Rose Parade

I had a great seat for this year's Rose Parade, as my second-floor office has a window right on Colorado Boulevard. I hadn't seen the parade live in probably 10 years, but it's a magnificent sight; it's impossible to capture the scale and detail of the floats on TV. I didn't take any pictures, but this guy has 200 shots, including this one of the City of Duarte/City of Hope float. My cousin's daughter Nicole is one of the people on the float, waving; a year ago she was diagnosed with leukemia, but thanks to a bone marrow transplant at the City of Hope Medical Center, she's doing much better and even won the Teen Miss Corona pageant.
Note that the photographer, while certainly having a nice collection of snapshots, made the grievous mistake of referring to it as the "Rose Bowl Parade." Ugh. It's the Rose Parade, or the Tournament of Roses Parade. The parade came first, decades before the game (which USC won handily, I might add; so much for Michigan "deserving" a shot at the title).

A couple of my favorite floats, the first from the City of La Cañada Flintridge, the second from Honda, who always submits something spectacular:
You can see more photos on the L.A. Times or Pasadena Star-News websites.

The Oak Ridge Boys were on a float, and I wondered about them and looked them up on Wikipedia. You know when they were formed? 1945! Obviously, none of the original members are with them.

And of course, no mention of the Oak Ridge Boys is complete without referencing the otherworldly vocal stylings of the J & H Productions guy.

Incidentally, can anyone from the East Coast explain the appeal of the Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade? I mean, it's a lot of the same damn balloons every year, and they're all just a bunch of corporate mascots. Give me the Rose Parade any day over that. We don't deplete the world's dwindling helium supply, either. (And New York's New Year tradition, that giant jewelled bauble? Just tacky. Don't New Yorkers pride themselves on their sense of taste?)