Check it out! It's Senator Amy Klobuchar and family walking and waving their way down 50th Street in the Edina 4th of July Parade! Look how happy she is. It's because of all the applause, duh. And for sure there was plenty of it. And I'll get back to that, but first I've gotta place a call to the Fashion Industry Lobby and suggest that if they want to get in with the Senator, they should swing by her office and drop off a couple of car-loads of threads for her husband. Seriously, is he for real with the pleated shorts and the tucked in t-shirt and the clownish blown-out-socks-and-dirty-tennis-shoes combo? Did the Senator pull him in from mowing the lawn to go to the parade? Doesn't this dude probably have to roll black tie dinners like 3 times a week? Washington fat cat style? He probably has 6 tuxedos, right? But no socks? I mean I get it, he's an everyman. But even us everymen know that if we're marching in a parade as the husband of a Senator we a) find a nice pair of shorts and b) leave them in the closet next to the dirty tennis shoes and wear a pair of pants and shoes that won't distract from her reasonable position on gun control. Ok, enough. He's not the public figure here, she is. BTW, nice pants, Senator.
So yeah, she came through early in the parade. Which was weird, because the way it normally works in the Edina parade is that near the end, one party all comes thru together, then there's some band or floats or something, then the other one comes thru. All the candidates at once. I like this technique. They should do it with clowns, too. It'd save me from having to jump up and hide juniorette's eyes every 10 minutes. Because clowns are apparently like the scariest thing on the planet.
But like I said, Klobuchar walked alone. And she got big applause. And she was smiling and the sun was shining and it was Mayberry-as-it-ever-was all over again. I'm thinking she was by herself because she wasn't running? Just showing up? Face time! But yeah, big applause. For lefty Klobuchar. Here in Edina. That's what we in the business like to call foreshadowing.
Fast forward. The Republicans were up first. And it was the one of the most surreal parade moments of my life and it totally made up for the fact that Lund's was throwing out bags of chips. Chips! Where are my frickin' tootsie rolls?! Game on, Lund's, it's parade season!
Anyway, here comes the GOP. And as soon as people saw the big 'Republican' sign or the elephant poster or the big truck or whatever, they just shut up. No boo'ing. No jeering. Just painful, painful, silence. It was like a morgue. You could literally HEAR THE TIRES ROLLING ON THE PAVEMENT. It gets better.
The truck in the lead had a huge calliope on the back. So in some crazygreat cosmic alignment of weirdness straight outta the backcountry scenes from 'I'm Not There', you've got all these Republicans, waving and trying to glad-hand a stone-faced and silent crowd, while circus music plays in the background. In the distance, a baby cries. Some loudmouthed doof yells "AWKWARD!" (Ok, yeah, that was me. But seriously, it was.)
Then as quick as they arrived, they were gone. Like a ghost. I bet if you asked around, nobody would even admit to having seen them. Spooky.
A few minutes later the Dems rolled thru. And it was like they brought the Korean War vets around again from the front of the parade for an encore. Ticker tape. Rock stars. Mets win Mets win Mets win. I'm only slightly exaggerating here. And these were nobodies. Obama and Franken street team rubes and stuff. Can you imagine this scene in the Edina of the 80's? The early 90's? Even the late 90's? Me neither. Did something happen? Was I too busy buying $4 gas to notice? I'll call Nick Coleman, I'm sure he'll know.
In related news, you know who else got huge applause? This pirate riding a bike covered with balloons.
He rode all the way home after the parade. That's a lot of biking for a pirate. Arrr.
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