It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Here’s a photo of a guy dressed as some kind of cylindrical statue of Liberty from the St. Patrick’s day parade:

I really don’t know why I choose this passage from Charles Dickens to illustrate my blog entry.  Maybe because it was the tale of two parades.  But these were both of the best of times, but some of those times were weird.  Really:

Really, really:

Really, really, really:

Really, really, really, really, really:

Really, really, really, really, really weird:

Boston apparently has a Chinese marching band.  I really thought they were great.  Unlike a lot of the other bands that weren’t in sync, the Chinese marching band was totally in synch and very organized, which made photographing them very easy.  Thank you Chinese marching band for walking in unison and making my job that much easier:

Back to these:

 

And now for a look at the audience at Sunday’s big show:

The Irish cherub wasn’t posted without reason.  The Irish cherub was posted with reason, as in the US of A, it was St. Patrick’s day on Thursday and Beantown celebrated with a parade on Sunday.  I decided to intrepidly wander into this parade with my giant camera and see what I could find.  And find things I did, lots of normal things, lots of weird things.  Just lots of things.  There were normal parade type things and things I never thought I’d see at as Irish of an event as the St. Patrick’s day parade in Boston.  This entry is going to be about the normal parade stuff.  You know, the photos that didn’t end up with people’s elbows and heads in them. Because there were some of those.  Actually, a lot.

Let’s forget the bad and stick to the good:

I think it needed one of these all along:

In the middle of Blenheim Palace:

The combination of his looks and the dark suit really made it come together.  And of course I thought “what a handsome man!”

I begged my parents for a dog for every birthday, holiday, Christmas, gift giving occasion imaginable but it was for naught.  My parents just didn’t understand that animals make everything better.  So, instead of begging them for a dog I am going to beg them for one of these from now on for my next birthday:

Look at this thing.  I’d probably never have another vermin in my house ever again.  And not to mention, this owl looks like a Polish politician.  I mean sure, a lot of older people look like owls and the owl is a symbol for wisdom but this owl.  This owl should be on the cover of Vogue.

The flower show decided to add live animals to their show.  I’d like to see them add some snow leopards, perhaps an alligator to the proceedings, but that will have to wait.  For now we have these:

Yeah, they are the same but one had the extraordinary foot view and the other just has that hawk view.  With all of the animals was this lady:

She was happily explaining everything about the animals and holding them and keeping them away from us.  One of the owls was asleep and the Polish politician on the top, he could turn his head all the way around.  See:

Good night!

I mean if there is anything remotely worth photographing, I am there with my giant camera.  Literally.  Literally I will go anywhere for a good photo.  This place wasn’t too extraordinary, just a flower show but it was full of people.  I mean full of them, exhaustingly full of them.  So incredibly full of them.  And full of these things:

This was great.  I was walking over to today’s big event, to be detailed momentarily when I spotted this:

There is always some Fellini-esque to random wedding happening in the background in places, so I love photographing them.  Unfortunately, the bride, for whom this day is probably kind of nerve wracking spotted me snapping the photos, so I made a run for it.  Well, I did manage to get another good one:

I think I might have finally might have mastered the whole taking a photo of someone taking a photo thing.