Contestants hope to be queen for Doo Dah day
High above Pasadena, the crowd sipped bubbly Sunday afternoon and pondered the contestants hoping to be queen of the parade.
“Yeah, there’s definitely an Adam’s apple on that one,” one man concluded, staring at a contestant who will remain un-named because she in fact did not possess that appendage, unlike several of her competitors.
This, after all, was not a contest to become queen of the venerable Tournament of Roses parade, but to lead its irreverent counterpoint, next Sunday’s Doo Dah Parade.
Between 100 and 200 people trekked to the Zorthian Ranch in the Altadena mountains for the annual selection, a talentless talent competition conceived to poke fun at the Rose Parade. The bubbly they sipped came in silver cans.
The rambling ranch of the late artists Jirayr and Dabney Zorthian has held a prominent spot in Southern California’s bohemian scene for nearly half a century. Their annual spring party featured naked “nymphs” wafting about, with Jirayr dressed in a toga as a character called “Zor-Bacchus.” He died in 2004 and she died earlier this year. Now chickens, dogs and deer roam among their sculptures and the vast amounts of junk they collected, from old trailers and buses to railroad ties, screen doors and electrical transformers -- the perfect place for the motley Doo Dah crew to hold their affair.
“We used to have it in this old Victorian mansion in Pasadena that was on stilts and falling apart,” said Tom Coston, the parade organizer. “But it got fixed up. They took it off stilts and it was all painted. So we came up here.”
Contestants for the parade need only show up, sign the roster next to the Barbie doll roasting on a spit, inhale the fumes of burning plastic and prepare to perform.
There is none of the vetting process that Rose queens must endure. No learning to wave lithely to a crowd, no following such rules as “never complain” and “always have a smile on your face and always be happy.”
Last year’s Doo Dah queen, Cherie Flores, 24, won by dancing with swirling balls of fire. Later in the evening she would crown the new queen.
The rock band Snotty Scotty and the Hankies warmed up the crowd.
The first contestant took the stage in her green dress and sang a Barbra Streisand song in such a grating, slurring voice that the judges begged her to stop.
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“I’m wearing second-hand
hats
Second-hand clothes
Thats why they call me
Second-hand Rose ... “
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The emcee finally escorted her from the stage. Next up was Guru Yogi Ramesh from Paramount, who teaches that laughing heals all ailments. He began to laugh, bounce and jump around, like someone desperate to get a baby to stop crying.
Few contestants got the increasingly besotted crowd’s attention until “Erica Valentine,” who did have an Adam’s apple, as well as size 14 shoes and a 6-foot-4 frame, took the stage with an electric guitar. In a platinum blond wig, ankle-strap high heels and a tight black dress, he jammed out a version of the Chantays’ 1963 song, “Pipeline.”
Valentine was hopeful that the Doo Dah judges, after picking the beautiful Flores last year, would “go back to normal” by choosing him.
“They picked a girl that looked like she could be in the Rose Parade,” Valentine complained.
But soon after him, three young women who used to play Zorthian’s nymphs at his spring bacchanalia took the stage -- topless.
“Everyone please distract the children,” Coston said.
To airy forest music, they gyrated and, well, held the crowd’s attention.
“Have we secured the permits for this, if they win?” he asked.
The last contestants, including a be-fezzed accordion player named “Count Smokula,” finished as the sun set. A cool wind blew up the canyon, and the revelers made their way down the road, across a rickety wood bridge to their cars.
So who won? Well, you might see Coston trying to obtain some type of permit at City Hall this week.
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