MY LATEST TRIP TO DISNEYLAND: 2/15

No, the devil isn't symbolic. I didn't do any mischief at Disneyland. I just like the way the red sculpture looks against the Disneyland map. It's a figure from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Fantasyland.

The day actually began placidly at a friend's house where we all assembled for the trip. You won't see those friends here because they never allow me to take their pictures. They think I add double chins.

At the park we started with a double decker bus trip down Main Street. From up here you get a good view of the rooftops.

I never noticed it before but lots of them are Post Modern simplifications of traditional tops. Here's (above) a classic French roof. Er...you don't suppose that Post Modern styling actually began in the 50s with these Disneyland shops do you? Naw, it couldn't be...

...but if it is, you heard it first here on Theory Corner!

Here's (above) a French roof railing adapted to a Midwestern American top. Am I imagining it or is there also a Canadian North Coast Indian influence on that roof?

For comparison here's (above) a North Coast roof decoration from elsewhere in the park.

And here's (above) a modification of what looks like...believe it or not...a Chinese roof. Wow! What an interesting mixture of styles!

Fantasyland roofs appear to be a combination of French and Central European styles. Elsewhere in the world beautiful rooftops are wasted on high buildings where you'd need an airplane to see them. Disneyland wisely brings them down, close to the ground.

Here's a German/Swiss roof topped by a weather vane of the crocodile from "Peter Pan."

Here's (above) a detail from the Snow White ride. The Baroque twisted pillars remind me of the castle in the film, "Horror of Dracula."

Wow! You could do a whole book on the wrought iron (above) at Disneyland.

This (above) is a view from the Small World ride. Most of my SW pictures were too blurred to show here. The camera just couldn't make the low light adjustments fast enough on a moving boat. This is the only photo that came out okay.

I'm guessing that this white drape might be cheesecloth dipped in liquid plaster. I used to make Halloween decorations that way.

I love the way the park (above) is designed to reveal different layers of reality wherever you look.

The designers somehow managed to make crowds interesting. It's a people watcher's dream.

This display (above) makes me want to try colored lights on my own shelves at home.

Nice, easy-to-do detailing on that pillar (above).

This type of open-front shop (above) isn't unique to Disneyland but it's nice to be reminded of how effective it is. It invites you in. The multiple proscenium dotted with bright lights is a real grabber at night. This store dominates this part of Main Street, even though it's only an arcade for showing penny hand-cranked films.

I'm tempted to speculate that if they were selling something there they'd clean up, but most places I've seen with fronts like this don't do serious selling inside. That happens in adjacent stores. I guess you have to give something away cheap to create an atmosphere of fun.

No trip to Disneyland is complete without a trip to the pirate store. I don't have to worry about being tempted to buy pirate hats...nothing ever fits my big head.

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A VALENTINE FROM THEORY CORNER

INT. GRANDPA UNCLE EDDIE"S HOUSE: 

GRANDSON: "Tell us again how you met Grandma."

GRANDPA: "Aw, I must have told you that story five times at least. Don't you want to hear something else?"

GRANDKIDS (ALL): "No! No! We wanna' hear about Grandma. Pleasepleasepleaseplease!"

GRANDPA: "Ooookay. Okay. Weeell, it was at a little park by the sea..."

GRANDDAD: "I wasn't looking where I was going and we just bumped into each other. I tried to apologize but I found I couldn't speak. My lips refused to move. Infront of me was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen and all I could do was look. 

She must have felt something for me too because for the longest time we just stared and stared at each other's eyes, our faces slowly inching closer and closer."

GRANDAD: "Then, when we could stand it no longer, we threw open our arms and clung to each other, clung as if our lives depended on it!"

GRANDPA: "I guess we weren't paying attention to what was going on around us. The biggest thunderstorm you ever saw was starting overhead."

GRANDPA: "The rain came down in torrents."

GRANDSON: "(GASP!) Did you get wet?"

GRANDPA: "Oh, yeah...soaked to the gills...but we didn't care."

GRANDPA: "Holding Grandma was like..."

GRANDPA: "...it was like...diving into a burning volcano."

GRANDPA: 'It was a kind of insanity."

GRANDPA: "Well, I'll never be able to find the right words."

GRANDPA: "Anyway the storm got worse and worse."

GRANDPA: "By the time we realized what had happened it was too late."

GRANDPA: "We were swept out to sea, a mile from the shore."

GRANDCHILDREN: "Woooooww!!!!"

GRANDPA: "But that wasn't all. We soon discovered that we weren't alone."

GRANDPA: "From out of nowhere a big old shark came up and swallowed your grandma!"

GRANDDAUGHTER: "Did you karate chop him?"

GRANDPA: "Huh?...karate chop? Er, oh yeah, sure...but it didn't do any good. It was a tough situation. With her sitting there in all those digestive juices, I knew Grandma had only minutes to live."

GRANDPA: "Fortunately I always carried a spear and flippers."

GRANDMA: "Kids, it's time to go to bed. Grandpa can finish the story in the morning."

KIDS (ALL): "Awwwwwwwwww!!!"

BEATNIK GIRLS

This is about beatnik girls. "Why not beatnik guys?" you ask. Well, Beat girls had their own take on Beat culture, and it was a bit different than what the guys were doing. Read on, you'll see. 

The amazing thing is that something as esoteric as the beatnik ideal appealed to girls at all. Only a generation before girls were bobbysoxers (above) who liked to giggle and go nuts at Frank Sinatra concerts.

Then rock and roll came along and everybody young bailed into that. Rock had its own culture and beatniks were just a side line. While millions were doing the Twist and having fun, the handfull of Beats were living in poverty and listening to horribly depressing jazz. It seemed like a movement that was destined to fail. How odd then, that in the long run it turned out to be the Beats who changed the world...through the hippies, I mean.

I just looked at a lot of old pictures of beatniks and my favorites are the ones that portray them as jovial Maynard G. Krebs-types, who wear berets and play the bongos. I like that image. It's the way Shag (above) pictures them. That's the way they should have been.

Unfortunately, they were probably weren't like that. In pictures and memoirs they seem like a pretty serious lot: confrontational, smug, very ideological, and very intolerant. A lot of them were actually kind of mean.

In my last year of high school I briefly went out with a beatnik girl and she was hard as nails. It was the hippie era but she preferred to be a beat for some reason. She made it very clear that I was beneath her and she was only seeing me because she had nothing else to do. She had that distant, far away look like Peggy Cummins (above) in "Gun Crazy."

Mostly we just hung out and tried to look cool. What I remember about her is that she was bored all the time, and had terrible disdain for the ordinary people who passed in the street.        

She liked to perch somewhere and chain smoke with a pained expression.

She didn't look like she was having much fun.

Beatnik women hardly ever looked like they were having fun. Guys on the other hand, at least looked like they were getting by. Haw! Maybe that's because they had something to look forward to. The beatnik code included free love and the guys were no doubt salivating at the very thought of it.

In the pictures beatnik girls frequently have a look that says, "Life is a drag, Man! Life is a DRAG!" That strikes me as tragic. Only a generation before girls looked effervescent and optimistic...the way young people are supposed to look...and now here are the Beats in the 50s looking neurotic and nihilistic. Yikes! Maybe they were just tired of wearing sunglasses indoors.

You have to wonder how that ennui came about. My guess is that they were copying the world weary look of Hollywood superstars like Dietrich (above) and Garbo.

 The cold, icy look had been standard in women's magazines for years.

Maybe girls out on their own for the first time, living the life of rebels, wanted to live the dream...to be icy and aloof like the models they secretly admired in fashion magazines. Maybe beatnik girls were always sneaking peeks at Vogue. Maybe fashion magazines contributed as much to the Beat movement as somebody like Alan Ginsburg or Jack Kerouac.

Well it's possible, isn't it?

Before I sign off I have one more picture to post (above). It's a really neat picture of a beatnik walk. I don't think anyone ever really walked this way but they should have.

For more on the history of Beatniks see the archived 6/4/10 Theory Corner post,
"Who Came Before the Beatniks?"

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/who-came-before-beats.html