Dear Otus,
I just love the final night of political conventions. There's something magical about watching thousands of balloons fall from the ceiling. ABC News said something about an Arkansan being involved in the tradition. Can you fill us in?
Disclaimer: Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.
-- Bill Bromista,
Maumelle
Dear Bill,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and a privilege to be able to pay homage to Camden's legendary Bubba "Mr. Balloon" Palloncino, who semi-retired last week after watching his handiwork transform the Wells Fargo Arena at the end of the Democratic National Convention.
Palloncino witnessed his final drop from the special nosebleed VIP box. He was sitting with Meryl Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer, Lena Dunham's cousin, Chastity, and Bill Clinton's half brother Roger's 14-year-old daughter, Macy.
Palloncino said it was the best spot from which to make sure all 50 nets with their 100,000 total balloons deployed in synchronized precision over a five-minute period.
It went off without a hitch.
The week before, Palloncino dazzled the world with his artistry for the Republicans at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. There were 125,000 balloons and 500 pounds of Mylar confetti in that masterpiece. His Guinness World Record is 222,189 balloons at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston's Astrodome that nominated President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle for re-election.
The record didn't help the ticket; America elected the balloon-loving Clinton and Al Gore.
The 82-year-old Palloncino is still spry for his age, although he admits "balloon dropping is a young man's game." He should know, he has been in the business since 1956, when he was 22, and involved in the first ever large-scale balloon drop for a major political party.
That was the 30,000-balloon event at the Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco that nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon for a second time.
"I liked Ike," Palloncino says, laughing, "but Nixon was tricky and a closet globophobic."
Political historians inform us there was a modest drop at the 1932 Chicago Democratic Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner, but the Great Depression was on and only 1,000 balloons were in the budget.
In 1956, Palloncino was on the inflation team for the Tillotson Rubber Co., the outfit that handled balloon drops until it went out of business in 1958. The young Palloncino founded Bubba's Balloonacy in Camden in 1959, using then-revolutionary latex balloons. He won the bids for both the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1960 and never looked back.
Palloncino has covered the national conventions of both parties since, except when the Democrats opted out. They eschewed balloon drops in 1984 (Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro) and 1988 (Michael Dukakis, Lloyd Bentsen), and during President Barack Obama's two nominations (the 2008 final day was outside in Denver, and in Charlotte, N.C., in 2012, it was moved indoors at the last minute due to a thunderstorm threat).
What's Palloncino's secret to a good drop?
"Organization and enough warm bodies [about 120] to load the nets in the 12 short hours we have overnight before that last day," he said. "Also, there are aesthetics involved. You have to have just the right ratio of red and blue balloons with white [5:5:10] to make it come off in front of the cameras."
Palloncino is also famous for his 2010 invention of the crowd-pleasing, 36-inch diameter bio-degradable Star-Spangled balloon. A photo of former President Clinton playing with one on stage last week went viral with 186 million views.
The large balloons are constructed of Guayule latex and have only 2 percent of the levels of protein found in Hevea latexes, making it safer for those with latex allergies.
A large drop always looks impressive, but there's plenty that can go wrong. President Jimmy Carter's second convention in 1980 suffered a drop malfunction that dumped all 100,000 balloons on the Oregon delegation.
In 2004, the balloons merely trickled out after John Kerry's acceptance speech. It was a foreboding harbinger of his campaign.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that in his retirement, Palloncino will be teaching entropic elastomer science at the University of Arkansas System eVersity. Details at uasys.edu.
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HomeStyle on 08/06/2016