Mardi gras

• NEW ORLEANS - Rocker Bret Michaels and Grammy-winning singer Cyndi Lauper were expected to usher in Mardi Gras with musical performances in the wee hours of the morning Tuesday.
(CBS News)
• FAIRHOPE, Alabama (AP) -- Mardi Gras. It brings to mind beads, parties and fancy floats in New Orleans as people cram in all the fun they can before the austere religious period known as Lent begins.
(Yahoo Finance)
• WDSU .com Ladders, chairs and tents lined St. Charles Avenue early Tuesday morning -- a precursor of things to come.
(msnbc.com)
• NEW ORLEANS -- As Carnival builds toward its out-of-control crescendo of Fat Tuesday, Barry Kern and his team of float-builders and artists are already preparing for next years parades.
(Huffington Post)
• Its Mardi Gras time and as usual the floats that will parade through in New Orleans have a distinct flavor. Barely a month after LSUs was beaten in the BCS title game in the city, there is one float that pokes fun at the Tigers.
(USA Today)
• When I moved to New Orleans, I discovered that this was a city that — at least in terms of food — was a world to itself. Many of its foods had little in common with those of the South I grew up in. Nearly everything was new and exciting and exotic.
(YAHOO!)
• Thousands are celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans today.  Revelers descended on the city for what is believed to be the best Fat Tuesday since Hurricane Katrina.
(msnbc.com)
• From babes to "old dudes," it was a good day for all ages in Metairie on Fat Tuesday. Eight-month-old Reese Thibodeaux, from Kenner, was dressed for her first Mardi Gras in a yellow onesie, a pink tutu and a purple fleur de lis scarf.
(nola.com)
• Revellers around the world are celebrating Mardi Gras — or Fat Tuesday — a day of rich foods, colorful parades, and raucous parties before Lent, a 40-day period of repentance leading to Easter.
(Voice of America)
• Carnival season commences Tuesday with Mardi Gras, and for the past eight days, partygoers have taken over the French Quarter in New Orleans, reveling in beads, booze and well, that other five-letter b-word.
(CNN)