Now I hadn’t planned on buying ANYTHING when i was in Disney World – i assumed there wasn’t a single item of modern merchandise i’d care to own – but then i saw these EPCOT tees and i went OMG OMG! and bought them all and tried to convince others around me to do the same because these celebrate when the future was the 80′s and EPCOT was still an all-caps acronym about an aspirational global Community Of Tomorrow. Granted the one on black looks like the designer spent about 3 minutes on it resulting in a wrongness that the Silverlake hipsters will think i’m wearing ironically, but no, i really am happy to be working my collection of faux-vintage EPCOT-wear at the home, office, and gym.  (If you’re a medium and like the black one let me know because I bought 2 because i didn’t know which size would fit after washing – so i’ll send u the medium if u want.)

Evil witch holds hero prince hostage is the fairytale image, but gay revenge fantasy is what I read.

Maleficent was the ugly thin gay kid in school who now finds his fierceness (power) in dressing in outrageous, yet well designed outfits, while wearing excessive makeup and accessories to distract from his not-hot features (check out the shnozz and chin). In other words, feeling he possesses no celebrated masculine power traits he opts to gain attention by going full tranny – which of course just gets him/her labeled an even bigger freak who’s now not just ignored but shunned. (Remember the entire Sleeping Beauty debacle happens because Maleficent wasn’t invited to a baby shower.)

The tall skinny gay kid/Maleficent hates the prince because he’s the hot jock kid with rich parents who never had to work a day in his life and will get a sweet job from family connections by doing nothing. IT’S SO UNFAIR!  He lives in a bubble having no idea how the rest suffer. To make it worse, the tranny Maleficent also sorta wants to have sex with the prince but hates that she wants to – aghh, internal conflict, what to do? Tie him up – but not do anything to him! This way he’s forced to aknowledge you for once in you life and at least make eye contact, forcing him to see everything isn’t going as well for you because people like him disregard people like you.

Maleficent knows its a temporary victory and she will lose and he will win – like always. But before it’s over he’ll face the full force of her don’t-u-ignore-me bitch rage (when she becomes the dragon – FULL DRAMA QUEEN MODE!) After which, he will hopefully, she wishes, live the rest of his happily-ever-after days implanted with a tiny shrapnel of fear knowing there are people out there like Maleficent, who were not born pretty, rich, and connected, and they’ve got his number should he ever cross them again.

When it opened in the middle of the French countryside in 1990 it looked like this:

It contained a theater, a restaurant, and lots of displays of what would become Disneyland Paris.

The Robert A. M. Stern monograph Buildings says, “…when the building was new it literally stopped traffic. Once the theme park was opened, the facade was painted over and the [prefabricated buildings] were used for other purposes.”

Ah yes. I’d say so. Here it is in 2008:

More pictures of its abandoned state here.

And how the interior looked in 1990.

Being I adore abandoned sites, Disney parks, and graffiti – finding this was like early Christmas for me. Thanks to Le Parc-o-rama blog for the tip.

There’s also an unfinished/abandoned Disney resort in Florida. There’s great video of it here.

The top image is a detail of a painting by for the Disneyland Paris Adventureland by Dan Goozee circa 1990. Below is “The Fountain of the Skull,” by Chiho Aoshima, 2007.

Sometimes I tell people Jake Deckard is my big brother even though I’m taller. 
  

This was a design for another project that didn’t happen but I always liked it and now that I have a fancy iphone I had a reason to make it into my screen wallpaper. All the other wallpapers I found ignored the iphone graphics that get overlaid on the BG image so I wanted to design one that incorporated the clock and slider bar/buttons. DOWNLOAD the wallpaper here.

I’ve also been converting some Disney mp3s into iphone ringtones to go with this theme. Here’s The Haunted Mansion Crow, The Haunted Mansion Coyote, The Haunted Mansion Bells, The Big Thunder Mountain Coyote, The Spinning Teacups, and the one I’m using that’s from the Disneyland Paris 15th anniversary celebration (I guess). When it goes off it’s like ULTRA-MAGICAL!!!, or SUPER GAY!!! which are sort of the same thing.   

The iconic facade and sets of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction were designed in the late 1960′s and bear the unmistakable markings of that time (and the couple proceeding decades). But I wanted specifics. What had Mary Blair, the attraction’s main designer, been exposed to that may have inspired the famous styling of that ride? Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Top image below: Mary Blair, Small World concept art, 1965. And below, two pieces by Auguste Herbin, 1951 and 1950, that are undeniably similar to Blair’s work.Below is a collage by Ray Eames in 1949. Besides a similar styling to Blair, the collage technique and use of transparent layers was something Blair would later use in many of her Small World collages.Below is another Blair illustration, and below that, a Paul Klee painting, Burg und Sonne, 1928I saw many similarities between Klee and Blair, like the three images below. The first image, Klee’s Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1932, uses leaf shapes seen in the Blair piece below it. The third piece is also a Klee and has some subtle similarities to the work above it.The Small World attraction debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair with a an enormous kinetic sculpture at the entrance called the Tower of the Four Winds (second image below). Designed by Rolly Crump but I see inspiration in an unproduced Do Nothing solar-powered kinetic toy designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957 (first image below).And lastly it seems It’s a Small World continues to inspire others, like perhaps Rex Ray (second image below) whose work possesses the same sense of retro-whimsy seen in Blair’s art for the finale scene in the attraction (below).SEE ALSO MY: Patty Wickman Paints Women Wrestling and I’m All Hey that’s from Epcot

First, Muse performs Invincible in a It’s a Small World-style attraction I’d so love to see built. (I’ve tried to track down the designer but emails to the production company have gone unanswered.) Below is the YouTube link, but a higher-res version is here.

Second, Goldfrapp’s Twist

The places you find walking by the LA river.

Due to the response from the brilliantly designed 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag seen in my previous post, I’ve dug out this beauty. If you, like myself, were an aesthetically astute child who visited Disneyland in the 70’s, then you’ll remember how captivated you were by this print and how you didn’t care what souvenir you got as long as it came in this bag. Because I like you, I’ve scanned and created a big desktop wallpaper version of it.

From the Kansas City Star last week:

“You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting you.”

Chuck Palahniuk chuckles as he says this, steering his pickup down Highway 14 just on the Washington side of the Columbia River. He’s saying you can’t judge an author by his books.

Come to think of it, he’s wearing a black T-shirt that says “Disappointed” in Disney-style script.

Palahniuk (pronounced “paula-nick”) loves the irony of this…

That would be my Disappointed shirt. I gave Chuck one last year after he complimented me on mine at a “Haunted” reading.