Monday Memories: Super Bowl half-time show

Monday Memories: Did I ever tell you about The time I was in the Super Bowl half-time show? Before you begin to worry, it wasn't the one with Janet Jackson! LOL AS IF! I've actually done two half-time shows... both in Tampa and both sponsored by Disney, so they were both family friendly. The second one NEVER AIRED on TV because the network chose to air footage of the Gulf War (even though nothing new had happened) instead. The first time was in 1983/84. Disney wanted an all child cast and went around to local schools holding auditions for it. I tried out to be a dancer, but quickly chickened out. However, they were also looking for props department folks so I signed up for that. My job would be to make sure all the cast had their props... I worked out of the back of a truck and the cast came up to get their prop. Props included tap dancing disks, umbrellas and flags. We had tons of rehersals and my boyfriend & best friend & her boyfriend were together for all of it. It was a blast! We had a great time watching the dancers and making fun of them "Flashdance wannabes!" And got to meet lots of fun folks from Disney... I remember one especially, he went by the name of TAZ. We had nametags that read "Hello, I'm..." and another Disney person had written "COLD" on hers. We were all cold! It was DECEMBER! Even in FL it gets cold. So the day of the Super Bowl we went to a highschool to wait. The dancers practiced and we sat ridiculing them...or walking around outside the school (no worries about creaps back then) and spending alone time with our boyfriends. Then they loaded us up on school busses and drove us to the stadium. We were handed our passes and warned to not let the pass out of our sight as someone might try to take it or offer us money for it. No one came near us, but we did see some scalpers. I went to my truck and got busy doing my job. The show started and all the sudden... BOOM! I screamed pretty loudly, which echoed in the back of the truck. I also got some looks from folks around me. No one had bothered to tell us that FIREWORKS would be shooting off from the truck next to us! thanks! My final job was to wait in the vomitorium (at least that's what they told me it was called, aka. the big exits from the stadium) and collect the umbrellas from the cast. When that was finished we were to go back to the busses to be transported back to the highschool. I tried to keep an umbrella as a souvenier (one of the staff said it was okay) but it was taken from me by another staff member on my way back to the bus. Where I met up with my boyfriend (he was working on another area) and we did the classic run to eachother hug. We met up with my bestfriend & her boyfriend and boarded the bus... and then waited and waited, but no one else came to that bus. So we had the whole bus to ourselves on the way back. We sat in the back with the windows open and just shared the experience with eachother. The second time was in 1990/91. My youngest brother asked me to drive him to the first meeting and I asked if I could help out again. They said sure and I got the part. This time my job was to push a HUGE balloon character out onto the field and then go wait by the sidelines until the end to push it back off the field. New Kids On the Block was the entertainment for the show, but their part was on tape. So for all the practices, we had Disney staff up there lipsyncing to the tape. For all the practices we would all "boo and hiss" when the tape announced the NKOB. But our part was to dance around to the music as if we were enjoying the show. LOL! So the day of the dress rehersal, the NKOB were supposed to be there... but only two showed up. We heard rumors that the rest were drunk on their bus. We got to walk past the bus but it was locked up tight so no proof. The day of the show we did our part and cheered when the NKOB went on stage and everything went well. We never got to meet the NKOB or anyone else... but TAZ was there again and this time he was in charge. Because the second one never aired, Disney sent us a tape. I still have it! I also received tickets to any Disney park for each show. I also did another Disney show. It was the Red, White & Blue Troops homecoming celebration. I was actually a preformer with a costume and everything. I'll post some pix later...gotta get Darly to gymnastics. Links to other Monday Memories 1. Running2ks (If you participate, leave your link in the comments and I'll post it below)

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