A Higher Look at Disney

     I have been a big fan of Disney movies my entire life. It's the kind of thing that I thought I would have eventually grow out of, cartoons are for kids, right? But thanks to full grown men like Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane, cartoons became acceptable, and even exclusively for adults. I still watch plenty of cartoons, and Disney is no exception to that. 

    You may have seen the recent release from Disney, a fantastic little movie called Encanto. What you might not know, is that Encanto has been destroying records since its release. The song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" (an earworm that burrows in deep and just won't let go) has shattered every record for a Disney song that has existed, leaving even "Let It Go" in the dust.

Actual picture of Disney execs in the green glow from all the cash they made off Encanto

    The success of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" has gone beyond the cartoon. Last week, it was the #1 song on the Global Billboard charts. I probably contributed to that a little, seriously that song gets STUCK in your head. In the last week I've woken up with lines of it in my head 4-5 times.

    But I am also a fan of the underrated and underappreciated Disney films out there. (Atlantis? Treasure Planet? C'mon Disney, give us the live-action adaptation we deserve!) And when it comes to music,  I can tell you with no doubt at all that the best score in a Disney film isn't Encanto, or Frozen, or any of the dozens of films scored by the great Alan Menkin (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid).

    No, like any hardcore man-child of the 90's, I know that the Disney movie that had the best score of them all was " A Goofy Movie" (No, really!). It didn't set any records, It didn't top international charts and set the internet ablaze.(It was released in 1995. Dial-up internet was very new.) But every song is a great, feel-good, catchy tune that adds to the story rather than interrupts it. In fact, I'm still waiting for a Powerline album. I would be all over that like white on rice.

On this, Disney and myself don't see I-2-I.

    I have watched A Goofy Movie probably 3 dozen times, with most of those viewing back in middle/high school. When my mom asked me once why I watched that movie so many times, I told her that I identified with Max. I remember this highly offended my dad at the time. But to set the record straight, my dad is no Goofy, and I wouldn't have dreaded taking a long road trip with him. (In fact we did at least once that I recall).

    The reason I used to identify with Max was because I knew what it was like to be invisible to my classmates, and the desire to make that one girl notice me. (I don't remember who the girl was, knowing me there were surely several) As an adult however, I find that I identify with Goofy more and more. Poor guy just wants his son to love him.

    So my new hobby, as an adult, is to get stoned and binge watch Disney movies. My (sometimes overly) ADD brain latches on to certain details and spins whole new meanings out of single lines, and it makes for entertaining viewing.

    Let me give you an example from the great A Goofy Movie that I caught recently. At the beginning of their road trip (just before the fantastic song 'On the open road') Goofy tries to get a despondent and pouting Max to play 20 questions. Goofy's guess? Walt Disney. Walt. Disney.

    That means that Goofy (and by extension all Disney characters) know of their creator. They know that they are from the mind of one man and do not really exist. (that was fairly terrifying and I had to pause the movie to calm down)

  

Just look at those cold, lifeless eyes.

    For a less extreme example, I want to bring up Zootopia (which by the way, might just have the worst score of any Disney film).  The tale is told from the perspective of Judy Hopps, but in my last higher viewing, I saw the story mostly from the perspective of Nick. Poor Nick is just a victim of society. He is a fox in a city where foxes are second-class citizens. He runs a hustle on an unsuspecting farm-girl because its the only way he can get supplies for his business.

    Think about it. He just wanted to buy a popsicle, and they wouldn't sell him one just because he's a fox. (remember the elephant pulls out a sign that says 'we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone'. might as well have said 'whites only') Once he manages to get the supplies to make his popsicles, he ends up being stalked by this rookie cop, despite having committed no crimes, once again because he is a fox(profiling!).

    This same cop continues to blackmail him and use him to go around procedure, even to the point of illegal search and seizure.(BTW, Midnicampum Holicithias, the night howlers from the movie, are real and super toxic to animals) 

    He was incredible businessman (imagine trying to make $200 a day, 365 days a year since you were twelve, just selling popsicles and popsicle sticks) that goes to extra lengths to protect the environment, (every popsicle stick gets recycled and reused) but he gets treated like a pariah by the others in his community. 

    I guess most of these high realizations so far have been pretty dark. Dang Disney, I thought you were supposed to be a family company. But that certainly isn't a reason to stop now. Until next week, and remember, don't talk about Bruno!

  

Freaking COVID man.

    I've been tested for coronavirus at least ten times. I finally got a positive result.  I thought for sure I was going to dodge that particular bullet, but omicron is a contagious little bitch and after more than two years of this shit, people are going to congregate whether it's good for them or not.

    This is a story about getting way too high in Denver. I was going to tell this story for its comedic potential and just stick to that, but now it's also the story about how I caught covid. I want to insist to you that this is not a tale of recklessly licking doorknobs and coughing on people I sit next to. I did what I could to minimize the spread of the virus.

    I follow most of the covid guidelines. I wear a mask where it is mandated, I wash my hands frequently. I got both vaccine shots, and even a booster when I was due. But it apparently wasn't enough. Within a week  of our return from Denver, three members of my family tested positive for covid.

Fauci is so disappointed in me.

    I went to Denver to see Tool in concert. (In 2000 the band went from using all caps (TOOL) to all lower caps (tool). no one seems to know which is correct anymore.)

    It has been nearly three years since tooL released its last album, Fear Inoculum, and along with it, they released all of their music to streaming services for the first time. If you had asked me then what my favorite band is, I'd have told you Metallica. Since gaining access to streaming their music, my favorite band is most definitely TOol. (In fact, according to the stats spotify gives you about your streaming habits, I am in the top 0.2% of TOoL streamers. Listening to ToOl while writing this in fact.)

    Anyway, my lovely wife, Princess Consuela Bananahammock (names have been altered to protect the mostly innocent), bought me tickets to see this fabulous band in concert for Christmas last year. It had been planned for 3 months, and I wasn't about to miss it.

    Denver, Colorado. Capital city of the first state to legalize recreational marijuana. The concert was to be held at Ball Arena in downtown Denver, and there was no way I was going to be sober for the show. Early on the afternoon in question, I stopped by a local dispensary and picked up something I had never tried before, drinkable THC. I'd done edibles of course, but never a drinkable. The package was covered with warnings about not taking too much, and how to properly dose out yourself just enough THC. So anyway, I threw out the measuring cup and drank a little more than half.

    Then with testing-my-personal-limits-of-tolerance levels of weed in my system, I called an uber and set out for the concert.

    I knew it was going to be bad while I was still in the uber. I got paranoid. And I'm talking 'this driver is going to take me to a shack and harvest my organs' paranoid. More than once during the car ride in, I considered just having him take me back to the hotel. But this was TooL damnit, and I wasn't about to miss Tool just because of a little paranoia. 

    I managed to make it to my seat by sheer force of will, and it was a great seat. Once in my seat, I didn't leave it again until the end of the concert.(I was sure if I left my seat I wouldn't be able to find it again, and if I asked for help finding it, they would kill me and harvest my organs.) I sat for easily an hour before the concert started, getting higher, and more paranoid by the minute. 

    

Actual picture of the stage from my seat (why does it always feel closer than it looks?)

    By the time the concert started, I had a serious case of the "no touchies". Over the last hour, I'd watched literally tens of thousands of people file into the same one room. We had to provide proof of immunization to get in, but in my paranoia induced state I couldn't stop thinking: How many of these people faked their vaccine card? How many are asymptomatic carriers and don't know it? How many of these people are here just because they aren't willing to miss TOOl in concert because they've got the sniffles? I clutched that mask to my face and wished it was thicker.(And see, I ended up getting it in the end. It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you.)

    The music was sublime. I danced, I sang, I headbanged, I pounded out drum solos on my chest. From the first note, I was lost in the music, and all was right with the world again. Though, I jumped a foot every time someone brushed against me, and I was constantly checking to make sure I still had my wallet. I made such a scene that the two people on either immediate side of me did not return after intermission. Well, it probably didn't have anything to do with me, but in my paranoia, I was certain it was just because of me.

    After another paranoia-fevered taxi ride, I finally made it back to Princess Consuela Bananahammock who'd stayed at the hotel. Turns out she'd had the other half of the drinkable and was every bit as paranoid as I'd been, but that's her story. Neither of us intend to drink it ever again.

Birds of a feather, am I right?