Santa Claus Lane Parade...EXPOSED!

Better Living Through Bad Balloons

Permit me to step outside of our usual format with this bonus post, since tonight is the annual Hollywood Christmas Parade (known in our innocent Southern Californian youths as "The Santa Claus Lane Parade", or "The Most Boring Thing On Channel 11 Besides Those I Love Lucy reruns). A not terribly beloved and kind of annoying local tradition, it was started in 1928 by the Hollywood merchants association in an attempt to boost retail trade and turn the eponymous Boulevard into a storied shopping destination like New York's Fifth Avenue. The City of Los Angeles pitched in, capping the lamp-posts with faux Christmas trees and even swapping out the regulation street signs for wooden banners that read "Santa Claus Lane" and looked as though they'd been carved by elf slave labor in some polar sweat shop.

Hollywood Boulevard, 1938. Happily, every building you see still stands. Unhappily, they're all owned by the Church of Scientology.

Sadly, the parade never achieved the cachet and notoriety of its crosstown rival, the Tournament of Roses, and as the Boulevard degenerated into a haven for hookers, porn flicks, and dime bag dealers, the quality of the Grand Marshals also declined, from movie stars to soap stars to former hosts of half-forgotten local kids' shows who retired abruptly under mysterious circumstances. Still, the tradition continues, and we continue to pay attention to it, for like the frost upon the pumpkin, the Hollywood Christmas Parade is the classic sign that the holiday is nigh.

When I was a kid, the annual event was as low tech and quaint as as a hand-carved hobbyhorse from some tourist trap in Vermont. The city spruced up the boulevard with lights and decorations, but the event itself consisted primarily of high school marching bands; modest, DIY floats that lived their shabby lives in the shadow of the Rose Parade and had a real Oh Who Honestly Gives a Crap? feel to them; and Grand Marshals who—while admittedly more recognizable than the local luminaries who invariably handled such duties in smaller media markets— were solidly So What? style celebrities, in the Joe E. Brown, Tony Danza, Susan Lucci mold (the last time I attended it was Marie Osmond). But hey...it was our Macy's parade, a cherished local tradition, and if you were a child growing up in Southern California—where there is seldom any change in arboreal set dressing; the trees remain stubbornly green, the thermometer hovers steadily in the mid-to-high 70s—you looked forward to this day as the official start of the Holiday Season.

But it didn't make money, so the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce decided to kill it (although I give them credit for being the only local Republicans who can actually organize to get something done, even if it does involve the homicide of a child's dream). The Walt Disney Company, however, has a major presence on Hollywood Boulevard, thanks to their flagship theater, the El Capitan, and smelled a nice cross-promotional marketing opportunity. They stepped in, and under their aegis the charmingly rough-hewn and amateur feel of years past has been replaced by the soulless, sub-contracted style of false, mandated cheer one often finds at Disney properties. It has also come to feature some of the most disturbing inflatable characters in holiday parade history; I consider them the official barrage balloons of the War on Christmas™, and I kept a photographic record of the worst violations of sense and sensibility.

Things were getting rambunctious even before the event started, with a gassy penguin saluting Gumby's ass. Now I'm no expert, but Gumby has always struck me as having rather a flat ass, rather than a Dat Azz!, but to each his own.

The neat, parallel rows of nipples makes it appear that NASA and Italy are preparing to launch the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus into orbit! Spectators should take the rare opportunity to suck on her space teats, because they dispense Tang! But beware, because judging by the melting, Daliesque character on the right, the bright orange, granular milk produced by her lupine bosoms is hallucinogenic.

"Homer Simpson was found dead today, dressed in a dog collar and a Tickle Me Elmo costume, and trussed with an elaborate network of Japanese bondage-style ropes. Auto-erotic asphyxiation is the presumed cause of death..."

"A giant, gut-shot pirate is seen seconds before collapsing on a crowd of parade watchers in Hollywood earlier today. Police are seeking a large, inflated assailant tentatively identified as Cap'n Jack Ruby..."

It's like Oscar the Grouch is jumping out of an R2D2 birthday cake -- in which case I'm definitely tempted to call Chippendales about a refund.

And what could better symbolize "Stories from the Golden Age By L. Ron Hubbard" than a gas bag that vaguely resembles a giant block of cheese?

I can't decide if this headline should read, "A giant, crawling eye, best remembered as the star of the 1958 Forrest Tucker film The Crawling Eye, lost a knife fight, and a good deal of vitreous humor, today..." or, "The dessicated corpse of Snoopy has been discovered, beneath the floorboards of an abandoned artist's studio in Santa Rosa, California..."

A CDC Rapid Response Team is dispatched to treat and quarantine a group of young women suffering from a sudden outbreak of kawaii.

Note the Tyrannosaur lifting its tail and "presenting" to a rampant My Little Pony, while a marching band looks on, appalled yet aroused.

Here we see the Lorax engaged in consensual sodomy with Horton the Elephant. Sometimes, after a long day of speaking for the trees, you just want to relax and let your own lodgepole pine do the talking.

You know what? I may be reading too much into this photo -- maybe it's just an awkward composition. Let's try another angle.

Nope. Judging by the look on Horton's face, I'd say Mustache Daddy is totes packin' that pachyderm.

And finally, even if your legs are oddly deflated, that's no reason you can't still ogle Gumby's disappointingly concave ass.

Happy holidays, everyone.