James Lileks goes to Disneyworld
For my Internet dollar, no one is funnier than James Lileks, and he's in top form here with his trip report from Disneyworld.
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Dinner was large. The portions are huge. They might as well put the plate down and say “here’s more than you can possibly eat, and here’s nine potatoes on the side. Would you like another gallon of high fructose corn syrup? Okay, well, don’t forget to leave room for six pies.” There’s something a bit sad about seeing childless adult Disney fans, lanyards spattered with pins, eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments. On the other hand, what gives them happiness? Food and Disney. This is the happiest place on earth after all -- even though there seems to be a subset of Disney nerds who appear immune to the very thing they've come to experience. But that's another story for later.Off to Downtown Disney, which we hadn’t visited before. Sheer marketing genius: an open-air shopping center designed to extract the last possible penny from every molecule of the Disneyverse. I loved it. As I’m sure I noted last year, you’re either immune to the Mouse or you get it, and if you get it that means the white-gloved hand has closed around something deep in your emotional constitution and squeezed, and squeezed hard. It’s best to get the Mouse and still maintain critical distance, because then you’re not just wallowing in the warm bathos of nostalgia and the murky brew of ersatz Americana, you’re laughing with delight at its innumerable manifestations.
We found the giant World of Disney store, and there (G)Nat was entranced. Me too. Behold the zombie Thumpers, screaming for BRAAAAINS.
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During one of his hospitalizations Oscar Levant was told there would be a patient excursion the next day to Disneyland. ''No, thank you,'' he declined, ''I provide my own hallucinations."
Now I'll be afraid to turn out the lights tonight.
There's a reason I removed all stuffed animals save my teddy bear from my room as soon as I became fully cognitive. I dislike things staring at me when I wake up.
Exactly. What did you your waking interrupt that they were just about to do?
/me shudders.
Happiest place on earth? Pscha right. More like the lamest place on Earth! I know this is great writing in my heart because I feel better than all of the icky plebs at Disneyworld. Steak slabs as thick as Tolstoi! Man, it feels good to be a BB reader today, though the rarefied air is sometimes hard to breathe!
Keep this kind of stuff comin' !!!
Exactly. What did you your waking interrupt that they were just about to do?
And of all the people who do not wake in time to interrupt the Plan?
Dude, Mark is totally trolling Cory.
I heartily recommend Lileks' podcast, The Diner, an excellent audio scrapbook of 20th century Americana, framed with a charmingly whack storyline about a roadside eat-stop.
(He also does a great job keeping it relatively free of his unfortunate political leanings, unlike his blog, which I sadly had to stop reading a few years ago.)
Re: day 2 of his trip: He may have been a bit more excited about Test Track if he had seen those cars fly off that loop when they were testing that ride. That's the only ride I've ever been hesitant to go on at Disneyworld.
Teh Sadlies are funnier
The Long Dark Disneyland of the Soul
Lileks buys shoes that are too small because he can't figure out how to buy them online. Complains about the salesman who kindly suggests he can get the correct size online. Then goes to Disneyland with small shoes and blisters, on purpose. Then complains even more about it on his blog. I think there's a word for that.
Lileks is an institution here in the Twin Cities. Love his blog!
And of all the people who do not wake in time to interrupt the Plan?
Sadly, we may never know.
Lileks is a decently talented writer I have, on occasion, enjoyed to read.
It's his shameless shilling for Bu$h during both the last election cycles that always left a nasty taste in my head.
The zombie Thumpers photos and line are pretty great, as are a few others there, but so is the Sadly, No post eviscerating him. (Thanks, Noen.)
I used to be a huge Lileks fan several years back, but I also used to have a very different political outlook as well and enjoyed and agreed with most of what he wrote. I kind of drifted away from him around the time I quit reading right-wing blogs. Now it seems odd to read someone's criticism of him and keep thinking, "yeah, they've got a point there."
Still...cheerful zombie bunnies out to eat your brains. Ha.
different political outlook as well and enjoyed and agreed with most of what he wrote. I kind of drifted away from him around the time I quit reading right-wing blogs.
Reformed right-winger here as well, I see? I salute you sir. I shudder to see what has been done to the Republican party. (But in all honesty, it happened before I was thinking politically and so I was never an 'old' right winger).
I don't know Lilek, but there are other figures I used to agree with that I now look at and look at criticism of and think, "What the hell was I thinking?" and then think, "What the hell are people still doing buying into that?"
we were there last month, it was nuts. had a ferry boat ride, it was like evacuating Dunkirk. Downtown Disney? Capitalism's finest hour, i bought the full-scale working Lego Space Shuttle. ate so much at the buffet, the carver needed rotator cuff surgery. went on Everest twice & bought some shirts. really, it was all so bad, but we laughed like drunken baboons. Mickey got me years ago when i sat an inch away from the TV, a mesmerized, immigrant kid. i'll be looking forward to what else Lileks writes
Am I the only American who scratches his or her head quizzically at the interest in Disney? I'm 50, so I grew up in the heyday of the Disney era and I have never seen any appeal in Mickey Mouse or any of the other Disneyphernalia. The only Disney product that I ever liked was Hayley Mills. Maybe it's a gay thing.
I'm another former regular Lileks reader who gave up because of the political stuff. For quite a few years it worth wading through the occasional rant and name dropping (ooooh, golly, James knows Hugh Hewitt!) for the brilliant travelogues or dissection of pop culture. Then sometime last year I gave up.
But dang: If you haven't been there already, do indeed check out Lilek's featurs about comics, foreign money, stock certificates, old cooks books and the like. Brilliant and funny.
I'm 48 and I resisted Disney like the snob that I am until 10 years ago when an 18 year old girlfriend called me on it and challenged me to try Disney World for a week. I'm still immune to cute but I totally respect their professionalism in the hospitality industry.
Maybe it's a gay thing.
I am straight(?) and I don't like Disney.
I like them as a film industry. It's the artifacts that leave me cold. But maybe that's just because I like my celluloid fantasies to stay on the silver screen and not in the theme park.
I don't like Disney either, but that is because they treat their employees and contractors like expendable android labour and are utterly ruthless in matters of money and copyright. That and their failure to have even one single sympathetic character with a radula.
Yeah, Snow White walking around loose weirded me out. I guess you get used to it if you have kids, which I haven't. All kinds of improbabilities become commonplace then.
Snow White walking around loose weirded me out.
I lived in SF for 25 years. It would be weird not to see Snow White once a week.
I just went there on Sunday with a head full of mushrooms. Nothing like psychedellic drugs to make you BELIEVE. I also made the trip by giving the park a grand total of two dollars (for a snack) as I got the tickets for free. Hall of Presidents (aka Robot White Guys) was easily the freakiest thing, and the Haunted Mansion was just awesome.
I thought you said 'be Snow White', which was an interesting visual. Time to unplug the 'scope and go rest my eyes...
#24-alejandrodelloco, didja check out space mountain? sheer magick! and all the sweeter when it's fee!
#16:
#19:
I'm straight and I liked Hayley Mills. Major childhood crush on this Disney hottie.
How different to grow up in the age of the intertubes.
Looked up Hayley Mills. I recognize her!
Daaa-aaamn.
...aw, why did we have to drag politics into this. I was happier when I could blindly stick my fingers in my ears and sing LA, LA, LA, LA, over Lileks' rants.
I guess it's getting harder to do that now. Still, the man knows his paleo-pop culture....
Lileks writes well. I didn't mean to rain on anyone's parade, sorry. To me he comes off as a crotchety old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
you make that sound like a bad thing
The lawn. Not the yelling.
You're just afraid they'll find the booze you buried.
I'm not a Disney fan, but I'm a Disneyland fan. Not of the whimsical fantasy stuff, but the logistics and how it works, that's always interested me.
Speaking of The Three Caballeros, I just watched that the other day for the first time in years. The whole section near the end with Donald going INSANE with lust for the lovely ladies is disturbing, surreal, and fantastic.
i was in disneyland.. i don't like this place..
Ironically deconstructing your trip to Disneyworld was cool about twenty years ago. What's next for Lileks - a tongue-in-cheek disquisition on standing in line for three and a half hours at his local Cheesecake Factory?
in the magic kingdom.
For all its faults, I still got choked up when I stood on Main Street and saw the castle in the distance.
In Kissimmee as I write. I hate central Florida. It's the hot, sweaty, stinking, armpit of the country. And the armpit hairs are gray.
For my Internet dollar, no one is funnier than James Lileks
Are you talking intentionally or otherwise?
Here's Roy Edroso's take on Lileks' Disney excursion, and his summary of Lileks' style in general. Lileks might be fun to read--he can turn a phrase well--if he didn't have to always, always, stick in his gripe du jour against liberals, in this case whining about someone's anti-meat T-shirt.
Ironically deconstructing your trip to Disneyworld was cool about twenty years ago.
Yes, but that's Lileks's schtick--pretending it's the Eisenhower era and the world is Pleasantville and what are all these hippies doing around here? Personally, I wish he'd do more political stuff about how liberals are ruining the world (they are) since he has such a good way with words. But I still read the Bleat every day just because it reads well.
Yes just go to Europe to see how "Liberals Have Ruined the World" It's truly awful. Every day is worst than the last, but even with the plummeting dollar it's still cheaper than a Disney Resort.
Lileks' chief virtue is that if you like Eisenhower-era kitsch, he's done the leg work of finding it all for you, and can be used as a bibliography. (As for what he has to say about it, I like my ironic distancing a little less palpably desperate, but to each their own.)
As for the rest, which is to say as for the other 99% of Lileks, this says it best. (Scroll down to the "Lileks" section.)
Mintphresh - Space Mountain was extra sweet The line was mysteriously tiny, too. I seriously suggest to all you freaks and mutants that if you are without spawn and find yourself in the Disney Place to add some chemical insanity to the mix. Fear and Loathing in the Magic Kingdom etc.
I'm immune. Scratch that. I'm allergic.
#42 flamingphonebook, "... how liberals are ruining the world (they are)..." WTF? it seems to me that the ones in control these last 8 years have been anything but liberal! and look what a fine freekin job those a-holes have done! just remember, another word for 'liberal' is 'generous'. another word for 'conservative' is 'tight-assed'.
The thing that I could never figure out is, what are conservatives conserving?
Flamingphonebook, Mintphresh
You're both wrong. Both parties are so large they encompass all sorts of people capable of all sorts of things. The Bush Administration has screwed over the country, but they are not the entire conservative base.
#48, the status quo?
I'm always a little dismayed every time Lileks is mentioned, and the discussion immediately turns to his (actually relatively moderate) political leanings. I don't much agree with the guy's politics, and I would prefer that he'd refrain from inserting them into otherwise amusing anecdotes, but I like him just fine and read his site every day.
The world would be a better place if we could all refrain from intensely disliking everyone who doesn't share our political beliefs; most people believe what they believe for stupid reasons that don't have a lot to do with the rational merits of the belief. So long as they're not absolutely egregious, getting bent out of shape about someone's politics seems to make about as much sense as getting angry at their sports team preference, or how much they like cookies.
#48, the status quo?
I know that's theoretically true. I guess that's why we say 'neocon', to distinguish them from true conservatives. The neocons don't seem to be doing much status quo conserving.
Mintfresh:
I never said conservatives weren't ruining the world. I said that liberals were. The real problem is collectivism, which both sides are guilty of. My point is, Lileks accurately disects the way that liberals illustrate the evils of collectivism, while passing over those of conservatism. When it comes to issues that conservatism doesn't really have consistently arguable positions on, like abortion, sex, religion, he hems and haws and moves on.
beating up on Disney in the year 2008? wow, how novel. I've never been a huge fan, the minute I got my nephews and nieces out of this phase, I was thankful. yeah, it's a dumb place, but all the "sins of america" pieces on Disneyland are getting tedious and old. I have a lot of friends, reasonable people -- who like it. They must all be bad and stupid people according to the rash of articles. It's like picking on 80s Hair Band Music. Easy target. Zzzzzzz ...