126th Rose Parade: The floats! The bands! The couch

I hate being cold. I loathe crowds. You won’t see me on Colorado Boulevard this (or any other) New Year’s morning. But I never miss the Rose Parade. So today, as I did what I’d done for the last many decades, I was in my cozy pajamas, sipping hot coffee, glued to what could only be described as Pasadena’s gift to the rest of the world.

10:15 a.m. | Once more with feeling

I can’t help it. I’m watching the Rose Parade replay. I’m afraid I missed something while typing the first time around. Like, for instance, how young Stephanie Edwards looked and how, ah, seasoned Bob Eubanks appeared by comparison.

“I’ve been looking forward to this inspired day, well, since I saw you a year ago,” Edwards told Eubanks, leaning in to her longtime partner.

“Aren’t you nice,” replied a stiff Eubanks before changing the subject.

Happy New Year.

10 a.m. | An emotional ending

At the end of the parade, a Wells Fargo executive presented a giant red key to retired Army Sgt. Dominic Perrotte III, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Perrotte received a purple heart after his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. He remained on the field, wounded, for 30 hours.

The key was for the couple’s new home, donated to them by the Military Warriors Support Foundation, in Hampton, VA.

Perrotte’s wife wept as her husband accepted the key.

“If that doesn’t bring a tear to your eye,” said Eubanks, “what will?”

9:50 a.m. | This thing is perfect

The sunshine is brilliant. The floats are gorgeous. The bands are in tune and the horses are behaving.

If this spectacle was created as a way to sell Southern California to the rest of the country, it’s doing a good job. Maybe too good.

If there have been any glitches, we have yet to see them.

Not to be a downer, but mishaps in the parade’s 126-year history have ranged from minor to cataclysmic.

There was the year, for example, that a Michigan high school marching band was deprived of its moment of fame when television cameras cut away from the band to cover a minor float fire. That was considered a local tragedy.

In 2012, a Palomino horse threw a rider next to spectators.

In 1988, a mechanic was crushed by a float, and four spectators were injured by a runaway horse.

But none of those hold a candle to 1926, the parade’s most tragic year, when 12 people died in three separate accidents. A shoddily constructed grandstand collapsed, a woman fell from a building, killing herself and a spectator below, and an equestrian police officer died after his horse threw him, then trampled him.

9: 40 a.m. |What’s Jack Black doing on a float?

At this point, more than three-quarters of the way through, you get a little bit of parade confusion. Everything is passing by so quickly, it’s hard to take it all in.

Just as you start to get engaged in a band, or really examine a float, the camera cuts away to the next entry in the lineup.

A few moments ago, Jack Black appeared on a float.

Huh?

The comic actor and musician, whose best loved film is “School of Rock,” sat beside his high school theater teacher, Debbie Devine, on a float sponsored by Farmers Insurance called “Dream Big.”

His presence seemed to throw Stephanie Edwards, too.

“There’s Jack Black, who I love so much I mentioned his float twice,” she said. “Please forgive me.”

9:08 a.m. | The metaphorical marriage of Stephanie Edwards & Bob Eubanks

I’m a little disappointed we haven’t had better banter from my favorite Rose Parade commentators, Stephanie Edwards, 71, and Bob Eubanks, 76.

After all, there are plenty of folks like me out there who tune in to their broadcast on KTLA because it’s like eavesdropping on a long-married couple who can’t resist digging at each other.

(Here is a previous exchange noted by my colleague James Rainey in 2009: When Edwards said “aloha” can mean “hello” or “be quiet,” Eubanks responded, “Well then, aloha!”)

Back in 2006, after co-hosting the parade for almost 30 years, Edwards was pushed out of the announcer booth and made to offer her commentary on the street in a driving rain, while Eubanks stayed cozy in his booth.

The next year, Edwards was kicked off the broadcast altogether, replaced by the much younger news anchor Michaela Pereira. That did not sit well with many longtime viewers – especially women – who did not appreciate the dumping of the “first wife” for the younger, cuter model.

But in 2009, after a management change at KTLA, Edwards came back.

And all was right with the world.

Except their banter, which seems to have lost some of its edge. I guess we all mellow with age.

8:50 a. m. | Of parades and politics

Here’s the thing about the Rose Parade: You think you’re getting a gorgeous display of floats made entirely from natural materials – flowers, seeds, stems – plus marching bands and equestrians to celebrate the new year and shamelessly flack our fabulous weather. This is not a political event.

But there is really no such thing as a non-political event, is there?

Last year, at a moment when same-sex marriage was one of hottest political topics in the country, the parade raised (some) eyebrows when it allowed a gay couple to be married mid-parade. Aubrey Loots and Danny LeClair, who own a chain of hair salons, tied the knot on a float sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. And it was a lovely moment.

This year seems to be the year of apologies for racial discrimination.

The city of Alhambra’s float honored Japanese-American soldiers, whose families were so poorly treated by their own country during World War II. Several elderly vets rode on the float.

This month, the mayor of Pasadena apologized to 83-year-old Joan Williams, who was denied the opportunity to ride in the Rose Parade nearly 60 years ago because she is black. He invited her to ride on the city’s float.

8:45 a.m. | The ‘Love Boat’ float

Why?

8:30 a.m. | Something a little different about this grand marshal

When you name a grand marshal who is well into his 90s, you are definitely taking a risk.

And indeed, the Rose Parade’s 2015 grand marshal is Louis Zamperini, the extraordinary hero of Laura Hillenbrand’s book (and the major motion picture) “Unbroken,” who died last summer of pneumonia at age 97.

Zamperini’s family rode in the grand marshal’s car, and just behind it, a float from his hometown of Torrance offered petal portraits of Zamperini at various stages of his dramatic life.

He was an Olympic runner, a World War II bombardier, shot down over the Pacific, lost at sea for 47 days, rescued by Japanese sailors and brutalized in a Japanese concentration camp before becoming a Christian motivational speaker.

For a man who defied the odds his whole life, it seems fitting that he would make history again again as the Rose Parade’s first posthumous grand marshal.

A spirit like that never dies.

8 a.m. | My favorite hosts

I attended the Rose Parade in person once, back in college. A friend owned a yarn store on Colorado Boulevard and invited me to watch from the sidewalk in front of her business. I spent most of the parade huddling inside the store to keep warm and vowed I would never NOT watch the parade on television.

Viewers have many choices. The parade is broadcast on ABC, NBC, and local Los Angeles station KTLA5.

But I always watch KTLA, and any Southern Californian knows why: It’s the hosts, Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks, who have had more drama in their Rose Parade partnership than most long-married couples. (More on that in a later post.)

Edwards’ awkward charm was on display last week, when on a KTLA morning show she noted that this year, there will be a float honoring those who gave their lives to fight the deadly Ebola virus. As Edwards put it” “This is new, the parade is stretching and teaching as it enjoys and gives pleasure, yes.”

Yes.