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Beyond Sambadrome: Carnival around the world, and in our backyard

^{A member of Unidos do Peruche samba school parades at the Sambadrome, as part of carnival celebrations, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, late February 20, 2009. (MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images, via www.boston.com)}

Virtual Carnival Cruise

Fat Tuesday is bearing down on us, and this boston.com roundup of Carnival festivities from around the globe was just too jaw-dropping not to share. Most of the photos were snapped in Brazil (natch), but this collection includes shots taken in such far-flung locales as the Canary Islands, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Haiti, and Colombia.

Enter the Sambadrome, if you dare:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/carnival.html

Mardi Hearty




	
	
		
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On the more provincial side, here’s a quick rundown of various Mardi Gras-related festivities happening in our neck of the woods (for this humble blogger, that’d be Boston).

FAT TUESDAY
Special Cajun menu and blues with the Gumbo Kings | Smoken’ Joe’s BBQ, Brighton | Tue.2.24 @ 6 pm | free | smokenjoesbbq.com

MARDIS GRAS PARTY
Jazz and R&B with Henri Smith’s New Orleans Friends & Flavours | Middle East downstairs, Cambridge | Tue.2.24 @ 9 pm | $5 | mideastclub.com

BEAUSOLEIL
Cajun music | Regattabar, Cambridge | Thu.2.26 @ 7:30 + 10 pm | $25 | regattabarjazz.com

VOODOO MARDI GRAS
Live percussion and mashups with DJs AA and Franklin | Underbar, Boston | Fri.2.27 @ 11 pm | free before midnight | underbaronline.com

Bonus tangentially Mardi Gras-themed joke:

Q: What’s the loneliest place in Louisiana?

A: Bayou Self.

Posted by shaula on February 23rd, 2009

Filed under art, events · No comment »

Random Access Photography: The Secret Lives of Atlanta Streets and Three-Eyed Kitty-Cats

Shredded couch armrests, severed chipmunk tails … Sometimes our cats leave us a few clues about their daily activities, but most of their seekrit feline goings-on remain a mystery. Until now. German workshop tinkerer and cat fancier Juergen Perthold whipped up the CatCam — a tiny $20 digital keychain camera rigged to take a shot every 2.5 minutes — and attached it to the collar of his kitty, Mr. Lee. The result? A slightly surreal glimpse into the kitty’s trek through woods, fields, tunnels and garages.

Check out the rest of Mr. Lee’s day, as well as the exploits of a handful of other feline Ansel Adamses. Want to build your own CatCam? Perthold shows you how! (And for only $31, you can order a CatCam kit from Juergen himself.)

From a similar vein comes “Stranger Photos Have Happened.” For this experiment, Jay Carlson (the founder of online ‘zine The Plug) left a disposable camera tied to a bench, accompanied by this note:

Good afternoon,
I attached this camera to the bench so you could take pictures. Seriously. So have fun. I’ll be back later this evening to pick it up.
Love, Jay / The Plug

And lo, the passers-by obliged, begetting much cheesy mugging unto the camera — enough to fill up the whole roll.