Masked Observer’s Mellow MoonPies celebrate a unique season
Updated Feb 19, 2021;
Editor’s note:
The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local scene.
Friends, roamers, revelers, I beg your attention. There is plenty of room around the fractured Column of Life, for Folly and Death have whirled, and it’s now time for you to save the world. Just as you saved Mardi Gras.
The Lenten season spares so few of us, both justifying the Carnival indulgence that precedes it, and offering the space needed to reflect and recover. The last 11 months necessitate healthy doses of both, and while we’re not out of the woods yet, the Observer has a feeling that we’re heading in the right direction.
Masked Observer: Reveling in the light, banishing the gloom
Updated Feb 17, 2021;
Posted Feb 17, 2021
King Braxton Hicks spreads his mystic splendor at the Krewe de Palmetto block party in downtown Mobile on Feb. 13, 2021.
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Editor’s note:
The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local
In the South, mamas always have the last word.
It’s no wonder that for Mardi Gras to happen, even with the volume turned way, way down, it would require the festive framework of maternal domain. Grappling with this invisible pestilence, the Mother of the Mystics and the Mother of Invention must have held a tête-à-tête, for the morsels that emerged from their Carnival kitchen filled the season’s final weekend with optimism and happiness.
Masked Observer bows at the crossroads of reverence and revelry
Updated Feb 13, 2021;
Editor’s note:
The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local scene.
Minutes into the golden hour of dusk, a lone figure slowly made her way along the perimeter of Mardi Gras Park, past the Carnival Museum’s perennial porch display and beyond the revitalized dens of the Mystics of Time and Infant Mystics. The solemn soul perambulated Church Street, Oakleigh and the Avenue, and beheld Mardi Gras visages erected by those whose hearts continue to strike Carnival’s communal beat, even if their feet, hands and voices cannot.
Masked Observer discovers mystic mythology on Dauphin Island
Updated Feb 13, 2021;
Editor’s note:
The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local scene.
DAUPHIN ISLAND As Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville strode down the avenue named for his brother last Saturday, he smiled. Not for all that his family’s legacy had bequeathed the people of southernmost Alabama, and the entire Gulf Coast, centuries ago. But for a new tradition born under the veil of Mardi Gras night: the Massacre Island Secret Society.
Fear not that your humble Observer has lost his mind, or his awareness of the time/space continuum as it exists in, arguably, the most anomalous Carnival season ever. He’s well aware that the tattooed Bienville died more than a quarter millennium ago. And yet, in order to gift the present dwellers of Dauphin Island their first sundown parading society, a revelrous resu
Masked Observer strolls among marauders and Midtowners
Updated Feb 13, 2021;
Posted Feb 05, 2021
A house on Demouy Avenue in Midtown Mobile is seen during a recent Mardi Gras event featuring the Blow House Brass Band.
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The Press-Register holds exclusive global rights to reportage of the Masked Observer, a mysterious denizen of the leisure class who covers the local
“Every day takes figuring out all over again how to live.”
When Dark Hallway said it from the shroud of downtown Mobile’s uncomfortable silence, it struck the Observer as a fittingly austere mantra on what should have been a cacophonous Carnival eve. Yet the glint in the surly bodyguard’s eye belied the standard lament that’s become so commonplace during this year’s truncated Mardi Gras celebration.