Notes on Disney World, part 1

We recently spent a week at the Contemporary (arriving the day of the monorail accident) and visiting the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and the Animal Kingdom. I haven't been to a Disney theme park since 1988 (Disney World; I remember going to Epcot and the Journey into Imagination and eating at the Biergarten, but while there's video footage of us at the Magic Kingdom, I have no memory of it. Besides, most of my experience was with Disneyland), and so there was a lot of "new" stuff to experience, especially with a 2- and 5-year-old in tow.

The Contemporary has held up well, and I was impressed with the Contempo Cafe as a place to get a quick breakfast and be off to the theme parks. It's still cool that the monorail goes through the building, though less cool that only one monorail track stops at the Contemporary. To get to the Magic Kingdom, you have to wait for the next car and take it through stops at the Transportation and Ticket Center (TTC), Polynesian, and Grand Floridian before you get to the Magic Kingdom. Leaving the Magic Kingdom, the Contemporary is the first stop, but in order to get to the monorail, you have to walk back out through the baggage check station at the entrance and through all the people coming in. By contrast, the monorail that now simply shuttles from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom (essentially it's for daytrippers to the park or people staying at off-site hotels) is easily accessible upon exiting from the Magic Kingdom. Moreover, that monorail has quicker access to the Epcot monorail at the TTC -- you simply get off and walk directly to the Epcot monorail while the people on the "resort" monorail need to go down an exit ramp, around the the structure, and up the entrance ramp to the Epcot monorail. This doesn't seem to me to be the best way to take care of the resort guests.

That was a longer gripe than I intended. We really did have a great time! Hopefully more on the "good stuff" tomorrow.

16-14 in the fifth?!

Wow. We've been out of town and away from internet access, and spent the last week recovering from the trip. Our flight took off right at the end of the 1st set, so we saw the last few games on the airplane's TV, including Roddick breaking Federer, and I figured we'd see the whole match, but we landed in Orlando at 8-8 in the 5th. It's too bad Roddick couldn't close out the 2nd set tiebreaker -- there was one point that stood out, where he mis-hit a high backhand volley (practically an overhead) that he "should" have gotten. It was a difficult play, but he wasn't quite able to make it, and I couldn't help but think that it's the kind of play Edberg or McEnroe would have made. If the sets (before the 5th) didn't go to tiebreakers, I'll bet Roddick would have won. Federer simply couldn't break Roddick that day until the very end.

One last addition: I really hate it when I read articles by people who think that Roddick isn't an elite player because he doesn't have more slam titles. It's really hard to win slam titles when Federer and Nadal are out there; Djokovic (2008), Gaudio (2004), Hewitt (2002), and Roddick (2003) are the last people not named Nadal or Federer to win each of the four majors, in order). There have never been a pair of men's champions like this; even Seles/Graf and Navratilova/Evert might not have been quite this dominant. To suggest that their greatness is due to a lack of competitiveness at the top is not really fair to anyone.

Twelfth Night (1988)

Finally finished this -- it was long enough to need to watch in two parts, and Veronica Mars has been so entertaining that we watched through disk 5 of that before we had a night where we were waiting for a disk. At any rate, Netflix describes this as "directed by Kenneth Branagh." Well, actually, Branagh directed the stage production, and Paul Kafno directed the filming, and it shows, because it's a straight filming of a stage production and lacks Branagh's keen eye for transcribing Shakespeare into film. As such, it falls flat because the actors are performing for stage, not film, despite Branagh's melancholy take on the play and some fine acting (though Richard Briers stands out head and shoulders above the rest).

We can officially drop Frankie K from future consideration for "greatest reliever ever"...

... because he walked Mariano Rivera (the current presumptive favorite for the title, though it's debatable) to force home a run. Sorry, thanks for playing.

A fitting tribute?

It makes me uncomfortable when people get emotional over the deaths of celebrities they've never met. The best I can do for Michael Jackson is to play the Thriller album on Audiosurf. RIP, king of pop. My whole family learned the moonwalk in imitation of you. The Thriller music video (while probably more appropriately classified as a short movie) is still the gold standard in my book. And one of my favorite Murray-Dodge open mike night moments was when someone read the "Bad" lyrics as if it was free-verse poetry. Hilarity ensued.