Adventure Notes: Aquatic Humiliation, Renaissance Faires, Tyra Banks, and Hip-Hop Looney Toons.

[Currently Listening To: The Rapture - Pieces Of The People We Love]



Beach culture is easily avoided when you grow up in the overcast gloom of Washington State. There we defined beaches as cold, gray, uninviting places where Laura Palmer's plastic-wrapped dead body washed up onto the rocky shore is far more appropriate iconography than a bikini-clad Pamela Anderson running slow-motion through golden sands. Add to that my penchant for activities that involve sitting in dark rooms basking in the artificial glow of various screens, and my pale Irish complexion which conveniently sidesteps golden brown on its short journey from pasty white to bright pink, and you have a recipe for someone who feels very much out of place on the sunny beaches of Southern California. So in hindsight, I can't exactly say why Tamar and I chose Big Bear Lake as our destination for a much-needed weekend off last week, but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that we were only actually on the water for about 30 minutes of our 48 hour journey. And, appropriately, it was an absurdly awkward thirty minutes.

Our intention had been to rent jetskis, but the nearby marina didn't have any in. All they had short of a fishing boat was a pedal boat - one of those little plastic things you sit in and pedal like a bicycle. Fuck it, we thought, let's try the pedal boat. It seemed fun in a quaint sort of way. That is, until we gave the lady at the marina our ten dollars, and she took us over to the dock where our aquatic chariot awaited. It was tiny, and plastic, and falling apart... and pink. Bright, flowery, pillow-biting, little girl's bedroom pink. It was the water sports equivalent of a Barbie tricycle. Still, we had come this far, so with some uncertain laughter we climbed aboard and pedaled our way out into the open waters at something akin to a snail's pace. We knew we looked retarded, but it was nice to have it validated by the children who were laughing at us as they zipped past on their jetskis. After fifteen minutes of constant pedaling, our little pedal boat that couldn't had taken us maybe thirty feet out onto the lake. And then, as if fate had constructed a diorama to demonstrate to us exactly how out of our element we were, we lurched right past a big fancy boat where two hunky, golden-skinned frat boy types were drinking beer and rubbing sun tan lotion onto the perfect bodies of two bikini-clad, silicone-enhanced beach babes. They were listening to some kind of sophomoric rock anthem - Linkin Park or whatever frat boys listen to - and laughing and drinking and having a great time, which got even better when they spotted two pasty LA hipster douches with black t-shirts and "I'm an asshole" sunglasses, chugging along the lake on their ironic little pink dingy. They pointed and laughed at us, along with the children who were already laughing at us, and we felt about as uncool as humanly possible. Even the lake itself seemed to be patting us on the head condescendingly and saying: "Oh, my dear little pale, out of shape city-dwellers, you really don't belong here. Please move along, before you get run over by frat boys on jet boats." And that was pretty much the end of our time on the water.

We were actually going to try again with the lake, but then we saw a sign for a Renaissance Faire going on that weekend, which sounded like pretty much the most amazing thing we could possibly do with our time. I'd never been to a Renaissance Faire, so if you're in the dark about this, Ren Faires (as the kids call them) are basically weird little events where the type of people who watch Xena Warrior Princess get all dressed up and party like it's 1399. It's mostly a lot of fat, greasy thirty-somethings who would look strangely at home at a swingers party, and who for some reason find the culture and stylings of the medieval period completely irresistible. I mean, I like Lord Of The Rings as much as the next guy, but these people take it a little too far. They talk in Olde English and sell chain mail and dragon goblets at little stands, and they drink ale and have sword fights and romanticize over a period of time that in all actuality was probably unbelievably shitty to live in. Everyone gets all into character, and it makes me feel indescribably uncomfortable having to talk to someone - say, for example, a guy at a food stand selling me the medieval equivalent of a gyro - who insists on speaking to me in exaggerated Olde English. "Good day, my Lord, art thou interested in a devine feast of dragon's flesh wrapped within the finest pita bread in all the land?" Dude, please just stop it. Clearly I'm not wearing a tunic and drinking mead, so I'm not one of you people, and I know you don't actually talk like that, and it's weirding me the fuck out, so just give me my gyro and let's pretend this never happened.

Oh, and it gets about ten thousand times more embarrassing when they start to sing and dance.



The most alarming thing you'll see en masse at a Ren Faire, though, is a staggering volume of fat mutant tit flesh. There are scores of very large middle-aged women who have stuffed themselves into heavily-strained corsets, and their cups runneth over with ye very olde giant, stretch-marked flesh pillows. I like big boobs as much as the next guy, but it doesn't really count when the boobs are only big because everything else is big, too. It's like if some of my aunts got together and dressed up like medieval princesses with ninety percent of their wrinkly fat old knockers squeezed out into plain sight. It looks something like this, but way worse:



Speaking of large things: Last week I got a call from a producer for The Tyra Banks Show asking if I would go on camera and elaborate my opinions expressed in a blog entry from two years ago entitled "Fuck, I Hate Fat People". That was about the weirdest phone call I've ever received. I tried to explain to her that most of what I write - particularly over-the-top rants like that one - is exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek absurdity for the sake of humor, and that entry was really about my disgust for laziness and gluttony, not some blanket disliking of anyone who's overweight. I'm not going to back down from my stance that you're fucking grotesque if you weigh 400 pounds because you stuff your face with cheeseburgers all day long and never exercise, and even worse if you let your kids get fat by giving them whatever junk food they want. But somehow, the thought of sitting on a daytime talk show looking like the world's biggest asshole as I try to explain the intricacies of my opinion while Tyra Banks paints me into a corner and the blood of a million overweight housewives boils over with rage... Yeah, that didn't seem too appealing to me. So that was the end of that. But hey, Tyra, if you're reading and you want me to come onto your show and talk about how much I hate right wing Christians, I'll fucking show up with bells on. There's no intricacy to that opinion, at all. I just fucking hate those ignorant fucks, and I'll talk about it until I'm blue in the face.



Anyway, after the Ren Faire started to get creepy we ventured into the town of Big Bear where we discovered The Super Bear Arcade - only the greatest old arcade in the world. I've discussed at length my remorse over the tragic death of the great American video arcade, so whenever I happen upon one which, either through extreme care or extreme negligence, has managed to retain that forgotten magic of yesteryear - it excites me to no end. The Super Bear - nearly forty years old and wearing age on its sleeve - is pure, glorious nostalgic heaven. It has well-worn but working original versions of every classic arcade game ever made, a long, gorgeous row of skee ball lanes, a homemade light gun shooting gallery, a curious offering of punk rock t-shirts for sale, and an adorably Mom & Pop selection of bizarre redemption prizes. Where most arcades reward you with stuffed animals and candy when you collect enough prize points, this arcade's big-ticket items included an iced tea maker, dinner plates, and yes, a crock pot:



What lucky child will save up FOUR THOUSAND coupons for that enticing prize? Amazing. But best of all, The Super Bear Arcade was home to Hercules - THE WORLD'S LARGEST PINBALL MACHINE:



An oddity from the late 70's, I'd never actually seen one of these before, and this place had two of them. They're about twice the size of a normal pinball machine, and smack around an 8 ball with their giant flippers. It's actually not all that fun - everything being so huge slows the action down considerably - but hey, the novelty factor is through the roof.

We also became oddly determined to collect the entire set of a particularly distressing series of Looney Toons figurines from a 50 cent machine. To this day, the classic Warner Bros. animated shorts of the 40's and 50's remain some of the finest cartoons ever produced. But the old-fashioned simplicity of Bugs Bunny and his pals aren't nearly as attractive to the trend-savvy children of the 21st century, which have led to many desperate attempts to modernize the Looney Toons characters and make them "hip." I really hate seeing great American icons dirtied with the callous, shallow trappings of disposable fads for the sake of making a few bucks, so when we discovered Hip-Hop Looney Toons figurines, it was an alarming new low for me. Take a look at these, and cry a little inside as I did:



Porky Pig wearing a gold cross? Taz freestylin' on the mic? Daffy saying "holla at a duck"? Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Aren't capsule toys meant for ten year olds? The day the word "bling" enters my ten year old's vocabulary is the day we pack it all up and fucking move out to the middle of Montana and fertilize crops with our own feces, Unibomber style, and have a six month detox course of reading Tom Sawyer and watching old Disney movies and, like, learning to play the piano or something.

Also, does anyone know what "flossin'" means? Apparently it's what Porky Pig is doing, and I don't think it involves his dental care. Man, I'm so not down with the kids these days. Anyway, my favorite Hip-Hop Looney Toon - and by that I mean the one that makes me cringe the most - is that hapless hunter Elmer Fudd, now ready for some ballin' as he asks that you please, "don't playa hate!"



Ironically, there was a Robot Chicken parody of Eight Mile starring thugged-up Looney Toons characters in a freestyle rap battle. It would be funnier if it were as absurd as it thinks it is, and not the exact characterization of Bugs Bunny the Warners marketing geniuses are apparently going for.

Maybe we can get The Smurfs involved in some Xtreme sports, and have 50 Cent star in Da Muppets All Up In Da Club 'N Shit, just to make sure none of my childhood icons escape tragic pop culture exploitations.

Our trip to the lake ended with a viewing of Snakes On A Plane (which might be the greatest movie ever made), followed by an energetic half hour of sending personalized phone messages from Samuel L. Jackson to everyone we could think of. Apparently they took down the website where you can do this, which is an incredible shame, but for a while there was a clever promotion for the movie which let you fill out some questions about one of your friends, and then a computer program, which very effectively simulated Samuel L. Jackson's voice, would call the person up, refer to them by name, and yell at them to go see Snakes On A Plane. I can't tell you how confused my poor Grandmother was when Samuel L. Jackson called her up and aggressively harassed her to see a movie she'd probably never heard of. In fact, I'd be impressed if she even knew who Samuel L. Jackson was. Sorry about that, Grandma.