Tuesday, December 6, 2005

The Happiest Place on Earth? Tomorrow, we head off for a luxurious mid-week jaunt to the happiest place on earth, which, if you're a believer, is Disneyland. I don't know if I believe.  I went to Disneyland for the first time a dozen or so years ago.  I had moved fairly recently to California, and my first time there was about as good as it gets--I went to the night time employee Christmas party, when the park is closed to outsiders and thousands of employees of Disney and (as was my case) affiliated companies have the park to themselves.  No lines.  No lines at Disneyland is pretty much the key to that happiest happiness.  I had a great time.  For a few years, this was the only way I experienced the park.  I was spoiled. Then, I met the H.  He grew up in L.A.  Disneyland was a huge part of his childhood, and one of the really happy memories in a sea of mediocre ones.  He loves Disneyland.  This is not a man who appreciates kitsch in any form.  Every time he leaves L.A. he gets creeped out by how fat everyone is--everywhere else.  (I don't say that to be unkind, I'm a good twenty-plus pounds overweight myself these days, but, let's be honest, America has an obesity problem...moving on.)  My point is, he doesn't do Americana.  But Disney--that's something else.  He buys into the charm in a way I find totally endearing. For years, long before we had even an inkling of a child, we'd spend his birthday at the park.  His birthday happens to be Valentine's Day (if you're considering marrying a somewhat absent minded guy with VD as his birthday, I recommend against it, but that's another story) and as a result, the park was often deserted on those birthday excursions.  It tends to rain in Southern California in February, and park attendance is off, and it's kind of drearily lovely. But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I was in college, a group of guys with whom I was peripherally friendly, if not wholly immersed, had a complex and fairly well thought out theory about Disney's plot to take over the culture.  It was kind of jokey, but, as I said, well conceived--when you thought about their examples of creepy Disney intrusions into places where the Mouse had no business being it was, well, creepy. Of course, I can't remember them now, but the funny thing is, that idea--Disney bent on world domination--seemed funny, paranoiac, and potentially just a big joke in 1987.  Now?  Seems like the world we live in.  And that's my problem with indoctrinating my darling kids into the cult of THPOE. I'm not sure I buy it. Disney is another big corporation bent on maximizing profits at the expense of everything else. (For fun, visit some of the disnoid sites on the web to see how the direhard fans bemoan the impact of this philosophy on the park.  These people are nuts, but sweetly so.)  They treat their employees not so well.  They make movies aimed at getting my kids to buy crap they don't need, eat crap that's not good for them (there's that obesity thing again), and to really piss me off, they still, always, kill off the mothers in every damn animated film they make.  Even Pixar jumped on that bandwagon.  So tomorrow, though I plan to have a good time, I may be the cynic in the house of Tinkerbell.  I'll keep you posted on my adventures. 9:44:50 PM     comment [] trackback []