Mummers the Word, Yo
Been awhile, I know. Everyone just DYING I'm sure to know every minute (pronounced My-newt) detail of everything I've been up to for the new year......

Well.... I vaguely recall Christmas. It was fun, and I found out how my grandmother makes her cod fritters. Also got a nice pic of the house in Italy (built by my great-grandfather). The place looks amazing, to say the very least.

In other news, I didn't move. New place got all kinds of shady, finally sent me a lease to sign two weeks before I was scheduled to move in, and attached to the lease was 86-- I kid you not, count 'em 86-- rules for what I COULDN'T do. What's the point of a hardwood floor if I have to carpet 80% of it? It's like shaving and then gluing fake hair on me. And besides... had I moved, I would have missed ALL the fun of the new year in South Philly. One word: MUMMERS.

For the uninitiated, the mummers (from what I can gather, and purely from an outsider perspective) are the union guys of Philly, who in the wee years of the 1900's congregated (rather drunkenly) to dress in women's clothes and makeup, and carried umbrellas. They pranced through the streets of Philly for a lark, and much laughter was had by all involved. It was such a hit that it's lasted to this day. So picture the Mommy-dearest roots now evolved to this.

It was such a nice day I decided I would just chill at home and tear up the remains of the garden, clear off the old vines, etc, when I saw these guys wearing what appeared to be bright orange pimp-pirate attire sitting in the patio of O'Neal's drinking beer and wearing makeup. Well... this caught me off-guard, even for South Street.... I asked them what they were and they said "Mummers". I asked what that meant and they said I could come on down and discover the meaning of the mummers for myself. What I found is that it means 'get wasted and have a great friggin' time with everyone around you on New Year's Day'. It also means 'get so drunk that you get lost enough to have to sit on someone's steps until you can figure out where exactly north and south are'.

All in all, it was a great time, and I discovered that I knew three of the mummers I ran into that day. Would have liked to chat more with the mummer on stilts. He seemed really interesting, from what the pictures say.

I remember also saying a lot of "HUTTAH!" and "ROCK ROCK ON!" I also think I threw in some Wesley Willis-isms in the vein of 'rock over London rock on Chicago', but I can't be sure.... it may have been while I was sitting on the steps trying to figure out just where the hell I had ended up....

The craziest and most endearing thing about the whole event is that the lovely folks of South Philly become uber-hospitable and feed you while opening their homes to you. I had some awesome homemade food given to me by people I never met. It made me want to spread that feeling throughout the year. I'm toying with the idea of having a movie night where I cook and someone brings a DVD to watch.

In other news, I cleaned up my friends lists on the IM, removing some and adding others. It was nice to reconnect with one person in particular and find that he was doing well, and seemingly back to his old self. Where some doors had closed, I'm glad to see that they weren't locked and could be re-opened.

Well... I could go on and on, but the hour is late, and David Bowie calls to have pretty fictions written to his tunes.

If anyone wants to see the mummer pics I took, email me and I'll send an invite to you to view my photo album online.