Bubba to Improve Parade TV
T
o tell the truth, I cannot remember as I am writing this which team won this year’s Rose Bowl game that was televised on New Year’s Day. Better still, I cannot recall which two teams played. However, I can remember ABC sports announcer Keith Jackson, known for his over-the-top style as much as anything else, referring to the Rose Bowl game as “the granddaddy of them all!” I remember it because I must have heard him say it about 10,000 times. Or maybe it just seems that way. Jackson was in the sportscasting business for 50 years and left an indelible mark. He never did learn how to pronounce “sophomore” correctly, though. The middle “o” in the word is silent, unless you are Keith Jackson, then you pronounce it. I mention the Rose Bowl because it has been on my mind lately, ever since Capt. Bubba Whartz, live-alone, live-aboard sailor and owner of the unique ferro-cement sloop Right Guard, floated a proposal into the smoky air of The Blue Moon Bar one afternoon not long ago. The words he said were: “You know, guys,” speaking to no one in particular, “the football in the Rose Bowl game is often interesting, but the Rose Bowl Parade is probably the dullest thing ever to hit TV.” I’m not certain if Bubba expected to get a response from anyone. I had no comment on the subject, because I had given it no thought whatsoever. I may not have watched a Rose Bowl Parade on television since Howdy Doody was popular and television only came in black and white sets. “I simply LOVE it,” Bruno Velvetier, ASID, countered. “All the glorious colors just dazzle me every year. And the
fashions are to die for.” Tripwire, wearing his customary cammie attire, was not impressed. “The only thing to die for in that parade are some of those high school cheerleaders, but going to San Quinton is not part of my game plan,” he grumbled. Doobie, who is rarely a player in any of the conversational interplay at The Blue Moon, had her curiosity aroused and asked of Bubba, “I am surprised that a man of your abundant qualifications even knows there is such a thing as the Rose Bowl Parade. Why don’t you like it?” Her question lit a fire under Bubba and launched him onto a platform to which he had obviously given some thought. “First of all,” he began, “every Rose Bowl parade is like every other parade that has ever been televised. There are floats with smiling women on them waving at the crowds of people they have never seen before and will never see again. Their waves, truncated to where they only move their hands, are as sincere as those from politicians who are introduced at political conventions and point to a member of the audience like they really know that individual personally. What the politicians are doing is faking it. They don’t know a single person in that ocean of common, nameless faces out there on the convention floor. Sadly, every politician fakes it in exactly the same way, so the hollowness of their stagecraft is evident to anyone with half a brain.” Bubba paused to swallow some beer and then continued. “The people on the floats in the parades are faking it
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March 2010
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