Pizza Power

A horrific Thanksgiving Day memory from me to you.

Did I ever tell you about the time I marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Probably not, as it’s a traumatic memory and I don’t often recount traumatic memories unless I am paying a licensed therapist to pretend to listen to me.

This is the year I dropped out of college to tour the country as Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. As I have oft-recounted, my friend Robert Ben Garant and I were hired to travel the nation in a blue Chevy Astro van as “promotional turtles” driving ahead of the touring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle “Coming Out of Our Shells” Tour. If you’re wondering whether such a tour would feature a song titled “Pizza Power,” wonder no more. It did.

The cast of the “Coming Out of Our Shells” tour. Not pictured: me.

Our job was to show up in cities a week or so before the tour arrived to drum up business, stopping at Pizza Huts, local TV stations, morning radio (where we appeared in full costume despite the fact that nobody could see us on the radio), and wherever else a hearty “cowabunga” was needed.

This is 1990, the peak of TMNT fever. It was a little bit like being a superhero. Putting on the costume had the effect of ridding us of our mild-mannered personalities, transforming us into instant A list stars. People freaked out over those turtles. I remember doing an appearance at an ice cream shop in Juarez, Mexico. Thousands of people showed up. So many that we had to move the appearance from inside the shop to its roof, where we performed Beatles “Let It Be” style.

Yet, somehow, I never got laid.

Macy’s invited the Turtles to perform at the parade that year. I don’t know why the regular cast – the cast who could actually, you know, sing and dance – weren’t the ones chosen to participate. Maybe they had a show across the country that night or something, which made it impossible for them to do the parade. Regardless, Ben and I (along with two others, although I don’t remember who they were), were tasked with marching/performing in the parade.

The idea was that we would march and ride in what was described to us as “the Jackson 5 rocket car” until we reached Herald Square, where we would do some kind of song and dance. As for choreography, we were going to, basically, “wing it.” I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to improvise choreography, but it usually doesn’t look… great.

The morning of, we have to show up pre-dawn way uptown in the freezing cold. We’re already wearing our nylon turtle suits, but we’re waiting until the last minute to put on the heads because the heads are heavy.

Like, really heavy.

For the tour, the production had constructed lightweight, highly flexible costumes that the actors could move around in. In the picture above, you can kind of make out that the heads are constructed of lightweight foam. For us, however the production had gotten their hands on the actual suits from the movie, which looked amazing, but whose heads were stuffed with gears and whirring servos and all manner of electronics so that the facial expressions could be operate with a remote control. As a result, each head weighed something like 25 pounds, the weight of which all rested on the bridge of the nose.

Does that sound like it might be painful?

Friends, it was.

The heads were designed to be worn for no more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, perfect for filming takes in a movie. Not so perfect when marching for hours down cold Manhattan streets.

The parade route is long, beginning up on 77^th St., and running for about two and a half miles all the way down to Macy’s on 34^th. Walking it normally would take an hour or so; doing it in a parade takes about five.

To put this in some context, the very first time I wore the costume was at a hospital in Long Island. Again, we were only supposed to wear the thing for about twenty minutes. I was still in the thing an hour later, when I had to be carried into an adjoining room because I had passed out.

Months later, as we started the parade, my turtle tolerance had built considerably. It was now routine to spend an hour or so in the costume. But this was a whole order of magnitude different. This was the Ironman of turtle costume wearing. This was David Blaine level endurance. This was a test.

I am not ashamed to say I failed that test.

I was in pain almost immediately. Not only were the heads heavy but they had very little padding to relive the pressure on the nose. I think there might have been some pads in there like the kind you use on the corns of your feet. (Is that the expression? I don’t know, I’ve never had “foot corns” and even writing out the phrase makes me slightly queasy.)

It felt like there was something hard and metallic pressing down on me. Because we were outside, marching in front of families, there was no place for me to stop and readjust the head, no place to take a break, no way to do anything but continue waving to those stupid, stupid children with a joyful rictus frozen on my turtle face while, inside the head, I’m going, “Ow. Ow. Ow.”

As we approached Herald Square for our “performance,” I was in literal tears. Every step sent additional flak into my brain stem. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” Then we’re supposed to dance? I spent years studying with Alvin Ailey for this?!? (I didn’t study with Alvin Ailey.) I believe I’m in the Raphael costume below and, as you watch my spectacular performance below, please know that, inside there, I am both sweating and freezing and in duress screaming, “Fuck you” to every single child I can barely see out of that goddamned robot head. Plus, I’m embarrassed that this ludicrous dance number is going out to the entire nation.

Here’s the clip:

By the time I got the head off, I had a dent on the bridge of my nose which may still be there. To this day, when I rub the spot, it definitely feels flatter than the surrounding nasal area. No wonder I’ve got a quasi-Owen-Wilson nose. Since then, I cannot watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade without horror. I have TMNT PTSD.

So that’s a little Thanksgiving memory for everybody feeling overwhelmed with cooking and cleaning today. As the messes and chaos accumulate, take deep breaths and relax. It could be worse. You could be doing all of that while wearing a 25 pound robot turtle head. Have a great holiday.