Tuesday will be the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake. So, of course, my thoughts turn to the Great Cedar Point EARTHQUAKE ride, which closed in 1984.
Like the discarded-to-the-North-Coast-nostalgia-scrap-heap PIRATE RIDE (closed, 1996) this ride was thrilling only in the way a drive around blind curves in a big, dark building filled with emotionless, hydraulic machinery that may well choose this day, for no particular reason, to kill someone is thrilling, EARTHQUAKE tells the story of one of America's original natural-disasters-compunded-by-govermental-fecklessness (I'm all about hyphens today) with delightful disregard for tact.
Everything is rosy in the early morning dawn of April 18, 1906, as sailors are kicked out of dark-light painted saloons (or wait, was that 1976?) while a refreshingly non-PC person of Asian descent gives some kind of fortune about disaster. Then the buildings start tilting at you, the fire begins, sirens wail, and then it all gets calm and quiet (I think there was even a Chinaman lurking in a garbage can on the final pass) and then you are back on the street, ready for a corn dog and a trip on the Blue Streak.
Or you could try the newest attraction, KATRINA!! where stupid white college students show you their day-glo painted tits, a clairvoyant in blackface holds up a chicken and says "Doom!" and then the storm comes, you drown, and the President says, "Heck of a job."
The EARTHQUAKE ride was built in 1965, so I guess we need to wait some sixty years before that's funny.
Doing my "research" for this today's entry, I came across the Cleveland!!! ride, which is, of course, not funny at all.
4 comments:
Wow. Now I'm just soggy with nostalgia. (Yes, there was, sadly an Oriental man in a garbage can. I always thought that was a bit odd. But, of course, it was just casual racism.)
Casual racism? Is that like a subtle kick in the nuts?
Well, you know, it's playful racism. Nothing malicious, just making fun of people because, you know, they're different than us and like that. You know, like those Oriental aliens in Star Wars Episode I. They were certainly a hoot.
Uh-huh. Well, I'm from Cleveland, home of Chief Wahoo. We're the lords of non-malicious racism.
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