King Mango Strut chooses its Grand Marshal

By Amy Reyes12/13/2012

Miami gets a chance to let its freak flag wave at the end of December at the King Mango Strut, a spoof of the Orange Bowl Parade with a cast of characters mocking all the strange and hilarious events of the past year.

This year's selection of Grand Marshal will set the tone for a parade of election year political shenanigans. Prepare to be led by none other than an empty chair. Thanks to Clint Eastwood's RNC speech, a conversation with a chair that was meant to be a stand-in for our nation's president, and Obama's subsequent Twitter rebuttal, the chair has come to represent the absurdist repartee we had to endure during this long slog to the 2012 election.

"We were finally able to negotiate a contract with the chair," says Mango Strut organizer Michael Lucas. "He wanted to have full script supervision, he doesn't like improvisation. He doesn't want to work with amateurs." This year's theme is "Going off the Fiscal Cliff," a reference to the current budgetary stalemate going on in Washington. The event's 2012 poster, 50 Shades of Mango, capitalizes on the E.L. James literary phenomenon. Will we see a few naughty mangos getting flogged on parade day? Let's hope so.

The parade starts at 2 p.m. at the corner of Commodore Plaza and Main Hwy in Coconut Grove.