![]() The pace of the parade seemed to be quicker, and there were a few glitches. The FTD float featured Aladdin with the slogan, "Your Wish Is My Command." "He should command it to stop raining," said one person in the stands on Orange Grove. An increasing number of bare spots were visible among what had started as well-filled bleachers. The stands at the start of the parade at Orange Grove and Colorado boulevards began to thin as the parade progressed. Even the live broadcast on Los Angeles television station KTLA was interrupted for a flash-flood warning for the L.A. Some parade watchers who had started the day with resolve melted away as the rain continued. "Look at those girls - look at their faces, look at their energy!" The rain intensified as the parade progressed down the boulevard. "It shows you there are still good people in the world today." Bruno even found inspiration in the shivering cheerleaders and majorettes marching by with goose bumps all over. And the weather did nothing to dim the day's inherent joy for 71-year-old Grace Bruno, who has attended for each of the past 10 years. "We might as well be part of history," she said. ![]() "We've thought about this for a long time." The rarity of rain even added to the allure for one of his nieces, Jacqueline Nguyen. ![]() ![]() "We were determined to come rain or shine," Pison said as the group sat on milk crates in the rain, playing music from an iPod. I had to come to sunny California to use it." The rain didn't deter Dave Pison, who came from Dallas to take his seven nieces and nephews, ages 8 to 29, to the spectacle. "You can buy them at the bookstore," said UT alumnus Cayce Coburn, a human relations specialist. But there was no shortage of University of Texas ponchos, orange and black with a white stripe. Supporters of the University of Southern California, one of the participants in Wednesday's Rose Bowl football game, seemed to have an edge. The crowds cheered the effort, which mattered more than the performances. Some band members pretended there was no rain and marched in shorts and wore sunglasses. The most cheers were for the marching band members, who braved the cold, wind and rain to perform their songs and twirl their batons. In fact, many families had positions they've kept for decades, sending members out into the storm in shifts to guard their folding chairs against interlopers. Poole, now using a wheelchair, has laid claim to the same spot for each of the last 19 years. To the squadrons of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts who ushered in each float, he yelled: "Yay! Scouts!" "These kids need all the cheers and applause they can get," said Poole, who sends his relatives in Maine a program in advance of the event each year so they can follow the bands and floats on TV. John Poole, 72, of Pasadena shouted "Thank you!" whenever a marching band strode past his spot toward the end of the parade's five-mile route. And it was a great day for true believers in the parade's magic. With magic as the theme of the pageant, the organizers managed to pull a bedraggled, chilled, soggy rabbit from their hat before a crowd that was storm-tossed, but still exuberant. Oddly, the grand marshal in the 1955 parade, which was merely moist by comparison with Monday's downpour, was Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Even so, hundreds of thousands of sturdy, poncho-clad souls lined Pasadena streets Monday to cheer on 25 marching bands, gape at 48 flower-bedecked floats, and wave back at Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the parade's grand marshal. For the first time since 1955, rain doused the 117th edition of the Tournament of Roses, which ordinarily is a kind of infomercial for sun-drenched, citrus-sweet Southern California.
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