It’s no longer an aberration for artists to collaborate in the cloud, given the ease with which most of the world accesses high-speed internet. And A Sunny Day In Glasgow—collectively based in Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia—creates the sort of impressionistic guitar pop that feels ripe for working in the ether. But that doesn’t mean the process of writing fine new album Sea When Absent (Lefse) across three cities and two hemispheres was ideal. In fact, the method was so present that it became a centerpiece of its narrative. The band will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on the band.
Adam Herndon: I’m usually kind of a birthday grinch. Just for my own birthdays, not yours. I just pretend I don’t want anyone to fuss over me, then get bummed when everyone takes me up on that. This year was the first birthday in a long time that I decided to make plans, really embrace this special wonderful holiday that is the anniversary of my dumb birth. I rounded up some friends and went to Six Flags Great Adventure to ride every roller coaster we could. It was a drizzly Monday, and not a single long line in the whole park. For the record, I don’t really think it’s healthy for a human to ride so many crazy rides in one day, but here’s a brief review of the many that we rode, and the subsequent coaster ride it took my stomach and brain.
The Kingda Ka
My plan was to bee line for the Kingda Ka. I’ve been wanting to ride it for years, and, of course, it was closed. Apparently, it’s almost always closed, except Saturdays when there’s a three-hour line. I bitched and moaned a little, but there was nothing we could do. High Schools were still in session throughout New Jersey, and there just weren’t enough stoned, pimply teenagers to operate all these thrill rides. Boo.
Green Lantern
Our first super-hero thrill ride of the day. Loopy, spinny, lime-green metal roller coaster that you ride in a standing position with an uncomfortable rubber saddle punching you in the crotch. It was awesome, but really kicked off my upset stomach for the next eight hours. Kingda Ka would’ve sent me off to barftown.
Spider-Man
Short line on this one; we wiki’d the ride while we waited. Rollercoaster experts gave it favorable reviews for being fast, smooth and fun. This was like eight minutes after Green Lantern, and my stomach was still a mess. Turns out this would’ve been the best ride to vomit on, suspended in a flying position (like Superman!), so it wouldn’t get all over me as much as it would spray park-goers below. But as reviewed, this ride was smooth like Superman. I didn’t lose my lunch, but I almost lost my sunglasses.
Skull Mountain
Worst. This was the scariest and stupidest ride of the day for me. In what seems like a tight old rickety barn, you’re barely secured in the car with just a greasy lap bar, but then thrown all about in an actual fast roller coaster. I expected some old fashioned (slow) haunted-house thing. The ride is completely dark aside from a few spots where they have some sorry neon skeleton pirates or whatever, and low-volume weak metal music. At these points of dim light you see the shadows of the things you’re zooming past where it seems you might hit your head or face on. As a tall guy, I was ducking hard and covering my face the entire time, screaming and getting sicker. Everybody else liked it. It sucked, though. Then we rode some log flume and some other thing, it was cool, got wet.
Nitro
My favorite of the day. I’m really afraid of heights, but also kind of like heights, this one went high, and had a crazy fast first drop, followed by humps that make you feel like you’re going to fly out of your seat. It was raining harder at this point, and any experienced coaster rider will tell you, when a raindrop hits your face at 80-mph it feels awesome! My sick stomach is joined by a headache at this point. We take a break for a beer and some pizza to recharge. A plastic cup of Summer Shandy overlooking a whack-a-mole game where you can win a flat-brim “SWAG” hat.
El Toro
Bumpy, old, fast wooden roller coaster. My second favorite of the day. The wood looked splintery and weathered, like the deck on my dad’s house. It’s just called El Toro and doesn’t fit the superhero theme, but then I realized the ride is sponsored by Scion? Some of the cars look like an old train with a bull on the front, while others have some dumb Kia logo wrap on them. Or Scion, I don’t remember. Most of the rides at #SFGA have some junk food sponsor, this is the only one sponsored by a slick car company. Wonder why they didn’t pick one of the new, slick coasters? My stomach is giving me warning burps and full stomach-to-neck quease.. No more rides. I think it was at this point my girlfriend also vomited during a bathroom break. We were all feeling it. Getting old, stomach not what it used to be.
Bizzaro
I was ready to throw in the towel but everyone wanted to ride one more. Again not much of a line, so very little time to get normal before we’re next up.. The announcer for Bizarro was bragging that this ride has 7 loops and that it’s the park’s most twisty ride. I almost chickened out, it seemed like a good time to stop. This was going to be the ride I wished I hadn’t gone on. As I reluctantly step on the ride I realize my seat has a pile of vomit from the previous rider!! How awesome, I know now that this is definitely going to happen to me. The stoned teenagers cleaned it up, very slowly, sent it off, and we got on the next one. This ride was soo much fun, actually wasn’t bad. How Bizzaro.
So yeah, no barf all day! I won! My brain is the boss of my stomach. Oh, I forgot to mention I took dramamine. I later convinced a bunch of friends to meet up at a really fun/terrible Philly bar called “Fat Tuesdays”, where I was treated to about 4 large rum slushy birthday drinks. I won that stomach battle as well! Great birthday, thanks friends! see you next year for paintball or go carts or something.
