A Pictorial History of Me at Disney

It's Disneyland's 59th birthday today. Disney parks are twenty years and one day older than me, and I was always taught to respect my elders. So in the interest of that, I've decided to take a sweeping pictorial look at me in Disney parks. Nothing deep. Nothing major. Just a picture or two of all my trips there, from 2007 to 2014. Seven years going to Disney. It's been a wild ride.

My first ride on Splash Mountain ever! (May 2007)

Trip #2: Joe and I travel to WDW for the first time together! (October 2007)

My dear friends Brad and Kay came with me on my third trip. As you can tell, even though he's known me for decades, Brad is TERRIFIED OF ME.  :)  (This was also the trip I didn't tell anyone about and boy, did some folks get mad about that.) (May 2008)

Joe and I decided to do all Four Parks In One Day.  One E-ticket, one D-ticket, one headliner, and two meals spread out over the course of the day.  It was awesome.  We are never doing that again. (September 2008)

My love affair with Baloo begins! (December 2008)

I took my Mom to WDW for the first time ever. She was especially fond of the Rock & Rollercoaster. (February 2009)

I went to Disney World alone after I lost my job (yay severance package) and tried to cure my depression. It did not work. My saddest trip, but still not, like, horrible. (March 2009)

For our 10th anniversary, I took Shawn to WDW for the first time.  He enjoyed the shirts and the beverages the best. (May 2009)

I went to the last hurrah of the Adventurer's Club, dressed in my steampunk finery.  (September 2009)

My second Shawn trip, and my friend Marty's first. I got them both hooked, because Kevbots are like that. (January 2010)

My first trip ever to Disneyland. I went with my friend Josh and I met my friend (and future frequent Disney buddy) Paul (and his husband Steve) for the first time! (April 2010)

I took my Mom to Epcot. She was less impressed than me.  Joe and I met the Crew for the first time! (October 2010)

Paul, Joe, and I go to our first WDW Today Reunion, and I am WAY too excited about being inside the old Wonders of Life pavilion. (December 2010)

Joe and me and The Crew get drinky. (March 2011)

My second trip to Disneyland, and Paul came along! (May 2011)

I celebrated my 36th birthday at Disney World. In Florida. In mid-July.  I won't be doing that again.  But I still went to Typhoon Lagoon for the first time! (July 2011)

Disney World's 40th Anniversary! You were supposed to look like 1971.  I grew a pornstache but Paul REALLY committed. (October 2011)

 

Joe's and my first Osbourne Lights, and he's apparently going to murder me at Epcot.  Worse places to die, AM I RIGHT?! (December 2011)

Disneyland in August, with a whole bunch of Disney World friends (Doug and Kristen among them, here on the Matterhorn) and of course Paul!  Yay!  (August 2012)

Shawn, Marty, Joe, and I went to EPCOT 30, the 30th anniversary of EPCOT Center/EPCOT/Epcot. (October 2012)

My first Reunion with Jeff!  (December 2012)

Then we did a bro trip to WDW, just for kicks! (March 2013)

Jeff's first trip to Disneyland, and we took Scott!  (April 2013)

Gay Days, where I met Joey, Doug, and Robert, a new frequent Disney buddy! (June 2013) 

  

Jeff and I went on our first Disney Cruise, and after spent some time at the Wilderness Lodge with so many buddies!  Paul, Jeff, Marty, Joe, and I (and sometimes Robert) rocked that week.  (November 2103)

Paul, Jeff, and I stayed at the CONTEMPORARY and things went awesome. (April 2014)

For our 15th Disneyversary (IT'S A WORD), I took my friend Joe to Disneyland for the first time.  We had a blast.  (June 2014)

After "Life With Archie"

The year was 2009. I was working on two major projects dealing with comic books – a chapbook called Drawn into Darkness, about Stephen King and his relationship with comics, and an entry on Tales from the Crypt and their publisher, E.C. Comics, for a comic book encyclopedia. I was covering horror comics (my first comic-book love), but I kept being dragged back into the world of Archie. King wrote a piece for the first Archie Americana collection that intrigued me, and I couldn’t escape the fact that the first publisher of Archie, Jon Goldwater, spearheaded the Comics Code (a self-imposed rule that restricted what comics could show and talk about), which effectively put E.C. Comics out of business.

I am often drawn to pop culture with deep history, especially if that pop culture is ongoing. That’s where my Disney thing comes from, not to mention my interest in things like the New York Times Bestseller List. The fact that Archie existed in the 1940s and keeps existing thrills me. I bought old collections and read pop histories of the company and the comic. Then I started buying the regular comics, like Archie and Betty & Veronica, hoping against hope that a new Josie & the Pussycats comic would launch soon. Man, I loved those cat ears.

Then a few interesting things happened. In 2010, a new comic called Life with Archie hit stores. It told two stories in two alternate future timelines: one in which Archie marries Betty, one in which he marries Veronica. The stories were fascinating. Pushing the Riverdale gang into young adulthood was only the beginning. They killed off Miss Grundy – in both storylines! Kevin Keller married a dude! Cheryl Blossom had cancer! Moose Mason became the mayor! And on. And on. It was a bit soapy, but that worked. For a long time, it was my absolute favorite comic. I looked forward to it every single month, to catch up with what my pals in Riverdale were up to, what predicaments they would find themselves in, and who they’d fall in and out of love with.

I loved the writing, which was a bit more sophisticated than that of the regular Archie books, and I loved the serialized nature of the story. Both those aspects filtered into the regular Archie books, which started doing miniseries and sci-fi and fantasy and pretty much anything they wanted. Kevin Keller had been introduced as the first gay Archie character, and he got his own comic. In one storyline, Archie fell in love with Valerie of Josie and the Pussycats, and they got married and had a child and it was all very cute. Afterlife With Archie, a remarkably mature and unsettling ongoing zombie story, debuted and captured me and a mass audience. I got a Moose Mason tattoo. And somewhere in there, I started … well, I started livetweeting the Archie comics, poking gentle fun at the characters and their crazy situations as I read them.

1950s Moose Tattoo

But never Life with Archie. That was sacred. That was my comic. And now it’s coming to an end.

Deaths of comic-book characters have been making headlines for awhile now. When I was in high school, the death of Superman was a big deal. More recently, Captain America’s death was all over the actual news. Those guys came back. And it’s not like Archie – the “regular universe” Archie – is really going anywhere. But an Archie, the one I liked the most, in the comic I liked the most, is dying. I knew that going into the issue, and I knew that he was going to die heroically. I was prepared. I was ready.

I was neither prepared nor ready.

For this penultimate issue, both alternate future universes – the Betty Universe and the Veronica Universe – merge. Pronouns proliferate. Archie is in love with her; he’s thinking about what she is doing. This is important, because we need to know that in any timeline, any story, any take, Archie Andrews is fundamentally the same: a good guy who loves his friends, his town, his life. The entire issue is a celebration of all that. He ruminates on the past, laments that he doesn’t often think about the future, and keeps running into the people in the present who help define him.

It works as both an elegy and an introduction, a significant balancing act writer Paul Kupperberg is more than up to handling. The death scene is as shocking and tragic as you might expect – more so, actually. This isn’t a super hero’s death. Archie’s just a guy, doing the right thing. The final panel, of an ice cream soda with three straws, knocked on its side, is heavy with both symbolism and history. A passing knowledge of the Archie comic immediately brings to mind that iconic image of Archie, Betty, and Veronica sharing a soda, all smiles. No one’s smiling now.

It’s a fitting end to this version of the character. The next issue, ONE YEAR LATER, will hopefully pick up the pieces and offer more reflection. We’re promised that “this is only the beginning” – a hopeful phrase whose importance has yet to be determined. For now, though, I’m going to read this issue again (and again), and say good-bye to the fictional friend I made four years ago. I’m sure going to miss him.

Different Out There

“You know what the coolest thing about LA was this time?” I asked Josh. I was on my bike. “Just, you know, bro-ing out on the couch watching TV.”

A hesitation from Josh. “We watched cooking shows. I’m not sure that counts as bro-ing out.”

“On the radio once, someone said he and his buddies broed out listening to Morrissey. I think our Cutthroat Kitchen marathon is a contender.”

Like, THE gayest?

I miss LA, that’s the thing. I always miss LA when I go, and it’s not just because Josh is there. That’s a big part of it. I always miss Josh. But it’s this whole mélange of things. Riding down the freeway, blasting Josh’s music, the wind in my hair because Josh has a jeep and that’s awesome. Looking up at the Hollywood Hills and imagining what it’s like to live up there. Walking over a mile to get to an open Starbucks because that’s what addiction is. I have other friends in LA I didn’t really get to see this time (though they saw me; Dave White drove by me while I was on my way back from Starbucks and then texted me). Palm trees. I don’t know what it is about palm trees. I go to Disney World all the time, and the place is lousy with palm trees, but it’s different out in Los Angeles. Everything is different in Los Angeles. That’s a cliché, but clichés always come from a place of truth.

Palm trees.

I keep trying to pin down what it is that I love about the place so much. The way I’ve explained it is, “It’s fascinating to me to see so much sincerity going into building something so artificial.” But that’s not quite fair. Sure, there’s a lot of LA that’s fake. The whole movie industry is telling lies for fun and profit. You have to pay to get your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But there’s an essential realness to the whole place, something I keep thinking I understand but then don’t, like string theory. My concept of what the place is, what it means, keeps shifting. It’s not like how I love Boston, where it’s in my blood, where knowing its buildings and streets and people is part of my DNA. It’s not how I love Athens, GA, where I can go there and feel bohemian with my buddy Joe, and everything I do is like being in college, from the rock shows to the late-night Waffle House marathons. It’s not like how I love New York; so many of my best friends live there, and there’s a routine there I love falling into, and it’s bright and shiny and there are always new places to eat.

There’s an inherent mystery to Los Angeles I keep falling in love with. Josh took me to the Chinese Theater to see a big explody sci-fi movie, and the movie was great, but there was something about being inside this grand movie palace, with its giant screen and rich red velvet curtains. I was dwarfed inside in the best way; humbled, to be sitting there with my buddy and scarfing Red Vines and watching Tom Cruise go back in time over and over. There’s a majesty, a mythos, that I built up in my head about Los Angeles before I ever went and which hasn’t fallen into tatters as I’ve visited more. I don’t know if that’s a me thing, by the way, or if it’s just the way some people are: the way I can see something over and over and over and never get tired of it. I always seek nuance and newness inside the same. I keep going back to Back to the Future. Dad bought the videotape way back when I was a lad and we watched it every night for about two months after dinner. And sometime in the last few viewings, I noticed that Twin Pines Mall had changed to Lone Pine Mall, and I got super excited and pointed it out to my Dad, and there was much rejoicing. There’s always something new in LA, and there’s always something strange, and I hear some people go crazy out there, but I think that’s part of it.

"That's YOU! On my LEG!"

I have this attachment to … I really want to say melancholy, but that’s not quite it. It has something to do with how I view myself as a writer, and how a writer is “supposed” to feel when he sits down to create. I’m always trying to tap into this … ugh, I don’t know, subtle desperation? Is that it? I’m not saying I want to suffer for my art (I’ve done plenty of suffering); it’s more that I want to feel constantly unfulfilled, always craving, always needing, always trying to be the absolute best and knowing I never will be. Not, you know, in life, just in my writing, just as a writer. I had that feeling so often when I was a teenager and stories were shooting out of me daily, like I’d opened a vein of creativity or something. And I’m not saying that the neverending half-depression I wandered through as a teenager is necessarily healthy or a requirement for my writing. I don’t really know what I’m saying.

Except that LA makes me feel that way when I’m out there, and that I like feeling that way. I like looking down at the lights of LA from the Hills. I like driving through the Valley. I love listening to music from LA, or about LA. I like seeing Oliver Hardy’s name on the Walk of Fame. It’s weird out there, but I’m weird, so it matches.

I have this plan for next November, a few months after I turn 40. I want to go out to Los Angeles and just write for a week. Spend a whole week just writing. Why November? Because that’s when people do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I haven’t done it in awhile, and I thought it might be fun to write an LA novel while I was in LA. Can I write 50,000 words in a week? Maybe not, but it might be fun to try.

This was stream of consciousness and it started out structured. But ah well. I haven’t pinned down my actual thoughts on this, so writing about it was never going to make total sense. My heart is from Boston but my soul’s from LA.

Right Down the Middle of Main Street USA, Part 5: "The Grand Finale"

Normally when I can’t sleep, I get up to write, or gauge whether or not the gym is open and ride out there. When I stir out of my thin doze at the Disneyland hotel, I get up and shower and go to Disneyland. Things are different out here.

My last full day, and I was at the gates before rope drop. There was nothing as concrete as a plan in my brain. That dream, the one where I’m riding my bike through an empty Disneyland, still lingered in my head. Time for instinct, Kev. You’ve done this enough that you know what you can hit early without having to wait too long in line, and to do the stuff that your friends just won’t want to do. I poised myself in the Hub in front of … well, it’s just the most adorable “castle” in the world … and waited for the announcement. It’s here that a good dose of German word combinations would really come in handy, because there’s no other way to describe the run-walk-gallop I did through Sleeping Beauty Castle on my way to Peter Pan’s Flight. Runwalkgallop? Anyway, Peter Pan is one of those east coast/west coast washes. It doesn’t have the moving cars of London … but holy gremlins, that starfield.

In rapid succession, I did me up some Classic Disneyland proper: Dumbo, Autopia, the Matterhorn. Twice. Someone needs to make a Lifetime movie about me and the Matterhorn, because it always hurts me and I always go back for more. Mother, May I Ride the Matterhorn? By the time Paul arrived, I’d had my fill of solo time and was ready for some good ol’ Star Tours excitement. Little did I know Paul was the Rebel Spy!

(For those not familiar with how Star Tours works, you get in a Star Cruiser, and you’re about to fly through the beautiful vacuum of space, when suddenly it turns out someone in your cabin is the Rebel Spy. They even show a picture of you! And by “you,” I mean everyone but me, because I don’t need to be the Rebel Spy. Is this because I’ve publicly stated that I don’t much care for Star Wars? I like Empire! Come on!)

“I’ve never been the Rebel Spy!” Paul exclaimed as we disembarked.

“Me neither,” I managed not to grumble.

“I’ve gotta get the T-shirt!” Because of course there’s a T-shirt.

He got the T-shirt.

Joe texted soon after, letting me know that friends of his – ours, as it turned out – had arrived: Mike Brister, who I knew back in the dim old days of LiveJournal, when everyone was there and no one was anywhere else, and Jonathan Belford, who I think I knew from before, but I couldn’t remember, because I’m terrible at names and likenesses and being a person. They were over in California Adventure, so we sauntered over and got ourselves situated by the Paradise Garden Grill, because omg tzatziki.

“Hey,” the Rebel Spy said to me as I literally licked tzatziki off my plate. “I think … I’m going to take off after this.” Paul lives in San Diego, which seems local to me, but is apparently like two hours away, and that’s without traffic. I mean, here he’s got the Haunted Mansion and California Screamin’, but back home he’s got a fiancée and a doggie and fine, the real world wins. This time.

Still, saying good-bye to Paul isn’t easy, because since that first time in Disneyland all those years ago, he’s become one of my best friends. Most of my best friends live far away, in other states, in other time zones. Seeing him again this year is currently up in the air, and even though we talk every day, I still miss him. Melancholy might be good for the writing, but it sucks when you’re in a happy place and you have to watch your friend walk away.

* * *

Dave was running late, so Mike and Joe and Jonathan and I busied ourselves on Goofy’s Sky School and the Silly Symphony Swings while we waited. For some reason, I was pretty sure that no one but me would be interested in the Swings, which swoop up and down high up over Paradise Bay, all to the tune of the “William Tell Overture.” But Joe stepped up readily enough, strapping in and taking off right in front of me. You don’t really know joy until you’ve seen Joe soaring. Sometimes I forget that he’s a theme park guy from way back, and that he’s been going on rides like this since before I even knew what a Disney park was.

With Dave trying his darndest to park and tram his way over to us, we settled in line for the Aladdin show, and I went to go get everyone drinks and snacks (and not, as far as anyone knew, hang out in the Animation building for a full six minutes because air conditioning and quiet). We shuffled in and took our seats and Mike and I were just starting to talk about the stage sets when the side door burst open, and there was Dave, because making an entrance is just something he does.

Joe seemed as impressed with Aladdin as everyone else (including my my buddy Josh, who isn’t the world’s biggest Disney fan, and is a theater guy); he laughed all the way through it, and hearing Joe laughing is one of life’s great pleasures. The show ended and we used our Fastpasses on Tower of Terror, everyone else expertly making the Olympic rings in the photo, and me doing … look, I don’t know. Maybe I’m shape-blind. Maybe I don’t know what shapes are, okay!? I learned it from watching you!

Then … guys, I don’t know if it was the giddiness of the day, or my need to shed some excess emotion, or the fact that we’d all stopped for some absolutely necessary Ghirardelli banana splits, but as we collapsed at the tables in Pacific Wharf, something in me snapped. And not bad snapped. Dave had this picture of a pug trying to get at a tennis ball. It was one of those stupid “ERMAHGERD” pictures that I always find sort of funny, but this was somehow next level holy fire laugh apocalypse. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I laughed till tears flowed out of my eyes and my banana split belly ached (even more) and I couldn’t breathe. And Dave kept going, “His legs just can’t reach,” and, “why doesn’t someone just roll the ball to him,” and “he’s trying so hard.” None of it helped. All of it helped. Hysteria never felt so right.

Eventually I calmed down and there was … well, I know we did Flo’s for lunch. Was Paul there for that? We did a full loop on the Disneyland Railroad, and Mike pointed out that the dinosaurs were the same as the ones in Universe of Energy, a neat little east/west combo that Joe seemed to get a kick out of. Eventually, Mike and Jonathan took off, and Dave and Joe and I got dandied up for our final dinner together, this time at the super fancy Steakhouse 55, right inside our hotel. Our hotel. The Disneyland Hotel. It’s still impossible to believe I stayed there.

The dinner was more subdued than the Ghirardelli meltdown had been. I was in my collared Disneyland shirt I’d bought on my second trip out and Joe was in something buttoned-down. I didn’t drink this time around, contenting myself with Shirley Temples, because they taste good and I’m an adult. I talked to Dave about some of the stuff he’d brought up the day before, about theme park operations and how fans, no matter how knowledgeable, don’t really know everything that goes on. It’s okay to be miffed at something Disney does that you don’t like, but it’s not the end of Disney, and it’s certainly not the end of the world. It came back around to my thoughts about why I’d done what I’d done with WestCotCenter. Does Disney need me to defend it? No, of course not. The people who think so much is wrong with Disney have labeled people like me “Pixie Dusters,” claiming that we think Disney can do no wrong. That had always bothered me too, because of course Disney does some stuff wrong, or at least some stuff I don’t like. I just had never let those things worry me overmuch, because for me, the good had always overwhelmingly outweighed the bad.

One of the things that had really set me to thinking was a bunch of tweets I’d seen from people who, like me, were very pro-Disney. When the concept art for the new Harry Potter land came out, most everyone was suitably impressed. I was suitably impressed. The last time I’d gone to Universal was pre-Harry Potter, and I had hated the park. Nothing impressive to me. But this stuff? This stuff looked very impressive. I found myself wanting to go and see and get immersed in these places that came straight out of the books I’d loved so much. And yet … and yet there were all these tweets from people saying they’d never go, because it would just give the Universal fanboys too much satisfaction. There were nitpicks. There were eyerolls and shrugs and a general sense of “meh, not Disney.” And that, more than any anti-Disney vitriol, made me slow my roll. No. This stuff is awesome. Just because this stuff is awesome doesn’t mean Disney isn’t.

It’s because the Internet allows extremes – rewards extremes. Subtlety isn’t one of online’s strong suits, especially in a world of 140 character thoughts and tl;dr reasonings. My stance had been to match extreme with extreme. To present a version of myself that was heightened all the time. When I would read fabrications or lies or half-truths or just really angry opinions, it would set me off, and here was my little forum to shout my disgruntled responses. Make it funny, I always told myself, and they’ll like it. They did. I got retweets and responses and likes, and that’s currency. That’s food.

But it’s also detrimental. My own honest reactions were being filtered by what I thought my followers would like me to like. I would look forward to Disney essays I thought were ridiculous and tear them apart. Only now do I realize I never asked myself two questions: 1. What right did I have to rip up someone else’s work, even if I hated it? What fucking right did I have, especially knowing that they put a lot of effort into taking pictures and constructing paragraphs and making it readable to the public at large. I may not like this stuff. I may not agree with this stuff. I may think this stuff is full of shit. But writing is hard. Putting yourself out there is hard. And here I come with my retro alternate Twitter account, saying that all this work you did was stupid.

2. Who appointed me the standard-bearer? I mean, that’s the question everyone should ask when they put themselves in the position of being an expert or a big name fan or a widely-followed pundit. But I’m not everyone. I’m me. I got into Disney seven years ago and fell in love with what the parks did, what they were and are and would be. How they made me feel, every time I was there. Did that make me the guy who deserved to tell other people how to like (or dislike) the parks? No. No, it didn’t.

We finished our steaks – I got a sirloin, and man, was it cooked perfectly – and headed out of Steakhouse 55. Dave headed toward the trams following a flurry of hugs and see-you-soons. Joe and I spent our last night in Disneyland together flying on the Matterhorn Bobsleds in the dark, riding the sleek red Monorail from our hotel to Tomorrowland, sailing the seas of the Caribbean. It was one of the few times Joe and I had the park to ourselves, and I was determined to make the most of it. I won’t be seeing him again until December, and that’s too long. It’s way too long. And before we go to sleep that night, our last night at the Disneyland Hotel, I realize I miss him already.

* * *

I am up early because I always am. I’m in the parks alone. I ride a double-decker bus up from the castle to the train station, then I turn around and walk right down the middle of Main Street, USA. I ride the Astro Orbiter because I can. I ride Indiana Jones because I love it. I’m a single rider on California Screamin’, and somehow I get put up in the front row. That’s when I know it’s over. I’m always looking for narratives, for guideposts, for signs. Random front seat in your favorite west coast rollercoaster? That works as a proper closing number.

I collect Joe and soon we’re outside, waiting for my friend Josh to come in his jeep. Due to a clerical mixup (and the fact that I can’t read a calendar), we have an extra day in California. Joe will be spending it with Dave, further on up the road. I’ll be hanging with my buddy Josh, who is one of my favorite people in the world. We pile in and Josh turns the radio up and soon enough we’re cruising down the highway, wind in our hair and the sun blazing above us.

It’s been a wonderful trip. Is it trite to say it was magical? Nah. It was magical. Time spent at a place you love with the people you love is never time ill-spent. I hope to be back here next summer, when I turn forty. It’s a long wait, but I can be patient. Forty’s a good year to be.

As for what I’m doing back home? Well, finishing this exceedingly long trip report up, for starters. I considered deleting my WestCotCenter account, because my thinking is different now, and because it made me someone I’m not, not really. The initial intent for the handle was to celebrate my love of Disney World, and Disneyland, and the movies and the history and the joy of it all, without overly bugging my regular friends who don’t care.

But the snarking? The meanness? The fighting negativity with aggressive positivity? Nah. I’m putting down my scrivener’s pen. I prefer not to.

Right Down the Middle of Main Street, USA, Part Four: "Here For the Hang"

There is nothing inherently wrong with solo trips. I used to do them, and they were, on the whole, satisfying. But as the parks grew more familiar to me and as I went more often (not to mention that time I went alone and tried to use Disney to cure my clinical depression; spoiler alert, Disney isn’t Paxil), I began to realize that Disney was more a communal thing for me. It’s not the only thing. I am still not to the point in my Disney adventure at which rides and attractions become secondary. It’s just that they’re always more fun with friends. Especially for a social beast like me. And especially at Disneyland. I never get to see those California boys.

After our long, boozy lunch at Carthay, Dave took off and our good buddy Vince swooped in to take his place. (After we all went to go see the Mickey & the Magical Map show, which has the interesting distinction of being one of those mash-up shows that picks the obvious Disney movies to highlight, but picks some of the lesser-known songs. Plus, psycho-hot trumpet player. Like, freals.) The first time I’d met Vince was at my first trip to Disneyland, four years ago. The last time I saw Vince was my second trip to Disneyland, three years ago. The lesson you could glean from all this is that Vince just can’t get enough Disneyland, and always shows up when Disneyland is in the offing. You couldn’t be further from the truth. Vince likes Disneyland well enough, but he’s just here for the hang.

Hot Trumpet Guy

Here was the hang:

During our last trip to Disney World, me my Contemporary boys ate … guys, we literally ate everything. It got to the point where we were just compulsorily booking meals. Once, when Paul and I had some alone time in Disneyland, he explained why the food thing was becoming a bigger deal:

“It kind of reduces the stuff we don’t like about theme park touring – constantly moving, waiting in lines, the heat – and bumps up a lot of the stuff we like the most, like talking with your friends in a relatively calm and quiet place.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, Paul! Except for embellishments and selective editing! Watch out, creative nonfiction, I’m the new Truman Capote!

Vince says hi.

So while I planned out the Super Fancy Times Hey Ho Let’s Pretend We’re Rich meals (for the record: The Blue Bayou, The Carthay Circle, and Steakhouse 55. Not the Napa Rose, because I don’t even own spats), Paul took care of the other stuff. Soon after collecting Vince, we made our way to Big Thunder Ranch, where a hootenanny was a-takin’ place! Well, less a hootenanny and more a sign that said something akin to a hootenanny would be taking the stage at some point in the near-ish future. No one else cared about the vague promises of a hootenanny as much as I did. They were all there for the ribs. Which … I mean, sure. But then the twang acts came on and I reveled in traditional country music, until Miss Chris came up to our table and started chattin’ with us about where we were from and how cool my Baloo tattoo was. Seriously, I’ve gotten mileage out of that tattoo. And Miss Chris was so sweet, and didn’t mind that we tore apart dead animals while we talked with her.

Our meal concluded (with s’mores pie no one wanted because of how full we all were, and which was demolished once it arrived), and we took to the wilds of Frontierland as the night came down around us. I haven’t talked much about Paul’s fiancée Steven here, but I met him the same day I met Paul and he is always awesome to have around. Full of nerdery and smiles and an earnest love of Disneyland, plus he’s got a saucy streak I quite admire. The best thing about doing tourist trip with locals is that new folks are always coming in and joining the party. The worst thing is that they invariably leave before you do. The night was glittering with popcorn lights and neon and we rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Pirates and maybe Haunted Mansion, and before we returned to California Adventure, Steven was gone. It’s always sad to see Steven go.

(Especially if it’s been over a week since your trip and your chronology might be off, but maybe not; look, I missed him when he left, is the long and short of it.)

We’d bought a World of Color lunch package at the Carthay earlier, so we had a relatively terrific viewing platform. Vince and Joe and I sprawled out on the cement, because when you’re four days into a Disney trip, your sense of shame and your tenuous grasp of social mores sort of drift off. “Sit on the ground!” I begged Paul.

“No.”

“I bet your feet hurt!”

“I’m not sitting on the ground.”

“I’ll go get you a Coke Zero.”

As soon as Paul sat, I dashed off to a kiosk and got drinks and snacks for everyone. This was a tactic I employed a lot during the weekend that I’m not sure anyone noticed. I hate waiting around for stuff, so when it came time to wait, I just offered to go get people drinks and snacks. Often I could get said drinks and snacks in an air-conditioned place. Sometimes I’d just hang out in the air-conditioned place for a little while. Look, no one has to know. I bought them drinks!

The first time I had seen World of Color, I was exhausted. The second time, someone in our party was in a wheelchair and we got pretty good seats. This time, even though I was interested in any changes to the show, my eyes kept shooting over to Joe, who was seeing it for the first time. Last night, we’d gotten the Magical show in a freakin’ boat. I had no idea how he’d react to this one.

Joe’s smile is often small, often inscrutable. But if you’re patient, and willing to look for it, you’ll notice. I noticed. The show, blasting with water and music and colors I could mostly interpret, with film and cartoons and neon and lights – something in it moved him. It’s very easy for me to talk about my feelings, my reactions, my inner workings. For whatever reasons, it’s harder for Joe. So when World of Color ended and the lights of California Adventure returned to normal and Joe leaned over to me and said, “Thank you,” it was enough. It was everything I needed.

* * *

In the thick of the night, as Joe took to the room for some rest, Vince and Paul and I retired to Trader Sam’s, where I realized the capacity of my drinking is more about duration than depth. The less drunk I get, the more quickly I recover. At least at the one-drink, two-drink levels I usually engage in. The last two nights of Trader Sam’s (Night One, Joe: “I blew a volcano!” Can’t bring that boy anywhere.) I’d gotten boisterous and talky. This last night, I… Well, look. I have two reactions to drinking. The first is boisterous and talky. The second is unbridled rage.

I don’t get it. I don’t know if it has to do with how much I’m drinking, or what’s on my mind, or the people I’m with, or the situation I’m in. I knew tomorrow would be my last full day at Disneyland, and I was feeling a little sad about it. I knew I’d be going out to see Los Angeles with my friend Josh, and I was giddy about that. I was one-third of an Uh-Oa in and my voice was low and deliberate and melancholy, and that’s right when the rage usually kicks in.

What I do know is that the rage is almost always there, just under the surface. One of the reasons I throw activity and accomplishments and comedy at myself every single day is so the rage doesn’t peek through. You know that line in The Avengers, when Banner tells Cap that he’s always angry? That’s me. All the time.

You know what happened when I was “outed” on social media? When someone told someone that Kevidently was also WestCotCenter? I got mad. I felt backed into a corner. And I felt a sudden, irrational need to explain myself, to justify why the nice guy was also this snarky guy whose dedication to positivity sometimes made him a little too pointed in his barbs against the foamers. Because Twitter is a knee-jerk platform, and because 140 characters is not enough space to cogently reason things out, I panicked. Recently, I’d been figuring out ways to put my eye-rolling incredulity at the Disney community into my various comedy acts (most of which has to do with dire predictions that don’t come true [“I know at least three people who won’t go see Frozen, which is why it won’t be a hit!”] and the culture of “I hate this, so everyone hates this” bullshit that runs rampantly through message boards and review sites). So what I said was, “Ah well, this is all material for my stand-up act!”

Guys, the reaction. I took the tweet down pretty quickly, but the damage was done. “Damage.” I mean, most of it’s the hypocrisy that comes with the territory – bloggers and Tweeters can use what I say to make fun of me online, but if I do the same in either those forums or onstage, I’m the troll – but I digress. It was a dumb thing to say, and a lot of people got irritated (I so, so badly want to say “butthurt,” but that’s … well, it’s fair, but it’s probably not necessary) over it, and the fact that it’s only partial truth is beside the point. I got angry. I panicked. And I said a dumb thing that still bothers me. Would I be so bothered if the weird passive-aggressive teasing wasn’t still happening? I don’t know. Maybe not. Just because Twitter doesn’t matter and the people perpetrating this stuff don’t matter doesn’t mean it doesn’t get under my skin. And they know that. And that’s another reason to get out.

I satisfied myself with my portion of the Uh-Oa and then got a non-alcoholic fruity thing with cherries in it. It was the last time I would drink on this particular Disney trip. I had another full day packed with friends and food and rides and happiness, and he thought of even potential rage was enough to worry me. Nothing was going to ruin my grand finale. Especially not me.

Right Down the Middle of Main Street, USA, Part 3: "What You’re Good At"

One of the things I have to constantly remind myself is that the Internet is not real. Twitter is not real. Facebook is not real. These things are reflections – and sometimes distortions – of our reality. Quite often, I go to Facebook and rattle off my accomplishments of my day, because I enjoy accomplishing things and because I like to see the things I do quantified. I think it’s a Type-A thing. Or maybe it’s just a consequence of my desperate need for affirmation. Of course, affirmation has a dark twin.

Look, saying, “the Internet isn’t real” is some great advice, but more often than not, I’ve found it difficult advice to take. Way back when I was lonely and living on my own, I discovered the Internet and it fixed things, at least temporarily. I fell in with faceless people who seemed to understand me … or at least to understand the things I’m into. I know I’m more than the sum of the things I dig, but for much of my life, the things I dig have been the things that have gotten me through, have kept me sane, have helped define who I am. That’s why I have the tattoos I do; they all describe the stuff that, put together, makes up some of the more interesting parts of who I am. My friend Duncan put it most succinctly: “Kevin, you have a lot of jams.” Indeed I do, and when I take to the onlines, I try to find other who share my jams, and who want to talk about them.

But there’s that dark side. There’s a turn. I’ve been both its victim and its perpetrator. What happens when the awesome thing you and your online friends share starts not working for them? What happens when they start feeling betrayed by the thing they love? What happens when they use the forum with which you became friends to start decrying that thing that still means so much to you? When you’re me, you take it personally – the exact opposite way you should react. Way back in 1996 I took it personally when some tool on my Stephen King message board said that the new King book looked like nothing but a “laugh-out-loud joke” (you never forget your first troll). More recently, I took it personally when the rampant negativity of the Disney fan community started to affect how I was seeing the parks. Suddenly, it wasn’t, “Oh, this is awesome” or “this needs some help” or “wow, I can’t wait to go back.” My enjoyment became defensive. My tweets started with an implied “here’s why you’re wrong” and ended with quotes I’d mock.

I began to look forward to Disney articles so I could pull out choice ideas that were stupid, to pick apart rumors that were dumb. I’d go on Twitter feeds … no. No. I’d fucking troll Twitter feeds, looking for awful comments, so I could hold them up for derision. It seemed fun to me. I was good at it. And I was on the side of the light, so what I was doing wasn’t wrong.

Did it all come to a head when I was “outed,” and the community at large figured out that the nice guy behind my Kevidently Twitter handle was also the ubersnark dick WestCotCenter? Or when people started using my regular Twitter name as a hashtag in the hopes that it was somehow get under my skin? Or when someone created a fake Twitter account based on mine, specifically to call me an asshole? Maybe yes to one, maybe yes to none, maybe yes to all three.

I don’t know when it got too much to bear, but I know when I decided I wanted it to stop. It was at the Carthay Circle Restaurant at Disney California Adventure. I’d had too much to drink. I was surrounded by friends and feeling something I never allow myself to feel: calm. I was surrounded by friends, real friends who liked me, and I’d been drinking, and my friend Dave was talking about theme parks, because he works for theme parks, and I was hanging on his every word. I realized then that this was what I wanted out of my Disney experience. Friends. Calm. And to be awed by these worlds I’d fallen into.

This:

* * *

Joe sleeps in.

One of the things Joe and I figured out over our previous fourteen trips together is that while our personalities meshed well, our personality types sometimes clash. I like to do stuff. Like, always. Constantly. I sleep because it’s a necessity. Joe sleeps because it’s vacation.

“You know you don’t have to wait for me, right?” Joe asked on our fifth or sixth trip.

“How’s that?”

“I don’t want to wake up at the crack of way too early. You do. When we’re together for these, why don’t you get up early and I’ll join you when I’m ready.”

Paul, on a different finger of the same hand, also likes to sleep in, but more on the, “hey, I’m getting up at a sane time, cool?” tip. It was cool, because while I don’t think I’d be as fired up for solo trips as I used to be (that one trip I went on to cure my depression kind of just ended up curing my desire to be at Disney parks alone), a few hours? Especially when it was Extra Magic Mornings? Oh, I could do that.

Which was how I found myself on California Screamin’ with my new buddy Chester at quarter of eight in the morning on my first full morning at Disneyland. Chester’s wife was also sleeping in. We hesitate longer than normal at the launch before that first big hill. The California sun hadn’t yet risen high enough in the sky to make the air oppressive, and boy howdy does Paradise Pier look lovely first thing in the morning. The Fun Wheel turns lazily, seeming to dip below the water, and the faraway Silly Symphony Swings and Golden Zephyr do their perambulations in sweet circle circuits over the water. The Boardwalk is empty this early, no lunatic lines yet at Toy Story Midway Mania. The air jostles with good smells: axle grease and cotton candy, churros and the smell of the water of Paradise Bay. It’s not quite the smell of the water at Pirates because nothing is. We hold in stasis, strapped into our cars, calliope music wafting over us like its 1914. Maybe it’s 1914. Maybe this is a dream.

Then we’re off, speeding like light into that first hill, and man oh man it’s great to be alive.

* * *

I texted Joe after tooling around California Adventure by my lonesome for an hour or so. Grizzly River Run had both managed to reopen after a brief refurb and soak me to the bone, all in the course of an hour and a half. Good thing I’d put my shoes and socks in a big plastic bag and ridden barefoot, even though you’re supposed to keep your shoes on the whole time, which is a rule I totally did not know and further did not willfully ignore until the cast member at the ride exit noticed and barked at me to put my sneakers on.

“Hey, Joe,” I texted, “are you awake yet?”

“Ohai, at Matterhorn with Mike Tupper!” I blinked. Did I know Mike Tupper? Joe was at the Matterhorn? Joe was awake?

One of those things that’s sort of better in Disneyland than in Disney World is you can be at the back of one park and get to the center of another park in like 10 minutes. Going from, like, Morocco in Epcot to Expedition Everest takes two maps, a Sherpa, three camels, and a universal translator. I caught up with Joe and Mike a little after nine and a little more than three-quarters through the line at the Matterhorn. It was a good thing, too. I was willing to share Joe’s first time on this mountain, but I’d introduced him to Everest in Florida and I was damned if he was going to ride this first without me.

After: “So! Did you like it! Did you love it! Was it the best!”

Joe: “Yes, I liked it.” Joe is inscrutable.

Me: “Yes! Disney history! Walt! My back hurts!”

As it turned out, I did know Mike Tupper, sort of. I think. Look, LiveJournal was awhile ago. You ever meet someone who’s all like, “by the way, the reason I’m this hot is because I go to the gym like 3 hours a day,” and you’re all, “well, I go two hours a day, that counts, right?” and he’s all, “I don’t really eat cupcakes.” At some point, you either have to accept who you are or go crazy trying to be someone you’re not. PS I had a cupcake at lunch. And a churro.

By that point, Paul had joined us – the only time he’d slept in later than Joe – and we did the whole thing straight up. Radiator Springs Racers. The Mark Twain Riverboat. Tower of Terror. “it’s a small world,” where we all pointed out the characters and continued to hum the song for the remainder of the day. At one point, I went back to the room to “rest,” by which I meant put on my Animal Kingdom shirt without the sleeves because in no way did I need to prove that I also go to the gym every day, and wow when you’re honest about your motivations sometimes you sound really shallow.

Mike took off as the night came down, and Paul went to go get his fiancée Steven settled into the room. Left to our own devices, I decided to take Joe on one of the quaintest rides in Disneyland, the Storybookland Canal Boats. There isn’t really anything comparable to it in Disney World, and I wanted Joe to be amazed at the miniatures and see how pretty they were all lit up at night.

Then something amazing happened.

“All right, passengers,” the perky cast member said from the captain’s seat at the back of the boat. “We’re going to be stopping here for just a little bit while the fireworks go off.”

I blinked. “Wait, the fireworks are going to go off … above us?”

She nodded. “Yes. We’ll be able to hear some of the narration if we’re very quiet, too.”

We were quiet, me and my buddy Joe next to each other on the Storybookland Canal Boat, sitting in the water as those lights exploded above us, like a celebration of our enduring friendship, and of our fifteenth Disney trip together. The fireworks show is called Magical, and no matter how corporate or how synergistic or how anything that is, when it comes to sitting in the water on a boat and watching fireworks go off above your head, that’s a pretty apt name. I was happy to be there with someone I like. All that online negativity seemed so far away.

* * *

Dave arrived early the next day, and it’s always good to see Dave. Especially when it’s your third day and so far you’ve been the only Type A. Dave takes charge of a Disney trip swiftly and happily, and no one ever complains, because Dave doesn’t just bring the party; Dave is the party.

We ended up at the Carthay Circle Restaurant, Dave’s last thing with us until he had to take off. It was cool. He’d be back the next day. Now, if I’d had a meal like the one I had that afternoon a few years ago, I would have gone stir crazy and antsy and probably ruined everyone’s good time. But years and experience have mellowed me. The Pimm’s Punch didn’t hurt, either.

We talked of things – cabbages, kings, sealing wax, I don’t remember exactly – but at one point, I brought up something that the world of online was going nutso over. Some hot-button topic that had all the tempests in all the teapots. Dave leaned back, cocktail in hand, and went about explaining the motivations, the reasons, the ideals, the concepts. He regaled us with tell of Big Picture Thinking, and This Too Shall Pass conceptualizing. “Disney is doing fine,” he said.

Something broke in me, right then. Hearing it all spoken out loud, calmly, as fact and not rumor or reaction, changed something in me. Something in the back of my mind whispered, I don’t have to be that guy. Don’t I know that? I don’t have to mire myself in the negativity in order to fight against it, because it’s not my fight. It has never been my fight. There’s no reason it should be my fight. All this will take care of itself. All I have to take care of is being happy, and that’s great, because I’m really good at being happy.

Do what you’re good at, right? Do what you’re good at.

Right Down the Middle of Main Street, USA, Part Two: "How It Begins"

I went to Chicago a year ago to see Drive-By Truckers. It was my first time there. It was a lovely city, and the trains were fairly easy to understand. Local eye-candy didn’t hurt, either, and there are plenty of Starbucks. But I was going there sort of on the cheap, and the hotel room I stayed in was … well, it was a dystopian little hellhole, not to put too fine a point on it. It was like someone took the very concept of Dickensian, made it manifest, and then shaded layers of suburban thrift bazaar on top of it. A mass-produced painting of a dog in a field hung disconsolately over my bed of many springs, and the closet-bathroom’s hot water worked intermittently, grudgingly. It was as if I was being punished for traveling across time zones to see a three-hour concert. I quite honestly didn’t mind. The things you do for rock and roll.

But it’s not as if hotels like that are my first, fifth, or even eighteenth choice. I lived 5/8 of my life in a room exactly like that, and I don’t feel any pressing need to relive the drear realness of my misspent youth. In one of my more honest moments, I said to Joe, “I am impressed by wealth.” This was in relation to having seen the Bay Lake Tower at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World and just being bowled over. I think Joe may have taken what I said wrong at the time. I think – and this could just be me extrapolating – that he thought I was more into being around rich friends. Friends that could treat me to stuff like the Bay Lake Tower when I was on my Disney trips.

That wasn’t it, though. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to treat my friends to this stuff. I wanted to be the guy who makes the Bay Lake Tower happen. Some of it’s my superhero complex. Some of it’s my need to be liked. Some of it’s trying to scrub off the poor from my early years. And quite a lot of it is just because I like nice stuff and it’s fun to do nice stuff with your buddies.

All of that is to say that I’ve been spoiling myself. Last year, I stayed at my first deluxe resort, the Wilderness Lodge at Disney World, and I brought my friends with me. Earlier this year, I stayed at the Contemporary, a long-held dream. It’s a twelve-minute walk to the Magic Kingdom, guys. And when I was last in Atlanta and I handed Joe the Disney Packet of Awesome, one of the best parts is where I was able to turn the page and say, “see this? This is a picture of the Disneyland Hotel. Where we’ll be staying. We’re going to stay there, Joe!”

I thought nothing about this trip was going to top that moment; the planning is almost always the best part of the trip. But you know what’s actually more exciting than looking at a picture of the Disneyland Hotel? Being inside the Disneyland Hotel. I mean, the chairs in the lobby are in the shape of teacups! The headboards light up in LED fireworks and play, “When You Wish Upon a Star”! Oh, and also this happens in the freakin lobby:

Things were off to a great start.

* * *

I should note right here at the very start that my co-conspirator for this whole endeavor was my friend Paul, who I’d first met at my very first trip to Disneyland in the faraway year of 2009. You know, it’s interesting. Paul and I had known each other through LiveJournal, but we weren’t what you’d necessarily call close-close. We’re close-close now. You never know where your best friends are going to come from, or how long they’re going to stick around. One of the best things about Disney is that it provides a place to hang out with all of them. My best friends are all scattered – Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, New York, New Jersey, right here in Boston – but a lot of us have Disney in common, and it makes it easy to pick a place to be together, and to have something to talk about. It can’t be the only thing, which is a lesson I keep learning.

Because I’m all about the rituals and milestones and narratives, Paul and I used the time between my arrival and Joe’s to ride the teacups (which we did first thing last time we were here alone) and grabbed a snack at the Bengal Barbecue (where we first ate when we were last here alone; my brain is like the middle section of a John Irving novel when the patterns start to emerge, usually after the bears but before Amsterdam). Then Paul helped me set up Joe’s gift spread on the bed (which, I swear to God, has nothing to do with buttcheeks) and when Joe walked in after traveling all day I kind of leapt at him and made him enjoy everything. Because my enthusiasm only counts if everyone matches it! I’m not hard to know!

Then with all the whirlwind excitement, we ushered a weary Joe into Disneyland! The main reason I’d chosen to go now was so Joe could see the Mechanical Kingdoms exhibit on Main Street, an impetus I’d entirely forgotten until we actually got there and then I super-smooth covered my surprise and made it seem like it was all part of the plan.

“Hey guys! Let’s go see that! It’s all part of the plan!” Super. Smooth.

If you’re any sort of Disney fan interested in visiting parks on both coasts, one of the fun things to do is to compare and contrast the same rides. Like, Space Mountain in Disney World has a better queue and track layout, but the one in Disneyland has a smoother track and on-board music. The Tower of Terror in California has some really neat ghost effects, but the one in Florida has the fifth-dimension room. Take a lifelong Walt Disney World man to Disneyland, and you’re bound to have interesting opinions … and, for some reason, Abbott and Costello conversations.

“Points to California,” Joe said, as we climbed off of Pirates of the Caribbean, that wonderful musty smell lingering everywhere, as if joy had an aroma.

I thrust out a finger and smiled. We were in California. How do you point to it?

“No,” Paul said. “Points to California.”

I was baffled. Was this a reference to the fact that we were in New Orleans Square? Like, was I supposed to be pointing west or something?

“Oh,” I said, because when you don’t get the joke, you just agree. “Yep.” Do you have any idea how dumb I feel writing this out?

We rode the Matterhorn, and as silly as it seems, that’s my connection to classic Disneyland. I wasn’t there. Walt Disney died before I was born. But when you’re surrounded by living history, it’s almost impossible not to feel echoes of the past. Especially if you’re a conscientious fan, someone who not only loves Disney as it is now, but as it was then. There are plenty of people who go to Disney and it’s just fun and that’s about it. And that’s fine. But when you’re people like me and you read books about the parks, when you visit them four times a year, when you listen to Disney history podcasts, some of that stuff sinks in. It becomes part of your experience when you’re there.

What’s harder is when that history becomes definitive, when things like “Walt originalism” and the concept of the past being static is used as a detriment rather than an enhancement. Here’s where I get into some trouble. See, part of my desire to learn everything about the parks led me to a number of websites that offered weekly reports on the goings-on at Disneyland and Disney World. That stuff is thrilling to me, a way of keeping up with my park love back home. There are usually pictures of things being worked on and new stuff being developed, of special events and flowers in bloom. One of the things I began running into was the initialism, “WWWDD,” or What Would Walt Disney Do? It’s both a noble question and an idiotic question. Noble, because the Disney parks exist for a reason, and the ideals and gumption that got them built are laudable, all these years later. Idiotic because the man is dead, and has been for years. We don’t know what Walt would do.

Accompanying this notion was an odd, prevalent sort of negativity. It was easy to notice in the forums. Forums on any topic in any fandom are redolent with the stench of lunacy and the culture of “used to be better.” According to the Springsteen forums, The Boss hasn’t done anything of worth since 1978. According to Apple forums, the iPod was the worst thing Steve Jobs ever did. And according to Disney forums, letting cast members wear beards is “just like putting a roller coaster on Main Street USA,” and letting guests wear fancy clothes proves that “Disney is nuts,” and putting a Starbucks in the parks is a sign that, “the real fans have lost. This is no longer our park, or Walt’s. The best we can hope for is that when we die, Uncle Walt will be in heaven, and take us on personal tours of that once glorious place.” That’s a fucking actual quote. I am not kidding you.

But then the negativity spread, and the actual reports – the ones that purport to be just relaying the news – started to seem angrier. More resentful of everything Disney was doing. Weasel words began to crop up. “Disney is working on this ride” became “Disney still isn’t finished working on this ride.” “Disney is expanding its fancy private club” became “Disney is destroying part of the park and taking more space away from regular guests.” The Twitter accounts from the writers I followed got even worse. Nasty. For every “I like this” tweet, there were fifty, “everything is terrible” tweets. It became this constant cycle of anger, of rage, of “Disney is for real screwing up my life.”

When you’re an optimist, and a positive thinker, and … no. Better. When you’re an actual critic (which I am, paid and everything), reading nothing but terrible reviews about things that are, on the whole, not terrible … well, it rankles. One of the first things you learn as a critic is that it’s more fun to write bad reviews. It is. You get to break out the thesaurus and go on rants and people eat that up. People love that. It’s harder to write good reviews. It’s more work. Convincing people that things are great is far, far more difficult than convincing them that things are awful. What I found was a lot of lazy reporting. A lot of empty rage. A lot of bizarre contradictions that I couldn’t even fathom (Disney fixing up a mall-like embarrassment into something more classic and impressive on one coast is the best thing ever, but on the other coast is the worst idea no one should care about).

Did I snap? Did I decide to lead a crusade against negativity? Did I say, “Someone has to take a stand?” No, none of that. It all started so small, so inconsequential. On my WestCotCenter Twitter handle, I just started copying choice quotes and pointing out why they were wrong, or ridiculous, or overly negative for negativity’s sake. I had followers by then – followers who had no idea I was Kevidently on my main account – and a lot of them thought my jabs were pretty funny. And I love attention. I love being liked. It’s addictive. And I thought it would be neat to have a persona completely separate from who I am, some place to go to be a little more snarky and a little more pointed in how I feel about the “foamers,” the people who were taking the concept of criticism and perverting it into something uglier.

I never really asked why I was doing it. Not really. Did Disney need me to defend them? Nope, no more than Stephen King or Bruce Springsteen does. As it went on, a part of me tried to justify it as standing for the fans who would read the negativity (and sometimes outright lies, like the one about how Walt Disney World doesn’t do real maintenance and everything is falling apart), but that wasn’t really it, either. I came up with reasons later – with some awesomely disastrous results – but I think at first, I was fed up with the bullshit and having some fun at bullshit’s expense. Pure motivation? Maybe not. But it sure was fun.

* * *

We got drunk that night at Trader Sam’s, the enchanted tiki bar. I got a kungaloosh, the drink of the now-defunct Adventurer’s Club – the steampunky club that used to exist in Downtown Disney. We’d ridden a lot of rides and done a lot of stuff, and Joe and I were feeling jetlagged but happy. The night had closed in, and as Paul pointed out, nights in Disneyland tend to be cool and humidity-free, unlike nights in Florida. We were discussing our first ride on Haunted Mansion, which Joe had judges as being better in Walt Disney World.

“Oh!” I shouted, after draining the last of my kungaloosh. “Points to Disneyland. Because they get all the points!”

That was day one.

Right Down the Middle of Main Street, USA: Part One, "Here We Joe!"

I have this dream. I’m on my bicycle, my fine Schwinn, and I’m cycling up the street. Shopfronts whiz by in a blur. Light music plays from somewhere, and I almost grasp the melody. I’m not wearing a helmet, but that’s okay. It feels safe here. I feel safe here. Only gradually, as I pedal faster, do I realize I’m cycling up Main Street, USA. This is Disneyland. None of my thoughts coalesce: everything I’m feeling is deep but vague. Comfort. Happiness. Peace. I think at some point I know it’s a dream, but I don’t care. I’m pedaling up Main Street and it’s pure joy.

I have this dream every night I’m in Disneyland, and for the next two days following. It’s the first dream in the last five years I remember that’s not a nightmare.

* * *

Let’s get down to realness. Late last year, I fell into a second job that paid me … just stupid money. Like, questionably generous money. I was functioning as a temp, but the way the manager set it up, I was getting paid directly by the company, and not going through a temp agency. The money poured in. And look, I’m not saying I was rich, but for the first time in my adult life, Christmas was easy and fun to shop for. All of my friends got stuff. I went out to eat without worry. If I wanted to go to a movie, I just could. It wasn’t rich-guy money, but it, combined with my regular day job and my job as a columnist, kept me in an elevated state for months. And in that elevated state, I spread some money around. Some went to bills. Some went to clothes. And a bunch went to Disney. Look, I knew the money was going to end. It was right there in my job description: temp(orary). So I went ahead and did everything I could to secure my Disney year in advance. And one of the things I decided to do was take my buddy Joe to Disneyland.

Let’s catch you guys up if you’re unfamiliar: Joe is a buddy I met at a bear run way back when. We

all went out to eat at Mr. Sushi and then Chuck Norris was there. Yes, that Chuck Norris. We all got a picture with him, which is kind of awesome because we’re all big burly bears and Chuck Norris is a tiny little guy. True facts! Long story short: while Chuck Norris and I never hung out again (his days are filled with sushi and spin-kicks, leaving little time for bro-ing out), Joe and I remained friends. Then I discovered Disney and Joe was all, “Hey, I’ve been going to Disney World my entire life, want to know some shit?”

Indeed, I wanted to know some shit. Joe was like a walking atlas of Disney World. He showed me videos of defunct rides (Horizons! Yes! You knew I was going to bring up Horizons! SHUT UP I LOVE HORIZONS!) and he introduced me to The Crystal Palace and this one time we went to the record shop on property and bought the Springsteen album Magic on opening day because the synergy is real. We don’t go to the parks together every time we go to the parks, but it’s often. Fourteen times often.

And here’s where we lean that oh my dear God, Kevbot always needs a narrative.

That’s right, meta-commentary in the third person! Joe’s and my next trip was to be our fifteenth together. Well, that’s cause for a celebration, isn’t it? Of course it is, because symbols and milestones and narratives are the only way to live in the real world! Only way! I might have a problem!

One of my life credos was that if I ever had stupid money, I would spread it around. I had done that at Christmas, and now it was time to carry that through before the money ended (which it did, far more abruptly than I’d anticipated, by the way. One day it was like, oh, Kev, b-t-dubs, we just realized that you working here for as long as you have at your rate is within sniffing distance of illegal, so leave now, okay?) So I did what any sane and normal friend would do. I took Joe to Disneyland.

Now, back the truck up. Have I mentioned that Joe’s never been to Disneyland? That’s right. Been going to Disney World in Florida since he was a zygote, and had never had a chance to visit the mother country. (Yes, mother country. Look, I’m a stunted manchild talking about my dream of riding my bike through Disneyland, let me have my florid prose.) In my process of discovering Disney World, Joe was there every step, pointing me toward books and podcasts, websites and references. For me, Joe was a walking history of Walt Disney World, and I can earnestly say that without him, I would not have become the fan I am so quickly or so thoroughly. Without Joe, I might not have been able to see the depth behind the rides and the cartoons, might never have delved into the history of it, might never have considered Walt Disney one of the three most important creative mentors of my life (Stephen King and Bruce Springsteen, for the curious). I wanted to figure out how to transfer my love of Disney into something richer, something deeper. All that stuff was there, waiting to be unlocked; Joe had the key. I owed him.

* * *

Now, I won’t presume to tell Joe’s story here. I’m pretty sure he has his own stories to tell, and I’m looking forward to reading them. What made me want to pick up the pen for this short series was the change that happened in me when I was in Disneyland, how my perception altered, and what I took away. Occasionally, you need to take yourself out of your routine and put yourself in a whole different place to learn some stuff about yourself. I know that it doesn’t seem like Disneyland is the place for a man – a grown man – to realize some weird truths about himself, but that’s where it is, and I’m going to lay it all out.

I’m not always who I really am when I’m online, is the long and short of it. Maybe no one is, and there’s no rule saying you always have to bring your whole box of self-awareness and actualization to the anonymous masses, but my problem was getting into a whole other box.

It started simply enough. My friends on Twitter were sick of me talking about Disney all the time, so I created a new Disney-specific Twitter account, and named it WestCotCenter, after an unbuilt park that was supposed to face Disneyland. (We got California Adventure instead, which sucked for a decade and then got super awesome.) I delved into the world of Disney fandom, and that’s … just never a smart idea. Fan communities always sound awesome, and it’s fun to join because feeling connected to things you love and the people who also love those things is such a pure impulse. What ends up happening, though, is that you start seeing the cracks. You find the people who seem angry at whatever the company/artist/musician/writer does, because it doesn’t fit their paradigm of what they should be doing. You come across those who feel personally betrayed by all the things they feel they’ve earned for being so loyal for so long. None of this was new to me: familiarity breeds contempt more often than not, and when you give a platform to the little tin gods who think they’re the torchbearers for what such-and-such used to mean … well, that’s a world of hurt.

What follows is the story of how I got in it, and how, just a few days ago, I realized it was terrible for me, and how I’m trying to drag myself out. It’s some real shit about my brain, and addiction, and my desperate need to be liked.

But it’s also about me having a goddamn blast with my friends at the Happiest Place On Earth, because you shouldn’t have to slog through my dark brain shit without me talking about how awesome seeing the Enchanted Tiki Room at night with Joe is. Because how you gonna be mad on vacation?

Stay tuned. It’s a journey.

Come On In and Cover Me

I've been listening to Springsteen nonstop this week, in part because Born in the USA just turned 30 and I've been having fun rediscovering it. I remember my friend David Chubbuck bringing the cassette over to my house and playing it, and me unfolding the lyrics sheet and trying to grasp it. Later, I saw the video for "Glory Days" over my friend Jason's house and I - at eight years old - asked why everyone looked so happy. It was obviously a sad song. Didn't anyone see that?

When the Springsteen fever bit me for real at 18, it wasn't the first one I went to. I'd just moved into a super depressing rooming house; for the first time I was alone in the world, and I was trying to find music that could help define my experience and help me understand who I was and why. I got Nebraska based on my friend David Polselli's recommendation and fell in love with it. Stark, bleak, depressing love. That was an album I took with me on rainy nights, wandering around suburban Quincy and trying to make sense of things. After that, it was Tunnel of Love - which I felt spoke more directly to my experience: my own reticence to be in love and my complicated relationship with my then-boyfriend. After that, I stole my Mom's cassettes of Human Touch and Lucky Town, and had reactions to them. I liked Human Touch, hated Lucky Town. Those opinions have since reversed and mellowed.

It was only then I discovered I actually had the record of Born in the USA. Remember back then, classic rock radio was still playing a lot of those hits, and I thought I'd be sick of them then. But the best thing about LPs was that it was hard to skip around, so I listened to the whole thing, side A and side B ... and I realized I'd never really listened to it all. I absorbed it all in context for the first time, and removed from the Brucemania of 1984, the music was allowed to stand by itself. That old revelation, that happy-sounding songs could be sad, recurred, and "Dancing in the Dark" became sort of a mantra to me. It's all about futility and desperation but everyone saw it as being about dancing with Courtney Cox in a pixie cut. "I'm On Fire" was both grim and erotic, a melange of feelings I'd experienced but was never able to contextualize. There's such simmering menace in that song, and it was a thing I understood. The meaning of these songs keep changing and mutating for me as I grow older (and become more ready to grow young again). I remember singing "Bobby Jean" at karaoke as my friend Josh was was preparing to leave for California; that final "good luck, goodbye" is tragic when it's sung.

It's fun for hardcore Springsteen fans to dismiss Born in the USA, with its 80s synths and sudden mass audience and the easy-to-grasp distillation of themes Springsteen had cultivated for over a decade. (In a way, Springsteen would do that again with the later Magic ... but that's another story.) They hate that "Cover Me" was written with Donna Summer in mind. They hate that people who hadn't even heard of Springsteen before this album flocked to it, and the conception that it happened because Springsteen sold out. But none of that matters, not really. What matters in the end is the music, and how it hits you. How it helped me realize, in its way, who I was when I was hearing it, and how it continues to inform me about the world at large, and the one inside me.