OK
breaking news, team. So I started writing this blog two days ago to put
of writing the anxiety-provoking final Russia blog but today I FREAKING
WENT TO HAPPY HOLLOW AGAIN. So please, while you read this and are
judging me for my frequent zoo visits, please be sure to add one more to
every number of zoo visits I speak about hereafter. I swear I have
friends that aren’t animals... no I don’t...
Apparently I love zoo’s. I didn’t know this about myself but I figure once you have gone to two zoo’s on two separate continents in one week that’s got to be some kind of intense dedication and undying love whether or not you realize it. (If you don’t know when the first zoo was, read the previous blog post)
The week I got back from Russia was a devastating mess of emotional distress, so when my friend Harriet offered us free tickets to a fund raiser at Happy Hollow filled with unlimited free beverages and food I bounced on it like an alcoholic moose (this isn’t a reference to me needing a beverage. Moose alcoholism is a real problem. Like to the point where they’ve killed people. Apparently they get addicted to things easily. We learned about it at the moose farm in Kostroma. Stop judging me. I hate you).
The details of the event were vague. I was getting information to go in a little black dress from one person and to dress casual from another. It didn’t help that Russia completely screwed up my perception of what is and is not dressy. I only brought work clothes with me so I pretty much always looked like I was homeless. However, the rest of Russia dressed like they were going out all the time. This made me think wearing wedges every day was totally normal and that it wasn’t weird to wear a dress to go work at an orphanage... but not really, I’ll never think that’s normal. After a few unsettling attempts at dressing myself and looking like a confused clown prostitute, I settled on a happy in between of dressy and casual. This information would not be included if dressing myself wasn’t such a genuine difficulty.
To make it worse, Happy Hollow itself is kind of a confusing land. It’s not quite an amusement park and it’s not quite a zoo. It got significantly less strange since I was little, but that by no means should lead you to believe it’s normal. There are a bunch of rides designed for children under about 6 that will literally crumble under the weight of an adult, a tiny zoo filled with exotic animals (you know, like a capybara and a leopard and what seems like the largest lemur collection in the United States), another petting zoo filled with goats the size of myself and some weird humpy African cows, playgrounds, and a crooked house (that’s closure made the city of San Jose one pitchfork and angry citizen short of the raid scene from Beauty and the Beast). There are also a lot of strange... uuuhh... attractions? Really I have no idea what to call these things. They’re things like an assortment of metal balls on sticks or giant wind chimes that don’t move in the wind and have nothing for the kids to bang on them with. And to top it all off, the mascot is Danny the Dragon which leaves it in a thematic gray area of being a magical fantasy land filled with nondescript Disney characters and fairy tales and being a zoo filled with actual animals. I think a good pants pigeon exhibit is just what they need to tie these two themes together nicely. Just the right amount of whimsey.
ANYWAYS you can see why all of this made it very difficult for me to understand just what the attire and theme of this event would be. Turns out the theme was “What am I doing with my life and how did I get to the zoo.” The attire was “it could be a costume party?! Or maybe a club! WHO KNOWS!!!” There were about 7 different open bars and a similar amount of delicious foods from around the world scattered throughout the park as well as some very Happy Hollow-appropriate confusing NEW attractions. These included things like life-size operation turned into a drinking game, a ghost ship shadow puppet show, bathtub racing, and a jungle gym turned dance club. Danny the Dragon was meandering the park in a top hat and bow tie to greet his patrons and periodically taking dance breaks in front of the jungle gym.
As the night wore on, the situation became more and more ridiculous. People (I) kept tripping on what Harriet aptly named the “slow down bumps for all the drunk people who walk too fast” that were in reality cord covers on the sidewalk. Side note: they really need to put those on sidewalks outside of bars because THOSE are the best sobriety test you could ever invest in. The jungle gym area became a rave for the middle-aged that made me infinitely grateful that I am still in my 20’s and infinitely confused as to why I was raving with a mid-life crisis convention. But I climbed up that rope net and I took that mandatory sake bomb on the way to the twirly slides and LET ME TELL YOU once you’ve chased a mandatory sake bomb handed to you by a dragon with a giant twirly tunnel slide you no longer have the mental capacity to do anything except not throw up so the self-judgment kind of ends there. Then you realize that rubber jungle-gym floors are excellent for dancing and you spend the rest of the night trying to convince your friends to table dance on big plastic rocks and watching ultimate midlife crisis woman cage dance on the playground tower like so:
Then you go on a childrens roller-coaster, eat a crepe from a truck, go home, and try to block out any questionable life-choices you made. But don’t worry, because when you take the kid you’re nannying to that same zoo three days later it will all come rushing back to you.
And that’s how you go to the zoo three times in a week and a half.
Apparently I love zoo’s. I didn’t know this about myself but I figure once you have gone to two zoo’s on two separate continents in one week that’s got to be some kind of intense dedication and undying love whether or not you realize it. (If you don’t know when the first zoo was, read the previous blog post)
The week I got back from Russia was a devastating mess of emotional distress, so when my friend Harriet offered us free tickets to a fund raiser at Happy Hollow filled with unlimited free beverages and food I bounced on it like an alcoholic moose (this isn’t a reference to me needing a beverage. Moose alcoholism is a real problem. Like to the point where they’ve killed people. Apparently they get addicted to things easily. We learned about it at the moose farm in Kostroma. Stop judging me. I hate you).
The details of the event were vague. I was getting information to go in a little black dress from one person and to dress casual from another. It didn’t help that Russia completely screwed up my perception of what is and is not dressy. I only brought work clothes with me so I pretty much always looked like I was homeless. However, the rest of Russia dressed like they were going out all the time. This made me think wearing wedges every day was totally normal and that it wasn’t weird to wear a dress to go work at an orphanage... but not really, I’ll never think that’s normal. After a few unsettling attempts at dressing myself and looking like a confused clown prostitute, I settled on a happy in between of dressy and casual. This information would not be included if dressing myself wasn’t such a genuine difficulty.
To make it worse, Happy Hollow itself is kind of a confusing land. It’s not quite an amusement park and it’s not quite a zoo. It got significantly less strange since I was little, but that by no means should lead you to believe it’s normal. There are a bunch of rides designed for children under about 6 that will literally crumble under the weight of an adult, a tiny zoo filled with exotic animals (you know, like a capybara and a leopard and what seems like the largest lemur collection in the United States), another petting zoo filled with goats the size of myself and some weird humpy African cows, playgrounds, and a crooked house (that’s closure made the city of San Jose one pitchfork and angry citizen short of the raid scene from Beauty and the Beast). There are also a lot of strange... uuuhh... attractions? Really I have no idea what to call these things. They’re things like an assortment of metal balls on sticks or giant wind chimes that don’t move in the wind and have nothing for the kids to bang on them with. And to top it all off, the mascot is Danny the Dragon which leaves it in a thematic gray area of being a magical fantasy land filled with nondescript Disney characters and fairy tales and being a zoo filled with actual animals. I think a good pants pigeon exhibit is just what they need to tie these two themes together nicely. Just the right amount of whimsey.
 |
| Even they're not sure what to do with these things |
ANYWAYS you can see why all of this made it very difficult for me to understand just what the attire and theme of this event would be. Turns out the theme was “What am I doing with my life and how did I get to the zoo.” The attire was “it could be a costume party?! Or maybe a club! WHO KNOWS!!!” There were about 7 different open bars and a similar amount of delicious foods from around the world scattered throughout the park as well as some very Happy Hollow-appropriate confusing NEW attractions. These included things like life-size operation turned into a drinking game, a ghost ship shadow puppet show, bathtub racing, and a jungle gym turned dance club. Danny the Dragon was meandering the park in a top hat and bow tie to greet his patrons and periodically taking dance breaks in front of the jungle gym.
 |
| Me driving a bathtub |
As the night wore on, the situation became more and more ridiculous. People (I) kept tripping on what Harriet aptly named the “slow down bumps for all the drunk people who walk too fast” that were in reality cord covers on the sidewalk. Side note: they really need to put those on sidewalks outside of bars because THOSE are the best sobriety test you could ever invest in. The jungle gym area became a rave for the middle-aged that made me infinitely grateful that I am still in my 20’s and infinitely confused as to why I was raving with a mid-life crisis convention. But I climbed up that rope net and I took that mandatory sake bomb on the way to the twirly slides and LET ME TELL YOU once you’ve chased a mandatory sake bomb handed to you by a dragon with a giant twirly tunnel slide you no longer have the mental capacity to do anything except not throw up so the self-judgment kind of ends there. Then you realize that rubber jungle-gym floors are excellent for dancing and you spend the rest of the night trying to convince your friends to table dance on big plastic rocks and watching ultimate midlife crisis woman cage dance on the playground tower like so:
Then you go on a childrens roller-coaster, eat a crepe from a truck, go home, and try to block out any questionable life-choices you made. But don’t worry, because when you take the kid you’re nannying to that same zoo three days later it will all come rushing back to you.
And that’s how you go to the zoo three times in a week and a half.
 |
| This will never be the same... |
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