The Students Take ONE of My Suggestions

This morning I had to proctor the PSAT for my sophomore honors class-- the test itself, after the usual technological and logistical shitshow-- lasted until 11 AM, and then the teachers were given two pieces of posterboard and we were supposed to persuade the kids to make two banners for homecoming . . . one of them was to be Disney-themed and the other was supposed to reflect school spirit . . . so MY suggestion for the Disney themed poster was to feature Steamboat Willie scratching, deleting, erasing, and defacing drawings of other notable Disney characters-- while reminding the audience in a caption that he was the only Disney character that existed in the public domain and the only one that could be used without permission-- I thought this would be a good lesson on staying, as Shakespeare's Fabian puts it, "on the windy side of the law" and keeping our class from being sued by the Disney legal machine-- but the kids ignored this brilliant suggestion, in the same manner, that they ignored this suggestion last year . . but they humored me and filled the blank space in our other poster with the chant, "We got spirit, yes we do, we got spirit, how 'bout you?"

Pirates? Not the Disney Version

Great non-fiction writers can make any topic interesting and Steven Johnson is one of the great ones, he's done it over and over with various topics-- innovations and ideas, cholera, the history of air, organized complexity, decision-making, video games and TV, etcetera-- and in his new book, he astounded me by taking a topic that I always thought was kind played out and juvenile: pirates-- but Johnson's take on pirates is different . . . he puts  them in global context, but I should warn you, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt is not a book that focuses on swashbuckling and sword-fighting-- although that stuff comes up-- instead it portrays pirates (specifically Henry Every) as a bundle of contradictions: democratic rapists; multi-cultural xenophobes; contract abiding torturers; free-spirited slave traders . . . it's a lot to take in, but Johnson does it in a fast breezy style and the history of the Mughal Dynasty and the East India Company goes down fairly easy.

The Specter of Walt Disney Raises Awkward Dave from the Grave

In the past decade, I've tamed Awkward Dave to some degree, but he still occasionally rears his ugly, awkward head; one of these times is when adults-- grown-ass adults--  proclaim their love of Disney World; this boggles my mind and-- unfortunately for my awkwardness-- we've got a bunch of these people in our school (and there are several in the English department!) and some of them visit Disney every year-- it's like a religious pilgrimage-- and some of them visit Disney World and they don't have children . . . and while I understand taking your kids there once so they don't feel alienated and neglected-- although my wife and I refused to go and swore we would never take our kids until finally my parents actually dragged us all there and footed the entire bill . . . I had a lot of problems with the experience, but I'm an extra-high-maintenance pain-in-the-ass . . . but that's not what this sentence is about, it's about the awkward fugue-like state I enter when adults mention their love of Disney World . . . I start saying crazy, insulting, and awful things right to their faces, and these are people I work with and see every day; here are some examples of things I start spouting to perfectly nice co-workers: 

-- I rant and rave about how lame it is to share a bunch of antiseptic engineered memories with the rest of the Philistines in the park; 

-- I explain how happy I was when an alligator ate a small child at the Disney Grand Floridian Resort and Spa because it injected some reality into the fantasy;

-- I told someone they were totally fucked in the head because she was touting the merits of the Epcot food and wine festival . . . I told her for that amount of money you could go to Italy and have real food and wine!

-- I like to call out people who claim they are feminists yet worship the princess culture;

so I've decided this can't go on . . . if people want to spend their hard-earned money on Disney vacations, so be it . . . I need to be more tolerant; also, I don't think they can help it-- I wish I could claim to have noticed this myself, but it was Chantal who pointed out that all the devout Disney worshippers are practicing Catholics . . . so maybe there's some tie-in between actually practicing religion and loving Disney-- and we all know you can't control whether you have that "belief" character trait . . . I don't have a lick of it and I think it saves me a lot of trouble (in fact, I just read a great little piece in The Atlantic about how politics has replaced religion in America . . . and Disney is better than politics, I suppose).

Birthday Shots, Cold Showers, Long Lines and a Perfect Score.

Quite a pair of birthdays for Alex and me: on Alex's birthday had a 1:30 PM appointment at the DMV for his road test with a borrowed car (thanks Johanna!) that had an accessible parking brake-- a requirement-- but the photocopy of the insurance card wasn't enough proof for the DMV dude-- and after much searching and fumbling, and we found an old card in the glovebox-- no good-- and got a rejection form with an allowance to come back at 2:30 . . . but at this point, my wife was driving over with ANOTHER borrowed car (thanks Ann!) and Alex had also called his buddy to borrow his car but then Johanna found her current insurance card and sent a photo of that-- also no good . . . we would have needed her passwords and access to her insurance website-- so Alex got in Ann's car-- which he had never driven-- and the other DMV guy with the Irish accent barely looked at this stuff and Alex took his test and passed (and did an A plus job parallel parking . . . which he's been practicing, which has been torture) and then we went over to the main building to get his real license (he has a 60 day temporary license) and the DMV security guy laughed at us and said there were no more appointments and to come back at 5 AM and maybe you might be able to get a ticket and then wait four or five more hours to get in-- so he's got that to look forward to . . . my students have many epic stories about this-- and then yesterday, my birthday-- Catherine and I drove to the Meadowlands to receive our first Pfizer vaccine shots-- and while it took a decent amount of time, everything moved quickly and was very well run-- you DO NOT need to arrive early, you get in line ten minutes before your appointment and it takes about ninety-minutes of various lines and check-ins-- like a Disney ride about pandemics . . . and everyone is very nice-- we were impressed (and I got every fuckign word on the NYT Spelling Bee!) and then my birthday dinner was a Tastee sub I ate on the way home and then I tried to shave and there was no hot water so we had to take the tankless hot water heater apart and clean the airfilter and reset the pilot light and then I was able to take a shower and go to bed . . . but some good news along the way, my cousin Geoff had a bad case of covid and ended up in the hospital but he's out now and feeling better.

Fast Times at Action Park

Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park is a tribute to a bygone era-- a time when the United States was less litigious; a time when hazing, heckling, and ethnic slurs were still regarded as good fun; a time when New Yorkers were a good deal grittier than they are now; a time of freedom and individuality; and a time when a good-hearted but slightly demented man named Gene Mulvihill could single-handedly build a shrine to action, danger, adventure, drunkenness, good times and fun on a mountain in New Jersey; the story is told by his son and despite the broken bones, open wounds, electrocutions, drownings, paralysis, comas, and death-- or perhaps because of them-- Andy Mulvihill appreciated working at Action Park and taking part in the family business; the bonding that occurred between the lifeguards at the Wave Pool-- in between pulling out twenty to thirty idiots a day-- is legendary . . . Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High type stuff . . . and the chapter by chapter description of the evolution of the park-- from the Alpine Slide to the Cannonball Loop to Motor World to the Wave Pool to an authentic German Beer Hall to Surf Hill-- is the weird history of the obverse Disney World, a place closer in tone to Jurassic Park than the Magic Kingdon . . . this is a book that will make you proud to be from Jersey-- I odn't remember ever going to Action Park itself-- but I did go on an Alpine Slide in the Poconos (which was also installed by Gene Mulvihill) and rode to fast and flew off the chute . . . which can happen, when YOU are in control of the ride . . . the book also reads like a theme park version of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment . . . there was something about this mix of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans-- many of whom couldn't swim well-- that made them want to ram speedboats into each other, jump off cliffs onto other people's heads, t-bone folks with Lola racers, get drunk, throw garbage everywhere, shit on the floor, race down dangerous slides (water and land-based) and basically ignore danger and forget to assess risk; a must read if ytiou are thinking about travelling back in time to the 80's and opening a shrine to personal autonomy.

The Test 75: Stacey Rules!

Another gem of a quiz by Stacey-- and she thought of it all by herself!-- listen to the rules and then identify the corresponding movie . . . and if that's not enough to pique your interest, then let me tempt you with these delights: Nick (never introduced) does an impression of Stephen Hawking singing Disney, Cunningham tears me a new one for being a condescending sexist, and the ladies reproduce the outro montage (this is weirder than it sounds).

Red Rocks and High End Shops

Sedona is a weird place-- it's incredibly beautiful, a town set within red rock buttes, mesas, and spires, with a clear shady stream running down the Oak Creek Canyon and then right under Route 179 . . . it's essentially like placing a bunch of houses and restaurants and shops inside Arches National Park, but there's more vegetation and the weather isn't as severe . . . check out the pics at Captions of Cat if you need some visuals . . . so you've got a super-touristy and rather cheesy "uptown" and then high-end galleries and the Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village, which is essentially a giant outdoor sculpture in the form of a ritzy shopping mall-- I've never seen anything like it-- and there are houses in the hills owned by celebrities-- our guide mentioned Nicholas Cage (who was in a film called Red Rock West) and Walt Disney and Al Pacino and Lucille Ball . . . but then there are umpteen miles of hiking and biking trails, so you've got all the outdoors people wandering around, and then there are the vortex people and the hippies and the psychics and the folks living in a van in the hotel parking lot and the dude sleeping in the botanical garden . . . it is a wacky mix of high end resort, low-end tourist trap, retirement community, and outdoor wonderland . . . we did a few hikes, into Fay Canyon, which was shady and had some excellent rock climbing at the end, and around the Airport Mesa, which offers the best views, but we also rested our legs one morning and took a Jeep Tour to Soldiers Pass . . . our guides name was Dan and here are a few things we learned on the trip:

1) Dan wears a cowboy hat, carries a .41 caliber pistol, a rare size which he claims shoots flat and straight, hails from Connecticut, and-- like Andy Bernard-- went to Cornell . . . this totally amused me, but he's been out West since 1991 and has lost all traces of East Coast accent and mannerisms;

2) Dan is very proud of the fact that his Jeep Tour Company-- Red Rock Western Jeep Tours-- has the exclusive rights to the Soldiers Pass route, which features the Devil's Kitchen Sinkhole . . . and he pointed out that this sinkhole is seven times bigger than the Pink Jeep Tours sinkhole on the Broken Arrow tour . . . my sinkhole is bigger than your sinkhole kind of stuff;

3) my wife believes Dan is legally blind-- which is a bit scary, considering some of the steep slickrock trails he navigated-- but she might be right, his sunglasses we extraordinarily thick and he couldn't see the large Cooper's hawk perched on a tree in the middle of the trail until we pointed it out to him . . . despite this possible disability, he did a fantastic job not driving off any cliffs;

4) we saw the Seven Sacred Pools, high in the red rocks, and learned that in the desert, dirty water is clean and clean water is probably contaminated with arsenic and/or mercury . . . and these dirty little pools were full of tadpoles and frogs;

5) Dan knows a great deal about botany and zoology, and we all listened intently when he told us about the thirteen species of rattlesnakes and the deal with Mormon tea (it's stronger than coffee, a Mormon loophole!) and about the shaggy barked juniper that Walt Disney used as a model, and he also knows a great deal about geology, but we usually zoned out when he talked about sediment and erosion and tectonic plates . . . although I did like the fact that the Devil's Kitchen Sinkhole increased in size in 1989, a consequence of the Bay Area earthquake that cancelled the World Series and I now know the correct definition of a butte (it's not a rock formation shaped like a butt).

The Test 23: Princess Cunningham

In this week's episode of The Test, Princess Cunningham quizzes Stacey and I on all things Disney; I do poorly-- which is to be expected, considering how I feel about that place-- but (spoiler alert) I do confuse two things that our older listeners might find entertaining . . . this film and this place; give it a listen, play along, and see if you can find your inner princess.

Where the Wild Things Are?

I have been accused of having no discernment in my ratings of books -- everything I tend to review has completely captivated me, and thus I praise the thing to death -- but this is because I work really hard to find books that I like; recently I tried to read Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq . . . and though I can't speak poorly about either book, as I certainly learned something from each, they didn't fully engage me, and so I dumped Jesus in the library book slot, half read, and barely made it through the first chapter of Overthrow, because I had to keep reading the name Queen Liliuokalani . . . and I must say that I do this quite often: take books out of the library because I want to have read them, not because I want to read them (I actually have a book in my house called The History of the Vikings . . . I've never opened it) but I am now fully in the grip of a wonderful book that I will certainly finish in a day or two, it's called Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About People Looking at People Looking at Animals in America and it's got everything I love in it: mega-fauna, meta-media, and monomania; I am currently reading a section about photographing polar bears, and the trickery necessary for a photographer to shoot "an image of nature that's already lodged in our heads" . . . the footnote in this section points out that lemmings don't actually run off cliffs -- the folks at Disney propagated this in the film White Wilderness, where they paid a bunch of Inuit kids to round up lemmings, then forced the lemmings to run on a treadmill covered in snow, and then threw the lemmings into the water, and created the sequence that created the stereotype . . . but Chris Palmer, famous wildlife photographer explains that these folks aren't "evil or malicious . . . you're just trying to get the damn shot so you can go home and have dinner with your family . . . so you put the monkey and the boa constrictor in the same enclosure."

You Look Sorta Famous

We had an excellent trip to the city on Tuesday . . . we found some stuff in the Met that I've never seen before (mainly in the aboriginal art exhibits-- big scary head-dresses and ritual boats) but if you bring your kids to climb inside Tomas Saraceno's interactive sci-fi fun house sculpture "Cloud City," which is installed on the roof, then be forewarned-- to participate, kids have to be ten years old and 48 inches tall-- and though my kids gamely lied about their age, my son Ian (who just turned seven and is definitely forty-eight inches, on the nose) was just shy of the counter-top, which the museum staff claimed was forty-eight inches tall . . . but they were definitely skeptical about his age; I find this ridiculous, that a kid who has gone on every roller-coaster at Knoebels and conquered Disney's The Tower of Terror without a whimper wasn't allowed to wander around in a mirrored steel sculpture, but-- on the other hand-- there were a lot of old people inside "Cloud City," murmuring things like "it's disorienting, but not terribly organic, like the city itself," and so maybe it isn't the place for my children, who got into a dust up on the rooftop pavilion over an apple . . . anyway, from the Met we hiked down to the Central Park Zoo, which was quite impressive for a small zoo-- especially the sea lion show-- and then, as we trekked diagonally across the park, on our way to Columbus Circle, stopping at playgrounds as we went, we had a celebrity sighting . . . but it took a while to identify the celebrity . . . at first I thought it was Ellen Barkin, but my wife disagreed, and then I remembered it was the woman from the David Lynch movies who also had a small role in Jurassic Park III and a famous dad, but it took another fifteen minutes to remember her name: Laura Dern!

Knoebels vs. Disney Revisited

Another nice thing about Knoebels Amusement Resort is that, unlike Disneyworld, the folks that run the place don't try to teach you anything . . . aside from: getting dizzy and wet is fun!

Knoebels > Disneyworld

Another ringing endorsement for Knoebels Amusement Park, and that's impressive-- considering that I hate amusement parks-- but a day at Knoebels costs a tenth of a day at Disney . . . there's no admission fee; plenty of trees; free parking; excellent, inexpensive food-- I highly recommend the pulled pork enchilada . . . not only is the meat tender and delicious, but they also give it a quick dip in the deep fryer to ensure tastiness; at Knoebels there's no claustrophobic feeling that you've got to stay and get your money's worth; they have several great wooden roller coasters; there are no people in costume . . . aside from the locals; and, finally, they have The Looper-- an ancient ride which became our children's passion: once they figured out how to spin themselves upside-down, they begged to ride it over and over . . . Ian and Nicky claim to have "looped" it sixty-four times . . . though I wonder if their counting abilities suffered due to the circumstances.

Two Things That Are Good To Know

We returned home from Disney on Saturday to find that something was wrong with our furnace (or to be precise, I should say our boiler . . . because a furnace heats air, but we have forced hot-water radiator heat in our house) and then we found out that PSE&G couldn't come until Monday and the PSE&G guy on the phone candidly and kindly admitted that if it was the pump-- which is what was acting strange-- then it wasn't covered anyway, and he said, "We'll fix it, but we're not cheap" and so we had to call our friend Rob the plumber and he was over with his buddy Keith that evening-- Saturday night-- and after hours of fiddling, they replaced the pump and fixed our ancient boiler (Rob called it "the Joe Paterno of boilers") and we had heat again . . . and they explained to me something about a "thermocouple" but I was so tired and kind of sick and I took NyQuil before I went to bed and when Catherine got home from her cousin's house and asked me what they had fixed, I couldn't string together anything coherent and I still don't know exactly what a "thermocouple" does and so I am thinking that the two most important things to know are not grand or theoretical or complex . . . they are the names of a good mechanic and a good plumber.

The Two Scariest Rides at Disney (If You Are Claustrophobic)

I went on all the rides at Disney last week, and this is a big deal for me, as even a merry-go-round can give me motion sickness, but I survived Space Mountain and Expedition Everest and Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain and Mission Space and Test Track and Dinosaur and The Tower of Terror-- I didn't vomit or cry once-- and I'm glad I got to see my six year old son Ian and my wife ride these things . . . it made me proud how brave and unfazed they are . . .  and I'm glad my son Alex takes after me: he admitted he closed his eyes on The Tower of Terror, just like his dad . . . but if you want to do something really scary then spend some time in the "holding pens" for Turtle Talk with Crush and It's Tough to Be A Bug . . . small spaces, low-ceilings, screaming children and worried parents . . . only you, my readers, know just how close I was to freaking out.

Carousel of Torture

Although I highly recommend The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World-- for the maps and the descriptions of rides, attractions, food, and traffic patterns in the parks-- I also think the writers are completely insane, for one very good reason . . . give me a moment to explain: my parents offered to wait in the twenty minute line for The Haunted Mansion with my kids, giving my wife and I a few precious minutes of free time (our plan was to meet them back in Tomorrowland at the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, which would give Catherine and I time to grab a beer while we waited-- little did we know that The Magic Kingdom is a dry land after all) and since there was no beer to drink, we went on the PeopleMover and nearly fell asleep, and then, in our somnolent state, we ambled into an "audioanimatronic theater production" called "Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress," which begins with a scene in a kitchen in the early 1900's where a mustachioed man talks about the technology of the day, and then the theater rotates to another kitchen-- a few decades later-- and the same man talks about the technology, and there's some stuff going on in the wings, some youngsters with a desire to do their hair in beehives and dance, and a girl trying to lose weight with some kind of belt contraption, and then the ride went a bit haywire, and the mustachioed man-- who had the look of a third-rate porn star-- kept singing the same song over and over and someone made an announcement that we would soon be moving along and that the 26 and 1/2 minute show would take a bit longer . . . 26 and a half minutes? . . . and finally, we moved through a few more decades of "Progress" and then there was a hip, video-game playing grandma who actually said, "We smoked'em!" and then there was some special effects when the voice activated stove misheard Grandma's score and turned the oven to 550 degrees (what video game scores in the hundreds?) and smoke spewed from around the oven door, and then finally-- finally!-- the Carousel of Progress (which my usually sunny and optimistic wife named "The Carousel of Torture") let us back into the sunlight, yet the Unofficial Guide people-- who are generally accurate in their descriptions-- call the mustachioed porn star narrator "easy to identify with" and they say the attraction is a "great favorite among repeat visitors" and they include it on all their touring plans . . . and so I have two questions: What were they smoking when they went on this thing? and How does Disney put this ride next to Space Mountain?

The Best Ride of the Day at Disney's Hollywood Studios

Though I rode The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, I couldn't tell you if it's the best ride in the park (because after we saw the view of Disney Studios from the 13th floor, and then started free-falling and being winched back up-- repeatedly-- I curled into a ball and closed my eyes . . . although I do recollect that my butt levitated off the seat each free fall . . . my intelligent son Alex had the same reaction as me, but my wife and younger son Ian were unfazed, which leads me to think there is something wrong with their brains and inner ears) and although I was very impressed with the 3-D effects of Toy Story Mania, Star Tours, and Jim Henson's Muppet Vision and the real effects of the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, they don't win the prize for best ride either (and neither does the ride out to Orlando International Airport to pick up my parents: because there are two, count them, two tolls on the tiny connector road called the Beachline Expressway) and so the prize for the best ride on that Sunday was the fourth quarter of the Giants/ New England game-- we caught it after the ride to the airport; four lead changes in the final fourteen minutes and a Giants victory with a one yard pass from Eli Manning to Jake Ballard with 15 seconds remaining to play . . . snapping a twenty game win streak at home for the Patriots . . . once again, though I tried to get out, the Giants have sucked me back in.

He Thinks He's So Smart

We were watching The Black Cauldron and it was getting near the end and the plot was tense and my five year old son was worried, but my seven year old son reassured him and said, "Three things have to happen or this isn't Disney . . . Gurgi has to come back to life, Taran and Eilonwy have to get home, and they have to find Hen-Wen, the magic pig," and like clockwork, in the waning minutes, these three things came true and Ian was relieved and Alex felt very clever . . . so I'm going to throw in Old Yeller next weekend and really blow his mind.

Kids Love Earwax and Vomit

Our friends went to Disney last week and they brought the boys back some Bertie Bott's Jelly Beans from HoneyDukes Candy Store; some of the beans are tasty: watermelon, blueberry, and lemon . . . some are bizarre: grass, black pepper-- which is actually kind of satisfying-- and dirt (which left a lingering dusty flavor at the top of my mouth) . . . and some are thoroughly disgusting: earwax, vomit, sausage, rotten egg, and soap . . . and the kids kept selecting the gross ones, so they could scream about how repulsive they tasted and then spit them into the garbage.

A Short Review for a Long Movie

Avatar is a Disney movie for adults: thematically simple, visually stunning, full of melodramatic cheesy music which nearly ruins the entire film, and an absurdly happy ending . . . three hammerhead rhinoceros thingies out of a possible four.