Sunday, May 31, 2015

Thinking Without Portals (page 1 of 3)

A few years ago, the Hoover Public Library started an after hours game night program. I thought it might be fun to contribute a few pencil and paper puzzles for the attendees in the spirit of GAMES magazine. This homage to GLaDOS was one of my games.

For the purpose of this blog, I'm dividing it into three parts because the image heavy content seems to be giving my previews a bit of a headache. Over the next few days I'll post the other two sections and an addendum reflecting on the whole experience.

Enjoy!







Saturday, May 23, 2015

Happy Birthday Pac-Man!

Pac-Man turns 35 this year, which means this classic icon from the eighties can now declare his presidential candidacy (for reference, Lara Croft won't be able to buy alcohol in this country for two more years). While Mr. Hyphen Man's relevancy may have dwindled since his heyday, the little yellow guy remains as recognizable as the 'Have a nice day' face, which doubled as the undefeatable predator that stalked your Berserk avatar at multiple speeds.

Pac-Man wasn't the first video game or even the best, but he was the clear juggernaut of the arcade's golden age. For whatever reason, be it the simplicity in concept or the ease of recognition, Pac-Man was everywhere, even in places he really had no reason to be.

If you're reading this blog (and you are) you probably already know all of the 'things you don't already know' lists about Pac-Man; you know his original name, the 256th level, and the hidey hole game glitch. So I don't have any of those kinds of tidbits for you. But I do have my own personal childhood intertwined with the heyday of Pac-Man's story, and I think that gives me a bit of a time capsule to blog about.
So welcome to Pac-Land.


The Cherry Voyage

Imagine you're in a situation where you have to explain the concept of Pac-Man to the uninitiated, i.e. someone who literally has never heard of Pac-Man, power pellets or the term 'ghost monsters'. That was my father trying to describe the brand new arcade game that Aladdin's Castle had just introduced to their mall establishment.

Let's reminisce about the arcade. Different time. Parents could abandon their kids at this cave of wonders with its unearthly lights and sounds (the training wheels version of Vegas) without ever blinking their eyes at the thought of abduction. I was there when Jungle King was pulled and replaced with Jungle Hunt. I stood for hours (collectively) watching Dirk the Daring die in innovative ways. And I rocked the hell out of Crazy Climber even if no one else warmed up to the controls.

So it was one impressionable day that my dad came home from work and told me about this new game where you were this lemon. Running around a house with these hamburglars chasing you. If you ate one of these stop signs, you could then eat the hamburglars and they'd run back to base before coming after you again.

I had a very different looking game in my head.


The Strawberry Festival

1980 was a great year for me. I was in second grade, where our report cards still assigned us W's, S's and L's instead of the oppressive self-esteem crushing A B C D and F system. Stress was low, and the 80's was defining itself right out of the gate with colorful movies like Flash Gordon, Xanadu and...um...The Shining. Me and my two best friends Jamie and Nebe were inseparable (Hey guys, sing with me, "Schroeder, Nett and Millimer are members of BFBT..."), and as a result we were full blown into the same things with all the soul and passion elementary schoolchildren could have. In other words, a LOT.

We didn't just connect over Pac-Man, we lived it. We had sleepovers centered around the Saturday morning cartoon, for which we quickly became adept at mimicking the character voices and devising our own fan fictions for each other. Jamie and I both created our personal puppet show versions of the cast, with sets and props. We even introduced a few new ghosts into the lineup, the yellow one named Yinky and the green one named Minky (although my version had Minky as an exceptionally mean character and Yinky as and uncharacteristically benevolent antagonist while their personalities were reversed in his world; that debate never resolved).


Apples and Oranges

Egads, the merchandise! If it involved Pac-Man I wanted it. I had the t-shirts, the lunchbox, the cereal, the repugnant vitamins (only once), and I called the local radio station over and over just to request Pac-Man Fever.

Then came Ms. Pac-Man, which was honestly the first arcade game sequel I remember ever experiencing. I mean, arguably Galaga was a sequel to Galaxian which was a sort of sequel to Space Invaders, but this was different. Ms. Pac-Man took what seemed like an already perfect concept and improved it in every way.

You know, come to think of it let's talk about the female gamer. When video games started out, they were thought of as part of the boys' club, a regrettable stigma that still perpetuates online harassment today. Toru Iwatani created Pac-Man with the intention of appealing to the female demographic (allegedly while eating pizza). Now I was eight years old so gender issues weren't really at the forefront of my priorities, but I distinctly remember that when I laid eyes on Ms. Pac-Man for the first time it was two teen-aged girls who were playing the game. The reason why it stands out was because the moment the pretzel first appeared bouncing around the maze, both girls exclaimed "A pretzel!" and the three of us started laughing. Damn, I miss Showbiz Pizza.

I don't know what order the rest of Pac-Man's relatives started showing up, but the next one I had the luxury of hating was Baby Pac-Man, the arcade/pinball hybrid that failed at both. Pac-Man Jr. was next with its oversized scrolling screen to add a needless complication to the gameplay. Then came Super Pac-Man with some real innovations yet somehow less fun overall. And finally Pac-Man Plus, a return to the basics where the original layout periodically vanishes on you, perhaps a metaphor signifying that nothing lasts forever.

Dynamite magazine once mentioned there was also Professor Pac-Man, but I never came across it.


Melon-choly

I've always assumed that our society's attention span has gotten worse over the years, but by 1981 consumers were already demanding a home port of Pac-Man on the Atari. Their version made it to the shelves a year later, and I'm sure you've heard how awful it was. And it was awful. I can't really place my finger on why it was as bad as it was, but suffice to say Atari really broke some hearts with that one. At least the E.T. game has the excuse of a six week development period by a single designer. Pac-Man had a year to get it right.

But you know who beat them to the punch? The Odyssey 2. If this was before your time, the Odyssey 2 was the equivalent of Snapple in the home console war dominated by Atari and Intellivision. There were some truly great games on that system but the most infamous was K.C. Munchkin, best remembered as Pac-Man in court.

K.C. Munchkin was unquestionably Pac-Man if you were doing everything in your power to pretend it wasn't Pac-Man. Three ghosts (Munchers) instead of four, only twelve dots which moved around the maze, a rotating regenerator that you could actually go inside, and a freaking level editor! It was a ripoff, but it was a damn good one (and for the record, so was Ms. Pac-Man).

Atari took Odyssey to court and lost the case but won the appeal. And while I can't say I blame them for overreacting the way they did, I don't know why they didn't try to claim ownership of the title and release it on the Atari instead of the wafer-fest that wound up killing their system. They should have sued themselves. And K.C. Munchkin is still awesome.


And the Inedibles

Like anything that burns brightly Pac-Man had a limited shelf life. We were all crazy about it, but the effect wore off. It's like a blackjack table that's no longer hot, those moments where you wakka through Inky without dying become commonplace. You get to a point where you realize that Billy Mitchell has already done everything that there is to do in the game. Pac-Man was destined to burn out.

That fever is never going to burn again the way it did for a few special years. It's not meant to. Ever sense our lovable lemon drop took a Pac-seat (Dear God, I swore I wouldn't go there) to Tetris blocks and Doom tournaments we've noted his absence but we haven't felt a loss. Like any A-list star, Pac-Man has become part of our collective culture. Someday the world may forget about Track & Field, Bump 'n Jump, or a short lived black and white classic called Ripoff (which still feels surprisingly original), but our little buddy will always be with us, at least giving our unconscious mind a little smile every time we pull away that first slice of pizza.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

A Random Questionairre

I've always had a fondness for these About Me questionairres. In fact, when I first set up my blog I uploaded my backlog of surveys that I'd amassed back in my Myspace days. If you like this one, feel free to look over past entries here, here, here, here, here, and even here. I'd also love to read your answers to any of these questions, serious or comedic. Just send me a comment down below. Enjoy!


1) How old do you wish you were?
I'm happy with my current age. I just wish I felt like I did when I was seven.

2) Where were you when 9/11 happened?
I was in Seuss Landing at Universal Studios: Islands of Adventure. I had no idea why every tourist was suddenly leaving the park all at the same time, but Universal was offering free guest passes to everybody at the gate. Florida was also being threatened by a hurricane that week and the news outlets couldn't figure out which story to focus on. Two days later I was playing Liverlips at the Magic Kingdom to a guest attendance of about two hundred people. Steve Irwin was in the park, but I never got to meet him. That's my 9/11 story. Fun, huh?

3) What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
I simply accept the fact that this amoral world of ours has targeted me personally for its amusement and left me with no course of action except to curl up quietly and seethe.

4) Do you consider yourself kind?
Yeah. Like the other day when I didn't push that kid down for screaming his head off like I really, really wanted to? See, I'm a nice guy.

5) If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?
On a disposable paper plate.

6) If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?
I would love to have been fluent in German when I was taking German so I wouldn't have had to study German. But now I'd love to instantly download Japanese into my head.

7) Do you know your neighbors?
I know of them.

8) What do you consider a vacation?
Anything involving a roller coaster park so I can cower in the face of death and then lie later about being insanely courageous.

9) Do you follow your horoscope?
Nah, I don't put much stock in it. I occasionally look up common traits about Scorpios whenever I need a self-esteem boost. I was also born in the year of the rat, which makes me venomous and rabid.

10) Would you move for the person you loved?
That was how I found her. But yes, I'll always put Ginny first. (Is she reading this? Somebody make sure she's reading this).

11) Are you touchy feely?
I am with my wife and most quadruped mammals (dogs, cats, cows, camels, elephants, the occasional yak).

12) Do you believe that opposites attract?
If we're talking physics I think that's been proven already. But in terms of relationships, I think the 'birds of a feather' axiom takes dominance. Successful couples probably have eighty percent similarities and twenty percent differences, enough to keep things off balance.

13) Dream job?
A curator at a videogame museum.

14) Favorite channel(s)?
When it comes to TV I'm into specific shows with little attention to what they air on. So let me go with internet channels instead. Itsjustsomerandomguy, How It Should Have Ended, Nostalgia Critic, Honest Trailers, and my wife's diet review channel (for which I'm usually manning the iPad camera).

15) Favorite place to go on weekends?
The abyss of imagination where anything is possible.

16) Showers or Baths?
Showers. Baths are too bathy.

17) Do you paint your nails?
Accidentally, like when I'm trying to paint anything but my nails.

18) Do you trust people easily?
I used to. Guess how that played out.

19) What are your phobias?
I'm afraid of paid vacations, movie premiers, and big piles of money; why do you ask?

20) Do you want kids?
Not particularly. In fact I kind of want other people to stop having them as well.

21) Do you keep a handwritten journal?
I keep notebooks to jot down ideas and rough drafts. But not for the sake of journaling. I don't find my day to be that remarkable.

22) Where would you rather be right now?
*points* Over there. Come to think of it, why aren't I? Hang on...okay that was a real disappointment.

23) Who makes you feel warm and fuzzy?
The aforementioned wife and most quadruped mammals (dogs, cats, cows, camels, elephants, the occasional yak).

24) Heavy or light sleeper?
How should I know? Either way I'm asleep during it.

25) Are you paranoid?
I honestly feel too insignificant to think anyone is out to get me. Although is it just me or did you ever notice that if you take the 'I' out of 'Paranoid' you can rearrange the letters and get 'Pandora'?

26) Are you impatient?
Internally yes, but I'm quite adept at repression.

27) Who can you relate to?
People who answer questionnaires with snarky responses. Or more specifically, introspective, eccentric, creative people who are defeated by their own idleness. They're great.

28) How do you feel about interracial couples?
I'm happy they found each other.

29) Have you been burned by love?
Remember that trust question from earlier?

30) What's your favorite pick-up line?
I don't like pick-up lines. Although in retrospect I wonder how "I don't like pick-up lines" would have worked as a pick-up line.

31) What's your main ring tone on your mobile?
I have it set on vibrate. It makes it easier to ignore.

32) What were you doing at midnight last night?
I was lying in bed wide awake worrying that the moment would become significant to an online questionnaire in the near future.

33) What did the last text on your cellphone say?
It didn't say anything. I had to read it. HAHAHA!!! I've been waiting 42 years to tell that joke. Well I don't have my phone handy but I'm pretty sure it was a sweet text from my wife reminding me again that those casino machines are rigged.

34) Whose bed did you sleep in last night?
Mine and my wife's. I apparently like to stretch out a lot.

35) What color shirt are you wearing?
Forward, aren't we? I'm wearing a grey shirt with a collar. See me yet? I'll try waving.

36) Most recent movie you watched?
The Avengers: Age of Ultron. I liked it very much, but I felt the movie should have had nine prequels to really help me understand what was going on.

37) Name three things you have on you at all times?
I have to NAME my wedding ring, keys and wallet? *sigh* Fine, I'll go with Ringo, Francis Scott, and Barbara.

38.) What color are your bed sheets?
They're white with, I don't know, some kind of pattern on them. A flower maybe? You know I actually have important things to remember, right?

39) How much cash do you have on you right now?
Come on, seriously. How much for the oil filter?

40) What is your favorite part of the chicken?
The way it crosses the road for no discernible reason.

41) What's your favorite town/city?
I don't really have an answer to that so I'll make one up. It's a little out of the way place that I never go to because it's a little out of the way, called Town City. Hands down, they have the most people with their hands down. Nobody ever gets called on in class or held up at gunpoint. Their motto is 'You haven't lived until you've been born'. In fact it's a law. Everyone who lives there has been born at one time or another.

42) I can't wait till:
I'm sorry to hear that. Are you okay with waiting tables?

43) Who got you to join LJ?
K's departure when the alphabet got reversed?

44) What did you have for dinner last night?
I had a hotdog. Man, what a boring answer. Let me dress it up a bit. It was the kind of evening one would expect in the middle of May, a bit muggy but not altogether unpleasant. My hunger pangs hadn't set in yet, but with the foreknowledge of my schedule the following morning dinner struck me as appropriate. I had a hotdog. No, it still sucks.

45) How tall are you barefoot?
5' 10" if I'm not jumping.

47) Do you own a gun?
And risk shooting my eye out? Do you think I learned nothing from whatever that movie was with the Christmas story in it?

48) What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Milk. Root Beer. Dr. Thunder. Anything that's not horrible.

49) What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
Lure them into what? Huh? Who are you, anyway? Why should I trust you with information that's clearly meant to be secret? Boy, you're really presumptuous. And don't think I didn't notice you skipped question 46 either.

56) Where do you think you'll be in 10 yrs?
Wow, we skipped a lot of questions. I must have hit a nerve. Sorry, whoever you are. Let's see, ten years (excuse me, yrs). You know, looking back on my life, there is no point I would accurately have predicted where I'd be ten yrs later. My goal is to have at least one book published by then. So that gives me like nine yrs to procrastinate writing one.

57) Last thing you ate?
A bit of healthy chocolate chip cake; healthy because it was only a bit.

58) What songs do you sing in the shower?
John Rutter's Requiem -I don't know! Whatever I have in my head at the time. Probably that Everything is Awesome/Let it Go medley that's been stuck there for the past year.

59) Last thing that made you laugh?
My paystub.

60) Worst injury you've ever had?
I don't know if my six days of hospitalization due to dehydration counts as an injury or just stubbornness on my part, but that diving board-to-the-face experience is the only time I've had stitches. And that joke about the cellphone text from earlier certainly injured my dignity.

61) Does someone have a crush on you?
Well since I've been married for six years. I think it's safe to say that my wife has advanced beyond the crush phase of our relationship. As for anybody else in the world, I certainly hope not. That would be most uncomfortable.

62) What's your favorite candy?
Oh no. It's YOU isn't it? YOU have a crush on me! No wonder you were asking me if I paint my nails. Look, I'm flattered and all that (and since you asked, I like Reese's), but you really need to find somebody else. There are a lot of nice, lonely, miserable people out there like yourself waiting for that special someone. Just be true to you.

63) What song do you want played at your funeral?
Pepperoni and cheese. Wait, no, that's what I want on my tombstone. You know, I have a song that I wrote called "It'll Be Okay" that I'd love to have performed at my funeral. I don't think I've posted those lyrics on my blog yet but yeah. That's the one.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

National Lampoon's Vacation 2015 (pre-emptive) Review

It's becoming increasingly harder to find anything to say on my blog that hasn't already been tackled by thousands of people before me, but I thought I might be able to beat the rush by reviewing a movie two and a half months before it comes out this July.

Full disclosure: I haven't seen the National Lampoon reboot/sequel/pale imitation of their Vacation franchise at this time (obviously- again, it comes out at the end of July). But I feel comfortable reviewing it now because I've seen the red band trailer. I'm convinced this is all the information I'm going to need.

Like its predecessor, the premise of Vacation is a road trip involving a well-meaning father who thinks driving, as opposed to flying, across the country with his family will bring them closer together and create cherished memories; a fleeting commodity in the modern era. What then follows is a nearly worst possible series of road trip encounters which push the family, and particularly the dad, to their mental breaking points.

This is a strong premise for a comedy. Road pictures are a staple of comedy films (a cliche even) because they allow the writers to only deal with many characters/circumstances for as long as they're funny and then move on to the next event. And when you throw in the positive intentions of the character in the driver's seat, it adds a certain heroic element for the audience to root for.

The original film was one of the best uses of Chevy Chase at the height of his talent. Beginning with the second movie in the series his Clark Griswold turned into a psychotically naive patriarch, which hurt the credibility of the situations he was in. But the original movie felt believable (save for the climax). It felt both funny and horrifying at the same time. In other words, it was a dark comedy.

Now let me be clear, I'm not like a massive FAN of this movie. I rarely warm up to dark comedies, probably because I'm secretly afraid of the world's amorality. Nobody, not even John Cleese with A Fish Called Wanda, has ever been able to convince me that there's anything funny about the untimely death of a pet. But even with my discomfort about the original movie, I can recognize that the comedy works. And that's the key to anyone who tries to pursue anything ever in comedy. It has to work. Being funny is honestly out of your hands, that's the judgement of the audience. Making it work is yours.

So we have a two and a half minute trailer which devotes the first 25 seconds to clips from the original. And right off the bat we have the first problem. It only takes six seconds to establish what franchise we're about to devalue. But instead of using the extra time to hit the heart of the movie or set up the point of the rehash, they show us the scene where Christie Brinkley flirts with Chevy Chase. The reason, as we'll soon see, is so the trailer's punchline will resonate with people who aren't sociopaths.

Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo make as much of an appearance as they're probably going to make in the actual movie. Then we cut to Ed Helms, instead of a grown up Anthony Michael Hall. Helms is the 29th actor to take on the inconsistent role of Russ Griswold, and he establishes that he wants to make one final pilgrimage to Wally World. And we have the first joke of the trailer. His youngest son (are you ready for this?) delivers an obscenity.

Oh. Um. Ah ha ha. We're in really good hands, aren't we? There's snippets of bad driving, explosions and twerking. Then a meta-joke about the original movie. You know the thing about meta-jokes and fourth wall humor? There was a time when these were so sparse and subtle that the inclusion of them was practically an Easter Egg. Today writers lean on them so much that they rarely work anymore. We've had two jokes now and they've both failed.

There's a sexual joke between a father and son that's so blatant that I don't actually understand the joke and can still recognize the obviousness of it. A second sexual joke (I assume. What else could it be?), an extended view of Thor's penis (not a euphemism), and the pivotal swimming-in-sewage scene.

Let's pause for a moment. The Griswold's go for an unintentional swim in sewage. Think about that in terms of humor value. Gross-out humor is hardly ever comedy. It may get a laugh, but that's not the same thing as comedy. Decades ago, people would laugh at gross-out humor because of the shock value. Today shock value is all but non-existent. We've seen it all before. It's boring, tired, and just gross. People still laugh, but now it's more because people are conditioned to laugh. It's automatic.

So not one single joke in this trailer, the very reel that is supposed to showcase the best moments in order to get an audience into the damn theater, has worked. But then we're given the aforementioned punchline: a recreation of the Christie Brinkley scene with another model. The twist is that she's killed in a head-on collision with a semi. I'm still trying to imagine one person on the production team reading that moment in the script and thinking that it was anything other than a desperate hack job of indifference.

The dark humor of the original worked because you could see yourself in Clark's situation. Here is an amiable man aiming for something wonderful, failing, and having to redouble his enthusiasm to uphold what little confidence his family has in him. You cared about him. You sympathized with his pain. You were invested.

The rewrite is clearly determined to keep you out of the characters, encouraging you to laugh AT them, like a bully. The team behind this movie really has no idea what the hell they're doing. They know nothing about the way comedy works. I don't see any reason to give this movie a chance.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Editorial: Five Signs You've Become An A***ole At Disney World

I worked at the Disney resort in Orlando from 2000 to 2006, and I have to say it's a chapter of my life I'll genuinely treasure. It's funny, however, when you get away from the company how frequently you encounter very assertive opinions against the company by people who really have no basis for what they believe apart from a simple desire to want to think Disney mistreats their cast members.

In my experience, this is not the case. Is it a perfect company? Of course not. Do they treat the cast poorly? Not at all. Admittedly the face of the company is so exaggeratedly positive that they may paint a picture of cast benefits to be unrealistic, but at the end of the day Disney is a job, and it's a good one.

I mention this because I want anyone reading my blog to understand that the typical cast member (there are always bad eggs to be filtered out) is someone who may have come to work with a bit of a migraine but still hopes you're enjoying your vacation. Some cast members are insanely outgoing, while others are a bit on the reserved side, but something inside us believes in what Disney is supposed to be.

But let's face it. Florida is usually hot. And it's crowded. And you probably took out a second mortgage just to cover the parking fees. Tensions can rise. We all get it. When that happens, ninety percent of tourists are able to push past their sense of 'their need is the only thing that matters to the world around them' and finds a way to have fun. This blog is about the remaining ten percent.

5. "We just want an autograph!"

You hear this one when an adult realizes the line to meet one of the Country Bears is as long as the one to an Aerosmith concert. Sometimes it's "We just want a photo" or "We just want to monopolize Liverlips's attention for an hour and a half" but the rubrics are always the same. It opens with "We just want-" as if the expectation which follows is going to be somehow less inconvenient on the character performer than asking them to drive the family in question to the airport.

Here's the deal, those autographs are meaningless. Disney cast members have to lie and say that the characters love signing their fake names because selling these meaningless autograph books and impossible-to-balance pens with Mickey's torso on them are a cash cow. The characters want to interact with you and give you an encounter as opposed to proof of the encounter.

But that's a digression of a deeper issue without a solution. The topic here is: no, your perceived 'minor' demand does not exempt you from waiting in line. All of those miserable people who are already following the rules that you think are so unimportant; you're as unimportant as they are. Get in the damn line or hang it up on the autographs.

4. "We dropped our fastpass."

No you didn't.

This one is similar to the character meet and greet, except in the example above the guest probably believes they have grounds to bypass the line. But here, someone knows they're trying to get away with something.

If you're unfamiliar with the fastpass system, there are kiosks outside some of the more popular attractions where you can reserve a time to come back later and bypass most of the line. I haven't been to Disney in a few years, and I understand there's been a major overhaul of the whole system, but the lesson here holds true. Don't try to play the system.

You see, Disney cast members do the same things every day. They know how the park works. And they're also bright enough to recognize people who try to take advantage of the company's already prevalent generosity. I had a couple of young guys attempt to bluff their way past me at Space Mountain. I got applause from the standby line when I sent them packing. Cast members LIVE for those moments.

3. "Universal lets us smoke wherever."

Where do I begin? Disney has designated smoking areas for those people who still haven't figured out that the consequences of smoking outweigh the benefits by approximately a lot to jack squat. But the company will still grant you a few spots within ironic walking distance to indulge.

Now admittedly, Universal's smoking policy has also changed since I lived in Florida, but I also heard "Universal lets us drink alcohol" and "Universal has better rides/food/alligator wranglers," as if dropping the name of the primary competition will suddenly procure better service. "Oh, my, well we certainly don't want that opinion to make it onto Yelp. Let me see if I can get you and your family dinner on one of the parade floats."

Truthfully though, this is usually a case where the guest isn't actually after anything apart from having their unimportant feedback heard. This one is ultimately harmless though. Disney cast members know there are some people who simply cannot be pleased. We want you to be happy. But we're not going to break our backs for you. And when you flaunt your inflexibility, watch how fast we stop giving a damn.

2. "My watch says eleven."

This is when something is going to open its doors at a specific time and people have to wait outside longer than they expect to. It's annoying. You have every right to be annoyed. You may even be right about the time. It may be 11:03 and the lack of open entranceway is now eating into your vacation. Maybe there's a mechanical issue behind the door. Maybe somebody didn't show up to work. Maybe the entire staff of Captain EO is deliberately making you and the other two hundred people in line wait longer for their own amusement. I don't know what's going on and neither do you.

But that poor lone cast member, with the desperate Disney smile, standing between the attraction and a potential onslaught; that cast member doesn't know what's going on either.

That cast member knows that the doors are supposed to open at eleven. That cast member has been telling twelve people before you that the doors open at eleven. And when you brazenly declare that your watch, which has a high speed uplink to the international registry of timekeeping, says that it is in fact eleven and those doors are now obligated to show some sign of movement, that cast member grimaces politely and says "We're on Disney Time."

What does Disney Time mean? I'll tell you. It means nobody gives a shit what your watch says. The f**king doors will open when they f**king open. And that well-trained Disney smile is the dam for a flood of anxiety and tears that cast member is pushing back the same way that cast member's fragile body is the only thing holding back the mob of irritated guests all expecting the attraction to open at f**king eleven. That's what Disney Time means. So shut up about your f**king watch.

1. "We measured him at home."

God! I hate this one. You know those six year old kids who only want two experiences at Disney World; to meet Goofy, and to ride You're Too Short To Ride This Ride Mountain? So many caregivers have this superstitious belief that their unfounded promises are going to cause a desired result to come into being.

I'm holding the scientifically crafted height stick, which resembles a mailbox flag if world's population suddenly became hobbits. If you want to ride this ride, your head has to come up to level where the stick indicates it has to. Why that height? Why not lower? I don't know. I'm not a paid journalist. I'm a paid stick holder. Probably nothing is going to happen if your almost-tall-enough child gets on the ride, but it's my ass on the line if I let him through.

When the child doesn't meet the requirement, there's usually a bit of underhanded scheming that the adults and child do right in front of me. "Stand on your tippy toes," is the first command. I'm not having it. "No, he needs to put his heels down on the ground," I inform them. They try to rationalize the situation by suggesting that if the child had only worn his six inch stilettos he would be tall enough for the ride. This is true, but he didn't and he's not.

"The other guy let us do it yesterday," they lie. "Ah yes," I lie back, "He was terminated this morning for that very thing." "But why can't he ride? I'll be sitting next to him, holding him down, blocking meteorological debris with my body. So why can't he ride?"

"Because he's not tall enough."

It's really a simple equation. Somebody who makes significantly more money than me has decided where the cut off point is for letting people onto the beloved death trap. I hear the arguments. I accept the names I get called. But the only thing in my hands is this damnable measuring stick, and that's what I have to go by.

If it stopped there I wouldn't have a problem, but then I'm presented with the problem. It's not my problem, it's theirs, but they try to pawn it off on me. "We measured him at home." Well, you didn't have this measuring stick. Maybe your child was correctly measured in inches and you went through some interdimensional compression zone between there and here. Maybe you didn't realize he was on a step ladder at home. Maybe you were drunk at the time. I don't care. Right here, right now, your child is not tall enough. And if your relationship with him is now damaged, it's because you tried to do my job.

The bottom line is, you are a single face in a sea of thousands. There is something to be said for individuality, but in this case you either do the right thing with the rest of the flock and be forgotten with the best of them, or you stand out by being a pain in the ass. Your goal should be to have the best day you can, not to ruin some one else's. You've already had to donate your plasma to get here, why squander it trying to feel more important than you are?

What stories do you guys have about dealing with impossible vacationers?