It's a ton of fun to be in the middle of all of this! I was actually standing in the road in my pj's and socks taking those pictures. At one point I was literally surrounded. It was awesome!

Nope, that's not Eli. Last mardi gras Eli made the cover of the bywater neighbors association newsletter, though

Shootings on the parade route at Mardi gras are, I'm told, almost traditional, and that the two incidents this year made it a slow year as far as violence goes. I'm not sure about that. There was something on the news about it and someone said that historically people would hold grudges all year and then get revenge during parades during carnival because they knew where they could find the people they were after, dispatch them and then disappear into the crowd, so that stories of shootings during the parades go back around a hundred years.
It's all about where you stand, they say.