Show Us Your Wits

The picture to your right is Natalie and her friends from the Picayune Angela and Stephania . . . I think.

I say I think because a combination of running the parade route, the cold and the fact that Natalie found it fun to bean me in the head with bags of beads left me a little disoriented. That, combined with my technological idiocy, allowed me to take possibly the most blurry picture ever on a digital camera (the one to your right).

From the top. In the days leading up to the parade , I had figured that I would start at the beginning of the parade, watch it up until Nat's float, and then tag along the float until the end, trying to get as many beads as I could from Natalie, Angela and Stephanie (since I am a rank amateur at this parade thing, I figured it was best to stay close to people who know me and would pity my lack of beads).

I'll let Natalie get more into the floats, but the basic theme was "Supermuse" a daring female superhero fighting the villians of New Orleans (right wing congressmen, corrupt judges, racist sheriffs all done up as super villians).

Anyway, after Natalie's float passes, I cut behind the crowd and start to try and get ahead to see them. All of a sudden. THWACK!! I get hit in the head by a bag of beads. I look up to see my girlfriend, laughing at me from the 2nd floor of her float. This repeats itself another two or more times and I finally get that she is not throwing to me, but rather AT me.

Wonderful, I am walking along in the cold trying to provide as much encouragement as I can and Natalie is having her fun beaning in the head with cold hard plastic. Nice.

This process repeats itself for another hour or two, until there was an unfortunate breakdown in their float, but I will let Natalie tell that story.

One last thing, throughout the parade I was trying to get people to yell words of scorn about various Philadelphia media owners/union presidents, etc. To the lady in the crown and her boyfriend who screamed "We hate Brian Tierney" at the tops of their lungs, must thanks is given.