Why is it that everything I enjoyed in my childhood is slowly being changed, or messed with to make it a shell of it's former self? It seems like people go, "Hey, there's something kids really enjoy, let's fuck with it and make it stupid." You can think of a lot of things like that.
-Merry Go Rounds- Not the ones with horses at the carnival, I'm talking about the ones at a park, where you'd hang on and the strongest kid would spin it around in a circle and then jump on and you'd get all dizzy and feel like barfing afterwards. That was awesome. But now, thanks to the Society of Super Cautious Parents, which I'm certain is a secret cult hell bent on taking all the fun stuff away, those are few and far between. Some dopey kid probably got stuck under one or something, and the SSCP went bonkers. Voila, no more Merry Go Rounds.
-Those things where you can hold on and swing across the park- Again, some idiot probably fell off and cracked his head open, and the SSCP had a field day. Stupid retard kids spoil all the fun.
-Halloween- Remember when you could just go out with your friends and get a little candy, smash a few punkins, and have a little fun. Now kids have this giant cadre of parents who come along, all with flashlights (heaven forbid your child is in the dark), and some of these people even dress up. (Newsflash: Halloween is NOT for you anymore. If you still crave Halloween so much, dress up as fat Brandon Lee from The Crow, and go to an adult Halloween party, get hammered, and ramble about insurance rates, and how big of a wheel you are at your job.) Then, the parents go through the candy with airport metal detectors and ration the amounts kids can eat. Whatever happened to eating candy until you felt sick, and checking for syringes in the goo goo clusters yourself? Kids don't want to eat cyanide either. I was fairly cautious about that, and the proof is that I am still alive today.
The reason I bring this up is because we took the kids to the 8th floor at Macy's to see the little Christmas show that Daytons first started back in the 50's, and has continued to this day, and also to see Santa Claus. The first thing I noticed, way before we even got there, is that Macy's has given up on this tradition. 50 years of happy kids, gone in the blink of a beaurocrat's pen. I know this because they mentioned that they were running the exact same display as last year, this boring nonsense called An Elf's Life. They tried to enthuse the masses by saying the display was "back by popular demand" which is a corporate euphemism for, "we don't give a shit about this long-loved, storied concept, and as a matter of fact we never took down the display from last year, so all we have to do is plug in a few things and now we want you to come see this half-assed knock off so you will pay us to see Santa, and hopefully buy things from our woefully overpriced Christmas store, and then go downstairs and choke to death from the scent of whore perfume we have emanating from all crevices of our space."
Needless to say, I went into our little journey with a slighltly jaded viewpoint. The first thing that bugged me is that no matter how many times I go there, I can never find the escalators. Somehow I always wind up in the underpants section. Then I have to drunkenly stagger around until either I accidentally find the escalators, or until my wife uses her built in homing device to point us in the right direction.
Once I've found the escalator, and done some swearing because it's so hard, I begin to notice that there is nobody there. This pleases me. Usually, the line wraps all the way down to the offices (which are dark and empty now which also pleases me. Eat a dick and go bankrupt, stupid Macy's), but in this case there was no line, so we paraded down the hall, past the elevators, which are not overflowing with angry people and wheelchair-bound kids, past the old retired ladies handing out booklets, and all the way into the display. This is all very pleasing to me. I don't have to wait in line, which is awesome, because I hate lines in the same fashion as I hate hornets, and because it proves that people aren't falling for the Macy's ruse. Stupid Macy's.
Once we get in the display I get annoyed again. An Elf's Life is configured about as stupidly as is possible. It's like Pablo Picasso designed it or something. The displays don't match up with the part you read to your kids. There was some garbled prose about the elves receiving lots of mail, and the display was of them going to elf school. So the message was really convoluted, and then every few yards or so, there was a real person dressed like an elf, that was running security detail or something for that small portion of the display, making sure kids weren't touching the bogus snow and things like that.
We also noticed that some of the "elves" in the display were actually just regular people from displays past that had been sawed off at the knees to make them look little. I swear to you that one of the elves near the end was actually the Godfather from "The Nutcracker" whose legs had been sawed off. You can't fool me, Punk Ass Macy's.
Finally we got through that mess, which was appropriately about half as long as the good displays Daytons used to do, and went to see Santa. Again, there was no line, which ruled, because I didn't have to worry about the kids running amok and bumping into people in front of us, and when we got done visiting Santa (who was criticized by my son for not getting him the right stuff last year, much to my surprise) and getting the hard sell by a 17 year old to buy a large quantity of Santa pictures and frames, we went over to buy Gingerbread Men (which we always do even though I don't like Gingerbread Men that much). At the Gingerbread Man station, we got the hard sell from the Gingerbread Man baker (what is it with the hard sell? Merry Christmas to you too, buttlicker.) who tried to sell us Gingerbread Men in bulk, and remarked what a bad deal we were getting because we only bought 3.
As we sat in an empty stairwell, eating our Gingerbread Men, two words kept running through my head, over and over, like the gears that made the elf/Nutcracker Godfather move. Screw Macys, Screw Macys, Screw Macys........
One post-script: I nailed a lady really hard in her ample buttocks coming out of the bathroom with the bathroom door. She looked at me like it was my fault. Why would you hang out in the indentation leading into the men's bathroom? That's a good way to get nailed in the butt if you ask me.
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