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05.18.10
Death Of A Livetweeting, Or, Killing The Frog
posted by Absinthe | 9:52 AM
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.” = E.B. White
So I took the boy to Disneyland yesterday, because our lives are about to get crazy busy and our passes won’t be good most days for the next couple months anyway. We headed straightaway to the Buzz Lightyear ride, which is what you do when your child’s favorite toy is a Buzz Lightyear and he tends to go around insisting that he’s Buzz Lightyear and you are Emperor Zurg, except when it’s the other way round. The line was mercifully short and the ride hasn’t yet lost all its charm for me, so the day was off to a good start. When we exited (through the gift shop, natch), he looked up at me and said “What are we going to do next?”
I let him choose. I’d call it a rookie mistake but my undercaffeinated state was a more likely culprit. Once I said “What ride would you like to go on?” it was all over. I looked him straight in the eye and tried to establish a telepathic link. Tiki Room, I thought. Say you want to go to the Tiki Tiki Room. You love it there. He looked back at me, quirked up the corners of his mouth, and said, “Maybe S’all World?”
So much for my vaunted mind control powers. So much for making it through a trip to Disneyland without sitting through a hundred choruses of “It’s a Small World After All”.
You see, Small World, it’s not really a ride. It’s a trap. You sit down in these miniature barges that – well, they move, but it’s not like they’re going anywhere. It’s a trip around a world of empty-eyed dolls that shiver and float in a spastic parody of dance, while an endless loop of the song you’re already humming to yourself burrows into your brain. And it lasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 minutes, which by mere coincidence is about as long as it takes your average human to get the bright idea of chewing through the restraints.
On the other hand, I love my son, and he’s at an age where he still gets joy out of the sorts of things banned in the Geneva Conventions.
So I decided to make a game out of it. I’d kill the soulcrushing aggravation by fighting back – or, perhaps, spreading the pain around. I’d turn off my internal editor and tweet every single thing that came into my mind on the ride, no matter how bizarre or unfunny or banal. I’d bleed it out to my friends. Of course, then Wil picked it up, which meant that my mental anguish was distributed to the kabillion people on his Twitter feed, who then retweeted it. It was like a million voices cried out, and were suddenly drowned out by a tacky orchestra and chorus. So, good job, me. Sorry about the song virus, everyone.
The depressing part, if you’re me – and I’m reasonably sure that I am – is that when I look back over the messages I sent in those fifteenish minutes (short line!), they strike me as funnier than anything I’ve written in months. Turns out a forced, real-time brainstorming session can be good for the soul.
But I like to look gift horses in their mouths, which is why I am never happy and frequently bitten. When I find something funny I often try to break it down – why is it funny? Why does a semantically inconsequential change of words sometimes turn a chuckle into a guffaw?
So I’m going to kill this frog. Exegetically. Here’s a few of the things I wrote yesterday, why I wrote them, and why they’re funny (or not). First, for background:
In order to stave off braindeath I will now livetweet the #SmallWorld ride at Disneyland. Starting with the line.
OK, I’m just laying groundwork here. But there’s a tiny bit of setup for:
Ok we are in line now #SmallWorld
… which is purely a timing joke, since the two Tweets should have arrived almost simultaneously. (Sidebar: a good part of the reason I put the SmallWorld hashtag into each message was to lower the chances of Tweet B arriving before Tweet A, since that would muck up any sequential/timing jokes I had in mind, or make anything longer than 140 characters nonsensical. More nonsensical. Anyway, I’ll edit them out from here on.)
Lots of topiary animals and one actual duck. I bet it feels all superior to the topiary.
Live animals intruding on the territory of manmade facsimiles. See this duck? This duck does not give a shit about your Imagineering or your handsculpted landscaping. This duck is here because there is water and there are suckers with popcorn. That was a little much to get down to 140 characters, however. Smug duck was more succinct.
Shitload of pennies in the water. Pity Kim Peek’s dead, he could tell me how much a little swim would be worth.
Rainman jokes: never actually as funny as you think they are at the time. This one might possibly be saved by the mental image of me grubbing pennies out of the stream while hordes of parkgoers in a hurry to be bored grumble angrily at my disruption.
Our long national nightmare of waiting in line for #SmallWorld is over.
See that molehill over there? That’s a mountain, son. Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
There are safety warnings in many languages, but nothing for the deaf.
Seriously, people who can’t hear are just on their own? Multilingual admonitions to stay in the car, keep all your limbs in the car, do not drink the water, DO NOT SMILE OR THE DOLLS WILL GO FOR THE THROAT. From all the clicking and popping I heard, either one of the speakers was on the fritz, or there was a warning in Xhosa. If you can’t hear, though, well, it’s a wonder the ride isn’t frequently jammed by their bruised, drowned corpses.
(Too much?)
Oh hey some dolls
Foreshadowing! It’s like Tippi Hedren tweeting “Oh hey some birds”. Also a setup for a callback later.
If I get out of here alive I am going to kill the next glockenspiel player I meet.
Position still open, send c.v. and salary requirements!
oh hey more dolls #SmallWorld wtf, some of them are BLINKING
Most of them are blinking, actually. The ones that are close to you, you can hear them blinking, even through the din of that song. Almost forgotten about the song, hadn’t you?
Two: number of children I could throw overboard before anybody stopped me, in my estimation
It was a pretty adult-heavy distribution in my particular car. I think I’d usually set the line at 3.5 kids and take the over, but I was committed to honesty in the moment. Maybe I sold myself short, as we were in the back row.
(Three if you count my own, which I don’t, because that would clearly be insane.)
See? I’m not a monster. Just a horrible, horrible person.
I wonder if the Chinese dolls brutally repress the Tibetan dolls at night
The most-retweeted line, probably for good reason. What happened was, I looked up to my right and saw a panda. Creepy panda with long, shimmery eyelashes. And I couldn’t figure out what a panda was doing in what looked like Mexico. (Walt’s vision: all foreigners look more or less alike, right?) Oh, China, I realized. Then I looked left and saw some dolls riding a yak. Interesting geopolitical statement, I thought. China over here, Tibet over there. I wonder if the Chinese government knows about this. I bet the Dalai Lama would be tickled. I bet he’d like this ride. Why am I wasting all this time thinking when I have a perfect opportunity to make a joke about doll-on-doll violence?
Interesting note: In the heat of the moment, I wrote “repress” instead of “oppress”, the latter being probably more appropriate. Nobody called me on it. Where have all the English majors gone?
WTF STILL MORE DOLLS AND WHY ARE WE STOPPING
The camel, his back is breaking. It turns out being stuck on a ride that doesn’t really go anywhere is just as maddening as being trapped on a runaway roller coaster. Fortunately the breach clears and we’re underway again shortly.
50% of these verses are about tears and fears. The song is dichotomous. I don’t actually know if that’s an adjective.
It is.
Seriously, though, half the song is about how the world is full of pain, sadness, and terror of the mortal coil. Happiest place on earth my philosophical ass.
OH GOD I DIED AND WENT TO LAWRENCE WELK’S HELL
Near the end of the ride the celebration of world culture disappears and everything becomes white. The variations on the “Small World” theme are all obliterated in favor of an overbearing, triumphal big band and chorale that recalls Welk’s “champagne music” sound. If you get this joke, you are almost certainly born before, say, 1976.
Sign says FAREWELL dare I live in hope?
Throwaway. Shouldn’t have bothered.
Pretty sure I just saw a flamingo being strangled by a panda
At the time it seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation. I had a bad angle.
Just now noticed seats in our boat are red. I thought they were blue. #SmallWorld. FUCK DOLLS FOLLOWED US OUTSIDE THEY’RE COMING FROM CLOCK
It really was the ol’ villain coming back to life for one last scare bit. Phew, we’re outside, it’s going to be okay, then the clock went off and a parade of giant dolls came streaming out. Well-timed, Imagineers!
And then, later:
Note to self: Round-the-park train ideal for drive-by on#SmallWorld clock dolls. Then flee and take shelter in Tiki Room? Get timetables!
We took the train around the park from New Orleans Square. At the Fantasyland stop the boy looked up at me and said, “S’all World?” And then I knew: it would never stop, unless I took action. To save him, save myself, save us all. Plus, you know, faint Kennedy assassination reference. For the laughs. Because, let’s face it, once you’re talking shit about amusement park rides, you’ll do anything for a laugh.
Please don’t blame me. I was driven to this. Well, not driven. Floated.
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Topics: Experiments In Terror, Human Interests, I Heart LA, Random Thoughts, The New Math | 3 Comments »
May 18, 2010 at 10:10 AM
Buzz Lightyear fetish seems like a perfect time to come visit Aunt April in Houston where they keep the ROCKET SHIPS. (just sayin…)
May 24, 2010 at 5:21 PM
Does he recognize Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear? I wonder what he thinks of Galaxy Quest and the Santa Clause…
Oh, and how excited are we for Toy Story 3?
May 24, 2010 at 5:21 PM
Finding you’ve posted is like finding a genuinely cool toy in a box of cracker jacks. I was once marooned in Small World Orlando Edition when I let my 8 year old talk me into the evening’s last ride during Magic Hours (ie midnight). This post had me laughing repeatedly but sadly also induced a PTSD reaction. 15 minutes of Small World is bad juju. 42 minutes is permanent and significant cortical trauma.