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"Now Containing Zero Mentions of Michael Moore... Damnit!"
Now Playing: "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" by Gene Pitney
Hello all you hep-cats and minority hep-cats! This week I visited an
amusement park in Montreal, where everyone speaks French for some
reason. It was a lot like Euro-Disney only with less wine and more
poutine. I am now badly sunburned, having spent over eight seconds
in the sun without wearing sunblock with SPF 62. I don't understand
how I sunburn so easily. You'd think having been born in the middle
of a desert, surrounded by sand dunes and Bedouins riding camels, my
skin would have been slightly better suited to handle the heat. But
alas. Here's what happened:
-We drove to the fairground in a
rented Pontiac Aztek (apparently Pontiac got their spelling lessons
from Mortal Kombat). This is the stupidest car ever invented.
Everyone I knew thought it was great. "It can turn into a tent,"
they'd exclaim excitedly, as though the idea of sleeping in a car
shaped like a tent is more appealing than sleeping in a car shaped
like a car. If you want a tent, here's an idea: Buy a tent. Costs
$60 at Wal-Mart. If you want a car, get anything besides a Pontiac
Aztek.
-It's time we all get together and admit the flume ride was a bad
idea. Somebody, somewhere, thought it would be "fun" to drench
yourself with ice-cold, AIDS-infested water and then walk around in
squishy socks and shoes for the rest of the day. That person owes me
a new pair of Nikes and a cure for AIDS.
-Face it, if you go to the fair you WILL be waiting in line. A lot.
Luckily, modern fairgrounds have incorporated some fun activities
into their queues, such as 1. Trying to see around the next bend to
find out if you're almost at the ride. 2. Trying to stop those
assholes with the attractive girlfriends from jumping ahead of you.
3. Jockeying for position under the only shade-giving tree in the
whole park. And 4. Drowning out the Tokyopop they have blaring from
the loudspeaker. I swear I felt like I was trapped inside a Dance
Dance Revolution machine.
-Quote of the Moment: One of the neatest tricks amusement parks play
is designing a roller coaster ride that lasts 48 seconds and
somehow, in that time, making you forget you just waited 3 and a
half hours in a shade-free lineup listening to a band with a name
like "Bubblegum Crisis." I don't know how they do it. But it works
every time, because as soon as we got off my travelling companions
said "Let's ride it again!" Gee, I'd love to. But by the time we get
through the line again the park will be closed and I'll have to
shave. At least maybe my shoes will dry.
-You know how right before every ride there are some cubbyholes to
place your valuable items into, and beside them a sign saying if
your valuables are stolen you can't sue, so you may as well take
them on the ride with you? Odd that my wallet is safer inside an
open roller coaster car as it performs corkscrews than in a
cubbyhole guarded by 4 park employees and 8,000 material witnesses
standing in line. My guess is the park employees are stealing stuff
themselves, because it would be easier for a criminal to break into
Fort Knox than to get to those cubbyholes undetected.
-Why, oh why, do people play those
stupid fairground games to win stuffed crap? You know, the ones
where you pay $5 to throw a ball at a bucket or a clown or something
and it looks really easy but really it's hella hard? And after
spending $50 because you couldn't give up or your girlfriend would
laugh at you and tell all her friends how you throw like a girl and
are also mildly impotent, you finally win a useless, worthless
stuffed piece of crap. Seriously, I think one of the prizes was a
stuffed brown amorphous blob. Now you get to carry it around the
rest of the day, and try to cram it in those goddamn cubbyholes
before every single ride. Awesome!
-Fairground food is delicious. Since I obviously wasn't going to
waste money on their
cotton candy I opted for more
traditional fare. Sadly, I was unable to secure the necessary
financing to pay for a slice of day-old pizza and a coke. So I just
gave them the keys to the Aztek, and then I was only $28 short. I
don't think the rental agency will miss it.
-No trip to an amusement park is complete without a visit to the
souvenir gift shop. See, if you're in Disneyland at least there are
souvenirs that your loved ones will recognize, like Mickey Mouse
ears or whatever. Even at Sea World you can get a miniature Shamu
(now playing for the Miami Heat). But if you go to, oh, I don't
know, Six Flags, they only sell souvenirs of characters in the
public domain ("It's Hansel and Gretel! Aren't they adorable?") and
perhaps some very overpriced flags ("Collect all Six!")
-I bet somewhere on this planet is a haunted house ride that's
actually scary. And I don't mean "Dangers of Global Warming" scary.
I mean crap-your-pants, holy-shit-we're-going-to-die scary. Things
jumping out at you from the darkness: Not scary. Everybody's
expecting that. Lots of blinking lights: Not scary unless you're
epileptic. Dragons breathing "fire": Not scary since I saw the King
Arthur movie so I know dragons are extinct. I think a ride that took
you through a men's-only all-night "spa" would do the trick. Now
that's spooky.
-All in all, my trip to the French amusement park was a rousing
success, and I will most definitely be returning real soon, provided
I can obtain permission from my parole officer. In fact, I might
even get season passes, because after riding every single ride 200
times in a month, I'm sure I won't get tired of it at all. Oh, sure,
my friends probably won't want to come, and by day 13 I'll just be
standing in line by myself, trying to make pleasant conversation
with the imaginary beings who accompanied me in my sunstroke-induced
hallucination. And sure, it might cost me a thousand dollars, but
damn it, I'll win that stuffed piece of crap if it kills me.
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