Category Travel

Wisconsin Day Five: What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster? Is it a monster?

December 11, 2008 16 Comments read Attractions, Travel

It has only taken me two months to post about my trip to Fright Fest–I’m fairly certain that history books will refer to me as “Mellzah Dildarian The Timely”*.

So, yes, on October 19th, I went to Fright Fest with starladear13. Every year, during the month of October, Six Flags theme parks go spooky, with giant inflatable spiders hanging off of roller coasters, haunted houses, and rivers of ‘blood’**.

And giant frigging animatronic pumpkin men.

I wish I could have brought something other than my crappy phone camera, but in a brand-new moneygrubbing move, Six Flags has instituted a rule that nothing can be carried on to the popular rides, and that everything must be placed in a pay locker before getting in line–and this pay locker expires in two hours. After two hours is up, the park claims your property. Too bad, so sad for you if the line you’re in is longer than two hours!

Lesley and I didn’t have to worry about that, however, as when we arrived, we shelled out the extra cash for a ‘flash pass’, which is one of the greatest inventions in the history of man. Yes, you’re paying to ride more rides over the course of your day (which is great by itself–we more than quadrupled what we would’ve been able to ride before), but more importantly, you’re paying for the thrill of cutting the line legally, the joy in watching other people scowl as you skip to the front of the line they’ve been waiting in for two hours. That’s the kind of glee that money can’t typically buy!

After we’d ridden rides for a while, we noticed a carnival game that offered superhero capes as prizes and ‘everybody wins’, rendering the playing of the game merely incidental. There comes a time in your life when you have to ask yourself, “Am I too old to be prancing around in public in a superhero cape?”

Thankfully for everyone, that answer for me yet remains a resounding “HELL NO,” and we flitted shortly thereafter to the beer garden, Batman and Wonder Woman capes floating gracefully in the breeze behind us. I had to have at least one moment of grace to balance out our next activity, which was to ride V2, a ‘suspended spiraling impulse coaster that utilizes an advanced design electromagnetic propulsion system to launch riders at speeds of up to 70 mph in less than four seconds.’

The key word there is ‘suspended’, as the seats are just high enough that I had to do a running backwards hop to get into one, which is even more awkward than it sounds. Worse was the dismount process–the seats are scalloped up inbetween one’s legs, and in the process of pushing myself up and over the hump, while dropping to the ground, I managed to smack my face HARD into the seat in front of me, inciting a chorus of laughter from the people waiting in line. Because this happened while I was wearing a superhero cape, I’m fairly certain they’ll be laughing about it for years to come.

Brand-new this year was the ‘Dark Knight’ tie-in ride, which the park rates as a ‘max thrill ride’ but I, sadly, have to disagree. It was like Space Mountain and a shitty carnival ride had an abomination of a baby and then spent millions of dollars tying it in to a highly-anticipated movie. It’s a shame, because with all the additional footage they bought with the original actors, it could have been SO COOL.

Hands-down, my favorite ride is ‘Superman’. After everyone is strapped into their seat with torso and leg restraints, the seats pull up and back, so you are facing downward.

The experience is akin to flying, or at least as close to flight as I’m likely to experience without throwing myself out of a fully functional plane (which I intend to do sometime next year).

All in all, Fright Fest was a total win, and it was great spending time with Lesley. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go twirl in my cape some more.

*Please, do not buy me a watch for Cthulhumas. You would not be the first person to do so in a ‘ha ha, I’m so clever’ sort of way, and I’m *still* not going to wear it.

**This year, they closed Roaring Rapids–in a previous Fright Fest trip, Lesley and I had ridden it because we were certain they’d shut off the water blasts because it was freezing outside. Yeah, not so much.

I was walking with a ghost

December 9, 2008 20 Comments read Attractions, Everything is Terrible, Pacific, Travel, USA, Washington, West

It’s no secret around these parts that I have a thing for roadside attractions. Yet for some reason, up until recently, I had neglected to check the Roadside America website for the strange and unusual in my own backyard. This is how I ended up at the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries on Saturday night. Also, how have I not been to see the troll under the Fremont bridge yet? Or to the Spite House?

It’s really a museum in the the very loosest sense. They have a few bookshelf displays–a couple on the history of the location, one on ‘Mel’s Hole’ and one on DB Cooper. The rest appears to be the results of a lifetime of collecting books on the paranormal and occult, with one lonesome plasma ball hanging out on a table.

We had arrived about 20 minutes early for that night’s lock-in, where we would be “participating in our ongoing paranormal investigation of our resident ghost, Peter Alexander Dunnovitch” by playing poker with him. But before that, we had to sit through the remainder of the ‘Ghost Hunter’s Meeting’ which registered at about an eleven out of ten, hilarity-wise. One group fervently espoused the need for psychics on the ghost-hunting team to ‘assist in pseudoscience by peering over the cliff of the known, where scientists dare not see’, while the other group indicated that no, they were scientists, and would do things scientifically. The first group countered that the second can’t rightfuly call themselves scientists if they’re not endorsed by, or members of, an official scientifc organization, to which the second group angrily retorted “Oh, so YOU can do science, but we can’t?” I was struggling between two major urges at that point: the urge to laugh maniacally, and the urge to blurt out “NONE OF YOU ARE DOING SCIENCE. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE I AM A SCIENTIST.” Another woman was also facing an internal struggle, and her struggle became quite clear to us all when she started snoring on the couch. Clearly, scientific debate doesn’t hold everyone in thrall.

After the ghost hunters cleared out, there were just three of us left–a ‘gun-toting republican ghost-hunter’, my date, and me, plus the museum employee. The museum employee (one of the psychic scientists) sat us down in front of the TV to show us a little bit about the history of the location as a prohibition bar, and afterward, she took us on a tour. As a psychic scientist, she had a lot of theories regarding just about everything. She had a theory that liquor was smuggled into the bar via the women’s club next door. She had a theory that a lot of the areas that were walled off, yet should’ve been accessible via the blueprints, were all secret passageways. She also theorized that these secret passageways have been backfilled at some point during the last 100 years. She showed us the inside of a closet, and theorized about the gap in the wall. She took us into the women’s bathroom, and theorized about a secret passageway. She talked about the exposed brick in the men’s bathroom and theorized further. So I wasn’t at all surprised when she took us through a cluttered service closet into a back alley and said “I have a theory that this is the most romantic spot in all of Seattle.” I know that when I am standing in a freezing cold, filthy alleyway blocked off by a chainlink fence topped off with razorwire, I think ‘true love’.

Next on the tour was the Harvard Exit Theater, which is supposed to be the most haunted place in Seattle, with employees reporting doors opening and closing by themselves and patrons reporting feeling someone fondling their hair, bathroom doors locking themselves, and ‘balls of leaves’ floating down the stairs. The psychic-using scientist also took a moment to theorize on why there were so many women’s organizations in one block, and what purpose they served in the community. After we went back to the museum, it was time for some ghost poker. Although I am by no means a spectacular poker player, I can hold my own, and was looking forward to playing for a while, ghost or no ghost. Had I known we were only going to play two hands, I would have bet more aggressively.

After our two hands (during which the ghost made no appearance, scientifically or otherwise), the tour guide had each of us draw a card, and said she would return in a moment. When she came back, she had us flip over our cards, and the person with the high card got to be the leader of a ghost hunt. Showing my natural inclination toward dominating others, I had drawn an ace and subsequently got busy ordering the other two around, as is my wont. The tour guide handed me a thermal video camera, I had the other two conduct a game of rock-paper-scissors to see who would use the EMF detector, and the other person became the Keymaster. This video–I can’t even begin to describe it. It was comedy gold. Our mission was to go into the women’s bathroom in the dark, do a baseline EMF scan around the room (noting that there are electical wires and whatnot around), then implore the ghosts of the women’s club to assist us in finding the secret passageway, and do another EMF scan. Afterward, we were to look in the mirror if we dared. It was clear on the video that we were all pretty uncomfortable, unbelieving, and out of our element, and the sarcasm flew fast and thick. The gun-toting-Republican-Keymaster asked the ghosts to do something to make him shit himself. We stood in front of the mirrors and chanted “bloody mary” and “candyman”, respectively. I wish to Cthulhu we’d gotten in some ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ and all of the other sleepover activities from my youth, but alas, we were short on whipped cream, sharpies, and a freezer in which to stuff people’s underwear. I further wish I’d been able to coerce the psychic-using-scientist to give me a copy of our footage. Since I wasn’t, here’s a picture of me and their Sasquatch.

Who wants to go back on ‘Weird Science’ night?

Wisconsin Day Four: The White Trash Wedding of the Century

November 26, 2008 85 Comments read Everything is Terrible, So Terrible It's Amazing, Travel

Unless you are John Waters, only occasionally in your life will you be called to bear witness to a true trash spectacle. And when that moment arises, it is your solemn duty to absorb every detail so that you may regale others with the story for years to come.

Friends, I stand here before you today to tell you the tale of the White Trash Wedding of the Century.

I was not invited to this wedding but attended as the guest of someone else who likely should not have been invited, either. You see, at different times, both of us had dated the groom. We both determined that sometimes people are ‘touched by an angel’; only in this instance, we were both ‘touched by a moron’. He had actually gone as far as proposing to Nicki while high on whippets, because nothing quite says “I will love and cherish you forever” like concentrated inhalants that strike down large swaths of brain cells in an instant. Lesser girls might have taken those glazed eyes for true love, flashed him a boob and then squealed yes, but Nicki, being a different caliber of lady entirely, decided that she COULD do worse, but only if she went cross-species.

You might think we’re being harsh, bitter bitches in our disdain, and you would be wrong. Here, I’ll prove it to you.

*This is a guy who proclaims to be an enlightened Taoist, but is seriously pondering getting a “bitchin’ tattoo of the Archangel Michael fighting Lucifer”.

*This is a guy who cannot construct a basic sentence in his native language yet somehow felt qualified to pursue a doctorate; when he was rejected by schools that felt differently, he placed the blame for the rejection on coming from a ‘broken home’. I didn’t personally know that when your parents got divorced well after you’d already moved out that it still counts as coming from a broken home. I’m looking forward to using this new scapegoat to my advantage. “I’m sorry that I missed that work deadline; I come from a broken home.”

*This is a guy who lists ‘tacos’ and ‘his cat’ as interests in an online profile before his wife. He also lists Jesus as one of his personal heroes. What?!? I thought he was a Taoist! The entire list consists of Jesus, Wolverine, Ghandi, Socrates, Benkei, Abraham Lincoln, and ‘Those who fought for us in America to save our freedom (what we have of it at least) and rights’. So I guess, Civil War soldiers. But most importantly, Jesus.

*This is a guy who refused (and still refuses) to sign the birth certificate for his daughter without having a lawyer look at it, because he’s afraid it might make him financially responsible for the kid that was apparently immaculately conceived, as that’s the only feasible reason to NOT man up and admit he’s the father. Since he can’t afford a lawyer, he still hasn’t signed it. That, and maybe he figures broken homes beget broken homes. I’m not an expert.

Even though Nicki set the bride up with the groom, for some reason, the bride still remains her friend, and insisted that Nicki be invited though Ben objected. Mandy won, and soon Nicki received this gem in the mail:

I knew as soon as I saw the South Park characters in the likeness of the bride and groom that I was being called to witness a major trash event. I was so certain of this that I flew across the country so that I could have first-hand memories of this event with me for the rest of my natural life.

So on Saturday, October 18th, Nicki and I put on our finest attire, prepared for an evening of velveeta and sausages from a can, and drove to the ‘Polish League of American Veterans Hall’. But how does one truly prepare for such a momentous occasion, knowing that you’ll be coming face to face with history? We arrived a few minutes before the reception was due to start (no one was invited to the wedding except family, and with six people standing up on either side and two people in the audience, I’m sure it made for a funny picture at the zoo. Oh yes, I neglected to mention: They got married at the Racine Zoo, home of the Mellzah-molesting camel. Because nothing other than whippets says ‘I will love you and cherish you forever’ like the wafting smell of large animal feces.) and determined it wouldn’t be right if the people who showed up to snark the wedding arrived earlier than any nice, legitimate guests, so we decided to prepare by having a drink at the bar across the street beforehand. A rather large drink at the bar beforehand.

Thirty minutes and thirty-two ounces of hard liquor later, we darted through traffic and into the Polish League of American Veterans Hall, and waited for the wedding party to show. And waited. And waited. And waited.

And then we noticed this sheet of goldenrod-colored delight at each folding table seat, and the grand trash ceremonies began. I have endeavored on this occasion to only snark at the groom.

I’m pretty certain that someone’s grandma doesn’t need to know anything about Jeremy Bush’s beast, and may, in fact, be happier living in ignorance.

She might also have been happier if she had been struck suddenly with blindness moments before the entrance of the wedding party, because no one with 20/20 vision left the event without cursing its clarity and precision, even at a distance.

The groomsmen were clearly instructed to wear just ‘a shirt and tie’ without respect to color or style, and thus strutted in with one powder blue shirt, one electric blue shirt, one lucifer’s ass red shirt, one beige vest, one white shirt, and one poufy ren-faire shirt. I remain surprised that no one decided to sport the Canadian Tuxedo: jeans, a denim shirt and a jean jacket.

The groom elected to appear at his own wedding, in photos he was paying for, with hair bleached so blond, it appears in safety gear catalogs directly behind ‘safety orange’, and a goatee comprised of 7 carefully-spirit-gum-applied pubic hairs.

When the lights were turned off in the hall, his hair glowed in the dark.

I felt awfully sorry for Mandy and her rather unfortunate, unflattering dress, but she made her own bed when she asked one of the groomsmen’s recent, unproven hobby seamstress girlfriend to make her wedding dress, and a dress for her daughter. This hobby seamstress girlfriend took on the job, and then sent the bride a text message on the day of the wedding to let her know that neither dress was done. After much freaking out, the hobby seamstress girlfriend finished the wedding dress bare minutes before Mandy needed to put it on for the ceremony. As she fastened the zipper in the back, hobby seamstress girlfriend proudly mentioned that she’d left Mandy ‘some room to eat tonight’. She certainly did–Mandy can gain forty pounds and the dress will fit better than it did on the day of her wedding.

God, that hair.

After dinner, Ben’s sister ran up to me to say that she had been excited to learn I was coming because she reads my blog.

Whenever someone approaches me and tells me that, and I hadn’t previously been aware they knew I had a blog, I will freeze in place. I will stand perfectly still while alarm bells scream in my head and I think about anything that I’ve said that might cause me to have to apologize. Liz either hadn’t noticed that I was referring to that day as the White Trash Wedding of the Century or she agreed with me, but I wasn’t about to make any inquiries.

GOD, THAT HAIR.

And then there was an excessive amount of bump and grind on the dance floor, and then glowsticks were busted out and THEN little kids started showing their butts to everyone and grandmas were hurling in the bathroom, and dudes got drunk and started burning cigarette holes in everything, and the air started to reek of sweat, singed polyester, and love.

We learned some juicy tidbits that night, namely that Ben and his new wife are still going to live in grandma’s basement, and that a flamboyant drag queen once mistook Ben for a bull dyke, and after a few drinks, the bride told us exactly what she thought of hobby seamstress girlfriend, and then after a few more drinks, we learned the secret that would drive us to conclude that the evening had reached its zenith, and that no more schadenfreude could be derived.

They were doing the ‘dollar dance’ portion of the evening, which is something I had never heard of before. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s essentially a cash-grab by the bride and groom where the guests line up and pay a dollar or more to dance with either of them. I elected not to participate, but Nicki lined up to dance with the bride. And while they were dancing the dance that Nicki paid for, the bride enhanced Nicki’s dancing experience by whispering to her that she’d needed to have her bridesmaids cut the crotch out of her pantyhose because she’d urinated in them. Even as the behavior of the guests devolved, it’s unlikely that anything could top the bride wetting herself, so we excused ourselves and congratulated one another on dodging a peroxide blond bullet.

Thus ends the tale of the White Trash Wedding of the Century. I hope that you have laughed, and cried, and shouted in horror, as I have on many sleepless nights since.