PPPPPPPPNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEE!

Yesterday being the opening day of the PNE, gate admission was free from 9:00 am til noon. Of course, Joel and I were all over that like fat on bacon. What with the inclement weather, it wasn't as horribly packed as we thought it would be. We excercised about five minutes of restraint before succumbing to the inevetable (YOU know what I'm talking about)...

and then started our program. In previous years, we've missed shows we really wanted to see because we just kind of floated, taking in whatever was closest and happened to be going on at the time we felt like being amused. This year, we mapped out our route on the way in so that we wouldn't miss anything important, like the pig races. Our first stop lead us over to the Family Theater for some Cirque-du-Soliel-esq craziness...


Yes, she is standing on their heads, and yes, they are spinning plates. I said I wasn't going to post these next ones, because they came out all blurry, but I have to (if you go to the PNE at all this year, you need to see the Peking Acrobats). Ok, they're still spinning plates (even if the plates are attatched to the sticks, which, come on, they might be, they still have to hold these sticks upright and shake their wrists the whole time) and now...what the deuce?



She is standing ON HER HEAD AND ALSO ON THE OTHER GIRL'S HEAD!!!! This is madness. Much more madness followed, like this,
and this (they're all on a bike, wheeling around stage), and this, but my favorite (who I didn't take any pictures of because I was distracted by how much I wanted her to get down) was this sweet-looking girl who stacked chairs upon inverted chairs (so that the backrest of one chair sat on the seat of the other chair, and then the next chair balanced its feet on the last chair's feet, and...oh hell, it was precarious) until her head was nearly level with the stage-lights and then she did a couple of handstands and things, but she looked so all alone up there, so high above the crowd, and she would stop once in a while and take a deep breath, as though impressed by her own daring, and I loved her and wanted to take her home.

After that kind of mind-bending lunacy, it was hard for anything to measure up. Luckily, the Iams SuperDogs (who I liked better when they were the Eukanuba SuperDogs) hold undying appeal for me. They played this hilarious game of musical mats where the owners have to try and get their dog on the mat when the music stops, but they aren't allowed to cross the line, so they have to issue commands like 'back up a bit.' Any dog that understands the phrase 'back up,' be he whippet or no, is alright by me.

The motorcross was the same as it's always been, even though it's now called Wheels of Steel and the logo seems to imply some sort of wheelchair racing (there is none), and they've introduced the Globe of Death, which I display for you here...

Yes, two guys on mini-bikes, racing around inside this metal sphere, and not crashing. And THEN, the mom of one of the guys got inside, and they raced around her and reached out and mussed her hair...and caused a screech or two. Pretty alright.

We hit up the Flying Canucks (trampoliners and trick skiers), got trapped by the parade (when we'd go to Disneyland as a family, we'd schedule our whole day around NOT hitting the parade, because you get stuck on one side of that thing, you have to go miles out of your way to get around it) which nearly ran us over with their giant Dora the Explorer (gay), and their massive Strawberry Shortcake (awesome! I had Strawberry Shortcake bedsheets, and my childhood experiences are a thousand times more valid than those of the current generation).

We sat on the REAL Simpsons couch...

and spent two hours in line waiting to get into the magic show to end off our night. We were hoping it would be at least as awesome if not awesomer than the acrobats, but such standards are hard to reach. There was a lot of you-expect-me-to-do-this-one-thing-and-hey-presto! I-have-done-something-else and there was some sub-standard dance filler and the lovely assistant was actually the magician's wife, which is fine, but she was trying hard not to be fifty, and it made me want to egg her. She was pretty good-looking, and could easily have pulled off distinguished and mysterious, but opted for hot-twenty-year-old instead. A shame, really.

Saving $30 on the price of admission makes you feel free to spend $30 on food, which, at the PNE, will just about feed you for the day. I got me an onion-covered long meat from the Sausage Haus...Joel got donair, and later we split a funnel cake...

For dinner we ate at Barnacle Bill's (last year we ate at Hunky Bill's, Barnacle's un-be-eyepatched brother)...

and picked up a McFlurry for the long drive home.

The PNE never fails to excite and amuse, even though all you do all day is wander around and catch free shows (that aren't really free, since you paid to get in, and it's $3.25 for a bottle of coke and $4.00 for a bag of Skittles) and watch demonstrations on a set of knives you will never buy and get your rings cleaned and pet a giant cow and eat a bag of mini-donuts and speculate how long it'll be until someone falls off the Wild Mouse and dies, and will they shut down the ride after that? Somehow, year after year, this seems like a great way to spend your day.

And it always is.