Some Things I Like About The Doo Dah Parade, I

Ah! The Doo Dah Parade! I do love it so. Why?

First of all, they began with a fly-over by three planes with pleasant coloured smoke streaming out the back.

Big deal, you say. Fair enough, but compare this to how the Rose Parade (which runs along a similar route six weeks later) starts… with a fly-by of a Stealth Bomber flanked by two Stealth Fighters. People cheered. I first saw this in 2004 when the USA had already reached out with this power to invade Iraq, and we were all depressed about the recent re-election of the leaders who committed that crime. [Later correction: Of course, I got my date wrong… The election was to come later that year… the depressed feeling was just from the ongoing Iraq situation.] My reaction as the Stealths flew overhead? Wanting to clasp my hands over my ears and run screaming – just like the orcs and trolls of Sauron’s army do whenever the chief symbols of his air power (the winged Nazgul led by the Witch-King of Angmar) fly over the battlefield. You wield your terrible weapons and scare the crap out of your enemy and your friends – what does that say about you? So this is why I like that the Doo Dah parade starts with those less in-your-face planes.

I digress, losing half my audience (all seven of you) by making a Lord of the Rings reference. Should have chosen Homer. Oh well. So, remembering that the Doo Dah is the antidote to the cookie-cutter perfection of your typical Rose-type parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, have a look at some things that caught my eye.

One of the things I love is the sheer randomness of it all. Just odd costumes with someone making some point of other (sometimes just not clear) or advertising some local business or club:

And there are the things I come for every year, such as the Men of Leisure Synchronized Nap Team:

(they stop and do a drill, of course, which includes them putting the pillow on the ground… stretching and yawning… settling onto the ground for a nap (including some twitching and scratching of behinds… then waking and moving on to make room for the next float or team…)

… and of course the Claude Rains memorial 20-man invisible marching drill team. There’s one man carrying a banner announcing them, followed by another (both bandaged fully, as in the invisible man tradition) – he is the guy who takes the team through their drill – and then there is a large gap, where their 20 invisible colleagues presumably are marching. Well, I did not get a picture of them this year as I almost missed them. It seems that the spacing was off and they were placed in the wrong place, since nobody in the crowd seemed to even notice them (there was some distracting thing or other just before, I think, and then something distracting behind.) What I did get was a great shot of one of the team asking (arguing with?) Howdy Krishna (yeah, I know) to leave the right space and not to crowd the invisible team. I note that he walked through his invisible (and presumably intangible) colleagues in order engage in this conversation:

(More on some of my favourites in a later post…)

There’s a set of pirates, for no good reason that I could see (and why not?):

…and yes, some school-band-type outfits do show up, but the kids (boys and gilrs shaking their pom-poms alike) seem so much more genuinely happy and relaxed and secure than the cookie-cutter variety:

Of course, no Doo Dah parade is complete without incredibly subtle political messages:

…something to gross-out the families (a fake local group this time… they were handing out colouring pictures for the kiddies – of little sperms, and dsitributing little bottles (and spraying from one) of a cloudy white liquid…):

…and if I go one year and the Raelians have not shown up, I’d be very disappointed:

Well, I’ll come back to this a bit later…

-cvj