The Bleat.: slideshow image 1
The Bleat.: slideshow image 2
The Bleat.: slideshow image 3
The Bleat.: slideshow image 4
The Bleat.: slideshow image 5

Blog

Return of Out of Context Ad Challenge

Need some new sweats – or, as the Brits call them, “trainers.” Even though 99.7% of the people who wear them aren’t training for anything, except perhaps an additional assault on the concepts of public decorum. I actually sweat in my sweats, since every night I do aerobics while watching some TV show I wouldn’t watch if I was required to pay complete attention. “Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Nipples,” for example. I love things Roman, and this is Roman enough, but it’s old-line Roman, where society consists entirely of Brit-accented upperclass twits and their wives (cracker-dry old schemers or ripe red-haired voluptuaries, nothing in between) and buff glistening gladiators. The twain intersect at dimly-lit parties where the slaves are either serving lark-brains-on-crackers or performing slo-mo theatrical sex acts. Yes. Of course. That’s exactly what Rome was like. One of those shows where people don’t have conversations, they have SPEECHES. Everyone talks in portentous SPEECHES. And then there’s the slo-mo splatter of combat. Somehow it takes you out of the moment when the blood drips on the camera lens. Makes me nostalgic for HBO’s “Rome,” which reveled in the quotidian details of life in the lesser districts. Makes you realize that in 2000 years they’ll make movies about our era, and everyone will be half-naked and sweaty while they commit mortgage fraud.

Anyway, sweats: I have but one request. Elastic ankles. These are rare; they have fallen out of fashion. Apparently I am supposed to enjoy the feel of ankle-fabric untrammeled by cinches, flowing around like the hems of a pasha’s garment. I don’t. But I may have to accept this, if there are no other alternatives; the elastic on my “trainers” is as loose as a UN resolution. I took out the garbage tonight with one hand holding up my pants.

This week fled on wings of mercury, no?

No? Galloped on hooves of quicksilver? Bugged out on heels of WD-40? No? Fine. Either you don’t have the appropriate figure of speech, or the week moved slowly. Mine snapped past at a frightening pace, which is always a sign that things are busy and reasonably satisfying. Perhaps it’s the week after a vacation that sluices by like minnow in a brook – but no, that’s utterly counterintuitive. Wouldn’t you be slogged down by the return to grim duty? It wasn’t that long a vacation, though. So perhaps it’s a combination of post-vacation depression alleviated by the brevity of the vacation and the pleasures of the work to which I returned, plus some work-at-home days, and OH WHO CARES.

I had to be home, because school’s out. Again. It’s parent-teacher conference week. This afternoon I went to school to see how she was doing; she is doing fine. As I tweeted earlier, the metrics are frustrating – they’re numerical, complex, and speak a language of an educational system that’s developed a vocabulary impenetrable to parents. So the range is 216 to 222, and she’s 219. Great. Meaning? Put it in oldthink terms, brother. A B C D F. Or do those cold letters have too much of the cold tang of JUDGMENT?

When we were done I went down the hall to see another teacher who’d told my daughter “I know your dad,” and she told me and said his name, and I was like LOL WHUT? as the kids say. I had no idea. He’s the brother of a college-era roommate of the female persuasion. Which required some tricky locution, lest daughter things you LIVED WITH A GIRL BEFORE MOMMY. Nothing like that – it was a house chopped up into rooms, and since this was the swingin’ 80s, guys and gals alike would live in such quarters, at least until they tired of being an unofficial citizen in Slobovia. As it turned out his sister was one of my favorite friends in those days. You know those people in your life with whom you share a few key banal catch-phrases that mean nothing to anyone else, but refer back to some event forged in tears and recollected with amusement? Like that. You can repeat those phrases 20 years later, and you both get it, and laugh.

It’s infuriating how people fade away or sink into the deep, and there’s nothing you can do. There was a Great Divergence many years ago, and the social order forced in the basement of the Valli Pub fractured. Now. You may well think it’s preposterous to assume these things wouldn’t happen, since life consists of such fissures: grade school friends are lost to middle school, high school friends lost in the great new wave of college, college roommates forgotten when the workplace and the post-college claque of 20s-somethings takes over, and then this batch abandoned when kids and the Real Job and all the other anchors of adulthood are draped around your neck.

But this is the Midwest, where people stay in one place and things last. When I get together with the Giant Swede we talk about things that happened this morning, and things that happened 32 years ago. In a few days when I shoot the video for the “Falling up the Stairs” ebook, it will be in front of an apartment building where the Giant Swede lived as well, and I took over an apartment from the Crazy Uke’s girlfriend, and Wes the Filmmaker lived downstairs, and Sam the Poet lived upstairs, and eventually he ended up living with the sister of the math teacher who told my daughter to say hello to your dad.

I drive past that apartment building once a month, at least.

So it’s all here all the time. Which makes the fact that some people turn into ghosts all the more frustrating. Worse: ghosts who haunt only by their absence.

And that’s what happened at the parent-teacher conference. You can imagine the chains of Marley that drape across every other intersection in my life.

Hey, here’s the Out of Context Ad Challenge for the week, as I slowly return to the ruined schedule of updates:

So: what are they selling? Answer eventually. New Bleatplus, and column at startribune.com. Everything’s back to normal on Monday. Have a grand weekend!

Nov 05, 2010 | Categories:Domestic Life | 67 Comments »

Wake Up and Sing

A few years ago, as part of my Customize Every Aspect of Life plan, I got a clock radio that would play an iPod. I would be awakened first by the wake-up call from the Andromeda Strain, and if I wasn’t jogged to consciousness by the voice of the lady from Des Moines who made her living recording messages for secret underground facilities, a song would follow: Wake up and Sing, a 30s ditty that provides a spry and merry start to any day. This worked well for years. Last week, before leaving for Florida, I tried to find a light timer, and unplugged what I thought was a timer behind the radio; unplugged the radio instead. Didn’t plug it back in.

Returned home, plugged it in. The battery power kept my settings – but it believed that the time was now 1 hour ahead, as though the device missed me and synced to Florida time. I tried to change the time. It would not permit any argument to the contrary. I tried to change the alarm settings, which had somehow become 5:45 AM. No good. Well. The only way to wipe it would be a removal of its backup battery, right? Find the battery hatch . . . ah. It’s covered with a door held in place with a tiny screw. A screw. Because the forces of nature regularly sweep through the average American bedroom, and rip out batteries nestled within an electronic device. The screw was so minute I had to use an eyeglasses screwdriver, and even then I couldn’t get it open. So I said to hell with it and unplugged it and used my iPhone as an alarm.

5:45 AM: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

I got up, looked at the clock radio: nothing was displayed on the front. No power. Yet it beeped. It was dead, but still it sang. I hit OFF.

5:46 AM: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

I picked it up and put it in another room and put a pillow over it. Around six it gave up.

Tonight I tried again to wipe its brain. This time I used a pliers to turn the eyeglass screwdriver, and withdrew a 2/3rd inch long screw. Opened the hatch. Inside was a button battery wedged so tight it had to be dug out with a screwdriver. So glad it was held in place so securely; otherwise it might have just flung itself out the bottom of the unit, pushed the alarm clock a foot in the air, ricocheted off the bureau, pinged off the roof and embedded itself in my eyeball.

It consented to being reset, so all is well.

All is well more or less elsewhere; the shearing of the trees continues, with the wind picking off more and more leaves. A few trees still hold on to their full compliment, but they’re the anomaly. Driving home from work today I was paused at a light – looked up to see late afternoon sun, that weak wan washed-out light, and a skyline of empty branches. It felt normal. That’s how it always works. Everything becomes normal, because it’s in the background and you’re thinking about dinner and sleep and what you have to do tomorrow. When you don’t work outside the seasons are a theater set.

The standard shot from the stoop, today:

While I was on the trip I read a book. Or, if you like, I read a book while I was on the trip. Either works. It was “The Reversal” by Michael Connolly, one of my favorite mystery writers. I think we had a drink about 20 years ago, not that he’d remember. I hope the book was a set-up for a sequel, because when it ended I was certain that the electronic version had omitted the final chapter. It felt like running off a cliff and hitting a brick wall face-first about 10 feet into the fall. Unexpected, and not in a good way. I got the ebook version because A) that’s how I read all books nowadays, because I’m just that modern a guy, and B) it was an Enhanced version. It had short videos throughout, acting out some of the scenes. Most of them were greeny night-vision shots of the bad guy walking around with the sort of vigorous purpose you usually associate with the end credits of Buckaroo Banzai.

You know, this. The only end credits in the history of the movies where the main characters just walk around to a tune that wasn’t in the rest of the movie. (If memory serves.) This was the 80s, right here:

Anyway. The enhanced extras weren’t technically impressive, but they weren’t intended as such. Usually I would resist literal interruptions of this sort, because you like to conjure the world of the book in your own way. It would be interesting to develop some sort of brain-scan that downloaded people’s visual conception of a book, how the characters looked, how the rooms were laid out. It would be as varied as the number of readers. There is no there there. Sometimes when I’m reading a book I stop, think about the room where the action takes place, freeze it, remove the characters and the descriptions of the environment, and trace it back to some archetypical room I inhabited once. (It’s surprising how many books take place in my grandparents’ house.) It’s a mistake to provide literal clues, but there’s nothing wrong with a little documentary at the end that tells you what the author was thinking.

I mention all this because I’m doing the same for the ebook of “Falling Up the Stairs.” I will have to write and talk and appear in the videos, of course. This will be expected of authors in the future, and woe to those who can’t rise to the task. It’s not enough to write it. It’s not enough to promote it. You have to be a personality, don’t you know. Eventually this means books become episodes in a personal channel, and you’ll be expected to do something between books to satisfy the audience. The next Hemingway will be obliged to kill himself on a webcam feed.

As a product, the “Enhanced Edition” of the book was rather basic and thin, but in a few years it will look like those early Edison films shot on paper stock and displayed on bedsheets. This is not a new art form, but a new version of an old one – and once we become accustomed to expecting Enhancement, the limitations of the Kindle will be apparent. It should take no more than five years before the basic Kindle is the equivalent of the printed book, preferred by people who like the old familiar experience without needless technological enhancements.

Well. A column night, which I’ve tapped out between dipping into the Bleat. Also watching “The Walking Dead,” which is certainly better than its predecessor, “The Jogging Dead.” I’m not a big zombie fan, because they became pointlessly, inexplicably hip, and the funny-zombie movie genre doubled back on itself rather quickly, but the first half of “24 Days Later” was one of the more harrowing things I’ve seen, and this TV version is good so far.

“Wake up and Sing” would be a great title for a zombie movie, by the way. At least it belongs on the soundtrack.

–

Updates et al return next week, but there will be Bleatplus tomorrow and some other things. Thursday already? Thursday already. Enjoy!

Nov 04, 2010 | Categories:Domestic Life | 47 Comments »

This, and little more

Daughter comes home from school, and says the same thing she says every day:

“Guess what?”

I love hearing that; you never know where it’s going. And you certainly can’t guess.

“What?”

“Today after gym we got . . .” she makes scare quotes. “THE TALK.”

“The birds and the bees?”

“No, periods and stuff.”

So now we know: the birds are periods, and the bees are stuff. There was great debate when I was in grade school over SEX ED, as the dreaded topic was called, but it never amounted to anything, and was left in the hands of the parents. I still remember The Talk: I was walking with my dad on the beach at Detroit Lakes, and he said:

“Doctor Christu says I should tell you the facts of life.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

And that was the end of the conversation.

Usually I write these things at night – unless you believe I get up at 5 AM and bang out thoughts accumulated the previous day and stored overnight so they and ripen nicely. So this is small, because I was up doing election stuff. Writing or talking. The most “modern” part of the day was doing a radio interview while I watched the host in a small browser window on the ancillary screen. In ten years these will all be replaced by holographic projections, you know. They will be chunky and look like late-80s or early 90s computer graphics, which means people will laugh at them twenty years later.

But you know what? At the time we were pret-ty damned impressed with them, because they were the start of the New World of Computers. No one had one, but we’d all have one soon. (Actually, I had one, starting in 1982, but that’s another story.) (TI/99, if you must) This was the third wave of the Computer in the popular imagination: first you had the 50s notion of the Iron Brain, full of tubes, making implacable calculations; then the 60s idea of the all-powerful IBMs whirring away in sleek black skyscrapers, compiling data on spinning magnetic tape spools; they weren’t malevolent or omnipotent, but tools in the hands of the Establishment.

Then we got our own and everything changed.

You know what summed up the future of computers in the early 80s? The GRID. I’ve written about this before, I know, but because they could generate grids, and make them pitch up and down, this was used all over the place to indicate the future. Such as:

Great theme, too – grandeur and ominous and madness.

Anyway. More tomorrow. Part of the problem here: I wrote all day. Filed eight pieces. So at the end of the day, no. Off to finish the new Sherlock Holmes episode; apologies, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Nov 02, 2010 | Categories:Domestic Life | 76 Comments »

Disney 2010: Day 3

Hollywood Studios.

At this point in the parade, I’m looking for a new float. The parade itself is familiar. Mind you, I like the familiar; I’m not one of those people with a horror of repeating experiences. I like to chew the rind. I like going back; I like building a history, and feeling as though I belong to something. Not Disneyworld itself – that would be silly. But going back to Saratoga Springs, yes. Walking around in the evening is one of the small, potent pleasures of the year. “Welcome Home,” you think.

If only the staff wouldn’t spoil it by saying “Welcome Home” every time you turned around.

Hollywood Studios is a curious place, born of an association later sundered, with a version of Main Street all shiny and fancy and top-hat swank. If Main Street is idealized early 20th century middle America, the streets of Hollywood Studios are an idealized vision of something that was an ideal in the first place: modern urban architecture severed from its historical roots, reclad in machine-age materials and design, and recast as a vision of the future arising out of the exuberance of the 20s or the torpor of the Depression.

I want to live here.


No place ever looked like this; no place was this all at once. But the pieces exist – as this site shows, matching the facades with the buildings that inspired them. They’re all together now as they could never be, and it makes you realize that no period in American architecture could be so diverse but still coherent. Fifties facades would all blend together. Seventies facades would look like a clown factory.

Anyway. We headed straight to the Toy Store ride . . . which had no more Fast Passes, and a 100 minute wait. Ah well. Went to a ride housed in an enormous replica of Graumann’s Chinese theater, an animatronic homage to old movies. And old rides: I think it’s 20+ years old, although everything works. You get on a car and move slooowwllly through various stages where robots act out snippets of scenes from movies – and then the action turns “real,” in the sense of being tightly scripted and acted by tour guides who may or may not have sickened of their lines to the point where they cannot bear to get up in the morning, or just don’t have the skill to sell them as well as they might. We were lucky – had an excellent gangster. I was startled to see “Alien” included on the ride; possibly the only time you’ll find a theme-park attraction that features both chest-punching bi-mandible xenomorphs and Humphrey Bogart saying goodbye to Ilsa.

“That was thrilling,” daughter said as we disembarked. We’re at the point where I don’t know if she was serious.

“Don’t be so jaded,” I said.

“No seriously that was fun,” she said. To prove the point, she wanted to go back an hour later. So we did.

Next: Indiana Jones’ Stunts of Doom Doom-Stunt Show (featuring Indiana Jones) This one has been around for a couple of decades as well, but that doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen it. The idea is rather creaky: somehow a thousand people have wandered on to the set of the Indiana Jones movie. No problem! The second-unit director tells us what’s happening, how the stunts are shot, what goes into the sequences, and so on. For a while my daughter thought it was real, that they were actually shooting, and I hated to say no. Again, if you’ve not seen it, great fun: fire shoots up, things explode, a Nazi is atomized by a propellor blade. The humor is bearable, the sets enormous. Longtime parkgoers say it’s long in the tooth. But there is no incentive to update it, really, no reason. Packs ‘em in and sends them out with the memory of an enormous boulder. Nowadays it would be conceived as a 3D film, perhaps, and it would be more immersive – the room would shake and things would dangle an inch from your face.

But you wouldn’t see the actual boulder roll. There is nothing in the world capable of reproducing the effect of a big boulder rolling down the slope towards Indiana Jones. It may not be as dramatic as the one you saw in the movie, perhaps because you know it’s coming, but it’s real.

There’s still a market for real.

American Idol Experience! Dawg! There was a short video from Carrie Underwood saying how American Idol had changed her life, and maybe American Idol Experience would change ours. Not a chance, sweetheart. I have little interest in American Idol, although I appreciate the existence of Simon, driving a hot smoking poker into the latex balloons of people who have an exaggerated sense of their abilities. We sat down front, sat back, and waited. Well: great pre-show, brisk staging, clever simulation of the show itself – hell, I was standing up and getting down when the camera swooped past, much to daughter’s mortification. First singer comes out. Chunky suburban mom in mom jeans and long-day-at-Disneyworld shoes. She’s going to sing “Black Velvet.” Takes about 14, 15 notes before the crowd realizes she * has * what * it * takes and starts to clap along. As happens, the clapping devolves into a mush, but not because people are bored: they just want to listen. She’s fantastic. The judges gush. Next!

It’s a mom from England! She’s fun and hot and perky and wearing white slacks and a white blouse with a pink sequined pattern, because she came to Disneyworld today to try out, and once you think about it she doesn’t look that much like the bloke what played the murderer in “Frenzy.” Much. She’s going to sing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” and it takes about 20 seconds before you realize that she is the absolute star of her social circle because she’s so talented, and she has all the moves you see on the telly, and everyone has told her she has to be on Pop Idol – well, too old, but maybe American Idol Experience at Disneyworld, luv.

Awful. Mannered, ersatz, no sense of constructing a performance. Coming after Suburban Mom, she knew it, too; it was like watching cotton candy meet a flame thrower.

Third contestant: Sensitive guy with requisite facial hair sings something from Hercules, and sings his heart out, and he’s flat throughout, except when he’s sharp.

Suburban mom wins, no surprise. She gets to come back for the nightly final!

Lunch!

But where? Here.

The sign doesn’t do the place justice. Finally: a 50s-themed restaurant that attempts to capture something like the actual 50s, not some Happy-Days / imaginary googie version. Because it’s a mess. A delightful kitschy mess. To the modern eye, everything clashes. It’s not consistent! But it was; bullfighter statuette groupings, modern cone lighting, harlequins, 40s linoleum, it’s all there. It’s a gorgeous garish mess – and every room or table had a TV playing period shows.

No hamburgers. Period food. And the waitresses? Ours was pushing 60. They’re not waitresses as such – they’re Mom. We’re the kids. Elbows off the table and eat your vegetables and here are the rules and that’s the way it’s going to be. She was in character, so I decided to be in character too. She asked me if I wanted a drink and I leaned over and whispered I would but I’m out of Sen-sen. She understood.

Then we saw the show about cars driving in reverse with great precision, which was quite impressive. Strolled around the backlots, which have that NYC-early-decline Sharks vs. Jets feel. Of course it’s ersatz – I’m depraved on account’a I’m derived – but who cares?

Saw the Muppet 3D show, which is great if you love the Muppets, but I’ve always been . . . . somewhat resistant, perhaps because there’s a expectation that you have to love Muppets THIS much and I only like them this much. Miss Piggy bores me. There. I’ve said it. The film had its charms, but featured a horrid little animated flying creature that must have been a technical knock-out at the time, but now looks like some sort of insect that sucks souls. Then we ducked into “Sounds Dangerous with Drew Carey,” which consisted of sitting in the dark and listening to a bad radio show on headphones: the absolute nadir of anything at any park anywhere. Drew Carey should hire people to stand outside and forbid entrance. A small meteor should fall on the building. Plague should strike the people who decided the “attraction” should not be shut down as a blot on the entire Disney Florida experience. Then wife went off to see the American Idol finals, and I went with daughter to get a frozen lemonade and sit on a bench and watch the world flow past. We cracked wise and goofed and had an absolutely delightful time.

The rides and the shows are fun. Sitting along an imaginary street with a frozen lemonade on a hot October night making each other laugh: life’s highlight reel, right there. I know I’ve sounded underwhelmed by this day, but that wasn’t the case; everything was fun, even when it was less than stellar, and I’d go back tomorrow. The attractions may be the least of the four, but I love just being there. Architecture makes me happy.

The park closed, and we went to Downtown Disney, along with 47 million other people. Too many humans. Grabbed some sandwiches at the Earl of Sandwich – a chain affiliated with the current Earl of Sandwich, as if sandwich know-how is hereditary – and hiked back to Saratoga Springs. Sat outside for a while and listened to the geyser in the lake, and regretted the end of the trip. Slept with reluctance.

Up at 5:17 AM.

Bus at 6, flight #1 at 8:45, two hour layover, two-and-a-half-hour flight. Home! Drop off family; fetch dog; home; get kid into costume, head down to the Haunted Triangle where the neighbors gather. Walked the kids up and down the streets for trick-or-treating, and even though it wasn’t entirely freezing I lost sensation in my toes, and had to repair to Jasperwood to hold them against the fireplace grate before heading back down to the Triangle. Exhaustion hit like a soft golden hammer around 11 PM. Finished all the work. At midnight I went down the steps, blew out the pumpkins, looked around, considered the day – how we had begun in Florida, tarried in Georgia, arrived home for the party, celebrated the night with neighbors and chili and a bonfire, and now November was upon us. A remarkable day.

–

Technical note: most of these photos were taken on the iPhone with the HDR setting in case you’re curious.

Nov 02, 2010 | Categories:Disney, Domestic Life | 42 Comments »

Disney 2010 Day 1 & 2

It may sound like hell, but trust me: getting up at 5:17 AM for a day of flying is a-ok if you’ve been in a good place, and you’re heading home for Halloween. It’s almost midnight, and I’ve no idea why I am awake. Really. Since the flight left at 8:45, the Mouse insisted we catch the 6 AM bus to the airport, and that meant getting up at 5:17 so I could be ready to get out of the way of the wife and child, slated for a 5:30 awakening. Slept a little on the first leg; landed in Atlanta, spent two and a half hours waiting for the second flight. Slept a little. It was thin sleep, snapped in two when my head dropped or lolled, but there were dreams, and dreams mean REM, and REM means you’ve mainlined some Z time down to the marrow. I woke for good just as the beverage cart pulled past: coffee, my good man. Watched an episode of a British crime drama (Pascoe and Daziel, Ep 1, if you’re curious) and that took me right to the moment when you have to shut off everything because your solid-state iPad will scramble the plane’s electronics.

Dropped off the family, drove north to get the dog, who was confused. He’s always confused when I pick him up. It takes a while. But I give him the standard whistle – the primary means of communication we have these days – and he got the point, trotted over to the car. He recognized that. Home, with the standard strange feeling you get after a vacation: refamiliarity. When I pulled up in the driveway my wife was just returning from dropping things off for the Haunted Party down the street at the Haunted Triangle (land that was once part of Jasperwood, but severed in the 20s by civil edict) and now Jasper got it. He ran to my wife and sang and talked and arooo’d and everything else. I may be alpha, but she’s his best friend. I am law, but she is Indulgence. It’s always been that way. Someone has to be Law, especially with a dog like Jasper.

Grabbed another 20 minutes of sleep, then off to the Halloween Party. Took the kids around the neighborhood with two other parents. Had some chili that had been simmering since Friday. Came home with frozen toes and helped daughter sort the candy by genre and rank. Went back to the party to chat, then staggered home to . . . resize photos and prepare the Bleat! Excitement unparalleled, that. Now it’s almost 12, and I will head downstairs for the saddest moment of the month: extinguishing the pumpkin. That’s the moment when you stop and savor the silence and give the day its due, remember the shivering pleasures of your own childhood, and realize: November, the great dead weight of November, has rolled ‘round again. Gird ‘em up; here we go.

Ah, but this will be a different November. As we’ll see. For now: I hope you had a great Halloween. The recap of the Florida excursion, a two-entry Bleat event, follows below.

10.28.10 8:54 PM
SARATOGA SPRINGS, DISNEYWORD
SITTING OUTSIDE

I am waiting for my entire reservation to be rebooked. Why? Because I did not add the dining plan when I checked in. Now, this option was not presented when I checked in, I think. I recall saying I would take it up with the concierge after supper, because we had been traveling all day, were starving, and wanted to sit outside, consider our options, then wife and child would go to the room.

The room I had already changed. I’m so damned difficult. They put us in a part of the complex that was as far as possible from Downtown Disney, and since we wanted to end our evening with a stroll over to the bright lights and merry – I’m sorry, magical – excitement, I requested, and got, a closer room. Then we had a delicious dinner outside in the warm humid air, and I went to the concierge. Only be to be told they could not -

They just came outside to tell me that nothing could be done. Their hands are tied. The power to rebook has been taken away by the Main Office, and that’s that. Ah well. Probably just as well; I hate that whole points system anyway. Now to go see if I can still buy tickets for the Park, or if that has to be done a year in advance as well.

Well, that was an inauspicious start, but probably just as well. I hate the points system anyway. You get a snack and two drinks and a half-snack and a table service and a sit-down service and a slouch-in-your-chair service and a half-drink and a crouch-over-the-table with a snack and six-drink option, plus dessert. Or something like that. Never been able to figure it out, and you end up eating more than you want just to burn off the points. Here! Have some chips! I don’t want any. You might as well! It’s America! Eat your chips!

–

LATER

As is the tradition, we walked over to Downtown Disney, where a magical time can be had shopping for magical merchandise to remind you of the magic of your magical vacation. Since daughter is out of the phase that requires a plush animal to mark every trip or event, we were spared endless plush deliberation. But I still enjoy seeing them all together, either happy with magical joy or screaming at the approach of Zuul:

We hit Goofy’s kitchen for TEH GREATEST Rice Krispee treat ever (the special touch: a layer of solid frosting!) Control freak that I am, I made it last for three days. Same with the jelly beans. It’s the lesson of moderation – forbid little, but make portion control paramount. Yes, you can have some ice cream. No, you cannot have two or three bars a day. Yes, you can have a waffle. No, you cannot have dessert after lunch.Yes, you can have this, but we’re going to split it. And so on.

Back to the room. We had a view of one of the lagoons and the fountain. A long day – seven, eight hours of travel with a long layover in Atlanta – but any day that ends here is a good one.

FRIDAY, OCT. 29

I love this place.

So this morning I got up and went to the Artist’s Palette, as the restaurant is known. The menu never varies. Ever. As you’d expect for a place that serves people once a year, I guess, but you remember these things. And laugh: the Bounty Platter! Yes, sample the rich Bounty of the Artist’s Palette! I’ll have some braised cerulean and some hashed ochres, with a side of linseed oil. The Bounty Platter has one of everything, including the hard little crusty severed Mickey-heads in waffle form. They’re better in the large size. The omelette are delicious, the potatoes magnificently seasoned, and everything fills you up and prepares you for a hard day of walking around – and eating!

We went to Epcot the first day. I love Epcot. Don’t have the same reaction I did the first time, where newness and delight was tinged with a certain sort of sadness – seeing the 70s ideas of THE FUTURE! was nostalgic and bittersweet. The glass pyramid, the monorail, the enormous million-faceted sphere, the tinged concrete, and all the other details that made you feel like you were in a Gene Roddenberry pilot.

Now I enjoy it for what it is, and enjoy its curious conjoining of Science! and international comity. One half techno-theme-park, one half permanent Festival of Nations housed in exquisite sets.

Rides first, including Test Track, which consists of some mundane rumbling around a dark room before then car speeds up towards a wall at an alarming rate of acceleration – then the wall parts and you shoot outside and spin around the track. The free soda from other lands stand, daughter’s favorite; the adhesive properties of the room’s floor are remarkable, and make you wonder how many people are incapable of bringing a cup to their lips without dumping half on the ground. I shocked everyone by going straight to Beverly, the Italian tonic known for its peculiar, somewhat bitter flavor. I love it. I would bet I am not alone; there are many who step inside the gates of Epcot and think “Beverly awaits.” It’s an acquired taste, particularly if you’re used to drinks so sweet they they would induce diabetes in a steel girder, but after a bracing cup of Beverly everything else tastes like liquid candy. Which it is. Sat by the fountain for a while, because I am content to just sit and watch the world pass by on a sunny day, listen to the music, just be there. But. Wife went off to some cooking thing that involved goat cheese, and I took the daughter to Innoventions to play a landfill sim and test my knowledge of storm-resistant construction techniques. We also played “Where’s the Fire,” and led the Findwells to victory. It helps to have done it before, and have only two players; we kept getting bonus rounds.

We rejoined and set off to the International Area of Cultures Sanded Down to Agreeable Archetypes, and were instantly tempted by the food. Chile! Brazil! But you can’t have the first thing you see. No, you must walk 2/3rds of the way around until you realize that what you really want was . . . something from Chile and Brazil, and then you keep going. Along the way, pavilions.

China: we went to the 360 movie, “6,000 Years of Scenery, and Don’t Ask About the Despotism.” It was narrated by a poet in period clothes from the Tungsten Dynasty – I think that’s what he said – and it made me wonder if 500 years from now they’ll have a holographic show that features Carl Sandburg, poet of the Kennedy dynasty, walking around in a hamburg and a pinstripe suit and running shoes and a monocle. Who’d know? The movie showed the great cities, the marvelous scenery, and since it was 360 you could turn around and around and lose yourself in the illusion, a little. There wasn’t any history, except to note that Shanghai and Macau were influenced by the West. The former was the most attractive of the cities, to me. I have absolutely no fellow-feel for Asian aesthetics at all. The art, the architecture, the music – lands on my heart like a rock on an anvil.

But it was impressive, and the hosts delightful, and we enjoyed it. Natalie had some potstickers and pronounced them the best ever in the world, and I had a bite and agreed.

Off to another nation we hadn’t seen before. (You want to space them out so there’s always something new.) Japan. Natalie is a great enthusiast of all things Japanese, thanks to anime, and when we entered the enormous store she almost died. This is what heaven looks like, she said with mock seriousness, but she meant it. Everything was SO CUTE or SO COOL and they had REAL AUTHENTIC JAPANESE CANDY. She had a gift card to spend, and chose her items with great care while . . . well. My wife had wandered outside to hear some music, and when we joined her she waved us over to the PhotoPass spot for a family picture.

“You listened to Starship?” the photographer said.

My wife said she had. The photog looked at me. “You a Starship fan?”

“No sir,” I said.

“Really? Aw dude, c’mon, We Built This City!”

“They didn’t build anything,” I said. “The idea of Grace Slick singing ‘they’re always changing corporation names’ when the band had three names is just the start of my problems, and ‘Marconi does the Mambo’ is the other.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it was Jefferson Airplane, then Jefferson Starship, then just Starship.”

“I hated them all,” I said. “‘White Rabbit’ is the Bolero of rock.”

“Okay well I can see you got opinions!”

Family by now is cringing. Yes, Daddy has opinions.

So we took our pictures and moved along. I had something at the Italian booth – ravoli in a creamy bolognese sauce under a quilt of mozzarella, unbelievable – then I found myself in sudden need of coffee. Hard as hell to get jake in these places, but I know a cart by the English pavilion, so that’s where I went. Stood behind a nice family of Englishmen, who ordered cappuccinos. I wanted to say how disappointed I was: tea, for God’s sake! Crumpets! Bangers! Mash! Conform to the things I saw on TV growing up! But we moved along to the Canadian pavilion, which has an enormous castle (it’s probably only 1 1/2 stories tall, but it looks five stories high) and their own 360 degree show called “We Could Only Get Martin Short for This One.” The queueing area was interesting. (If you don’t spend time studying how they do things here, like setting moods in the queue, you’re wasting your time. You’re a cow on an abattoir chute!) It was dark as a mine-shaft, woody, 19th century. Felt honest and frontier-rough. I loved it, because it tied into the iconography and preconceptions of the Old West, and since that’s America, a bond was formed, and deep in your heart you remembered that Canada and America are brothers, and -

“I swallowed the cellophane wrapper from my rice cake candy,” daughter said.

“Did you mean too?”

She nodded. “It wouldn’t come off. I think you’re supposed to swallow it.”

After a little speech from a clean-cut, proud, but not boastful Canadian fellow, we saw the show. As I said, Martin Short. He’s very self-deprecating. It’s all very self-deprecating. “Hare are some cities that are bigger than you may have thought, and a few smaller ones. Now, snow. Now, trains. Here’s the Bay of Fundy. The tide is really low when it’s out and really high when it’s in. Snow! Flowers, we has them. Look at all our happy ethnic community-members turning to the camera and smiling! Hockey!”

And so on. What I loved about it: the fleeting shots of early 20th century Canadian architectural accomplishments. The magnificent things they built in the New World with pen and ink and strong arms and sharp minds. The way the vocabulary of the old world was brought over here and reinstalled, sober and decent and just. At least that’s the impression you get. Never was that entirely, of course. But better Victorian Regina than the latest Emperor with his soft arse on a silk cushion in the forbidden city. If you ask me.

When we got out it was time for more grazing. Chilean pork, something from Brazil, and the most amazing treat of them all: from New Zealand, a “Lamb Slider” with tomato chutney. Yes, it’s boring to hear what others eat – at least it always bores me to read it – but the idea that you’d spend a day at Epcot and rapturously reel off the things you ate is a testament to this festival. The weather? Perfect. Warm. Sunny. A light breeze. Early sunset, it being the end of October, and then a warm night in the park.

A perfect day. Tomorrow we try it again. More pictures? Yes: it’s Hollywood Studios. See you Tuesday!

–

By the way: Recession be damned. The place was packed.

Oct 31, 2010 | Categories:Disney | 48 Comments »

The spookiest pumpkin-bot that ever was

It would not be Halloween around Jasperwood without a mention of Him Who Certainly Can Be Named: Spookie Ookie.

He had two appearances on Rolie Polie Olie – once as a scary creature who scared kids in Polieville, and once as a dream-demon who made Zowie into the Queen of the Pumpykins, so he could convince her to climb the pumpkin staircase to his house, where he could frighten her into giving him the Super-Remote. (I will go to my grave knowing the plot of this cartoon.) Supposedly he wanted to get into his house, but there was a darker implication; give him the Super-Remote, and who knew what Spookie Ookie would wreak. Zowie insisted he not bad, he just want to go home, but she would, wouldn’t she?

Those pictures take me back, they do. Almost makes me glad Olie was cancelled, so it didn’t turn into utter crap, and makes it a part of her childhood that didn’t join the eternal Remix In the Cloud, where nothing is fixed to a particular era. On the other hand, I have no idea why no one saw the stupidity in killing this show and its characters.

A surplus of obligations has bitten deep into blogging time, and so it will be for tomorrow as well. So:

If you go to this page, you will find a thumbnail for a video about things to do on Halloween, notable for the fact that I attempt to sing two themes from the score of “Psycho.”

Universal Monsters! Oh, I could make it a blog post, but then I’d have to duplicate it for the Black and White World section. Drac 2 is here. Drac 3 is here.

Annnnd . . . the Halloween Diner. It’s the second half that really earns your patronage, I think.

I wish you a fine Halloween, however you wish to spend it. Comments are open; feel free to discuss the issues of recollected childhood costumes, and the merits of particular candies. We will meet again on the cold stone steps of November. See you then!

Oct 28, 2010 | Categories:Black & White World, Disney, Domestic Life | 73 Comments »