Kyle Quincy saves the day once more!

If you look at your timeline of Awesome (fig. 2.14 on p. 7 of your textbook), you will see (with the exception of Japan, who has pretty much been consistently awesome since the time of the Samurai. No piece of their pop culture that makes it over here is any less than completely adorable. Fruits Magazine! Pikachu! Dr. Do! Hello Kitty! Supa good time fun pleasure! Herro boy!) that there are definite ups and downs. In the 1100’s, for example, Awesome was in a lull because the Crusades and the Black Plague were decidedly not awesome. But by the 1500’s it was again riding high with male wigs, my man Bill Shakespeare, and the aforementioned Samurai. But when it comes to music, no generation gap caused an increase as enormous as the 1980’s, and a devastating plummet as tragic as the 1990’s. The 80’s were textbook Awesome. The 90’s totally sucked.

What’s my point? I found myself in the possession of a ticket to see the band Candlebox on a few Monday night's ago at the Intersection. After locating them on my timeline of Awesome and seeing them all lumped in the icy depths with the unforgivable suckage of Collective Soul, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Verve Pipe (sorry, yo), and Creed, needless to say, I was not expecting much. But, it was a great show! They kinda rocked a little bit. Age hasn’t been much of a hindrance to these guys (especially the singer and lead ax man. Call me! Please! I’ll make you a casserole!) and there was enough gratuitous shredding and cussing that any dirtbag rock snob and aging groupie (like me) would get a little rock, in and around the mouth. Steph from downstairs was fun, the opening band A Verse Unsung channeled a little Beastie Boys rowdiness, and Grand Rapids’ own Fled 5 proved that they were more than just a dummy corporation set up to net ass. So for dinner that night, I had a little bit of crow with my chicken tenders and will officially go on the record to say that Candlebox does not, in fact, suck (except for that acoustic guitar thing. The song wasn’t too bad, but why stop the rock? You had me at “FUCK Y-Y-Y-Y-YEAH!”) like I thought they did. The 90’s in general though, still sucked balls. Write that down.

Me and KP were not, however, granted the luxury of Walking with the Dinosaurs at Van Andel a few weeks ago. Tickets were $80. What the fuck? How am I supposed to buy more drugs if I have to spend $80 every time I want to see a freaking dinosaur? Not cool, man. So here’s how I imagined it would be instead:

After the first T Rex (which was an adorable baby. Rhaa!) ate six children in the VIP seats, me and KP were exchanging nervous glances and thinking what luck that our seats were not front row and that KP finished her hot dog prior to the dinosaurs coming out of their dressing rooms (which were very big, indeed). It was actually a decent, quiet little showie show, until after half-time, when the carnage really began. Their marching band did a neat little medley of Queen songs and the dance team was actually pretty good (even though two of the velociraptors tore each other completely to pieces during “Bicycle”) but there was a pyrotechnics problem near the “We Are The Champions” finale that began the chain of events that eventually led to the part where me and KP were making out with a couple of hot fire fighters off-duty on a plane to Maui. Let me digress…

One of the strobes popped a fraction of a second before cue, which spooked the triceratops into spearing the rump of the brontosaurus right before it was supposed to do it’s one-man (lizard?) rendition of the car scene in Grease (this car is systematic…). It being a bit of a princess as it were, it refused to go onstage so the mastodon had to do it instead, which, you know, he was fine with until the brontosaurus got jealous and so he lumbered on stage, which is about the time when everybody (including the crew and roadies) realized that these were not robots, but actual dinosaurs. Oops! There was blood everywhere.

I know what you’re thinking, and believe me I thought the same thing, hey! Aren’t brontosauruses the sweet, lumbering, vegetarian hippies of the Paleolithic age? Weren’t they non-violent? Hell no! That thing was kicking some major ass until the mastodon’s crazy-eyed buddy stegosaurus came to his rescue and started talking some mad shit. Then all the dinosaurs got in on it and dino-wars was really cool for the first fifteen minutes, until they turned on the audience and started picking people out of the upper bowl like Skittles. We decided that we should probably bail. And lucky for me, KP had previous dino-wrestling experience because if it weren’t for her subduing that paleosaur at the last minute, we might have never made it out alive. Thank god the Van Andel made exits that were only big enough for people (in this case, the few raggedy, limbless survivors) and not dinosaurs because that gave us the precious time we needed to escape before they busted down all the walls and went on a rampage down Monroe Avenue.

And who do you think was currently checking into the Marriot Courtyard across the street on a trip to visit his buddies in Grand Rapids while on vacation from the L.A. Kings? Mr. Kyle Quincy! If you’re still breathing in the West Michigan area right now, you have him and him alone to thank. He, thanks to his Canadian upbringing, (with the help of KP and a few other trained dino-wrestlers they had to call in from Special Forces) was able to round up almost all of the marauding dinosaurs from the area before it was too late and they tore the entire town to bloody stumps and entrails. Mind you, I said most of the dinosaurs, most. The rest, about the fire fighters and Maui, you can piece together yourselves. Aloha!