Observations About A Place Called San Diego

The Oregon Marching Band, of which I am a member, recently went to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl, hence the downright spotty update situation over the past week.



"Na na na naaaa SAN DIEGO!" - Austin Fiske, a trumpet player.

Why, yes, before you ask, it was awesome to leave snowed-in Portland for a free trip to San Diego and $200 cash per diem. It sort of makes the months of frigid, rainy rehearsals worth it, along with the embarrassment of listing “marching band” as one of my hobbies. However, every silver lining has a dark, nasty cloud in there somewhere – in this case, it was the fact that we had to drive from Eugene to San Diego on buses. And then, afterwards, drive back.

Two days on a motor coach does things to a man. I have now learned not to measure the time between stops in hours, but rather in the number of movies we’ve watched. For example, Eugene to Red Bluff, California was Shoot ‘Em Up, Death Race, Step Brothers, and half of Dogma. After days of roadside Jack In The Box, I have developed a bizarre immunity to heartburn. Also, I have mastered the art of peeing in a coffin-sized bus bathroom while traveling over a steep and bumpy road through the Siskiyous – sadly, this practice has earned me a bizarre and inaccurate nickname that I’d just as soon never repeat.

California’s problem is that it’s very long – inconveniently so, in my case. What’s worse, all the really relevant California stuff happens in only about two-thirds of the state, and there’s a full third up at the top there north of Sacramento that’s just the geographical equivalent of packing peanuts and lint. That might sound like a low blow toward the people of Extremely Northern California, but if you’d just spent four movies driving through it, you’d get where I was coming from.

I feel like I’ve always made it known that I have a general mistrust of the state of California. Before anybody gets angry, I should clarify that I mistrust the state of California for the same reason I mistrust incredibly handsome guys who got laid all the time in high school, because generally speaking, California is that guy. The outskirts of San Diego, parts of town that, in Oregon, would be comprised of strip malls and oily puddles, are here filled with rolling bluffs, ocean views, and at least six things from a Beach Boys song. It’s locations like these that make California an Aryan, single syllabic-named god of football who goes through hot girlfriends as fast as I go through Kleenex. Oregon, on the other hand, home that I love, is a lot more like me in high school – unpopular and sweaty at awkward times.

Things are different down there. The walls on either side of the highway are made out of pleasantly tanned brick rather than flat, drab concrete, giving the impression that perhaps someone knocked down an old Spanish mission (they seem more common than trees in Southern California) and used that rubble to build the sound dampening wall. Everything costs 8% more than the listed price because of some “Sales tax.” Most importantly, though, these strange, alien, beautiful people practice the bizarre tradition of celebrating Christmas for about a week and a half, instead of one day like all of us posers in other parts of the country.

When we made a trip to Sea World, Christmas was still very much in full swing, even though it was December 28th. Christmas music was playing in all the park restaurants. Furthermore, rather than playing actual Christmas music, the Sea World staff had cobbled together an awesome mix CD of the best Jamaican steel drum covers of Christmas standards, in keeping with the tropical theme of the park. My tolerance for steel drum music is limited at best. My tolerance for Christmas music is practically nonexistent. I call it The Perfect Storm.

To augment this, a crack squad of four carolers was strolling through the park, crooning Christmas carols of yore and dressed in replica Victorian attire. Now, I suppose all of that is fine and dandy if you’re in Victorian England Land,* but this was Sea World. The women were wearing hoop skirts and bonnets, the men black suits and top hats, and they were standing in front of a tiki torch and matching pitches with a bunch of horny sea lions a few feet away. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe if they’d dressed a bunch of dolphins up like Victorian carolers? I mean, the Victorian bit still makes basically no sense, but at least at that point you’ve got dolphins.

*”Come on down to Victorian England Land! Take the kids for a spin on Jack the Rippercoaster, and afterwards help yourself to a biscuit full of weevils and a glass full of typhoid infected water! It’s all… Uh… Wow, this was a terrible idea for a theme park.”

Last of all came the Shamu Holiday Spectacular. Now, I’m not necessarily a fan of watching a giant whale splash its own filth on people (I find it to be an all-too-accurate metaphor for life) but I figured that since I saw a Broadway show in New York, I ought to go see Shamu at Sea World. After all, he’s basically the Barry Manilow of giant water-dwelling mammals; I would be a fool to pass such an opportunity up. Let me say this much: The show started with a master of ceremonies, clad in a long wool coat and scarf, walking through the stadium and inviting us via microphone to join Shamu in celebrating peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. Shamu’s plan to celebrate this was evidently to swim around in his tank and splash his own filth on the audience, but that’s cool – art is never recognized in its time. As the show wore on, many more of Shamu’s “friends” joined in the fun, including eight robed children singing hymns, two dozen carolers in bow ties and red blazers, and a nonunion musician who was clearly a scholar of Kenny G. playing a winsome and slightly off-key rendition of Silent Night on a soprano saxophone.

Billboards on the roadside informed me that Knott’s Berry Farm was reenacting the Charlie Brown Christmas until January 4th, and every restaurant we went into, no matter where in the city, was playing Christmas music on the PA system. It’s like California is trying to apologize to God for the porn industry by celebrating the birth of the big man’s son for much longer than is appropriate. Listening to White Christmas while sitting under a palm tree in an outdoor café in 75-degree weather is oddly ironic, even moreso when you’re doing it on New Year’s Eve. San Diego needs to get the message – it’s not white, and Christmas is over.

Aside from questionable taste in music, though, San Diego is a fine place to be – I’d put it up there with San Francisco as one of the two cities that begin to atone for the flagrant vileness of Los Angeles. I could be saying this because my friends and I spent most of the trip saying, “God, this is so much better than El Paso!” Really, the bulk of my complaints about San Diego come from the fact that I went down during the time of year when they’re playing music I hate, and that it just happens to be the southernmost city in California, necessitating a very long drive. So if any members of the city council could do something to rectify those two issues, I’d be more than willing to give San Diego the gold star of my unflinching approval.

Oh, and we also won a football game.

Truman Capps was worried at first that he would lose a lot of readership because he missed an update day, but then he remembered that 95% of his readership went on the bowl trip with him.