Scenes from a Parade

Seen:

• A young woman wearing a t-shirt that says: "Torture is barbecue"
  
• On Broadway a young man and woman playing catch with a sizeable dildo with a base shaped like a foot, such that I initially thought they were tossing a model of a human leg across the street in advance of the Pride parade. What can this mean?
  
• Ronnie Kroell, late of Make Me a Supermodel, who on close inspection and in natural lighting actually looks as though he were first airbrushed and then lit by professionals.
  
• Small clusters of fundamentalists, who look like they've all gone together to special stores to buy their clothes. They've also really gotten into those big Old Testament beards favored by the Afghans and the guys on the Luden's Cough Drop boxes. Pride parades without religious extremists are like Easter without malted milk balls: it would be more logical and straightforward, but would lack a certain traditional element that one remembers from childhood. There are, however, fewer each year.