Dancing and prancing in Jingle Bell Square in the frosty air
I'm sorry, I was too busy today to write up the next step in the Women's International Pinball Tournament, 2024 edition. Please enjoy a double dose of pictures from the Silver Bells parade last November instead:
The parade started late for reasons we never knew but don't worry, you get to jump right to the beginning!
And here's the Detroit Tigers mascot, who's been there a couple years running, but never as guest of honor.
When the family that donated the tree (or maybe it was the grand marshall, something like that) arrived in horse-drawn carriage, the horse decided it had had enough carriage-drawing, and refused to go further.
Parade officials tried to reason with the horse.
They did not succeed, and the horse moved only when unharnessed. I'm happy I managed to get it approximately focused in the tracking shot here, although it does make it look like the horse took off running when in fact they just trotted forward.
And then parade folks had to draw the carriage the rest of the way themselves.
Now on to the real parade stuff, vehicles and trailers festooned with lights and scenes that make sense to the organizers! I guess it's an elves workshop thing going on here.
Weird, this isn't a VW Bug.
The Cata-Piller has got a new bus and new design and I'm not sure it's better than the old. Stil, anytime a bus has antennas and can wink at you, right?
And here's one of the marching bands, many of whom did not play Jingle Bell Rock!
Channel 6's news team, in the one float that parade broadcaster Channel 47 always cuts away from for some reason.
This was new, performers in those big circus double-hoop things. Fun interlude in the marching; they did some feats of balance and all in front of the reviewing stand.
Trivia: Sega began in May 1952, when Marty Bromley --- who had managed game rooms with slot machines, pinball, and other coin-op amusement devices on military bases in Hawai'i --- began shipping slot machines, banned by the 1951 Transportation of Gambling Devices Act, to Japan. Source: The Ultimate History of Video Games: the Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World, Steven L Kent. Though one may then ask, well, didn't it really begin when Bromley had a company that was managing coin-op devices on US military bases? ... Yeah, that does seem reasonable to me too. Wikipedia indicates it was 1952 when the company that would become named Sega was founded.
Currently Reading: The Oregon Trail: Yesterday and Today, William E Hill.