The Progress of History
Sushi and Shack
May 20, 2001

So, anyway, the millennium was coming. Well, not the real millennium -- the one we all celebrated anyway, the dawn of 2000. I, personally, was not in the best of shape. I had reached my stress limit in my previous job and had announced that I was beginning a search for a new one. They were pretty nice about it and I kept working there for a couple of months during my job search.

Well, anyway, it was mid-December and my best job opportunity -- one where they had flown me down for a bunch of interviews and I spent the weekend there -- fell through. And they had finally settled on a replacement for me, which was going to take place mid-January. And I was seriously screwed. But I had a week of unclaimed vacation time and I decided to cash it in with an end-of-the-year trip to visit my sister, my mother, and Sushi.

We won't discuss my visits with my family too much, other than to say that my sister said to me at one point, with all honesty, that she thought mental illness was caused by demonic possession. Sushi, however, had two free passes to any of the Disney parks for us to use. She wanted to go to EPCOT, with all it's futurey goodness and all. I was never a big EPCOT fan. But, you know, they were her tickets, so her call.

It was mostly a horrible experience. We had been there as kids, and were too young to see the kinds of corporate influences on the place that are incredibly obvious now that we're adults. In fact, as technology advances and becomes more accessible to the average American, it has become increasingly obvious that EPCOT is just a great big corporate lovefest. Sushi and I recalled our experiences with the visit on IM and decided to post it for your amusement.

Sushi: Well, the thing that disappointed me most about EPCOT was that it is not the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow any more. It is the Community of About Two Days Ago. Even worse, perhaps. Remember the Dreamcast machines?

Shack: Yes, I remember us running into that pavilion when we saw that sign, "The Games of Tomorrow." I didn't realize they were, literally, the games of tomorrow. As in they were being released the next day.

Sushi: Not even that! they had already been released! Even worse, now Sega has discontinued them; And I bet they are still at EPCOT!

Shack: Well, I remember all the other displays for Xerox and IBM at that pavilion. The network administration game! And people were lined up to play. Do you remember your comment just as we left?

Sushi: No, what was it?

Shack: "All they're missing is a cash register."

Sushi: Yes, it was even more commercial than I remember it from years ago. It was VERY disappointing.

Shack: We were younger then and didn't recognize it. P.J. O'Rourke wrote about it when it was new and picked up on it immediately.

Sushi: Well, every single exhibit was linked to some corporation or another.

Shack: They always were. I remember that now. And at the end of each ride was a big corporate message. Don't you remember the dinosaur ride, where at the end you had to sit and listen to some 15-minute message from the oil industry or something? It was so fucking dull.

Sushi: Yes, "If we can dream it, we can do it!" I still remember that one from GE. Only much later did I learn that GE's profits surpass the GNP of all countries except for about five, and the issues revolving around that.

Shack: Okay, you have to tell me why you ever liked Spaceship Earth. It's a ride about communication! Was it because it moved up and down and you were backwards sometimes?

Sushi: I enjoyed the historical part.

Shack: The history of talking?

Sushi: For some reason Rome burning was my favorite... maybe it was the smell of burning wood that they add. :-)

Shack: So you don't actually remember the "message" or anything. Very amusing for an exhibit about communication.

Sushi: The history of progress; I think that part of the ride is valid for what it is.

Shack: The history of progress? What sort of doublespeak is that? That's just history. History is about things progressing.

Sushi: Well, we've had some history of regressing, too... which is also covered in the Spaceship Earth ride -- if you had been paying attention!

Shack: I didn't bother because I had already paid attention in history class. People are paying to ride in a history class.

Sushi: You know what they say, "The future ain't what it used to be." THAT should be EPCOT's new motto... "Welcome to EPCOT, where the future ain't what it used to be... and now, The History of Progress!"

Shack: I just can't get over "The History of Progress." It sounds like corporate mumbo-jumbo. It's just so redundant. Like, "The Future of Tomorrow" or something.

Sushi: Spaceship Earth didn't bother me. "The Land" bothered me.

Shack: That was the boat ride that went through what appeared to be a university's agricultural sciences department greenhouse? What bothered you?

Sushi: Well, to begin with they spent time in the beginning talking about how they used to be so stupid and destroyed the land. That is, they said they instead of using the word we. But then they went on to talk about all the things they are learning. Like planting multiple crops on the same plots to prevent mineral depletion and eliminating the need for crop rotation. Remember what we were shouting out during the ride? "Oh, just like nature does it!" Also that they're learning how to eliminate the need for some pesticides by using beneficial insects. Once again, "Oh, just like nature does it!" I was just irritated, because living harmoniously with nature isn't some big research project. It is just common sense.

Shack: Yeah, besides which I was skeptical of the whole thing anyway. I think the only said that so people would eat at that restaurant that served food they grew there. My time in South Carolina showed me that we're nowhere near cutting back on pesticides. When you go by the tobacco and cotton farms and such, they have big signs that detail on them which pesticides that they're using. I was never quite sure whether they were warnings or advertisements.

Sushi: Well, that was the worst thing about every exhibit. It was big corporate propaganda. Remember the Monsanto exhibit that you wouldn't let me go in?

Shack: Yeah, I remember it because you were unaware of Monsanto's history. And that I made fun of the guy overseeing it. To his face.

Sushi: I wonder if they said in there, "Sorry about Agent Orange," and, "Oh, we really screwed up with that Terminator Gene stuff. But we're learning to be more like nature everyday! Just visit 'The Land' exhibit!"

Shack: The guy was all, "Agent Orange was so long ago." Yeah, so was World War II, buddy. But we still try to remember what happened there.

Sushi: Yeah, he was defending them though. Just out of momentum.

Shack: And the excuse that they were doing it for the government. As if that excuses anybody of any moral obligations.

Sushi: Well, I really did like Horizons. The GE ride. It was always my favorite. Apparently they've updated it. I loved that ride because they talked about living in outer space, which I've wanted to do ever since I can remember.

Shack: I always thought that one was just as vague as Spaceship Earth. It had that cool interactive ending, but that's it.

Sushi: It was just a fictional survey of the future.

Shack: Yeah, which made it kind of pointless. It was pretty, though.

Sushi: Pointless? Well, I love that sort of thing. Funny thing about the future though. As we develop faster and faster. The future becomes harder to predict as we go further in time. We used to be able to write sci-fi that took place millions of years into the future. Then thousands. Star Trek aimed at a few hundred. Cyberpunk takes it down to 10-20. And that is it today. We really can't predict past that. In fact, I would say we can't predict well past five. The Internet being my example for that last statement.

Shack: Ooh. Remember "Test Track?" Without a doubt our most surreal moment.

Sushi: Why our most surreal?

Shack: Remember how people were waiting for hours -- all day in fact -- to ride it, so we figured it must be some big deal? Then when we went back there at around 9 p.m. in the hopes that the lines were shorter, which they weren't. We talked to a worker who explained that it was a car going around a track at 65 m.p.h.

Sushi: Yes, to which I replied that we had driven to Disney at over 80 m.p.h.! What was up with that?

Shack: Right. I couldn't believe that people waited all dayfor that ride.

Sushi: The best fun I think I had was at the Japanese restaurant. Especially sitting next to a couple of Japanese tourists who spoke almost no English. Now that was surreal.

Shack: And no doubt I gave them the nasty cold I was developing and it spread all through Japan.

Sushi: "Shack wipes out the population of Japan, gets big kickbacks from U.S. automobile manufacturers." I tried to talk to them in Japanese.

Shack: I recall that. I think you failed miserably.

Sushi: I'm sure I just kept going on and on about how the JubJub birds are jogging through sunset parks of baby dolphins.

Shack: You probably called his wife a diseased whore.

Sushi: Maybe the best thing about EPCOT has always been the nations.

Shack: It's better than the future part. But it's still terribly "Sanitized for the American middle class." It's Disney's Nations.

Sushi: I would like to go drinking around the world. Saki, Margaritas, Beer, etc.

Shack: You don't have to go around the world to do that.

Sushi: It is just an excuse. You were recommending I go slutty. Maybe I could go sleeping around the world. THAT would be fun.

Shack: Where to next? The parade! We liked the parade. It was kind of silly/campy, but sort of '60s flower-child imaginative.

Sushi: The parade was good I thought. The thing that disappointed me was the audience. Several performers controlling the large puppets actually waved them in people's faces, only to have the people walk nervously away as though nothing were happening.

Shack: Yeah, They couldn't be bothered watching the people with the giant metal head puppets dancing around.

Sushi: "I'm not really here. I'm back at work. At the water cooler." Interaction is very important to me in these types of events. Otherwise they are hollow.

Shack: I also realized that you absolutely have to be gay to be a guy and do that stuff. I can't think of any straight guy that would willingly prance down the street with a giant abstract butterfly on his head. Maybe I should have tried to flirt. I totally missed my chance to connect with a guy who worked at a shop on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom last time I visited there.

Sushi: Do you remember the one dancing group we liked so much? The butterflies with gas masks? That was the MOST artistic thing I've seen in a long time. It's presence at EPCOT shocked me. They weren't part of the main parade.

Shack: Yeah, I remember them. We encountered them outside the British pavilion. The women were dressed like moths, really, rather than butterflies, on stilts.

Sushi: I SO wish I had gotten some sort of information about them. A picture, literature, anything. The memory will have to suffice.

Shack: They were dancing around some guy with a music machine dealie.

Sushi: Yes. We were told later it was a commentary on our development of flight. I'm not sure I believe it was just that, though. Perhaps.

Shack: I think it was some sort of commentary about pollution. I mean they were wearing gas masks.

Sushi: Yes, very gothic actually. It was not a happy situation.

Shack: Yeah, the guy played one kind of music and they acted like they were dying. Then he played a different type and they started moving again.

Shack: Okay, what's left? What about the final fireworks show, with the earnest voice coming from boxes in the trees telling us how important the future was and blah blah blah.

Sushi: I thought the whole fireworks session was very anticlimactic. It was like nobody cared anymore. They had already traveled around the park and concluded that the future was dull and full of corporate logos. Although, perhaps they were trying to send us a message by setting a giant metal globe in the middle of the lake on fire.

Shack: Do you remember the music? It was synthesized, Disneyfied African tribal music. I wondered what that meant. Are we going to destroy our societies and end up as hunter and gatherers again?

Sushi: I think perhaps maybe they were making up for the fact that they turned the entire continent of Africa into a little outpost that sold fruit.

Shack: That's right, we bought pineapple chunks and bananas there. I still wish we had gone to the Magic Kingdom instead. The guys that work in Adventure Land are way cute. Any last thoughts from you?

Sushi: My final thought. From a place that used to spark my imagination and perhaps helped shaped my very future, part of me died after visiting last year. It was like learning a childhood hero or mentor has passed away. Or that you are smarter than your parents.