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Decent Quality Since 1847

The Purple Rose of Pasadena

1/1/2014

4 Comments

 
I watched a little bit of the Rose Parade this morning, and two small things come to mind.

One is that the City of Burbank had a float that won the Fantasy Award.  The celebrity on the float was writer-director Garry Marshall.  I mentioned this for a particular reason.  The float was very colorful -- lots of red and yellow and blue.  But there were two, small splotches of purple.  The first was the scarf that Garry Marshall wore, and the other was the megaphone he was holding.  I suspect that this was not by accident -- Garry Marshall went to Northwestern University (there always was a Northwestern pennant on the wall of Al's Drive-in on Happy Days, and Marshall periodically goes back to the school to lecture).  And Northwestern's school colors are -- purple and white!  Northwestern didn't make it into a bowl game this year, but given that the Rose Bowl is played between teams from the Big Ten (NU's conference) and the Pac-12, my guess is that this was Marshall was doing his part to at least get the Wildcats there somehow...

The other moment was when one of the floats had a space alien theme, and it was cleverly designed to allow three "spacecrafts" back out and drive around the Pasadena street before returning to the "docking port" of the float.  At one point, when driving around in semi-circles, two of the mini-vehicles came close to one another, and emcee Al Roker began screaming out, "WATCH OUT!!  WATCH OUT!!"  They didn't hit -- and then later one was headed towards the crowd, when Roker again shouted out his "WATCH OUT!!" warning, before it spun away.  Only to later yell, "DON'T HIT THE CAMERAMAN!!" who was standing in the middle of the road.  This all may have struck some viewers how thoughtful and protective and diligent Al Rocker was for public safety.  But the thing is, this wasn't Al Rocker standing in the street like he does on the Today Show, smack in the center of the action.  It wasn't even the Al Roker who stands on the curb for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, with the noisy crowd.  Rather, he and his co-host were sitting at a stand far down the road, probably a good half a mile away.  It's not that no one on the parade route heard him, but that no one could have even possibly heard him.  I suppose for some people it made for good, dramatic TV.  For head-shaking others, it helped define the term, "grandstanding for the cameras."

What else I watched was fine.  It doesn't have the sizzle of Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, but has far more charm.  But TV doesn't do it justice, so I find myself a bit distant from it.  On TV, everything looks like a...parade.  No matter how often the announcers say that every float has to be covered with flowers, it still just looks like a...parade.  For people in the area, though, if you can't make it to the parade that early or don't want to brave the crowds, or make the long trek to Pasadena, the floats are kept on display by the city for a couple days after.  I've only done that once, but it was worth it.  Up close, you can see the wonderful, seriously impressive detail of all the petalwork on everything.  But more than that...it was far and away the best-smelling parade I've ever been around.  The floral aroma is just wonderful.
4 Comments
Douglass Abramson
1/1/2014 11:00:05 am

Al Roker? Why weren't you watching channel 5, like all good Southern Californians? (Not that I watched anything. I was still asleep.)

Reply
Robert Elisberg
1/1/2014 03:16:06 pm

Seriously, ever since Bob Eubanks anti-Semitic joke was caught on film in "Roger & Me," I really haven't watched KTLA's coverage. It's not that I think he's a Bad Person, just that I no longer find their whimsical banter all that charming. Hey, you asked...

Reply
Douglass Abramson
1/1/2014 04:05:19 pm

Ah. I've never watched "Roger & Me" in its entirety; I had to look up your reference. With that and at least one anti-gay joke on the record, I'm shocked that he's still doing the parade; but this explains why my mother noticed that a KTLA reporter was doing the commentary while the AIDS awareness float with the same sex wedding went by.

Reply
Robert Elisberg
1/1/2014 04:22:17 pm

My recollection is that Bob Eubanks *might* have been off the air for one year, but I wouldn't swear to it. People's memories being what they are, I suspect most people don't remember the story. I wasn't aware of his anti-gay joke because I stopped paying much attention to the fellow. All the more an answer to your question why I don't watch the KTLA coverage.

(As for your duplicate message, that's a glitch in the software here -- not to worry, I just deleted it.)

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    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

    Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for
    the Huffington Post.  Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel.  As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.



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