The Elephant in the Room

Given the extreme sharpness of the wit involved, and the tremendous wealth of unusual experience from which it sprung, I'm more than a little hesistant to begin a blog entry by quoting from the immensly quotable Mark Twain.  I will instead simply quote from the considerably less daunting Samuel Clemens, who said, "Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most."

It's practically become an American proverb, showing up in a variety of pop culture mediums from bumper stickers to Techno-Hacker movies.  Oddly, I've yet to see the twisted post-modern use of the term in a dark schyzophrenic animated muppets-from-hell scenario, but I'm sure Jason Segel is working on it.

Point is, there's something irrestibily, even childishly, attractive about the absurd.  As far as humor goes, the Absurd has always been one of my favorites, ranking alongside if not above dry satire or bitter sarcasm, and certainly in competition with tried-and-true slapstick.

Why we enjoy the absurd, either as imagined in stand-up comedy routines, or as witnessed in those rare sublime moments of reality, is well beyond my ability to answer.

But we do - I certainly do - and if you put up with this blog, Absurd must be something you get too.

So I must admit, I was a bit disappointed when I went to watch the Elephants march into NYC.  It just sounds so... ridiculous.  Sure, NY has TONS of parades, occasionally involving livestock, and always with more pomp than necessary.  But the Elephants aren't (in theory) a public event - taking place on a Monday night starting at Midnight.  The event - now annual - marks the beginning of the residence of the Ringling Bros./ Barnum & Baily circus at Madison Square Gardens in the heart of midtown Manhattan.  And while MSG is located right on top of Penn Station, a major railway hub, apparently none of the circus' regular freight cars can fit through its tunnels.  

What is a gigantic circus corporation to do when their elephants can't get shipped to the venue?  They go for a walk.  The pachyderms get off-loaded at a railhead in Queens, and then they march the elephants through the midtown tunnel (presumably the bridges would scare them?), and then across the island of Manhattan on the major thoroughfare of 34th street (like the Miracle) from 1st to 7th avenue (actually terminating at Macy's - sadly, months after the last elf has departed). 

It's become quite the event - apparently last year saw the first widespread protest by PETA members - "Circuses Abuse Animals" ; "Free the Elephants" ; "Kids Don't Want Elephanticide"; etc.

But when I got down there, along with a small crew of swing dance acquaintances, all seemed in order and frankly a bit too well orchestrated for my taste.  The elephants emerged from the tunnel right on cue at 12:30, did a long press conference/ photo op with flood lights, clowns, local news people, and local newsclowns before starting the cross-island trek.

It was cold out - just above freezing - with a very slight dewyness. Not ideal, and it's hard to imagine the elephants being any more comfortable than the rest of us.  And so they started walking at standard elephant pace, just faster than a walking stide, and the small crowds of people lined up along both sides of 34th, gripping their starbucks for warmth, cheered and whistled.

Then, finally, something interesting happened.

We're not talking about a lot of elephants - maybe a dozen all told, with a small group of ponies in tow and a variety of plainclothed handlers at the front and rear.  The result is that it takes about 45 seconds for the entire "parade" to pass by the average on-looker.

Once this happened, taking into account the temperature, the time (now after 1 am), their jobs the next day, etc.  many people turned and went home.

But not all.

For every 10 or 20 people that the elephants passed, 5-7 of them, for reasons I doubt any of us understand, would peel off from the street and start darting up the sidewalk until they reached the front of the parade again.  For the first block, this was barely noticeable, but each block there were more people along the street, with more people peeling off, and adding to those who, having made the efforts since block 1, weren't about the stop now.

It was a snowball of 'Elephant Chasers', giddy with the adrenaline of an absurd purpose and sharing, knowingly, in an experience that was both immediate, communal, and intrinsically worthless.  Once you've seen 1 elephant, suffice to say you've pretty well seen them all.  Once you've seen the same 12 elephants, seeing them time and time and time again does not make the experience any more informative. 

But the idea of chasing them, with scores of other serious, insulated, high-fashion, no-BS New Yorkers was surreal, and that's not just an observation.

One of my closest fellow chasers said, with no small touch of surprise, "I'm high on Elephant."

Indeed.

So here's to a spectacle which was invented of practical necessity, grew into a mundane-but-glittery spectacle, and somehow catalyzed the absurdity of innocent, even adolescent, joy in the cold, dark heart of Gotham at 2 am on a Monday morning.

Weber

::(lame) Texpatriot

P.S. in digging up Twain quotes, I found one more, perhaps familiar to you already, but which given our current economic whatever seems apropo: "Buy Land.  They've stopped making it."

clever bastard.