carnival

It's September and there's a carnival near our apartment. Late at night we hear the noise of people and the din of fireworks. Occasionally, we'll hear some strange sounds, of what we aren't sure. I'm reminded of the years Brad, John, Phil and I spent in Little Italy when the Feast of San Genaro appeared like a hurricane each September. The first 2 days of that feast were like having Disneyland at your doorstep. We ate zeppoli, sausage sandwiches (some more than others, ... John), laughed with the crowd and thought of ourselves as geniuses for having chosen such a fantastic place to live. That soon turned to despair. After 5 or 6 more nights of moving drunked people away to get in our building or stepping over the piles of trash to walk to work, we wanted that damn thing over with, but it's a 10-day feast, and we had another few days left. The worst was the dunking clown. You know him. He sits on a collapsable bench in a glass tank full of water below and tries to get people to spend $3 for 3 chances to throw a baseball at a target which, if hit, will drop him in the water. Unless he's your high school principal, it's not easy to convince people to spend the money, so typically these clowns resort to ridiculing people walking by ("Hey fatso, one more of those zeppoli and you may lift off"..."Does your wife know you're dating that dog?"... and it goes downhill from there). Fine if you're walking by. But our window was not more than 100 feet from the clown, and since he was in a glass tank, they gave this guy a microphone and speakers. And it was summer, so it was hot, and not that many apartments had air conditioning. We didn't for the first year or two. So the windows were open. Weekdays, he did his spiel until 11pm. Weekends, until 2 or 3am. And it's pretty quiet at 2:30am, except of course for mr. clown. Even after we bought an air conditioner we could still hear him through the window. (they gave this guy a speaker system!).

So no dunking clown here. Though it's early in the fiesta. We'll see. Gen and I have been playing around with some insults in Spanish ("Se veste estupido su mama!"o "Con una marido como el debe usar una correa!" o "Es su papa o se cepilla su perro"). We're trying to make do. We do, however, have a gypsy beggar who walks the streets of our neighborhood and sings her little gypsy song for people to please give her some money. And we've got the guy with the steel barrels of water that bangs on the barrels every two blocks or so to let people he's coming by. Like a spanish version of Mr. Softee.