Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to shift to using Dreamwidth more, so let's start with this.
8:01 am: Dude, that is not how you use a piano.
8:06 am: Announcers note all the volunteers involved in making this event possible. I wonder how many volunteers they're down this year because they're working extra hours at JPL for the Ultima Thule flyby.
8:08 am: First float of the day: Honda has managed some spectacular ones in the past but is phoning it in with this one.
8:09 am: First band of the day has gone for "sexy superheroes" with its majorettes.
8:12 am: Okay, can't comment on every single thing. They're really moving it along this year.
8:16 am: Street reporter doing a fairly good job of explaining laminar flow.
8:17 am: ...but the much-ballyhooed water feature doesn't appear to have worked. Cal Poly float still looks terrific with astronauts and aliens rocking out.
8:18 am: They don't get any college credit for this? Outrage!
8:22 am: Most Oustanding Float Design given to a float advocating organ design with an amazing rendering of traditional African woodcraft. ...Slightly awkward that it's covered with white people.
8:29: Farmer's Insurance has won an award for best use of roses on its float inspired by interesting disasters it has paid claims for. Announcers struggle to identify all the animals involved.
8:34: The first out Rose Parade queen. Also the first Jewish one and the first to wear glasses, in case you were thinking the Rose Parade has a history of being progressive.
8:37: A look at the job of driving floats, which despite modern technology still consists of "squint out a tiny window and follow that line painted down the street".
8:43: I do agree that steampunk could use some more color but I think the Trader Joe's entry has gone too far. Much too far.
8:45: "Celebration" is one of those songs you'll hear every year at some point in this parade but not usually because someone has put Kool & the Gang on a float to perform it live.
8:47: Appropriately followed by a band arrangement of "Get Ready for This" (that thing they play at sporting events everywhere and no one knows the name of).
8:54: My team! My team! Quit talking, street reporter, and pay attention to that float behind you! (Someone close to me grew up working on the La Cañada Flintridge float.)
8:59: No TV time for the LCF float this year, at least not on ABC. Phooey. But there is some consolation in
looking up the list of winners and seeing that they bagged the Founder's Trophy.
9:02: 24-Hour Fitness hopes to inspire you to get in shape with a huge semi-decayed zombie. No, wait, it's supposed to be a cutaway of a healthy athlete. No, it's definitely the centerpiece of some eldritch ritual.
9:04: I don't think I knew that Pop Warner is an actual person.
9:05: "Books Keep Us On Our Toes" is a theme I can make no sense of, but that truly is a spectacular ostrich. Well done, UPS.
9:12: China Airlines can aways be counted on for something beautiful. The techno mix of traditional music is a new spin.
9:19: Hawaii has produced easily the most colorful band in the parade.
9:20: Dole has chosen to enhance its plant-covered float with tiki torches. How could this possibly go wrong?
9:23: Most exhausting-looking job in the parade: those two guys on the Carnival float having to do trampoline acrobatics for the whole route.
9:29: Segment spotlighting a little-known problem of float design: Getting your theme to work with the parade theme. (Some floats are actually started being constructed before the parade theme is even chosen.)
9:31: Chipotle's solution was to fill the bed of its float tractor with musicians.
9:32: Next up is the All-Izumo Green Band, which is of course wearing blue and black.
9:33: Sierra Madre, a city of 11,000 people, has produced an amazing Japanese garden complete with simulated stonework and aged statues.
9:37: OMG Pern! No, it's Universal/Dreamworks advertising the next
How to Train Your Dragon movie.
9:40: The Calgary Stampede Showband is, disappointingly, not stampeding.
9:43: The Cavalcade of Bands Honor band has the slowest, most mournful arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" I've ever heard.
9:45: To commemorate a project in which countless Chinese laborers were worked to death, the Chinese-American Heritage Association has assembled and decorated an entire float, which is usually the work of months, in two weeks.
9:48: I've been staring at this mochi since Christmas and it's finally time to eat some.
9:50: It is not entirely surprising that the float assembled in a mere two weeks has caught fire trying to make a corner.
9:54: Of course it's the biggest float in the parade that has broken down, necessitating bringing out the biggest tow truck in existence.
9:56: ABC gives up and starts rolling the credits.
May 2019 go slightly better than this.
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