Ray's Contrarian Opinions #1

As a society we're instinctively prodded towards consensus. It seems that more and more everybody likes the same things. Cults of Personality take over and turn into phenomenon. I'm starting to think that I could survey 100 people for their favorite book or movie and get no more than 10 different answers for each. Convenience rules our lives and most people want to swim the mainstream. This is the same reason why no matter how hard some people try, we aren't going to have a three-party or four-party political system in America. People want options but they don't want to be exhausted by options. Most people would be perfectly happy strolling through life as though it were an SAT test. Multiple choice, but no more than four choices. This is sad enough, but what is even sadder are those topics on which there is NO choice.

There are certain things that we are raised from an early age to like and dislike without much say in the matter. You really aren't allowed to not like Abraham Lincoln, puppies, sunny days, Krispy Kreme donuts, Morgan Freeman, or sliced bread. Sure there are people who don't...but they are often forced to hide these feelings and made to feel as though they were wrong. If you tell people you don't like puppies then you become the godless miser who hates puppies. I personally am not a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. I think he was kind of a dick. However, since everybody thinks that he was the one who freed the slaves and united America, I become the guy who is pro-slavery and anti-America. Read those history books a little closer, people.

There are also things that we as a society are told we aren't allowed to like. Racism, hurricanes, tuberculosis, Pauley Shore, and meth labs come to mind. Well I say it's about time we stopped listening to the societal consensus and thought for ourselves. I say we make like Stevie Nicks and go our own way. I fully intend to do my part for this revolution by sharing four things I dislike that society praises and four things that I enjoy that society frowns upon.

#1: Disney

True to the above rationale, I am already catching flak for this opinion and I haven't even posted it yet. But you know what, to hell with Disney. You can tell that they truly have untouchable status because their movies are the only wide-release films that can garner 95+ ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, but movie reviewers who write bad reviews of movies they like so that they can up their readership is something for me to bitch about at a later date. It is also generally agreed that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. Clearly these people have never been to Disneyland, or to Las Vegas for that matter. Then there is the beloved Walt-Disney himself: the Academy-Award grabbing father or animation and purveyor of the American Dream. In actuality: a fascist hate-monger. There is so much to criticize about the Disney corporation (now officially the Walt Disney Company). That is why I'm going to have to break this down into three parts: Their films, their theme parks, and their societal footprint.

I'm not here to criticize all of the films of Disney or to say that there is nothing redeeming about them. The Walt Disney Company has produced many fine films, but they aren't all Hakuna Matata (that means "No Worries"). I recently saw an advertisement for Disney's new re-release of The Jungle Book. They were bringing it out of the depths of the Disney vault for it's 40th Anniversary to give it a new release on a 2-disc Blu-Ray and DVD. This begs two questions. The less important of these two questions is "What the hell is on that 2nd disc?" We're talking about a 40-year-old cartoon here. I'm pretty sure it's not a making of video. Anybody involved who warrants providing commentary is either decrepit or dead by now. And if they've got some deleted scenes, please spare us.

However, this is probably a ploy to take our attention away from the greater question which is "Why are you putting a movie that everybody has already seen in the Disney Vault?" There is the standard asshole reason that putting a moratorium on availability drives up prices, but I think that the answer is more sinister still. Putting tons of movies, even ones that everybody has seen, into the Disney vault allows you to better disguise the fact that this is also the location of Disney films that not everybody has seen and that you have little desire for them to see.

Who knows what tremendous embarrassments to the Disney brand lie within this vault? I'm sure that's where they are keeping Song of the South for good. This race-relations nightmare has been kept under lock and key for quite some time and many of the stars died shortly after making it of mysterious circumstances. If they could part with the ever popular Splash Mountain and Zippidy-Doo-Da they'd be rid of this for good. Let's not forget such classic animation as Donald Duck decked in Nazi regalia or Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette (gasp!) using a lighter with a Swastika on it (double gasp!). I'm sure the Aladdin version with the original cut of "Arabian Nights" is in there. Mickey and the Boy Thursday is definitely in there (google it, oh so racist) along with the original Fantasia with Sunflower the Centaur.

However, there are certain examples that Disney hasn't scrubbed out of existense because they think that they're subtle enough. These include the Siamese cats in The Lady and the Tramp, King Louie and the monkeys in The Jungle Book, and of course the crows from Dumbo led by the uneducated, smoking, and pimptastic-hat wearing Jim Crow. And who could forget the ever so racist "What Makes the Red Man Red?" number from Peter Pan. In case you have forgotten you can direct your attention to the video and pay attention to the lyrics.

It's the whole vault cover-up that makes things even worse though. Sure the original Aladdin "Arabian Nights" lyrics were controversial but quite frankly wasn't the merchant just saying what most Americans were already thinking: That the Middle East is barren wasteland where the justice system runs on a clear and simple limb-removal policy. However, the unnecessary political correctness involved in airbrushing these lyrics out of history like a failed comrade in a Stalin painting allows the mighty Disney corporation to maintain it's erroneous status as a moral idealist so that it can continue to corrupt generations yet to come.

Also, I'm all for fantasy and idealism but it is pretty rough how children of the Disney golden age are let down every day when there unrealistic expectations of love, family, and the physics of human hair are shattered. There was never a worse twelve month span for romance than when The Little Mermaid and Pretty Woman came out. How many tween relationships ended because he just wasn't Prince Eric. Likewise, Disney clearly over-glorified the allure and magic of the single parent household. I'm pretty sure Mulan is the only protagonist that made it into adulthood from a two-parent household. I grew up in a loving two-parent household, so I can't speak from experience, but I know plenty of people that can tell you that one-parent households and the orphan life aren't the swashbuckling good time Disney promotes them to be. And then there is the ridiculous issue of Disney hair. Have you ever tried helping a friend's daughter with her Princess Jasmine Halloween costume sans a wig? The multiple ponytail holder concept does not work the way Disney implies that it does.

Yet there is no more epic letdown from elevated expectations than that of the Disneyland parks. They are marketed as the happiest place on Earth. Bunk! Bunk I Say! First of all, it is crowded, noisy, and there is no place to sit. And it lacks amusement. There are only a small fistful of rides that could be considered amusing by anybody over the age of 7. I'm not saying that kids aren't the most important thing, but they can't drive themselves to the park. Have you ever heard of fun for the whole family, Disney? The park is also a death trap that has few major attractions by which to mark oneself and keep from getting lost. How does one know where Adventureland begins and Frontierland ends? They are the same place. You basically have to use the Matterhorn to orient yourself because their maps are worthless. The lines are already ridiculously long for the five rides that anybody actually wants to go on, and when Space Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean is down for maintenance every other weekend the lines for the other decent attractions multiply exponentially.

Any parent will tell you that the worst aspect of Disney parks is that they are money traps. I was once at a gathering where a child asked his father if they could go to Disneyland. The dad said, "Sure. We can go to Disneyland." The kid then got really excited. "I'll take you to the parking lot! Ha Ha Ha!" The kid's hopes deflated like one of my tires on my exceptionally shitty car. Everybody can tell that this dad is a jerk for taunting his son, but he's an even bigger jerk because he's willing to shell out $20 to park in Disneyland's parking lot just to taunt his son. You pay $20 to park! And then you lose your car because instead of having to remember a number to know where you parked you have to remember which one of the Lost Boys you parked near because Disneyland marks their lots with sometimes obscure characters. If you don't know the difference between Chip and Dale then screw you.

Then if you want to go into the park the leeching truly begins. This I can't actually blame Walt Disney for. When he died the parks admission was $4. Now it is $72. This so Michael Eisner can give himself a bonus that is half the size of my Alma Mater's endowment (not an exaggeration). A family of four is now at $302 and they've just entered the money trap. Welcome to a World of $4 sodas and $6 churros. I have eaten at the 2nd most expensive McDonald's in the world. It is at the Staples Center, where a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal costs $9. The most expensive McDonald's can be found at Disneyland Tokyo. Souvenirs are also ridiculous. They'll charge you a couple dollars for some Mouse ears that were produced by a little Indonesian boy who's lifetime salary couldn't gain him admission to the park. And then they will charge you $10-$15 for a photo of you coming down Splash Mountain. Don't worry though, if you want to take your own pictures they have marked "Kodak Picture Spots" throughout the park for tourists who are too stupid to recognize a scenic view. It just gets more and more ridiculous. Did you know that the value of all the purses and wallets that get lost at Disney's parks every day is over $35,000 and the value of all of the purses and wallets that get returned to Disney's lost and found stations every day are $14.08. You can't make up numbers like that off the top of your head.

They also treat their employees like dirt. And not just the Indonesian boy who makes their mouse ears. I'm talking about the hard-working drones who help run their park. I have seen a Disneyland employee manual. For somebody who hated the communists so much Walt Disney really wanted everybody to look the same. There are outlines for acceptable hair cuts which is basically one for guys and one for girls. Nail polish colors are at one. Your uniform is issued down to your shoes and jewelry is often nish-nish. There also appears to be a caste system amongst the costumed performers. I haven't exactly figured it out yet but I think that if you are actual royalty (ala Princess Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty) you are at the top of the caste system and it works it's way down from there. Heaven help you if you are Lady or the Tramp. You get treated like an actual dog. Although Mickey is the trump card. The Mouse rules all. If you get sick or are suffering the effects of heat struck you had better suck it up because if you remove your head for any reason (i.e. to vomit) it ends in immediate termination. So vomit in the suit. And employees who overhear parents telling their children that the characters are just humans in costume are told to call the child abuse hotline. When audioanomatronic characters die they are given audioanomatronic funerals. When human workers die they are dumped in a ditch on Tom Sawyer Island. You get the picture. For the record, I made up less than half of those facts.

Disneyland has tried to whitewash away the less than glamorous parts of their parks (just like they did with their movies) and in doing so have wiped away all of the fun. They put It's a Small World through the old Politically Correct facelift and now the Chinese have regular-sized eyes and don't wear those ridiculous cone hats. This was probably for the best. I can't fault them for trying to be less offensive. However, I'm not sure that removing Tienneman Square signs from EPCOT's Chinese district after the riot there is in any way, shape, or form historically responsible. But on the Jungle Cruise they no longer shoot the attacking hippopotamuses (hippopotimi?). They throw rocks at them. If you want to kowtow to a billion Chinese people, that is one thing. But don't kowtow to PETA. They aren't real people. Having a fucking spine and remember that when a hippo attacks listen to Robert Muldoon and "Shoot Her!" They keep the best parts of their parks hidden. Every child wants to go to the Magic Kingdom. The best Disney park experience is found at Blizzard Beach at Walt Disney World. The 120 foot drop of the Summit Plummet and girls in bikinis beat the hell out of anything the Magic Kingdom has to offer, Fast Pass or No Fast Pass. If I were to go to Disneyland today I would probably just find a bench in New Orleans Square within the French Quarter and sleep until it was time to go home. By the way, New Orleans Square is actually an irregular hexagon in yet another Disney ploy to miseducate our youth.

However, the most atrocious of Disney's flaws have nothing to do with their movies or their parks or even the fact that Walt Disney was a spy for the FBI during the Red Scare and helped craft Hollywood's Blacklist. No...the main problem with Disney can be seen actively at work today as part of Disney culture. It stems from the Disney Channel. The Disney Channel and it's tween lifestyle machine are one of the main problems in America today. It started long before the Britney Spears Mousketeers of the mid-90s. Way back when Annette Funicelli led the Mickey Mouse Club they were already being corrupted by Walt Disney. They were forced to address him as "Uncle Walt" (creepy) and anybody who was caught cursing (even if it was just "hell" or "damn") was immediately terminated. Things have taken a turn for the worse recently though. The Disney Channel is pumping out maladjusted child tabloid fodder at a record pace.

Take a look at the top child talent to come out of the two major child actor camps of the mid-90s. Nickelodeon produced Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson, Larisa Oleynik, Melissa Joan Hart, Elisha Cuthbert, Michelle Trachtenberg, Christine Taylor, Nick Cannon, Jason Dohring, Emma Roberts, and Seth Green. All of these actors went on to great success after they left Disney and if some of them didn't reach super-stardom well at least they were well-adjusted and none of them (except maybe Nick Cannon) was ever plagued by scandalous tabloid stories. Now let's look at the cream of the Disney crop: Lindsey Lohan, Kirk Cameron, Dustin Diamond, Joey Lawrence, Kristen Stewart, Erik von Detten, Britany Spears, Mischa Barton, Shia LeBouf, Hillary Duff, Raven Symone, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Vanessa Hudgens. These names are a lot more famous, but the ones that haven't crashed and burned yet are headed to do so soon. Among them I can count over half a dozen DUIs, at least a dozen celebrity feuds, at least four whose genitals I have seen, multiple counts of possession of a controlled substance and hundreds of National Enquirer and Star cover stories. But Erik von Detton was the runner-up of Celebrity Mole so they've got that going for them.

Sure I'd rather have Miley, Britney, or Shia's bank account or the ability for me to address them by their first name and have you know exactly who I mean, but I'd rather sit down for a meal with Amanda Bynes, Elisha Cuthbert, or Jason Dohring any day, because they are real people. Also, their careers are ahead of them, not behind them. And this isn't a coincidence. This has everything to do with the vapid lifestyle that Disney promotes and their uncanny ability to want to make childhood seem so magical that those who buy in too deeply lose touch with reality. Like I said...Life isn't all Hakuna Matata.

#1: Elective Surgery (and Steroids in baseball for that matter)

Elective Surgery gets a bad rap. There's multiple reasons that people look down on. Some people think that it's expensive and carries unnecessary risk. Some people look at cases like Joan Rivers and Kenny Rogers and see people who have turned themselves into maniacal-looking clowns. Yet others see it as humans valuing superficiality over who they are supposed to be and inner beauty. These are not totally unfounded concerns. However, the problem here is not the plastic surgery itself. It is the overuse of it. Everything in moderation. Sure you have cautionary tales like that of Heidi Montag who went from super-hottie to somewhat scary looking by trying to have ten elective surgeries consecutively. But let me tell you...for every Heidi Montag there are ten hideous gargoyles who were transformed into decent looking human beings.

I have always supported every human's right to attempt to achieve their maximum potential by any means that I deem moral, be that legal or not. This is why I support illegal immigration. Trying to be American is just the epitome of maximizing your potential. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with people who are unattractive. Unattractive people are some of the best people. However, it is an undeniable fact of life that there are rights and privileges that are afforded to the beautiful that are not afforded to the ugly. However, this is not something that works in the reverse. If we are talk about maximizing one's human potential then we are talking about getting better looking. Who are we as a society that blesses the beautiful to tell people that they shouldn't take drastic measures to be amongst that beautiful elite?

I hear your arguments against it. You can tell me that people that elect to have superficial surgeries aren't being true to themselves and that they should look for somebody who will respect them and love them for who they are rather than trying to fix themselves to land a mate. These critics are apparently very unaware of the shortage of non-superficial people that make up the general population. That isn't a judgment or a condemnation of society, I'm one of them...and I don't think that I feel all that bad about it. It's human nature. I don't always support a conformist philosophy, but it isn't always a bad thing. I do support grabbing the brass ring and taking what it is that you want. If we look at the state of the American dream it becomes increasingly clear that some people might need a little help from the knife to do that. So who are you to tell them that they shouldn't?

Naysayers of elective surgery like to focus on the augmentation of undesirable physical attributes whose removal or alteration is unnecessary. They spend significantly less time considering the psychological changes that a recipient of cosmetic surgery goes through. Cosmetic surgery has obvious effects on people's self-esteem and confidence levels and has been proven to be a very effective tool in combating depression. A simple rhinoplasty may not drastically change an individual for the better on the outside but if it gives them increased self-confidence then that is invaluable. Also, while there are risks associated with elective surgery, if done by a properly trained surgeon it is significantly safer than using mind-altering drugs to combat depression.

However, this doesn't mean that I'm saying you shouldn't use chemical-altering drugs. I am after all for steroids in baseball. Why the hell not? To argue that they disgrace our national past time is a futile argument. That argument may have had teeth about ten years ago, but since then baseball has been shot in the head and kicked into a shallow grave. Baseball is boring as hell and it sure as shit isn't our national present time. Football has taken over. Basketball is making a stand. And NASCAR, golf, tennis, soccer, and even pro wrestling can make their case to be above baseball. Baseball has been mismanaged into the ground by too many consecutive generations and faces irrelevance in the near future if it can't pull out of it's tailspin. It seems destined to take it's spot next to boxing and horse racing in the graveyard for once-great American sports. But there is hope for baseball and it comes from what many consider to be baseball's worst enemy: Steroids.

That's right...I am suggesting re-pumping the sport. Let the juice run loose. Baseball was so much better ten years ago. I want to see people at their best, even if that isn't their natural best. I'm not trying to say that steroids aren't dangerous or without their consequences but I don't want to see first basemen be sexual lotharios. I want to see them jack some dingers. And let's reconsider our stance on steroid users entering the Hall of Fame. If Barry Bonds is pushed out because he was a steroid user then Major League Baseball's all-time hit leader (Pete Rose), all-time home run leader (Barry Bonds), and third highest career batting average (Joe Jackson) will all be banned from it's Hall of Fame. No thanks, Cooperstown...I have little interest in viewing your Hall of Average. And I don't want to hear that steroids give hitters an unfair advantage when shooting for home run records. Every decade baseball has made rule changes to increase it's number of home runs: Banning the spitball, integrating the league, building "hitters parks", expanding to cities at high altitude, and actively spiking the coffee in every club house with steroids while preaching against it. And it led to one of the most exciting eras in baseball (1997-2006). Now we turn our back on that. No...we reach for the brass ring and much like elective surgery we strive for best body available. And if you are a baseball player, that means a steroids body.

I am clearly advocating using any sort of artificial means to enhance one's physique and appearance in an effort to maximize mankind's potential through Darwinian adaption. And I can see and hear that some of you are sick right now. You're asking yourself where it ends. Will I endorse building robotic third arms onto people or splicing our DNA with that of a dolphin so we can breathe underwater for longer periods of time? The answer. Maybe. Some of you might be saying "Get Bent Dr. Moreau, we will lose our humanity!" To which I will respond, "Listen to yourself, you fucking child!" And after we've had a good yell at each other I will explain that our bodies are not what makes us human. If God had really cared that we all cling so dearly to our human shell and not alter it then he wouldn't have created Siamese twins or thalidomide babies or told the Israelites to circumsize themselves. It is our soul that makes us human. So if somebody doesn't want to look like the Elephant Man or if somebody actually does I support them in their endeavor.

Let's be all that we can be, people. I fully support working to be all that you can be...but when that fails you, there is always science. Don't let the movie Splice scare you, we can push the science of human improvement ourselves without things going to shit. We just have to remember the timeless words of Tony Sinclair "Always in Moderation". That's how you get into trouble with elective surgery (I'm talking to you Montag, Rivers, and Rogers) and that's how you get in trouble with scientific exploration. But let's let science show us what we can truly be. After all scientists owe us for fucking up the food pyramid. It was ten times better when I originally invented it and gravy was at the base. So feel free to get that otoplasty, pound some HGH, or get a tattoo because it's your body and it will be what you make it.