male crew and couldn’t care less right now what anybody does with her work. It is based on a true story (“or sort of,” says Nola). It is strongly believed that the rap video in question is the one for Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin”, portions of which were filmed on location in Trinidad during Carnival 2000 (hence the outdated reference to “a $950 costume” – these days you can barely get a costume in a jouvay mud band for that price). The original version of “Stop the Carnival!” was published in The Ticket magazine.

STOP THE CARNIVAL!

This Lent I’ve given up vegetables and exercise. Some of my friends and associates think it’s contrary to the spirit of the season, but after a pre-Carnival dominated by denial, steamed foods and entanglements with weight machines and other instruments of torture, I think it’s the least I can do for myself. In short, my pre-Carnival is pretty much other people’s Lent, if with a slightly less noble goal—i.e. being able to squeeze into my costume on Carnival Monday.

But there was one Carnival a few years back when I didn’t have to worry about fitting into a costume. Up to two weeks before the event I’d been a regular at the gym and observing a dietary regime that would have given a hunger striker cause for concern. Then I get a call from this friend who works in the biz (that’s Hollywoodese for the film business, I think) asking me if I wanted to work on a rap video that was being filmed here over Carnival. Being both Trini to the bone and in possession of a $950 costume, I refused. Then she mentioned an obscene sum of money, plus the fact that they’d reimburse me for my costume. I was on eBay in seconds flat announcing the sale of one Carnival costume, which was snapped up within minutes by a drag queen from Abilene, Texas. And in the space of a pit stop at KFC to rebuild my depleted reserves of saturated fat, I went from mas’ player to a full-fledged member of the biz.

Well, maybe not so full-fledged. I soon learned that I’d been hired not for my way with celebrities but for the fact that I owned a car, which ended up transporting not major rap artists and recording label execs, but boxes of groceries and emergency supplies of masking tape and clothespins (which, as not many people know, they use a lot of in the biz). “Believe me, you don’t even want to meet those people,” my friend said. “They’re a bunch of arrogant, sexist so-and-so’s. You’re far better off in the, er, transport department.”

Carnival Tuesday morning arrived and I still hadn’t come within 100 feet of a rap star. Crawling bleary-eyed to the production office that morning, I’d run into several of my costumed pals, wending their way in jaunty fashion towards King George V Park. “How’s show biz?” they asked. In response I made the cross-armed gesture popularised by Run DMC circa 1989, which is about the most up-to-date piece of urban body language I know (I’d planned to bone up hanging out with rap stars), and which was appropriately ambiguous.
 
That afternoon, however, my big break finally arrived. Somebody handed me a walkie talkie and dispatched me to the Savannah to find the band Poison, whom the director had come up with the bright idea of filming a scene with. Arriving at the Grand Stand, however, about 80% of Poison had already crossed the stage. The 6,000-strong spandexed throng was pouring out on to the western end of the Savannah in jumbled mess, bikinis askew, headpieces discarded, any notion of staying in section long forgotten.

After fiddling with the buttons for about five minutes, I finally got the walkie to work. “We’ve missed Poison,” I yelled to the Assistant Director. “They’ve already crossed the stage!” I heard the AD relaying the news to the director, who cursed and grabbed the walkie. “Well then we’ll just have to get them to go across again!” he screamed. I almost dropped the handset laughing. “Did you hear what I said?” he yelled again. It took me a few moments to recollect myself. “Yes, I heard,” I shouted back, “But that can’t happen.” “And why the *%&# is that?” he yelled. “Because this is not your movie,” I replied calmly. “This is Carnival.”

Leaving the director spewing expletives on the other end, I switched off the walkie and caught a music truck down the road. And that was it for me and the biz.

My only regret is that I’d sold my costume, as the following year the band was charging $1250 for one that was practically identical.

I’ve discovered I find spam easier to tolerate if the “sender” has a cute name. Today’s “Spam Name of the Day”:

Just made a quick dash back home to grab a bite before heading to the Queen’s Park Savannah to continue filming Phase II Pan Groove as they gear up for their Panorama semi-finals performance this evening.

Earlier today we were at the panyard filming the pans being cleaned and tuned, the racks being oiled and hauled onto the trucks which will take them to the Savannah. As I said to long-time Phase II friend and aficionado Keith Maynard, who’s playing with the band for the first time this year, “We must really love this thing called pan.”

But have to run. More later.

I’m not one for marking such occasions (or for admitting that I do), but yesterday I made my 200th post at Global Voices. I had no idea when I was doing it, but it turns out that my 200th post linked to Nicholas, which is more than appropriate, as Nicholas, I’ve come to realise, is my blogging foil.

We’re often in the same place at the same time, usually because we’ve gone there together. In most cases I’m wielding a microphone and/or camera while he scribbles in his Moleskine (though more and more these days his tiny silver camera makes appearances). I’d say he’s the substance to my style, if that did not give the erroneous impression of a lack of style on his part and a surfeit of it on my own, but we’ve come up with a few striking multimedia set-pieces in our time, notably on the subject of Trinidad & Tobago’s World Cup qualification celebrations (print|audio) and, more recently, the 3canal Show (photos|print).

Yesterday, however, I missed accompanying Nicholas to the Hosay celebrations in St. James, and he’s written a beautiful description of the event which I have to say fills me with almost as much envy as my 3canal photos did him! My higher self, however, is always overjoyed to see a blog post from Nicholas, as he never fails to cover his subject so well and so thoroughly that that I feel no obligation to do anything but piggyback on his talent — in true Trini style — by linking to it either here or on Global Voices. I’d sort of promised in these pages, for instance, to write about Minshall, but now I don’t have to, because Nicholas has.

It occurs to me that Nicholas was also present on the other occasion whose anniversary I’m now realizing I’ve missed: the recording of the first CFR podcast on February 4, 2005. (I’d forgotten, in fact, what a ridiculously short Carnival season we had last year). There’s an image imprinted on my brain of him wedged between a desk and maybe a fridge in 3canal’s madhouse of an office on Carnival Friday, trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible so as not to be jostled, or more like crushed, by the hordes pouring in to collect jouvay costumes, t-shirts or, in many cases, Carnival Friday vibes.

But podcasters tend to celebrate the anniversary of the release of their first show, rather than the recording, and I’ll still have a chance to do the former in ten days’ time. But I’m still sorry I missed CFR’s real first birthday.