A Whole New Old World

Dan spent all weekend writing a research paper on Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project which, disappointingly enough, isn't about one man's attempt to play every coin-operated Ms. Pac-Man in America in the span of a year, but rather 19th century covered passageways in Paris.

Although I'm learning a lot about historical materialism by proofreading Dan's work, I'm also really grateful that I'm no longer in grad school and thus free to watch a Gilmore Girls marathon while eating brownie bites. I do still make an effort to flex my poetry muscle on a daily basis. I can't help but think metaphorically about booking Carnival cruises and enjoy coming up with slant rhymes for Air Tran. (Oh Air Tran/now under Southwest reign.)

From Oct 23-30, I'll be at Disney World researching the parks and blogging daily on everything from my American Idol audition experience at Hollywood Studios (I'm singing "Black Velvet") to the fish and chips portion size at Epcot's Rose and Crown Pub. I hope to explore the Disney zeitgeist and our polemical engagement with materialism that inevitably capitulates under the subconscious weight of magical abandon. Um, and ride Space Mountain like twenty times.

While Dan has been tying cultural criticism to the current trend of disjunction in poetry, I've been relating it to Disney. We both just read poet Tony Hoagland's essay entitled "Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment," which contrasts novelty (an obsession of Benjamin's) and experience. Hoagland opens with the assertion that embedded in newness is the seed of obsolescence. Nothing can stay new forever, despite the poet's attempt at innovative form or style. Convention is ineluctably "conventionally tired." But Mickey Mouse never seems tired, even prototype Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse, who was pretty much either always at the ship's wheel or peeling potatoes.



I think what makes Disney so compellingly mythic is its ability to reinvent itself while maintaining a firm foothold in the old. Disney is neither dated nor slickly modern. The parks age, yet somehow they don't. It's no coincidence that you won't find a newspaper inside the Magic Kingdom.

I grew up with a Fisher Price Record Player and oodles of vinyl-- Mousercize and Disco Duck and the soundtrack to the animated Robin Hood featuring the twangy vocal stylings of Roger Miller. I used to cart my equipment down to the lake and DJ for the neighborhood boys who fished for brim, spinning hits like "Feed the Birds" and "Never Smile at a Crocodile." Can you believe my first date wasn't until college? I can.



The point is, my relationship with Disney runs deep. I think each one of us has a private history with the parks that refuses to be supplanted by any amount of revamping. We create emotional memories rooted in the unchanging aspects of Disney. It's the big picture -- mouse ears, Cinderella castle, music -- that emerges from the fog of childhood. The past is a record on repeat. (Is it unfortunate when this record is Mary Poppins? Maybe.)

Birnbaum's Official Guide to Walt Disney World touches on the seemingly reductive and inauthentic nature of Epcot's World Showcase: "You won't find the real Germany here -- rather, the country's essence, much as a traveler returning from a visit might remember what he or she saw." The countries at World Showcase, then, aren't reductive at all. They're meant to represent what we as travelers remember once we're home again. It's the "essence" of recollection.

At 33, what I love about Walt Disney World is its vague fluttery core, a heart-warming abstraction that has the effect of intensifying feelings of attachment.


(panel from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics)

Aren't You Superfluous, or What?

Inevitably, the first question I get asked at parties when I tell people I'm a travel consultant is: "Didn't the internet put you guys out of business?" and then: "Wait -- is that the same thing as a travel agent?"

1988 was the year I became an entrepreneur. I founded two companies. The first was a knock-off Purina Puppy Chow outfit. I'd won a year's supply of dog food at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds by filling out an entry form and dropping it in a fish bowl when my parents weren't looking. Because an adult terrier can only eat so much puppy chow in one day (five bowls with a pine cone garnish), I decided to repackage the food in brown paper lunch bags and sell it door-to-door. I made Print Shop labels with a clip art dog barking "Ciao." I thought it sounded exotic, the way gelato sounds more exotic than ice cream. I tried to pick the most Italian looking clip art dog. The best I could find was a black and white Golden Retriever in a bandanna.


I took Ciao to the streets, biking in a Springdale sales radius of about 800 yards. When someone opened the door I'd say "Ciao!" in a cloying Punky Brewster voice and produce dog food from behind my back. Very seldom was I treated like a Chinatown handbag salesman. No one asked about protein content or synthetic additives. This was the late 80's. Moms used Aqua Net and let their babies teeth on lawn darts, you know?

After I made about $20 on Ciao, I grew bored. Dry dog food just wasn't galvanizing anymore. I decided to be the neighborhood travel agent. Because we didn't have one.

As a go-getter, another favorite pastime was phoning 1-800 numbers and requesting brochures. I always made sure to call in late May to guarantee I received a lot of mail at summer camp: catalogs from JC Penny and the Graceland souvenir store, marketing kits from Jamaica. I pored over the Newport News fall line of bolero jackets when I should have been learning how to tack a Sunfish.

My travel agency business plan was really simple: I'd order a crap ton of brochures from various tour vendors and tourism boards, smack a label on them with my name and phone number, and then distribute them in mailboxes. Neighbors would flip through the marketing materials and forfeit self-sufficiency in favor of the expertise of an eleven year old who had only really been to Myrtle Beach and gave vacation counsel out of a tool shed. I stored extra mailers in my father's Craftsman chest.

I only ever got one phone call -- a woman who had received my Club Med brochure and wanted more information -- and in a moment of panic (was Club Med a sandwich?) said I was in sixth grade and hung up.

Now, at age 33, when I'm asked at parties about the viability of travel agents in the age of internet autonomy, I explain the difference between an agent and a consultant. An agent is no better than a kid collecting brochures next to power drills. An agent merely regurgitates pat copy, pedals a product second-hand. If you're looking for an agent, then might I interest you in this here dog food?

A travel consultant offers invaluable knowledge rooted in first-hand familiarity. I develop personal relationships with my clients that counter the uncaring anonymity of an online booking engine. I've actually been to the places I recommend. I've read the guidebooks. Travel consultants are successful in spite of this tired economy because they know how to focus on what the internet can't possibly deliver. We're real people with valid passports, physical store fronts.

In a recent issue of Travel Weekly, columnist Richard Turen noted that "One hotel chain, years ago, was actually using prisoners on work release to handle phone reservations." Aside from the occasional traffic ticket (one, embarrassingly enough, issued by a cop on a horse), I don't have a history of run-ins with the law. My list of excursions doesn't include being bused out for road-side beautification. Wouldn't you rather speak with someone reputable, someone you can meet in person?

You can trust a consultant. You can save time with a consultant. Maybe you've made an Excel spreadsheet of all the times of all the fireworks shows at Disney World, and graphed that data against the height requirements of Dumbo the Flying Elephant, and placed that graph alongside a Venn Diagram of value meals, but can you stomach staying on hold with the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique, listening to the Country Bear Jamboree? And what if I told you've I've already drawn that Venn Diagram and paired it with a resort pool chart? How much is your time worth?

Poet John Keats was onto something when he wrote about the importance of a living hand: "See here it is—/I hold it towards you."

All Aboard

Once, I sang "Midnight Train to Georgia" at Pieces' drag queen karaoke and a 60-something black man tucked a twenty in my pocket as thanks. As I was thinking today about how I could render the last two months, how best to take up blogging again, it occurred to me that I am both parties in the song. That basically, I've ridden that train twice. I'm the one who left to find the world I left behind (I lived in Athens for two years) and the one who followed because I'd rather live with the man in his world (Dan is currently a PhD candidate at UGA). This revelation felt metaphorically satisfying until I caught myself explaining to Dan that the man's midnight train ticket was cheaper because he qualified for an advanced purchase fare, whereas Gladys Knight, deciding to go last minute, probably just bought a ticket same day at the station.



After years away from the travel industry, I'm working again as a consultant for a local family-owned agency. Not only did I return to Georgia, but I returned to an industry I couldn't wait to leave. I'm doubling back, not to be confused with conceding. At first I wasn't so sure. I had to reaffirm that spendthrift intermediary time -- that lacuna of years I took out student loans and rode in cabs and occasionally wore a sparkly black lamé pantsuit. How could I have just ended up back where I started? When did I become Reese Witherspoon? But ya'll, I'm excited to wake up in the morning and help people see the world, probably because I saw it, too. I miss teaching, but I'm where I'm supposed to be right now.

Although I assist with all kinds of travel, I'm the certified Disney agent for our office (I have mortarboard graduation mouse ears). The summer I turned 19, I worked at Epcot, sweating through purple polyester and pulling pizza tickets from a printer. If we didn't fill orders fast enough, the machine spit the paper onto the floor, or more specifically, onto the caked rubber mat we hosed down every night at close. I have a very distinct memory of bending over to pick up a ticket and losing my balance, coming face to face with my own grimy regulation Reebok with its parmesan and sauce-encrusted sole, my visor obscuring my line of vision, my elastic waistband stretched to capacity, and sincerely thinking: "This is awesome." And in a lot of ways, it was. I'm practically dangling a lion cub over a cliff, my life is so circular.



In a few days, my agency launches a new website which features a section where I'll be blogging. My first foray into work communiqué happens October 23. I'm spending a week in Disney World and chronicling my daily adventures. I hope you'll join me for the month of October as I transition From Soho to Silo into a more travel-centric site.