A Pair From July, 1961
Well, it's that time again - time for some photos (from 1961) that will leave you feeling slightly antsy, a little itchy, and possibly grouchy. You have been warned!
I have to wonder what exactly the photographer was going for here; I guess he was impressed by the criss-crossing Monorail tracks above the Submarine Lagoon? He only caught the Skipjack almost by accident. The Skipjack's pilot is checking out the ladies boarding the neighboring sub. He can't help it, he's spent the last few months beneath the polar ice caps!
And here's another oddly-composed image. You know, juxtaposing the duck with the distant bush makes a daring statement about the fragility of life, while the mill indicates the inevitable takeover by machines. I'm not crazy!
23 comments:
I always enjoy your Sunday posts, Major, and look forward to everyone's comments. Thank you!
I'm not crazy, either, Major - I'm....
--Lou-ney & Sue-icidal
Major-
The Skipjack skipper certainly does look as if he's being 'awfully friendly' with one or more of the passengers boarding the adjacent submarine. (I wonder if he's related to the peek-a-boo skipper on the Little Toot from yesterday's post-?)
Thanks, Major.
Why is Becky Thatcher's raft, docking at "Tom's Landing"? Huck had his very own landing. I think Becky should have built her own darn dock!
- Tokyo Mummy!
The hazy lighting in the first pic does sorta make the scene look flat and lifeless, doesn't it. Other than that it's... well, flat and lifeless. (Actually, it's not that bad.)
Moving on to image #2: The people leaving the Island are symbolic of the vast diaspora of the Human race leaving its cradle, Earth, after the Machine Revolution. While the duck wonders, "Hey! Where am I gonna get bits of hamburger buns and Mickey waffles after all these people are gone?"
Thanks for the very deeply philosophical imagery today, Major.
- Jellied Bugs
Pic 1: The skipper revs his engine preparing for the mother of all submarine drag races!
Pic 2: "Hey! A duck!"
We're sorry, the spooky name generator is temporarily off line due to probably terrifying technical issues.
I woke up with Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” stuck on repeat in my brain, and let me tell you, that’s the perfect accompaniment to today’s photos.
The Skipjack is lighter without passengers, but the nearer sub will have better track adhesion. I predict they will both hit the switch at the end of the dock at about the same time, causing an underwater calamity not seen since Great Uncle Jake ate a bowl full of baked beans and then climbed into the hot tub at the Disneyland Hotel.
The last photo tells me that we are all products of American universities, where we were trained in our liberal arts classes to look for nonexistent patterns and deep, hidden symbolism never intended by the author or artist in order to vomit enough words onto paper to make the assignment’s minimum page count. Well done, everyone. Well done.
These are odd images, but the comments are even stranger.
Is that a real duck, or another forgery? Are there other forms of avian larceny lurking in the shadows?
The sub pilot needs a few days liberty in port, and maybe a couple of Chao’s Mai tais to unwind a bit. Perhaps someone is tugging his trouser leg.
Meanwhile, Chuck has perfectly described the state of art criticism in the Derrida-esque post-didactic hothouse atmosphere of todays universities.
Just Ghastly
Chuck, I have an English degree. It's literally a piece of paper that says I am an expert in BS.
Lou and Sue, thank you (wow, dark nickname!!)!
Nanook, the skipper reminds me of your typical military man in old movies. “Look at those dames!”. Yes, his whole family is famous for peeking out of amusement park attraction windows!
TokyoMagic!, now that you mention it, I wonder if there was ever a plan to give Becky her own landing? As far as I know, there were three rafts (Tom’s, Huck’s, and Becky’s), but I’m unaware of there ever being more than two landings.
JB, I’ll have you know that I especially like flat and lifeless photos! (Joking). I am glad to know that I am not the only person waiting (and ready for!) the Machine Revolution. Will machines want to feed the ducks? Or will they want to conquer them as well?
Stu29573, I suppose that a race between submarines would be “interesting”. As for spooky names, you can only go so far until you invoke the Candyman.
Chuck, I prefer the cover of “Paranoid” by The Dickies (sort of joking, but sort of not). I never thought about “track adhesion”. I guess that’s just one of many factors that real sub captains have to consider! And thanks for that baked beans story, it really “paints a picture”. Unfortunately. Gosh, I am learning so much about what I missed in that second photo, it is truly enlightening! I DO like to look for nonexistent patterns, I admit.
JG, while pigeons had been forged for at least a century, we didn’t have the technology to forge ducks until the early 1970s. According to Bu, sub pilots were subjected to a lot more than having their trouser legs tugged. It seems unbelievable, and yet… I believe it. “Derrida-esque”, I don’t even understand that reference. I guess I”m not as smart as I thought I was (news flash).
Gotta love Sunday Snoozers.
The first pic and Stu's comment about a pending sub drag race reminded me of my high school years in Newport Beach. There is a quiet street called Cliff Drive that has an expansive view of Newport Harbor and the ocean.
When on a date a guy would ask a girl if she wanted to park on Cliff Drive and watch the submarine races. "
"They race at night?"
"Oh yeah, so there aren't any other boats on the water."
Sometimes it worked. ;)
Grant's Tomb Vacation Packages now available.
(Guests check in but they don't check out)
JG, I first encountered that phenomenon in my first honors course, an English class my sophomore year of high school. I got so fed up with the teacher trying to get us to find hidden meanings that in class discussion I actually (and coherently) showed how Jack London’s 1908 short story “To Build a Fire” paralleled the American experience in Vietnam and Edgar Allen Poe’s 1842 masterpiece “The Masque of the Red Death” was an allegory illustrating the Domino Theory and the complacency of Western democracies against the dangers of Global Communism. I got a “D” in the class the one semester I was in it and was not invited back to another honors course for the remainder of my high school career.
Stu, so…a BA in BS?
Major, I must confess I was unfamiliar with the Dickies until this morning, but any band with an album called Stukas Over Disneyland must be worth a look.
In 1956 there were three rafts : TOM SAWYER, BECKY THATCHER, and HUCK FINN ( boarded from raft dock below the Chicken Plantation)
In 1957 a fourth raft, INJUN JOE was added and guests could board from The Indian Village for a time.
In more recent years Injun Joe became a service raft and lost its name. Today all the rafts feature pirate names on treasure chests aboard each raft. I don’t think any of the original raft names are used any longer.
The first Tom Sawyer Island rafts were constructed in Costa Mesa, Ca by the same company that built the Storybook Canal boats.
Has everyone seen the new dinning area being constructed where the old Keel Boat landing used to be? The name for the dinning dock is Pelican Pointe ...... sounds like a beach front housing development! Rumor is guests at nite will be able to pay extra to be seated on the dock for Fantasmic viewing.
MC: Pelican Pointe. Well...that "e" at the end says it all...Pelicans kind of speak to the sea..not so much a river...but maybe they are there...if they have some magic-band-genie-get-to-be-special-with cash...kind of thing (?) Pelican Pointe is the senior complex next to Shady Pines, celebrated in the hit series..."Golden Girls" a Touchstone television production. Can we get a "Golden Girls" dark ride please? Perhaps they can do a remake of Escape from Witch Mountain, except call it..."Escape from Shady Pines Mountain". Sofia will have a "Star Case" to figure out the escaping! Kim Fields, now that she is a "celebrity" again can do a cameo...I like where this is going! To the photos... the tugging on the Sub Skipper was indeed real...but not as you think...apparently guests thought the man standing on the platform in the sub was an audio animatronic...so, allegedly...pieces and parts were tugged...and not just with hands/talons/claws...I will leave it there...perhaps an ex Sub Skipper circa 1981 can corroborate this story...or perhaps it was locker room conversation in the Tomorrowland break room...since I didn't actually see the "tugging" , I can only trust my memory to what was said by the jocular group. I see I think 4 straw hats in that raft photo...I later in life worked with someone at another job, who actually worked at the park at the same time as I. She worked in West Side Ops. That being said, she worked TSI one summer...she spoke about the raft getting unbalanced and flooding quite frequently with guests shrieking and then scurrying to the other side...only to flood THAT side of the raft...UNTIL...the journey ended with that BUMP on the dock where everyone would lose their balance and grab on to unsuspecting strangers. Lots of flooding in my days back then...I got flooded out of a Pirate boat too...that was actually not a fun thing...and for another diatribe. Boo Berry
Am truly NOT disappointed coming back to read today's comments!
Boo Berry, PLEASE share your Pirate boat story with us, as soon as you get a chance (this week?). Would LOVE to hear it!
BTW, Boo Berry, don't ever buy a house boat. ;o)
--Lou-ney & Sue-icidal NOT!
The pelican is the state bird of Louisiana (it’s even on the state flag), so there may be a conscious effort afoot to theme this to New Orleans, although the superfluous ”e” smacks of elitism. Still, that dock was just sitting there, lonely and forlorn. On nights with a full moon, it’s said you could hear it mournfully crying in the night for its lost purpose.
Well, that’s about enough beer for me for tonight.
Major and Chuck, Jacques Derrida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida
Is a Marxist pseudo-philosopher who developed the PostStructural textual analysis technique called “deconstruction” which was acknowledged to be a tool to undermine the meaning of Classical philosophy by rendering the study of it impossible, i.e. “post-didactic” since learning is no longer the purpose of teaching. Much like Chuck’s school task, I had a similar experience in college philosophy and escaped with a “D” grade for explaining how the Emperor had no clothes using his own methods.
I can hear that dock calling to me now, a lovely song, it will be a dock without equal, silver in the moonlight, frequented by forged pelicans, the finest dock on the River, truly without peer.
JG
INTERESTING UPDATE : the new keelboat dinning dock under construction at Disneyland was renamed from Pelican Pointe to PELICAN LANDING!!
My college prep class was Logic…basically it was a room of way-too-brainy high school kids debating on the effects of gamma rays on man in the moon marigolds. I think I got my D due to my bitter argument regarding fur on Mickey Mouses ears. Since Mickey was an imaginary being, there could not be fur on his ears. My argument was the context of Mickey, and that the lesson did not have enough tactical facts to fully extrapolate the entity of “Mickey Mouse” and did not give enough data to fully understand either the fantasy of an imagined talking mouse, or if, Mickey was a name for a type or breed of mouse yet unnamed in research, or historically. Since the question/lesson was unclear and not specific I could form only speculative notions of what the lesson was truly about: The discovery of a drawing from an artists imagination based on a real mouse in life. Therefore, I contended that the mouse named Mickey, by a lay person as a pet or an art study did indeed have fur on his ears. If there was a hairless/furless breed of mouse, those circumstances would certainly dictate a different outcome, but would probably be unlikely, even on a molecular level for a earth bound mammal. Pelican Landing? Oh dear. Not sure I am a fan of a “pay per view”. This might be a job for “DeRuin”.
Grant, ah yes, I have heard about the classic viewing of submarine races. Guys will think of anything!
Chuck, I was sure that you were going to say that your English teacher was so blown away by your unique and razor-sharp insight that he gave you and “A”. Or even an “A+” with a smiley face, the highest honor a student can achieve. Yes, a BA in BS, which sounds like a pretty useful discipline if you ask me. I love the Dickies, they are awesome!
Mike Cozart, thanks for confirming the three rafts. I was pretty sure of my answer, but not 100% sure. I did NOT know that there was an INJUN JOE raft! Shocking. Yes, of course all the rafts have pirate names now. Ugh. Are the “logs” actually something like foam-filled fiberglass? I’ve always wondered. And NO, I have no seen the new dining area, I hope you are joking??
Bu, yes, that extra “e” tells us that it will be classy as hell. If they spelled it the regular way, who would even care? Not me. It really is starting to feel like they are going to nickel and dime guests for every little experience. Would you believe I have never seen an episode of “The Golden Girls”? Somehow I managed to avoid it. Is Kim Fields a celebrity again? If so I haven’t seen her in anything. Oh, I was sure that you were hinting that guests “poked” the skippers where they shouldn’t be poked. I’ve seen plenty of photos of those rafts VERY low in the water, so I’m not surprised that there was the occasional flood.
Lou and Sue, I actually know somebody (a friend of a friend) who lives on a houseboat in Sweden, it’s supposedly very expensive, and “small but nice”. Such a weird idea.
Chuck, I’m sure you’re right about the choice of the pelican for the riverfront addition. I still hate it though. And yes, adding that “e” is like spelling “shop” “shoppe”, it’s mannered and kind of annoying. They should build a big fence in front of the river, and rich guests can pay to sit on the other side of it. Hire me, Disney.
JG, well that’s what I get for watching cartoons instead of studying. I kind of wish I’d delved into philosophy, but somehow I never did. And now it all seems so out of reach. Oh well.
Mike Cozart, well, I guess it’s a better name, but I still hate the basic idea.
Bu, see what I missed out on, going to an art school?? No “real” classes (though of course I did have to take my general ed classes). Of course, all these years later I also think about all of the stuff I learned that wound up not having any practical use in life. But one never knows what will be useful and what won’t. I can’t help thinking that Mickey’s ears are the way they are on the costumed character, basically coated with a fine “velvet” flocking.
Major, I think Bu meant Kim Richards of "Witch Mountain" fame, instead of Kim Fields who played Tootie on The Facts of Life.
The thought of Disney charging for close-up seating for Fantasmic is so disgusting and vile. However, nothing they do at this point really surprises me anymore.
I agree, TM! Nothing they do at this point surprises me, either. And I will never forgive them for closing off the Court of Angels, from us common folk.
Yes! T Monster! Kim Richards! Not “Tootie”…although if you take some good and take some bad, you take them both and there you have: the facts of life!
Bu, it takes a lot to get 'em right, when you're learnin' the facts of life!
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