Flower Power Pasadena On Parade Day Just May Be The Happiest, Most Colorful, Most Spectacular Place On Earth

Long before the crimson-clad Cougar Marching Band strutted smartly up Colorado Boulevard, blasting out “Louie, Louie,” one thing had become incredibly clear under the bright morning sun.

It’s tons easier to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade on TV.

Sure, there’s the announcers’ yammering to endure. But you don’t have to cope with humongous crowds, and it is way easier to find a restroom.

Here’s the truth, though. The tube just doesn’t do it justice. Not even close.

There’s just something about being able to hear horseback riders calling out “Happy New Year” with your own ears and see with your own eyes the Rose Bowl queen’s lingerie lines beneath her snug royal dress.

Southern California’s premier tourism event is so outlandishly outsized and unique that exaggeration, the obvious choice for anyone trying to describe it, turns out to be all but impossible.

The parade is so big, so colorful and so outrageously popular that it almost seems like a happening in a distant galaxy. It’s a good-times festival on the flower-worshipping Planet Pasadena.

The police always say the parade attracts about a million onlookers. And Thursday morning, a pretty fair percentage of the folks in the diverse throng wore smiles.

It has got to be one of the happiest events on the American calendar. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, at parade time, neither football team had lost yet. So the armies wearing Michigan and Washington State shirts shared a high-fiving confidence and celebratory spirit. Beyond that, there’s just something cheery about a seemingly endless procession starring gorgeous flowers, upbeat music and blissed out people waving at you.

The parade started with motorcycle cops sounding their sirens. Then half a dozen TV helicopters swarmed overhead, adding a thumpa-thumpa-thumpa urgency to the proceedings.

Then came a full-of-life lineup of top-notch bands from all over the country, equestrian units and the huge signature floats.

Other big parades have bands and horses. But if you want to see rolling mansion-sized flower-covered monsters, the Tournament of Roses is the place to be.

Where else are you going to see, for instance, giant lizards with bobbing heads sponsored by the folks at the U.S. Postal Service?

But for spectators, the fun starts long before the parade does. The predawn scene along the route features legions of spot-saving early birds in sleeping bags and lawn chairs. Then there are thousands and thousands of float-oglers getting close enough to the big cartoonlike creations to sniff them.

It’s like a combination of a weird post-apocalyptic party and the mobilization of the world’s strangest, least scary armored division.

The theme of Thursday’s spectacular was “Hav’n Fun.” Sure, it’s meaningless. But for those who clearly got a kick out of yelling “Hi, Carol!” to parade Grand Marshal Carol Burnett, it was apt.

In a grandstand near the start of the parade, one mother with two grade-school-age children kept imagining that television cameras were focused on her family. “Are we on?” she said repeatedly, as her kids rolled their eyes.

As a high school band from Utah passed by, a flying insect landed on one chubby horn-player’s cheek. The boy glanced at the bug, but he didn’t take his hands off his instrument. He kept playing, marching along.

After all, this was the Tournament of Roses Parade. And everybody knows that’s a once-in-a-lifetime.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Color photos