Seafair Torchlight Parade

We met up with fancy baker man Renaud for a picnic at Idylwood Park in Redmond.

Eating with these guys is so casually fancy that it's funny. To them the best bread you've had in your life is just some trash left over that they couldn't sell that day.

We headed to downtown Seattle for the Alaska Airlines Seafair Torchlight Parade. I remember cackling at the thought of having a downtown St. Louis parade after dark. There would be casualties.

Bruce Harrell is Seattle's first Asian-American mayor.

There were kids around wearing inflatable Alaska Airlines planes on their heads. I was extremely jealous.

Seahawks Dancers, formerly known as the Sea Gals

When I saw the Coast Guard was here I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore.

There were some very creative ways to watch the parade.

Seattle Cinerama Theatre closed during the pandemic and hasn't revived. Cinerama is a wide screen video format introduced in the 1950s that involved three different overlapping projectors to produce an panoramic image. It was like a precursor to IMAX. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bought the place and renovated it, but since his death it has fallen back onto some hard times.

Parade Balloon Wrangling

I’ve infiltrated a couple of parade outfits in St. Louis and so we’ve walked in several at this point. I always tell people that walking in the Mardi Gras parade is the closest I’ve ever felt to being famous, with a ton of drunk people screaming and flashing you for some beads. Well one aspect of the glamorous parade life that I had still yet to do was being one of those people that holds the ropes on the giant balloons. There’s a scene in Batman where there’s a parade with those big balloons but I think they were filled with poison gas and Batman has to cut all of their strings to save Gotham. Needless to say giant balloons are very exciting. I joined all of the.. special interest groups at my new company, U.S. Bank. There was one just for St. Louis events in particular that I didn’t expect to be too exciting, but the excitement was cranked to 11 when they sent out an email asking for balloon handler volunteers for the 4th of July parade. Awesome!

Balloon handling is a lot more work than I had expected. Those balloons are very large and filled with so much helium that it is constantly fighting you for its freedom. They supplied gloves which were necessary to not get rope burn. Once we got walking down the route, onlookers kept yelling at us to spin the balloon around by making all of us sort of jog in a circle. I did not enjoy that. There were a lot of trees and other things to get snagged on and it was kind of stressful.

After the parade we walked it to an alley, open its vents, and all jumped on it to force the gas out. It felt a lot like the murder of a large majestic creature.

We got a bit of news coverage, though I was cruelly out of frame for a tv news spot that happened right next to us.

I'm visible in the bottom right corner of this one.

I'm on the center left of this one. Not bad at all. Give the people of St. Louis what they want: more John Milito!

Afterward we went to a 4th of July party at Zoe and Spencer's house. Spencer has an affinity for explosives so he got weird with it.

Spencer had like homemade sticks of dynamite and was setting them off in his backyard. You could feel the shockwave hit you after each explosion. Anyway our night ended when one of his neighbors went ballistic after probably having their house foundation cracked by one of the explosions.

Mardi Gras Mayhem 2020

I have a contact at Randall's Wines & Spirits that I bug when I want to walk with their float in a parade. I hit them up for the best parade of the year: Mardi Gras! They are awesome because they always provide free booze. I guess the downside is that it's not a full float so it doesn't feature an on board outhouse like many of them do. Drink responsibly or forever hold your pees.
 

Seago was in attendance this year. I wowed him with Brunei delicacies from beyond the seas.

Lydia and Zoe like to pee every five minutes. It's sort of like their hobby. To them it's sort of like liquid crochet. So to that end, they insisted that we stop for a non-alcoholic drink on the way to the drinkiest day of the year. 

Oh look. Here they are peeing.

The floats all assembled in a parking lot in the shadow of the Purina building. I like this part because when you're in the parade you don't get to see the floats pass by. The best you can do is walk around and check them all out beforehand.

I think there must have been some sort of blue/St. Louis Blues theme because everything was blue. You know, Marge Simpson/Stanley Cup stuff. Obvious associations like that.

Despite the fact that their theme didn't make any sense I was pretty impressed with their costumes. The hair was just a cylinder of blue bubble wrap taped to their heads.

Marges for days.

One awesome thing about the Randall's float is they always supply drinks. Even when it's supposed to be a dry parade. But I brought the ol trusty rum bag with me just in case. An adventurer never knows when a bag full of warm rum may come in handy.

This Bud Light ATV thing had a friggin Gatling gun t-shirt cannon mounted. 

Here is Seago having a serious conversation with a woman dressed like a jellyfish. I assume regarding marine biology.

My public was very excited to see me.

While I was whipping plastic things at the screaming masses I became separated from pretty much everyone in our group. Zoe dropped her phone and fell over while running to catch up with us. I'm not sure if she threw a single bead. Lydia tripped over someone with a wagon or something. And Seago just wandered off the parade route to chase some skirt. Bodies were dropping like a horror movie but I wasn't going to let the drunkards of St. Louis go home empty handed!

Zoe's special friend had a house party for us to make an appearance at. It was quite a house and wisely we weren't allowed inside.

The party was so well populated that we had our own hobo permanently stationed outside the gate. That's how you know that you've made it.

I made some youngins cry at beer pong. Back in my day we had to use rocks instead of ping pong balls and the cups were made out of clay.

Sassy.

We were drinking some top secret stuff.

The day was saved and the pearly necklaces were distributed. I was proud that I don't think I spent a damn dollar the whole day.