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.

Our House Had All the Summer Shade

Does writing out a blog here get my creative juices flowing and make it easier to write the annotations that I need to today? Hard to know if there's any correlation there, but let's believe that it's true today.

I'm not sure why, but Ontario Place has been on my mind a bunch lately. Maybe because it's August and it's making me remember the dog days of the summer working there and waiting for the school year to start (I guess I have always really liked school). Maybe the current heat wave in Montreal is making me think of the days at OP where the humidex would go up to 50 beside the lake. Maybe it's because I still use my OP windbreaker as a light jacket and I've recently worn it in the rain. In any case, the park has been circling back in mind over the last two weeks or so and smaller stories and memories that I haven't thought about in years are returning as a result.

Something you only noticed about Ontario Place if you were there every day for three months was that they just played a single Sirius Satellite Radio station for the entire summer. One summer it was Sirius 70s, one it was 80s, one was a weird PG Top 40. Though I assume the DJs who made the playlist thought they had made a huge mix of songs, I feel like I had heard the entire run of them in about three days. You quickly got used to this station being the background noise of this summer and not long after that started to hate every song because you had heard it so many times. 

That being said, there were always a few songs each summer that would cut through the haze and boredom and remain awesome, no matter how many times you heard them. On a long hot workday, these would be a welcome relief and boost to your mood.

 The Official List of Good Songs that Played at Ontario Place:

Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back in Town

I think that this might have been where my appreciation for Thin Lizzy started? So many losers made a big show of listening to classic rock while I was in high school that it was hard to not associate it with them and it took me a while to come around to the good parts of the genre. I legit perked up every time this song started and started to love it before long. There was so much boring 70s arena rock on the playlist, but the guitar harmonies and thumpy bass made me realize that Thin Lizzy was head and shoulders above them all.

Orleans - Still the One

Speaking of boring arena rock! I truly can't explain why this song appealed to me, as it's so fucking corny it hurts. I think I was just so overdosed on love songs by bands like the Ergs! and Descendents that anything in the genre could win me over. What if Grand Funk Railroad and the Eagles combined but left their small amount of songwriting skill behind. You get this band! It does pain me to admit that that's a huge vocal harmony on the chorus.

The Eagles - Lyin' Eyes

Much like the Dude, I just fuckin' hate the Eagles man. They're infinitely worse than all the other California easy rock from that time, having none of the guitar shredding and maliciousness of Fleetwood Mac or the dark moroseness of Jackson Browne. I guess chalk it up to the same reason that Orleans song popped out to me? Forgive me, I was painfully single and lonely.

PS: This song is 6 minutes? What the fuck?

The Miracles - Love Machine

I wasn't alone in getting tired of Ontario Place's music and most of the staff  felt like Bill Murray each time he wakes up in Groundhog Day. One day I was rotating around to my next position in the waterpark took over the spot of this big Chilean guy named Nick. As he left, he said something like "Oh man, that 'Love Machine' was playing." and started doing a little dance and singing "I don't work for nobody but you!" in a falsetto. I think he was high. It brightened up my day.

Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns

This one is no surprise as I'm about as a huge a Mitchell fan as there is, so I was stoked that it was part of the 80s playlist. One morning, I was hungover and stoned coming into work and this song was playing as I entered the gate of the park. What a perfect morning.

Miley Cyrus - The Climb

When we converted to a Top 40 playlist, it was weirdly all songs that were like three to four years old. I already thought this song was hilarious because of an inside joke with my friend Jamie, so that made it easy to vibe to it when it started to play at OP. I started to joke with all the 20-year-old biddies that I worked with that this was my favourite song and it often played at the bottom of one slide where I had to do rescues, so the over-the-top anthem about overcoming adversity started to be about me having to jump in and get kids.

Katy Perry - Hot 'n Cold

At the height of poptimism, I was super into Katy Perry's first two albums (if that weird debut doesn't count) and I think that "Hot 'n Cold" playing at Ontario Place was the start of that. I caught myself vibing to the song one day at the park because it's undeniably catchy. Once again, I fell prey to a song about someone fucking you around. I would go home after work and watch the video on Youtube because I loved it, but then also erase the video from my browsing history so that other people wouldn't know I was listening to it. I was punk! Punks can't like Top 40!

PS: While working at Ontario Place, I realized that "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha and "California Gurlz" by Katy Perry have the same melody and are almost the same song. I mentioned this to my co-workers and most didn't believe me, despite the similarities being obvious, or didn't care. Crazy! All of them!