Laughing is fun! Who knew?

It has been so much fun to belly laugh the past few days.

We just got back from Thibodaux, and I don't really care that we only won 1-0. And I don't really want to think about how we went a zillion innings with a goose egg before finally scoring right now. I'll have time to think about having a close game with Nicholls some other time in the far way future.

Me and my peeps and Coach Hullabaloo (who made a rare cameo at a mid week game) trekked over the bridge and down Highway 90 to Thibovegas to avenge our embarassment from last year at Didier Field.

We stopped for dinner at Bubbas. I don't know exactly which Bubbas it was because that whole Bubbas thing is just confusion. Bubbas II, Bubbas on the Bayou - whatever. But seriously, Bubbas has got to be the most expensive fried seafood in the history of man. $75 for food served on trays, served with plastic forks and lemon juice packets!! It was like a robbery hold up, but in reverse. In my opinion of good seafod eatin', Bubbas ain't got nothing, nothing on Drago's.

We sat at the game with our favorite Tulane friend, Lil General, and her husband, Mr. Lil General. They live in Thibodaux. They are so sweet and came to sit with us a spell at Bubbas before the game too.

Mr. Lil General was throwing out the funnies left and right (har har). I say left and right like that because there were some very annoying Kappa Sigmas who were cheerleading the game and one of their go to cat calls was the "left right left right" chant when our Greenwave players walked off the field. It was uber annoying.

Here are the Kappa Sigs when they thought they could sit on top of the Tulane dugout. They snapped this just moments before they got kicked off and sent away by security.

showsyy
Afterwards the Kappa Sigs set up like railbirds in front of the fence along first base bleachers and continued their annoying cheers. The one that was actually kind of funny was that they would all go "WHOO!" in unison each time that Rankin does his famous wind up high kick that he does. (We looove you Daniel! We wouldn't change a thing about your baseball habits! It's cute!)

photo from David Grunfeld, Times Pic
Afterwards they all congratulated the Greenies and shook hands, so I have forgiven the Kappa Sigs for some of their more immature taunts. At least they are doing something constructive with their time in college like supporting their classmates who are student athletes and not like running a drug den out of their fraternity house or acting like fools at seranades. So overall I was impressed and jealous with their school spirit - because like when's the last time a Tulane fraternity has shown up for a game, any game? ..... It's been decades. Sigh.

So anyways, on the way out to Thibodaux, Peggy kept us in stitches by sharing a classic story that will go down in the annals of Hullabaloo Huddle as one for the ages. It just might displace our apron story, as funniest story ever.

Peggy and some of my girls, Pickle and Jubilee, had been volunteering at a tournament which shall remain nameless because I don't want the FDA or health inspectors knocking down our door. or someone getting in trouble. So I'll just discuss it here on the interwebs between you and me.

So my girls Peggy, Jubilee, and Pickle are at this event and they were in charge of distributing the lunches to the teams that were participating. Which would seem like an easy task However, some of the teams would come up and grab all of their lunches for their team, but then sometimes individuals would go up and claim their own lunch. It was up to our peeps to keep track of who was getting what. You can see how this might go sideways if you aren't paying attention.

So one of the participants came up to the lunch check out and asked for her sandwich by herself. She dressed her sandwich and then left. Meanwhile another team came up to claim their lunches for the entire team. There was a stray sandwich still wrapped up all nicely that was still on the table, so it got added to the pile that was being handed over to the team and off that sandwich went.

Well the girl came back and asked where her sandwich went that she had left on the table. Peggy was momentarily horrified and explained that it must have been given to another group. The girl sez, you don't understand - I put mayo on the sandwich. Peggy responded, Oh well the sandwich in question is gone. And the girl then responds, no you don't understand! She had taken a BITE out of the sandwich! Immediately Peggy's response is to start laughing. She's given out a half eaten sandwich to goodness knows who.

One of my other girls who was also volunteering, whom I'm calling Pickle also starts to laugh, or cackle, and everybody is laughing like it's the funnies thing. Amongst just us, Pickle whispers through laughter and tears that she hoped it had gotten picked up by one of the LSU coaches (omg ha, right?!). And that she hopes (kiiiiddddding) that they think we did it on purpose. ha ha!

One of the worker bees who was supposed to be supervising Peggy, Pickle and Jubileee - was just beside herself fraught with worry over SandwichGate. Meanwhile Peggy, Pickle and Jubilee can't even look at each other without laughing. And then they start cracking jokes about the bite being like a kingcake baby. Meanwhile the concerned workerbee was wanting to report SandwichGate up the chain of command, which just made it all the more comical. Even when the concerned worker bee is distraught and trying to explain to the tournament supervisor about the mistake, it was making Peggy, Jubilee and Pickle - grown women who are mostly all grandmothers - laugh even harder. Because could you like imagine sending out a half eaten sandwich and the reaction of the person who got the half a sandwich? Or if they God forbid, had eaten it?!

Don't ever trust us to volunteer again! But in all seriousness: I swear on my cats that we won't spit in your tailgating food, or serve sandwiches we've already bitten into. I prooommmmmise!!!

SandwichGate reminds me of Peggy's and my last trip to the Litter Box in Bataan Rouge for a final farewell baseball game there. They were just building the new place next door and Peggy and I discussed at length the possibility of digging and burying some Tulane jerseys in the new litter box stadium while construction was still happening. Could you imagine how funny? Peggy even suggested that if we buried say 2 jerseys, that we should send a ransom type note and tell them that there were 4 buried jerseys just so that they would dig up the whole place chasing down the 2 ghost jerseys.

Oh, the fun of rivalries I tell you!

Yes, ha! The corndogs lost to USL. Of course they are blaming the rain delay on all their errors. While I still find USL annoying, I shan't pass up a chance to laugh that corndogs lost. So: ha ha ha ha

Yahweh, Take The Wheel

A fellow Greenie, whom I'll call Perry Mason, has been pestering me about updating Hullabaloo Huddle.

In all honesty, I'd been waiting until I was in a less bitter and patronizing mood to pen something. So I wouldn't sound, well so patronizing and bitter. I'd actually written a few versions of my Nola Bowl recap, but deleted them.

Parker Waters Photography
I've also kinda shut my trap a bit because it's the homestretch in recruiting. Signing Day is Wednesday. And it's a tenuous situation with Temple and Kansas State for the love of Yahweh upsetting the apple cart up in here. I'm holding out hope that CJ pulls a pelican out of his ear and delivers us some serious linemen.

But I am a Tulane fan after all, and ya knows we have our fair share of absurd to plow through if not today, tomorrow. And if not this, week, well TPTB will get around to derailing something next week in an effort to give us something else to roll our eyes about and call for TPTB to resign/be fired/wear a tie/go across the street. And yet, TPTB gets right back to keep on keepin on.

marymouton
So at long last y'all, my two cents about our cameo at the Nola Bowl: Losing to USL was such a bitter pill to swallow. Wretched.

rslipman
I was simply stunned and totes embarrassed. And to all those Moral Victors out there all aglow: I salute you for your fortitude. Because I am a much, much, weaker individual and I am not worthy of your esteem.

I'm not a completely awful, hateful person though. I was relieved that we didn't just roll over and give up.

I have no hard feelings towards any member of the team. Defense kept us in the game and has been so unbelievably fun to watch all season.

But why oh why did we deviate from the running game at the bowl game?

photos by Chris Granger, Times Pic
Hello, this plan was working just fine... If we were insisting on putting Montana back in there after what happened at FAU and UTSA - why oh why were the instructions to pump fake and then throw to the other team? Handing it to Darkwa was just fine.

So alas, after a month of getting over it I was finally thawing out from my painful memories of December 21 to write something that didn't sound deranged.

But just as I feeling up to the task of sharing my thoughts as a civil person and post cute pictures of all our events, Something Happened. I was fixin to have ample couch surfing time and nesting opportunities around Chateau Hullabaloo and everything due to Sneauxmageddon2014. I had even done p-r-o-m-i-s-e-d Perry he would see a new post. And then wouldn't you know... BAM! this unfortunate Georgia Tech scandal up and hit the fan and I got all wrapped up in following that drama.

TPTB was done raked over the coals from all corners of the Greenie Dat Nation, and not just by the so called "lunatic fringe" this time.

Thanks for finally waking up y'all! TPTB is so used to tuning out our usual vitriol over scheduling lame teams like Southernmost Alabama and Jacksonwherever State, that I bet you one zillion latkes that they didn't give a second thought about cancelling the only interesting OOC series we've had going in at least a decade and with a school who wants to come to New Orleans. TPTB always think small time.

and I had to giggle that Consiglieri Yvette Jones was trotted out again to smooth out their foul up and spin like a washing machine that all is just going smoothly and according to plan, nothing to see so move along (and by the way, the stadium will only have 20,000 seats).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh why, oh, why is it Tulane's karmic fate to only make the national news when either tragedy befalls us or we deliberately wish to look like fools (see our Black Tuesday implosion, see the Big East Meltdown, etc., etc. etc.). If we could only collectively will competency upon those who lead our beloved Olive and Blue.

The only thing missing from the walkback explanation has been the perfunctory reference to Katrina. Because ya know. Oh, Ryan Grant's equipment didn't arrive on time to the Senior Bowl? well you know Katrina .... We hired Bob Toledo and extended him, well you know Katrina made us do it .... We hired a basketball coach with a questionable win record, well you know that pesky Katrina has just been up to no good!

It's just not a proper press opportunity in TU-Land if Katrina is not defamed.

I mean fer real! TPTB just announced that they be hiring a "Person to Blame In Chief" - what I'm calling the new position anyways. It's actually supposed to be a COO, but you already know how that's gonna roll. They will hire some naive/young/inexpensive person who is under the impression that we know what we are doing and then she or he will get knocked in the head with a sack of quarters when they realize what's really up and then get blamed for everything that ever went sideways. Be that as it may, the paper carried an interview about this sudden shift in management strategy over there on Ben Weiner about hiring another worker bee, and wouldn't you know it - just when Katrina thought she was finally in the clear, Wham-O, she gets disparaged yet again (read the final sentence of the article. omg, just kill me now).

What I fall back on during disappointing times, what usually offers me refuge from sad thoughts, is to throw myself into gameday tablescaping, shopping and future menu planning. and believe you me I have been setting my Pinterest on fiya. (I have lots of suuuuper cuuute ideas for our opening Yulfogelmevlin tailgating. Which I plan to defiantly unroll even if I end up doing it in my own driveway on the westbank if the official Tulane tailgating goes sideways. Which, sigh, is sadly such a possibility.)

So on that note .... back to my chronicling of our first bowl game in a Decade. You all know how I felt about the New Orleans Bowl going into it. And the requisite activities surrounding the bowl were seriously stressing me out to plan between the holidays and the weather, and not really having my heart in it. But in the end I couldn't let an opportunity to tablescape pass on by, and I couldn't not have the perfect outfits lined up. Or design this cute logo which I created to inspire me to soldier on.

I was the Martha Stewart of Bowl Games y'all and spent the weeks leading up to it making hospitality bags for our out of town wave mommas and working with my Krewe of Hullabaloo-ettes in making super cute second line parasols.

We even made this cute parasol for Coach CJ's wife Angel!

In the end I very much enjoy spending time with all of my peeps, so that was worth the effort and the pain of losing to USL. It is my hope that we don't have to wait another 10 years to be kidnapped by the Athletic Department for a three hour bus ride though. (a three hour bus ride...a three hour bus ride....)

Everybody else called that bus outing "The Bowl Stroll", but we were calling it "the Night We Were Kidnapped by the Athletic Department."

Thursday before the game, we were packed up onto those touristy double decker buses you see around town, but with insufficient information about what exactly was going to happen. It turned into a 5 mile (not really, but it was long) second line march practically to Chalmette and back - and I was in wedge heels. They were cute though and matched my new tweed blazer perfectly, don't you think?

Needless to say, by the conclusion of our forced march I was walking barefoot through downtown (yes, disgusting).

Coach Hullabaloo and Booty were lubricated and so we were just howling with laughter at our predicament. The grand finale was supposed to be a "pep rally" with the football team at the hotel, but someone didn't distribute the memo so we ended up doing a 100th round of the fight song and the Hullabaloo to the valet parking attendants in front of the Hilton Riverside. Mercifully, an hour later after further wandering the streets of New Orleans on what seemed to be a hijacked bus, we were finally deposited back at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood where our saga began.

So the following day, Coach Hullabaloo and I went to the "official" Bowl Luncheon which was at the Marriott.

We got to sit with Devin Boutte's adorable family and learned that they took Nick Montana for his first hunting experience down there in New Iberia.

and Steve Gleason gave a nice speech. Here he is with our players. Love that they got to meet him.

Anyways, nothing else was much interesting really to report about the Bowl Luncheon other than my jaw dropped when I walked into the Marriott. The weeks leading up to the game, it was impossible to find out what the full details were going to be for the bowl game activities as far as Tulane's participation. It was aggravating. The buses which we were taken on the night before had one sad little banner strapped to a corner of it.

By contrast the Marriott, where USL was staying, was completely festooned with USL swag. The doors, the ceilings, posters, stands, garland, gobos - everywhere you turned. When we did our flash mob to the Hilton parking attendants the night before, there was not one stitch of Tulane anywhere at our team hotel. I even asked a client of mine who is in group sales at the Hilton about it and she went on and on about Alabama's swag there for the Sugar Bowl and didn't have a response about our decision to remain anonymous. So the lack of proper swag was very un-Hullabaloo Huddle worthy in my humble opinion.

Anyways, I tried to make up for it as I usually do. On gameday we organized a fab brunch for our booster club and friends that was so cute I couldn't stand it. Tulane Alumni Association hosted something themselves, but I still just looved how ours turned out. Look how cute.

I challenged myself to not spend any more of Coach Hullabaloo's fortune given that it was the holidays and I had already purchased multiple outfits and shoes and kept having to revise outfits due to the changing crazy weather.

So, except for ordering the cake and the balloon bouquets, everything pictured were repurposed items or came from my existing stash. Even the coasters I gave out as favors were liberated from the bowl luncheon the day before.

In all, I have to admit that I enjoyed the chance to stretch out the football season a bit. Coach Hullabaloo was delighted that I didn't wig out like that crazy Alabama fan who tried to beat up on those OU college kids at the Sugar Bowl, so that was a plus. And the game was almost a thrilling comeback.

So in an effort to put it all behind me, I'm already pinteresting menus and such for our games at Yulfogelmevlin next fall. And I'm holding out hope that we have a miracle coup on the recruiting front. (please, please, please, please!)

See you at Signing Day and Cheers to an improved 2014!