Grandaddy Of The Suck, Part 3
Part 3: The Happiest Place On Suck
We departed for Disneyland straight from our rehearsal site on the same day that we got to L.A. – this was before we’d even so much as seen our hotel. While blazing down the highway en route to Anaheim, the staff member on our bus informed us that CNN was at Disneyland and would be taping our scheduled performance, but because we had fallen behind schedule we had to get off the buses in uniform and ready to go, like a crack squad of Airborne Rangers who know the Thriller dance.
In Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt makes a point of explaining the many disadvantages of fighting in a basement.
Changing on a moving bus presents similar difficulties, especially when everyone else around you is changing as well. Forget shame or dignity – we are, after all, a marching band, and have precious little of both to begin with. Logistically speaking, the act of changing involves a lot of flailing around and awkward movement, and when a busload of 40 or so people all do it at once while the bus is traveling quickly over California’s somewhat poorly maintained highways, the result is an orgy of half naked people elbowing one another in the ribs while trying to pull on yellow and green spandex.
But we hurried to get dressed, and in record time the entire band was in uniform and ready to go. After another half hour in transit, we reached Disneyland, where we were herded off of the buses like cattle and aggressively prodded into pulling out our instruments and warming up as quickly as possible. And then we were off, running at a good clip through Disneyland’s backstage, a vast expanse of warehouses and prefabricated trailers, most of which smelled like reindeer poop as a biproduct of the recent Christmas festivities (seeing as Disney has made its entire fortune on gigantic animals, I wasn’t surprised to find that at least one part of the park smelled like shit).
Let me tell you, nobody backstage at Disneyland looks even remotely happy. Most of them look like janitors on their lunch break – and in many cases, they were. I suppose whether you’re in a bad mood or not, you’d be inclined to frown a lot on your lunch break at Disneyland, just to get it out of your system before you went back to work eagerly informing tourists of the intergalactic safety regulations all lifeforms must obey on Space Mountain.
They rushed us into a small open area behind a large gate and strictly informed us that we were now “on stage” and needed to be quiet. We heeded this advice and got ready to make Disneyland more magical in the way that only an overdose of school spirit can.
We waited, “on stage,” speaking in hushed tones, for a full half hour. By that time, we had gotten an idea of what kind of trip this was going to be, and had dubbed ourselves the Oregon Standing Around Waiting To Do Stuff Band (or OSAWTDSB). Finally, roughly an hour after being told that we had a very tight window to make everything work, we went out in front of Cindarella’s castle, played a ten minute set, marched a short parade down Main Street USA, and were finished.
Then, we were free to hang out in Disneyland for four hours.
Now, let me say this before I say anything else: Disneyland is the greatest amusement park in the world, hands down. They take their job more seriously than anyone else in the business – they are the New York Times of feeding corn dogs to fat people from Indiana and then putting them on machines designed to make them vomit.
All that being said, I just don’t enjoy amusement parks, so while the four hours at Disneyland were the high point of the trip for most of the band, for me it was more of the suck.
I wish that I did like amusement parks, but roller coasters are a pretty big no-go for me. My life is scary enough without them – getting on an airplane puts the very fear of God in me (as my seatmates on the trip found out) and I’m also prone to night terrors (as my roommates on the trip found out). External forces in my life make me want to scream enough as it is; I don’t need a machine to give me more reasons to do so.
I also have difficulties with crowds, and it just so happened that we were visiting Disneyland during their busiest time of year. I got shoulder slammed by several French-speaking tourists, which struck me as remarkably ungrateful after everything my people did for them in World War II, and more than one plastic-lightsaber wielding child hit me in the back of the knee like I’d just walked onto the set of an episode of The Sopranos.
However, life had given me garbanzo beans, so I did my best to make hummus. I went on the rides I had enjoyed when I went to Disneyland in elementary school to see if I could recapture some of the magic of my youth. Pirates of the Caribbean had more or less turned into Johnny Depp – The Ride, but I was pleased to see that Star Tours had not incorporated anything from the new movies, in a rare case of George Lucas making a choice that wasn’t a creative disaster.
We returned to the hotel and went to bed roughly 22 hours after we had woken up. Fortunately, we were able to snag a full four hours of sleep before we had to get up for rehearsal the next day.
Tune in tomorrow for Part 4!
We departed for Disneyland straight from our rehearsal site on the same day that we got to L.A. – this was before we’d even so much as seen our hotel. While blazing down the highway en route to Anaheim, the staff member on our bus informed us that CNN was at Disneyland and would be taping our scheduled performance, but because we had fallen behind schedule we had to get off the buses in uniform and ready to go, like a crack squad of Airborne Rangers who know the Thriller dance.
In Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt makes a point of explaining the many disadvantages of fighting in a basement.
”You know, fightin’ in a basement offers a lot of difficulties. Number one being, you’re fightin’ in a basement!”
Changing on a moving bus presents similar difficulties, especially when everyone else around you is changing as well. Forget shame or dignity – we are, after all, a marching band, and have precious little of both to begin with. Logistically speaking, the act of changing involves a lot of flailing around and awkward movement, and when a busload of 40 or so people all do it at once while the bus is traveling quickly over California’s somewhat poorly maintained highways, the result is an orgy of half naked people elbowing one another in the ribs while trying to pull on yellow and green spandex.
But we hurried to get dressed, and in record time the entire band was in uniform and ready to go. After another half hour in transit, we reached Disneyland, where we were herded off of the buses like cattle and aggressively prodded into pulling out our instruments and warming up as quickly as possible. And then we were off, running at a good clip through Disneyland’s backstage, a vast expanse of warehouses and prefabricated trailers, most of which smelled like reindeer poop as a biproduct of the recent Christmas festivities (seeing as Disney has made its entire fortune on gigantic animals, I wasn’t surprised to find that at least one part of the park smelled like shit).
Let me tell you, nobody backstage at Disneyland looks even remotely happy. Most of them look like janitors on their lunch break – and in many cases, they were. I suppose whether you’re in a bad mood or not, you’d be inclined to frown a lot on your lunch break at Disneyland, just to get it out of your system before you went back to work eagerly informing tourists of the intergalactic safety regulations all lifeforms must obey on Space Mountain.
They rushed us into a small open area behind a large gate and strictly informed us that we were now “on stage” and needed to be quiet. We heeded this advice and got ready to make Disneyland more magical in the way that only an overdose of school spirit can.
We waited, “on stage,” speaking in hushed tones, for a full half hour. By that time, we had gotten an idea of what kind of trip this was going to be, and had dubbed ourselves the Oregon Standing Around Waiting To Do Stuff Band (or OSAWTDSB). Finally, roughly an hour after being told that we had a very tight window to make everything work, we went out in front of Cindarella’s castle, played a ten minute set, marched a short parade down Main Street USA, and were finished.
Then, we were free to hang out in Disneyland for four hours.
Now, let me say this before I say anything else: Disneyland is the greatest amusement park in the world, hands down. They take their job more seriously than anyone else in the business – they are the New York Times of feeding corn dogs to fat people from Indiana and then putting them on machines designed to make them vomit.
All that being said, I just don’t enjoy amusement parks, so while the four hours at Disneyland were the high point of the trip for most of the band, for me it was more of the suck.
I wish that I did like amusement parks, but roller coasters are a pretty big no-go for me. My life is scary enough without them – getting on an airplane puts the very fear of God in me (as my seatmates on the trip found out) and I’m also prone to night terrors (as my roommates on the trip found out). External forces in my life make me want to scream enough as it is; I don’t need a machine to give me more reasons to do so.
I also have difficulties with crowds, and it just so happened that we were visiting Disneyland during their busiest time of year. I got shoulder slammed by several French-speaking tourists, which struck me as remarkably ungrateful after everything my people did for them in World War II, and more than one plastic-lightsaber wielding child hit me in the back of the knee like I’d just walked onto the set of an episode of The Sopranos.
However, life had given me garbanzo beans, so I did my best to make hummus. I went on the rides I had enjoyed when I went to Disneyland in elementary school to see if I could recapture some of the magic of my youth. Pirates of the Caribbean had more or less turned into Johnny Depp – The Ride, but I was pleased to see that Star Tours had not incorporated anything from the new movies, in a rare case of George Lucas making a choice that wasn’t a creative disaster.
We returned to the hotel and went to bed roughly 22 hours after we had woken up. Fortunately, we were able to snag a full four hours of sleep before we had to get up for rehearsal the next day.
Tune in tomorrow for Part 4!