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    Getting a Head: Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear
    Getting a Head: Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear
    Getting a Head: Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Getting a Head: Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear

    By Daniel Falk

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    About this ebook

    If you're like most people, you've probably had to deal with the fact that, at some point in your life, you've found yourself dancing in front of thousands of screaming/puking/urinating children wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, an undershirt, and twenty pounds of bear costume.

    If you're still struggling to come to terms with your years spent working in children's entertainment, then this is the book for you. If your spouse still wakes up screaming from nightmares where he falls off a stage and is swallowed by a horde of rabid four year-olds, and you feel powerless in helping him re-acclimate to non-animal costume wearing society, then this is the book for you. But most of all, if you want to spend some time laughing at someone else's poor life choices, then this is most certainly the book for you.

    Join in Daniel Falk's descent into madness as he travel to exotic locales like the beautiful Paris, France and the even more beautiful-er Fort MacMurray (Sometimes called the Paris of Canada by no one, anywhere, ever). Live vicariously through his adventures as he dumpster dives in Marseilles and prepares three course meals in his hotel room with nothing at his disposal but a coffee maker, a multi-tool, and a sink full of ice. And finally, learn what it takes to get a head (a bear head, specifically) in the world of children's entertainment (spoiler: what it takes is a total lack of dignity).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDaniel Falk
    Release dateJan 27, 2014
    ISBN9781311449450
    Getting a Head: Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear
    Author

    Daniel Falk

    Daniel Falk is a writer/actor/player-of-video-games based in Toronto. He has been a regular contributor to McSweeney's Internet Tendency and The Big Jewel. In 2007 he produced his co-written musical Funny Business which ran for five months in Toronto and provided him the valuable life lesson that producing theatre in Canada isn't so much a career as a very expensive hobby. He is married (sorry ladies) and has zero beautiful children.

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      Book preview

      Getting a Head - Daniel Falk

      Getting a Head:

      Touring the World as a Giant Dancing Bear

      Copyright 2014 Daniel Falk

      Published by TheGreatRobotPress at Smashwords

      Cover Design: Trevor Campbell

      http://trevorcampbelldesign.com/

      Getting a Head originally appeared on McSweeney's Internet Tendency

      www.mcsweeneys.net/tendency

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Daniel Falk's memoir of four years traveling through North America and Europe with a children's theatre troupe is fun, funny, charming and endearing. His inside-the-bear's-head viewpoint puts you right at the centre of the insanity. Not only is Daniel an entertaining guide, his wry comments, sardonic observations and flabbergasted reactions to the madness going on around him reveal a thoroughly nice human being behind it all. Getting A Head is a delightful read.

      - Don Ferguson, Royal Canadian Air Farce

      Acknowledgements

      Though I must ultimately take responsibility for what I hath wrought, there are people who should, at the very least, be held partly accountable. My editors at McSweeney's, John Warner and Chris Monks, have been abetting me since this book's original column form. My mother has been enabling me this behaviour with encouragement and unconditional love for my entire life. My father is responsible for brainwashing me to love writing AND to love theatre ever since I was an innocent little boy. And the biggest offender of all, my wife, Sarah... She's the one who got me the gig touring around the world as a giant dancing bear to begin with. She's the one who kept me just sane enough to emerge from the bear head with enough sanity to write at least semi-coherently about it. She's the one who's loved me enough to dig me out of holes, prop me up, and kick me in the ass as necessary. She'd also be my getaway driver if she knew how to drive.

      Table of Contents

      Into the Head

      The Stump Complex

      The Day the Fan Stood Still

      Bear's Guide to Hotel Cookery

      Remembering Bird

      That Which Cannot Be Named

      Captain Unicycle's Blog

      Do You Know Who I Am?

      Buy the Merch

      Fart Protocol

      Dumpster Diving in Marseille

      Nine Hours of Trivial Pursuit

      Shooting Star is Dead Inside

      The Disappearing Rabbit Trick

      Lame Bus/Party Bus

      Squished Fox

      Space Invader Safari

      The Missus

      Out of the Head

      About the Author

      Into the Head

      Backstage, Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Canada.

      I stare into the tangle of straps in the empty hole of what will soon be my giant bear head. Is this really what I’m about to do? Am I sure I don’t just want to get some student loans and go back to school and become a teacher or something? No… no more debt. That’s why I’m here to begin with: to get myself out of the hole I’d dug for myself by producing a play I’d written. I’m here for the money. I’m putting on this giant bear head and dancing around to pre-recorded voice-overs for the money.

      The rumble of hundreds of parents asking their hundreds children if they’re sure they don’t need to pee one last time penetrates the heavy red curtain. Sweat already streams down my back inside the thick fur of my costume; a costume in which I am trapped, my mittened hands unable to grasp the zipper to free myself.

      The houselights dim under the curtain. Unlike grown up audiences that immediately hush when the lights go dark, an audience of children just get louder until their enthusiasm is squashed by their accompanying adults. Put the head on, I tell myself. Get in the head. I close my eyes and when I reopen them, the world is dark and sound is muffled. I am in the head. My own voice is oddly close, and all other sound is oddly distant. I struggle for a few moments with the straps that keep the head from popping off and ruining children’s lives before I manage to get them clipped together, pinching the skin under my jaw.

      My only window to the outside world is a few inches of black mesh that covers the back of the bear head’s constant idiotic, open-mouthed smile. My girlfriend (dressed as The Spirit of Christmas Fairy) approaches, looks up into my mouth hole and wishes me a good show.

      I tell her I can’t see shit.

      She assures me I’ll be fine, then takes her place in the wings. What does she know, anyway? She’s not in one of these stupid heads. How did I let her talk me into this?

      I’m jostled from behind and stumble forward. I turn, but can only see the lower half of the giant rabbit who bumped into me, untangling some tinsel from around her legs. I lean back as far as I can to get a view of the rabbit’s face. The rabbit leans back to get a look into mine and an unfamiliar voice apologizes. I apologize back for some reason. An assemblage of other animals ready themselves next to us in the wings.

      Beaver steps in front of my field of vision. He puts his hand on my shoulder and says something in a very serious sounding tone. As his voice had to pass through his giant Beaver head, out into space, and then into my giant Bear head, however, the only words I understood were, Hey, don’t forget to…

      Don’t forget to what?

      That’s right. Have a great show! And with that he was gone—running on stage to the gleeful screams of hundreds of children.

      Dammit, I thought, I’m going to kill someone out there.

      The veterans of working in those heads had a preternatural ability to know where everyone else was on stage. I managed to make it through the big ensemble numbers by keeping my hands in front of me the entire time. Whenever I ended up in the wrong spot, or started exiting to the wrong wing, one of them would gently guide me in

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