"Searing Gas Pain Land?"

As some of you know, Boothe and I took a trip to Six Flags: America yesterday. Why would we want to do that? I got two free tickets when I signed up for Comcast High Speed Internet, and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to get something out of my six weeks of testicle-bunching torment. So, rebounding from a rousing night of two-man Circle of Death, Molson Canadian, and wrestling DVDs, we clambered out of the condo at 10 AM and hopped in my roaring, groaning beast of a car, bound for Largo. We made it there by 10:45, fifteen minutes after the park opened. I was unpleasantly surprised by the TEN dollar parking fee, but I eased my sorrows by making the "Don't forget, we're parked in the Itchy Lot" joke for the ninety-seventh time. The classics never die.

Now, let me back up for a second. I *love* roller coasters, and I have ever since I was in my early teens, when I got tired of holding everyone's backpacks during our trips to Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens. But there are good theme parks, and bad theme parks. I give the aforementioned my seal of approval, as well as Hershey Park. However, as it is the closest park to home, I have been to Six Flags enough times to say without equivocation that it is...not good. There are plenty of mitigating factors. The park has undergone a few theme changes in the last couple decades, from the jungle-motif Wild World to the more generic, Cal Ripken-sponsored Adventure World (nothing could beat Crocodile Cal's Outback Beach House, though), to the current Six Flags: America brand. As a result, the park's actual "theme" is something of a hodgepodge, a bunch of half-assed ideas. You have the awesome comic-themed rides in Gotham City, but there's also a Looney Tunes area for the kiddies, and for some reason a cowboy-and-pirate-type land. But isn't it called "Six Flags: America?" Well...yeah. So right inside the gates, they've thrown together a colonial village of shoppes and reste roomes and the like. What a mess. Oh, and occasionally, someone gets stabbed.

But the worst aspect of SFA is without a doubt the pervasive flaw in every park under the Six Flags Umbrella: those horrid commercials with the creepy Dancing Old Man. Seriously, whose idea was that? "I know what will make people flock to our parks! We'll dress up a woman to look like a mutated cross between Charles Nelson Reilly and Abe Vigoda, and have it show up in a colorful bus that plays that annoying Venga Boys song. The Old Man pops out of the bus, dances spastically, and lures children away in the mysterious bus. It'll be great!" Of course, the creepy bastard is plastered all over the interior of the park. Amusingly enough, my father claims that it is actually Charles Nelson Reilly. He won't accept common logic as proof to the contrary. It hurts just to think about it.

So, I've already told you that Six Flags: America patches together pieces of several other theme parks. Still, it seems like there should be some cohesive, overriding theme that binds the various parts together. Boothe hit upon it as we disembarked from the Superman: Ride of Steel. It's a junkyard. It's painfully obvious from the high vantage points of the various roller coasters. From the dizzying heights of the Two Face: Flip Side I remarked on the highly visible storage area, complete with sheds, beer kegs, tents, and the like. But that's nothing compared to the view from atop the 90 foot drop on the Superman. It appears as though you are plunging into what was once a body of water. Now, however, it is an atomic, bright green mass of stagnance. As Boothe said, "If we fall, it's comforting to know that we'll be dissolved upon impact by flesh-eating bacteria". But the Bog of Eternal Stench was just the tip of the garbage iceberg. There was also a haphazard collection of junk scattered around a neglected field of grass between featured areas of the park. It included a length of tubing that looked like it was taken from a McDonald's PlayLand, a lonely locomotive, an empty gazebo, and best of all...and abandoned junked car that could have been a Pinto. Why? The world may never know. I won't even try to comprehend the wooden crosses and replica (I hope) skeletons that can be seen from the waiting area for the Superman ride. I can only assume it's a memorial to the immigrant laborers that died to build the coaster. Poor Canadians; they just wanted a piece of the American dream.

Beyond the pervasive urban decay decor, the core problem with Six Flags is that there just isn't enough to keep you there for a full day. They've mostly had the same shows for years; even if that's your thing, you can't sit through the Batman Stunt Show or the Looney Tunes gang singing "Funkytown" too many times. The roller coasters they have are very enjoyable; even the wooden ones are a good old-fashioned thrill. But there are only seven of them, and I have never been to Six Flags on a day that all of them were operating at the same time. Because we got to the park early, we avoided long lines until lunch and managed to catch all but the Mind Eraser while they were actually functioning. By lunch time, we were pretty satisfied. The water park is closed by this time of year, and even if it were open...well, you know. Those things are as sanitary as the restroom of a Shell station. We're not stupid or rich enough to hit the arcade. So we had some overpriced Chinese food and hit the best rides one more time, and then grabbed some funnel cake for the road. Of course, we were exhausted and dehydrated, so I pulled into a 7-Eleven and bought the most orgasmic Slurpee of my life. The final tally: Five hours at Six Flags: America. Forty dollars for food and parking. Ninety minutes round-trip. But the tickets were free, and the rides were fun, and the weather was nice for most of the day. But if anyone wants to take me to Cedar Point next year, I won't say no. I hear they are stabbing-free.

Current Music: Foghat - Slow Ride