I think this event is loosely associated with Earth Day and the website calls it an artistic pageant and uses words like sharing and caring and embracing and inspiring. Welcome to the Hippie Parade with crowds of people in homemade costumes accessorized with umbrellas and bikes, playing instruments, dancing through town and ending at a park with a drum circle. There were only three rules to “protect the cultural evolution” of the procession: the costumes can’t have words or motorized vehicles and no pets allowed. Humans can get dressed as animals but can’t bring their actual animals? Curious.

My niece wanted to get involved in the parade so I told her I’d help with a costume. She picked Rainbow Dash of My Little Pony, a valid choice for a parade with an emphasis on imagination over “species.”

We raided my sister’s ribbon box:

Added cardboard and a headband and fashioned a “mane” and tail for her. Voila!

A little more rainbow fairy and a little less My Little Pony, but she fit right into the festivities, which ran the gamut from an impressive peacock:

And Turkey:

And puppet:

To the low rent sheet-gators:

 And things that defy description or explanation like Inexplicable Umbrella Guy:

 What. Is. This?

The world on legs? A bacterium? Something alien? Who knows.

All in all, a progression towards color, creativity and interspecies mingling:

After an afternoon wrangling kiddos and absorbing peace, ribbons and non-mechanical methods of transport we took off for some adult time with Cajun food and the movie Super. It’s my second superhero movie of the week but unlike Thor, I think this one will stick with me for some time. Rainn Wilson plays a man who’s wife left him for drugs and her drug dealer and he thinks he’s chosen by God save her and take out some bad guys along the way. It’s a graphically violent (and funny), grindhouse-esque movie about an average Joe turned vigilante but with overtones of superhero philosophy about the nature of evil. I found the ending poignant, the more so since Rainn Wilson has a heart twisting vulnerability about him when he plays characters that just don’t fit in and don’t understand why. He’s perfectly cast as the Crimson Bolt as is Ellen Page as his sidekick “Boltie”. I hope in 10 years this movie acquires a following and gets a Rocky Horror type treatment because it’s got all the right camp elements (Shut up, crime!).

From hippie love to smashed in heads and pipe bombs, it’s been one extreme to another today.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you brave women out there. Remember to call your moms and send them flowers and love.

See you Monday.