Sean Dolan’s mother probably refused to let him hang with his buddies once too often. The payback? Sean “gakked” her, dumping a bucket of the cold, blue watery gunk on her head.
“It was for all the times she said no for when I wanted to go to see my friends,” said 8-year-old Sean, who lives in Norridge.
“He’s right. I do tell him no a lot,” added Mary Dolan. “I can’t hold (being gakked) against him.”
Sean got his mother back (but in a loving, caring sort of way) recently when the Nickelodeon Live Tour hit Chicago. Kids and adults got physical and messy and played games from two of the cable channel’s most popular game shows, “Nickelodeon GUTS” and “Nick Arcade.”
Sean competed in a game where he used a hand crank to move a cut-out copy of a blimp over a line. The blimp headed for a bulls-eye, which his smiling mother was sitting under. Hanging over his mom’s head was a bucket of the messy Gak-gloop. When the blimp hit the bulls-eye, the Gak glooped. Mary Dolan wasn’t smiling anymore.
Nick Live landed at Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon as part of a 100-city tour that started in September and is scheduled to finish in the spring.
“It’s fun, just being able to get on stage and be in front of a lot of people,” said 11-year-old Brian Jones of Bellwood. All Brian had to do for his 15 minutes of fame was drink some soda pop as quick as he could, slip on a pair of big, floppy shorts and hit himself in the face with a whipped-cream pie.
“I like the feel of pie on my face,” he said, smiling. It wasn’t just kids doing outrageous stunts before thousands of people. Adults also got into the act – whether they wanted to or not.
“You’re in the Nick Zone now!” warned Mike O’Malley, host of “Nickelodeon GUTS,” who was ringleader of Nick Live along with “partner in slime” Phil Moore of “Nick Arcade.”
Mark Timberlake, 35, played musical chairs with several others, including his 7-year-old daughter Jenkina. But the key of the show is mess, so they passed a whipped-cream pie around – when the music stopped, the person holding the pie had to stick it in their own face. “It was absolutely wonderful,” said Timberlake, an insurance agent from Chicago. “I think kids get a kick out of seeing adults participate and supporting the things they’re interested in.
“And of course,” he added, “they like seeing you making a fool out of yourself.”
Contestants also sped through an obstacle course, hit video elves electronically with “snowballs” while the audience watched on two large television screens, and climbed the “GUTS”‘ Aggro Crag, or a mountain-like wall.
Moore and O’Malley regularly jumped into the audience and headed into the balcony to pick people to play games. Music blasted as loud as any rock concert, and everybody – kids and parents – screamed and stomped their guts out. “You’ve got moms and dads who, all of a sudden, they have to go `Aahhhhgg!’ ” said Moore. “You’ve got kids who, because it’s Nickelodeon, are now in charge. Normally, Mom has to go, `Excuse me, go to your room, you didn’t do what I said.’ Now you have those moms on stage … and a kid gets to take a pie and go … smasho!”
To find out when Nick will be near you next, call 407-363-8500.
