It’s raining here in Charm City and I’m packing my car and heading for what would have been the Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow had Walt Disney not been a cigarette smoker.  But what’s there now is still very nice, and so is the rest of it.  Disney World is Huge, and the first time I went there last November I spent most of my time just gawking at the immensity of it.  Now I have a better idea of what I want to do, and more time to do it.  I also want to wave ‘hi’ to a certain someone, and maybe see him smile one more time.

I’m spending a week, but not in the park this time, which will make it harder to just tune out the entire world like I did last time.  But the hotels inside the park are way too expensive…even the so-called "value" hotels.  There are so many other nice hotels and motels crowding around the entrances to the park that it’s not hard to find something even nicer then the mid priced Disney hotels at, I kind you not, about a third of the cost.  But then you are not in the park the entire time, and being wrapped completely inside that park almost makes it worthwhile.  You really can just leave the world behind for a while, and live in a place where it really is a small world after all, and there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and find yourself believing that dreams really do come true.

Once upon a time I viewed all that as nothing more then cheap escapism.  But the world, and my life, just stresses me out too much now.  I’m single, I’m desperately lonely, and I’m living in a world that never seems to let any chance go by to tell me it hates my guts.  And there is still that sense in the land of Walt, of all those things I thought the world was, and the future would be.  You can see it slowly fading as Disney’s handiwork is overlaid with newer things, some of which I doubt he would have liked, and some which just don’t hit the mark he would have.  But even as it fades, it lifts the spirit.  At least in someone of my generation.

You have to experience the parks to realize, again if you’re my age and remember watching him on television, how wide Walt Disney’s imagination ranged.  People think of Disneyland and they think of the part of the park called Fantasyland.  But there was Tomorrowland and Frontierland and Adventureland.  There was the little Main Street where everyone entered the park.  There was the hall of presidents, and the river boat and the monorail and the people movers.  There was the ground breaking animation, but also tons of live action film, and nature series and documentaries. Look a little deeper, beyond all the eye candy and the rides and the exhibits, and you see, astonished, a park infrastructure that is still held in awe by architects.  This operation is Huge and yet it runs smoothly.  And Disney World in Orlando is several orders of magnitude bigger, and it Still runs smoothly.  Chuck Jones once told Disney he wanted his job (Disney told him that position was already filled), and Jones was himself an fantastically creative animator.  But there was no city of tomorrow in Chuck Jones, let alone a World.

Last time I walked through the parks down in Disney World, it all came back to me…that it’s a small world after all…that the search for knowledge is a great adventure…that tomorrow was something to look forward to with a smile.  People told me after I came back home last November, how much better I looked, how more at ease I seemed.  One person insisted I must have gotten laid.  I hadn’t of course…but it was almost like that in terms of how good life seemed again.  For a little while…

So now I’m packing the Mercedes for another trip south.  Before I leave I briefly scan the web.  I see Andrew Sullivan reporting the Rod Dreher has replied to Damon Linker, who has in turn replied back.  Linker, you may recall, asked Dreher if he had something, anything, besides The Bible Says So to justify his obsession with the Homosexual Menace.  Dreher gives the expected answer back…

If homosexuality is legitimized — as distinct from being tolerated, which I generally support — then it represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth. It is to lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality. I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human. And I fully expect to lose this argument in the main, because even most conservatives today don’t fully grasp how the logic of what we’ve already conceded as a result of being modern leads to this end.

Note the hyperbole.  The horror of individual desire being seen as more legitimate then his cheapshit barstool prejudices.  The knee jerk slandering of that desire as essentially nihilistic.  But what Dreher is afraid of here isn’t that the human heart is nothing, but that he is.  In the end, the Homosexual Monster, like the Dangerous Black Man and The Greedy Jew represents nothing more then the abyss he stares into every morning in the bathroom mirror.

This is why I am going back to Disney World.  I want to spend some more time in a place where I can have that vision of the world and tomorrow I had as a kid back again.  Where it’s a small world after all.  Where I can return a stranger’s smile and not wonder if they want to cut my ring finger off and stick a knife in my heart, so they can go to heaven.

Probably not.   But I haven’t been blogging as often as I have previously and it’s because I’m not sitting in front of a computer nearly as much.  As I said previously, I’m finding I get a lot more done around the house when I’m not sitting down at my computer.  But something else is happening.  Something I was sort-of hoping would happen, though I hadn’t taken into account what it might mean for my blogging patterns.  Slowly, but inevitably, my iPhone is becoming my all purpose communication – entertainment – information widget. 

When it first hit the streets, the iPhone was lacking a couple of really important items in my personal information management toolkit: a sync-able notepad and ToDo tracker.  But I have really great third party iPhone apps now that fill those slots.  And as I get more comfortable with using them, I use Mowgli, my main household computer, less and less. 

Last weekend, I had Mowgli off almost the entire time.  I ran Bagheera, the art room Mac, to finish a couple of photography projects that I’d left on my plate for far too long.  But Mowgli is slowly being relegated to finances and work related projects.  I am keeping in touch with the world, and with my daily life, more and more with just the iPhone now.   

And…there is this:  My little patch of the good earth is on the cusp of spring, and I don’t want to be angry all the time.  I read the news, in particular the continuing culture war on gay people, and I get angry.  So I am avoiding the news.

This Saturday, I’m going to Disney World again, for a week.  Mostly to just spend some more time in a place where it’s a small world after all, there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and dreams really do come true.  Better there, then driving across the mid-west and listening to hate radio the whole way.  My brother said they still have their YES ON 8 campaign signs planted in their front yards of houses all over Oceano, Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande.

Andrew Sullivan posts a YouTube under the heading, The Strangeness of Germans…

You’d think he’s never seen Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. There’s nought so queer as folk Andrew. We Americans have our own strange little ways too. Take a trip into Sid and Marty Kroft land sometime.

You want strange Andrew…? Try a little…Walt Disney? Oh yes. This clip is from Alice in Wonderland, and some of the best animation ever produced. The animator who did the character of Alice was a master…simply a master. But the entire film is a masterpiece of animation. The eye candy is everywhere and it all moves and flows perfectly. This clip from the film starts off being your usual Disney cartoon slapstick but the strange comes in at about 2:15 into it. Remember, Disney did Fantasia too…

I’ll bet if I poked around British movies and TV I could find myself some grade ‘A’ strange in there too. We humans are a funny lot. Strange makes the world go ’round Andrew…

When I was in Disney World recently, I made a point to ride the monorails.  I’d been absolutely fascinated by those things ever since I saw the pictures of the first ones in Disneyland back in the early 70s.  I’ve wondered ever since why more cities didn’t have something like them. 

On the trip from Magic Kingdom back to the Transportation center, which is a transfer point from the Magic Kingdom and Resort lines to the Epcot line, you go past several Disney resort areas, and the voice in the cars narrating the journey takes note of a little wedding pavilion along the way, just between the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian resorts…

Disney’s Wedding Pavilion

With all the grandeur of a classic Victorian summer home, Disney’s Wedding Pavilion offers many enchanting possibilities for the wedding ceremony of your dreams. With its palm-fringed solarium and views of Cinderella Castle across the Seven Seas Lagoon, this magnificent non-denominational chapel can accommodate your Escape Wedding ceremony with style and grace.

I was coming by then to really like Disney World, and the It’s A Small World After All mentality that pervades it.  But I had to wonder if that wedding pavilion was open to all couples, or whether Disney would, to avoid controversy, stipulate that the marriages had to be legally binding in the state of Florida, which had just then passed an anti same-sex marriage amendment.

Well…know I know…

Gay couples given keys to the Magic Kingdom as Disney relents

The Guardian, Saturday April 7 2007 

Disney’s theme parks are synonymous with the great American family day out, with the company’s traditional hospitality and characters having enthralled generations for more than half a century.

Now Mickey Mouse has taken a step away from protocol by throwing open the gates of Cinderella’s castle for same-sex partnership ceremonies. Gay and lesbian couples can, for the first time, stage their own commitment ceremonies anywhere on Disney property, a privilege heterosexual couples have enjoyed for decades.

"We are not in the business of making judgments about the lifestyle of our guests," said Donn Walker, spokesman for Disney Parks and Resorts. "We are in the hospitality business, and our parks and resorts are open to everyone."

The shift in position came after complaints that gay couples were specifically excluded from the Fairy Tale Weddings programme at Disney’s theme parks in California and Florida, and on its cruise liners. While others had a wide choice of marriage options, such as taking their vows on a white-knuckle ride or beneath a fireworks show with Minnie Mouse as a bridesmaid, gay couples had to organise their own private ceremonies in rented meeting rooms at resort hotels.

The Walt Disney Company has long been a tacit supporter of gay tourism. It has come under fire from the religious right for policies that include partner benefits for homosexual employees. In the 90s, rightwing groups held protests against the annual "Gay Days", when more than 100,000 gay and lesbian visitors go to Disney resorts.

The company blamed its weddings policy on laws in Florida and California prohibiting same-sex unions. But after pressure from the gay website afterelton.com, it dropped its requirement that Fairy Tale Weddings packages, which start at $8,000 (£4,100), have to include a valid marriage licence. "This is consistent with our policy of creating a welcoming, respectful and inclusive environment for all of our guests," Mr Walker said.

Michael Jensen, the editor of the website, had complained that Disney appeared to be hiding behind the law. Although same-sex wedding ceremonies were not legally recognized, he said, there was nothing to prevent gay couples holding their own ceremonies.

"Elton John, who had a civil union with his partner David Furnish last year in England, would have been turned away from Disney’s wedding gates," Mr Jensen said, pointing out that the singer had earned the company millions of dollars with his music for The Lion King.

Note that happened back in 2007.  Nice.  And I’ll say this…you can’t stay in the Disney theme parks for long without realizing there is a ton of gay talent there, working hard to make sure everyone enjoys their stay.  From the "cast members" in character costume (including several really cute Peter Pan’s I saw during my stay) to the ones who were simply working support roles and keeping the whole complex running smoothly, my Gaydar, which has trouble going off around DuPont Circle, was going off like mad.  And even though Gay Days for this year were long over, I still saw the occasional same sex couple strolling through the crowds, hand in hand, or arm in arm.  Nobody bothered them.

The pleasant, Let’s All Get Along And Enjoy The Day attitude was infectious and disarming.  You felt it everywhere.  In Magic Kingdom I took a bad spill one night near main street, while hurrying to the monorail.  I’d mis-stepped over a curb and tumbled hard onto a cobblestone pavement with my cameras dangling around me.  Luckily neither they nor I were badly hurt, but instantly a crowd of about a dozen or so folks were all around me asking me if I was okay, and helping me back up.  In another park I am certain they’d have just walked right on by. 

We are in the hospitality business…  That, really, sums it up.  And it’s the right answer to give to bigoted louts who just can’t enjoy themselves unless other people are suffering.  But there is more to it.  It’s that It’s A Small World After All mentality.  That really does seem to be the bedrock there.  I wrote previously how refreshing, how exhilarating it was to see the story of life on earth, and the history of human progress told, not only matter of factly, but that the study of science and history and archeology was a grand adventure.  There was something else in Disney World that genuinely lifted my spirits more, much more, then I would have imagined going into it.  That, It’s A Small World After All mentality that pervaded everything there. 

Sniff at the Disney-esq sentimentality if you like…but it gave my soul a much needed boost to face the real world outside the gates (where I later learned hundreds had been killed in by terrorists in India…).  I’d thought of it as escapism.  It isn’t.  It’s taking a break.  You just can’t let the world bear down on you constantly without going nuts.  It’s good to have somewhere you can go to remember your dreams, and why they were good, and let the power of those dreams lift you once more.

So it should not surprise the Kultur Krieger that Disney of all mainstream American icons, is being gay friendly.  For one thing, they’re in the hospitality business, not the beat your neighbor over the head with ballot initiatives business.  For another, Disney has always believed in the better tomorrow, and in the power of dreams.  If all that is a fairy tale, I’ll take it over the one George Bush, James Dobson, and the Mormon church are selling to America these days.

It isn’t cheap by any means, but same-sex couples can have that magic moment now too.  They can exchange vows by the shores of a beautiful lagoon, with Cinderella’s Castle in the background.  Everything will be just right, perfect even, like a dream come true. 

Then they can go forward together, back into the world, breath their life into it, and make the dream real…

A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes Come True
by Harrison Ellenshaw