I don't mean to rain on your parade, but . . .

This weekend was the big annual festival for the town where I'm employed. I worked a full day Saturday and spent three hours covering the parade on Sunday. It's a large parade - just over two hours in length with 132 floats - and it rained the last hour and a half of it. In the last 30 minutes, the light rain turned into a downpour. At the end, I was one of only a few dozen people there, standing around soaked and miserable. Boo to that.

I like parades, but I'm always disappointed by businesses that just enter a truck with their logo on it and pretend it's acceptable. Do these people not realize they're making the parade suck, or do they just not care? If your parade entry is going to totally suck, and do nothing more than shamelessly promote your crappy business, you'd better toss out a crapload of candy. Full-size candy bars, too. None of this miniature Tootsie Roll crap.

We had one business in the parade this year that had not one truck, but four in a row. While having a fleet of trucks instead of just one was meant to make it look extra cool, it actually made it four times as sucky, because it added three more sucky parts to the parade. In a two-hour parade, you don't need any extra suckiness. There's enough suck to go around. Especially with all those high school marching bands. Man, those kids suck.

Speaking of disappointing entries, here's the worst one, from Pepsi-Cola bottling:

I realize celebrities will never appear in small town parades, but it's still really pathetic to drive a truck with a bunch of cardboard people in the back. It's like that scene in the movie "Home Alone" where the little kid rigs up a bunch of cardboard figures to make it look like there's a party going on in the house, because he's a loser who has no real friends to come to a party. Or maybe it was to scare away the burglars, and keep them from robbing the house. I don't know. Either way, that kid freakin' sucks.

Just in case anyone who actually has a job - and therefore might be involved in a business that would enter into a parade - is reading, let's go over this a few more times:

Gigantic cow wearing hockey helmet: cool. Politicians handing out crap: dumb.

Spawn of Satan giving children candy: cool. Losers sitting on a boat for no reason: dumb.

Anyway, the parade was still pretty cool, especially for a small town parade. And in other news, I'm happy to say a girl who works as an intern at The Newspaper - which employs me - was crowned queen during this weekend's festivities. There were dozens of candidates competing to be crowned "Miss (Insert Name of Town I Work in Here)", but our little intern won. Woo-hoo to the intern.

Of course, "Miss (Insert Name of Town I Work in Here)" is not the real name of the title. That would be stupid. But I'm not about to tell you people which town I work in, because I know one of you drunkards would end up calling The Newspaper - which employs me - and getting me in trouble. To put it plainly, I don't trust you bastards any farther than I can throw you. Which isn't far.

Either way, I hope I can use our intern's new status to get things for free in town. Maybe I can drag her into the liquor store and get some free booze. Or maybe I can, um . . . maybe I can get . . . uh, okay, so the liquor store's all we really have. But if royalty can't get free booze, then what good are they?

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Reader Comments

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The Flash      Sep 23, 2003 • 12:27am   Michael Keaton is probably busy making lame movies. Damn Ian for that...Damn Ian to Hell... zam      Sep 22, 2003 • 10:57pm   Aaron lied to us. Boy, that Ian's a fucking asshole. Paul Ryan      Sep 22, 2003 • 4:46pm   I thought it was Candyman that showed up if you said his name three times. Katers      Sep 22, 2003 • 4:27pm   *saying it three times aloud* Hey, Paul, did Michael Keaton show up? Man, I loved Batman. He was awesome in it . . . what? He DIDN'T. That Aaron J. Brown sure is a hussy, lying to all of us. ;) Aaron J. Brown      Sep 22, 2003 • 2:05pm   If you say the name of the town Paul works in three times, Michael Keaton shows up. That's why Paul won't give the name out. Paul Ryan      Sep 22, 2003 • 1:39pm   And I could delete it in a matter of seconds. ;) Katers      Sep 22, 2003 • 1:25pm   I could be evil and tell everyone the name of the town Paul works in . . .

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