Anecdotes! Anecdotes! Part 48

Original beginning to this post:

As I said in my last post, I've been reflecting on Ontario Place a lot lately.

New, updated beginning to this post:

Two weeks ago, I was thinking about Ontario Place a lot and the draft for this post was still here!

Really though, I think this anecdote is really about the school year starting and new students doing their orientation, so maybe it's actually more relevant now than the time when I wrote down a few notes.

At Ontario Place we would have a wide variety of groups that would have their "days" at the park. Caribbean groups would come through during Caribana. Muslim groups would come through for, I think, Eid. Etc. Etc. In hindsight, there were actually few days during the summer that didn't have a special theme or group coming. I think that it might have been because the park was run so badly, and management was scrambling to get as many people into the park as possible. Did Canada's Wonderland have themed days every summer? Were they successful enough not to?

One that I happened to remember and that gave me a full body cringe when I did was when the University of Toronto's Engineering School (*deeply sighs* I hate that I know about Skule) came to do its Frosh activities at the park. I was standing at the back of the splashpad when a group of like eight new students led by a senior walked by and decided to use the area to do one of their challenges. 

Having lived with an engineer at Guelph for two years and being close friends with another at UofT during my youth, I feel like I have a deep knowledge of what most engineers are like, which is to say that I know why they suck and are annoying. There's this strange duality instilled in them by those older than them that engineers are not only smarter than everyone at the university (they're not), which makes them the most important people at the school, but they also party very hard (they don't). On one hand, they believe they are these crucial people that make everything that matters in the world happen, but on the other they truly see themselves as the same as the bros and jocks at the school. They believe that everyone wants to know them and be them, but in my experience no one wants to do either. So, even though they're dorks, they believe that everyone sees them as the cool bros at the school, because they have no self-awareness. 

On this day, the challenge that they had to do was, I think, take a video of them singing in public. Wow! Isn't that crazy! Can you believe how cool engineers are? The senior gave the camera to a younger student, got up on a bench with water jets on it near me on the splashpad, and then sang a rendition of "I Want It that Way" by the Backstreet Boys.* At the time, the song was having this moment of being an ironic thing with bros. They would sing it because they totally weren't gay bro. And being sensitive is also gay bro. It was super obnoxious 

*This is the first I've listened to this song what's gotta be ten years. Is it good? The chorus is undeniably cheesy, but the rest kind of fucks. I legit can't tell how I feel about it. Also who is the coolest one? Like, AJ is obvi the "cool one", but can any other member challenge him for the title? I don't think so.

What was weird though was that it was obvious that to some degree this senior didn't even want to do this. He was clearly doing it because he knew that's how cool loud bros acted and not because he actually thought that him doing an overly sincere version of "I Want It That Way" was funny. Masculinity, it's a hell of a drug.

Onto to good music. For some weird reason, I've associated these bands with each other even though, from what I can tell, they have nothing to do with one another (aside from both being on Run for Cover Records). Pairing two bands like this is something that I've done in the past, so I guess I'm just continuing that trend here. Both are post-hardcore, I guess, though two very different permutations of it. One a lot closer to hardcore like Turning Point, the other more Revolution Summer, but sounding contemporary. Excited for both of these records.