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A Million Firecrackers -- and Us
By
Ben Fong-Torres
AsianConnections
is proud to present the adventures of Ben Fong-Torres, our Renaissance
man: author, broadcaster, and former senior editor and writer at
Rolling Stone Magazine. This guy's our hero!
Ben
was a featured character in "Almost Famous," the Oscar and Golden
Globe-winning film by Cameron Crowe.
- AC Team
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Early on in the broadcast of the San Francisco Chinese
New Year Parade, I told the story of the dragon chasing after the
pearl, and, seconds later, told it again, word for word. An errant
extra page of script made me do it, but after the repeat performance,
I should've asked my co-anchor, Thuy Vu: "Is there an echo out here?"
"Out here" was the big, black KTVU tent, propped up high
on Union Square, where Thuy and I sat and watched the parade�mostly
on little monitors. That's because the parade marches by behind
us. And that's because, when the cameras are on us, they want viewers
to see the most colorful backdrop possible. And what better than
the parade?
With more than a million firecrackers exploded before the
Year of the Dragon was officially rung in, the parade was nothing
less than a blast. Sure, it's oversized, corny, and commercial�I
cringed when I saw that the mallet that struck the parade-opening
gong was draped with a banner advertising the sponsoring telecommunications
behemoth�but, hey, it's a parade. And, as we said at the top of
the show, it's an American event. I was only surprised that the
pearl that the dragon was chasing wasn't sponsored by the Diamond
Warehouse.
It being the year of the most celebrated creature in the
Chinese Zodiac, we couldn't help but repeat ourselves�even without
duplicate script pages. Just about every float, every contingent
featured some kind of tribute to the dragon. The occasional respite�the
wacky Stanford University Marching Band; the acrobatic Cheer San
Francisco, and the Millennium Ball (Oh, all right; it was the "Bay
Area Ford Stores Millennium Ball")�were most welcome. The Ford entry,
which I called "a disco ball on steroids," included a gang of dancers
who could've been working the Grammys.
And then there was the group who shambled by in T-shirts
and jeans; another unit on stilts; a woman who kicked bowls into
a neat stack on her head�while riding a unicycle. It was all very
Ed Sullivan; all American.
To avoid the traffic mess that is as much a part of the parade
as any lion dance or firecracker, I took public transportation to
and from. Packed into a subway car with happy parade-goers holding
souvenirs and umbrellas, I heard nothing but praise for the event.
And a couple of days later, the ratings were in. Despite huge crowds
along the streets�police estimated upwards of a million spectators�enough
people stayed home and watched the broadcast that the parade won
its two-hour time period.
Happy Year of the Dragon, indeed.
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Ben Fong-Torres, long-time writer and editor at Rolling Stone
magazine, is the author of four books, including his memoirs, The
Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American, and his latest, Not Fade
Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll. He is Editorial
Director of myplay.com, an Internet music site that offers free
Web space, where users can grab, store, mix, play, and share music
of all kinds.
Click to Ben
Fong-Torres Articles Index
Visit Ben's official site: www.BenFongTorres.com
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