A Pasadena Right of Passage

Welcome back. Happy New Year to my 8 loyal readers and to the occasional passersby who come here for a bit of snark, pathos and failed attempts at humor.

I'm sure you're all happy to be back at work. I know I am. Albeit as a Fractional Creative Director, emphasis on the fractional. 

Sometimes infinitesimally so.

Many of you, if the patterns hold true, have resolved to lose weight, exercise more and be healthier this year.  I'm making it a point to maintain my weight, be healthier and maybe exercise less, as of late my rigorous routine has taken its toll on my bum hip and lower back. Like you I probably won't be able to keep this promise I made to myself, due to my aerobic obsessive compulsion disorder.

And my Strava overlord.

I'm also determined to continue on the unchartered path of "doing new things." 

To that end, I began 2025 on a high note, by joining Ms. Muse and her friend JJ, on a midnight jaunt up Orange Grove Avenue to experience the Rose Bowl Parade floats before they are unveiled to the 330 million hungover citizens of America on New Year's Day. 

I should preface this by saying -- not in a curmudgeonly way -- that I'm not a parade person. They are to me what clubs are. I don't want be part of any that would have me as a member. 

The exception being the St. Patty's Day Parade in NYC, which was a seminal event in my misguided youth, mostly because it was an opportunity to engage in low cost binge beer drinking. 

We would drive in from the suburbs at 10 in the morning. Park our asses at a Brew Burger or a Beefsteak Charlie's and partake in their $7.95 Cheeseburger and All You Can Drink Beer Special. Which on several occasions became not-so-special to the restaurant manager.

"You boys leave, now. You drink too much. Go."

I digress. The New Year's Eve stroll up and down Orange Grove is quite the ritual. It might even be mandatory. They are very particular in these parts. There's a lot of Foothillian lore I'm still being acquainted with. 

The night was a blast. It had all the revelry of a Times Square Celebration (which I have never attended) without the drunks, pickpockets and Pizza Rats. 

Should the opportunity present itself the night before 2026, I will certainly be there again.

Here we see yours truly and Ms. Muse, braving the frigid 47 degree Pasadena evening night air with our not-so-surreptitious cocktails...