What a tradition. The Tournament of Noses Parade.
If you missed this morning’s telecast of the annual Tournament of Noses (well, okay, Roses) Parade, you really missed something. If you’re like me, you’ve seen it, done it, been there. It’s too wholesome for its own good, so very yesterday.
Except this year. Today’s parade totally rocked.
No doubt, you were sleeping off a hangover, but this year’s parade really got with the program. Yes, there were the usual marching bands, horses and floats, but there was much more. First, the US Air Force band played, highlighted by a flyover by two F-115 Stealth Fighters and a B-2 Stealth Bomber. For my money, that was pretty cool. But what none of us expected to see was the simulated nuclear bombing of Baghdad, using the nearby town of Altadena as ground zero. Intense.
Then there were the corporate floats. Frankly, I was shocked to see entries from both Enron, ImClone, Marth Stewart and Tyco. But there they were. The Tyco float featured a large image of Dennis Koslowski running with the money, all in a chorus of flowers. What excited the crowd was as Dennis took the money and ran, dollar bills spewed out of his briefcase, causing people to scramble on the street. For my money (oops), it was pretty impressive PR. The Enron float (whose theme was We're only in it for the money) featured Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow flipping everybody off, all in a dazzling array of roses in various shades. The combined ImClone/Martha Stewart float had the theme of Only little people get convicted, a kind of It's a small world from Hell.
But wait! There’s more!! Much to my surprise, the best float by far was from the adult film industry, Celebrating 75 Years of Hard-Core Porn. The float was incredible. How the people who build those things could create in flowers the 8 people depicted on the float doing what they did was a marvel of mechanical engineering. It featured this 40-foot woman (beautifully rendered in roses, azaleas and gardenias) throbbing up and down…well, you just should have seen it. I was amazed that the Tournament organizers would allow such a float, but hey – times are changing. The float was very popular with the crowd, although many parents covered their kids’ eyes.
Finally, one of the more popular floats was from one of the large banks. Titled What we’ll do to bin Laden once we catch the little bastard, it was a very realistic representation of torture techniques but beautifully done in exquisite tropical flowers. Listening to Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks doing the play-by-play, you could tell they really liked that one.
I really should have made the trek to Pasadena this year for it. Once upon a time, I did.
Recollections of Past Parades.
When I was in school at the famous Art Center College of Design, I rented some really cheap photo studio space in Old Town Pasadena, right above a XXX book store and a dive bar. (And no, I never went to either. Ever.) At the time, it was anything but a good part of town, but we needed cheap space to do our tabletop still live commercial advertising photos, and it gave us a great view of the Rose Parade. Today, Old Town is a lot different. The sleazeball bookstore and dive bar are long gone, replaced by a Gap store. A new Apple Store is opening across the street next week. Times have changed.
A bunch of us would hunker down in our studio the night before, armed to the teeth with champagne and squirt guns. If you haven’t been to Pasadena, CA on New Year’s Eve, it’s the mirror image of what you see on TV the following morning. It’s Party Central. Almost a million people lined the streets, totally out of control. Our studio (which we rechristened The Texas School Book Depository for the night) had three windows, giving us an unobstructed squirt gun free fire zone on the drunks below. Working in close coordination, we would pick out a particularly obnoxious drunk, and about 7 or 8 of us would train a withering stream of fire on the jerk. It was hours of fun.
We also figured out how to make money at the expense of the drunken revelers. In a spurt of reckless imagination during my second year at Art Center, we pooled our money and went to Trader Joes, an incredible outlet for comestibles and alcoholic beverages to stock up on vast quantities of champagne at a deep discount. We loaded up an old VW Microbus full of the chilled bubbly and drove the length of Colorado Boulevard (the parade route), lined with party animals. Discreetly sliding open the VW’s big side door, we shamelessly peddled the champagne to the crowd at ridiculously inflated prices, in total disregard for local ordinances and our legal safety. The later it got, the higher the price.
Let’s just say we made off like bandits.
In my senior year at Art Center, I was asked by the Tournament organizers to be an official photographer. Weighed down with camera gear, I slowly made my way to the press stand to capture the event. A couple of images stood out in my mind. By dawn, most of the drunks and party animals retreated to pass out, or found a rock to crawl under. But a few stragglers were to be found. As I walked toward the starting line of the parade, I saw this perfect looking couple, a sort-of Barbie and Ken, but without all the plastic. The woman was simply stunning and classy. Out of the blue, a totally stoned space cadet approached her. He had obviously been partying all night, and I could almost make out the little nuts, bolts, flies and small planets that orbited around his head. Let’s just say this guy was no rocket scientist, someone whose potential for upward mobility was severely limited. He looked her up and down, stared at her from point blank and said, “Lady, you got nice buns.” It was truly a Kodak moment.
Just to give you a sense of the times, it was 1980 and we had hostages in Iran. At the time, the US military was hardly in high regard by most college students. But I could tell America was turning a corner. Literally. Photographing from the press stand above a large crowd of rowdy college students (many who had been partying all the night before), I saw the US Marine Corps marching band turn onto Colorado Boulevard to head down the main length of the parade route. I was expecting the party animals to give the Marines a nasty reception.
But I was wrong.
Instead, the crowd went insane. People who had but months before been anti-war peaceniks had overnight turned into hawks. They started screaming and cheering, yelling for the bloody head of the Ayatollah Kouhmeni on a platter. It was amazing. Times were changing.
If you get the chance, make the trek to Pasadena. But just watch where you step if you’re crossing the parade route. Those horses can um, well, leave quite a mess.
If you missed this morning’s telecast of the annual Tournament of Noses (well, okay, Roses) Parade, you really missed something. If you’re like me, you’ve seen it, done it, been there. It’s too wholesome for its own good, so very yesterday.
Except this year. Today’s parade totally rocked.
No doubt, you were sleeping off a hangover, but this year’s parade really got with the program. Yes, there were the usual marching bands, horses and floats, but there was much more. First, the US Air Force band played, highlighted by a flyover by two F-115 Stealth Fighters and a B-2 Stealth Bomber. For my money, that was pretty cool. But what none of us expected to see was the simulated nuclear bombing of Baghdad, using the nearby town of Altadena as ground zero. Intense.
Then there were the corporate floats. Frankly, I was shocked to see entries from both Enron, ImClone, Marth Stewart and Tyco. But there they were. The Tyco float featured a large image of Dennis Koslowski running with the money, all in a chorus of flowers. What excited the crowd was as Dennis took the money and ran, dollar bills spewed out of his briefcase, causing people to scramble on the street. For my money (oops), it was pretty impressive PR. The Enron float (whose theme was We're only in it for the money) featured Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow flipping everybody off, all in a dazzling array of roses in various shades. The combined ImClone/Martha Stewart float had the theme of Only little people get convicted, a kind of It's a small world from Hell.
But wait! There’s more!! Much to my surprise, the best float by far was from the adult film industry, Celebrating 75 Years of Hard-Core Porn. The float was incredible. How the people who build those things could create in flowers the 8 people depicted on the float doing what they did was a marvel of mechanical engineering. It featured this 40-foot woman (beautifully rendered in roses, azaleas and gardenias) throbbing up and down…well, you just should have seen it. I was amazed that the Tournament organizers would allow such a float, but hey – times are changing. The float was very popular with the crowd, although many parents covered their kids’ eyes.
Finally, one of the more popular floats was from one of the large banks. Titled What we’ll do to bin Laden once we catch the little bastard, it was a very realistic representation of torture techniques but beautifully done in exquisite tropical flowers. Listening to Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks doing the play-by-play, you could tell they really liked that one.
I really should have made the trek to Pasadena this year for it. Once upon a time, I did.
Recollections of Past Parades.
When I was in school at the famous Art Center College of Design, I rented some really cheap photo studio space in Old Town Pasadena, right above a XXX book store and a dive bar. (And no, I never went to either. Ever.) At the time, it was anything but a good part of town, but we needed cheap space to do our tabletop still live commercial advertising photos, and it gave us a great view of the Rose Parade. Today, Old Town is a lot different. The sleazeball bookstore and dive bar are long gone, replaced by a Gap store. A new Apple Store is opening across the street next week. Times have changed.
A bunch of us would hunker down in our studio the night before, armed to the teeth with champagne and squirt guns. If you haven’t been to Pasadena, CA on New Year’s Eve, it’s the mirror image of what you see on TV the following morning. It’s Party Central. Almost a million people lined the streets, totally out of control. Our studio (which we rechristened The Texas School Book Depository for the night) had three windows, giving us an unobstructed squirt gun free fire zone on the drunks below. Working in close coordination, we would pick out a particularly obnoxious drunk, and about 7 or 8 of us would train a withering stream of fire on the jerk. It was hours of fun.
We also figured out how to make money at the expense of the drunken revelers. In a spurt of reckless imagination during my second year at Art Center, we pooled our money and went to Trader Joes, an incredible outlet for comestibles and alcoholic beverages to stock up on vast quantities of champagne at a deep discount. We loaded up an old VW Microbus full of the chilled bubbly and drove the length of Colorado Boulevard (the parade route), lined with party animals. Discreetly sliding open the VW’s big side door, we shamelessly peddled the champagne to the crowd at ridiculously inflated prices, in total disregard for local ordinances and our legal safety. The later it got, the higher the price.
Let’s just say we made off like bandits.
In my senior year at Art Center, I was asked by the Tournament organizers to be an official photographer. Weighed down with camera gear, I slowly made my way to the press stand to capture the event. A couple of images stood out in my mind. By dawn, most of the drunks and party animals retreated to pass out, or found a rock to crawl under. But a few stragglers were to be found. As I walked toward the starting line of the parade, I saw this perfect looking couple, a sort-of Barbie and Ken, but without all the plastic. The woman was simply stunning and classy. Out of the blue, a totally stoned space cadet approached her. He had obviously been partying all night, and I could almost make out the little nuts, bolts, flies and small planets that orbited around his head. Let’s just say this guy was no rocket scientist, someone whose potential for upward mobility was severely limited. He looked her up and down, stared at her from point blank and said, “Lady, you got nice buns.” It was truly a Kodak moment.
Just to give you a sense of the times, it was 1980 and we had hostages in Iran. At the time, the US military was hardly in high regard by most college students. But I could tell America was turning a corner. Literally. Photographing from the press stand above a large crowd of rowdy college students (many who had been partying all the night before), I saw the US Marine Corps marching band turn onto Colorado Boulevard to head down the main length of the parade route. I was expecting the party animals to give the Marines a nasty reception.
But I was wrong.
Instead, the crowd went insane. People who had but months before been anti-war peaceniks had overnight turned into hawks. They started screaming and cheering, yelling for the bloody head of the Ayatollah Kouhmeni on a platter. It was amazing. Times were changing.
If you get the chance, make the trek to Pasadena. But just watch where you step if you’re crossing the parade route. Those horses can um, well, leave quite a mess.
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