Bubble Machines and Lawn Chairs

Random observations from the Gold Cup and Saucer Parade:

• Bubble machines are big, and an easy and cheap way to give your float lots of visual energy.
• What’s with the older gentleman, a “float of one” walking along in a sombrero?
• Islanders seem to have abandoned the collapsable lawn chairs in a bag that were so obvious at the Festival of Lights and turned back to traditional lawn chairs. No word on whether Steven Garrity has followed the herd or not.
• Majorettes are showing more skin these days, and the anti-anorexia movement is, thankfully, demonstrating headway, as evidenced by the variety of body types present. Unfortunately this also appears to mean that Majorettes no longer actually twirl or throw batons, they just walk along carrying them.
• Is Hagar the Horrible popular enough to warrant a giant floating balloon statue? I heard a lot of parents trying to convince their kids it was really Elmo in a Viking costume; kids weren’t buying it.
• Only in Charlottetown could the winner of the award for “Most Humourous Float” be a float consisting of a flatbed truck of people in hippie costumes smoking giant pretend joints. I thought “obvious drug references” were banned in North America since Nancy Reagan? Thank God we’re still free here on the Island.
• Every father hopes their son will grow up to be hip and cool and eschew parades in favour of John Coltrane records and mint juleps. I am failing in this regard: Oliver loves marching bands and horses and Bush Dumville’s antique car. He even like Hagar the Elmo.