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Posted March 26, 2007  Hollywood Christmas Parade Marching
Band
(35mm time exposure, hand
colored)
by Michael Dare
The Hollywood chamber of commerce has
cancelled the annual Hollywood
Christmas Parade, claiming they lost $100,000 last year and
expected to lose twice that this year.
Hollywood Boulevard is simply too narrow a street
to really do the job right. The Hollywood parade has always been an endless
line of marching bands, small floats, lots of old cowboys on horseback, and
has-been celebrities in backseats of convertibles with their names on banners
taped to the doors, waving back and forth to crowds feigning interest, crowds of
wholesome families from Pasadena who found themselves surrounded by every manner
of Hollywood derelict who treated the whole event as a massive hallucination. If
one were Dickens, one could paint a pastiche of cultural revolution, the haves
in the convertibles vs. the have-nots picking the pockets of the tourists. It
was the real thing, a genuine parochial home town parade where the town
just happened to be the entertainment capital of the world.
How can I be mourning the death of this
tacky antiquation that had neither the overboard surreality of the Rose
Parade in Pasadena, the scale of the ridiculous balloons in the Macy's
Parade in New York, nor the genuine party attitude of the Mardi Gras in New
Orleans? It's entirely personal. For years I had a second floor loft/photo
studio on Hollywood Blvd., above Frederick's, across the street from Johnny's
Steak House, down the block from Musso & Franks, with two
enormous French windows that overlooked the street, windows that
actually opened out onto the boulevard and the Walk of Fame in all its tacky
glory. It was the perfect place to watch the parade go by, as all my friends
soon noticed. For about a decade, it turned into
an annual event.
Unlike the magnificent city of New Orleans, where
drinking in the streets was allowed during Mardi Gras as long as it was in a
paper cup, the city of Hollywood never did anything to encourage its only parade
to turn into anything like a party in the street. No such problem upstairs,
where the level of festivity far exceeded that of the rabble below.
This was a time when I fancied myself a west coast
Andy Warhol, hosting a non-stop party of professional perverts in my photo
studio where I cranked out art by the bucket, provided the
refreshments, and sat back to watch the mayhem. The Hollywood Parade? Yeah,
who cares, unless you were watching it from Dare's loft.
 Hollywood Christmas Parade
Go-carts
Making fun of parades has a lovely underground
history, starting with KPPC in the early 70s, who presented The Credibility
Gap, a comedy group starring Harry
Shearer, David Lander, Richard Beebe, and Michael McKean. They were a lot
like The Firesign Theater with less emphasis on blowing our minds and
more on making us laugh our asses off. Every January 1st, they would advise
us to switch our TVs to the Rose Parade,
but to turn down the sound and listen to them instead. What followed was classic
and hilarious, ruthlessly making fun of everything, the floats, the queen, the
marching bands, the organizers, the designers, the flower pickers, the whole
zeitgeist of floaty showmanship.
Even now I remember my favorite bit. Every time
the camera showed the back of a float, one member of the Gap would
casually inform us "that hole in the back is where the driver is." It became
monotonous till near the end of the parade when the camera showed the back of a
horse. "That hole in the back is where the driver is" we were told.
Alas, the Gap broke up and KPPC
became KROQ where, in the 80s, I was lucky enough to be a member of
The Three Guys from Hollywood, whom I hesitate to mention in the same
breath as our noble predecessors. KROQ was right down the block from the parade
and we did live reports in the Credibility Gap tradition.
So just picture a
party, a good one, everyone in the mood, when suddenly, out the window, comes a
marching band, playing some hideous piece of Sousa crap. Everyone runs to the
balcony and shouts "Shut up! Please stop that! You're making me nauseous!" but
no, the horrible music gets louder and louder till it's right below, and we're
all shouting "In a Gadda Da Vida! Anything but that!"
And they're gone, replaced by a guy on a horse who
looks like Gene Autry because it actually is Gene Autry. We hang out the window
to get his attention, then shout "We love you Roy!"
We discovered the TV feed was actually two blocks
west, UP the parade route, giving us a good two minute warning as to who was
approaching. Knowing Charo was on her way, we made up a sign that said
"Cuchi-Cuchi," held it out the window, and now I can put in my résumé that I
once blew Charo's mind.
 Hollywood Parade
Let's face it, it's not just the sucktastic
marching music or the phony patriotism that sink parades to the bottom of
the over-all entertainment universe, it's the too too flattering commentary inevitably provided by the networks in
endless smarmy complements to everybody involved. Screw that. I want Robin
Williams and Stephen Colbert and Simon Cowell to rip the shit out of the
damn thing. Make the parade deliberately tacky, just like it's always been, but
give us commentary from people with something to say.
David Geffin, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg,
Bill Gates, the list goes on and on of the bigwigs who could save the Hollywood
Parade as casually as buying breakfast, so consider this a plea. It's worth
saving and remolding into something spectacular, a parade for the 21st century,
entirely interactive, live on TV and the internet. Encourage a vast discussion
while it's happening, turn it into a contest, a Hollywood American Idol, a
reality show, an insane promo for absolutely everything show biz, encourage
interaction with the audience in the street, celebrities throwing giant stacks
of their latest DVDs from the backseats of classic American convertibles as seen
in Hollywood movies through the ages. It doesn't take much imagination to sell
the hell out of the damn thing.
Man, if I were a billionaire I'd do it in an
instant.
Satan Doesn't Want
You to Know
Could MS Word be more annoying? Yeah,
well, I suppose it could poke you in the eye once in a while. I'm sure they're
working on it. Meanwhile, here are some ways to make MS Word less annoying.
Don't Take My Word For
It
"When tyranny is law, revolution is order."
- Don Pedra Abizu Campos -
"Grown men do not need leaders."
- Edward Abbey -
"7% of society is psychotic at any one
time."
- Dr. Phil -
"The RIAA was recently
voted the worst company in America in an online poll, narrowly beating out
Halliburton. Upset by the news and the RIAA's plans, Halliburton announced plans
of its own.
"CEO Bob Johnson said that his company would begin infecting
elephants and other endangered species with the AIDS virus then shooting them
from giant catapults onto orphanages and children's wards of hospitals.
"'If that doesn't build the hate, then I don't know what
will,' said Johnson."
- Brian Briggs: RIAA
Updates Mission Statement to Reflect Priorities -
"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's
there to appreciate it."
- Franklin P. Jones -
"On Monday, March 19, the
Supreme Court heard a case concerning the scope of student speech in public high
schools. The case, Morse v. Frederick, involved an 18 year old high
school student who was punished by school officials for displaying a banner on a
sidewalk across the street from his school. The banner was destroyed and the
student was suspended because officials believed the banner, which read 'Bong
Hits 4 Jesus,' touted a pro-drug message in violation of the school's anti-drug
policy.
"The case has the potential to impact a wide swath of student
expression. The Court, however, could walk a narrower path and carve out as
undeserving of constitutional protection just one type of speech: drug speech.
Based on the justices' questioning at oral argument, it appears that a majority
of the Court may be inclined to refashion the Nancy Reagan's mantra 'Just Say
No' into 'Don't Even Say It,' when it comes to student speech that references
drugs.
"One of the most disturbing features of the Supreme Court
argument was the fact that most of the justices appear to believe that because
drugs in high schools are a scourge worth combating, student speech about drugs
- and by extension drug policy - is likely to encourage student drug use. The
justices, in other words, equated student speech about drugs with drug use
itself, and a majority may permit school administrators to censor the former in
the hopes of snuffing out the latter."
- Daniel Abrahamson: Will the Supreme Court Separate
"Drug Speech" from Free Speech? - (Be sure to read the actual
transcipt of this ridiculous case.)
"In one experiment, people who were walking across a
college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting
chat, two men carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the
subjects. After the door went by, the subjects were asked if they had noticed
anything change.
"Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door
passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different
height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing
different clothes.
"Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger
for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect |