2002.01.01

So every year as far as I can remember, my mom would always be awake on the morning of New Year's Day, watching the Tournament of Roses parade on TV. I've never really seen any point to it - I mean, why watch a bunch of flower-covered floats go by on TV when you could be lying in a warm, comfy bed asleep or something?

But alas, this year, I found myself in southern Cal visiting Yolanda, and one of her family's traditions has been to go watch the parade in Pasadena live every year. So hell, why not go to the parade too? For this, we stayed over at one of her aunts' places in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, where I met two of her cousins. They're pretty funny...but anyway, the next morning, we woke up around 5:30 or so just to go stake out spots along the parade route. And it was nuts! Never before have I seen so many people in one place outdoors so early in the morning! By the time the parade started, we were all packed in like sardines, just trying to get a glimpse of the street.

Here's a shot of the crowd on one sidewalk. The insanity...

Anyhow, after all was said and done, they marched some floats up and lined up some bands, but then they all stopped there or something. I guess farther up on the route, where all the TV cameras were, some sort of speech was probably being made or something. Whatever. In any event, there was a band stopped directly in front of us and some drunk people in the crowd on the sidewalk were sarcastically cheering every time they actually did something (since apparently, the crowd was getting impatient waiting for stuff to start).

Yup, and here's that band that was standing there waiting for the parade to begin. Some drunk people in the crowd were taunting them and demanding that they start playing something. So when a few drummers beat their drums briefly, some sarcastic applause came from the crowd. The other thing to notice is the houses on the other side of the street -- it must suck to live there if you wanted to sleep in on New Year's Day, eh?

So eventually, we figured out what everyone was stalled and waiting for: right before the parade was to begin, some spiffy aircraft was supposed to fly overhead...like this B2 bomber or whatever it is:

Then after that, it was float madness. Yup. Float after float after float of something or another that some organisation spent countless hours designing...here are a few that I got pictures of:

Check it out - koalas! woo hoo!

And here are some tigers. Yup. Tigers. Pretty scary looking little buggers they were, and to think, it was made from flowers...

And here's one of the more amusing ones I saw: this float featured a fully-functional carousel where people could sit and ride horsies around and around and around the whole time...

And here's one of many floats that had a patriotic theme to it...

And aside from floats, there were some other interesting things, like marching bands (as alluded to above) and people riding horses.

This looks an awful lot like the bunch of people from Medieval Times riding along here...Of course, the yellow knight looks to be a different one than the one that performed when I was there last summer.

And here's a marching band of bagpipe players in kilts from West Point. Yup, that's right: kilts!

And of course, with all the heightened security everywhere, there were the "security dudes" who acted more like "assholes on a power trip", seeming to take pride in flexing their power in telling people where they could and could not stand along the sidewalk. The dudes pictured here were particularly annoying...

Yeah, so after that, it was a few hours in the books, and it wasn't even noon yet. But at the very least, I can now say I've seen one of these things live and in person, yup yup.

And here are the people that never get any TV coverage: it's the religious fanatics who follow along after the parade spreading the word and their beliefs...I was amused.