Hey Hey Hey, It's Faaaaaaaaat Tuesday

Happy Fat Tuesday to all of you.  Here's to the end of a raucous Carnival season for the GTB-boys and girls... and our collective headlong launch into sobriety and serenity for Lent.

As such, have one tonight, be it hurricane or hand grenade, Abita or Sazerac. Cheers, revelers.

In the meantime, here's a game you know well from cocktail parties: it's called 24 Truths and a Lie.  Most of these facts about Mard Gras were copied and pasted from one of several websites with the Fat Tuesday lowdown.  Some were not.  One of them is a fib.

See if you can spot it!

24 Truths and a Lie About Mardi Gras

1. Mardi Gras is always the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
2. Carnival season begins on Jan. 6, Twelfth Night, the Christian holy day of the Epiphany, and ends with Mardi Gras.
3. Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is also known as Shrove Tuesday.
4. "Laissez les bon temps rouler" is the official greeting of Mardi Gras. It means "Let the good times roll."
5. The colors of Mardi Gras are purple (justice), gold (power) and green (faith).
6. New Orleans has been celebrating Fat Tuesday with parades since 1837. 
7. Carnivals include balls, parties, and parades with floats and costumed dancers.
8. The first floats appeared in the parade in 1857.
9. During the 12-day period leading up to Mardi Gras, nearly 70 parades roll in the area.
10. It’s illegal to not wear a mask onboard a float.
11. Each parade is run by a different krewe.
12. Krewes choose a different theme for their parades each year.
13. Each krewe has a system of royalty.
14. Whitney first attended Mardi Gras in 1996; at happy hour at the Irish Times on a Wednesday, several colleagues convinced him to show up the next day at work with bags packed for Mardi Gras. He did, and they all drove the roughly 1,000,000 hours to New Orleans. Way more roughly coming back Sunday.
15. Mardi Gras Indians are more secretive about their parade schedules.
16. Beads have been a tradition since the early 1900's.
17. Mentioning one phrase will score you beads at parades: "throw me something, mister"
18. If you want to keep Mardi Gras family friendly, avoid the French Quarter.
19. Festivities have been canceled 13 times before, most often during wartime.
20. Whitney returned to Mardi Gras in 1997 with his fiancee's sister; that went over poorly.
21. Sometimes coconuts are distributed instead of beads.
22. Mardi Gras sometimes overlaps with the Super Bowl.
23. Joe Corcoran and Whitney had heaping amounts of beads from sweet-talking hot girls and shedding clothing before many female onlookers.
24. Mobile, Alabama, was the first place in the United States to celebrate Mardi Gras.
25. Mardi Gras is a state holiday in Alabama, Florida, and parts of Louisiana.

Good luck! Laissez les bons temps rouler!