The Mardi Gras baby creeps me right out. Here, a rare photo of the elusive creature in the wild. Any small children sitting in the vicinity of the courtside seats, I am sure, shrieked in terror at the sight of it.
I’m sure those of you on Twitter have heard me talk about the crazy life size Mardi Gras baby that’s been appearing in one of the Hornets’ timeout “entertainments” during carnival season. Well, last night I put the call out on the Twitterator for someone to send me a picture of it, and here it is.
This description of the phenomenon is from Toney Blare’s SLAM Online recap of the Spurs/Hornets game a couple of weeks ago:
During a break, there appear in the crowd three mascots, each with a large plastic head: a king, a baby, and a jester. We are within breathing room of Mardi Gras, when you eat King Cake, sort of like a super-sugary circle of cinnamon roll. Inside each cake is a small plastic baby, and whoever finds it buys the next cake. Let me say, it gets out of hand in offices all over town for upwards of a month. Now, I’m telling you all of this because I can’t imagine what the Spurs must think. The three mascots “race” down to the court, the baby looking especially ghoulish and slow. They circle through some yellow cones, with the King winning by crossing a purple finish line held by Hugo the Hornet and the Geico Gecko. I didn’t mention him until the end, because he really was the most innocuous of these newcomers. That baby actually scared me, like the clown from IT or some sh*t.
I am not gonna lie, this thing freaks me right out. Maybe it’s because I am also irrationally terrified of the creepy Burger King that lurks around women’s windows in the commercials like a plastic-headed peeping tom. This baby looks way too similar to that for me to be comfortable with it. Maybe it’s like how some people have a fear of clowns. Either way, you better believe that my uneasy truce with the Mardi Gras baby is SOLELY due to the fact that I sit in the last row of the lower bowl, far enough from the court to feel fairly safe from it coming after me.
The baby always loses the race, by the way.
Concerned
“That baby actually scared me, like the clown from IT or some sh*t.”
Now that’s funny! LOL!
That was my first time seeing this monster… I am scarred for life.
I have a recurring nightmare where I’m walking home from the French Quarter late at night and I hear footsteps behind me. I turn to see the Mardi Gras Baby rushing up and bashing me over the head with a huge ass beer bottle, then dragging me under the interstate…
LMAO Niall Doherty!!! I wonder who in the world thought that ugly a** thing was a good idea??
Last night my friend was saying that the baby costume would be the best Mardi Gras costume ever this year, and be perfect to hide in someone’s room in the dark. Can you imagine waking up to that thing, or getting home at night and having that thing greet you when you open the door? Scary.
HAHhahaHAHhahaHAHA…that’s the baby!? Why couldn’t they make the legs the same size as the body? Matter fact, if they just put Aaron Gray in an adult diaper that’d have been sufficient.
They are setting it up for the baby to win the final Mardi Gras race.
Its an an for Geico. So, I’m sure there is a caveman inside it spouting witty Man-Men-ish sayings
OMG, guys, the fact that it’s arms and legs are teeny and real person-sized is one of the creepiest things about it!!
Benjamin Button Baby?
It is not of the million dollar variety
OMFG, I’m one of the ones reading the tweets wondering what this “Mardi Gras baby” is all about… I have to say, he is FANTASTIC! NOLA is so fabulously unique, I absolutely love it. He is creepy for sure, but how awesomely eccentric.