James Lileks goes to Disneyworld

James Lileks goes to Disneyworld: " For my Internet dollar, no one is funnier than James Lileks, and he's in top form here with his trip report from Disneyworld.

Dinner was large. The portions are huge. They might as well put the plate down and say ‘here’s more than you can possibly eat, and here’s nine potatoes on the side. Would you like another gallon of high fructose corn syrup? Okay, well, don’t forget to leave room for six pies.’ There’s something a bit sad about seeing childless adult Disney fans, lanyards spattered with pins, eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments. On the other hand, what gives them happiness? Food and Disney. This is the happiest place on earth after all -- even though there seems to be a subset of Disney nerds who appear immune to the very thing they've come to experience. But that's another story for later.

Off to Downtown Disney, which we hadn’t visited before. Sheer marketing genius: an open-air shopping center designed to extract the last possible penny from every molecule of the Disneyverse. I loved it. As I’m sure I noted last year, you’re either immune to the Mouse or you get it, and if you get it that means the white-gloved hand has closed around something deep in your emotional constitution and squeezed, and squeezed hard. It’s best to get the Mouse and still maintain critical distance, because then you’re not just wallowing in the warm bathos of nostalgia and the murky brew of ersatz Americana, you’re laughing with delight at its innumerable manifestations.

We found the giant World of Disney store, and there (G)Nat was entranced. Me too. Behold the zombie Thumpers, screaming for BRAAAAINS.

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(Via Boing Boing.)