Carnival Country

Not everyone is talented. This is why I work. At a real job. With bitches. Real live bitches. The majority of our soca entertainers should consider that.

Although I don’t fete, wine or drink, I like Carnival. It’s the only time of the year I can mount my high horse and look down my nose at those Canaval Jumbies with self righteous disgust. It’s quite addictive actually and I’ve never missed a year. Now I know how Pastor Cuffie feels.

Have you seen the cost of tickets for the average Carnival fete? Hell I could eat for two months with that moolah. And I’ll be eating good too. So they’re all inclusive. Big deal. The kind of prices I’m hearing, even a career drunkard couldn’t get his money’s worth. And too besides, all the live entertainment does is instruct the audience to ‘raise yuh hands in de air!’. When I was little that was used a punishment in school. I find it hard paying upwards of $500.00 to be punished when I could get the same - and worse - for free on the streets. Another thing is this bloody counting. If the soca tune is two minutes, you’ll be hearing 15 minutes of the performer counting to three.

I watched the Soca Monarch finals on television and it took away what little happiness I had gleaned from the knowledge that I have no work on Monday and Tuesday. What could possibly cause such abject despondency in a carefree, happy-go-lucky creature such as myself? Well it’s because I learnt that I’m not an independent woman. According to a number of contestants, my stationary pelvic area has set back my gender God knows how many decades. But I’m not worried; from the amount of dancing girls who displayed their autonomy onstage via jooking, rolling back and plain old wining, methinks the feminist movement is in good hands. Hazel Brown would be proud.

What truly irritates me about the season is the influx of foreigners. It’s like a disease. Not the tourists mind you – the obnoxious Trinis who spend a couple years abroad and show up with the attitude that we should be grateful to hear their grating hybrid accents. It’s easy to tell a fresh water tourist from the bonafides. They’re loud. Insufferably loud. And they talk slow. Real slow. So we natives can keep up of course. I’m sometimes tempted to ask them if they remember what it’s like to be a newly landed Trinidadian in a foreign land but I’m always afraid they’ll respond with “WHAT? WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” at the equivalent speed of a snail rushing home to catch re-runs of Sex in the City.

One show I would have loved to attend was 3Canal’s ‘Shine’. I was able to get a glimpse of it on television. (Local natch; no $300.00-per-month-and-no-movie-channels for this shrew.) Even while the calypso tents are going through their various controversies and kaiso gets less objective and more inclined to the calypsonian’s political bias, 3Canal and the rapso artistes are probably the only authentic Carnival experiences remaining in the land of Machel, all inclusive fetes and imported bikini mas.

But why ponder on these irrelevant issues when there are still fetes to go to, big trucks to follow and bumpers to wine on? So grab yuh rag and on de count of three: 1...2…1,2,3 Waaaavvveee!