24 Hours In The Mist

Last weekend I spent 24 hours in Niagara Falls – exactly 24 hours. It was roughly 23 hours too long.

It began in Fredonia, NY where I was booked to perform at Fredonia State College on Thursday night. The show was amazing and it’s always great to perform there. Mostly because it’s my little brother’s school (until he graduates in two weeks) and he always spurs a million more great stories out of my brain to share with the crowd. Awesome.

I had my guitar with me for this performance and was traveling with my good friend and fellow musician, Jason Bean. He had brought his guitar as well so we could work on new music at the hotel after the show. On my way to Fredonia I had realized that I had forgotten my capo (a device used to change the key of a guitar by clamping it on the neck and strings). A lot of the songs Jason and I are working on use a capo so following the show, I made a very hasty decision; go the only store open at 8:45pm in Dunkirk, NY – The Wal-Mart Supercenter. I knew they sometimes carry shitty musical gear (i.e. picks, strings, capos, etc.) so we decided to try it.

Since I’ve made a lifelong promise to never shop at a Wal-Mart as long as I live, my plan was to GIFT Jason Bean the exact amount of the capo and he would, in turn, buy a capo and GIFT it to me. It was a flawless plan. Luckily, in some divine sign from God, they did not have any capos. This was not discovered as simple as us walking in, asking for a capo and them saying “sorry, we don’t have them.” Us asking for a capo spurred on a 20 minute quest involving four employees. It was one final way for Wal-Mart to stick it to me. Well played, Wal-Mart.

We got back in the car, headed north and arrived in Niagara Falls at 10:21pm.
The adventure begins.

I should note that the reason we were even going to Niagara Falls was to see my absolute favorite comedy troupe, “The Kids in the Hall” on Friday night. Rather than performing in Fredonia (located about an hour south of Buffalo) driving home and then coming back the next night to see the show in Niagara Falls (located a little north of Buffalo), I opted to stay over and kill some time in Niagara Falls until the show at 8pm.

We were staying The Crowne Plaza; a very nice hotel in Niagara Falls, NY. This was a Thursday night and never did I expect the hotel to be busy, but luckily for us, there was a Lions Club Election at the Hotel this same weekend. I never knew that Lions Club elections even existed, but the best way for me to describe this is hundreds of old, confused people walking around a hotel trying to rally up votes for their candidate. There were campaign posters, campaign lunches and even decorated vans circling the parking lot. It was unreal. I will say this, thought: The Lions Club is really diverse! The three candidates were an Indian woman, a Black man and an Asian Man. Not a white person among them. It was refreshing because if hundreds of crusty white people can accept a Black candidate for Lions Club President, District A2 then maybe my man Barack Obama has a chance.

Around 10:55pm, we ventured outside to find some food. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the American side of the falls is shit. Absolute shit. The Canadian side isn’t any better (in some ways, worse), but the American side has absolutly nothing so finding food at 11pm is impossible. We called room service, they were closed. The two bars inside the hotel, just closing. The only place to eat in all of Niagara Falls, NY is a restaurant inside the Seneca Niagara Casino. We bellied up next to the fat gamblers of Western New York, ate a small dinner and went to bed.

The next morning, we woke up, lounged around, watched TV, etc. Pretty much anything to kill 12 hours. We even watched “Ghost.” Yes, “Ghost.”

Around noon we checked out of the hotel on a mission to find anything possible to kill eight hours because the rest of the day, we had no home. We lived on the streets of Niagara Falls. We wandered the American side and eventually came to terms with the fact that nothing exists on the American side. There is a casino, a bus stop and a parking garage. That’s it. So we decided to take a chance and see if we could get into Canada. We knew that in this post 9/11 world (I hate that I just used that phrase), it’s almost impossible to go anywhere without a passport, but we thought we tried it. The streets of Niagara Falls, Ontario which is more populated but in no means any less shitty. Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock, Indoor Water Park, oh my. Just a sea of hacky tourist shit that in comparison to the American side was a heaven we had to get to. Even at the risk of jumping the border and running for a waiting pick-up truck.

We crossed the pedestrian bridge and entered Candian customs.
The man said “Where were you born? Why are you here? Go ahead.”

Done. We’re in. Wow.

So we just wandered the streets. Miles and miles of killing time which any other day would have taken hours, but on this day we were trapped in some black hole where time was frozen and the French Canadian accents were thick. After walking every street in Ontario and even some streets we really shouldn’t have… this mission was completed in about an hour and 45 minutes. We had run out of things to do with still six hours left before the show so we decided to cross back into America and go see “Iron Man.”

Upon approaching the border back into America, we were stunned to find a turn style asking for 50 cents. That’s it. No guard, guns, cops, nothing. At first we thought, “Wow, as long as you have a dollar, you and a friend are welcome in our country.”

This fantasy was cut short after we crossed the bridge and met some of the biggest asshole border patrol guards you could ever imagine. A pair of guys that long to be TSA bag checkers, but are currently stationed at the lamest border in the country: The pedestrian bridge from Canada to America. “Do you have anything to declare?” Yes, I do. Niagara Falls sucks.

We went to Iron Man (which was a super-kick ass movie) and then headed over to the Seneca Niagara Casino for the show. I had gotten the tickets through the radio station. Our sister station in Buffalo, actually. Citadel in Buffalo deals with Seneca Niagara Casino on a regular basis so they were nice enough to give me a set of tickets.

The absolute worst tickets I have ever had to any event in my life.

This was not the fault of my friends and co-workers in Buffalo by any means. I am appreciative of them and their ability to even get me the tickets. The Casino must not like us very much. This is all blamed on a Casino that has absolutely no idea how to put on a comedy show. On the right, you will see a photo of where my “VIP” tickets were in location to the stage.

The seats were on flat ground, no slope whatsoever, so once you’re two or three rows back, forget it. All you see is head. But that didn’t piss me off nearly as much as the comping policy.

This Casino offers comp show tickets to their “high rollers” which include my grandmother and thousands of people like her. 75-year-old women who play bingo for 12 hours a day and bus in and out of their casino twice a week. Because of this, I had to endure sitting in row 27 (only two rows from the absolute back) waiting for one of my biggest comedy influences to take the stage while I watched silver haird beauties pushing oxygen tanks to the front row. Mother fuck. The Kids in the Hall are easily one of my earliest influences and probably 60% of the reason I am in comedy now. I would come home every day from school, sit on the couch and study what they did on Comedy Central re-runs. I know almost every word to every sketch. This moment was 15 years in the making and there I was, watching retirees strut past me to watch a show they have no interest in.

Now you’re probably saying “if you wanted good tickets so bad, you could have bought them.” Wrong, even those seats didn’t start until row five! Plus, I was being given “VIP Seats.” What gets better than that? Well, apparently, about 26 other rows.

For those of you who don’t know The Kids in the Hall, they can be rather offensive. Homosexuality, Nazis, everything. They push the envelope and it’s what makes real fans love them. Unfortunately, Gert and her husband Bert were offended by the second sketch. Because of that, there was a constant flow of old people exiting the theater at varying speeds for the rest of the performance. Not only was I back so far I could barely make out what they cast looked like, but now it was graciously being interrupted by snowbirds walking in front of me.

The saddest site was at the very end of the show when Mark McKinney came out with a camera to find people in the crowd and “crush their heads” the giant screen his camera was projecting on was showing completely empty front rows. Awful.

The show finished, I was bummed, we got back in the car and pulled out of the very same parking lot at 10:21pm. Exactly 24 hours later.

The best way to sum up these 24 hours would be with a photo. This is a piece of paper I found in the grass outside the Casino before we walked into the show. It says exactly what this insanely long post has been trying to say for the last 40 lines…