Big Parade Needs Your Participation

To the Editors:

TOMORROW is the BIG PARADE! Tomorrow is the day we have been working for and dreaming of and waiting for and talking about all year: it is the BIG DAY!
Tomorrow we come together as a multifarious, hyper-talented community, in all our strength and glory, and have our biggest celebration of the year, an all-day festivity-feast. From Eastwood Elementary School on East College street at 9:30 a.m. to Tappan Square at 4 p.m., this is our city’s Carnival, our Mardi-Gras, our Desfile Grande, our Festival: are you yet involved? Do you have your costume, your puppet, your float, your dance team, your instrument, your boom-box, your mask, your dancing shoes? We hope so!
But if you don’t — if you haven’t heard about this yet (somehow), if you don’t know how to get involved, if you are fearing a normal, unexceptional end-of-the-semester Saturday approaching — have no fear: there is still hope.
The Big Parade is big, and it takes a lot to get it going; your involvement is not just welcome and appreciated — it is required! We have beautiful puppets and giant floats and crazy masks that will not come to life without your help; this parade is going to be amazing, and we need YOU!
There are floats of caterpillars and unicorns and triceratops and big blue feet and an ocean-car and a panther-head, and a pick-able nose and a giant chicken. There are ships of pirates and teams of clowns and jugglers. There are teams of dancers and flat-beds of musicians. And you, too, can carry a puppet — you can be the one to drive a tractor! If you want to do these things, email Oberlinparade@hotmail.com or call 774-3484.
But if you are too darn late — if you just want to join the parade tomorrow morning, and you can’t find a computer, and you don’t believe in the telephone, you can still do a number of things. In fact, within good reason, you can do just about anything — join the ranks of clowns, become a gnarly pirate. You can bring your clarinet. You can dress up your dog and enter the Peter Goldsmith Dress Up Your Dog contest. Or you can simply dress up as best you can and come along with your own fine self. You can even bring your fly-ass stereo (with batteries, of course) and join the Dancing Boom-Box-Marching Band to the tunes of WOBC.
And if you are a langorous-late-sleeper and just can’t break the habit, you should know that at 11am, as soon as we walk through the Festival Arch and into the Square, we start the GIANT CARNIVAL, with a dunking booth and a moonwalk, music from OSteel, Salsamos, the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble, the Al Green Cover Band, and forty other amazing bands, free food and drink, endless games and events and fun-loving contests and beautiful sunshine.
This little slice of heaven in our central square needs some help as well, so don’t feel too shy to approach the Registration table at the SE corner of Tappan Square and ask how you can be of assistance. After all, who knows? You might get to dunk your favorite professor. Or you could be the BBQ Queen or King who makes the PERFECT BURGER! You could win the pie-eating contest, or organize a three-legged race, or learn Israeli dancing, or join the Capoeira roda. It’s all going to be there: how much better can you get?
We’ll be preparing Tappan Square by the time this paper comes out, so come on over and help decorate! Get yourself going crazy! You better not cry or shout or squirm: you better get yourself happy, because tomorrow is the BIG DAY! Tomorrow is the BIG PARADE!!

–James Blachly
College senior