“Oh, No!” Mr. Bill leads off the parade in the float bearing his creator, Walter Williams, King of Krewe Du Vieux 2006 The T.O.K.I.N. subkrewe puts Mayor Ray Nagin on the (G-)spot Spoiled fridges were a favorite parade motif Blue tarp blue is the new black “Home is where the tarp is” One-man Blue Man Group

Five months after my husband and I applied for post-Katrina disaster assistance, we finally got our FEMA check — for $200,400.69! The official-looking U.S. Treasury note came in an official-looking FEMA envelope and was handed to me by a very unofficial-looking reveler wearing a giant dildo and a blue tarped roof on his head.

Welcome to Krewe Du Vieux, post-K edition.

The check was bogus, of course, marked “disaster assistance — you wish!” But there was nothing phony about the spirit of Krewe Du Vieux, the X-rated satirical walking parade that kicks off every Mardi Gras season by giving the high and mighty a raucous kick in the ass.

And in New Orleans after Katrina, there was no shortage of targets: Everyone from Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco to “heckuva job” Brownie got skewered in scurrilous send-ups.

Flanked by more brass bands than ever before — a terrific omen in itself! — Drips and Discharges and 16 other subkrewes brought visions like “(Nagin’s) Wet Dream” and “Blanco Blows Wind” gloriously to life on mule-drawn floats while outrageously costumed marchers dispensed a bounty of instant collectibles like the life preserver key chains emblazoned with this year’s theme: “C’est Levee!”

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