This museum, and the fountain in particular, are a real magnet for strange. To get here today, I had to pass through a gauntlet of Evangelical Christians preaching loudly at the entrance. They were trying to convince everyone to join their church and be saved because the Second Coming and the Rapture was near. They preached, in a loud and insistent voice, that “the end of the world would soon be upon us. Only those who had joined their church and believed would be lifted off this earth and taken to heaven in the Rapture. All others would stay behind and be dammed.”
Luckily, they stayed off the museum grounds, but once here, I encountered a strangeness of a different sort. Two women, baby boomers, dressed in early 80’s attire, crop tops and knee-length skirts, were sitting near the fountain having a picnic. They’d brought their 80’s ‘boom box’ and were blasting out, over and over, Blondie’s song, Rapture…
You know, that the strange rap-like song with a long, rambling story about dancing in Bars and being eaten up by a man from Mars, who went on to eat all kinds of cars, then moved on to eat Dance Bars, before blasting back into space and eating only guitars.
But what made that song so unforgettable, was the very distinctive musical phrase, the one where Debbie Harry trills “Rapture…”
And if that wasn’t strange enough, there was this weird guy, in the picture above. He seemed almost in a trance as he meandered aimlessly around the fountain; somehow, never being caught in a wall of water as it jetted up.
There were other people following him, at a distance, that could have been his wife and kids. Finally, when he crossed into a separate quadrant of the fountain and was all by himself, I distinctly heard him shout, “Now is the time of the Rapture… Beam me up Scotty.”
On cue, the water jets sprang to life and trapped him in that quadrant. He then disappeared. At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes…but I looked harder through the wall of water. He really was gone.
The kids in the other quadrant screamed, “Dad…Dad… don’t leave us behind…”
It was a tense few seconds until the wall of water came down, and there he was—laughing, draped in a reflective cloak of mylar.
We all laughed, the kids too, it was all just an elaborate joke.
Author’s note: You can hear Blondie’s song ‘Rapture’ in YouTube, by following this link.
That was an interesting one my friend. I loved it and went to listen to the song. Interesting twist I must admit.