frouella, 9/26 Post-class-post-class-post

This post is a bit late in coming, so I'm goin' all out! Cue the music!

**start nostalgic 50's instrumental soundtrack here**

Ah yes, I remember it well. It was a great many years ago when my family and I all piled in the station wagon and drove to see Disney's newest addition to the Florida landscape -- Disney Celebration! The adults were abuzz with excitement as they drove through the pristine streets, admiring the houses ("Oooh, look honey, a Cape Cod!"), gushing over the cute little shops on Main St., and marveling at how neatly everything was laid out. Perhaps it was their enthusiasm that distracted them from the fact that at this point many of the pristine streets had streetlights and driveways but no houses, most of the shops were empty, and the whole town was eerily devoid of people...

**sound of scratching phonograph needle -- soundtrack cuts off**

So now let me tell you what really happened:
About, what, ten years ago, my two gay roommates and I all piled in their Escort to take a look at The Town that Disney Built (not to be confused with Orlando proper). It was still under construction, but even so, they really did ooh and aah over how cute and quaint everything was; meanwhile, I sat in the back seat and stared out the window with something akin to horror spreading across my face. It must have showed, because they asked me, "So what do you think, frouie?" All I could say was, "...It's an ant farm."

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the most eloquent statement I've ever made, but it was the best I could do while my mind was trying to cope with what it was seeing. None of it made any sense to me. Why were there streetlights when there weren't even houses on the streets yet? Why was construction on the Main St. business district finished, but yet there weren't enough people living there to support that many businesses? Why were there flowerboxes outside of said businesses, complete with blooming pansies (no, not talking about my roommates ^_^)? It was all so contrived, so fake -- I'm sorry, people, that's not a town, that's a set. It's a manufactured world; hence, the ant farm reference.

Sadly, that may have been my first encounter with manufactured communities, but it wasn't my last. And every time I see another one, the same little voice in my head* starts yelling, "Cheaters! That is so cheating!" Celebration, Baldwin Park, Avalon Park, Whatever Park, it doesn't matter -- they all try to create this idealized history and atmosphere for themselves, so people can buy their own little piece of it, and it's crap. And as much as they try to simulate it by planning an Old-Tyme downtown, or planting old-growth trees, it still doesn't change the fact that six months ago that town didn't exist. So there. :P

*Btw, I don't mean that kind of voice in my head...

Random Po-Moment:
I was flipping through this month's issue of Vogue when I came across a story about how so many people's homes were destroyed in the fighting in Lebanon, oh the devastation, so tragic, yadda, yadda, yadda. Then, very next story, they focused on some New York socialite and how she just redecorated her multi-million-dollar mansion. Yeah, we Americans are sooo sensitive to the plight of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East; I think maybe the throw pillows that woman bought were from somewhere around there. Way to go, Vogue.