happy mummer's day!

when dressing in drag (and occasionally doing the hula) is not only socially acceptable but celebrated! Steve Highsmith appears to be the only anchor WB 17 can keep around for very long cuz i didn't recognize any of the others. it's good for the WB though cuz the Mummer's like him cuz he gives them publicity and does stories about him and whatnot. they had the cool commentator guys, but the string band guy didn't get to do as much as usual cuz they had to dumb it down for the broadcasts in other areas. it's cool that they're spreading the joy (not that i have any illusions about non-Philadelphians bothering to watch it) but it seems that the nationwide broadcast came at the expense of showing the fancy brigades on tv. which isn't too big of a dissappointment, cuz they all start to look the same after a while and mummers inside seems wrong somehow, but the whole thing was a big deal about southwest airlines being their sponser. they even started calling it the southwest mummers parade which was sorta lame, but i guess i should take what i can get. the string band i thought was best (which means it won't win cuz it's not fralinger or frelling quaker city, shut up bob shannon) was avalon because they did an artic theme and had peeps dressed up like yukon cornelius and a massive abominable snow monster prop, and how can you not love rankin-bass related parephenalia...ok so after a while rudolph's shiny new year and all that got to be pretty crappy, but that's because you just can't top the original awesomeness of the original although in the case of the little drummer boy the original wasn't so awesome and therefore very easy to top, but book 2 more than just tops book 1, it blows its predecessor out of the water! how can you go wrong with a song that goes 'money, money, money makes you poor or makes you rich'? not to mention the whole 'plato, you fool!' thing. anyway, mummers are cool, but it turns out there's a conspiracy which favors the same bands year after year. basically if you won last year you get a slot at the end where they're more willing to give higher points and the bands that don't win don't win because they're handicapped by performing later which is so ridiculously lame! again, shut up bob shannon. i know i shouldn't take it out on him but i'm still bitter about the year they let his band win cuz he had a heart attack during the performance. ah well, the mummers keep on marching and it's a philadelphia-y and rendell was on pretending he doesn't love philly best so that was funny.