I was quite sur­prised to hear the opin­ions of vet­er­an mas de­sign­ers of Min­shall's Car­ni­val king cos­tume. I was not sur­prised that they did not like it, but rather the rea­sons why.

What is most dis­ap­point­ing is that the ma­jor­i­ty of this non­sense came from the win­ner, Mar­cus Eu­stace. Let me just re­peat that. The win­ner. I was al­ways taught that when you ex­cel at some­thing or are recog­nised for your work over that of your peers that you should be as gra­cious as pos­si­ble; it's good sports­man­ship.

Every sin­gle en­trant in­to the com­pe­ti­tion de­mand­ed sac­ri­fice from all those in­volved, whether it be a par­tic­u­lar skill or sim­ple time and en­er­gy to sup­port their friends and fam­i­ly. Dis­miss­ing oth­er com­peti­tor's ef­fort and fi­nal re­sult is as class­less as it is taste­less–dare I say tacky?

One would al­most as­sume that the re­al is­sue was that Min­shall's Car­ni­val de­pic­tion was that it was of a man dressed as a bal­le­ri­na. No, that wouldn't be it, we're not that provin­cial in our think­ing, are we?

"That (moko jumbie) is not mas."

Well then why was Min­shall al­lowed to en­ter? Sure­ly he would not go through all that cre­ative process, time, and mon­ey to il­le­gal­ly en­ter a com­pe­ti­tion? While he is un­de­ni­ably ec­cen­tric, I would by no means tick the 'in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly-chal­lenged' box.

"You have peo­ple build­ing all kinds of ex­pen­sive cos­tumes and they com­ing tenth and eleventh."

So the cri­te­ria on be­ing crowned Car­ni­val king is cost? Cool. More mon­ey, more bet­ter. Got it. How de­light­ful­ly quaint and Trump-es­que to "juss pelt coin at it nah." I must re­mem­ber this fi­nan­cial nugget of wis­dom.

"How would it look if next year every­body play­ing moko jumbie?"

Per­son­al­ly, I think it would be de­light­ful­ly re­fresh­ing. Per­form­ing on stilts, I would think, re­quires a lit­tle more skill than haul­ing a mon­u­ment as big and hefty as the Taj Ma­hal be­hind them. More phys­i­cal strength? Def­i­nite­ly. Skill? Sor­ry, no. Moko jumbies pranc­ing around the stage en masse ver­sus watch­ing men and women do­ing their best to smile through their heart at­tack and pulled ham­strings sounds like a much more plea­sur­able time for all in­volved to me.

"That is not mas. That is why the stands are emp­ty."

Pad­na, you re­lat­ed to Learie Joseph be­cause this com­ment had me rolling, I not lyin' tuh tell yuh. Ex­cuse me. I must col­lect my­self. Ahem. Yes, the pletho­ra of moko jumbie en­trants over the last two decades has clear­ly dri­ven the spec­ta­tors off in droves. That must be why pho­tog­ra­phers were el­bow­ing each oth­er out of the way like teens at a Bieber con­cert. It cer­tain­ly couldn't be the repet­i­tive na­ture of man/woman drag­ging their vil­lage's weight in gaudy ma­te­ri­als across the stage that is caus­ing a slack in at­ten­dance. That would be ridicu­lous.

It still baf­fles me in this ob­vi­ous­ly mul­ti-cul­tur­al so­ci­ety how we Tri­nis love noth­ing bet­ter than a good pi­geon hole. Dare to be dif­fer­ent and watch how quick­ly that square peg is bashed in­to that round hole. (Why we don't have a store ded­i­cat­ed to torch­es and pitch­forks is equal­ly con­fus­ing.)

If every­thing must be fixed and un­yield­ing, then why even both­er? As in why both­er at any­thing. We are a species of in­ven­tors, it is what we do. I am sure mil­lions of peo­ple twirled their mous­tach­es or para­sols and scoffed at the au­to­mo­bile when it first came out. If our traf­fic is any­thing to go by, I think we can say it was a suc­cess. Don't even get me start­ed on what Philadel­phia's res­i­dents must have thought about Ben­jamin Franklin run­ning around in a storm with a kite. Ut­ter bonkers.

I hes­i­tate to men­tion...okay, I don't...that I ac­tu­al­ly had to use google to find an im­age of your en­try...un­like Min­shall who, un­der­stand­ably, took so­cial me­dia by storm, but then that's the thing with crowd favourites, you see.

David Cogdell