Poor, unfortunate ride.

Here's a ride-through of the anticipated dark ride, Ariel's Undersea Adventure.



Wow.

"Hey! Remember that Little Mermaid movie we made, a few years ago? Yes? Well, just in case you don't, here's a synopsis of its major scenes! Now available on Disney Blu-ray™!"

I'm of the opinion that when you make a dark ride, its content should dictate its form. Peter Pan's Flight, for example, uses miniatures and a suspended ride vehicle to simulate flying like Peter and friends. You could just as easily make Peter Pan's Flight into a Dumbo's Flight ride, and it would be just as affecting.

Peter Pan's Flight isn't interested in telling the story of the film it's based on. It prioritizes the experience of flying over London and Neverland more than re-telling the film's story. It gives you an experience you can't get in front of a television set. It gives you an experience you can only get in Fantasyland.

Following this ideology (like WDI once did), I can think of two options for a Little Mermaid ride.

A submarine ride (a dark ride that's actually underwater). Since dance and fluidity of movement are so important to the movie, the challenge would be building animatronics that are graceful underwater, and not clunky like the ones in (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea / Finding Nemo's Submarine Voyage).

A dark ride that simulates being underwater. The challenge would be building animatronics, sets, and ride vehicles that believably adhere to underwater physics, while still maintaining the grace mentioned above. WDI has already toyed with this, set-wise, in the queue to the Seas with Nemo and Friends, so this isn't a revolutionary suggestion on my part.

Projecting a few bubbles on the walls and hanging metal overhead to look like currents don't quite cut it. Also, Ariel's beehive, lol. A for effort, fellas.

Ariel's Undersea Adventure is a soulless exercise. Its only successes are the movie's successes. Fortunately there are ample successes, since the Little Mermaid is a great film, but it's a shame that all of WDI's effort went into xeroxing a great film.

I shouldn't be harsh. I can't imagine how many Imagineers had to move to Ursula's garden after building this ride.

The wind knocked over my Red Bull can.

It spilled on my script notes.

I had a fuckin' paroxysm.

It only spilled on a few pages of notes. These notes were typed. These notes were saved on my computer. These notes could be replaced by pressing Ctrl+P.

But I took the can and whipped it around my head until the remaining Red Bull was marinating me, my chair, the sliding glass door, and some palm trees.

And I grabbed the notes--both the wet pages and the dry--and flung them into the pool.

And I crushed the can against a wall, and then I crushed it width-ways.

And this tantrum was directed at the wind.

The fucking wind.

I'm in therapy, and I exercise, and I meditate, and I keep myself very well occupied. I don't quite know how to cope with wanting to beat up a meteorological force.

If you have any ideas, you can find me taunting Poseidon's bullshit son, Aeolus.

I went on a date.

She was interesting. I was awkward, and wanted to die.

But the night had its perks. She had pretty great taste in music. She was kind enough to share Gold Panda's "Quitters Raga" with me, for one.



She also had pretty great taste in music videos.

Music videos are not my thing. I love music because I'm jealous of it...of how easily it evokes emotions: subtle emotions, bold emotions, and emotions that're too alien for words.

It takes reams of prose to do what music does in two minutes. And music doesn't need the investigation that poetry requires, nor the focus that paintings demand.

Music slugs you in the fucking heart.

So attaching a video to it...well, it limits the experience. It does the introspection for you. "Here's what you should be imagining when you hear this."

Critics of Fantasia, for example, resent associating "Dance of the Hours" with tutu'd hippopotami.



The counter-argument is that Fantasia is a fucking masterpiece, and fuck you.

My date phrased it better (but only slightly). She explained that her favorite music videos provide a thrill of escapism.

The video for Beirut's "Elephant Gun" has a bunch of people twirling on a soundstage, but the song loads it with so much nostalgia, celebration, longing, and whimsy that she wished she could live there. The combination of music and film was enough to make her feel like a crowded, confetti-littered room could be a home.



Sigur Rós is important to me and my introspection...but when she showed me the video for "Gobbledigook," I had to admit, it wasn't half bad.



I was not my best self during my date, but if audio and visual can coexist, maybe I can too.

My inaugural moustache.

September 2010 - May 2011.


I don't remember my upper lip being so tall. It must've grown since September.