The Hawaii Disney VIP Visit
I was near the end of the whirlwind visit to the Hawaii Disney area, the massive development that was both movie studio and theme park, a huge, sprawling area on one of the islands, someplace familiar in geography and terrain and foliage, but one where I'd never been before. I say I'd never been, but anyone who'd ever watched any television knew all of the landmarks, knew all of the lots and the houses, where all of the shows had been made. I even knew how many steps it was from certain locations to others, the colors of the bushes in between. I was here, living a dream.
I'd won some kind of contest, and I and a few others were VVIP guests of the place for a day or two or three. We'd been staying at the ultra-modern pad perched on the hillside, looking down the lush valley over the golf course to the perfectly placed and maintained white cottages and bungalows of the resort area. Up and to the rear lay the still-wild reaches of the upper valley, just beyond the working area of the studios, where land-clearing and construction was always happening, reshaping the world in order to create another mass-media version of another further different reality. The pad was something like a cartoon Frank Lloyd Wright, like the incredible place in North By Northwest, jutting out in cantilevered extreme, seemingly shooting out of hill in tiers of perpendicularly opposed ledges and decks and floors. Despite the raw angularity of it, it melded perfectly into the hill, its materials and colors perfectly blending the green of the land and the blue of the sky.
And inside it was cool and quiet, the floors a smooth stone. Fantastic amenities inside.
And now I was on the final tour, by myself on a fast-moving vehicle, kind of a bus, kind of a truck, moving through the massive corporate spaces of this place. I'd seen everything, the TV operations, the movie sets and filming, the theme parks, both the public and the behind-the-scenes areas. It was incredible, all of it, and now we were looping back, across public land and open spaces now in order to get back to where we wanted to be. We were on surface streets, but I was up above it all, at a height of maybe 30 or 40 feet. I don't know what kind of vehicle it was, but I liked the sensation of the movement, and of being above, looking down. It was almost flying.
And it seemed we were in LA, or a kind-of LA. It was some kind of amalgam of my imagined LA, coupled with what I know of the geography of Hawaii. Apartment buildings built right into the side of the volcanic faces, incredible architectural achievements and engineering triumphs, with windows and balconies jutting out from raw natural sheeer faces, with the ubiquitous ferns everywhere. It was spectacular, but I wondered about parking and vehicle access. What about evacuation and fire? It was neat to look at, but what about actually occupying it, and then managing it?
We were on a big highway, leading up a hill, toward what I knew from so many hours in front of the movie scree and TV face to be a sort-of back gate to the corporate property. More of the incredible buildings to my left, and the road slowly, gently narrowed. Eventually it was a winding two-way road, poorly maintained. And along the road, more and more people, all of them knowing about this back gate, all of them crowding the edges to maybe get in, to get a glimpse of the ones going in and out. So many folks, all looking at me/us (whoever the "us" was) as we moved on up the road.
And I saw the camera boom extended from the vehicle, and we were filming. I didn't know what we were shooting or why, but now I and our vehicle were really part of something concrete taking place, not just a passing truck. The crowd were excited, seeing the relative action, and they started to move. They were waving and jumping, trying to get the camera's attention. Folks were looking at me, too, and I wondered why they'd want to look at me, as I was literally just along for the ride. They thought I was a director, maybe, or possibly even a star. Hell, I was someone involved in the production, and by simple virtue of that these simple, media-dominated morons were interested in me. They had no idea who I was, but there were hundreds flowing by as our vehicle wound up the road who wanted nothing more than to get to know me, to shake my hand, probably even to tell me how great I was, just because I was on the truck carrying the camera making whatever film was being made. The power in that was unmistakable, the power to abuse so quickly and readily, the mischief that could be had if I were to take advantage of that. Just the hint of the available sex was more than enough to sign me up for the program.
But none of that, as we were approaching the gate. The crowd was huge here, backing up and off the road, up into the jungle fringes around the run-down houses near the cracked and rutted road, the asphalt years beyond its useful life. So many folks, refugees, just standing around a guarded chain-link gate, waiting for something they thought would make their lives better.
And we were through, no more crowds. And we were slowly lifting off, the vehicle no longer just a truck. Maybe a helo, maybe something else, but we were rising slowly from the ground as we moved across the open spaces between the fabulous guest house and the production areas. It was a huge grassy meadow, hundreds of acres of nothing but green, flowing grass. I could see the patterns of our wash in the movement of the grass, and we were rising. The crowds were growing smaller, so much smaller, the entire place shrinking as we rose.
And then it was just me, shot up, the incredible feeling of upward acceleration. I was flying, rocketing upward, that strange yet undeniable feeling of movement overwhelming me. I yelled out in sheer exhilaration, raw sounds of abandon and pleasure and wonder. The other contest winners were relatively close--somehow we'd all gotten to the same place as a sort of reunion climax to our visit. Together we rose, spinning, to maybe 10,000 feet. No cold, no thin air, just the most incredible view of the still towering mountains all around this incredible valley, and the head of the valley closing off behind the park, painting-perfect mountains of steep, jagged pyramids coming together in a jumble, a forest of King Kong environs up there, way up there. The wind was warm, there was a slight haze, and the feeling of the movement was intoxicating. Absolute bliss.
And then the balloon was done, slowly falling. I was drifting down, down to the meadow and the fringes of the expertly maintained golf course. The visit was ended, and now it was time to return to my life, normalcy, anonymmity. None of that bothered me, but I wanted so much to return to that incredible feeling of flying, that lift, that feeling of being in the air alone, drifting and moving. That was all I wanted, and was willing to give a lot to have it again.
I drifted down to the soft green grass, to meet Al Franken, clearly fresh off the golf course. Since I was a nobody now, he handed me his grass-caked golfing shoes, expensive things with custom embroidery and such. He made some noises that I couldn't make out, and it was all about getting them cleaned up and ready for his next outing, whenever that would be. Who was I to refuse Al Franken, so I took the shoes, damp from his sweat but surprisingly non-redolent (what a great word), and headed back up the slope to the guest house.
I set the shoes on the main table in the spacious dining room, confident someone on the staff would find them and get them to where they needed to go. After all, I'm not Al Franken's goddamn shoe-shine boy. I wasn't pissed at him, but I wasn't going to do his shoes either.
As I moved through the house to find my room and pack my stuff, I could hear a piped-in monologue from some semi-rising star, talking on one of the corporate networks about making it famous. He'd had a scene, in Saturday Night Live, or my dream interpretation of a show somewhat like it, and he'd ad-libbed a line and a move having to do with a pair of goggles. He'd just thought it up on the spot, literally a step away from saying his set and rehearsed bit. He hadn't planned it at all, no dark scheming to use the show to his own benefit. He'd just had a flash of the comically brilliant, said his throwaway line and made his comical move with the goggles, and the rest was comedy history. It was the funniest twenty seconds of television in the past 30 years, and the offers and the endorsements deals were cascading down upon him still, a good two years after he'd made such a huge and unplanned smash debut.
And so it was clear to me: One must remain open to and alert for opportunities. Planning is important, and constancy and security come best from planning and dedicated preparation, sure. That is undeniable. But major leaps forward, and disastrous falls occur in the blink of an eye, with little or no warning. One has to be awake, alert, and mentally ready for these things when they arrive unbidden or unanticipated.
I'd won some kind of contest, and I and a few others were VVIP guests of the place for a day or two or three. We'd been staying at the ultra-modern pad perched on the hillside, looking down the lush valley over the golf course to the perfectly placed and maintained white cottages and bungalows of the resort area. Up and to the rear lay the still-wild reaches of the upper valley, just beyond the working area of the studios, where land-clearing and construction was always happening, reshaping the world in order to create another mass-media version of another further different reality. The pad was something like a cartoon Frank Lloyd Wright, like the incredible place in North By Northwest, jutting out in cantilevered extreme, seemingly shooting out of hill in tiers of perpendicularly opposed ledges and decks and floors. Despite the raw angularity of it, it melded perfectly into the hill, its materials and colors perfectly blending the green of the land and the blue of the sky.
And inside it was cool and quiet, the floors a smooth stone. Fantastic amenities inside.
And now I was on the final tour, by myself on a fast-moving vehicle, kind of a bus, kind of a truck, moving through the massive corporate spaces of this place. I'd seen everything, the TV operations, the movie sets and filming, the theme parks, both the public and the behind-the-scenes areas. It was incredible, all of it, and now we were looping back, across public land and open spaces now in order to get back to where we wanted to be. We were on surface streets, but I was up above it all, at a height of maybe 30 or 40 feet. I don't know what kind of vehicle it was, but I liked the sensation of the movement, and of being above, looking down. It was almost flying.
And it seemed we were in LA, or a kind-of LA. It was some kind of amalgam of my imagined LA, coupled with what I know of the geography of Hawaii. Apartment buildings built right into the side of the volcanic faces, incredible architectural achievements and engineering triumphs, with windows and balconies jutting out from raw natural sheeer faces, with the ubiquitous ferns everywhere. It was spectacular, but I wondered about parking and vehicle access. What about evacuation and fire? It was neat to look at, but what about actually occupying it, and then managing it?
We were on a big highway, leading up a hill, toward what I knew from so many hours in front of the movie scree and TV face to be a sort-of back gate to the corporate property. More of the incredible buildings to my left, and the road slowly, gently narrowed. Eventually it was a winding two-way road, poorly maintained. And along the road, more and more people, all of them knowing about this back gate, all of them crowding the edges to maybe get in, to get a glimpse of the ones going in and out. So many folks, all looking at me/us (whoever the "us" was) as we moved on up the road.
And I saw the camera boom extended from the vehicle, and we were filming. I didn't know what we were shooting or why, but now I and our vehicle were really part of something concrete taking place, not just a passing truck. The crowd were excited, seeing the relative action, and they started to move. They were waving and jumping, trying to get the camera's attention. Folks were looking at me, too, and I wondered why they'd want to look at me, as I was literally just along for the ride. They thought I was a director, maybe, or possibly even a star. Hell, I was someone involved in the production, and by simple virtue of that these simple, media-dominated morons were interested in me. They had no idea who I was, but there were hundreds flowing by as our vehicle wound up the road who wanted nothing more than to get to know me, to shake my hand, probably even to tell me how great I was, just because I was on the truck carrying the camera making whatever film was being made. The power in that was unmistakable, the power to abuse so quickly and readily, the mischief that could be had if I were to take advantage of that. Just the hint of the available sex was more than enough to sign me up for the program.
But none of that, as we were approaching the gate. The crowd was huge here, backing up and off the road, up into the jungle fringes around the run-down houses near the cracked and rutted road, the asphalt years beyond its useful life. So many folks, refugees, just standing around a guarded chain-link gate, waiting for something they thought would make their lives better.
And we were through, no more crowds. And we were slowly lifting off, the vehicle no longer just a truck. Maybe a helo, maybe something else, but we were rising slowly from the ground as we moved across the open spaces between the fabulous guest house and the production areas. It was a huge grassy meadow, hundreds of acres of nothing but green, flowing grass. I could see the patterns of our wash in the movement of the grass, and we were rising. The crowds were growing smaller, so much smaller, the entire place shrinking as we rose.
And then it was just me, shot up, the incredible feeling of upward acceleration. I was flying, rocketing upward, that strange yet undeniable feeling of movement overwhelming me. I yelled out in sheer exhilaration, raw sounds of abandon and pleasure and wonder. The other contest winners were relatively close--somehow we'd all gotten to the same place as a sort of reunion climax to our visit. Together we rose, spinning, to maybe 10,000 feet. No cold, no thin air, just the most incredible view of the still towering mountains all around this incredible valley, and the head of the valley closing off behind the park, painting-perfect mountains of steep, jagged pyramids coming together in a jumble, a forest of King Kong environs up there, way up there. The wind was warm, there was a slight haze, and the feeling of the movement was intoxicating. Absolute bliss.
And then the balloon was done, slowly falling. I was drifting down, down to the meadow and the fringes of the expertly maintained golf course. The visit was ended, and now it was time to return to my life, normalcy, anonymmity. None of that bothered me, but I wanted so much to return to that incredible feeling of flying, that lift, that feeling of being in the air alone, drifting and moving. That was all I wanted, and was willing to give a lot to have it again.
I drifted down to the soft green grass, to meet Al Franken, clearly fresh off the golf course. Since I was a nobody now, he handed me his grass-caked golfing shoes, expensive things with custom embroidery and such. He made some noises that I couldn't make out, and it was all about getting them cleaned up and ready for his next outing, whenever that would be. Who was I to refuse Al Franken, so I took the shoes, damp from his sweat but surprisingly non-redolent (what a great word), and headed back up the slope to the guest house.
I set the shoes on the main table in the spacious dining room, confident someone on the staff would find them and get them to where they needed to go. After all, I'm not Al Franken's goddamn shoe-shine boy. I wasn't pissed at him, but I wasn't going to do his shoes either.
As I moved through the house to find my room and pack my stuff, I could hear a piped-in monologue from some semi-rising star, talking on one of the corporate networks about making it famous. He'd had a scene, in Saturday Night Live, or my dream interpretation of a show somewhat like it, and he'd ad-libbed a line and a move having to do with a pair of goggles. He'd just thought it up on the spot, literally a step away from saying his set and rehearsed bit. He hadn't planned it at all, no dark scheming to use the show to his own benefit. He'd just had a flash of the comically brilliant, said his throwaway line and made his comical move with the goggles, and the rest was comedy history. It was the funniest twenty seconds of television in the past 30 years, and the offers and the endorsements deals were cascading down upon him still, a good two years after he'd made such a huge and unplanned smash debut.
And so it was clear to me: One must remain open to and alert for opportunities. Planning is important, and constancy and security come best from planning and dedicated preparation, sure. That is undeniable. But major leaps forward, and disastrous falls occur in the blink of an eye, with little or no warning. One has to be awake, alert, and mentally ready for these things when they arrive unbidden or unanticipated.
posted by Scrumpox at 10:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home