The Chrysanthemum Palace

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WHEN THAD’S LUNCH WITH MORDECAI and the Danish DP wannabe director was canceled, Clea got it into her head we should all go down to Disneyland. It’d been a rough week and she thought it might be “fun” to get him out of the Chateau and “into open air.” I hadn’t been to the Magic Kingdom in years; the escapade jibed perfectly with my second adolescence (courtesy of Miriam). Still, I was surprised at the level of Thad’s excitement when she floated the idea.

When we arrived in Anaheim, he suddenly got excited about California Adventure — so instead of going to Main Street, we hung a right. Friendly guards cursorily searched the girls’ handbags then pointed us toward the truncated Golden Gate Bridge that served as the corollary theme park’s entrance.

A sense of horror quickly descended.

There was nothing but wide-open spaces filled with porcine, handicapped families tooling around in rented, motorized tricycles. In place of attractions, an onslaught of shops — vast franchised plains of promotional material that looped back on the World of Dizleenan like a nauseating Möbius strip. Wall-to-wall music of the overamped John Williams variety piped relentlessly through invisible speakers, inflated and gaudily anticipatory, a sound track typically heard over opening (or closing) credits of a Spielberg extravaganza; everywhere you turned the orchestra strained toward something massive yet all one encountered were sprawling boutiques, screaming toddlers, and crippled fatties in PC motorcarts. Clea wanted to go roller-coastering and finally, miles away, we spotted “Mulholland Madness.” Weirdly, the point of the ride was to simulate what it would be like to speed around Mulholland Drive. There was a long line but a “cast member” (translation: wage slave) signaled us through, having cheerfully recognized Thad as a VIP. It was lame enough to see a replica of the Manhattan skyline in Vegas, or the Eiffel Tower in Orlando, but something else entirely to take a forty-five-minute sojourn from the Chateau in order to be whipped around a simulacrum of my native Mulholland. Soon, no doubt, there’d be a new wonderland — a mini-Disneyland within the park itself, a glorified, edited version of the Happiest Place On Earth™, with tinier boutiques filled with bitsy souvenirs. Secondhand reality was hot! I thought about my faux-Dynasty project, Holmby Hills, and got even more dejected.

As my mood grew more cynical and downcast, Thad became contradictorily energized. He tugged us this way and that, as if burning off the nervous energy accumulated during the week. He and Miriam walked arm in arm, chortling about her brainstorm to make him a bestseller. (I was genuinely glad to see him upbeat.) Then he’d hook up with Clea and off they’d go while Miriam and I strolled among the meat puppets, dissing Black Jack Michelet. She was resolute her plan would succeed, giving Thad the last laugh. She wanted to huddle with Perry for his blessing and approval; I told her I would seriously lobby the cause. Basically, I’d agree to anything she asked, which had nothing to do with the fact she was my potential wife and the mother of my children, nothing to do with the fact at that very moment she had arched her neck to inhale the scent of my inner ear, nothing to do with the fact she was joyfully showing off the sun-bleached hair on her forearms, parading them for my delectation, and that her eyes witchily widened when I brushed her thigh and kissed a strawberry wedge of lip (in full view of grimy-costumed Cast Members, and the riveted toddler-spawn of a paraplegic dad) — and certainly nothing to do with the fact I found her crusade to get Thad his millions to be heroically sound, just, and true.

Eventually, we did find a ride I enjoyed.

Miriam and I sat in little steel gondolas that faced an IMAX screen, approximating what it felt like to hang glide. Soaring over a montage of river, mountain, and gorge, we clutched at each other with desire and wonder while the gondola swayed and surged in a warm, slyly generated current of synthetic Santa Anas. (At last, something worth the $47 park entrance fee.) She gasped and excitedly pointed — for a rapturous moment, our old friend Death Valley, and Badwater too, lay below.

Just when I thought everyone had had enough and we could hightail it back to lotusland for an expensive lunch, young Michelet caught sight of a heinous sidebar village called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot. In the last hour or so, I’d caught fans staring; once or twice a family approached to have their picture taken and Thad obliged, for which the three of us were skittishly grateful. (He actually seemed to enjoy the attention.) Strolling deeper into the Backlot, he thrust a theme-park brochure in my face, stabbing his finger at the captioned ride he was dead set on buying tickets for. According to the description, the miniature limousine (set on little railroad tracks) took starstruck groups on a Mr. Toad — like tour of “the Hollywood experience of casting offices and premieres.” It did sound amusing, very Nathanael West, and Thad was miserably deflated when we arrived to find it shut down. We made inquiries to a ubiquitous Cast Member but the pimply girl said the ride had been closed for “voluntary safety issues,” whatever that meant, and no one knew when it would “relaunch.”

Thad just stood there, staring at the moribund attraction, as if he could will it to life.

Clea headed toward the candy superstore — she was jonesing for double-chocolate truffles — when our disappointed friend, ever-vigilant, spotted the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Theater. I groaned. The line was a block long. “We have to go!” Thad shouted. “Don’t you see? I can pay off the IRS! I can finally pay off the fucking IRS!”

My mood plunged further, if that were possible. I hate to be dramatic but there was something so creepily apocalyptic about it — I wasn’t even sure Millionaire was on the air anymore. Not that it mattered. Disney evidently fucking owned it and was going to fucking milk it for all it was fucking worth. When I was a kid, there was Tomorrowland, Tom Sawyer, and the glorious, snowcapped Matterhorn; now, it was all about replicating whatever syndicated hits had metastasized under the corporate umbrella. I had one of those “If this be our culture, let it come down” moments, and muttered as much to Miriam, who said I sounded like an intern at the Voice. I thought it was more Fahrenheit 9/11, but what the hell, I liked being put in my place. That’s what wives were for.

It turned out the theater was full because everyone was eligible to win a three-day cruise and Americans really love winning shit. That probably isn’t fair. I should have said, Americans really love standing in line to win shit. The host came out. Someone must have tipped him because he pointed toward us and said “we have a VIP in the crowd today.” The audience applauded while our boy Thad-libbed; they laughed but something didn’t feel right. Miriam shushed me for being a curmudgeonly paranoid.

Questions flashed on huge screens and whoever gave the fastest, most accurate response was moved to a center-stage “hot seat.” (“Answer buttons” were on back of each chair.) Thad was nothing if not competitive; it suddenly occurred to me that he really wanted to win. Things went from bad to worse when he couldn’t make headway. The questions were easy but they made sure to lob the occasional high ball, leaving you clueless unless you happened to be conversant with the inventory of the entire merchandisable Disney universe. Thad began to curse. It was funny for about ten seconds then some triple-chinned cracker objected to his language. Thad told her to shove it and the hubby didn’t like that one bit. Clea and I began to tug at both sides, as both reprimand and cue to leave.

The master of ceremonies asked the hot-seater, “Where would you be most likely to find a denouement?” The answers flashed onscreen, with annoying musical trills:

1. In the bathroom

2. In a story

3. Under the hood

4. In a salad

The mispronounced word (“day-new-mint”) had the contestant totally stumped. He used his “lifeline” to phone a Cast Member standing by somewhere in the park. After the employee answered, we could hear him hand the receiver off to a pedestrian. The Q&A was repeated and each time “day-new-mint” was enunciated Thad laughed so hard I thought he’d have a heart attack — it was that violent. After much deliberation the hot-seater said, “I guess in the bathroom.”

Thad literally fell off his chair. “You fucking idiot!” he shouted. “Yes! Of course. That’s where you find a day-new-mint—in the shitter, with your elephant-legged wife and waterbrain daughter! Sucking each other’s pussies!”

Needless to say, we rushed him out at the very moment a squad of terrified Mouseketeers, poorly trained in militia-like maneuvers, gave dogged, unspirited chase.

While waiting for the tram to take us back to the car, Thad bought the tiniest cup of Coke I’d ever seen. It was like something from a dollhouse but still cost $4.50—setting off another rant, this one with anti-Semitic overtones that managed to include Michael Eisner, Mel Gibson, and shouts of “Allah Akbar!” Clea told him if he didn’t shut up, “we could very well be detained.”

We finally boarded for the two-minute trip to the parking garage. I remembered how exciting it was to listen to the recorded voice accompanying that ride in my youth; how it evoked the genteel mystery and endless promise of a clean, well-lit, preordained world — truly, the Magic Kingdom. Now everything was different. The kingdom was Orwellian, the world was rotten, and the singsong murderous monotone of the man alternating product promotion with safety reminders only filled me with premonitory dread.