Friday, June 1, 2012

I Love a Parade

The movie "Blue Velvet," if I remember correctly, opens with a sort of surrealistic parade scene (and a severed left ear). It's a bizarre movie, and capturing the spectacle of a parade sets the tone, since parades are some the strangest fucking things I've ever seen.
I recently attender a Memorial Day parade. People in passing vehicles distributed candy, and my kids raked it in like it was Halloween. What's better than a lollipop that has just rolled across the street?
Participants in the parade included people who were trying to sell cars; people who were trying to get you to adopt dogs; people who were trying to get you to send your kids to summer camp; fire trucks; more fire trucks; cheerleaders; high-school marching bands, in full regalia in the wilting heat; cops (waving); firemen in kilts playing bagpipes; gymnasts, who had attendants walking alongside them spraying them with, I guess, water, but it was in one those pump sprayers used to put weedkiller on the lawn, so maybe they were actually spraying the kids with poison (now that would be a parade); baton twirlers; people riding bikes, including one that looked suitable for a circus clown (meanwhile, the guy who owns the local bike shop did handstands on his skateboard); my kids' friends from little league, riding in a truck while their fathers walked behind; old guys, some of whom appeared to be veterans, riding in pickups and waving; politicians (waving); and my personal favorite, the guys and gals who looked like Hell's Angels, riding their Harley Davidsons too fast, vests adorned with MIA patches and something like "Bikers for Christ" stitched across the back. God has Hell's Angels in his corner. I still don't understand why they were there or what they have to do with Memorial Day or whatever. But I suppose you have to populate a parade somehow. Sometime early in the parade a 12-foot guy dressed like Uncle Sam zigged to one curb and zagged to the other. I'm guessing he had stilts under that patriotic outfit.
We even got one of those things you use to secure a better grip on a hard-to-open jar, except this one contained some sort of religious message. Not sure about the thought process involved there. "Hmm, let's quorum up and figure out how to spread the word. I got it: The things people use to get a better grip on lids." Maybe some people use them frequently and, as such, will see the word a lot. Maybe the plan is ingenious.  They should have handed out toilet paper with Bible verses.
Our bounty also inluded, I think, seven Frisbees. What the hell, it was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, and nothing says summer like a Frisbee. And nothing reminds me more of our fallen service members than a Frisbee.The kids use these for bases while playing baseball, then the dog bites them in half.
The kids also seemed to think there was nothing unusual about it all; why not have motorcycle guys proselytizing and the high-school marching band and the girls in their gymnastics outfits and the car-dealer sales pitches? It's capitalism and God and candy and gymnasts and veterans and motorcycles and dogs. It's America. If I couldn't embrace God, catch a Frisbee, eat candy, dodge motorcycles and listen to marching bands, I might be distraught.