2002-08-19 - 9:37 p.m.
*
*
*
Six Flags = PBBBBBBBBBBBT
"Yeah so, I can't believe we're at Six Flags and....what the hell is the Q-bot?" - the last thing I said today before being permanently pissed off the rest of the day
This world is changing on me in ways I can't comprehend. Today, I found Six Flags has taken my head and thrown it all over the fucking place...and THEN I got on the rides.
It started innocently enough, with my sister picking me up with Alexa and her sister Morgan at 9 AM. We rode out to NJ in record time...and by record time I meant way too fucking long. We were in a hurry and we wrote down the directions off of MapQuest all stupid like...
************************
a program designed to be the downfall of anyone who uses it. It seems to make sure it finds the longest physical possible way to send people, as if you were given directions from someone who just moved to that area not 3 weeks prior. Also, it's a pain in the ass to use, because you can't just type in "Tell me how the fuck to get to Six Flags" which should never had been done since I know the way to Six Flags almost by heart at this point, but figured I was going to sleep and let everyone be happy. MapQuest is a big fucking waste of life...
************************
...And the Route 9/Garden State exit, where you get off and can go to either Route 9 OR the Garden State was read by my sister as:
...and therefore flung us head-on into Route 9, despite me yelling at the top of my lungs that we were going the wrong way. My sister, trying to save face in front of her friend and her friend's sister, yelled at me and told me I was a moron because the directions said Route 9.
It was the wrong fucking way. Who is the moron, moron?
So, that made the drive...pleasant. Then, we park what seemed like 2 blocks away from our own house, in the farthest possible section of the parking lot. We didn't care (at that point) and we decided to just go in and have fun.
By going in and having fun, I meant sitting on line for an hour JUST TO GET TICKETS and then walk through a netal detector. Joy.
By the way, did you perhaps notice the sweltering heat that rained down like pure agony today? I did.
So we get in and that's when the worst thing in the world happened to me today. We walk past this booth that has this annoying yellow character...
************************
and while I'm on the topic of characters, let me touch on the "charm" of Six Flags Great Adventure. Not trying to be outdone by Disney, a vicious, bloodthirsty corporate beast that drinks both the blood and soul of anything it touches and paints a smile there to make it look like an act of childhood magic, Six Flags has taken it upon themselves to swallow whole the entire Warner Bros. rights to anything WB. That's right, Bugs Bunny and the whole gang along with the wonderful and colorful Warner Bros. movie family are thrown all over the park. Now, I love Bugs Bunny. I love cartoons and Warner Bros. is pound per dynamite stick pound the greatest and most violent of cartoons. But throwing out garbage in Sylvester the CAt's mouth while a big 7 foot monstrous Bugs Bunny hugs a child screaming as if the ears of the gigantic velvety head were going to come alive any minute and swallow it whole, along with the annoying music attempting a Disneyish feel makes my fucking brain hurt beyond words. Simply just another corporate tie in to suck more and more money from more and more sources. Disney has had a park for years. WAIT! We can just buy out a park chain....Six Flags....Bugs Bunny...Horrible, monstrous merchanizing scheme? IT'S A DEAL! And the movies....shit. The movie Batman and Robin lasted about as long in the movie theatres as the ride that bears it's name lasts.
For you people who have never ridden it, that's 46 seconds...
************************
With a horrible smile and gloved hands.
Oh if Disney could have seen it.
His name was Q-bot and he is the bane of my existence.
Before I get into Q-bot, which will pretty much dominate much of this entry, as it dominated my sanity, before I even tell you what in the fuck Q-bot is, let me take you back a bit.
It was a trademark beginning to the summer for my family to go to Six Flags with thier friends, the Bassis. Each year, we would show up at Six Flags, them from Connecticut, us from the Island and we'd meet at the gates, get our pictures taken to be later crammed into a small plastic Viewmaster-ish box and then run rampant on Six Flags. It happened EVERY SINGLE SUMMER, without fail. We'd hit every single ride, sometimes twice or 3 times. My mom, who's not much for rides (as a matter of fact, she gets motion sickness from WATCHING roller coasters) would hang out with her friends, ride the teacups, "race" me in the carosel...
************************
That was our thing. The carosel. When my mother dies, the one thing I will miss most is that I would never be able to ask her for a rematch on a carosel ever again. One time, when I had the chicken pox I think, she took me to Nunley's on Sunrise Highway, just one small amusement park in I think Baldwin or Freeport. Well, WAS in there; it was torn down years ago. When I was supposed to be home, my mom took a 180 degree about face on "Being Belmo's Mom"ology and took me there. We played miniature golf, which we always cheat at together and she let me play 10 dollars worth of quarters in the arcade, as old as it was. But she challenged me to a race on teh carosel, which we both knew was a joke and whenever her horse got higher than mine, it's head would come out front and she would yell "OHHHHH look at that! I'm gonna beat you" in the kidding way that can make any kids heart explode with silliness. I'd fight back, "make" my horse go higher by whipping it with my handy dandy invisible whip and then MY horse would be higher. "HAHAHAH mom. You're gonna lose," I'd joke back. It was glorious. She won of course. But it sparked this neverending battle that to this day, if both of us are ever together and a moment arises where we would be able to ride a carosel together, I can guarantee, you'd see these two people way too old to be sitting on a hollow plastic horse yelling at teh top of their lungs about a race no one can ever win but no one could ever quit...
************************
...and whatever wussy thing she could handle. My dad would try his best to be the tough guy, by trying to prove that he could ride with his kids, but by the time Batman came around and they started to all go upside down, he just stuck to going on the other stuff. We loved him for it. The day would end on the biggest roller coaster at the time and wouldn't be complete without a ride on the ferris wheel.
IT was the same park as it always was. Of course, we stopped going about the time I went to college, but in those 3 years, I always imagined that place being just as memorable for me and just as sacred.
Holy fucking shit was I motherfucking wrong.
Look back on everything I just read and now rip all emotion out of it. Tear to shreds all forms of attachment to human emotion, obliterate all forms of family and of love and you have the current corporate situation that Six Flags Great Adventure is today.
Not content with being the biggest amusement park in the Tri-State area, as well as almost all of New England and the East Coast and...well, it's fucking huge and always has been. Now it's huger. A shitty water park slapped on it's ass and an average of about 15 rides per year more, as well as prices that rise to meet these additions and you have the "glory" of this shit hole. IT's disgusting. IT's grown so large and so bloated with greed and money that you can barely find even close to 66% of the rides now. There is so much to go on there is too mcuh to go on and yet, there are still 3 hour waits on some rides.
This is where it would be nice to talk about Q-bot.
Q-bot, obviously one of Satan's handpuppets, is not a robot, nor is it a scripted character in Quake nor is it an IM thingy created to send you IMs for porn sites the moment you sign on. Nope, it's a piece of plastic that you can buy for probably way too much that enables you to walk directly to the front of the line at the times you choose ahead of time.
Let me further explain this. Let's say you have way too much money in the middle of Six Flags, something that is impossible when water costs 3 bucks and everything there could be bought outside of the park maybe 5 or 6 times over for the same amount of money you'll spend on it, and you just don't FEEL like sitting on lines. Sun's a bitch and lines tire you out, Moneybags. So, for a fee and some planning, you can walk up to the Exit of the ride of your choice, at a time you choose, and wave your rinkydink asshole badge at this box and it clicks it off as you're on the ride. You proceed to walk IN THE EXIT, TO THE FRONT, AND GO DIRECTLY ON THE RIDE.
Let me explain this as I saw it. Let's say your as poor as shit and the 38.75 you paid to get in, despite the 10 dollar coupon that took it down from its original and ludicrous price of 48.75, has made you either broke or so close to broke that your 2 bucks in your pocket couldn't buy you toilet water. You're sizzling under the glare of the sweltering heat, the sun pounding you viciously and with complete abandon of care for your health. The 2 hours, although not really fucking worth the 1:24 that the ride lasts (and if you're riding Batman and Robin, that's 3 hours or 4 if you're riding in the front and half the duration of the ride) is understandable because damn is this a good ride and shit, where else you going to go? Bugs Bunny's Wild Ride? Sit in a fucking mock jeep that is stuck on a track and look like a fucking fool becasue the line was 15 minutes and you talked the operator in letting you on despite you being well over the height limit? No, I'm sure you wouldn't and...neither...would I. Anymore. The scorching destruction of the blistering sun on your brain is rendering your senses null and at this point, you'd attack anything that touched you, including but especially the douchebag with the big funny hat he won from hosing Tweety bird's mouth better than his friends and that seems to forget you're standing behind him. You're tired and are still trying to figure out just why it costs 50 bucks to ride 2 rides in 10 hours and spend about 30 more dollars on a 20 ounce soda and a funnel cake. As you're about to step into this device which could splatter you on the pavement if it malfunctioned, you notice the hand of the attendant come up and hold you back, denying you the ability to see if the asshole with the hat will lose his hat because he refuses to leave it. Instead, some douchebag walks up with his hyper, oversugarred, spoiled, snotty, loud, abrasive, semi-psychotic, semi-delinquent asshole son, who is yelling at the top of his lungs because his father couldn't stand the screech of his son in his ear crying that they had to wait on line and he buckled and spent the not-even-considerable-section-of-my-fortune so that he can walk to the front of the line, so he can be flung about at 60-80 MPH with his squealing putrid son, so that when they get home, his son will ignore his father had laid out over $150 and instead notice that the Tweety bird 5 times his son's size was too small for his awful awful escaped sperm.
To shorten that, people cut me all fucking day, without any fucking care about what they did or who profited off them. All they cared about was the glory of first.
The day wasn't all bad. I went on Nitro, the sickest motherfucker ever to rock my face...
************************
This roller coaster, also known in the New England Six Flags for you Massholes as the Superman roller coaster (it's the same roller coaster exactly, only it's piss yellow instead of red) was so bad that it had to be closed for 20 minutes right before me and my sister were supposed to go on for the last ride of the day because someone had a heart attack on it. I swear to fucking god. They had a heart attack from riding Nitro...
************************
...and Medusa and many other rides, with me and my sister putting on the "Dragons" face (you wouldn't understand...) at all of the pictures.
Except on Nitro. Some Dad and his son had to leave thier picture at the booth because my middle fingers popped out due to the 80 MPH velocity.
NO wait. It was because I'm a bastard. Fuck you, Q-bot.
So we crashed through a whole day of fun, getting thrown around with wreckloose furiosity and almost drowned on the water rides.
When I came home, I tried to cook some of the zeppolis I saved from the park, a staple in food for me and my parents when they would go with us to the park, just so they wouldn't feel left out of the festivities. I figured it was a good gesture, to remind them of all the times they've given me, to thank them for not being Q-bot parents, to reminisce together about a time where both of us were happier and they were a little younger and could go out with us.
But instead, I find 2 completely depressed people in the forms of my parents, my mom frazzled from the countless atrocities that befall her from all sides at work, home and around life and my father, who wants to lose weight and doesn't want to die from cholesterol and has since created a blander version of his life becasue he doesnt want to die. He's stripped all of the little sins we call fun out of his life just so a number that tells him how fucked his arteries are goes down so he can feel comfortable.
I throw the zeppolis into the stove, digging them out of the 3 pounds of sugar they were buried in. I'm not being sarcastic. I couldn't find them at first becasue the girl making them didn't pay attention and put in probably 3 times what she should have. I immediately put a smile on my face, rubbing my hands together, knowing I have brought home the cure to thier bad day, the 5 minutes that will atleast let them go to bed tonight with a smile on.
Instead, I got a "oh I can't have that. It's not good for me" and a "Ruh ruh ruh ruh (insert current thing you are upset with due to you being brought up more ladylike than any of us could ever be)"....
************************
Let me explain that one. My mother, who does have a great sense of humor and can relax like the best of them, was brought up, obviously, by my grandma and grandpa. Both of my mother's parents, who are dead, sent her to catholic school and made sure she kept herself in the proper light at all times. My grandma Anne was probably the closest thing this past century has seen to a true lady, becasue she was proper and trim and lived better to herself and to everyone she ever met than anyone I'll ever know. Guaranteed. My grandpa Joe, although he drank a little, had probably the greatest sense of clean humor that ever existed and had the softness about him of a teddy bear. He never liked dirty dirty humor, despite being in the Army for years of service (including in World War II)without being injured, which made me revere him as a god or at least a powerful angel for being so valiant and not being tarnished mentally or physically by the atrocities of war. HE did, however, have a tendency to tell all forms of CLEAN dirty jokes (or at least telling dirty jokes as clean as possible) and laughing in a giggle where he chuckled and his whole face erupted into a light that would quickly envelop all around him and truly feel his warmth and kindness. There is no other like them. There will be no other. You missed them and so do I...
************************
IT made me feel like my parents were gone. The zeppolis almost seemed to insult them and my attempt at trying to get closer to them, to fill the gap I widen with all of my embarrassments to them with my ways of life they don't approve of (which is all of them) seemed to simply annoy them.
I didn't want to tell them that I took them home, that I held them and protected them for many hours jsut solely so we could at least share one little shred of the past that was still sacred to me, that lingering flap on the end of the flagpole from when the dollar tore the sacred flag of my memories of that park away from me and it too died, but because my parents did. They died inside at least, to me, in that way I remember them the best. The way that they could bring the world to me, show me the sky upclose right by my side by being spontaneous and amazing and everything I could only try to be when I get older.
I can't take this shit anymore. My parents have grown too old for me, I'm too much for them. The past few times I've come home, my parents seem to yell more and more at me until it seems the only times they can even bother looking at me is when I get there and when I leave. They miss me and they want me there, only for me to be a burden to them when I get there and a pain to them until I leave. This is not the home I can remember, the one I just got done explaining not but 24 hours ago. I'm growing too old too, but I refuse to grow with myself. I'm too childish. I'm too immature. I have too much energy for them, for my own good. "I have to learn how to control myself, I have to learn how to get myself under control, I have to control who I am. What I ("you"; me) lack is control."
I'm tired and I'm tired of this. I've done everything to make them happy and do good in thier eyes. It's not FOR them; it's for me. I'd rather be victorious in what I do for them because I know it would make them proud and that's all I ever wanted them to feel about me. I could drag myself into whatever I wanted to and just get some stupid job and waft through life fine, doing whatever to get by and survive, but I chose to go to school, to get better, and when I was doing shitty becasue I simply couldn't perform what I could do, I kept at it, switched to find a better fit, threw my whole life plans away, drafted new ones. I tore down my life, eradicated my future, but redesigned myself and my goals so that I could make something for me to be proud of and for me to be proud that they were proud and that I could at least make someone happy for once. I struggled as hard as I could, pushed myself to limits I had no idea I had just so I could live the way I wanted as well as do the right thing, for me for them. I GAVE YOU FUCKING EVERYTHING AND YOU FUCKING DIED ON ME! WHAT THE FUCK ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
Fucking Q-bot.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
