Summer Dispatch Two

When The Brand Trip Falls Apart

Let’s break the 4th wall for a moment

There is a common question that one asks themselves when one finds themselves ankle-deep in the shallow end of a lukewarm wave pool at an indoor water park in Garden Grove California.

“How the hell did I get here?”

After all, I was a teenage anarchist. I hurled myself across the country in a van playing the grimiest basements and legion halls America had to offer, I studied Foucault and McLuhan at Berkeley…and now I spend my summers playing sunscreen police for two kids (that I had on purpose?!) while we’re on a trip so I can make social media content for a luggage company. Life comes at you fast, chat.

To be fair, the indoor water park was a brilliantly choreographed plan B that my wife came up with when our original trip to Tahoe was canceled on account of hand, foot and mouth disease. To be fair, this is kind of a best case scenario for a 41 year old dad who occasionally goes viral from reading his silly poetry on an app mostly designed for teenagers to make dance videos.

The Tahoe trip was actually what I sold the luggage company (No Reception Club) for this partnership. I promised scroll-stopping views of the Eastern Siaras, cannon balls into Windex-colored lakes, and the high-altitude hygge of my family escaping the city for a deeply aesthetic summer getaway. I promised that their products would be featured as the skeleton key for unlocking the perfect, kid-friendly vacation. I promised to write a story where their bags enable me to be the hero in my own story.

I promised a social media marketing manager’s wet dream.

We booked everything, packed our very convenient (and photogenic) bags, and about 36 hours before our scheduled departure, we got word that the family we had planned the trip with was showing symptoms of the HFMD virus. They were already in Tahoe, they had booked the AirBNB, and there was nothing any of us could do but refund what we could and find a plan B.

So naturally when life hands your friends rashes and sores on their palms you head to the chlorinated mecca of un-ironic Nightmare Before Christmas tattoos and funnel cake - the indoor water park.

The indoor water park sits in the shadow of Disneyland amid the urban sprawl of north Orange County. It is like a casino in that you never know what time it is and everything feels cheap and expensive at the same time. It’s like a casino in that it is genuinely fun, however that fun is predicated on taking some calculated risks and if you do it right you never have to leave the building in order to experience the full spectrum of human emotion.

• It contains:

• A hotel

• An arcade

• A bowling ally

• Three restaurants

• One Duncan Donuts

• An entire children’s immersive wizard-themed role playing game that involves purchasing an electronic magic wand and running around the entire resort gacked out on Dippin’ Dots mostly unsupervised

• …and so much more.

However the indoor water park is also like a church in that people come here seeking some kind of relief, and the light is perfect. It’s like church in that you feel absolved of whatever you did before you entered these hallowed walls as soon as your head goes under the water, and everyone sleeps easier after they’ve spent a little time inside.

The indoor water park is more than a little gritty and you can feel the fumes of the chlorine overtake you like it’s the nag champa of summer’s head shop. The crowd is eclectic, a lot of parents wearing tattoos in different stages of removal that they likely never intended to be seen in the context of splashing kids jockeying for inner tubes in the lazy river.

We spent one night there to capture the footage for the No Reception Club brand deal and I can tell you with my full chest that above all else, the indoor water park is a good damn time, and we will be returning when the check hits my bank.

It’s also worth noting that No Reception Club was awesome about the whole thing and entirely unbothered by the change in direction. I’m also happy to be able to give their bags my full endorsement (more on that below). Check out how the final video came out:

blakeoftoday

A post shared by @blakeoftoday

---

The Music:

Before I knew Jack Antonoff from Taylor Swift, I knew Jack Antonoff from Fun, and the only reason I really cared much about Fun is because the other guy in the band was Nate Ruess. And the reason I knew Nate Ruess is because he was one half of one of the best goddamn bands to come out of the early 00’s indie/emo scene that not enough people talk about - The Format.

The Format has not toured in well over a decade and just last week announced that they will be playing shows again later this year. If you are looking for a jumping off point check out Interventions and Lullabies (record best enjoyed with the windows down driving through the desert with an obliterated heart).

The Media:

Poet Andrea Gibson passed this week. They were a massive inspiration to me from a very young age and I have been pretty floored by their loss. I highly recommend spending four minutes and twenty-seven second listening to their poem about life after death:

Other Stuff:

In addition to the indoor water park, the family has been traveling quite a bit this summer - a lot of small trips - and we have been using the bags No Reception Club sent us almost exclusively. They are designed by parents so have a ton of cool features and compartments that make it much easier to stay organized in a chaotic hotel room or in a cabin on a cruise ship. We’re big fans.

If you have gotten this far let me know what kind of trips you’re going on this summer - we have another one or two ahead of us.