To celebrate its 375th birthday, Boston had a parade. I love a good parade. I love the bad ones, too. It's the marching bands--I can't help it.
This one was not at all advertised, and attendance was appropriately thin. Paul Revere, or an actor who plays him in parades, started things off by riding the route on horseback, shouting, "The parade is coming!" Or maybe, given his inability to work the meager crowds, it was really William Dawes. Anyway, it was perfectly fitting that, as our mongoloid Mayor Menino marched by us--just about the only spectators in sight--I was looking down, fiddling with my camera, not even noticing.
By the time the Puerto Rican group came by, with their deafening music and dancing girls, things were perking up. The route was lined by spectators on at least one side. Some bands were actually quite good. The gay pride people were all smiles and waves, even though censors apparently required the taping of a rainbow flag over the word "gay" on their banner. But pride! So much pride.
Then came the Boston Parks Department float: Imagine a flatbed carpeted with Easter grass, with potted plastic plants that had long ago fallen over and never been righted, with a park bench and drinking fountain stuck in there. As it passed, a guy behind me said to his friend, "All they're missing is the stray shopping cart and a homeless dude on the bench."
2 comments:
funny.
My favorites included the old nutter in the sailor cap marshalling a loosey-goosey marching jazz band to the tune of "Tequila." When the crowd didn't shout "Tequila" on the appropriate cue, Captain hollared "Don't you know the goddamn song?!" in that kinda funny, kinda scary way that makes one ask "was he drunk? This early?" And the Brazilian women in riotous Carnival outfits of enourmous diameter (the outfits, not the women) picking their way around the horse poop. Why don't the horses ever go at the end of the parade? Really, with the marching bands and all, it should be obvious.
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