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The Quest For Venusaur:
It's Various Forms of Animal Cruelty Time!
Matt
- 7.09.01
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Oh, while we were there we saw Scary Movie 2, which was pretty essential considering our absolute and total worship of Regina Hall. I'd just like to mention that while the movie was obviously rushed and didn't quite have the charm of the first, any movie that successfully gets Tim Curry and Chris Elliot in the same room warrants several thousand viewings. Now, back to the show...
So, Venusaur was there, but out of my price range. And you thought internet banner ads made us losers millions. Point is, I was pretty upset. I would've drowned my sorrows in the tequila, but I already did that. Kinda loses the effect. Instead, I chose a new means to cope: candy. Luckily, Wildwood has more candy shops than Melrose Place had bad casting decisions. I'm not sure what I was looking for when I headed on in, I assume it was some form of tiki God-shaped chocolate statuette, but wouldn't you know it, the place topped my alkie-induced imagination with something far more esoteric.
 
In between the assorted dipped strawberries and taffy, (a shore staple) I came across something referred to only as the 'Surprise Bag.' The bag promised to have the greatest assortment of mystery candies and toys anywhere, so how could I resist? They even had a cartoon bag on the package named, adequately enough, 'Mr. Surprise.' The final hard sell was made when I read the ingredients, which claimed that the package may contain any of the following 250 ingredients. Icing on the cake? The import spot listed said something to the effect of the bag's contents 'possibly coming from the USA, Canada, Mexico, or China.' Talk about enigmatic candy. Not since Fun Dip has such a fuss been made over sugar. But this stuff - it ain't just sugar!
 
Okay, so I paid two dollars for a few stale Warheads, a plastic whistle, a few plastic hands, and some gumballs. The point is, I was surprised. Sure, the mystery bag of crap was by no means a Venusaur, but a bronze medal is better than no medal at all. I'm pretty sure that's a Joyce Dewitt quote. If not, it should be.
After this, we stumbled back onto the boardwalk in search of more mayhem, and the big Double-Doubleyou delivered with the strangest arcade game I've yet seen. Bear in mind that I haven't seen an arcade game based on the directorial efforts of Mario Van Peebles, so if one should exist, this is merely the second strangest game. As it stands now though - pretty fucked up shit, take a look:
 
Electrifying! Meet Fester Addams and his amazing game of electric shock. For the low, low price of just one dollar, you can grab on to Fester's handpoles of doom and get shocked for 30 seconds while progressively crazier music blasts out of his head, attracting the attention of everything on the boardwalk and in a general 20 mile radius.
I'm all for a little electroshock, but paying a dollar to get my hands shaken vigorously seems a tad excessive. Then again, I'm saying that after spending 40 bucks last weekend on rented beach chairs. Who'm I to judge? For those interested, you don't really win anything if you survive Fester's mock torment...instead, you get a standard store receipt congratulating you for surviving the test. This is one of those games that's funnier to watch from the sidelines, as anyone who plays it has no choice but to look incredibly foolish in front of lots of people. I'd rather keep the buck and laugh with the crowd. But maybe I'm just cynical towards anything that makes me pay a dollar to put my wrists in pain for a week.
Besides, why waste a dollar on that when you can waste two on this?
 
Yip, the boardwalk strikes again, this time with the inclusion of a friggin safari. Course, I don't think Merriam-Webster defined safari as a 'loosely connected bunch of small, dirty cages hosting animals who are nigh death from heat exposure and disinterest from their caretakers', but I stopped reading the dictionary once it got to the pedestrian 'Q' section...maybe I'm wrong. The cover charge was two bucks, so this was definitely a bargain, especially evidenced by the big teaser sign outside the place...
 
Dragons?
As it turned out, what was inside this mysterious 'safari' was far less enthralling than the sign promised. Actually, it was depressing. Alligators, parrots, monitor lizards, and so on...all stuck in cages obviously too small, flanked by a vaguely shaped piece of green tarp and a gratuitous amount of their own feces, which by the way, shared the same scent with the entire building. I'm not sure how this is possibly legal, but it's there. The people working there aren't really at fault either. After all, they're probably from Jersey. We shouldn't expect them to know any better than to stick rare lizards on top of room heaters. Nevertheless, we saw a safari. Go us.
Ethan: This place fucking smells man!
Matt: Really? I can't smell anything.
Ethan: Coke?
Matt: You know it. What's in this cage anyway...is that a parrot?
Ethan: I dunno - I can't see through the shit prints on the glass.
Matt: Maybe Venusaur's inside it then? Never know.
Ethan: A Venusaur doll would never fit in that cage, stop kidding yourself.
Matt: Do you think we should like, report this place to some kind of animal mistreatment bureau?
Ethan: Animal Mistreatment Bureau! Hah, where'd you pull that one from?
Matt: Leave me alone, I'm trying to converse while on sixteen Stackers here.
Ethan: Hey, what do you think of my hat? Too loud?
Matt: Nah, it's fine. ....Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...
Ethan: Shut up fag.
Matt: Tell Ginger to hook up with the professor, okay?
Ethan: Jesus Christ I can't believe how bad alligator shit actually smells.
Matt: Yeah, you'd think with their strictly vegan diet, their waste would be a virtual bed of roses.
Ethan: ....I hate you.
Matt: That's just because I'm better at Smash Bros. than you.
Ethan: No, you're just cheaper. Cheap cheap cheap!
Matt: Want some cheese with that whine?
Ethan: We have to get out of here - we're gonna catch Beaver Fever in this place.
With that, we left the Safari. After spending two dollars to see the World's Worst Safari, the only logical chain of events dictated that we should spend four dollars to see the World's Worst Aquarium.
 
I knew that the whole touching-a-live-shark thing was probably going to include contributing to the disease of some poor captive sharks...thing is, I really wanted to touch a shark. Before I had any time to weigh the morality issues, the guy running the ticket booth started waving around a python. Really hard to have an internal debate with a giant snake being shoved in your face. Bets were hedged, and we went inside...
It was basically the same deal as the safari, only we replaced mistreated land animals with mistreated sea animals. I guess the upped admission cost just proves that it takes a little more effort not to clean fishtanks as opposed to parrot cages. To their credit, the shark-touching thing was no bluff - you really got to touch 'em. In this case, the semi-docile nurse shark. After hearing more about the nurse shark than I could possibly stand, the guy running the show let us pet his back. The shark didn't seem to mind all that much, but comparatively, if a group of monkeys invaded my house and gave me a whole bunch of debilitating foreign diseases, I probably wouldn't be too upset over them slapping me in the face. This shark's obviously desensitized to the madness.
I'm being a bit harsh - nurse sharks aren't the most fragile fish out there, so don't think this is total grounds for assault on the Seaport Aquarium. No, if you're going to blow up their shit, there's a far better reason to do it.
Monitor lizards are usually pretty happy, right? Everyone knows that. They're practically leprechauns in their level of gregariousness. So why does this one look so upset? Did his girlfriend lizard make him watch Crazy/Beautiful? No no, nothing that upsetting. It's just as sick, though...
Nothing makes a monitor lizard feel more at home than being stuck next to a room heater that's used to heat entire apartments. I think this is how animals evolve over time. They get so pissed off about shit like this that they start growing horns or otherwise sharp body parts with which to stab the people responsible for idiocy like this through the stomach.
Speaking of animal evolution... ::sigh:: Venusaur. I'm still pining for him, but at this point, things looked pretty grim. I knew this was my one and only shot - if I didn't go home with Venusaur from this vacation, I'd never have another chance. The fucker's just that damn elusive. Even asking the comic shop owner, who's level of interest in us suggested that he hadn't made a sale in four months, wouldn't budge a bit on the ridiculously jacked up retail price. Like I said, I'd need outside help on this one. I'd need an Act of God. I would've settled for an Act of Rob, but Berry would never buy me a Pokemon doll. No, we need an Act of God.
Anyway, the boardwalk was starting to irritate us. It wasn't so much the motley crew of visitors, or even the water ice shops. It's the fact that walking on the boardwalk in basically putting your life on the line - doesn't matter if it's day or night, you run a serious risk of getting run over by something.
 
In the day, it's bicycles. Hundreds upon hundred of bicycles. Bicycles, unicycles, quadcycles, you name it, it's there. Wildwood has a ton of bike rental shops, and they've managed to convince everyone that no trip to the shore is complete without spending the morning hours peddling your way through a maze of 45,000 groggy people who really need breakfast. Most of the cyclists pay attention, but one out of every 20 or so seems to think that both they and their rented transportation are completely intangible entities of unknown origin that can pass right through you undetected.
In the night, it's tram cars. 2.25 each way, this is the most excessively expensive way to get from Point A to Point B on the boardwalk. Usually reserved for people who are too immobile, fat or drunk to walk, the tram cars' annoying audio warnings do little to get you out of the line of fire in time. The only plus side of these hellcars is the vicarious joy one feels when they see the conductor stop short to scream at a poor old lady who can't get out of the way fast enough.
So yeah, we've had enough of the wooden plankfest. After considering the options, we decided to go against every fiber of our being and use Wildwood for what it's really intended for - the beach.
But, as you'll see in Part III, even that didn't curve my desire to complain about anything and everything. Next up: the intricacies of the beach, and the dangers of Olestra. And oh yeah, a little closure on that whole Venusaur issue. Click the pic below to continue!
 
Or, just click here!
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Matt
matt@x-entertainment.com
Fark.
AIM: xecharchar
OTHER X-E TRIPS
(not directly involving stuffed animals)
   
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