I L L H U M O R + B Y I A N S H O A L E S
f a n t a s y l a n d:
If you lived here,
you'd be somewhere else now
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Sure, you have to wait in line an hour for a 30-second thrill, but Disneyland's crowd control is almost as fascinating as the rides themselves. I've even come to enjoy the relentless self-promotion of the place. There's not one thing in Disneyland that is not a Disney product or promotion. This is amazing when you think about it. Look at your own home. There's always something there that doesn't belong to you -- a friend left a salad bowl or sweater, you borrowed a tool and never returned it. There are books, pens and albums you acquired somewhere along the line, but you no longer remember where or when or from whom. I have three copies, for example, of the Mothers of Invention's "We're Only In It for the Money." Where did they come from? I didn't buy any of them. I don't even have a turntable anymore, for God's sake. It takes the power of a mighty corporation to purge a site of anything extraneous. Or the hive mind of a cult. In the wake of the Heaven's Gate suicides, what amazed the media most was how tidy the death scene was. A spotless death scene just doesn't seem right, you know? We like our mass graves cluttered. I guess if you're going to leave your human shell, beam into an alien body, then cruise the universe in a highly evolved state, neatness counts. You have to travel light too: carry-on only. Is that the moral I'm supposed to take away from this? What am I supposed to take away from the strange month of March 1997? The eclipse, the comet, the suicides -- were these millennial signs and portents natural phenomena or a spectacle produced for our entertainment by imagineerlike gods? Personally, when it comes to millennial indicators, I keep thinking about former President Bush dropping slowly from the skies. How can you want to leave this world when moments like this septuagenarian sky-dive make life, unevolved as it is, a constant surprise? Think of it. Here's an old man in a parachute, surrounded by Secret Service agents in free fall, each ready to catch him in their arms should his webbing fail and carry him down to the surface of the Earth as safe as a preteen on the Matterhorn. But then again, he's an ex-president. If he wants to live in Fantasyland, he's got polite bodyguards who can cart him there faster than a good fairy. What about the rest of us? The executioners in Florida, for example. When fire erupted from the head of the latest death penalty client, they pooh-poohed any criticism that electrocution might be cruel and unusual punishment. I frankly think they thought the outburst of flames was kind of cool. They even have an affectionate nickname for their electric chair: Old Sparky. Sounds like something you might find on Main Street USA, doesn't it? One man's fantasy is another man's lethal injection, I always say. And what about this new breed of bank robbers? You know, the ones who dress up in body armor and carry more firepower than the armies of three Third World nations combined? A bank robber's fantasy used to be to empty the vaults, make a quick getaway, and escape to Rio. These new guys seem to want the money, all right, but they're fuzzy on the next part. Rather than escape, they want to get shot to pieces in a parking lot firefight with 500 law enforcement officers. What's the point? Do they think that stolen money will come in handy in the afterlife? Do they think some UFO is waiting to snatch up the souls of thieves? What fantasy are they living? In Las Vegas, you can now visit a replica of New York City. In New York City, the formerly hellish 42nd Street is being remodeled by the Walt Disney Company into something more resembling Main Street USA, that is to say a safe environment in which to buy Disney-related products. Every place will soon be every place else. Orange County's own B-1 Bob Dornan, in pursuit of his own fantasy of re-election to the U.S. Congress, has been subpoenaing everybody in sight, trying to prove that illegal immigrants robbed him of his seat. But his subpoenas have so far been ignored. They're as useless as an E-ticket. Poor dude's living in the past, and not the kind of past where you can peddle Disney-related products. Staggering back to my motel across the Disney lot, under the pale toxic sky that is a Southern California indicator, feeling as bright and puffy as Toontown itself, I pondered our human fates. To visit Fantasyland only requires disposable income. But if I want to live in Fantasyland? Well, that requires a combination of enormous self-discipline, semiautomatic weapons and Internet access. Oh, and aliens, of course. No Toons allowed.
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