Debacle of '05

Gather round my children for I will take you by the hand and lead you into the mysts of time and show you what could very well be the funniest/worst/funniest again week of my life. Mortal men would have been brought to the brink of sorrow and lapped up the murky water of devastation that would give them a tapeworm of depression. But I prevailed due to the fact that I used a Brita filter.

Let me take you back to the summer of 2005, when I was on Mr. Chapel. One of our stops was cancelled, but a friend of Jessica and myself from our year of CBC invited our group out to her place in Cochrane, Alberta where we would perform at some Remax event. It sounded ok and so we agreed. Our path to our battle of Evermore began.

We arrive at her parents ranch which covers a vast piece of land. They clearly do well for themselves. Her father has the classic rancher look. Full on beard, wears the cowboy hat along with those weird multicolored collared shirts. He's also very conservative. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I am trying to paint the picture of the scenario in which the Debacle of '05 rests. He used to work with lighting or sound or something and had come to not like actors very much. Mind you, all of us, with the exception of our one tech, were actors. But I was the creator, the writer, and director. I felt perpetually uneasy around the guy. I think he even smelled my fear. Cowboys can smell fear. Or is that dogs?

Either way, we had a week before we performed. And then it hit that we were going to perform for kids. With Mr. Chapel. Mr. Chapel goes over the head of some adults. It's satire. I could see how this is going to end. It was like being handed a prophecy. However, the daughter and the father both assured me that kids would like it, because I had a superhero in it. I tried to explain that the superhero was only a small part of the grander show. But like how the prophet is not listened to in his hometown, the actor is never listened to. We don't know anything about engines and hockey, so concordantly we don't know anything. Even the stuff I learned about.

Anyway, we had time before the performance at the end of the week, which I was predicting to be an unmitigated disaster. And you may be thinking that that is the thing I am referring to that brings me the previously unattained level of angst in my life. You are mistaken and you should just let me tell the story!

People thought it would be fun to maybe ride the horses. People typically think that horses are fun. I don't know why. But being that I am a fan of comradery, I agreed to go. But knowing that there was a good chance that I would fall off, decided to wear clothes that could get dirty. In this case, it was baby blue hockey jersey for some backwater team along with a checkered pants and grey cowboy boots. I looked like an idiot. When they were deciding who got what horse, they gave me the one closest to death and who was a show horse. They assured me that a show horse are trained to never gallop and the fact that he's old means he wouldn't want to anyway. I fell for that and got on the horse. The horse was also in on it and was behaving just fine as we went around in a circle in the training yard. That is the not the name of the area, but I am actor.

Once we got used to the basic stuff, it was decided that we would hit the dusty trail. It started off fine. Everybody was sharing laughs, talking about how their horse and how much they missed Full House. I don't actually remember due to the fact my horse wanted to go another way. As we headed down the road, my horse veered against my will towards the neighbours house. Now let me set the record straight, I didn't panick. I remember what I was supposed to do and that was to pull on the reins. And that's what I did. But the demon horse started to pick up speed instead. It was a mere trot, but it was mere trot away from where I'm supposed to be. I started to yell "Whoa!" along with the tugging. This made the horse go inexplicably faster. Despite my feeble attempts to stop the animal that is five times my weight, it sped to a gallop, the apparent thing that the horse is unable to do. It was a miracle! Unfortunately, the horse was headed towards a fence and I was thinking that show horses that have never galloped probably have never jumped fences either. I then thought that this may very well be my death or at the very least, it would go all Christopher Reeve on me. What? Oh, the Reeve comment? Too soon?

Anyway, the horse realized it could jumped, so it slowed down and turned around. I thought that I was safe, but the horse then continued on it's terrorizing rampage and went back towards all my friends at blistering speed. I then started to think that I was going to be sent headlong into one of them. It was at this point that Shannon, the girl who brought this death trip upon my head, come to meet me and stopped my horse. I looked over to see the father, who had watched a horribly dressed clown of an actor being tossed around like a rag doll on the back of a dying show horse. Strike one.

It turns out that when you tug on the reins and yell "whoa" while you also dig your heels into it's sides, you are sending "mix signals".

Two days later, we go quadding a thing I haven't really done before. It was fine and funny. We got muddy, we didn't crash, the thing didn't misinterpret me to the point that it almost killed me. We get back, turn them off and put on clean clothes. It turns out that you need to do something to drain something from the something in order to stop it from leaking something on their lawn and killing a large patch of grass. I was informed of this later and I asked the mother and daughter if the father was mad. They said, "He'll get over it." In other words, he was extremely upset. Strike two.

It came to the day in which we had to perform. I was more anxious than ever. I find out that the show is for little kids, not even junior highs who would be able to catch some of it. I accepted this fact as I got ready to move things into this igloo of a tent. I got into the van, started it up and moved forward, the van lurched and was up on something. I then heard yelping. I looked out my window and saw that the 15 passenger was currently standing on top of the father's favourite dog. I said "uh oh" and put it in reverse and back off. The dog runs off yelping and crying. Strike three.

Didn't see that one coming did you?

People arrive and the father starts advertising the show and they got all the kids excited to go. And as I looked upon their smiling faces, I knew that it was like I was sending them to the death of their joy. The kids all crowd into the tent. We have our screen up and start to perform. And every time we come out to do the next sketch we lose half the crowd. By the end, we had like five kids in there. All of which were the older kids. If I could've swore so loud that I would've finished off the dog who whimpering over it's wounds. The thing that I was supposed to be good at was one of the biggest disasters of the week. I was talking to the father afterward and he was clearly not satisfied. Strike four.

I only had 36 more hours before we would be out of there. 16 of those hours would be spent sleeping. How hard could it be?

Two hours later, the daughter came up to me and told me to go chase the llamas again. You see, two days before, when we were out in the pasture I jokingly tried to pet their llamas and the llamas would run away and I looked hilarious for trying to run after them. It was quoted as being "entertaining". So I figured, why not? Maybe I will regain some of my lost status. You know, any of it. So John and I tried to trap them and people were laughing. It was great. Then I got tired and that was enough. But then I noticed that the llamas were still running. In fact they were running for entrance to the whole ranch. I said "uh oh" and ran through a wooded area, jumping over fallen branches and through the thickets to head them off at the gate. The llamas saw me and actually picked up the pace and one of them escaped out the front. I hung my head low and walked back to Shannon. She, her sisters and the rest of Mr. Chapel helped me to go track them down. I was hoping it would be me who would bring it back, but it wasn't. Strike five.

I spent the whole week trying to not be the stereotypical idiot of an actor and instead fulfill and even move the step beyond to fulfilling the characture of an actor. It was awkward. It was one of the worst blows of the summer and it was only the first week of touring.

I was thinking that I should pull out a final stunt and ask permission to marry one of his daughters (of which he is very protective). Maybe the one who was eighteen. That would have been awesome. The main reason I didn't would be the fact that he may very well murder me. And I'm pretty sure I would not be able to fight him.