Welcome to landfall!

This morning the ship docked at Disney's Castaway Cay, their private island which has all kinds of activities scattered about.

It's well-themed with Disney touches, which is the entire reason for going, I suppose...

Looking back at the ship, you can see that it was overcast the entire day, but never rained...

Before dinner it was time for a visit to Star Wars Hyperspace Lounge for drinks. Honestly, I thought it was going to be very tough to get in, but it actually wasn't. No wait at all. And only a short wait other times I popped in to see what's going on...

The interior feels very Star Wars, and that gives it a leg-up on the very similar Epcot lounge/restaurant, Space 220, which was nice enough but a bit of a letdown. The bar has a large "window" behind it which alternates between various planets, ships, and the like...

The big deal about the place is their bubble gun, which is used on some of the drinks they offer...

The rotational dining restaurant tonight was "Arendelle: A Frozen Dining Adventure" which features a live show built around the engagement of Anna and Kristof, but Elsa was there too...

As was Olaf, who is hilariously dragged around the restaurant on a serving cart along with shopkeeper Oaken. The robot snowman is slyly controlled by the cart-pusher who twists various knobs concealed as a pepper grinder and such...

And tonight's bed sculpture is a penguin...

At least I think that's what it is? Maybe a penguin in a blanket?

Today's the day! The real reason I'm here in Florida!

But not so fast, because it was essential to start the day with Tonga Toast at Disney's Polynesian Resort.

It's sublimely delicious... made with a thick piece of Sourdough French Toast which has been filled with sliced bananas then covered in sugar and cinnamon...

Then it was time for a Very Merrytime Cruise aboard the Disney Wish!

Some background...

I have cruised with Disney three times before... twice with my mom because she loved cruises. But they were their original two ships, The Magic and The Wonder, which are much smaller than The Wish. And less crowded. This is my second Christmas cruise, which Disney does very well...

Fast-forwarding to the most exciting thing on this first day, I happened across some paintings which I thought were by one of my favorite contemporary artists, Kehinde Wiley (probably most famous to many as the artist behind President Obama's portrait)...

But they were not. The biggest clue being that they were relatively small, and Wiley paintings are mostly quite large. And the cool patterns that Wiley adds to his works were absent. But even so, it was thrilling for a second to think that I got to see Kehinde Wiley's works by accident instead of flying to an exhibition somewhere!

More excitement was to be had at my first night of rotational dining at the Worlds of Marvel restaurant, featuring Ant-Man and The Wasp...

Like most of the Disney restaurants, there's cool stuff going on while you eat. In this case there's a "demonstration" of the technology playing on the screens which goes very, very wrong... and requires some help of other Marvel heroes to resolve.

Interesting that the "towel sculpture" on Disney cruises is not with towels any more, it's with the cover that goes along the foot of the bed. Tonight it was a turtle...

And tommorrow it's land-ho.

I'm too tired to blog, but I'm committed to the madness... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Crashing Down? Does anybody want to buy some $BlogographyCoin cheap? It's the best crypto out there, and I'm letting people who worship me to get in on the ground floor, because this is sure to be an investment that skyrockets! Sink all your retirement into crypto because it's the investment that can't fail!

   
• Oh She Young! Sharing this for no reason at all...

Yep. Nope. No reason.

   
• Cringe Story! Some comedians can pull from experience in a way that should make other comedians jealous...

Guess I need to see if there's more material out there by this guy that's worth watching.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Pasta at Twice the Price? Some Italian Producers Face Huge U.S. Tariffs. If I could find bronze-extruded, slow-dried pasta that was American made... then great. Happy to buy it if the quality is good. But I ain't going to buy shitty American teflon-extruded, rapid-flash-dried crap that won't hold sauce and is just a slippery gawdaful mess. I'd eat half the pasta... but I'd pay twice the price for the pasta that's worth it.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Sales of AI-enabled teddy bear suspended after it gave advice on BDSM sex and where to find knives. But... so cute...

And now I really want one of these bears!

   
• Defunct Autonomatons! Defunctland released another video, and this one is beyond good... assuming you're into Disney stuff. This one is just over four hours long, but the time flies by as usual because Kevin Perjurer is just that good at his job. For the most part, this is just a timeline of Disney's adventures into autonomous animatronics, but it's also somehow deeply embarrassing for Disney who has become synonymous with overpromising and underdelivering...

They'll get there eventually. And once they do I'm sure it will be incredible. And, can I just say that Perjurer's take on whether Walt Disney would want himself resurrected as an animatronic is perfect? Probably because it's the same opinion I have.

At least until the autonomous animatronics get loose and decide to kill all the guests. Westworld never looked so adorable. I mean, just look at this...

Death by Olaf... what a way to go!

   
And... I'm off to a much-needed sleep.

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day, everybody!

An episode of Will & Grace popped up while I was working tonight and it guest-starred Bruno Campos, who many people will remember as Quentin Costa on Nip/Tuck, but who most people will know as the voice of Prince Naveen in Disney's The Princess and the Frog.

"I wonder what he's been up to?" I thought. "I don't remember seeing him in anything recently."

A brief internet search revealed that the last thing he did was voice Prince Naveen for the Tiana's Bayou Adventure ride pre-show in 2024. Then I ran by his IMDB page to find out that he stopped acting in 2010, and the only work he's done past that was an occasional job for Disney when they needed Naveen's voice for something.

Turns out the guy quit acting to go to law school and works at a law firm in Washington, D.C.

Turns out that not only is he a native speaker of Portuguese and English, but he also speaks Spanish and Italian. Which might come in handy as a D.C. lawyer, I'd imagine.

Interestingly enough... his Italian also came in handy for playing Prince Naveen. The character is from the fictional country of Maldonia, where the language is based on Italian.

Isn't it great how you can learn random strange facts on a Monday evening?

It was announced that a woman in her 60s went non-responsive while riding the Haunted Mansion this past Monday at Disneyland. She was later taken to the hospital where she died.

This is incredibly sad. She was likely visiting the park with family or friends, so now the Happiest Place on Earth will have sorrowful memories for them. The Haunted Mansion (one of my all-time favorite attractions) isn't all that scary, so I'm guessing that it was a medical issue which could have happened anywhere.

At the end of the day, there's danger in everything you do. Just walking out the door exposes you to danger. There's danger in your home. Crossing the street can be lethal, especially in a day-and-age when people are looking at their phones instead of watching the road. But you really don't anticipate dying during a theme park visit (there was another death earlier this year at Orlando's Epic Universe).

In an article over at Entertainment Weekly, a former creative director with Disney Imagineering said that they had discussed removing the hanging corpse of the Ghost Host which appears during the first part of the attraction in the stretching room. And while I understand this is easily the most triggering part of the entire ride, I really hope that they don't do that. It's a frickin' haunted house. Things like this should be expected. Furthermore, it's not all that easy to see in the first place. It's kind of obscured by a screen, and you have to know what you're looking at to really understand it. This is the last attraction overseen by Walt Disney himself, and they've already made some poor decisions by altering it (removing the axe from Constance Hatchaway was clumsy and ridiculous)... it would be nice that at least some of what he intended is preserved.

I may not have a three day weekend like some people in the USA, but don't you fear about me making time for bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Small, Small World! The Disfarers YouTube channel has been interesting, and I've been going back through them to see what I missed. This one from three months ago is hands-down one of the most fascinating Disney Parks video I've ever seen. It's not just about It's a Small World, it's about the fascinating process of Imagineering which has a lot of cameos by a lot of rides...

While not a fan of the ride so much, I'm a massive fan of Mary Blair, and have always appreciated the artistry of the ride. And now I appreciate it even more.

   
• Wedneday Murder Club? Why. Why would Netflix make a major change to The Thursday Murder Club when they KNOW that this has screwed up faithfully adapting the future books? Insanity. Just insanity. I know the book was much deeper and some things (like back-story) would be lost when translated to a 2-hour movie (requiring some things to change), but this? THIS?!? What possible reason? My opinion of Chris Columbus as a director just dropped several stories. And the pacing is awful. Slow at the start where things could have been cut, then rushes to the botched ending where the time should have been spent. Character personalities are changed to bad effect. A good director would understand the books well enough to realize that this change wasn't a good one, and had the writers re-think things. Jeez what a disappointment. If you buy the rights to the book to turn it into the movie... ADAPT THE FUCKING BOOK! Two out of five stars because I'm mad a book series I love with actors I love was mostly good... until it wasn't.

   
• Atom Man vs. Superman! YouTube has a lot of cool restoration videos. The ones I'm enjoying now are the paper poster videos, because it always amazes me how they can just dump water on everything in order to flatten it (something I've tried after watching it, and it works... if you're careful). This last one I saw is very cool because it's so big...

I cannot imagine how much this kind of restoration would cost.

   
• Peaches! In my news feed, there was an article about Thomas Rhett's wife being pregnant with their fifth child. And I didn't know who that was. So I Googled him and some images popped up. Didn't recognize him, but he's obviously a famous country singer. then I see him in a Boston Red Sox jersey and am like... okay... I like him already. Then I see how famous he is, and I'm like... oh... I'm sure I've heard his stuff then. I click on the Boston photo and it's from his Instagram. I click though to that. He's got a beautiful family. And then I see gem...

Legendary dad material.

   
• Cracker! I didn't think that the new Cracker Barrel logo was terrible (for the minute it was used). But it was beyond terrible FOR Cracker Barrel. The thing about branding is that people can get incredibly attached to stuff that they form a relationship with. If you're changing something, for better or worse, they're going to react. So you had better have a very good reason to do it. And you need to be very smart about how you do it. This was a massive misstep from the jump, all because whomever was in charge of this mess committed the First Sin of Branding... they did not know their own audience. Because to say that this was a glaringly obvious disaster is not an understatement...

I don't even have Cracker Barrel where I live (the nearest one is in Vegas) but I reacted with a wince to the rebrand because I knew immediately how it would be received. Because I've been to one of them once. A decade ago. What's ironic is that they probably did it hoping it would be more appealing to society at large because sales were sliding. Now they're in the dumpster having to try and crawl their way out.

   
• Negative Four-And-A-Half Stars! Maybe I was too quick condemning Paramount+ for canceling Strange New Worlds after an upcoming abbreviated fifth season. Because Four and a Half Vulcans has got to be one of the shittiest episodes of ANY Star Trek I've ever seen. Good Lord. Somebody watched this dumpster fire and thought it should air? How did it get past script stage in the first place? It would have been better to cut it completely and come up an episode short this season than to air something this horrendously bad...

Apparently when you take the Vulcanizing serum, it changes your hairstyle!

The stupid... it still lingers.

   
• Insecticide! And lastly, allow me to once again comment on a botched adaptation. Butterfly, the comic book series, was a brisk four issues. It was breakneck storytelling and an interesting read. So when I found out that Prime Video adapted the comics with a leisurely six episodes, I was excited. Watching it, I didn't think it was as good as the source material because it got repetitive in ways that weren't interesting... but I liked the cast and thought "Well, this will be a nice diversion!"

AND THEN I GOT TO THE END WHERE THEY CREATED A STUPID FUCKING CLIFFHANGER AND A NONSENSICAL FUCKING TWIST TO SET UP A SECOND SEASON THAT I WILL NEVER... NEVER EVER... WATCH. What a lazy-ass pile of shit. Why is it that nobody can just complete a series any more? It always, always has to have a stupid-ass cliffhanger for a next season that may never come. Lazy fucking writers. Just tie everything up with an ending in case this is all we get! Then, if you get a second season, you can find a new and exciting angle to begin again. But NOPE! Easier to just fuck over the audience. And "easy" is all these talentless hacks have to offer. My God. It's getting to where I don't want to watch TV series any more. Though movies are doing it too. Netflix made a shitty The Old Guard sequel, which I hated, then ended that MOVIE on a cliffhanger which probably won't be resolved. I need to create a new website explicitly where people can share whether or not a show ends on yet another lazy-ass fucking cliffhanger so people can decide whether or not they want to invest time in something THAT MAY NEVER BE FINISHED. At least The Thursday Murder Club was smartly written enough to have a satisfying conclusion (well, if you haven't read the books).

   
If you're an American who's off work tomorrow, enjoy your day off from labor. If you're an American who's not off work tomorrow (like me) try and enjoy your Monday.

The Dog Days of Summer may be slowly fading, but the Bullets of Summer are still sticking around... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Yesterland! This video of Disneyland in 1956 is wild. Everybody dressed up for a day out at Disneyland... from dress shirts with long pants and full on suits... to sundresses or Capri pants... nobody was in jeans and a T-shirt (and where were short pants for the guys?)...

I remember for my first visit 20 years later it was the same. My brother and I were dressed up in matching green suits that my grandmother made. And the reason I remember them so clearly? Because the threads in my suit glowed when we were riding It's a Small World. I remember the suits right down to how the buttons looked (but don't ask me what I had for dinner last night). And, wow, were the attractions very different at the beginning! No E-ticket rides in 1956 because they didn't come until three years later. And of course this were back in the days where not much was politically correct. Something I didn't know is that Disneyland was never segregated. Walt Disney wanted everybody with the means to pay to visit the Happiest Place on Earth. That being said, there are precious few non-white people in this film (except for the "Indian Village" entertainment, of course). Interestingly enough, the boat skippers on The Jungle Cruise fired AT the hippos instead of in the air to "scare" them back in the day. Vicious.

   
• I've Been Framed! Every payday I've been buying picture frames to hang up prints and art and maps and bits and pieces I've been collecting over the past 50 years. Last time, I bought some frames that arrived in a totally a different color than I ordered, so they refunded me 50% of the cost and I just spray-painted them. Score! Today they finally stopped smelling, so I hung them up. They're prints by Bill Mudron as a tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli films (based on prints by Kawase Hasui). I love them. There were actually five I wanted, but two of them were sold out, so I got the these three, which are incredible. They're in the hall as I walk in the front door...

Dang. I wish I could afford glare-free museum glass (to get a closeup glare-free look at them, you can visit the artist's website here). What I really love is that the characters from the films are almost hard to spot in these prints because they're very small. In mine for Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, you have to look a minute...

I really wanted the prints for Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo as well...

You can buy reproductions on Mudron's website, but you can't get them at the size of the original prints, dangit. I may buy a few smaller reproductions to hang somewhere else in my home, because they're so frickin' amazing.

   
• The Plot Thickens! If you've never seen Robots Draw, you're missing out. I knew about the account, but I didn't know that the guy behind it did a TedTalk...

Before I could afford a dot matrix printer, I had an Atari 1020 4-color pen plotter, which I'm reminded of every time I see a Robots Draw reel...

The printer was mostly for fun because the paper was only 4.5-inches wide, but it was better than nothing. Even if it took forever to print text because the letters had to be drawn one by one. Wikipedia has a short article on the unit here (which is where I got the photo).

   
• Gooey! I honesty don’t know how in the hell got to be THIS BAD at Apple after Steve Jobs’s died. Granted, I am using a public beta of the latest iOS, and this might be fixed... but... what the fuck does this last button do in Apple Music?

The first is shuffle. The second is repeat. The third is infinity auto-play. But that fourth button provides no feedback as to actually doing anything, so I have no idea. This odd set of buttons could very well be the worst GUI design I’ve ever seen. Coming from a company that used to care about GUI! Fortunately, long-time blogging friend LeSombre managed to remember an article about this very topic and was able to tell me it means "AutoMix" and Apple describes it as "Songs transition at the perfect moment, based on analysis of the key and tempo of the music." So I immediately turned it off, because I wondered why in the hell the end of a song was either sped up or slowed down in weird fucking ways as it faded to the next song via CarPlay. No thank you. And, on that note... APPLE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PROVIDE SOME FEEDBACK FOR YOUR FUCKING BUTTONS SO PEOPLE KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ACTUALLY DO!

   
• Only Connect! If you've ever been frustrated by The New York Times puzzle "Connections," you should know that it was inspired (or stolen) from a UK quiz show Only Connect. These puzzles always feel incredibly difficult, and I can't fathom having to solve them within a time limit. It usually takes me forever when I have forever!

In other news... "Father's Day" was invented at a YMCA in Washington State?!??

   
• Atmosphere! Alaska Airlines has rebranded their loyalty program as "Atmos" now that they've merged with Hawaiian Airlines. Which is fine, I guess, if not for the fact that Dolby Atmos home theater sound standard already exists. I'm guessing that there was no trademark danger since they are wildly different industries, but I still wonder why they'd go with this?

"Atmos" isn't a real word. At best it's an abbreviation for "atmosphere" (which is where Dolby got it, I'm sure, because they're creating an atmosphere of sound). Not sure where Alaska's head is at here, but I can't help but think they could have come up with something better.

   
• Winds of Waiting! I am clinging to the idea that the person asking this horrific question has challenges gauging social situations and perhaps didn't know that what they were asking is awful. Anything else just beats down my faith in humanity to new lows. I don't care how impatient you are for the next book, this is inhuman. And I have zero doubt that this question already haunts George RR Martin himself. So... why?

That. Being. Said. While undeserving of... whatever this was... Martin has kinda brought fan frustration on himself. He has been stringing everybody along for thirteen YEARS. All the promises and all the assurances of Winds of Winter being a "priority" falling by the wayside while he finds another TV show or movie or game or book or convention or talk show or whatever to do. Anything but actually getting the work done. Add to that the HBO adaption utterly destroying the ending of the A Game of Thrones adaptation and making fans even more anxious to know how everything "really" ends... and, well, it takes things to new levels. — No, he did not deserve this terrible question. But I have to wonder if George RR Martin wasn't constantly making promises he couldn't keep, would we have an environment where people feel entitled to ask a question like this in the first place? Something to ponder. Also something to ponder? BRANDON SANDERSON COMPLETING A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE?!? Good Lord. I'd rather have no ending than that. These authors in no conceivable way complement each other. Like... at all.

   
Now it's time to go pick tomatoes for my dinner.

Well, this day was awful. Which you can read about tomorrow. Suffice to say that I am wondering exactly how much longer I have before I collapse in a pile of anxiety and have a heart attack. There is no corner of my life that is consistently stress-free except one, and then even that went off like a (temporary) bomb.

But hey, maybe I'll die of the mother-fucking plague and won't have to worry about it. Fingers crossed. Though with dipshit anti-science fuckhead RFK Jr. in charge of America's health, I probably don't need to cross my fingers. It almost seems inevitable that I'll die of the plague. Or whatever major health crisis drops on us which could have been addressed by science, but RFK Jr. killed mRNA research... or what-the-fuck-ever miracle that scientists were working on... so we're all hopelessly fucked.

If only I could just stick my head in the sand and pretend that the world isn't a toxic pile of shit, I could have a stable baseline from which I could deal with all the other anxiety-inducing shit assaulting me.... but no. This is our normal now.

I'm choosing to embrace the horror.

What else is there?

But anyway...

Today when I got home from work (and was preparing to do more work) I happened across an article "debunking" the infamous Jenny Nicholson video: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel. It had me laughing out loud because it clearly... clearly... failed badly to "debunk" shit. Jenny, who is the absolute dream guest for a themed hotel because she lives for this stuff, nailed it. She fucking nailed it. She manages to clearly explain why her trip sucked, make comparisons to alternatives, use her vast knowledge of immersive experiences to critique what was offered, brutally dissect Disney's endless greed and incompetence, all while presenting it in a way only she can.

It's glorious.

So tonight I've had it playing while I work... for the sixth time. Which is insane considering the video is four hours long. But I can't help it. Every minute of those four hours is gold. If you haven't watched it, I can't possibly recommend it more...

And, on that note, back to work I guess. Good night. Don't let the plague doctor bite.

I'm way too tired to blog, but here I am again... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Memories Do Pass. It seems so strange that two more musicians from my youth have passed... namely Ozzy Osbourne and Chuck Mangione...

As if that weren't enough, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, most known for playing Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show also died in a tragic drowning accident. I prepared for getting to the point where all the people from my memories were going to start dying, but I wasn't prepared for how quickly they're passing. Every month a couple more seem to leave us, and I can't help but wonder how many more will go before I do.

   
• McMissing McPies! I don't give a shit how "unhealthy" McDonald's fried pies were... I want them back. Who eats at McDonald's to be healthy?

Of course McDonald's is so fucking expensive now that I can't really afford to eat there any more, so it's not like it matters. Though I might be willing to take out a second mortgage if it meant I could have a fried McPie again.

   
• Perfect 'Maters! When I had to transfer my tomato plants outside, I was certain that they would be pecked at by birds and spoiled by bugs. But no....

Am I just phenomenally lucky? Because the biggest problem I have is to wash off the water spots. They tomatoes themselves are beautiful.

   
• Ares! The original Tron is one of my favorite films of all time. The sequel was okay but hardly in the same league. About all I could say was that the special effects were darn good. And now another sequel has landed and... well... the special effects look darn good...

It looks far removed from the initial concept, though the idea of computer constructs from the digital world being able to make their way into our world was where the sequel ended up, so here we are. If nothing else, I hope it's at least entertaining.

   
• Mickey Kicked the Bucket? ZOMFG! WHEN DID MICKEY MOUSE DIE?!??

When I was at the Walt Disney World Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party last year, I saw that there are people lining up to buy dozens of the special event popcorn buckets and sipper cups. That's some big business on eBay, apparently.

   
• Leaving Las Vegas! Pre-pandemic, I had several work trips to Las Vegas for the charity I volunteered with. But over the years there were fewer, because we were finding the number of conventions wanting to hold events in Vegas were fewer. This video offers some interesting insight into the many problems which make Sin City a less-desirable vacation destination...

#1 on my list? Fucking "resort fees." I personally avoid Vegas for this one reason. I hate being lied to about the rate I'm paying. Hotels country-wide should be forced to list the TOTAL PRICE YOU WILL BE CHARGED at the time you book your lodging. And those absurd fucking "Restaurant Fees" and "CNF Fees" are #2 on my list.

   
• Republican Speaker of the House Just Loooooooves Pedophiles! Well this should shock absolutely nobody... "Speaker Mike Johnson said he would send lawmakers home early for their summer recess in order to head off Democratic demands for votes on calling for the release of files from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein." Gotta protect pedophiles at all costs, I guess. There must be some huge donors and very important politicians on that list. Why else would you protect pedophiles?

And now we just wait for Ghislaine Maxwell to give an interview with the FBI where she says that no Republicans were on the list, names a few token Democrats, then gets mysteriously pardoned by the President of the United States for finally "telling the truth to the American people." Because keep in mind that only the President can pardon her crimes of supplying underage girls to Epstein Island.

   
And on that depressing note, off I go to try and get some sleep before facing the horrors on a new news day.

As I've already said... I have zero problem with Disney (the company) deciding to make an animatronic of Disney (the man) because Walt Himself had zero problems with dredging up people like Abraham Lincoln to be turned into a robot. So why not? In the end, I actually thought that it was a good thing.

At least I did until I saw what they came up with.

Does Walt Disney Company not have photos of Walt Disney? They did a terrible job of making something that even remotely resembles the guy...

I know it can't be perfect... but getting the hairline, eyebrows, and nose right would have gone a long ways towards a better resemblance.

I can't even figure out what era this is supposed to be from. It's not near his last appearance (bottom), that's for sure. Why wouldn't they take his look from the middle of the extremes that people recognize him from (top)? That would have made a lot more sense.

Yikes.

I guess those people saying that he should have never been ressurected as an animatronic have nothing to worry about.

Because that ain't him.