At the
start of this post it is exactly 56 days, 7 hours, 37 minutes, and 15 seconds till Carnival takes place in Trinidad and
as you can probably guess I’m beyond excited. As an added bonus, I received the receipt for my deposit on my costume. A
few months back I was eyeing a costume in the Island People Butterfly and
Song Bird sections which I mentioned in the Enchanted
Forest post, but those puppies were sucked up so fast and with no direct contact in Trinidad I was finding it
pretty difficult to get in on any of the Island People action. To keep a long story short I decided on playing with Poison.
Poison as a second choice mas band isn’t a bad
choice either. Having been on the Carnival scene for several years their band is one of the largest and often times has
the skimpiest costumes. This year’s theme is ‘Dreams.’ See Exhibit A: The costumes seen here are part of the Ricco Soldato Frontline section of Poison and
the one with the large headpiece will be worn by yours truly. The amount of time invested into putting together the
decorative bikini to be worn as your street attire when parading through Port-of-Spain easily brings the price to $400
USD, but is also all inclusive.
The first step in getting a costume or signing up with a mas camp is to go
to the band launches held in October/Novmeber of the previous year if in Trinidad and if overseas by checking popular
TnT websites. (Island Events and Trini Jungle Juice are good starters.) Once the bands launch in full, you
register by placing a deposit on the costume of choice and pick up the piece on Carnival Friday. At that point you sit,
count down the days, and bore your non-mas playing friends with every grueling detail. Only 56 days, 7 hours, 22
minutes, and 36 seconds to go!