for 23 August 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler: Third World Blind
Polly: Am I the only one a bit disturbed by the fish's choice of lunchtime fare? A concerned reader I, too, am concerned with the Fish's fish lunch. Maybe the blackened tadpole was on special, and it sounded simply irresistible. Or maybe Terry is slightly unhinged. Through history, though, the unhinged bring us the world's greatest art, so we probably shouldn't complain. Polly  so I guess a blind hog DOES find an acorn every once in a while! It is good to see that you can be funny every once in a while. remember - being narcissictic about oneself - not funny misspelling narcissictic while criticizing another - funny live and lurn pete Well, you can lead a blind hog to acorns, but you can't make him eat them. Hogs hate acorns. And I have to disagree - is funny misspelling narcissictic while criticizing another! You lurn something new every day! Polly Hey, longtimereader, firsttimewriter. Your Generation Ex bit was hilarious. A few months back I got an e-mail from an ex-girlfriend Angie who wanted some advise about her current boyfriend, Beau (natch), who was still interested in his ex-gf Denise, who was also an ex-gf of mine. Here's a snippet from the letter I sent back to Ang. I read your story, but I can hardly fathom it. So let me get this straight: Your current boyfriend is my ex's ex, and you, being his girlfriend, are his ex's ex's ex, making Denise both my ex and your ex's ex? This makes me your ex, her ex, his current's ex and his ex's ex. I've never gotten so much ex in all my life. It's the best ex I've ever had. It's better than ex. And to top it all off, Denise was then seeing .....drumroll please....former MTV VJ Alan Hunter. I laughed myself silly when I heard that. Anyoldhow, keep up the killa filla. Peacepipes. Bruce Man, that means you're practically related to Alan Hunter! Very cool! Polly Just to let you know, Filler is awesome. I've been reading it for a while but never felt the urge to comment. However, I think the real reason we don't like friends and ex's to get together is that they'll share and reveal some secret horrible truth about you that could only be gleaned from close intimate contact by two people that know you too well. Then the world will know that the facade you present is only that, a facade. Then you'll have to invent a new facade. And that's so hard and painful to do more than once. Chris Chris, I invent new facades as often as I change my socks. And, changing facades is like changing socks, in that, often is often not often enough. It reminds me of an AA idea that someone once shared with me: uncovering layers of emotional damage and dysfunction can be like peeling off the layers of an onion - every time you peel off one layer, there's another layer underneath. I can't think of any metaphor that could make you crave a drink more than that one does. Cool, soothing beer... Polly Whee! The People Are you going by 40th street black now? I'll have to go back into the archives and compare stuff. Reminds me of techno DJs who find they have to change names when they switch genres (from jungle to deep house or bigbeat, for example). I'm just writing to say that that was great (Whee!The people) for reasons I'm only guessing at right now and it has lots of interesting implications for the town I'm living in, Prague, but in the opposite direction. Given the hordes of Americans that stomp through, maybe you've been here. It's one of the only towns really unscathed by WWII, and it was one of Europe's gems to start with. I worked at a paper a few years ago here which once ran a picture of a double-steepled cathedral on the main square that made the steeples look like mickey mouse ears. The point being that the effect of Disneyland is to make it difficult to take something as beautiful and old as Prague seriously. "It almost looks like the real thing," people joke. Prague as theme park vs. Prague as financial center is a serious issue for planning folks here as modern methods of using office space tend to clash with those from, say, the 16th century. For the city to thrive, both of those worlds have to be coddled to and zoned for. Downtown Prague today is a mix of sunglassed, screaming Italians, Czechs dressed up in Mozart outfits handing out concert invitations, chubby Americans in Jams and college t-shirts, and suits talking into their mobile phones in any language as they sprint across the old square. If Disney were to build a park somewhere on the outskirts of town, out by the industrial and business parks already growing there, I think Prague would have a schizophrenic meltdown. Great stuff. (Any articles or book suggestions that pertain would be appreciated.) Robert McLean <mcleanr@ini.cz> Thanks for reading and sending a note. My e-mail was briefly switched with St. Huck's. Taking my own look through his archives, I wish I were him instead of me full-time. Thanks for the interesting take at Prague, which I'm guessing is nothing like Youngstown, Ohio but sounds equally terrifying. If Disney doesn't end up building there, perhaps the closest things to Mickey Mouse (squeaky voice, inexplicable world icon status, eerie and unsettling late-life makeover), Mr. Michael Jackson, will make good on his promise of a Neverland (Really) East. Best, 40th Street Black Second time writing to you. Thanks for your response to the last. Theme parks! Deep thoughts about trivial pursuits, eh? Yet, this at a time when I'm actually agonizing about whether or not to attempt an unbudgetable trip to Kennnywood PA before they close for the winter and tear down the infamous Steel Phantom. In this case, nostalgia over the impending loss of something I've never seen is motivating me to consider going somewhere I'd never be motivated to otherwise go--I'd never imagine making a trip just to ride a rollercoaster unless I knew it was about to be torn down. Is that effective marketing or what? They'll probably make up, in last-minute Phantom-mourning attendance, what it costs them to tear it down and build a new ride. Also compelling, since I live in topical Orlando, are your thoughts on Downtowns and Park Culture; here we have lost our downtown, as a once-vital entertainment venue, to the ersatz mini-metropoli of Downtown Disney and Universal CityWalk.In this case, amusement parks are posing as places of business, rather than vice-versa, but then again, that's what they really are anyway, right? Still, it's sad for us, since Downtown Orlando used to be really hopping every night; now, if we want nightlife, we have to go hang with the tourists, rather than them getting to come hang with us. In any case, it's still a matter of the better-presented rides overshadowing the sideshow. I enjoy your writing. Stuart Nichols <snichols@rollins.edu> Thanks so much for writing. I was interested in hearing from someone who lived in Orlando. I watched some footage of basketball player Grant Hill making his trip to Orlando to decide whether to play for the Magic - because the lives of multi-millionaires are more important than my own - and I was struck by the fact that what they were selling as Orlando seemed to have nothing to do with any sense of the city, where I seem to remember at one point there being a clear distinction made by civic leaders. I hope you get to ride the Steel Phantom. I'm all for manufacturing nostalgia that whips you around a steel track as opposed to sitting there staring at you over half a vodka-tonic. 40th Street Black Dear 40th St. Black, excellent article on a fascinating subject. Years ago the journal Glyph - which I am sure has long ago vanished from sight - published an article by Louis Marin entitled "Disneyland: A Degenerate Utopia." The title says it all. Marin was a bright guy but his point of view is that of a snooty educated European revolted by the horrors of American commercialism. But if Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno could praise France - in 1947, when they wrote Dialectic of Enlightenment - for its whorehouses and pissoirs, I certainly don't feel apologetic about Disneyland or its assorted congeners.When I was in graduate school years ago, I lived next door to Belmont Park in Mission Beach here in San Diego. It had a great creaky old roller coaster - which I once rode on to sober up on a Sunday morning - and during the summer months, when the park stayed open until eleven at night, the entrance was littered with the puked remains of cotton candy. But my only memories of Belmont Park are fond ones. I'm happy to have had a chance to observe first-hand the gutsy pleasures of an institution like that - in contrast to the more pasteurized ones of Disneyland - just as I'm happy to have had a chance to see live burlesque when I was in my teens. There's a wonderful painting by Paul Cadmus of the Coney Island beach in the 1930's that really manages to get the raunchy unstructured spectacle of Americans at play on canvas - like a great shot out of an early sound film. Best wishes, Dave Clayton <daveclayton@worldnet.att.net> Hi Dave. Thanks so much for you note. I found a photo of the Cadmus painting — http://www.photo.net/ photo/pcd0222/cadmus- coney-island-58 — if anyone is interested. It's extremely vivid. My Belmont Park was "Adventureland," in North Webster, Indiana, home of the "Wild Mouse" roller coaster, the amusement equivalent of trying to drive your totaled car away from an accident because you told the officer you could. Nothing was more terrifying than the lean on that first curve. I sure hope we're never expected to apologize for Disney; the straight-to-video stuff would take up six months of free time all by itself. Best, 40th Street Black |
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![[Tim Cavanaugh]](/fish/staff/images/tim.gif)
![[Phillip Bailey]](/fish/staff/images/phil.gif){kind=small}
