There’s been all kinds of things written about the future.  I don’t know if you know or care, but when Back to the Future came out in 1985, 30 years in the future was 2015.  Back to Future got some of those things right and some way off.  No the Cubs still haven’t won a World Series and yes there is a team in Florida.  There are some things similar to hoverboards, but nothing close to a flying car yet.  No, we don’t wear two ties to work. In fact, we kinda went opposite on that one.  We do have video conferencing, but microwaves don’t cook any faster than they did years ago.  Sure I suppose we have a few months to get all those things changed, but I’m not counting on our lazy inventors.  They are busy inventing unuseful things like elephant nose medicine dispenser’s so they can get $50,000 on Shark Tank.  Let’s just say that we are headed for a much more mediocre future than anyone would ever predict.  Let’s look at the recent past for evidence of that.  Like December 2012 when we went to Disney Studios. See the Bitterness below…

 

 The Bitterest Place on Earth – Disney Studios Edition – Part 5 

 

Every once in a while a movie can be magical. You can be completely transported to another place, or time or be another person. I remember the first time I saw the Karate Kid. When I got home my parents couldn’t get me to stop karate chopping my brother or stop me from doing that crane move on my sisters. After Ferris Bueller, my parents couldn’t stop me from faking sick so I skip school for a whole week. After Back to the Future, my parents couldn’t stop me from going back and forth in history. (Spoiler warning: 2013 is just as bitter as 2012 was.) But most of the time movies are boring, or the same as many others. Just like Disney Hollywood Studios.

We were greeted by the Big Magic Mickey hat from Fantasia, which according to my sources (Google) was 122 feet tall, which means I would have to be 350 feet tall to wear it so it would fit, and it could hold 444,744 gallons of water (why do they always use water), or soda, which is about how much soda my son drank on the trip, at least according to the amount of trips we made to the bathroom.

With the promise of the “Celebration of Action, Glamour and thrills of Hollywood at its best” we set off for a new adventure. First stop, the gift shops. Down Hollywood Boulevard, we could get the one of a kind souvenirs that you could only get anywhere else in the world. They were so unique, in fact, that the only place you could find shops like this were at every other Disney Park, at other stores, or online. So of course, we had to go to each shop in order to see all these unique items.

I have spent an entire decade avoiding American Idol, by watching repeats of other shows that are good, the fireplace channel, and staring at blank walls for an hour. When they added Jennifer Lopez and her acting and singing inabilities, I knew they had created my ultimate anti-show, the one that if I watched would make me into a nice, boring person instead of the bitter, interesting person that I am today. The magic of Disney Studios made it so that I was on an unavoidable collision with my nemesis. Talk about drama and suspense! There we were, face to face, the American Idol experience, as the unmovable object, and me, the irresistable force. So what happened? I bet you can’t wait to know? I armed myself with my two hands, placed them firmly on my ears and I moved around the American Idol experience. Yes, the bitter guy always wins in the end. Take that American Idol experience!

After we so deftly avoided that drama, we found an action packed thrill ride that was unforgettable from beginning to end called the Great Movie ride. Most certainly we would see such movie classics as Die Hard, Die Hard 2, 3 and 4, Transformers, and Scott Pilgrim right? Nope, just some early black and white obscure films that had singing. One was called Singing in the Rain and another was Mary Poppins. Maybe they should have put on this ride something that people had heard of. Or a movie that was good. Then they had an exciting shoot out with two unknowns, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Apparantly one of them had also directed a film about a rich babies, but you know it was probably one of those stupid kid movies. In the middle of the shoot out though, something great happened. Our tour guide who just adored movies got abducted. Finally, something bad happened to a cheery Disney employee! Maybe we should bring all the cheery ones on this ride! Then some random lady from the old times that wanted a treasure took the place of the tour guide. So cool! We are being guided through this tour by a wanted criminal! But alas, all good news had to come to an end when the criminal went after the gold and got vaporized or sucked into the machine and our cheery tour guide came back. Ughh good triumphed over evil again! So bitter!

Thankfully, we were able to come down from our adventure high, quickly enough to get in an extremely long line for the Toy Story ride. We had no idea what the ride was about, but that didn’t deter us, no way! It most assuredly wouldn’t be just some slow moving gallery shooting ride, right? And we wouldn’t have to listen to Mr. Potato Head tell the same lame jokes over and over again right? And we wouldn’t have to be right ahead of really pushy, whining annoying brats right? Actually yes, but we only waited 70 minutes, so take that Disney! According to the Disney employees we would have only had to wait 5 hours on Christmas day! If only we were still there then…

Not wanting the thrills to end, we had to check out one of all time least favorite mashups, the Muppets…in 3D. Just to show us that 3D isn’t annoying enough, they mixed in the equally annoying Muppets and mashed them up into two annoying things. Talk about Gestalt! The whole annoying experience was greater than the sum of its two annoying parts! The Muppet name itself is a mash up of two annoying things. Monsters and Puppets. If only I could do a mashup of two things that I liked, Lazy and Bitter, and make a Lazer. Then, I could take the 22 foot Magic Wand that went along with the 350 foot Wizard Hat, and produce a wish. With that one wish I could shoot everything I disliked in the park, like Muppets and waiting in long lines, cheery Disney employees, American Idol and Jennifer Lopez with lazy bitterness.

But alas, my bitter wish did not come true as we found out about Disney’s overwhelming power of happiness this week. So we continued to avoid any semblance of a good ride by not waiting for 70 minutes for Tower of Terror and 80 minutes for Jennifer Lopez other annoying partner Aerosmith’s mash up Rock and Rollercoaster. Get it? I made one last ditch effort to find an evil T-shirt to display my bitterness in T-shirt form at the Villians in Vogue store, but all they had was Jack Skellington. Seriously, this is the only evil character T-shirt Disney could come up with? Of all the awesome villians they have the dude from The Nightmare before Christmas? I have never seen that movie, and now I definitely won’t. He is on my bitter list.

So what did we learn today? Mashups are only good if they are used for bitter and lazy purposes, Disney’s overwhelming power of Happiness can only be twarted by my lazy bitterness, and I conquered all four Disney Parks! Take that Disney. I won because you only got half my money, because we ate at Cici’s pizza after we left the park!

Disney now defeated, I will conquer one last park, Universal Studios, next time. And it will be an epic battle to finish! May bitterness win in the end!

Arrrggghhhh

Bitter Ben