Get Your Motor Runnin’
At 1:45pm on Saturday, August 19, 2006, on the Red Bull Flugtag flight deck in False Creek in Vancouver, it was Sushi Gone Wild’s time to give’er. In the span of 3 minutes, everything Sushi Gone Wild had worked towards for two months came to an end with a glorious second of flight.
The 300 lb Wild Sushi needed a little help going down the ramp to the flight deck.
The first thing that all teams did when it was their turn to take the stage was to talk to the MCs, MuchMusic VJ Matte Babel and The Beat‘s Nira Arora. Pilot Elizabeth Shrimp did the talking (and was très fab!), while the rest of the team hurriedly set up the props – the stool, chopsticks, and chopsticks rest. Katherine Wasabi also put her cat-like reflexes to use when she held back The Wild Sushi from prematurely rolling into the Creek!
Katherine was constantly distracted by fans who screamed, “WASABI!”
Before we knew it (really!), our arrangement of the song Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf) started and off we went. (Born to be Wild ~ Wild Sushi ~ Sushi Gone Wild. Get it? Clever, no?). Sushi Gone Wild used our minute-long skit to the max as we strutted our bulky stuff for the crowd and judges – one of whom was apparently Brendan Morrison, currently of the Vancouver Canucks.
Our skit was an umm…interpretive dance about an independent shrimp who was “looking for adventure” and found it in the wrong place. The shrimp had thought that the cool soy sauce, wasabi and sushi rolls were having a rad time ‘soul training’. But she was sadly mistaken, as she was forced by the others to take the plunge on The Wild Sushi. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere for kids, I think.
Sushi Gone Wild prepares to ‘soul train’ for the masses.
When the music gave the final bellow of “Booornnn to beeee wiiild”, a salmon roll, soy sauce bottle, wasabi and avacado roll frantically pushed a shrimp and The Wild Sushi off a pier. That moment of flight was fantabulous – the lift…the splash…the floating. Watching that perfectly round circle merrily drift atop False Creek was an image Sushi Gone Wild won’t forget; it brought the brilliant ridiculousness of the event to a tranquil close.
Sushi – meet Creek. Photo courtesy of pokedyoureyeout on Flickr.
Suddenly, there was booing! Apparently the masses were disappointed in how the rest of the team hadn’t taken the plunge. Leonard, however, swears they were saying Boo-urns. I didn’t mind the booing much – I mean, how many people can say they’ve been booed by a crowd of 30,000? Heck, even Brendan Morrison gets booed live by only 18,000 people on any given game night.
Anyway, Sushi Gone Wild is wildly happy to report that Pilot Elizabeth is in one piece, after having recovered from belly-flopping upon impact on The Wild Sushi. And for those who care about such things, The Wild Sushi officially flew 20-feet. Not too shabby!
Feel free to email Sushi Gone Wild: wildsushi@lotus-land.ca