Alpenfest Grand Parade -- saw it at my friend's parents' house.

Today I watched the Alpenfest Grand Parade from the lawn of my one friend's parents' house. The theme of Alpenfest this year is "Heaven in 2007", so there were a lot of heaven-themed floats. We ate taco dips and chips and had daiquaris (sp.?) and sat on the curb or in lawnchairs. My one friend's aunts were there, too, and were shouting at the floats, which was a blast. The highlights, in no particular order:

1) As the Trout Festival float passed by, my one's friend one aunt was like, "Smells like fish." Not only was the Trout Queen on there, but so was the Little Mr. and Mrs. Trout, who were like five or six years old.

2) As the Animal Shelter float passed by, my one's friend one aunt was like, "Throw us some animals!"

3) As the bagpipers go by to begin the parade -- my one friend's parents' house is at the very beginning of the parade route -- my one friend's one aunt was like, "Time for that old question, what's under the kilts?"

4) As the Truck of Honor passed by, which had murals depicting the Twin Towers and the Flight 93 Memorial and some sort of panel saluting soldiers in Iraq on the back doors, my one friend's brother got up to run after it and smash a beer bottle on its side once he realized that George Bush's face was looking down from the clouds onto Ground Zero.

5) This one Child Evangelism group had a miniature truck pulling like six or seven cars in a row that were made out of oil barrels -- each was on its side and painted a bright color and had a seat put in it where a kid could sit, and each had a hinge on front that would allow side to side motion so the miniature truck could pull the cars behind it in a wavy pattern -- and there was like six or seven beautiful smiling children there, each about anywhere from four to six years old, one in each car, only the one in the last car was African-American. My one friend's other aunt was like, "Why does the black kid always have to ride in back?" She shouted loud, too.

6) My one friend's one aunt lost a lot of her eyesight years ago in a tragic tanning accident, so she couldn't see the floats too good, and when this one guy was walking past in leiderhosen waving at everyone, she turns to me and is like, "Who is that?" I told her that I couldn't remember his name, but that he was the one guy who used to be really involved in United Way and was picked up by the police years ago for picking up a transsexual hooker down in Detroit somewhere, and she was like, "Oh yeah, him," and corrected me that it was Flint, not Detroit, and that he got picked up not for picking up the hooker, but because he either got beat up or ripped off by the hooker and somehow the police got involved. There was this older woman in blumenkrantz and a dirndl walking by him, too, so I was like, "Man, she has big hands," and my one friend's one aunt was like, "Yeah, and look at that Adam's apple."

7) There was this other semi truck in the parade that was used for evangelism and painted up with tons of slogans and cartoon characters on it. On the side towards we were sitting, you could see a dancing Snoopy outside his doghouse under the words "Dog gone wild for Christ", only his doghouse was like a little church and said "Snoopy's Chapel" on it. The trucker was big and had tattoos, but he waved from the window at everyone and had a peaceful smile.

8) There was this big group of older women in full-body cow suits who had tinsel halos and angel wings on, and they were walking behind a banner that said "Heavenly Herd" or something like that. I shouted out to ask them who they were, and one was like, "The Heavenly Herd!" I still don't get it. But, my one friend's one aunt was like, "They should put some tassels on that udder and put on a show. You could get eight going at one time."

9) This one float that a golf course put out was called "Fairway to Heaven", and they had some golfers standing on there and waving. My one's friend one aunt was like, "Show us your balls!"

10) They had a bunch of 10-year olds in swim trunks and t-shirts walking behind a banner from the local Sportsplex and holding a bunch of foam swimming toys, and my one friend's one aunt was like, "Show us your noodle!"

11) The local Elks lodge had their usual float, a giant elk's head that has flashing red eyes and smoke coming out its mouth, only they put wings on it, and they had a guy sitting behind it pulling ropes to flap it. There were a few seats behind it too, so there were these girls sitting there waving and wearing angel's wings, only in front of them was a big trellis that had a handwritten marker sign on it that said, "Heaven's Gate". Some guys in leiderhosen were walking alongside the float, and they all had t-shirts on that said, "Wo sind die Elkburger?" I guess the Elks lodge here serves Elk burgers now.

New friend (II of II): Worked from home.

So, me and this other guy who was also friends with my one friend's older brother were also talking a lot, and every once in a while he would talk about how he worked from home, and would have to go in to the office every once in a while, though the location of his main office changed between Chicago and Vancouver and other places like that. Like an hour into the group conversation, we started talking about YouTube and the shit you can find on there, and he was talking about how sometimes when he's travelling and has wireless in his hotel room, he just tries random words to see what he can find, and then he kind of did an aside to me and was like, "Well, I'm in jacuzzis," and then he started telling me about this one YouTube clip of a jacuzzi that he found.

I still don't understand how he worked from home and was in the jacuzzi business.

New friend (I of II): Knew her name.

When I was out with friends at the bar last night, I met a girl who had graduated from my high school back in '89 and was friends with my good friend's older brother and some other people we know in common, though I had never met her before. When she told me her last name, it turned out that I knew her brother's last name; he was this guy who had died in a tragic dirt-biking accident back in the mid-70s, and they had started up a triathalon in his honor that my high school's athletic association runs every year. So, I started telling her about how I had volunteered for that and for two years I had handed out water, but one year I was by the finish line taking times of runners as they went by, and how then the damnedest thing that I ever saw was these runners staggering out to rest a bit and then going to the free food barbecue area to get buns without hamburgers and plop massive amounts of coleslaw on them and eat them that way raw. She was like, "Yeah, that happens," and then she told me that the year that she marked numbers on people was the last year she ever volunteered, because not only would people pull their shorts down so she could mark numbers on their legs, but a few guys had upper arms so hairy that her marker would get caught in the hair and couldn't hardly write. "You know, like when you made a 3 and shit," she was like.

Lunch special.

Out on the signboard at La Senorita's:

"LA LUNCHA

LA BAMBA

BURRITO

$4.95".

Was looking for a red onion.

My parents are growing some tomatos and hot peppers in pots on our front porch, and so I bought some cucumbers and tomatos and a red onion at a farmer's market the other day to make a salad and use up the hot peppers. (I had to buy tomatos since ours weren't ripe yet.) When I went the next day to get the red onion, though, I couldn't find it anywhere in the fridge or on the counter, and when I went to look in this big ceramic pot on the landing to the basement, I saw that a white onion in the bin was moldy, so I picked it up to throw it out, but the mold that was all on one side fell down as soon as I picked up the onion. It turns out the mold was actually a dried-out bat that was clinging to the side of the onion. It beat the hell out of me and my dad how the bat got to be there -- my dad said not to ask my mom because he didn't want her to know about it -- but then my dad remembered that he had taken a bag of onions to hunting camp like a few weeks ago. He's thinking that the bat crawled in and was sleeping there, and then it got crushed to death between some onions in its sleep when he picked up the bag to take it home.

The shit people name their kids.

When I was at a Saint Vincent de Paul resale shop the other week, I found a cool shirt, but I couldn't find the dressing room, and when I was going up to the counter to ask where one was, I could see this fat forty-something mom with a white tanktop on and her bra straps showing calling bitchily and languidly over her shoulder to her kid who was getting into stuff and being like, "Ambrosia! Come here now."