David Cronenberg's "The Fly" - LA Opera, The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, September 27, 2008, 2 p.m.

I should mention this from the start, so you can determine the level of my bias in regard to David Cronenberg's The Fly:

The first cat that I owned, outside of living at the home in which I grew up, was a sweet-natured seal point Siamese beauty named Brundlefly.

The cat probably deserved a name more befitting her gorgeous looks, but I was deeply in thrall with Cronenberg’s brand new version of The Fly at that time, and after seeing it more than a half dozen times in its first couple of weeks of release, there was no other choice as regards a name for a new kitten in my home than Brundlefly. I hated people who just named their cats Ms. Boots or Whiskers or Puss-Puss, and wanted to name her something that would start conversations. Unsurprisingly, this one started many a discussion, and gave me the opportunity to expound for several years on my love for this film.

Twenty-two years later after that naming, I found myself telling Jen, who never actually met sweet Brundlefly, that I would rather skip out on our trip to Disney World than miss out on seeing David Cronenberg's own mounting of The Fly as an actual operatic event with the Los Angeles Opera in September. Honestly, I thought I would never get the opportunity, thinking that the tickets would be snatched up straight off by every horror movie fan in LA County. Combine that with the usually earnest opera crowd, who tend to think of these things in terms of season tickets, and I thought there was no way I would see this outside of selling my soul to the devil in the guise of a ticketscalper. Two things worked in our favor, though: on the whole, horror and science fiction fans seem to be put off by having to attend an actual opera, and likewise, opera fans, on the average, probably do not like people tampering with the stolid tradition of their beloved art form.

I can back this last statement up by reporting how many possible walk-outs I perceived following the first act on Saturday, when we did actually attend the final performance of The Fly at the LA Opera. With none other than Placido Domingo himself wielding the conductor's baton, bass baritone Daniel Okulitch (portraying scientist Seth Brundle) strips down to absolutely nothing right square in the middle of the stage and then crawls into one of two telepod devices that bookend the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This resulted in a handful of shocked gasps around us, and while I can’t be sure if those particular gasps were connected to the numerous people (not all of them elderly) who were voicing their discontent with the activities on stage and proceeded to vacate the balcony area come intermission -- after Brundle’s emergence from the telepod on the opposite side of the stage, still fully naked -- I am certain they engaged in a similar form of gasping wherever they were seated. I must state that I did not actually follow these naysayers fully out of the building, so I can’t really say if they actually walked out of the show for good. I did, however, see many people leaving through the front doors in a determined fashion during the break between acts.

I can't speak for opera people in general, not knowing the general makeup of the audience these days, nor am I aware of modern developments in the form that might have the traditional audience more accepting of new concepts or sensibilities as outré as Cronenberg's. But however they may have advanced in recent years, I don't know how prepared they may be for the director's unique form of bodily and often vagina-based horror (check out his early oeuvre from Shivers up through Dead Ringers for the truth: every single film save The Dead Zone, which is a Stephen King adaptation, contains some form of vaginal surrogate). And I am fairly certain that some of those walkouts may have been season ticket holders who were just checking out the show because they didn't want to waste those tickets, and then ended up getting something of which they were completely unsuspecting: gore, sex and talk of the birth of a writhing maggot baby. Lastly, I doubt a good chunk of the audience, if they did know the movie or had seen it, even knew David Cronenberg by either name or reputation. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise!

Myself? Despite a handful of critiques I was saving up for after the show, I was having a fine, giddy time seeing a personal favorite film of mine being transcribed to the operatic stage, especially by its original director and music composer (Oscar-winner Howard Shore). Add to this a set design by two-time Oscar winner Dante Ferretti, costumes by Denise Cronenberg, and a libretto by Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly), and I was in heaven. Mostly, I was so astounded that I actually had been given the chance to see such a production, that I really wasn't the most clear-headed of patrons at the moment, and Jen would back this up with her opinion as to how much of my remaining mind I lost in the car on the way to downtown L.A. waiting for the traffic patterns to enable us to reach the show on time. (We sat down in our seats at 2:01 pm. So, four minutes to spare, technically…) Not being an actual fan of opera, but merely enjoying a show once in a while (though I am huge on operas starring Bugs Bunny), I would be the one there who would not hesitate to throw down the gauntlet in defense of the sci-fi and horror fans in the audience. I was there mostly to see the translation from screen to stage, and the quality of the music was really beside the point for me. My questions were “Would it hold true to the vision of the film and director?” and “Would it still be crazy, gory and/or scary?” And I was also hoping that perhaps I might end up in the same room as Cronenberg or Shore merely by dint of sitting in the same opera house (though, as far I know, this was not to be).

I can understand the consternation of longtime opera fans when confronted with such raw and far more modern sensibilities than those normally encountered on such a stage. Despite the fact that Cronenberg and Hwang set the show in the ‘50s – a conceit that squarely does not work for me at all – and despite the ponderous framing role of a policewoman investigating the possible homicide scene that is now Brundle’s demolished lab, the remainder of the show hews remarkably true to its remade movie source (The Fly was originally lensed in 1958, though that similar story is not represented by the ‘50s setting of this show). Large, mostly unaltered chunks of the original, incredible Brundle dialogue, once mouthed by an at-his-peak and superlative Jeff Goldblum, have been incorporated into the libretto, and for this Cronenberg nut, it was worth the traffic pains alone to be able to hear Okulitch warble prophetic on the finer points of “insect politics.” The storyline remains true as well, though Stathis, the shady jerk of a science magazine editor comes off as far less of a chauvinistic jerk, and manages to keep all of his limbs intact and unspewed upon with digestive fluids, than in the film version. And the show also manages to sneak in a nod to the prime directive of the overall Cronenberg vision, included as the mantra repeated throughout the show (and in various other permutations) by the chorus in the guise of the ghost within the machine, i.e. the computer's voice, "Long Live the New Flesh!"

The oddball romance born of scientific obsession is still here, and so too is the baboon whose body gets turned ickily inside out through the course of teaching the telepod computer about the ways of the flesh. Also recreated on stage are the sex scenes between Brundle and his writer lover Veronica, and some even more shocking scenes later on when he practically kidnaps the “I’m no hooker” hooker Tawny from the bar after he breaks the wrist of her burly paramour in a poolroom arm-wrestling match (the most unsuccessfully sequence, both in terms of music and staging). I was expecting one, maybe two positions on stage, tops. But four or five? It almost seemed for a couple of sections to turn into Kama Sutra: The Opera. Not that I am complaining, but some people in my row were negatively vocal about such things. Where my pal Raw Meat was sitting (and I will partially tell the amazing tale of his ticket search at another time), he said the old ladies were grabbing for the binoculars in the dirty parts, especially when Okulitch (or a body double; we are still not sure which, since he doesn't sing at that point and the lights quickly go out for intermission) crawls out naked from the telepod.

I am absolutely no judge of operatic ability, and were I to attempt it, I am sure brother Leif would chide me straight off. But I will say that I believe lead actor Okulitch was probably chosen for the part because he was the one who looked best naked. His voice just doesn't seem strong enough at many points, and he often gets lost in the music. He also gets outmatched by the singers playing Veronica and Stathis, which slightly takes away from his ability to command the show like his character should. I can only offer a comparison to Jeff Goldblum as a direct parallel with the original film. As good as Geena Davis and John Getz are in their supporting roles, we are carried through what could have easily been just another gorefest chiefly by an incredibly winning and endearing performance by Goldblum. Even when Goldblum's version of Brundle turns into what is recognizably a monster by societal standards, and serves as a being of great menace to all involved, we are still rooting for him to figure a way out of his tragedy, or at least for him to be able to embrace that tragedy on the way to further scientific discovery, which he basically does until it completely overtakes his ability to function as a human anymore. Okulitch, though this might be an error on the part of the creators instead of an acting one, never wins over the crowd to any great extent, and he eventually just becomes an opera singer playing dress up (or dress down, as it were) in a monster suit. It also doesn't help that the music, while always menacing and swirling throughout the piece, doesn't allow him to play longer in the role of the just transformed, quick-thinking, early version of Brundlefly, giving him only a short couple of minutes to expound manically on a thousand ideas in that time while downing massive amounts of sugar. He is most effective, though, in Brundle's further decline, when he starts to take on the appearance of an old man though really his body is just slowly eating away via the transformation.

Whatever small demerits I have given the show, however, do not reduce my enjoyment of the show overall, as it is very clear that, despite my relative inexperience with opera (I have only been to a dozen or so in my life, though I do enjoy them), I have to live with the belief that this particular show was made for me. For my own sake, I have to believe that my every experience with the tale of the mad scientist who accidentally gets transmuted into a human-fly mash-up has led to this point, from my teenage afternoons after school watching the Vincent Price original and its pair of sequels, to my discovery of the original short story years later, to the glory of my Cronenberg faith derived from several early films paying off with the still amazing remake version and demands for a Goldblum Oscar nod, to the weaving of the film into my own personal mythology through the naming of a new pet, and to the instant purchase of several VHS and DVD copies of the films in the series over that span. All of this surely led to my near-fanatical desire to see this show at any costs, even resulting in a willingness to destroy a long planned for family vacation to see a genius scientist accidentally get turned into a giant insect. (I, for one, refuse to believe that Brundle is actually mad until after the transformation.)

Would I have gone so far to threaten such devastation to the household if chance hadn't presented a pair of convenient shows to me after I returned from that vacation? Who knows? Who can predict such a chain of events as that outlined above, and who else besides myself needs to chronicle or even consider them? And if there is anyone who wishes to argue against my own mad vision of these circumstances, who wishes to deny my cravings for resolution, then that person is certainly someone who doesn't understand the way I operate. They can't understand the impulse of the true fan, of the mad genre disciple, of my "junk" movie-inspired, mutated soul. I needed to be there, no matter the cost, no matter how it tormented by physical or mental being, no matter how it twisted me into a ravenous, slathering monster undeserving to trudge forward on this now alien planet.

Long live the new flesh, baby...

Recently Rated Movies #63: The Revival

Welcome back, Rik, to a feature that you seem to have forgotten about on The Cinema 4 Pylon!

Pardon me, dear readers, while I argue with myself briefly regarding one of the chief reasons why I started this blog almost three years ago. Yes, you know the score by now as well as I -- the Pylon is meant as a working writer's notebook, a collection of pop cultural and movie reviews, and a place where I can work out all of the psychobabble junk which I need to burn off before it drives me even more bonkers than I am -- yes, all of this has been mentioned numerous times before here and duly noted. But, especially as a foundation on which to build columns and ideas for the Pylon -- and, eventually, Cinema for Space Lovers the website -- I also meant the Pylon to be a place where I can keep a running track of every film that I watch, whether I wish to write about them fully or not.

In the past few months, I have really gotten away from this.

Part of the reason is that I really didn't want this to be a place for lists. Early on, I would list anywhere from five into the low double figures of films, with very little textual content, though opeing sometimes with just a couple of quick jabs at something or other, and often wholly unconnected to the films being mentioned. I grew tired of this rather quickly. So, I then started to only do Recently Rated Movies columns when I really wanted to write about a certain film, and sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn't append the column with a quick list of other films I had seen recently. You would think from the entries I have put up in the past year that I have not seen all that many films. This would be a misnomer. I have seen hundreds of films in this time, and at the same rate that I normally watch them. Sure, I have off weeks, but then I will knock through a dozen of them over a weekend.

This past Friday night alone (two days ago), with Jen working and with my latest Spout Mavens review completed and published both here and on my SpoutBlog, I knocked through three movies in succession before my girl arrived home. Saturday morning, arising at 5:00 and with little writing ambition for the moment, I watched another 2-1/2 films, and then this morning, I have already finished the second half of that leftover film and started into another. (I also read three chapters of my immense new biography on Disney and worked on notes for an animated film of my own, so don't think I just sit around watching movies solely. I've got a lot going on all the time. Jen says I can't even relax when I am doing what other people do to relax: watch movies. She is correct...)

And I now have somewhere in the realm of a couple of hundred films that I haven't reported here on the Pylon. All along, I have been trying to figure out a new way of listing them, so that I just don't have pages and pages of movie ratings and nothing else. Not what I really want on a site devoted to writing about movies, not just reporting on seeing them. But then, because I have not been listing them, an important component of this site went away: a true portrayal of the diversity of film selections here on the site, so that I can give readers a general sense of where I have traveled in the past and where I plan to travel cinema-wise into the future. It's an essential part of the process of movie-going, judging that which you are seeing against that which you already have. Equally as vital, when sharing your opinions on movies with your readers -- be they friends, family or complete strangers -- that they have the means to understand the foundation of your opinions, and providing small snapshots such as the lists I used to print in Recently Rated Movies on the Pylon was at least a quick, up-to-the-minute way of doing so.

Early on, I attempted to give capsule reviews for each film, but capsule reviews are really not how I wish to write about films. Writing full essays on every single film I see will mean that I will never catch up in my list as well. I tried that for awhile -- and full reviews will happen in the future from time to time -- but doing so constantly is impossible. And, as I said, I didn't want to revert solely to a regular listing format, because lists are, in the end, merely lists, just title after title with little other information, and boring at that.

But I think I have hit upon a near perfect way of doing this again, keeping it interesting to me, going beyond a mere list format, and using the Pylon again as a "notebook" as well. The idea is to expand the list slightly to add a handful of immediate notes for each film following my viewing of them, which also might do more to explain the ratings I give each one on the site. They will be sketchy for the most part -- I will try to keep them sketchy, a common failing of mine, given my unstoppable need for verbosity (read: my unstoppable need to be long-winded) -- and only two or three lines at most.

We shall see how this works out, and I will start the revival of Recently Rated Movies in a couple of days. Luckily, to catch up, I can go through my Netflix list and all of the notes I have taken on films I have viewed on cable in the last six months. I only have, oh... two... three hundred films to work through, so by the time I catch up, I should have only another, oh... two... three hundred more films to work through. Wish me luck...

Spout Mavens Disc #14, Part 13 of 13: Shorts! Volume 3 - Archipelago (2004)

Director: Leon Siminiani
Spain/Puerto Rico, 18 minutes, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

And so, the short film Archipelago, with its triangle of players representing the past that more often than not rubberbands back to snap most of us smack in the face, drifts coolly up to me at a time when I seem to be on the verge of my own inevitable haunting by past. As far as I can make it out, the haunting is not of a malicious nature, but I am definitely getting the feeling of some serious ghosting going on about me.

Recently, coincidentally or not, as I approached my 44th birthday, I began to see the signs. New Facebook friends, forged from old friends, lovers from spurious romances, those we wished to have as lovers in some momentary but glorious lapse of reason, part-time enemies and mild acquaintances of my cruel past – the same cruel past we all share, and a past which grows daily, no matter how we pretend to not care, with each additional tiny, cruel step we take forward every second of every day. Random emails from much of the same lot who have found my blog or discovered through another party that my existence continues unabated to this point somewhere on the same planet.

Funny what the click of a few computer keys can do for human relationships. That which might prove extraordinarily uncomfortable to do face to face -- reconnect with the figures of our past, possibly dredging up old memories that certain parties in the exchange would rather have remain undredged -- is so much easier to do online, where facial tics can't betray our true feelings regarding a bespoken courtesy, and where nearly everyone speaks in a nearly Cro-Magnon form of baby-talk gibberish almost entirely free of nuance or true personality. Is it any wonder that I flee from online boards, where people spend much of their time having to explain and re-explain, again and again, exactly what they meant when they initially slapped down eleven misspelled words and a handful of incorrectly posed punctuation marks? We are slowly being reduced to a set of emoticons representing half-thoughts, and we will suffer for it.

But, in regards to those ghostly reconnections via Facebook (and not so much the horrid MySpace), I welcome them openly, if only because, in that Chex Party Mix of people (many of whom I wonder, "do they really even remember who I am?" or, at least, "... was?"), there are several of whom I am truly glad to hear from again, in whichever of the several categories I mentioned earlier they may fall. There are people in there whom I wish I could hang around with right now, and will not hesitate to keep up contact with them into the future if they are willing to do so on their ends as well. Whatever the distance that the last few years, or even past actions on any of our accounts, have laid down between us, I still feel that I know and miss these people, and wish to continue to know them. Besides, no matter what there might be in our respective cruel pasts lying in wait to spring anew upon us, likely most of it could never compare to the mildly Hitchcockian setup of past betrayal which haunts the trio of romantic combatants in Archipelago, the last of the films I had yet to write about on the Shorts! Volume 3 DVD collection.

Meet Ben and Nina, a dashing 40ish Spaniard and a zaftig Puerto Rican chica, recently married, and enjoying an idyllic honeymoon on the beaches of a seemingly lost area of Puerto Rico called La Esperanza ("The Hope"). They tickle, they flirt, they lounge about, and are increasingly interested in romantic gamesmanship. Nina wishes for Ben to "stop time" for her, whatever that may mean to a person, and I imagine that success in such a game relies more heavily on what Nina might be hoping stopping time involves, and not so much on what Ben thinks it does. However, having already won her heart, and given the state of their current mood, it seems that even the mildest trick with the right intentions will give Nina her deeply desired mood of time stoppage.

And then, time does stop. It creeps in so slowly, the couple doesn't even realize it. But it does stop all the same, and it happens when a third party enters their idyllic scene: Aníbal, who comes forth at first as just a scruffy lost traveler needing water and seeking out La Esperanza on his own, even producing a hastily drawn map upon a napkin which proves remarkably similar to the one that Ben shows him. Ben speaks of happiness to Aníbal, and insists on his staying at La Esperanza, telling him that "there is room for all three of us here" and "what's the use of being happy if you can't share it?"

But we already know that sharing this happiness will not be something that Aníbal will wish to do. When we hear that he is not married, but nearly was, we can already sense that the jig is up. Feigning to depart, Aníbal hands Ben a small jewelry box as a gift, seemingly for the kindness Ben has shown him, which Ben hesitates to take, but soon does. Inside is a single bullet. "I have five more in here," Aníbal states coldly, showing him the pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants. When Nina finally enters the scene and sees Aníbal for the first time, she will run up and slap his face, staring him down.

There is more, but I will leave it at this point for the readers and, hopefully, eventual viewers of this film, to discover the emotional savaging of these characters and to muse on their impact for themselves. Truthfully, the moment of the slap is the moment when the film could have ended for me. Five to seven minutes could have been shaved off the running time, and the movie would have proven just as intriguing. But don't think I am shooting down a couple of fairly gripping plot points in those extra minutes which I also recognize as worthwhile study. I just don't think that I personally got any more out of the film past that slapping point. The rest simply pours over those last few minutes like a mildly tangy though slightly acrid gravy, which partially serves to emphasize the taste of that which had already been fed to us, but also smothers it somewhat in the process. I would have rather been left wondering about the fate of the characters than to have it mostly solved for me.

But we understand that there are serious consequences from similar of trust, breach of romantic contract, or even outright betrayals, however calculated or confusedly innocent in their construction, within each of our pasts. Certainly, Ben now faces the ghosts of Nina's past betrayal of scruffy, timeworn Aníbal, and please feel free to judge for yourself how Ben handles such a devastating revelation directly following his ideal moment of reverie. Does time indeed stop for this couple forever, or will Ben seek a way out of this emotional black hole? And are we stopping time ourselves when the ghosts of our own pasts attempt to reestablish contact with us? Do we find ourselves transported out of our current happiness (assuming that one is happy at the time of the contact), and back into a time to which we would perhaps not prefer to return, even for mild and polite niceties with an acquaintance or old friend?

As much as I dearly love many of my friends from my past days, there was a reason I had to get away. So many reasons, really, but none of them involved any intentional betrayals of feelings or friendships. I just simply needed to make a change in my life before I got sucked deeper into a job that I despised and a depression that I was losing more and more ground to with every passing day. And don't forget that friendships go two (or even multiple) ways. You can go for a very long time without contacting someone, and may start to feel concerned about your lack of energy in committing to such an action, but always remember that there are at least two parties responsible for such a divide, not one (assuming that we are speaking of a friendship that remains on decent or at least OK terms, of course). Either one could have contacted the other at any time -- practically every one has a goddamn phone, letterbox or email) and lack of contact possibly speaks to a general conformity to the same inertia. Past relationships of the more romantic kind are more difficult to confront, especially if said parties are attempting to make a bridge to friendship again, but if I ever hurt or was hurt by someone, both sides must accept that such things were just not meant to be, and move forward to resolution. We have all broken hearts, and we have all had our own heart broken.

To simply chalk all this up to human nature is perhaps to take the coward's way out of the conversation, but there it is. Part of that human nature, though, is to take the devastation that we felt at the height of those despairing moments and to analyze and learn from them to brighten our future relationships. This would not placate the ex-wife, who is surely convinced to this day that I cheated on her with everything that moved, even though I only ever did within the confines of my own brain, and this only after I had given up irrevocably on having a sane relationship with the lass about two hours into our eight-year marriage (which never should have been). I regret that it could not have turned out differently, but there it is. It is now the past, and there is naught I can do to fix it except to leave it in the past. The actions of those days will always haunt me, though, and there is nothing I can do on my end but to throw up my hands, and use the experience to enrich myself psychologically going forward. Knowledge is a powerful thing, and the knowledge gained from past mistakes is an even more powerful usually than that which we learn from a book. And, man, was that a doozy of a mistake.

And so, after years of many such mistakes, only some of them emotional, I ran, much like Nina ran at some point before Archipelago starts, to leave behind that mounting depression, that terrible career choice and a city that held many fond memories for me, but almost equally as much, it held crushing defeat for me as well. I sought to reinvent myself, always careful to remember that I was still the same person that screwed up elsewhere, but to attempt to do things more in line with that which I had originally intended myself to become. Unlike before, where I was trapped in a dank warehouse with bad lighting, unforgiving concrete floors and clouds of paper dust, I now get the opportunity to write occasionally for part of my living, and to work in a far more exciting career setting. I am content in the most successful relationship of my life, and am just settling in after three years into life in a land that is still rather foreign to me in many aspects. Though the body betrays my middle-aged years more and more with each passing day, I am still far happier day to day now than I probably have ever been at any single section of my life.

If the ghosts of my past warrant they must contact me again, then so be it. The beauty of Facebook is that you only have to take part as much as you wish to take part. You can have a thousand "friends" but only contact the few dozen or so that you really appreciate. Not all ghosts are unfriendly, and as long as you watch out for the ones gifting you with bullets, you should be fine.

Disney World Postscript: Brainwashed by the Perfect Girlfriend Channel

You might wonder why, if my vacation in Disney World was supposed to be about, in the immortal words of one Elmer Fudd, "west and wewaxation at wast," why I spent so much time snapping out dreamy-eyed mashnotes about the place (always laced, though, with my usual snarky little diatribes against this and that personal injustice). The truth is, I didn't spend that much time writing. I sleep, even on vacation, relatively little -- six hours tops, most nights -- and so I would wake up far before anyone in our cabin, and not wishing to rouse them all too early, I would just sit in a corner of the bedroom in the darkness and type away. As the notes may attest too, most of the writing was mere muscle memory -- hey, remember these letters on the keyboard? -- and much of it flowed out almost automatically. But there was a purpose behind the facade of merely writing, something I discovered last year when I spent six days and nights at the park.

Mainly, I had to keep writing because of this simple fact:

You cannot think at Disney World.

Let me qualify this statement. It is nearly impossible to think about anything else but Disney World at Disney World. They don't let you. The shuttles from the airport, the buses, boats and monorails around the parks, and the lobbies of anyplace even remotely connected with Disney World are filled with the sounds, music and advertising of Disney World and Disney products. This is fine, since I chose to be here willingly, and outside of a little corporate creepiness in all of this, I was there to lose myself in a fantasy land. The real point of going, to which most patrons of the park would attest, was not to think.

And yet, I kept wishing to think. I just wanted some peace and quiet. Sometimes, not even to really think, but just a little peace and quiet. The way I achieved this last year was to go out early in the morning, and walk around the Fort Wilderness environs on a walk/run/trot which would encompass anywhere from three to five miles daily. I zipped around everywhere, along the bike paths that cross all over the surrounding woods and camp areas, and backtrack again, and then go down dead ends with signs saying "Cast Members Only" and weird, too too quiet areas where you were sure there was some sort of swamp creature lurking, or at least an alligator (which I never saw, damn it). I would watch ducks and egrets and herons and ibises in the reeds by the lake for half an hour sometime, with the only sounds about their chirping, a faraway motorboat, and the occasional, and ironically, far too industrious leaf blower. I would take pictures, stare at the calm waters of the lake, and then run off in some random direction until I felt it was time to see if the rest of my party were rising for the day.

This year, I attempted to recreate that mood on my third morning at the park -- and I turned my ankle over in a stupid accident. Didn't break it -- just broke my spirit. A mild strain, but enough to make my ankle swell up every day, and to cause shooting pains up the inside of my right leg for the rest of the trip (and even this morning still). Granted, my strained ankle pace is still faster than anyone else that normally has to keep up with me, so it didn't really slow me down much. It just made me wearier faster, and needed constant attention. So, we ended up in the cabin every late afternoon for icing and rest sessions, and with one's leg raised up above their heart, lying prone upon the bed or couch, one is often stuck watching a bit of television. At Disney World, this means a poor selection of local channels, a handful of Disney-owned cable channels like EPSN and the Lifetime Movie Network, Florida's crazy mix of religious offerings, a couple of Asian channels -- and all channels even remotely connected to Disney itself. No pay-per-view at all, no HBO channels offering movies that might actually make your spare cabin time even somewhat enjoyable. (At least you have a DVD player in your room.) Just relentless Hannah/Miley stuff and the Cheetah girls and the Wiggles and the Jonas Brothers.

And somewhere within this mostly boring mix is the Stacey Channel.

If you turn off your television and leave your cabin for any number of hours, you can come back later and turn it back on -- and there will be the Stacey Channel. It's not actually called the Stacey Channel, but that is what we have called it for two years running. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Stacey J. Aswad, a bubbly and energetic actress of only relatively mild success otherwise in the industry, shows up on every television in every hotel room in Disney World as the host of a show called The Top 7 Must-Sees at Walt Disney World. It is the only show on the Stacey Channel, and it plays constantly. And you can't escape it. I don't know if the televisions are automatically set to start up on the Stacey Channel, or if the maids reset every television every day back to it. But Stacey is always on. And, boy, is she on...

There came a point (and it happened last year, and I was reminded of it this year, even though I had forgotten about her in the interim) where one realizes that Stacey, at least in this Disney infomercial, might be the most Perfect Girlfriend in the world. Perfect Girlfriends don't really exist, and the people who are prone to believing in such an archetype are the sort who really believe the Cleavers were a true representation of the perfect 1950s family. (How many families do you know have had their kids go missing because they fell asleep inside giant bowls of soup? Exactly...) No such animal. Well, OK, yes... Jen is an example of a Perfect Girlfriend, but I am saying this partly out of contractual obligation, and with the understanding that it is through the appending of the words "For Me" to the statement "Perfect Girlfriend." You see, there are no perfect people, only standards of perfection which are impossible to meet because there are no perfect people. We each have wants and needs in certain areas, and no one person can meet all of those.

But there is Stacey, whooping it up on coaster after coaster, water ride after water ride, and getting all crazy over every restaurant in the place. Her #1 Top Must-See, Expedition Everest, is my #1 Top Must-See, so it must be kismet (even though I know she is just going by the script). Her buoyant energy makes her seem like she could easily keep up with me, especially with my decrepit ankle, and she is fetching enough to probably be able to convince me to do all of the things I really don't want to do, like clubbing at Pleasure Island or the water parks (or even get a makeover at Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutique). I am a stubborn sort concerning certain events and places, but I think she could get me past them with some well-applied pressure, peer and otherwise. And yeah, after about the 72nd time through the Top 7 Must-Sees at Walt Disney World (and really, after the first) it starts to dawn on you that such non-stop effervescence is truly strangling-quality annoying after even five minutes -- but you forgive her because -- ahhh! -- she's so cute and bubbly, like Tuffy in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. You want to dress her up in mouse ears and just a diaper.

And then you realize that you are being brainwashed!! Brainwashed by the Perfect Girlfriend Channel! You hobble out of bed and run to the living room, but Jen and Sande are watching it too. True, for reasons less prurient and sick as yours, but still! They are watching it, sucked into the same Vortex of Rampant Sweetness that you have been. And you can't escape! You will leave your cabin to attend Fantasmic, leaving the channel on ESPN to see what happens when you return, and when you do -- MORE STACEY! You cannot escape... and you don't want to escape... the only escape is to leave her behind at Walt Disney World, there on the deviously built and unceasingly adorable shrine hereafter known as the Channel of the Perfect Girlfriend... the Stacey Channel.

Until you wake up in your apartment in the middle of the night, and there, in a bloc of paid programming on some random channel that Jen switched to in her drowsiness, there is Stacey. Yes, I have seen her show on late night television, and if you think you can at least switch her off momentarily at a Disney Resort, but only because you know you can return to her any moment you wish, here, in the darkness of your own bedroom, you watch every second of the Stacey show. You don't know if you miss her or the park most, but there you are. There is nothing sick about this, and nothing dirty going on. You are just watching Stacey, and it must be done.

She will not stop until she is everyone's Perfect Girlfriend. And all thinking has stopped. Which was why I just had to keep writing, to keep sending out signals that all was OK, and that I still hadn't totally lost my mind yet.

And now, here I am back in California, still thinking about the Stacey Channel. I am surely lost...

Notes on D-World 9-21-08 Sunday

Get up at 6:30, sad but tired, knowing we probably stayed a little too long this time. I write for a while, and the usual fury with which I attack typing lessens the sadness to a great degree. After I shower (as usual, just before everyone else starts rising), I pack everything up in a far more methodical fashion than I normally do, mostly to kill time but also to make sure I am not forgetting anything. And then, after some toast and tea, I go back to writing while the girls get ready to leave. We head to to Outpost just before 11:00 am, the standard hotel checkout time, and check our bags in at the Magical Express for our ride back to the airport much later in the afternoon. Sande, however, leaves well before us at 11:50, and her Express shuttle arrives a few minutes before that and we hug her and see her off on her way.

Down a member of our happy little party, Jen and I still have around three hours to kill before we absolutely have to be back at the Outpost for our own shuttle. We mull over the possibility of hitting one of the parks, but decide that the most direct and reliable place to be with easy access for returning is Downtown Disney. We have some shopping to perform still, and also, a decent lunch is also a very desirable item, as we will be in the air for five hours later. We grab a ride almost right away, and we head off.

I am in the mood for pizza, as we never even came near to having any in our entire trip, so naturally, the Wolfgang Puck Express Cafe appealed to me, especially given the success of our dinner three nights earlier at the regular Puck restaurant. The basics only for this boy still wrasslin' with an upset stomach: pepperoni and mushrooms; Jen gets the Pizza Margherita. We get the food far quicker than we expected, and we only eat half of our food in order to have something left to eat before we board the bus around 3:30 p.m. As a result, we have more spare time to kill. We wander about in stores we would not even normally walk through, and eventually pick up a couple of shirts at the World of Disney store. We stop to get mint chocolate chip ice cream and a soda at the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain, and after a final run through the Lego store, for no really good reason except to just hang around in the Lego store, we head to the bus and make it back to the Fort Wilderness Outpost with nearly an hour to go before our shuttle arrives.

We eat that time up mired in a battle-to-the-death checkers match in the Outpost lobby, on a wonderfully huge and antiqued-style checkers board with pieces sliced directly off a piece of wood it seems. Little round slabs of wood, barely sanded and finished. I play evil cutthroat and Jen plays rational and temperate, much like everything we do. We run out of time though, when I spy the Magical Express bus careening around the corner through the window, and so we decide to call it a draw (very reluctantly on my part, because she was clearly about to lose, though she will never admit it). We meet the bus, and even though he won't leave for another 15 minutes, we climb on board as the only patrons of this particular section of his route, and then eat the remainder of our lunch. The bus will jam almost completely full at the next couple of stops at Port Orleans and another hotel, and then we head out for the nearly 40-minute drive to the airport.

We checked in at the Outpost, so once we hit the terminal, all we have to do is go through security, where there is no wait at all, and so we shop for magazines and snacks at a Hudson News store to kill more time. I find a copy of the first entry in a new line of Ray Harryhausen-produced novels, War Eagles, a novelization of an original story by Merian C. Cooper, the man who brought Kong to life. Since I am finding what I would normally take to be a more obscure publication in an airport bookstore of all places, where the selection is ridiculously limited and generic, I take this to mean that I am meant to purchase this book. So I do. That I don't actually try to read it on the plane is more a reflection of the fact that I don't really like to read on planes than anything else. Too many distractions on planes for me to read, so I watch an incredibly shrunken version of Speed Racer on the 10-inch monitor hanging above our seats, and spend the rest of the time listening to Nick Cave and TV On the Radio on my iPod. Sit in the middle, with Jen on my right and the world to my left. Manage to find a strange peace there in space. Reflect on past experiences in similar situations. All is well.

Notes on D-World 9-20-08 Saturday

Our last full day here. Magic Kingdom in the works for evening, but day to be spent at Hollywood Studios with Mary and her sister Marg. Plans to ride Toy Story Midway Mania a couple of times. Everything else up in the air. Will probably grab book on the Box Office insanity at AFI store.

However, wake up with immense, pounding headache at 3:00. Plans to go up to Trading Post for WiFi dissolve when I don't fully wake up until after 7:30. Head still aching. Shower. Sit on porch to write, drink soda and take Advil. Tiny, 3/4 inch frog (or toad) hops timidly across the railing of our porch, right in front of me. Woodpeckers in the trees. Larger, orange and brown-speckled 3-inch toad that is apparently living under our cabin is not out right now, though we have seen him the last two nights coming home.

Sande makes scrambled eggs and heats up the remainder of the Macadamia-crusted chicken she got at Puck's the other night. Marg and Mary meeting us between 9 and 10. Should make the park by 11:00. Would have loved to get into a park super-early this trip, but at beck and call of Jen, who has to check us in if we want to get in free. So that ain't happenin'...

Girls arrive just after ten and we head straight out to Hollywood Studios. We are accosted by a cast member driving an antique-style vehicle, decked out in pseudo-Victorian wear. I never catch anything she actually says, as I am loading new film into my camera, but I do hear Mary say "And you look like Damn Edna!" The cast member thanks Mary for the kind words, and we split into groups. Jen and Sande head off to do non-thrillride things, while I whisk Mary and Marg away for the Tower of Terror and the Rock-n-Rolla Coaster.

Truth be told, at this point, in a buildup of stomach anxiety over the previous three days, I am nauseous as hell. I tell the ladies this before we get on the ride, and sure enough, in a first for me on any version of the Tower, I am close to puking several times with each elevation. Later I am told at the Dark Room Camera Store that the ride is now computerized to vary the series of raises and drops with every single trip, and I did notice the series was vastly different from the one at California Adventure. The other cool difference, besides the place being far larger, is that the car doesn't just set up the story and then start dropping. Here, the car goes up a couple of stories, and then it detaches and rolls forward through a zig-zagging hallway, before finally coming to a stop and beginning the true terror. It's a nicely disorienting touch. Despite the fact I am close to puking, I love the Tower here much more.

The wait on the Tower was a mere 20 minutes, but we stepped on in less than 10. So when we saw that the Aerosmith Rock-n-Rolla Coaster only had a 30-minute wait, you must forgive us for assuming it would be a nothing wait. In truth, thanks to a massive amount of Fastpassers showing up just as we got in line, it took us over an hour to get on the over-in-a-flash ride. The girls refuse to sit in the front car, though I politely offered it to them, but I am overjoyed because that is exactly what wanted to happen. I end up in the driver's seat of the superstretch limo, and a single-riding chickie crawls in next to me. Not her first time on the ride, but like me, first in the front row. Whereas the first time I thought the ride was OK but over to soon, this time I relax (as much as one can when their face is melting off at the beginning) and take in the flow of the ride. Maybe it's the front row thing (I prefer either the front or back on a coaster), maybe it's because there are no idiots throwing their arms up in my way, but I really enjoyed the hell out of the second ride, and have had to upgrade my opinion of it. We rush to meet up with Jen and Sande at the waters near Hollywood and Vine, but before we go get some lunch, I zip over to take some photos of a giant green brontosaurus on the opposite side of the water.

With its pleasant eyes and a mouth contentedly munching on water plants, this dinosaur seems awfully familiar to me. Assuming that there is some sort of soda fountain or gift shop built into the creature (this is a Disney park, after all), as I walk around to its side, I discover that the pleasant creature is actually an old love of mine: Gertie the Dinosaur, Winsor McCay's beloved prehistoric pet with which he largely introduced character animation to the world. I had already been snapping pix of the old girl, but now I am ecstatic. There are two Asian girls working the booth, one from Japan and one from China, and the Chinese girl, Anna, who notices the giant smile on my face, starts talking to me about it. Naturally, I go the film geek route and start blathering about Gertie, whose films I have always had in my collection, let alone my being a massive McCay fiend (so much so that half the time when I refer to Finding Nemo, I accidentally say Little Nemo). The stand the girls work is actually called Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream Bites, but I am looking for a Coke. Anna tells me there is some just around the corner, and then surprisingly leads me there. Clearly bored on their rather empty side of the park, she asks the other Chinese girl working the refreshment cart if she needs any help, and when she is told "No," she walks back with me to Gertie, where I snap a couple more pictures before returning to the group.

We grab some lunch at the Backlot Express, where my cheeseburger was far better than I expected, especially given the general unfrozen patty feel of other burgers in the theme parks. I zip to the Dark Room to grab more film and meet everyone at the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. I told Jen honestly that the opening portion of the show, where Indiana has to negotiate a series of traps while heading through a temple, was far more exciting than anything in the most recent film. The show is a lot of fun, though I can't imagine every watching it a second time, once the fix is in, and you know about the plant from the audience who gets a part in the show (we had him pegged almost from the beginning) along with a large group of real audience members. I did think for a bit about when Kit was training for the Waterworld show at Universal, though we only got to see him perform in the Terminator ride. Would have been cool to see.

The girls were unable to score us FastPass tickets for the Toy Story ride, since the next ones were for after 7:00 pm, and we had plans to be at the Magic Kingdom by then. So we dive into a projected 70-minute wait line and decide to deal with it. Sure enough, that is about how long it takes, though we have our own fun, chatting away and making jokes all the way through. It's not a wait if you are having fun and passing time with people you enjoy being around. More families would do well to learn this tip, since we are surrounded mainly by screaming babies who shouldn't even be on this ride and a lot of sourpusses who are clearing having a miserable time in their lives in general. Sometimes the sourpusses are holding the babies, and that's their own problem. Please don't make it mine. We are behind a group of two couples and a grandma with three toddlers between them, and the kids are well-behaved, but they keep having to drop out of line to take the kids to the bathroom or change them. Which is fine, but much of our time is spent with them asking our forgiveness while they pass us back and forth. Where I get riled with them is that they always seem to be looking the opposite way whenever the line lurches forward, and this becomes a problem only when it is time to leap from the first part of the line to where you pick up your glasses and move to the second part, where the FastPassers join the regular crowd. Because these two families screw around with their glasses so long, they get selected as the last to go through the turnstiles before the next group of FastPassers comes flying up the corridor to go through. As a result, because of their obliviousness to everything go on around them, we end up stuck at the turnstiles for an extra ten minutes while a mass of humanity rushes past us. It doesn't matter, as we soon enough get to the ride, where Jen claims that her "kicking my ass" remark was only delayed by a week, as she handily defeated me this time by about 8000 points and 5 percentage points on accuracy. (The battle, though, was much tighter through the first four rounds, with my best two first rounds ever.)

Mary and Marg decide to stay in the park for the Beauty and the Beast show, but the rest of us head back to the cabin. We watch a couple more episodes of Spaced while Jen and I ice our respective pained parts: her lower back and my ankle, which has swelled up again. Another problem: after three-plus days of stomach discomfort, I finally start throwing up. I decide to go back to the park anyway. The ladies call us when they are done and ready to meet us at the park. We head out to catch a shuttle, but one leaves the spot just as we are coming around the corner. We have to wait for the next one (about 10 minutes) and once we arrive at the dock, the same thing happens with the boat, as one takes off just as we walk up. In all, it takes us almost 75 minutes to make it from door to Magic Kingdom gate, surely a record on our part. We are almost wiped out from the time we arrive.

We head to the Burger Port area again to grab some food before planning our attack on the fireworks show. Jen grabs a veggie burger for me, which I eat completely unadorned by condiment or anything else. My stomach aches after even that simple fare, and while I don't let the group know it, I throw up again in the bathroom a few minutes later. We go over to Mickey's Philhar-Magic so that Marg can take in her first ever viewing of that show. The doors are just about to close for the next show, and so we skip the usual waiting process, and rush into some seats in the nick of time. Once we get out, just 8:30, Jen decides she is not going to make it to the 10:00 pm fireworks show, and so we head out. While I initially say I am going to stay to take pictures, my stomach and ankle weigh in, and I think better of it and head back with them.

There is apparently a huge fireworks spectacular planned for the waters just off the Magic Kingdom, in addition to the usual Wishes show, and so all water travel is supposed to shut down between 9:20 and 10:00. We are at the dock by 9:05, but there is no boat, and even the cast members are confused as to what to do with us. One of the larger boats finally arrives, loaded down with people trying to make the Wishes show, and once they deboard, it is about 25 minutes after the hour. The dock has to be clear, though, for the show, and so they load us up and send our boat out across the Seven Seas Lagoon. While we wait and eventually board, a series of Lite-Brite style displays featuring an enormous sea monster, an octopus, dolphins and King Neptune (amongst others) lights up the night in front of us. As we shoot across the lake near Fort Wilderness Lodge, we pass the displays in the darkness, with the lights all shut down on them, so that you can just make out the basic outline of the craft and the pilots seated on them. It is an eerie feeling, and there is a weird calm as if we all had just narrowly escaped sure disaster, even though it was a mere fireworks show. We get to the dock, and there are hundreds of people crowding the beach to watch the fireworks. I go to the Trading Post to buy some Tums, and while in line, a couple of women stand in front of me waiting to find out the price of the wine sitting on a shelf behind the counter. One goes to the clerk at the other counter to get the price, which is just over twenty dollars, which is all they have in hand. Without prompting, I give them a dollar to cover the extra, and I go to the other clerk to make my purchase. As I leave, I stop to see if they have enough, and with the tax, it comes out to $21.25. I give them another quarter, and they thank me profusely.

I go back to the beach, and the show starts as I arrive. The fireworks can be easily seen for the higher effects, but only a glow can be seen over the islands for the lower ones. After a couple of minutes, we decide it would be wiser to hit the shuttles before being stuck waiting with these hundreds of people for them, and go back to the cabin. Walking down the loop to our cabin, a car rudely and too quickly pushes through us in the dark -- going the WRONG WAY on a ONE-WAY LOOP, motherfucker -- and I yell at the car telling them this, only without the expletive. Once they park at a spot about twenty yards in front of us, I march up and tell them directly. The lady says "Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you" to my statements, as she is aware that they have done the wrong thing, but the husband decides to be an asshole. "Yes, we realized it when we decided to drive through the sign that said 'one-way', blah, blah, blah..." Jen glares at me, because she knows I want to react it, and I say "As long as you are aware of it..." When we get to the cabin, I say "I want to go smash his fucking window in" but Jen tells me to drop it. "The guy just had to be an asshole," she says. "The thing about those guys is that they have to live with it everyday." Minutes later, Mary starts up about wanting to do something to that guy's car, and I point at her and look at Jen, saying "See? It's not just me! It's not just a guy thing!" We all laugh...

Check out day tomorrow. We are not laughing about that, though to a certain extent, we will be relieved. We are exhausted from doing nothing.

Notes on D-World 9-19-08 Friday

Epcot is the thing this day. We have yet to do the left side of the park (facing in), and we really want to ride Mission Space again, though this time, due to my wishy-washy (but decidedly not washboard) stomach, I will ride the wimpier version. The shuttle buses line up almost perfectly for us on the way, and we are there in less than half an hour. Unbeknownst to us, there are people riding in with us, whom we notice, that we will get to know briefly on the way back. When we enter the park, we stop for an official photo in front of Spaceship Earth -- that's the gigantic, omnipresent golfball -- but when we walk up to the entrance for the ride, we notices how long the lines are, and we decide to catch it later.

None of us have ever seen Ellen's Energy Adventure, and yes, Ellen is Ms. Degeneres (or Mr. Degeneres or Mrs. De Rossi or however they wish to have it), and yes, she is alternately charming and annoying on this ride. The filmed portions combine her with Bill Nye the Science Guy, Alex Trebek, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Richards, and there are some mild laughs to be had, but the audience seems nervous about the entire affair. I think this is a ride you only ever do once, since it is very long (37 minutes, as it admits at the front entrance) and rather slow ungainly in construction. Giant moving theatre-cars slide slowly around a multi-screen theatre, and then you move equally slowly through massive prehistoric landscapes featuring dinosaurs and other reptiles (who don't necessarily exist even in the same time period as other creatures in the same section of landscape. (Dimetrodons and apatosauruses? I don't think so...)

We next hit the easy version (i.e., the home game version) of Mission Space, where Gary Sinise sends you off on a "deep space" mission to Mars, which really isn't all that deep as far as space goes, but... Still pretty cool, but wish I could get the girls to experience the effect of the full version. No use trying though, especially since my manner of describing the difference between the two is saying to multiple the intensity of the easy one about four times and then add nausea to the mix. Why am I wimping out and doing the easy one. The reason I give is that I don't want to ride the rough one alone, and want to hang out with the girls instead. The real reason is that my stomach is already kicking my ass, or doing something more internally-based to it, before going near this ride. Believe me, this one will make you hurl if you just look to the side during it; don't need to make things easier to hurl by going on with an existing condition.

Jen and Sande, unlike myself, are both hungry, so we boat across the pond over to Morocco and eat at the Marakkesh, one of our favorite dining places from last year. For the first time, we get seated next to the band for first time, which is tremendously loud. I already have a headache going, so the level of noise makes me unable to appreciate the rather attractive, as most of the women in this restaurant are, belly dancer undulating around the tables. So, in a rather uncharacteristic manner for someone who both loves live music and half-naked women of exotic origin, I am thankful when they take an immediate break.

I order the couscous with chicken, which I recall being a particular delight from last year, but I forget to order my customary mint tea. Large sections of veggies in the couscous prove delicious, but my stomach is unable to handle much of anything. I eat half of my meal and have to excuse myself. Yes, I am puking my guts out, and will continue to do so off and on for the next 24 hours. I go outside into the cool shade of the Moroccan deli to settle myself down, and people-watch for a while until the ladies meet up with me post-dessert.

We head out of the World Showcase and go to The Seas pavilion to ride the Finding Nemo clamshell ride. Still only an OK, but I do like the part with Crush very much, where the clamshells get surrounded by a giant tube of swirling video-projected water. We get off the ride and look at the real sharks, dolphins and a manatee for a while before heading to the front of the park for a second shot at riding Spaceship Earth.

I do the ride properly this time (I messed up the photo portion a couple of days earlier, you might recall) with my usual arched-eyebrow pose, and I choose "Home" as my future interest. In my specially constructed future, I end up traveling about on a cool super-bike and the walls of my home change mood and location on command. Jen and Sande end up on the big screen, but somehow mine doesn't. Sande emails us postcards from the mail center at the end of the ride, which show our cartoon versions mucking about in our possible futures. Cheesy, but fun.

We head back to our cabin to cool down from the massively humid afternoon. Completely drenched, we each take a show, and then watch an episode of Spaced ("Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!") and snack for a bit. No matter what I eat, though, my stomach flips about on me. After a bit, we bus to Hollywood Studios to try and catch Fantasmic at 8:00. Still have some extra time to kill, but Toy Story Midway Mania is far too busy by the time we get there, so we play restaurant tag trying to catch one that is still open or even mildly vegetarian. After four attempts, we end up at the buffet at Hollywood and Vine. Good selection for Jen, and there is a good chance we will end up there tomorrow for lunch with Mary and Marg as well, since we are spending the day portion at the same park. I eat very little though, and pretty much waste what is an all-you-can-eat opportunity. All I can eat is about a half plate. Really, its the way I try to eat in my normal life anywhere but on vacation: half meals.

Fantasmic show here is vastly different from the Disneyland version. Pocahontas still sucks, no matter how they work the damn movie into shows. Snake is Jafar transformed instead of Kaa. No pirate ship. Dragon is more impressive looking on stage overall, but its death scene at the hands of a giant costumed mouse works better in CA. Death is too prolonged and less impactful here. The Mickey illusion at the end is pretty damn fun if not obvious to anyone over toddler age, and the crowd reacts, well, idiotically but appropriately. This is a Disney fantasy after all. When in elaborately reconstructed everywhere but Rome, do as the elaborately reconstruction everywhere but Romans do.

Leaving, the two families from the bus that rode in with us turn out to be from Fullerton area. We end up waiting for a second bus in lieu of standing all the way home, so we hang with them for a bit and they are fun, chatty folk. Once we make it back home, we lounge about for a while watching a couple more episodes of Spaced and then head to our respective beds.

Notes on D-World 9-18-08 Thursday

My plans for a constant walkabout in the mornings truly were waylaid by the intrusion of this ankle injury. While the swelling was only minor, and has mostly gone away, on the inside of my leg, there is pain to the touch, and every time I take a step to the left, I feel anywhere from minor discomfort to shooting pains up my leg. I decide to relax this morning and watch the first disc of the Zappa Plays Zappa concert, which runs nearly two full hours and is still playing when the girls get up for the day. I, of course, am as happy as can be with my headphones on listening to Zappa, and pretty much block myself out for the morning.

We catch a larger boat over to the Magic Kingdom, and spend the opening hour wandering through the stores, as Sande is looking for a couple of lighter shirts to wear and I have a need to look at books on Disney's history and design. There are five Imagineering books available, but I decide to look them up on Amazon later, though the savings when matched with Jen's discount would probably be comparable. I just don't want to lug them.

As usual, food is on the immediate agenda, so the girls want to return to the Burger bar place in Tomorrowland, but I have a need to get a hot dog at Casey's Corner, a baseball-themed walk-up that has some small replica grandstands inside where one can eat their dog and watch Mickey, Donald and Goofy sports cartoons. I collect a new first name for my invisible list when the girl that waits on me is named Comfort. She and another girl working the counter, Louisa, are both from Kumasi, Ghana, where there is apparently a dearth of cash registers, as they both seem to be completely lost on the machine. They add my total of just over six dollars to the previous total on the register, and then Comfort asks me for $12.79. She then goes "oh..." and attempt to clear the total and start anew but both of them stare at the machine for a bit before calling in another clerk. This is perhaps not the first time this has happened today, and a manager strolls over while they are still ringing up my purchase properly, and openly starts chiding them in front of me. Comfort apologizes to me, but I tell them not to worry, that there wasn't a problem at all, and that I was not in a hurry in the least. I don't think this comforts Comfort. I grab some condiments and go to meet the ladies at the burger bar.

Post-meal, we board the People Mover, an ancient "futuristic" mass transportation system that I think is awfully swell. It's slow and rickety, but it does get you small glimpses into a couple of hidden things, like a model of Walt's future city plans. Even more archaic is the Carousel of Progress, slightly updated from the version that appeared in the '64 World's Fair, but not updated enough to keep the Virtual Reality-playing grandmother to dress like she stepped out of 1898. A truly surreal experience, but of course, I jumped at the chance to see it again, mostly out of my love of animatronics.

Before the Carousel, though, we rode the Magic Kingdom version of the Buzz Lightyear attraction, which has a very different layout, but is lessened by the guns that are 1) mounted directly on the car, limited a player's shooting abilities and 2) unable to be aimed at anything definitely, so all of a player's points come completely by surprise. I have no idea what I hit with my "single laser beam of light" at any point in the ride, and neither did Jen. Sande, however, got a massive score way above either one of us, but I tried desperately to make her admit she had no idea what she hit to get it. Which she wouldn't...

On the way into Tomorrowland, I pretended that there was no way I going to drive a car on the Tomorrowland Speedway -- the Disney World version of Autopia, where Jen likes to make me chauffeur her around for once. Naturally, I can't wimp out like that, and so Jen drops into the passenger seat to mock me endlessly for a circuit. After four tries at this over a 14-year period, I might finally be getting the hang of it, as I do my least bumpy ride ever. Jen seems impressed, but there is no way I will ever really drive.

We give Mickey's PhilharMagic, possibly my favorite thing in this park, another go, and hopefully sans babies or toddlers. We pull this off by careful targeting of our area and row, and finally have a pleasant time of it. The shirt I wanted to get last year for the attraction is no longer in the shop, however, so I am disappointed, but I do get a brand new keychain representing it (I decided to retire my Lego Batman quartet once I got here). We take in the Haunted Mansion again, but there are difficulties. On the Speedway, having to press the pedal with my right ankle and the climbing in and out of the tight environs of the tiny vehicle caused more strain than I thought. Departing the Mansion, stepping out of the Doom Buggy onto the moving walkway to my left sent me spiraling out of control and I almost crash fully into the railing. We decide to head back to the cabin so I can ice up before the evening. This also affords the girls the chance to go swimming and do some laundry, which we all need to do. Before we head back, though, we do some quick shopping, and then catch another big boat back to the dock at Fort Wilderness.

The boat is packed full to standing -- which we have to do as well -- because of the biggest mystery of our two stays here in this resort: the Hoop-De-Doo Musi-Cal Revue, a supposed theatrical and dining extravaganza that we have yet to even try and catch. But people from all over the parks head to its several shows through the evening, and so our buses and shuttles end up being delayed by people who have no earthly idea where they are heading. Many of them don't even seem to be aware that Fort Wilderness exists, so every time the bus pulls up at a regular stop, they get confused and have to ask the drive if this is the place to get off. Over and over and over again. On the boat back, we are standing next to two girls -- one white, one Asian -- with British accents, who keep wondering if the "Hewwp-Dee-Dew" is going to be worth the trip, but then go on about wanting to stay at the campground, and wondering where the hell the Hoop-De-Doo is. It doesn't help anyone on the boat that the Aussie boat pilot keeps referring to it as the "Hoop-De-Hoop" instead.

Once we get off the boat, we head to the Trading Post to grab some milk, eggs and various snacks for the next couple of days. While I ice my ankle and dive into the second half of ZPZ, the girls go swimming, jumping out of the pool to switch laundry from the washers to the dryers before lounging about in the sun. They return a couple of hours later, and we all get ready for dinner that night at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe in Downtown Disney. I am a little reluctant at first, as we are seated next to a couple of families with screaming little brats, but I decide to make the best of it. Our waitress/waitperson Jessica is very personable, even after I pepper her with numerous silly little puns and jokes to try and lighten my mood.

While ordering my meal of pumpkin ravioli with chicken and an order of Asian vegetable spring rolls as an appetizer for the group, the passel of screaming kids makes way almost at once for an amazing fireworks show outside our window looking into the waters adjacent to Downtown Disney. Apparently, it is not a normal show, as almost no one expected this to happen, except the staff of the surrounding businesses. Jessica tells us that it is in honor of the Pleasure Island section of the district being closed down. People run in and out of the emergency exit to catch the show even closer and louder, and then run back in to their tables. Kids run around like nuts, but following the display, most of the brattier kids are whisked out of the place, and we are able to enjoy our ultimately very satisfying meals in peace. While we finish eating, and long after, Jessica chats us up, and once she finds out we are from Anaheim, she tells us of her plan to first move to Atlanta and then out to L.A. to pursue her acting dream, wanting to at least try it before finally settling down for the obligatory "kids and family" bit. Jen gives her tips on housing and auditioning, and we talk to her for a long time after meal. Of course, she does have a job to do, so once she is called away, we decide to call it a night and head home.

Notes on D-World 9-17-08 Wednesday

Sande has purchased tickets for us for the Cirque de Soleil show in Downtown Disney for later in the evening, so our entire schedule is based around making it to that show by 5:30 pm. We decide that the Animal Kingdom, which closes daily at 5:00, is perfect choice, especially since we haven't hit it yet. At the bus stop, we encounter a quartet of older people with various disabilities who are cared for by two extremely patient and kind helpers. The woman in Minnie ears who sits next to me while we wait for the bus points out all of the different colors on her striped shirt and tells us over and over just how much Todd, the male half of the helpers, well, helps her. A second woman keeps Sande and Jen busy pointing repeatedly to her purple Princess cap. She doesn't say as much as the other woman, but she laughs constantly. Todd gets very sheepish every time the first woman repeats his name. The other helper talks to us for a while, and you can see how tired both of them already are this early in the day. They are far better people than I, though I enjoy meeting the group, and while we are on the first shuttle, I play a waving game with one of the women in the pair of wheelchairs. I have no idea if she remembers playing the same game with me briefly two days before on another shuttlebus. She is extremely proud of her Donald hat, pointing at it, and smiling shyly at me.

The second direct shuttle to the Animal Kingdom finds us standing the entire way, as it is jammed completely full, and I end up standing at the driver's shoulder for several miles. He is carrying on a conversation with an obese couple from South Carolina who are telling a tale of how a shuttle they waited for the day before didn't show up for almost 40 minutes, forcing the lady in the couple to make a report on its lateness. Somehow, the talk turns to Southern cooking (the man specializes in "hambone and collared greens) and eventually, the economy and the upcoming election. The driver seems to have a lot of time to muse on his private thoughts, and while not revealing his preference in the election, says "no matter who wins in the election is going to have his hands full for the next few years." He then adds "one thing for sure... no matter who wins, the next 8 to 10 years is going to be family time. With people traveling less, this means they are going to be home more, and be able to get to better know the people they should get to know: their families." When I first hear this, I think about how nice an idea it seems. But then I think about the other side of it: what if their families are worth getting to know? What if the reason they stay away working or driving around so much is because they are in horrible situations? What if they married poorly and their spouses are assholes? Sure, some families will benefit from this development, but I wonder if divorce rates will go even higher, and also murder, infanticide, spousal abuse and alcoholism rates as well.

But back to Disney! By the time we arrive at Animal Kingdom, the day has blossomed into yet another frightfully humid one. We are already melting before we make it partway into the park. I decide to purchase a water and a Coke for the walkabout, but as I step forward as the next person in line, another larger Australian couple leap from the side and slap their money into the hands of the clerk before I can even say "Hello" to her. They purchase creamsicles and then slurp them loudly right there at the cart while I yet again am displaced by another someone buying a water from the side of the cart. I am openly pissed off about this, and say "What the hell..." and the larger Australian woman blankly says between slurps of her creamsicle, "Well, I guess you are invisible today!" "Fucking Aussie cunt..." is what I think, but politeness keeps me outwardly calm and I finally make my purchase and shuffle off angrily.

We decide the Safari shuttle ride will be the most relaxing, breeze-blessed one, so we get in line for it. Once we board the bus, our excitement is shattered by the couple who are placed in position behind us FOR THE NEXT BUS, who climb on after us and end up keeping us uncomfortably jammed together for the entire ride. There are numerous animals about on the safari, but my attempts to snap pictures of them is mostly thwarted by the driver's inability to stop the bus even briefly at the best points in which to shoot a picture. This includes stopping for a gorgeous giraffe laying down in the grass about ten feet from the bus. The driver actually speeds up once we reach it, and I barely get the camera to my eye in time. Not sure, since my camera is not a digital, if the picture came out or is just a blur. After a couple of other attempts, I decide that I just don't have the patience or eye to be a photographer of even amateur rank. Crocs, ostriches, elands, kudu and elephants go by without my turning on the camera.

Leaving the ride, all of us sweaty and frustrated, we watch a sleeping gorilla for a few minutes before moving to the train for Rafiki's Planet Watch, a section we did not hit last year. Every turtle or tortoise in the park moves faster than this ridiculous time-waster of a train, and it is horribly stuffy to boot, even though being completely open on one side of the train. After what seems like hours, even though it is only about 10 minutes, we arrive at the Planet Watch, which is comprised basically of a science center and a petting zoo. We skip the zoo part, but we wander about the science center, which concentrates on how important our care of the environment affects animal species. I climb into a booth to listen to the sounds of the rainforest, and look at numerous awesome species like a Surinam toad, an axolotl (which I have never seen live before), and a massive Goliath bird-eating spider, easily well past the span of my own hand. Jen doesn't even want to get near enough to look at the spider, but I have more than enough enthusiasm over the discovery for the entire population of the park.

The drive back on the train is equally monotonous and hot. Before we go any further, we decide that some food in an air-conditioned environment (which really plays counter to everything we learned at the science center) would be just what we need. We decide upon the Tusker House, another place which we missed on our last visit, and one which is greatly touted within the pages of the Vegetarian Guide to Walt Disney World which Sande got for Jen before our vacation. Sure enough, the selection for Jen possibly exceeds that of nearly any other buffet which she has previously visited, and she is in heaven. Naturally, I go for the chicken curry and spicy mustard pork dishes before reverting to veggie status and trying some of Jen's fare for my second plate. My dessert? A quartet of quite spicy samosas, skipping the mango chutney which would compliment them, as I am not much of a fan of sweetness. Which I why I normally don't do dessert. On this trip, I decided to rewrite the rules of what constitutes dessert.

While Sande is off at the restrooms, Jen and I stand outside of a gift shop in what little shade we can find. Weirdly, a store clerk sneaks up behind me and sprays my bare calves with a water mister. I jump, but am amused by his prank. I tell him thanks, and add "it's far easier than having to spray myself," because, after all, as Robyn Hitchcock says, "a happy bird is a filthy bird." The clerk is slightly shocked by this revelation, but then smiles and says "Are you trying to be adultish and childish at the same time?" to which Jen replies, "Always childish, never adultish." She is, sadly, right in most cases.

Which explains my behavior as we traverse the Asian area of the park to make our way to the Kali River Rapids ride, which we also missed out on doing last season. Even after just leaving the pleasant atmosphere of the Tusker House, we are already overtaken with sweat and humidity, sticking to every square inch of our clothing. I stop once more at a cart to purchase liquid refreshment, and once more, even though my two Coke bottles are already sitting on the counter in front of me, a fat, pushy guy with a teenage son attempt to squeeze their way in front of me. I hold my ground, and the guy openly says to his son, "We'll get something as soon as some people stop getting in our way." Since I had been standing there a full five minutes in line before fat boy and son appeared at the cart, I just turned to him and said directly into his face, "It's because I was here long before you, you fat fuck!" His face goes slack, and I walk off. I don't even turn for a reaction.

The wait for the Kali River Rapids ride is, surprisingly, rather swift given the conditions. But we are there long enough to watch a family in front of us push a decrepit old lady in a wheelchair (the immediate impression is that she must be the mate of Grandpa from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre), who is asleep and dragging one foot dangerously beneath the chair, through the lines. We cannot imagine they would take her on this ride, and wonder if they are just going to leave her behind while they all go rafting. Several other people wonder this as well, and eventually someone asks them about it. "Oh, no!" is the reply from the younger woman pushing the cart. "She's 96, and she can't go on any rides, but she refuses to sit in the hotel room because she hates the air-conditioning." Indeed, they leave her in the wheelchair and stroller section. I state to the girls that I think the ride is probably based directly on the Grizzly River Rapids at California Adventure, and while the concept is the same, the rides are remarkably different. For the Kali River Rapids, this is to its detriment, because while there is a similar giant plunge into the waters below, here it happens near the beginning of the ride, so that all that follows is a very disappointing anti-climax, where the California version happens at the tail end after several other smaller dips and plunges. We did, though, get completely soaked on that first and only plunge, and we will remain very wet until we get back to our cabin for a change of clothes.

We decide we should get back to prepare for our night out, but I have a great and fervent need to do my favorite ride in all four parks: Expedition Everest. Since the girls refuse to try this high-speed rollercoaster which even goes backward in circles for part of its circuit, I am able to use the wonderful single-rider line, which enables one to get onto the ride swiftly, as long as you don't care with whom you ride upon it. I don't, and I am seated next a cheerfully obese mother within about six minutes. I am through and off the ride before Jen and Sande even realize where I am, since I took off on my own. I meet them on the bridge just past Expedition Everest, which I wish I could stay and ride over and over like last year, but we have a schedule to meet. We go to the cabin, change and head to Downtown Disney.

I suppose that circuses had to change to this eventually. As a fan of old-school circuses, I have been reluctant to make the switch to the more modern influence of Cirque de Soleil, even though doing so would enable me to discard my torn emotions regarding the use of animals within them. Wow. I should have done this long ago. La Nouba, the show here at Downtown Disney, specifically created for their own theatre which lies at the far end of the shopping district, is quite simply one of the most amazing things I have ever seen on stage. I don't even know where to begin, since the eye is never allowed to relax during its 100-minute running time (no intermissions) and we probably had even a better turn at it since we ended up sitting in the sixth row, nearly center-stage. Speaking for myself, the fact that, at any second, something could go horribly awry and any number of the various apparatus used by the performers, or the performers themselves, could come flying into our heads probably added to the thrill. It has also been far too long since I have been taken in by the antics of truly professional clowning, so that was an added bonus -- I don't subscribe to the "creepy clown" stereotype that seems to have overtaken our society. Yes, there are creepy clowns -- I know a couple personally -- but to see the act done well is to understand how truly silly the act's denigrators really are. I also loved how the troupe made use of nearly every square inch of the space, and was even turned about on my opinion of the music within the show, a style which I have always found extremely annoying, but was completely moved by when it was paired with the actual performance for which it was created. (A tip to me: don't listen to this music by itself.) Outright, an incredible show, and I will not tarry in heading to Vegas in the future for the pair of other shows outfitted there.

Dinner at the Estefans' Bongos club, where Jen and I spent a memorable evening last year. Then, it was a place we desperately needed to be inside, with the winds howling and the rain sheeting down upon us, and the food and live Cuban music aspect was perfect for the moment. Now, I have reversed my mind on it, as my meal of steak, rice and plantains was exceedingly plain, with the plantains, mashed and fried into completely unchewable discs, being particularly disappointing. My mojito, though, was refreshing and alcoholic enough to make me get through it without really complaining much. I still love the atmosphere of the place, but I am reluctant to eat there again.

The night is still young enough to do a little shopping, and I had been itching to hit the gigantic Virgin Records store for the entire trip, staring longingly into its windows the other night. Now was my chance, and since Sande had nicely given me some birthday money on Friday, I decided to treat myself. However, I was only in the store for roughly five minutes before the unexpected happened: a power outage forced the lights out in the store for only a couple of seconds, but it caused screams to emit from those upon the escalators, and very confused looks from those surrounding me once the lights came back on. I was not aware of the extent of the damage caused by the outage. According to the girls, who went off in search of swimsuits, though the outage occurred while they were still paying the bill at Bongos, the power went completely out on Pleasure Island, the connecting area between both ends of the Downtown Disney. Police and security had to close down the bridges and not let anyone in or out until everything came up. They had to watch along the outside of the area to get to World of Disney at the other end.

Resuming my shopping, and after much deliberation and the replacing of various items back into bins, I purchased four items: the Criterion Collection version of (which comes complete with a paperback version of Walter Tevis' original novel), the two albums by the Cramps which I had yet to get on CD (have the LPs though), The Man Who Fell To EarthSongs the Lord Taught Us (File Under Sacred Music) and bad music for bad people, and a 5-disc box set called Zappa Plays Zappa, a 210-minute-plus film document of a Zappa tribute tour featuring son Dweezil, Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio, with 2 DVDs and 3 CDs. I can't friggin' wait to watch it. It will be a largely restless night until I get up in the morning to do so.