- That’s an Old Testament book you imbeciles!
Perhaps the unseasonable cold, high winds and other miserable conditions were my punishment for seeking out an assignment, mainly to laugh at it, and most definitely not with it. Were the Gods and Goddesses of the Snark Universe telling me that a well of snark-worthy targets of this magnitude is not easily won? Usually, winter coats in Southern California are a prop – and that’s even during the three months out of the year when you can wear them and not look insane.
"Did somebody call for a big bag of hot air?"
And you’d really think that between the balloons, fossil fuel emissions, and “celebrities,” there’d be enough hot air wafting down Hollywood Boulevard to make everyone comfortable, if not, toasty warm.
Who?
in the top five, if not number one. Think I’m being a stick-in-the-mud? Try the following exercise: pretend you’re describing what a parade is to an alien using as few descriptive words as you can, and without talking about its history and/or the emotions a parade is supposed to evoke.
“Well, a bunch of people line up on a street. Then a bunch of things and people go down the street, very slowly, so the people can wave at them. These things include famous personages in automobiles; young people playing instruments; people on horses; giant balloons; and floats.”
Next, try describing a float. “Well first, precariously assemble a bunch of boards on a slow moving vehicle, so people can stand on them…” We can play this all day. Digressing in the opening paragraphs bodes badly for the rest of the piece. Soooooooo…
If the Hollywood Christmas Parade is on December 21, 2012 - those aliens are goin' straight home
I recently covered the Dance of the Dead that is The Hollywood Christmas Parade. “Aw, man. I don’t know what I’d do if I got that assignment,” my writerly friends said. Oh, no. I didn’t get this assignment. There’s no J. Jonah Jameson hollering at me through a Hitler moustache in the offices of a major metropolitan magazine. I don’t usually have an editor screaming at me about, well, anything. I asked for this assignment. More to the point, in the absence of things like an editor, or even a department head, to play middleman between me and the subjects I cover, I have to make up my own gigs. So I did the legwork to score this one – not that it was particularly hard.
“Hi! I’m from Pasadena Parenting Weekly, and I want to cover your show.”
“You mean, someone’s actually interested?”
Only in America: Mini. Blue. Angels.
It was really out of nothing more than morbid curiousity that I thought it might be interesting, if nothing else, to catch up with something I used to like as a kid this holiday season. Older, wiser — rather, more cynical and jaded — I thought it would be campy, and even Huell Howser-esque, to cover the parade. I probably haven’t watched it regularly in at least twenty years, and the one time I did happen upon it, I didn’t recognize a single person, save for the withered mummies they bust out of the mothballs and trot down Hollywood Boulevard every year so they don’t go all “Norma Desmond,” on the community at large.
Who?!
Since that one magical time, when I witnessed the roll out of all the WB’s mid-season replacements in float form, I’ve been calling it “The Cavalcade of Has Beens,” which really only covers half the story. Actually, they should change the name of the parade, again. I suggest The WHO??? Parade. In order to be a “has been,” you actually have to have been in the first place. Think of it this way: E! Entertainment Television has a potential TWENTY FUCKING FOUR HOURS A DAY of entertainment “news” programming to fill, and they sure as fuck weren’t down there.
The only people who had a less fortunate position than myself were the reporters from "Bop!"
The press kit confirmed that 2010 would be no different from years past, at least when it came to “star power.” Mostly, it was people from soap operas and Disney shitcoms. It was almost cute the way the person who did the press release figured out a way to say, “Um, we got nothin’ folks.” The name of the show would go first, then the “talent” associated with it. As if seeing the title Hannah Montanna is going to make us forget that we don’t know who Jason Earles is. The anomaly, on paper at least, was Danny Trejo. Mainly because he actually has a career, and I know who he is.
I also took the assignment because I thought it would be relatively easy, which in truth, coming up with 200-500 words is pretty easy. I could have adapted the press release, and just called it a day after the “Red Carpet.” Pardon me, I SHOULD HAVE adapted the press release, and called it a day after the red carpet. The fact that the event staffers didn’t think to put out at least some fucking hot water, paper cups and goddam fucking Folger’s crystals should have been a portent of doom.
Actually, no. The first portent of doom was the pirate balloon, and its staff.
Where I come from, pirate = rum
“That’s crazy,” I said. “They’re so hard up for sponsors, they’ve turned to the Captain Morgan people!”
What if you went in there, and instead of Santa, it was Tom Cruise?
Not quite. Since the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce cut the parade loose in the early 2000’s, the City of Los Angeles has had to turn to alternative sources for funding – dead horses don’t flog themselves, you know. And if the annual appearance of a Winter Wonderland on that dead-ass lot next to Hubbard Headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard says anything at all, it’s that Scientologists are all about Christmas. Well, X-Mas. Well, Holiday. The pirate, and his inflatable treasure chest, were advertising L. Ron Hubbard’s series of fiction “Stories from the Golden Age.”
"Yar! Would ye be wantin' a free personality test, matey?"
This is what happens when Rip Taylor farts
Nothing serves as a better reminder of where one is at on the entertainment reporting ladder — or perhaps where the publication you work for is in the pecking order — than being stationed next to the reporters for Bop! and Teen Beat magazines. So to take a tally, freezing fucking cold, no coffee or cocoa, and I’m standing next to mall-lings. To their credit, they kept their cool when Rip Taylor accosted them.
Mr. Taylor pauses for a moment to discuss his interpretation of Lear with the girl from Tiger Beat
Digital camera technology is a beautiful thing. You can crack off a shot to give a looney his attention pill, just so he’ll leave you the fuck alone, and it barely makes a dent in your memory card. Personally, though, I actually have a soft spot in my heart for Rip Taylor. I’ve seen a lot of episodes of Love Boat and $64,000 Pyramid. Though his reason for being (semi) famous is pretty retarded, I can at least point to definable shtick.
Who???
So after being outside the back of a Scientologist bookstore, clapping at the likes of Erik Estrada so I don’t get thrown the fuck out, we are directed to the Press Pit. “Sweet,” I thought. “That must be where they’re keeping the Saint Bernards wearning the collars with a little keg of brandy on them.”
I’m not a diva when it comes to reporting. I’ve stood back and made bunny ears behind my counterparts who berate event staff. Nothing sets me off quicker than, “Don’t you know who I am?” BUT… if you don’t understand the value of a couple bagel plates and some shitty coffee, at least realize that the best place to put press and photographers is WHERE THE FUCKING LIGHTS ARE!!! EVEN BETTER – WHERE THE FUCKING LIGHTS ARE, AND WHERE THE CARS ARE STOPPING TO TALK TO ERIK ESTRADA!!!
This is what the parade looks like when you don't work for Hallmark Movie Channel
No, the more than aptly named “Press Pit” was a two-level set of plywood risers, the likes of which I haven’t seen since being in chorus in the sixth grade. They were being guarded by another volunteer, who was at wit’s end, trying to get a large family of Latino people to understand that it wasn’t just a really cool place for them to sit. She finally resorted to “liberating” a couple of traffic cones from LAPD when their backs were turned. Any moron could have told her that her wall wasn’t going to work. Too many gaps…
This is all before the parade began, mind you.
Larry King was the Grand Marshall, which was another reason whoever organized this clusterfuck is brain damaged. This is not me being “catty.” There’s a very real danger of Larry King croaking at any given moment, and you don’t want the last memory of the man being the entertainment business equivalent of the Zapruder film. This is funny because, even before he hit the Press Pit, the cops parted the crowd on Highland, and the classic car in which he and his Mormon wife were riding, made a beeline for the end of the parade route.
Ladies and gentlemen, Grand Marshall Larry King, and his lovely wife, Shawn!
“Boy, those people are going to be PISSED when they find out that the rest of the parade is about an hour and a half behind him,” I thought.
Hot... but, WHO???
From there, well, that’s the funny part. From there, I don’t have a lot to say about the parade that hasn’t been said, or assumed, before. Just one continuous line of WHO??? This had to be annoying to the volunteer in charge of the Press Pit. Because we eventually stopped asking each other, and started asking her. When your job, at its very core, involves knowing more than your fair share about people in the popular culture, asking “who?” repeatedly will usually result in your being exiled, and your editor getting a very nasty call from pissed off publicists. At the Hollywood Christmas Parade, it became a running gag.
Machete improvises?
I think it’s pretty well established by now that I’m no prude. What I am saying is that the Christmas Parade is an old school tradition; and in terms of structure and execution, a very, very old Hollywood tradition. There are a lot of people who would shit an ever-lovin’ brick if they knew that one of the participants had double-teamed Lindsay Lohan and her onscreen mom in Machete. I could see him getting around that with the old guard by playing up his role in the Spy Kids movies. Plus, the guy is as clean as a whistle in real life.
The really weird one was UFC fighter, Tito Ortiz. The fact that he beats the holy shit out of people for a living is one thing. Again, it’s something that’s kind of moot in this entertainment landscape. There was a time when WWE was considered “fringe.” I like UFC well enough. Most of the time, it’s two jock shitheads who probably fucked with people like me in high school beating each other to an early grave. Add a PE teacher into the mix, and I’d never miss a fight!
Tito Ortiz takes time off from beating the shit out of Jenna Jameson to wish his fans a merry Christmas
No, if my eyes didn’t deceive me, his “baby mama” was riding with him, and that would be (former) porn star, Jenna Jameson – who, just because she doesn’t do “features,” anymore, doesn’t mean she’s not involved with the game. Then again, she’s more successful than any other producer they could get to participate – without making him Grand Marshall. And I gotta be honest. I think they should have MORE porn stars in the parade. Let’s get it all out on the table, people! Nope, the real problem for me, porn and violence being their bread and butter aside [After all, is there a more fitting symbol of Hollywood than that?] is that: HE WENT TO JAIL FOR SMACKING HER AROUND EARLIER THIS YEAR! She even filed for divorce and dragged his name through the mud in public. They eventually backpeddled on the story and reconciled, but you’d really think that somebody would have realized the potential PR nightmare involved and called Hulk Hogan and his amazon daughter. Maybe they did, and the Hulk-ster wanted money.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s a charity event,’ brother?”
I actually heard somebody say "Isn't that cool how his lightsaber is a zigzag pattern?"
What I really enjoyed was the balloons. I enjoyed them for many reasons, none of them were because they’re awesome, or they remind me of Christmas. The majority were half-inflated. I love the image of a parade producer cutting costs, and sending out the balloons as soon as they looked close enough to “right.” It was most likely, however, that because helium expands, which gives the balloons their lift, the cold weather made it possible only to barely keep the balloons afloat.
"Who you callin' nutcracker??? Ah'm shick of you, anyway..."
Barely. If there was one upshot to the shitty positioning of The Pit, it was that the high winds made it virtually impossible for the handlers to control the balloons. The nutcracker was the best because it was one that managed to retain its shape after it was off camera – which was a feat. The only thing with more hot air in it was Larry King, and he knew better than to hang around. This apparently made it very difficult for the volunteers to control, with hilarious results. By the time it got to our end of the route — in between buildings, creating a SERIOUS wind-tunnel — the volunteers were struggling to hold the balloon back from crushing the people who were in front of the Souvenirs of Hollywood trinket shop and tourist trap. He looked like a drunk trying to pick a fight with the crowd.
A caption would only spoil the magic...
I did not tough it out. I did not finish the parade. And there was a point, where the end WAS in fact, in sight and still, I just had to go. The siren song of Canters’ matzo ball soup, and half a Reuben sandwich were beconing. My feet were fucking killing me, I was tired of seeing celebrities get to the edge of the carpet (yes, about twenty yards of Hollywood Boulevard were covered in red carpet) only to have the driver gun the engine just before the single unit of cheap klieg lights whose generator was already running low.
WHO???????????
A balloon of Horton, from Horton Hears A Who, was just getting off of the carpet, and looking to finish off the work that the nutcracker began.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Horton. It’s time to leave.”
Tales From The Snark Side 