The Long Dark Disneyland of the Soul
Roy already gave this one the hit-and-run, but it deserves so much more. Everyone’s favorite humorless humorist, the Man From Fuddles, has taken his annual pilgrimage to the land where the fun never ends. While a trip to Disney World, for some people, is cause for joy and celebration, for our Jimbo, it is cause to complain about anything and everything that isn’t him. Let’s watch!
Every year I buy a new pair of Chuck Taylor’s. It’s the first sign of spring. I prefer a 7 1/2, but not all stores carry half sizes. (“You could get them online,” the clerk usually says. To the customer. With money in his hand. Standing In the store. It’s an odd world.)
Lileks pulls this bit a lot when he wants to complain about what he calls ‘bad service’ and what other people would call ‘the inability of retail stores to act as magic wish-granting machines.’ For such a devotee of the free market, he doesn’t seem to understand how it works: The reason that most shoe stores don’t carry a lot of half-sizes is because there is not a great deal of demand for them, leading to a smaller supply. The clerk, by suggesting that Jimbo buy his shoes online, is actually being helpful, suggesting a way for the customer to get what he wants — rather than going back to the storeroom and selling him a pair of size-eights with a new number written on the box in Sharpie. Jimbo’s understanding of capitalism seems to be that if he goes into a pet store and wants to buy some luggage, and the clerk tells him they don’t have any, that he is being ill-served.
Since the eights stretch and get too loose, I shift down to size sevens and spend a few weeks wincing as I train them. This year I bought three different pairs, in different styles. (The extent of my annual shoe expenditure is about $160.) All three pinched my soles in different places. I didn’t stretch any of them out sufficiently, and I would even switch to last year’s pair for comfort. And so I came to pass that I stood in my closet at 4:55 AM, wondering which pair of shoes would be less painful.
And here Jimbo, who spends pretty much every hour that God sends on the Internet, confesses that he buys shoes that are too small and suffers through the subsequent agonizing foot pain, rather than simply buying the right size online.
I’d be doing some walking in the next few days, after all. That’s why we were up before five: the plane to Disneyworld left at seven. And that’s how it came to pass that I began a trip to Disneyland with blisters already on my feet.
Somehow he avoids blaming his blisters on al-Q’aeda, or speculating that electing Barack Obama would lead to Orlando getting hit by a suitcase nuke, but he’s still swole on a role. After complaining that planes have turbulence, Florida is hot, and bugs live on Earth, he gets down to excoriating cartoon rats for engaging in extramarital sex:
The video screens on the bus show all the characters having a wonderful time, even though you wonder why Donald and Daisy and Mickey and Minnie are taking a trip to Disney World – don’t they live there? They’re not married, are they?
No, James, the imaginary rodents are not married. What else you got for us?
It makes for a different mix; among the families, most of which are pasty and mid-thirties with jouncy-belly kids, there’s a big contingent of pasty people in their mid-forties lugging gimme-sacks full of incredibly important material from very important conferences.
James Lileks is complaining about middle-aged white people toting around tons of useless ephemera. Oh, the irony! But, you see, they have fat kids, so it’s okay to mock them. His own daughter is thin via the inherent virtue of conservative parental values.
The women look like managers and the men give the impression of someone who wants to golf, but cannot.
Women, mannish; men; harried; grammar, erroneous. Check, check, and re-check! Now let’s make fun of some liberals.
While checking in I was in front of a woman who had a T-shirt with a picture of a dead pig, and the words AUSCHWITZ BEGINS. I peered at the shirt to divine the full text: “Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals – Theodor Adorno” I suspected that if an actual Auschwitz survivor had approached the woman in the shirt and upbraided her, the woman would have shrugged it off: well, she’s a little too close to the matter to see the deeper meaning.
And, of course, what would Adorno, a Marxist who fled Nazi Germany along with his Jewish wife, know about Auschwitz, anyway? The Holocaust does not belong to him. It belongs to James Lileks and his strawman friends.
Who the *$(#% wears a picture with a slaughtered pig and a specious Auschwitz equivalence to a Disney resort check-in line, anyway?
People with variant political and cultural attitudes to James Lileks’s are being allowed to attend conferences at the same resort as him! Where is the government to intervene in such dire times?
There’s something a big sad about seeing childless adult Disney fans, lanyards spattered with pins, eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments.
Like Lileks, these people are gorging themselves during annual trips to Disney World. But unlike him, they deserve our scorn and/or pity, because they are fat and childless.
Off to Downtown Disney, which we hadn’t visited before. Sheer marketing genius: an open-air shopping center designed to extract the last possible penny from every molecule of the Disneyverse.
Wow, a big shopping mall in an overpriced resort hotel! What a BRILLIANT idea! Whoever thought of that was a GENIUS!
Tomorrow: Epcot, or, the Long March, or What Happened to the Enormous Wizard Wand?
Wearing a t-shirt to a Disney World Hotel that makes reference to Auschwitz? Totally inappropriate! Comparing an amusement park to the Long March, on which hundreds of thousands of people died? Hilarious! See you tomorrow, everybody!
Oh dear. Size 7 feet? On a man?
On the plus side, it makes it easy for him to borrow Gnat’s pumps.
Every year I buy a new pair of Chuck Taylor’s. It’s the first sign of spring. I prefer a 7 1/2, but not all stores carry half sizes.
Wait a minute. I’ve been buying my favorite Rockport sandals that have been discountinued for years – ON LINE since 1997, and Lileks is complaining that his neighborhood shoe store doesn’t carry his size of a ubiquitous shoe he’s been wearing for – i dunno – decades?
Hello, Jim – ever heard of Zappos? fuckin’ idiot.
I believe I am older and more inclined to be a Luddite than Mr. “Weren’t the 50’s Great?” – but at least I know how to buy the fucking pair of shoes I want and make sure I get them.
Look. I figured the whole Disneyland thing out at least thirty years ago.
There has NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!!! Been a better place to take ridiculous amounts of LSD, I’m talking SHEETS of blotter, at least two fucking THOUSAND mics and wander about.
I mean, c’mon. You’re gonna go to cartoon world, you might as well see cartoon world as it was intended.
If you’ve never done it, never tried it, never even tripped or fried? And you have just one goddam bloody chance to give ‘er a go? Please PLEASE listen to me.
This is not an experience you should miss, and don’t pass it up ’cause well, dammit, it’s too late.
C’mon. Road trip. Let’s score 96 hits of cheap blotter and start chewing ’em along about grapevine!
Whaddaya say?
mikey
Christ. I first went to Disneyland (never have been to Disney World) at the age of 49 or so, with my spouse and kid. I was totally prepared to dislike it; I made jokes of wearing a beret and smoking a Gauloise and sneering during my visit. But, in fact, my kid was about 8, and I completely forgot about my misgivings, and had a great time watching him have fun. Since I like thrills, some of the rides were really fun just for me – not just for my kid. And I totally enjoyed spending the day there.
I have absolutely no desire to go back, and I don’t even think my kid (who’s now 20) wants to go back, but Jeebus Christ! What kind of cynical fucking spoiler take his child (I assume Gnat is still an innocent child who enjoys simple things) to something she wants to go to and spends the time sneering and making fun of it?
What a dick.
So he’s actually writing about his shoe size and buying his footwear. Without humor. BITCHING about it and soliciting sympathy.
I’m working on a theory (==I thought this the other day) that the Bush admin. has been a complete cancer to the right. So this is what they’re passing around as commentary. This is what they have left. Mr. “I Wear Chucks–Am I Down With the Brothers at the West 4th St. Basketball Court or What?” sneering at fat people at Disneyworld.
It’s nice, yes, but it’s not enough. It is not enough, that Lileks demonstrate in public his idiocy while waiting for applause. Bush and Cheney themselves must suffer.
Is that so very wrong? To desire simple justice? I don’t think it will actually happen–Bush is too pathological and Cheney is too corrupted–but you got to have a dream.
although – mikey, amplify this to having it happen while you’re tripping – my friend L, who grew up a stone’s throw from Disneyland, said her high school senior trip went there. And she was on some ride – Magic Mountain? not sure – when the ride malfunctioned and they were stranded for over an hour. It was real close to the “It’s a Small World” ride, and they had to listen to That Song playing for over and hour…..!
Imagine if you were high (and I think my friend L probably was.). What hell could that be?
I vote that we rename James “the strawman”. Because he loves them so
much. Never an assertion without one.
Or a barbershop quartet full. Or a veritable chorus.
I dunno about Disney World, but I’ve always dug Epcot Center. It appeals to the nerd, the idealist, the dreamer, the romantic, and even the wounded-cynic in me.
It’s a fantastic place, and I would suggest anyone reading Sadly, No go, because it’s maybe the last place where education and learning are encapsulated as something good and fun in this country.
Plus, they sell alcohol. If the other stuff doesn’t inspire, getting blitzed in a Disney park should.
Seven and a half?
BhehehehahahahHAhAhAHAHAHHAHAHAH!
Shorter Lileks: “Gimbol’s? GIMBOL’S?!”
I got stuck on top of that stupid thing at Sea World in San Diego that is like a donut that goes up a Churro. Know the one I mean? They put everybody on seats facing out on this donut, and it goes up this tall phallic stick like thing until it gets to the top, then it spins around real slow.
Well, I went up it (can’t remember when it was precisely, but I DO remember that every couple minutes they played Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” on the radio, so I reckon I could figure it out if’n I wanted to) with a couple friends and most of the way up it made a NASTY grinding sound and just stopped. About two hundred feet above the asphalt. I hat a joint behind each ear, a pint of JD in my boot and the better part of a gram of coke. By the time they decided they weren’t gonna fix it and had the fire department put up a ladder truck, we were eighty percent of the way to a spontaneous orgy. Lots of clothes were off, lots of dancing was going on, and some strangers were getting to know one another MUCH Better.
Another hour woulda been nice.
Just saying…
mikey
If you’ve never done it, never tried it, never even tripped or fried? And you have just one goddam bloody chance to give ‘er a go? Please PLEASE listen to me.
Avoid Splash Mountain. It’s kind of psychotic for that kind of thing. Otherwise yeah: do what mikey sez.
brilliant
Oh. And unless you’re VERY confident of your compos mentos, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride can be kind of messed up too.
But hey! You’ll discover these things just like we did!
It’ll be fun!!
mikey
To be fair, mikey, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride can be pretty bad even when you’re not on something.
Y’think?
Maybe it’s the part where you DIE AND FUCKING GO TO HELL?
Proof yet again that old Uncka Walt was one wack individual…
mikey
The shoe buying is mystifying in its stupidity. A clerk made a suggestion. To a Customer. With cash in his hand. Legal tender. In all 50 states.
Imagine wearing too small shoes. On blistered feet. A Disney World. On Purpose!
Why?
Imagine having small feet for a guy and walking through a Disney World!
Not a pleasant picture, is it?!
I always found Mr. Toad funny. But that weird laughing in Splash Mountain is disturbing.
Also somewhere on Main Street there’s a tape playing of an extraordinarily painful visit to the dentist.
Eek. I always pictured him as a guy with a plaid flannel shirt and a seven-inch beard the color of cat litter.
There has NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!!! Been a better place to take ridiculous amounts of LSD…
A couple decades back, I knew Disneyland employees who took this advice very seriously, and often. They worked as characters in the parades, so for them it was all about frying, playing with kids, acting silly, and watching the fireworks. Sounds like a terrific job.
You know, Nordstrom has an event I call Freakfoot every so often, where they invite the folks (okay, I’m one of them) who have unusually small or large pedal atrocities and specifically have vendors cater to them, free of additional charge. I can score J-Lil an invite, if he’s amenable. BECAUSE HE IS A FREAKFOOT. One of us, one of us…
Can’t help him with his hat size though.
Mikey, you and I must be brothers. Twin sons of different mothers. Except you’re way older than me. But anyway… the best and last time I did acid was in fact a trip to the Happiest Place On Earth By Definition. The (first) rush hit just as the line for Space Mountain went inside the building. I have no idea what we were on, or how much we took. We thought it was not being effective, so about an hour into our visit, we dropped a booster. Turned out, it wasn’t really dud acid after all, and we didn’t really need that boost.
The best thing about Disney On Acid is that no matter how hot it is that day, no matter how many scowling Japanese businessmen you see wandering around with their jackets slung over their shoulders and sweat stains under their arms, you NEVER FEEL THE HEAT.
The worst thing is that you can’t turn the fucking stuff off when you’re done, and all night, every time you close your eyes, you’re back standing in a fucking line for the Matterhorn.
But man, that was a hell of a day.
Lileks is so pathetically trying to be Dave Barry, but Dave Barry wouldn’t be so asinine as to buy new, ill-fitting Chucks every damn year like some kind of retarded Imelda Marcos.
mikey wrote: “This is not an experience you should miss, and don’t pass it up ’cause well, dammit, it’s too late.”
Or you could just watch the film Walt Disney made with Salvador Dali. It’ll get you close enough. I believe it’s on the web somewhere.
Mikey, you’re a better man than I … back when I could happily turn a trail in a little park into the yellow brick road itself, or find endless fascination in a store window with its lights off but really remarkable reflections from the street lights, especially when they mutate into that wonderful near-strobe effect that means, oh nothing, ossifer, just walking home … not to mention the sight of Buddha looking over the shoulder of a 6-year-old girl in her Sunday best on the Full Moon of May at Swayambhunath … even then, I could not — physically could not — remain more than ten seconds in such a fifth-rate haven of lights as a Wimpy Bar (ask any Brit) … and the very idea of Disneyland was enough to send me screaming for the Sierra in a vain attempt at reconnecting with my sanity … never went, never will … but thanks for the report from the front
Admittedly, Dan Someone has a point in re: full control of the external temperature
hilarious, Mr. P.
(The extent of my annual shoe expenditure is about $160.)
translation: “I AM NOT AN ELITE, YOU HEAR ME?!”
C’mon. Road trip. Let’s score 96 hits of cheap blotter and start chewing ‘em along about grapevine!
Whaddaya say?
Dude, come get me. I’ve never done anything like that. Closest I’ve come is gobbling a bunch of field shrooms and hitting one of those weekend travelling carnival things that pop up during the spring and fall months at your finer Wal-Mart parking lots throughout the South. I don’t know if I could recommend the experience. Way too much stimuli fighting for attention. Maybe I’m just a lightweight after all, but hurtling around a rickety Tilt-A-Whirl while “Gimmie Three Steps” blares out of a blown speaker system and dodging upchucked corndog is hard enough straight.
Lileks is so pathetically trying to be Dave Barry, but Dave Barry wouldn’t be so asinine as to buy new, ill-fitting Chucks every damn year like some kind of retarded Imelda Marcos.
No shit. I got a similar problem to Jimbo’s, except that I wear a size 13 and for whatever reason, anything higher than 12 is a pain-in-the-ass to find in tennis shoes. I’m particular about my tennis shoes in that because of the freakish size of my feet, I favor a more laid-back shoe. Y’all seen big ol’ tennis shoes lately? The very first time I bought shoes on-line – just the right size and style – I knew I’d never spend the bulk of a weekend driving to every shoe store in a 20 mile radius to find a pair of size 13 tennys that weren’t in any way neon colored.
That’s why we were up before five: the plane to Disneyworld left at seven. And that’s how it came to pass that I began a trip to Disneyland with blisters already on my feet.
Even I, at the tender age of 10, knew that Disney World and Disneyland were two entirely different places.
On opposite ends of the fucking country.
… well, they were dirty commies, so yeah, that’s kind of funny comparing their horrible death to a jaunt through a capitalistic pleasure land.
For cock’s sake, if you only buy Chuck Taylors, then you can buy online with impunity, once you’re sure of your size. They don’t switch the sizes to mess with your head. It’s the times where you’re not tied a particular brand or style — or have feet that aren’t well served by the regular size/width measurements — where trying the fuckers on makes a difference. And even then, Zappo’s is pretty good with returns.
I knew I’d never spend the bulk of a weekend driving to every shoe store in a 20 mile radius to find a pair of size 13 tennys that weren’t in any way neon colored.
This is one annoyance about most US cities’ retail layout. In Europe, you can generally find all a town’s shoe shops within walking distance downtown; in the US, you either feel compelled to buy from the first one or two places, or embark upon a 20 mile trip around the periphery. (I like Adidas Samba; no fucker in town sells them.)
Buying shoes that don’t fit you every year despite their being an easy solution = Conservatism.
I got REALLY stoned at Disneyland once and MAN, I WAS Mr. Toad. I was screaming and yelling and steering the car and I started laughing insanely when we went to Hell. My friend Mark was a little worried that security was gonna be called on us.
We went on It’s A Small World which had a bit of a calming effect,
Those two are still my favorite rides.
Apres Jon H:
Lileks is so pathetically trying to be Dave Barry, but Dave Barry wouldn’t be so asinine as to buy new, ill-fitting Chucks every damn year like some kind of retarded Imelda Marcos.
That’s true. He’s trying for that light, slice of life vibe that Dave gets rather effortlessly, but being such a nasty, ill-tempered asshole, it always comes off rather badly. Like if Dave wrote out column ideas but was ghosted by George Sokolsky.
I think, upon careful consideration, this li’l anecdote “tops” his jerking off to the frozen pizza last year. Truly, (as asked repeatedly here and at Roy’s), what the hell kind of snickerdoodle buys the wrong size of shoes, on purpose, and acts as if it’s some kind of Goddamned act of principle?
funny dan. fucking funny man.
To be fair, the last thing I want to buy on line are shoes (and yes I’m a half size and I have yet to meet a store that doesn’t carry half sizes…what gives America?). Even though I know my shoe size, not all shoes my size fit or are comfortable and it’s hard enough returning shoes to a store in my ‘hood never mind repackaging them and returning them for a refund to an online source. The thought of having to pay postage to return shoes I don’t want doesn’t sit well with me at all. No, I do not want to buy shoes on line.
Although I’ll occasionally give buying clothing on line a whirl (something reasonably reliable like a t-shirt), I usually avoid doing this, too. If we didn’t need to try clothes on there wouldn’t be change rooms in stores. But most of us do try before we buy, because clothes often do not fit or they look like shit on. Maybe gals are fussier than guys…I don’t know. All I know is that when it comes to shoes I think it’s reasonable to expect a store to either carry a size or be able to order a size in.
how fucking sad, a grown man with little boy’s shoe size. plus all that other shit.
I used to do a shit load of acid. I don’t really remember too much about it. But, I’ll tell you, don’t eat a lot of Opium and try to have sex. It’s embarassing to wake up on a sleeping, naked stranger.
His own daughter is thin via the inherent virtue of conservative parental values.
I always figured that starving the children was a fundamental conservative value, but I never figured that it applied to their own children.
Ok, this thread is devolving into a psychedelicized romp down memory lane, eh? Cool. Well, I’ve never tripped at Disney, but I can echo Matt T regarding the fly-by-night rural carnivals. My buddy claimed to have seen little gnomes hammering at the machinery and thus refused to go on any rides. I went. The tilt-a-whirl was amazing, but I couldn’t stop looking at the nuts and bolts and noticing how some had cotter pins and safety wire while others doing the same job didn’t, and hearing every single squeak and groan.
The bumper boats absolutely rocked my world.
Oh yes… Halloween in Key West beats any Disney experience hands down. Even for us straight guys.
I suspect his bitch about the shoe store has to do with the fact that he apparently believes the guy at the counter is making money off of each pair of shoes sold. Possibly, but not necessarily. If he’d noted the store in question works on commission, it wouldn’t have sounded like such a reanimated-Andy-Rooney’s-nine-year-old-corpse joke. Though it probably would have sounded like Jay Leno mugging away as he explains the joke. I can’t help with that, really.
And, because this has lately been causing me to skip the Sadly No bookmark, I will just suggest, and then move on with my life lest some sort of idiotwar break out in comments, that taunting Lileks for his fat jokes might go over better if a person could go twenty paragraphs anywhere on this site without running across someone else’s fat jokes. Okay? We get it. You skinny people think fat people are inherently stupid. Gotcha. Really.
The fact is, Lileks has a butt-chin.
Hey, I’ve got some real advice for Mr. Lileks. Not sarcastic snarkomatic mock advice either, this is really real.
Next year when you trek off to Disney World, this time, keep on going, right through Orlando and continuing SSW, to, say, Holmes Beach or Treasure Island. Go to the beach. Go to the beach. While there will be no mandatory video force-feeding you Mickey n Minnie at the beach, there’s the sun and the Gulf of Mexico and the shush shush of the waves. You can take your shoes off altogether. The soft sand beach is especially lovely at sunset, as the sky darkens and goes black and the stars come out. The restaurants there mostly won’t have a theme; mainly the idea is “here’s something tasty, here’s something good to drink.” If you insist on strenuous vacation activity you can walk or swim for free, or even rent a motorized contraption, though I think you’ll find all that motor noise detracts from the pleasure.
I speak from good will. I don’t own a hotel, or hotel stock. Try it, Mr. Lileks, you’ll like it.
Wow. James Lileks is La Creme de la Femme.
I’m still convinced Lileks is twins. The funny one created The Institute of Official Cheer. Unfortunately the evil one writes everything else.
He buys tight, uncomfortable shoes? That explains his writing. Is he Larry Craig’s and Earl Butz’s love child?
He buys the Chuck Taylor All-Stars in three different sizes but none of them fit properly and he still insists on buying the same shoe?
Didn’t someone once define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
Gads, I owned a pair of Chuck Taylors once and I’ll never make that mistake again. Most uncomfortable shoes I’ve ever owned. Footwear design has progressed quite a bit since 1917.
It’s been a long time since reference to Mr. Butz was made.
Robin Williams once talked about taking his 3 year old to Disneyland: “To a 3 year old, Mickey Mouse is a six foot fucking rat!”
Note to humorists (especially conservative ones): There’s pretty much nothing left in the I-went-to-Disney-and-made-fun-of-it barrel of laughs. Yep: It’s busy, it’s hot, the people are white/fat, it’s crowded, it’s annoying, it’s kinda strange, Walt Disney had a bunch of odd ideas, kids are kids, etc., etc. We know. We’ve been there before. It’s funny enough to ramble a few minutes about to your friends…and that’s it. P.J. O’Rourke couldn’t even wring the funnay out of a trip there anymore.
I believe I would like to possess a bumper sticker which reads:
“mikey is my tour guide”
“It makes for a different mix; among the families, most of which are pasty and mid-thirties with jouncy-belly kids, there’s a big contingent of pasty people in their mid-forties lugging gimme-sacks full of incredibly important material from very important conferences.”
CPAC?
I had to go to Disneyworld once for a sales meeting, and being the crank that I am, decided not to waste money going into the “amusement” part of the park. Really. Families who have shelled out thousands of dollars to experience the misery of Disneyworld don’t need me rubbing their noses in it by pointing out all of the various ways in which it is SO not fun. But I digress.
Although I elected not to pay to go into the paid admission only parts of the park, I did spend some time wandering around the free admission shopping mecca area adjacent to our hotel. And that’s where it struck me: Disneyworld resembles nothing so much as the former Soviet Union, only with brighter colors and better weather. Because everywhere I looked, there were long lines of unhappy people, waiting in line to purchase shoddily-constructed merchandise they neither needed nor wanted. And looming over all, wherever you turned your head, was the larger-than-life-sized visage of Mickey Mouse, the Vladimir Illyich Lenin of Disneyworld.
And if you’ve ever read anything about Disneyworld’s employment practices, security forces, etc., you’ll realize that it only reinforces that intial former Soviet Union impression you get from first glance.
As for the cranky part of this…I wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid I had a season pass to Six Flags over Georgia, and spent as much time there as humanly possible – which was whenever someone would drive us there. I must’ve gotten burned out on the whole thing from that.
New Year’s Eve in Key Largo isn’t quite the pageant Key West is, but if the biker bar you’re at has a good band, watching the fireworks reflect off a half-acre of chrome is a real good time …
I always figured that starving the children was a fundamental conservative value, but I never figured that it applied to their own children.
My father, like many nutso conservatives, has an authoritarian personality. Unfortunately for my siblings and I, he was also an overweight child. He saw fat, like poverty, as a symptom of moral weakness. Most of us eventually got out into the wider world and become hippie hobo degenerates. Sadly, eating disorders aren’t so easy to shake. But we are thin.
ANYTHING in Key West beats Disney. Or at least it did 8 years ago. Key West should be renamed “Chill von Chillville:.
Jennifer, I love you
Ew, can you explain to me why Mike Nelson invited this whiny little bitch to guest on Rifftrax? If he had to toss a bone to a Minnesotan, wouldn’t Jesse Ventura have been more interesting?
To be fair, the last thing I want to buy on line are shoes
Oh, Lesley. Come into the light. Experience the Zappos!
On second thought, maybe don’t. I’ve spent a damn fortune and my shoe closet is rainbow-colored.
Brilliant post. Thanks. I sometimes forget just how disgusting a man who nicknames his daughter after an invasive, biting mosquito can be.
So he deliberately buys shoes that he knows won’t fit his tiny, oddly effeminate little feet, to prove a point to some clerk at his local retail outlet who is making a munificent $7.50 per hour? A clerk who doesn’t even know the point is being made, and wouldn’t give a damn if he did? And he doesn’t realize that some of the people checking into hotels at Disney World are, in fact, there to attend conventions? Ya know, James, some people have real jobs. Jobs that require them to go to the office everyday, carry briefcases full of papers, and occassionally travel to resort areas to attend conventions. You wouldn’t know anything about it, because you’ve never had a real job in your life, but I assure you, it’s true. I used to wonder what made Likeks so whiny. Now I know…tiny, little sore feet on a tiny, little sore man.
And let me just say, what is it with conservatives and tiny little appendages? Like Dennis Miller’s hands, for instance.
God, what a miserable little shit. Your typical emo teenager is less whiny than this twerp. In Lileks’s mind, he doesn’t want a nice pair of 7 1/2 shoes… he just wants to carpet every square inch of the world.
I’ll bet he has sexual fantasies about big dirty brutes robbing him.
Take it! Take everything!
Fuck yeah, beat the fucking fillings out of my teeth!
Rub your filthy paws all over my money…
I dunno Mikey, sounds like I could get the same effect simply by walking around Disney World without my bifocals on.
BTW, was this the only shoe store in his town? Maybe Northern VA is different but almost every damn shopping center, and we have tons of them, has at least 1 or 2 shoe stores including a few that are the shoe store version of the big box store. I wear a half size (bigger than 7.5 thank God) and they’re not hard to find unless you buy shoes in Walmart or some tiny store the size of a, well, the size of a shoebox…
Dinner was large. The portions are huge. They might as well put the plate down and say “here’s more than you can possibly eat, and here’s nine potatoes on the side. Would you like another gallon of high fructose corn syrup? Okay, well, don’t forget to leave room for six pies.”
Later, despite the purging, Lileks would fail to make weight for his day’s races at Pimlico.
The Lileks post starts: I stood in my closet at 4:55 AM and there he remains to this very day.
Next year when you trek off to Disney World, this time, keep on going, right through Orlando and continuing SSW, to, say, Holmes Beach or Treasure Island.
No. No no no no no no no no no no. Not Treasure Island.
James Fucking Lileks is not allowed in Pinellas County. He would have to drive within about 3/4 of a mile of my house to get to Treasure Island, and I’m already having enough trouble with property values, thankyouverymuch.
To me, it’s not that he bought a pair of shoes knowing they were too small. It’s that he bought THREE PAIRS of shoes knowing they were too small. Who the fuck does that? (please don’t answer that)
“There has NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!!! Been a better place to take ridiculous amounts of LSD”
A state mental hospital in the days before de-institutionalization. On Halloween. With a full moon.
“There has NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!!! Been a better place to take ridiculous amounts of LSD”
A state mental hospital in the days before de-institutionalization. On Halloween. With a full moon.
An old-fashioned fundie outdoor revival. Yep, they still exist. Lights, pyrotechnics, giant video screens, music, dancing, healing, speaking-in-tounges, seizures… you don’t really need the acid, but I can only IMAGINE.
Jennifer, you got it right with the Soviet-era comparison, and I know, because the fact is, I was in the actual real Soviet Union (not an Epcot replica, although hmmm, there’s an idea) in 1977. Then they were gearing up to the 60th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, so in addition to the standard yellow-red-tan-dirt-colored posters and the pervasive gloom (except for Kiev, which was vivid, with leaves and gold domes all sunlit), there were, here and there, six-foot tall red “60” obelisks scattered about. So so red, glowing in the twilight, just like the red stars that floated (not really, they just seemed floaty at night) on the Kremlin walls. It was almost perfect. It just needed a red-gloved Mischa Mouskovsky leaning jauntily against the “6”.
Lileks would have loved it too. In the tourist shops (the ones that took hard currency and weren’t typically open to Soviet citizens) the clerks acted exactly they way he dreams all clerks act: the busier it got, or the closer to lunchtime, the faster the clerks disappeared. It was like they didn’t care about customers at all, OMG!
Note to other old people: if you go to Disney World, and if once upon a time in the distant past, you indulged in acid, I strongly suggest you go unlit the first day. You will have flashbacks, and the money you save you can use on return postage for ill-fitting Zappos shoes. ‘Cause of, you know, teh bunions. Youngsters have no idea.
Ew, can you explain to me why Mike Nelson invited this whiny little bitch to guest on Rifftrax? If he had to toss a bone to a Minnesotan, wouldn’t Jesse Ventura have been more interesting?
I’m guessing ‘works for free’ would have been part of the equation.
spencer: No. No no no no no no no no no no. Not Treasure Island.
James Fucking Lileks is not allowed in Pinellas County…
Man, that’s so harsh. I’m trying to reach out, to make things genuinely better for Lileks and family. But your response is so symptomatic of the spiteful partisanship that’s divided our great country. Can we turn this around? Can we bring America together again? I say, Yes We Can!™
And think about it. When one day “Gnat” is all grown up, the one childhood vacation she will remember most vividly and fondly will be the idyll she spent in the sand and sun and salt surf, far away from Disney Hell with its hideous brightly-colored plastic and the piped-in music everywhere. Be generous; give her that.
I knew Lileks back during our college days. Talented guy – he could have been the next Will Rogers. Instead, he’s a cross between Eeyore and the old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
Someone with a foot binding feti – Oops, sorry.
I guess you don’t want to hear about his Tickle Me Elmo collection either.
Not that this makes the rest of this any less inexcusable, but I have to say – if I saw someone at Disney wearing a shirt with a reference to Auschwitz, I would also be tempted to ask :
This might be my only chance in life to agree with Lileks, so I didn’t want to pass it up.
Most likely because Lileks, like Nelson, is a doughty conservative warrior standing tall against Islamofascism, &c. &c.
Who the *$(#% wears a picture with a slaughtered pig and …[an Auschwitz reference],,, to a Disney resort check-in line, anyway?
Right on!
“There has NEVER. NEVER. NEVER!!! Been a better place to take ridiculous amounts of LSD”
A Donny and Marie Osmond concert in a New Orleans suburb. Okay, it was a few years ago. And my employer bought the tickets. But I felt I truly connected with Marie, and she was trying SO HARD to please us.
Uh…it’s not the fact that the T-shirt was worn to a resort hotel check-in…it’s the fact that the T-shirt exists, or that there exists a person so unmoored from civility that they would think, “hey, I should make a T-shirt that compares killing pigs to killing people in a concentration camp!”…or that there exist other people similarly unmoored from civility that they would purchase and wear said T-shirt. It’s almost as bad as referring to circumcision as “a holocaust”.
If he still has his old, broken-in shoes, how many pairs of Converse All-Stars does he have in his closet?
3 x Middle Age + Attrition through vigorous shopping = ~40 pairs of shoes. Does he give them to the homeless? Is the city filled with men wearing retro hipster shoes as they wander the streets?
…because Lileks, like Nelson, is a doughty conservative warrior standing tall against Islamofascism…
I knew there was a reason I liked the Joel MSTs better!
…or is Joel a wingnut too? Say it ain’t so.
Is the city filled with men wearing retro hipster shoes as they wander the streets?
Even if he did give them away, I doubt it. Stretched-out size 7 Chuck Taylors probably don’t fit many men even by homeless standards.
Women, maybe.
Susan,
To be fair, Nike only bought Converse in 2003, so that’s only about a dozen pairs of Chucks. Pre-03 he was probably wearing Air Jordans or Ollie Protection Airwalks – shoes he’d only need to buy one pair of per year.
Destin and Fort Walton have nice beaches. And they’re already so conservative that the Lilekites couldn’t possibly do any damage.
hey, I should make a T-shirt that compares killing pigs to killing people in a concentration camp!
Well, I can see how you might say that good old-fashioned barnyard slaughter is to factory farms as the noose is to Dachau. It would be pretty offensive to equate Jews to pigs, but I don’t think that is a fair reading of the woman’s t-shirt.
The theory seems to be that society tests out ideas on animals and then applies analogous treatment to humans at a later date. If that is true, I can’t WAIT until free-range eggs filter down to the typical office space.
Yeah, I heard Mike Nelson speak once on a book tour, and during the Q&A it became clear that he was a lot farther to the right than I had expected. I’m ashamed to say that thinking about it still kind of disappoints me.
The fact is, his feet are huge. I wear size 6’s.
The fact is, his feet are huge. I wear size 6’s.
Yeah but, you’re only ten. Lileks is in his 50’s.
it’s the fact that the T-shirt exists, or that there exists a person so unmoored from civility that they would think, “hey, I should make a T-shirt that compares killing pigs to killing people in a concentration camp!”…
As a ham-eating monster I will allow that arguments of the “pig farm=Auschwitz” sort are pretty hard to deal with except by repeating “but they’re pigs!” Peter Singer is a convincing guy (and he allows for the consumption of meat if no cruelty is involved).
There was a time long ago when one could have, if one wished, driven out to the pastures around a certain college town and picked a certain sort of mushroom. If one were to then return to town and make and then consume tea made with the fungi in question, an interesting several hours could be expected to ensue.
If a movie, like say A Clockwork Orange, were playing on campus just then, the entertainment value of the evening could go up exponentially.
Standing in a packed theater lobby in such circumstances is not really recommended though.
Size 7 1/2!?! What happens on a windy day? Can this guy go outdoors without fear of being blown over?
Anyway, anyone else notice that since Chuck T’s are now made in China, the sizing is different? I’ve worn size 11 since junior high. A recent purchase (over the internet) fit like they are the boxes they came in. I had to return them for 10 1/2’s. But at least the Chinese give you laces that allow you to fully string up a pair of hi-tops and still have enough left over to tie a knot.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a dainty yet ill-fitting tennis shoe stomping on a human face — forever.
Indeed rigteous George, when fascism comes to America, it will not be wearing jackboots, but the latest Chuckies with day-glo laces, wrapped in insensitive smugness and carrying a grudge.
Perhaps the biggest bunch of bullshit in the whole column is the offense he takes at all the fat people he sees. This guy’s from Minnesota, which means he has been to the MN State Fair, which will never be confused with a supermodel convention.
One of the small advantages of living in a CITY like say NEW YORK – is that there is more than one shoe store – hell they typically are found in groups on the street. And i’ve never had a problem finding 1/2 sizes – you see if you live where are a lot of people – well more shoes sizes will be needed.
Spending money on shoes that don’t fit – Does ‘Lilkes’ mean ‘pinhead’ in another language?
Well, it is institutionalized torture & killing on an incredibly massive scale, done to animals that are more intelligent than dogs or cats. And it upsets some people enough that they *shudder* wear provocative t-shirts.
I understand how people can feel defensive about such things, but “kill the messenger” reactions by SN posters make me sad.
We all have a cranky old man in us. But it’s wise to try to keep things in perspective or at least be funny about it all.
I guess losing his newspaper column didn’t help Lileks’ disposition.
> I used to wonder what made Likeks so whiny. Now I know…tiny, little sore feet on a tiny, little sore man.
You know, there may very well be something to this. John Cleese said he resisted going into analysis for years, even though he knew his anger issues were making him both physically and mentally sick, because he was afraid if he lost the anger, he’d no longer be funny, and he’d basically be out of a job.
Maybe Mr. Fuddles continues to torture himself with ill-fitting footwear, in spite of how miserable it clearly makes him, because he’s afraid if he lost the whiney, he’d no longer be … whatever the heck it is that he is.
… whatever the heck it is that he is.
Andy Rooney Mark II.
ManOnBlog – look, I probably wouldn’t have had the same reaction Lileks had to the t-shirt, but I still would have found it in poor taste if for no other reason than imagining how I would feel if I were a Jew whose family had died at Auschwitz and saw someone wearing such a shirt. That’s why the reference to “civility”: most of us at least consider how others might feel about provocative sayings or images on our clothing, and choose accordingly. I have a T-shirt with the Mooninites on it that shows them with small pixellated squares in their crotchal regions, with the saying “observe our digital dongs”. Personally, it cracks my shit up…but I don’t wear it to the grocery store because I know there are people there shopping with their kids who wouldn’t find it amusing or want their kids to see it. And that’s a whole long way from anything that could be construed as comparing pigs to concentration camp murder victims.
As for myself, I went on a pastured meat only diet after reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma so I’m in agreement about the horrific conditions of feedlot animals. I just think that the message on the T-shirt in question is a very unfortunate choice for trying to convey the message.
Y’ever get beaten to the punch on an Andy Rooney reference? I hate it when that happens because you have to follow it up with some other comment. They should make an indicator on websites that show you when an Andy Rooney joke has already been made. I’m sure some engineer at some important place has come up with that and just not told me about it.
I went on a pastured meat only diet after reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma so I’m in agreement about the horrific conditions of feedlot animals.
AOOOOOGAAAAAH!!!
Holy Jeebus!…..I wear a ‘half-size’ and I’m able to find properly fitting foot apparel in my exact size all the time. With all this whining, I’m surprised he wasn’t also bitching about the blood seeping from his ears.
Mikey-
I was once on a rugby tour passing through FL, and was the designated driver for a group of underwashed brutes consumin remarkable quantities of ‘shrumes at DisneyWorld. They had a good time, but going around ‘It’s a Small World’ 20 times in a row got pretty boring for me after a while.
Lileks pulls this bit a lot when he wants to complain about what he calls ‘bad service’ and what other people would call ‘the inability of retail stores to act as magic wish-granting machines.’ For such a devotee of the free market, he doesn’t seem to understand how it works: The reason that most shoe stores don’t carry a lot of half-sizes is because there is not a great deal of demand for them, leading to a smaller supply. The clerk, by suggesting that Jimbo buy his shoes online, is actually being helpful, suggesting a way for the customer to get what he wants — rather than going back to the storeroom and selling him a pair of size-eights with a new number written on the box in Sharpie. Jimbo’s understanding of capitalism seems to be that if he goes into a pet store and wants to buy some luggage, and the clerk tells him they don’t have any, that he is being ill-served.
As someone who has worked in sales for the last 15 years I want to thank you for writing this. In my experience about one out of every 10 customers is a Lileks. I just know that there is a special place in hell for them.
Jimbo’s understanding of capitalism is that every commercial interaction strokes his sense of status and economic power, with the retailer tugging his forelock to debase himself as part of the transaction.
Of course, Jimbo is getting a free ride in life from his wife and his ridiculously indulgent employers, so lets hope he has to debase himself on a regular basis to keep them satisfied.
I am a homosexual man.
James Lileks is a fag.
eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments.
Should probably get that looked at.
Again with the Bolsheviks!
Clearly the clerk was thinking, “7 & 1/2? I didn’t think they made Chucks that small.”
Ok, this thread is devolving into a psychedelicized romp down memory lane, eh?
I think that young people lost a lot when bumper cars and roller coaster rides became routine and consequence-free
Yeah, I heard Mike Nelson speak once on a book tour, and during the Q&A it became clear that he was a lot farther to the right than I had expected. I’m ashamed to say that thinking about it still kind of disappoints me.
Don’t be ashamed. It IS disappointing. I felt much the same when bigh-head small-foot Lileks was invited as guest riffer and the ensuing debate on the Rifftrax boards showed Nelson to be a staunch rightie. MST3K was a massive cultural achievement and even during the Joel years, Mike was head writer, so that plus Rifftrax – which has had some great moments – amounts to a fantastic body of humorous work, the last thing you expect from a right-winger.
I still get twinges of regret every time I’m reminded that I can’t in good conscience buy Riffttrax any more, and I was a fan from day one.
Changing tack: as a regular S,N! reader but infrequent commenter, can I just say that it is one of my biggest wishes to one day be allowed to meet mikey, my favorite blog commenter bar none (apologies to everyone else, but you understand me, I’m sure).
I think my feet were that small when I was 9–10 at the oldest. No wonder these dickless wonders hate themselves so much. They are half-men, literally!
would paying someone to beat Lileks with a shoe tree save the world from further outbursts of his footwear related whining?
Jennifer, I am half-way through The Omnivore’s Dilemma and I am hungry and I really, really don’t want to be hungry right now. I hope there’s a happyish ending. The only thing I can harvest right now, all by myself, are Meyer lemons and basil. And I’m housesitting, so it’s not like I can eat the neighbors.
Mmmm, grilled neighbor with lemon & basil – it’s what’s for dinner!
I’m sure RB has a recipe for this.
I’m gonna drop a whole lot of windowpane right now and go shoe shopping!
So yeah, I’m kind of figuring that unless Mike Nelson is donating a fixed portion of RiffTrax sales to some especially obnoxious right-wing causes (and I don’t think that’s the case) it’s not such a big deal.
I saw them doing Over the Top (the Stallone truck-driving arm-wrestling film) live a while back and it was extremely funny. Mike (as well as Trace and Kevin, I think) just seemed like a nice guy with an acerbic wit. But then, he wasn’t talking about Muslims or gays or single-payer healthcare or imperialism.
I just hope he sticks to making witty comments on how awful various movies are, rather than doing whatever it is that Lileks now does. I wish Lileks would do the same (with old cookbooks), and while I’m wishing, I wish Janeane Garofalo would be funny again too. Some otherwise funny people just shouldn’t do political humor.
Mike Nelson is right-wing??? No. No. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Seriously, though, how is that possible? I always thought the writing on MST3k skewed way left, including the later years.
All this talk of pig is making me hungry. Pork, it’s what’s for dinner!
Mikey speaks the truth (although my experiences were with some Oregon fungi circa early 1990s, and some x, once. Okay, twice. On Gay Day).
On the other hand, does no one else find it kind of funny to be wearing a (presumably) pro-vegan shirt with a slaughtered pig on it at a theme park with various animal mascots? Even a few edible ones?
Shrill, yes, and the Holocaust-to-carnivore logic ratio is bugfucked. But it’s almost an Amy-Sedaris-style parody of militant vegans.
“You think Donald is cute? Well, how does he look now ON YOUR DINNER PLATE???!? MEAT IS MURDER!!!!!” and then she splashes them with fake blood.
Oh, mercy, if I saw that high…
I spent puberty growing up not far from Disneyworld, while they were building it.
Believe me, you don’t need any chemical enhancement.
Anyone with a sense of irony will be freaked out by the endless loops of maniacally cheerful music, the Borg-like faces on the employees, and the mouse police who follow around anyone who makes ironic comments.
If, like me, you have friends who work there, you know the guy playing Goofy is dealing with imminent heatstroke under that big head, that chances are 50-50 he’s already thrown up in it, and if he passes out he’s under orders to drape himself over something so the little kids won’t see him lying in the street.
To me, it’s the perfect Prozac Police state.
I can’t speak for that woman, but it is certainly a serious philosophy that “murder”/mistreatment of animals has a significant effect on human society, leading to many unhappy things, such as genocide.
The point of the quote isn’t to belittle the Holocaust, but to help explain it, and provide an alternative world where nothing like that ever happens again. Which happens to not be the world we are living in now.
So I say good on you to anyone who actually cares about that, and tries to do something, not just sitting around complaining about fat people and high gas prices, and some stranger’s t-shirt.
“murder”/mistreatment of animals has a significant effect on human society, leading to many unhappy things, such as genocide.
Yes, but showing innocent kiddies what a slaughtered pig looks like, much like splashing pictures from Abu Ghraib on TV, only makes the problem worse. We buy our meat washed, wrapped in plastic, and pressed into unidentifiable shapes. The closest thing to an animal we should ever see is the happy cartoon on the packaging. How can violence against other creatures affect a society that never sees what is happening to them?
You know, ever since they built those smokestacks down at the penitentiary, there’s a funny smell in the air.
$160 for three pairs of Chucks? They’re $41.99 a pair on converse.com. And who buys shoes a half-size too small? No wonder conservatives are so angry. Overpaying for shoes, choosing to have sore feet…
I believe Mike Nelson comes by his right-wingedness from the religious side, as opposed to the angry money-grubbing zenophobic side. I recall an interview he did where he talked about his religion, even mentioning that he didn’t let his kids watch television.
It’s sad when stupid conservatives not only fale two use gramma cheks and stuf in theyre proze but mis-stake theirselfs four peeple who can rite like hunter s. thompson — see how kool he is? he even wheres chuck tailors, just like the docter, but he cant rite the same way. cuz hes teh stoopid. and konservatif.
a psychedelicized romp down memory lane
A contradiction in terms. If you remember anything, you did it wrong.
is it just me, or is lileks the text equivalent of a white guy doing the robot or old people cursing and using teenage slang? you know, the laziest, most tiresome jokes that unfunny people laugh at.
Zod, I love this site. Great post, great comments.
ps Busch Gardens Tampa > Disneyworld
Kathleen, as a reasonably conscientious vegetarian for over half my life (er, the current half) and a Jew for all of it, I find the connection between genocide and the very real cruelty of agri-business to be strained. I’m not saying there aren’t parallels, but it skirts Godwin’s Law rather more closely than it needs to. (Cue Jonah reminding us that Hitler was a vegetarian hippie. Shut up, Jonah.)
I am open to persuasion, though. I just think there are better arguments to be made without resorting to Holocaust comparisons.
I also spent many years in driving distance of Disney World, and in my college years when I had the time and luxury of getting altered and going to Disney during Florida Resident’s month, wearing a shirt like that was just the sort of (in hindsight, tiresome) prankishness we’d do regardless of our actual beliefs, so this totally reminded me of those days, hence the humor.
“Mommy, why isn’t Minnie moving??”
Actually, there’s now a picture of Gnat up at the site, and she’s quite a chubbette herself.
Chubette? Lileks, the dutiful husband and father, takes her to Chuckie Cheese a few times each week rather than cook a healthy meal. But he can’t abide people with bad taste.
Well fisked, Mister Leonard. 🙂
I believe Mike Nelson comes by his right-wingedness from the religious side, as opposed to the angry money-grubbing zenophobic side. I recall an interview he did where he talked about his religion, even mentioning that he didn’t let his kids watch television.
I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. I really don’t.
Hey, Leonard. Thank you for braving this. I tried reading it, but couldn’t get past the part where he bought new shoes. What was expecting the salesperson to do? Take his money and sell him some nonexistent shoes? Attempt to get him to settle for the wrong size, or a brand he didn’t want? No, instead, the clerk helped him find the right shoes for him, even to the detriment of the company and the clerk herself, assuming she gets a commission. Maybe it’s just reflex: maybe he just can’t help but insult low-paid service workers.
The man is such a crank that he can’t even invoke Godwin’s Law correctly.
AG: Really, worrying about “Godwin’s Law” it’s just a cop-out. The Holocaust is only different from any other genocide in its scale. That’s it. There’s not much else special about it. The Armenians, Russians, Chinese dissidents, Mayans, Ugandan Christians, Cambodian intellectuals, Bosnian Muslims, Rwandan Tutsis, and Sudanese Fur (to name a few) who were killed are just as dead, and their deaths were just as horrible and unjust as those of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust — or the Communists, labor unionists, homosexuals, Gypsies, Jehova’s Witnesses, and countless others.
I think Mr. Leonard Price already said it about Theodor Adorno, but it bears repeating, in the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer:
What do they know–all these scholars, all these
philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about
such as you? They have convinced themselves that man,
the worst transgressor of all the species, is the
crown of creation. All other creatures were created
merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented,
exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis;
for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.