Source: NOLA.com
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Do you know what it means to be king in Orleans? Hulk Hogan, named King Bacchus by the Carnival group that first brought celebrities to lead their parades, said Friday that he was just starting to.
“This is better than winning the World Wrestling Federation championship and slamming Andre the Giant!” he told a small crowd of patients, parents, doctors and other employees in a parking lot outside Children’s Hospital. “It’s just now hitting me how big this is and what an honor it is.”
He styled next to a huge plaque naming him Bacchus, god of wine and mirth, held up by krewe captain Owen “Pip” Brennan.
Waiting for him were children in heavy jackets or blankets who tapped feet clad in wooly socks, tennis shoes and bunny slippers to the Bucktown All Stars brass band.
Hogan showed up in jeans and a black T-shirt, throwing purple aluminum coins with his face — in shades and bandanna, of course — on one side and an artist’s idea of Bacchus on the other.
Hogan brought Lexie Hayles, a 10-year-old cystic fibrosis patient from Abita Springs, and 12-year-old Carl Barre, a leukemia patient from New Orleans, up to the podium with him.
Each year the Krewe of Bacchus’ celebrity king visits Children’s Hospital to meet the patients. In a statement released Tuesday by Bacchus officials, the celebrity wrestler said one reason he accepted the offer to lead this year’s parade was Bacchus’ relationship with the hospital.
“This is where I steal all my energy to get through the weekend,” joked Hogan, who went into the hospital afterward to talk to children who couldn’t get outside.
Bacchus parades on Sunday. Hogan said he planned to spend part of Saturday visiting parts of the city that have yet to recover from Hurricane Katrina’s floods in 2005.
“It’s really great to see the whole city recovering,” he said. “I want to see some of the areas that haven’t recovered yet.”
As Hogan went into the hospital, Carl, holding up a huge black marker, tried to get his autograph. A hospital employee assured him he could get the signature inside.
He did — on his head, bald from chemotherapy, hospital spokeswoman Cathleen Randon said.
“He said `I’m never going to wash my head again!'” she recounted. “I told him, `Carl, that’s gross.'”
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