Last night was Brady’s “orphan” Christmas party (a recurring theme at Disney where all heroes are orphans and Cast Members work through the holidays regardless of religion view or family obligation), and it was off the charts. We were instructed to dress as our fav’rite orphan – step aside Annie and Webster. Make way for Esther and Harry Potter!

I chose Bruce Wayne, a controversial decision since technically Batman is part of the Universal family, but everybody was so punch drunk/pill giddy/ old-fashioned inebriated that they wouldn’t have cared if I came as Walt’s warm corpse.

 

Maybe I wear too much black. Maybe I sketch too many skulls or obsess over E.A. Poe and Morrissey. Or maybe I'm just in a spiritual cul-de-sac right now, looking for double chocolate relevance in a vanilla circumstance.

 

One of the most Magical encounters a Cast Member can have is with a child from the Make A Wish Foundation. Disney does a lot of work with the Foundation to provide final wishes for kids with terminal diseases. Not surprisingly, these wishes often include meeting a favorite Disney character, and Disney goes all out to accommodate them, rushing them to the front of the lines, giving them full VIP status. Mickey and Minnie are favorites, as are Pooh and Tigger, but all the characters give extra time and energy to the "Wish kids."

 

After being kicked out of Indonesia, Lou Perelman is back in the States to face bank fraud charges. You remember him, don't you, the guy who created Backstreet Boys and N'Sync?

I would have happily died never knowing that name, if it weren't for my roommate, who wants to be Lou Perelman.

Click on the photo of Brooke Nipar to see some of Chenman's Hidden Mickey pics...

There's a fine line between passion and obsession. Most of my friends from the action sports world straddle that line with varying degrees of success. For example, compare Travis Pastrana's passion for rally driving with Tas Pappas' obsession with psychotropic drugs. Pastrana just became the youngest ever title holder in rallying history, while Pappas spent a few quality months in an Orange County jail, where he received divorce papers from his wife's lawyers and, upon his release, was banished to Australia, where he won't be allowed back on American soil to defend his 2006 skateboarding title. Unfortunately, to the casual observer, most examples aren't that black and white.

Quiet as a lion cub, Scott turned the knob and opened the door to the Hair Department.

“Scotty-poo! Come here and give me a big hug!”

“Hi Ethel.” He forged a smile and scanned the room hastily for an Aladdin wig on a Styrofoam head. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Nonsense!” Her voice was age-worn and coarse, like the ropes of an old pontoon bridge. She scurried across the room and threw her arms around his waist. Stooped as she was, her wrinkled cheek just met the top of his chest.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my reasons for leaving everything behind in LA and coming to Orlando. It feels like I did the right thing, but sometimes I wake up in the night, panting and sweating like an escaped convict. It's worst when I talk to my brother or my parents, but every interaction with the Wish Kids gives me a twinge of doubt too.

Whether it's deliberate distraction or accidental osmosis, I find myself learning more than I ever cared to know about the characters that make up the animated films of Walt Disney. I've learned Sleeping Beauty’s real name (Aurora) and which prince goes with which princess. Splinters of trivia stick in my memory and refuse to dislodge.

“Where’s the bathroom?” a guest asked me one day.

“Just up ahead on your right,” I said, pointing naturally with two fingers. “Just past the Tree of Life, where you’ll be interested to know there are 325 animals carved into the trunk and branches.”

I cautiously watch The Eyes And Ears for reports of a Guest passing at one of the parks, but that news never comes. Disney World remains immune.

About a month ago, I began researching death, bookmarking web pages that outlined the possibilities of immortality: Taoist sites with hopeful messages of reincarnation, discussion boards about stem cell research and nanotechnology, dark magic. I've spent entire nights researching cryonics, the historically disastrous “science” of freezing a body into a state of suspended animation, which, ironically, supposedly attracted Walt Disney (There's an amazing story on This American Life about Bob Nelson, the first President of the Cryonics Institute).

These days, I'm seeing death from a philosophical angle, not as a final state of rest, but as a transition that relies on tangential factors like technology and privilege and faith. Each reference to eternal life lights a fresh spark of hope in the caverns of my mind, and I cling to these hopes to fight off the demons.

I didn't want to accept the news that Disney is shutting down Pleasure Island. It felt like a cold blood murder to me, the senseless destruction of something wonderful in the name of consumerism? Barbaric.  When I first landed in Orlando from LA, PI was my purgatory.