This is Your Year

Do you want to rule Doo Dah? This is your year to be queen. Sunday is your day to prove it. Here is your info:

2013 QUEEN TRYOUTS
WHERE: The American Legion Bar, 179 N. Vinedo St., Pasadena
Cross street is Colorado Blvd. (626) 792-9938

WHEN: Sunday, April 7, 2013
2:00 pm - Doors Open and Live Music begins
3:00-4:00 pm - Queen Hopefuls Check-In
4:30ish pm - Queen Tryouts Start

COST:  $5  cover; 1st 20 queen hopefuls to arrive are free! 1 admission per Queen Entourage.*
Trying out? Call 626-590-1134 and we will answer your questions and give you tips. Open to everyone, and we mean it! All are encouraged to dress randomly even if coming to watch.

WHAT: Each Queen Hopeful will have a few minutes to WOW the Judges. Microphone and boom box, even drumroll, provided. Be ready to show us and tell us why YOU should be Queen! Bring Loyal Followers and HUMOR!

Then, mark your calendar for the 36TH OCCASIONAL PASADENA DOO DAH PARADE, to be held Saturday, April 27th, on Colorado Boulevard between Altadena Drive and San Gabriel Boulevard in east Pasadena.

Stepping off at 11:00AM and daring to go where no parade has gone before, this year's parade will bring its own brand of raucous eccentricity to Pasadena's east side.  The cost is always free.

Can you tell I copied this from a press release? I'm copying just a little more, because the currently-reigning queen and soon-to-be-outgoing queen, Patrizzi Intergarlactica, has this advice for you:

1. Channel the Tim Burton, Monty Python, Karl and Groucho Marx spirit world.
2. Open your heart.
3. Say yes.
4. Leave your favorite sunglasses in a safe place when cavorting.
5. Know that your inner azimuth will become dented and bewobble from here on out.

*could be a bargain, depending on the size of your entourage.

Information

Union Station, Los Angeles

Every once in a while we have business to catch up on. On which to catch up. Straggling details. Fragments.

The annual lighting ceremony on Christmas Tree Lane will be this Saturday at 6pm, preceded by a vendor fair in the Altadena Library parking lot at 2. Altadena craftspeople don't generally try to sell you potholders their kids made at school. We're talking fine stuff. I'm going.

I enjoy the Arroyo Verde Awards, presented each year by the Council of Arroyo Seco Organizations. The Council recognizes the year's heroes in the preservation of the Arroyo. This year the ceremony will be held on December 12th at 7pm, at La Casita del Arroyo. I don't know yet who all the awardees are, but I know that Dianne Patrizzi, Patrizzi Intergarlactica, Mademoiselle Gramophone, our Doo Dah Queen, who marched in the Doo Dah parade as Princess Haha (and I don't know how many other personalities she has but these are all good ones), will receive the award for Best Activist. You can come to the awards! It's low-key fun and I love seeing people recognized for their important work.

Friend and photographer Kevin McCollister has a post up at 591PhotographyBlog. If Kevin isn't the finest photographer working in LA today, it's because Ansel Adams came back to life and moved to a downtown loft.

Did I mention this? I have a new book review up at Hometown Pasadena, of Kim Fay's The Map of Lost Memories. I might have mentioned it. I'm on new migraine pills. They are my current excuse for everything.

Some Camelot & Vine news:

One:
I said I'd keep the Camelot Where You Are photo contest going until Camelot & Vine is published. As you may know, it's not published yet. Two contest entries wait in my inbox for a third and hopefully a fourth to join them in deadly friendly competition. Take a picture of Camelot Where You Are and send it in (details here). I post it on the blog, everybody votes, and if you win I'll send you a free copy of Camelot & Vine (when it's published, which it will be. See Two).

Two:
Camelot & Vine will be published dammit! (in case you were wondering). I had hoped to have it out in time for Christmas--hell, I had hoped to have it out in October--but obviously, I had no idea how long it would take. January? This is now the plan, and it seems doable (as did October and December, once upon a time). The book has been edited and typeset, the cover's almost ready, and I can't imagine what else will hold it back.

But what the hell, let's come up with some scenarios!

PMH Super Twofer

Two new exhibits at the Pasadena Museum of History are well worth your visit.

You're going to love the enthralling Pacific Electric Railway, Then and Now, an exhibit of memorabilia and "then and now" photos based on the book by Steve Crise and Michael Patris. Crise took the exquisite "now" pictures with more than expertise: he added care and wit. Not satisfied to simply position his camera to correspond exactly with the "then" photos, Crise went to the trouble to take his photographs at the same time of day so shadows would correspond. He added witty touches as well, even waiting for the time on a clock to be the same in one photo as it was back then.

Oh and note the detail of the train crossing gate above. A delicious touch.

Tasty in a whole different way (like a banana split with a whiskey chaser) is What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been: 35 Years of the Pasadena Doo Dah Parade. Just across the hall from the trains you'll find photos, costumes, signs, and uh, stuff, collected from past Doo Dah Parades. I wish my photo of the crowns of past Doo Dah queens had worked! That is some fab headgear.

Doo Dah is our own mini-Burning Man, Pasadena's hand-made, knee-jerk reaction to the Tournament of Roses. There may be other events like it, but they probably haven't had a lot of museum coverage. Bravo to the PMH for proclaiming Doo Dah as part of Pasadena's history, which of course it is. My only concern is the exhibit may legitimize Doo Dah, and I would hate for that to happen.

Poo Dah

Due to unforeseen circumstances I wasn't able to make it to yesterday's Doo Dah Parade. That's lousy because yesterday's parade was, to me, the most important one ever. The Grand Marshall was Pasadena's outgoing public information officer and my friend, Ann Erdman. This year's Doo Dah Queen is also a friend. She's Dianne Patrizzi, the high priestess of flumwhatery, Princess Haha, Queen Patrizzi Intergarlactica.

So I don't have a photo of this year's parade. I took the above photo at the 2008 event. It gives you an idea of the parade's exuberance if not the parade itself, which is a massive crowd of insanity, music, tortillas and non sequitur. If the Tournament of Roses Parade poses the question, "Are all Pasadenans well-organized, pretty and wholesome?" the Doo Dah Parade answers, "Well no. No, we are not."

So, poo. I didn't make the parade. But there's video! Patrizzi had her well-deserved moment in the sun on a glorious day. And Ann, I hope, will always be involved with Doo Dah, which is brought to us by the Light Bringer Project, thank goodness. Because every town must have its flumwhatery.

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Wear Your Extrovert Genes

Did you know the Doo Dah Parade is coming up this Saturday? Did you know it's in a new location? Do you want to be in it? You could march with the winners of the Thorny Rose Award.

I just learned that Friends of Hahamongna (I'm a Friend) won this year's Thorny Rose Award and at the last minute has been invited to march in the parade. Each year, says the Pasadena Star-News, "the Thorny Rose is awarded to Pasadena's most controversial citizen or group by an anonymous committee of local socio-political observers." This year the observers had a hard time coming up with anyone cantankerous enough. The Friends of Hahamongna are pretty nice. But they just won't drop the Hahamongna issue, so I guess you could call them a thorn in someone's side.

Columnist Larry Wilson expressed concern that the Friends of Hahamongna might take the award as an insult instead of an homage. But the Friends are good-humored folk who see the Thorny Rose as an opportunity to spread the word.

A few weeks ago some of you joined in signing the petition at savehahamongna.org, asking the City Council to reconsider a 2003 decision to build soccer fields at Hahamongna (there's still time to sign). Now you can join the Friends of Hahamongna in the Doo Dah Parade. The parade starts at 11:00am this Saturday at 2627 E. Colorado Blvd. Look for the Friends of Hahamongna and join in the friendly chaos!

Future Queens of Doo Dah

I believe I mentioned I didn't get any good photos of the Doo Dah Parade last Sunday. I got there too late to get a good seat. But I got this shot of a couple of young spectators.

Some of the Doo Dah happens in the crowd. People wear their silly hats, their weird glasses, the things they would wear at Burning Man if they went (and if they wore anything). Doo Dah day is for getting our ya-yas out. Or our doo-dahs, you might say.

I'm bored with my wardrobe. It needs some whimsy.

Zen Monday: #32

Zen Monday is the day you experience the photo and give us your thoughts rather than me telling you what the photo's about.
There's no right or wrong. If the photo evokes something in you, that's all it is.

As each new Zen Monday is posted, a label is added to last week's to further identify it.

Guest photographer: John Sandel.

Gettin' Our Doo Dahs Out

Hmmm, what to post, what to post? A photo of the Sperm Donors of South Pasadena as they squirt free "samples"? Maybe the Men of Leisure Drill Team, napping in the middle of Colorado Blvd. The picture of the L.A. French Quarter Synchronized Baguette Brigade routine came out blurry. Very-close-to-naked ladies carrying a mattress on their heads? Nah, everybody's going to post that one.

Today the 31st Occasional Pasadena Doo Dah Parade made its merry way down Colorado Blvd. Or maybe up. Tourists camp out over night in the cold for the "other parade." But this one's for us locals--well, for some of us--so we brought our lawn chairs about an hour before the parade to get a good spot in the sun.

I had a hard time deciding what to post. I wanted to capture the parade's silliness as well as its exuberance. Exuberance won out.