Be careful what you wish for; the wooden Cyclone lives up to its name, and then some. We were pummeled and bashed and whip-lashed for what seemed like an eternity. I thought Disney's Space Mountain and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror were fearsome, but the venerable Cyclone eats their dust. No wonder The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms came to grief there in 1953. Still, it was fun, in that exhilarating, what-have-I-gotten-myself-into kind of way, and on balance much less dangerous than the broken glass bits on the beach and the many loose planks on the boardwalk, which seemed poised to pop up and embed sharp nails in our knees, like a mantrap out of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.
I can understand resistance to gentrification, but "the people's playground" is one serious incident away from a major lawsuit resulting from the tattered planking. Without better maintenance the park could one day soon be owned by an injured five-year-old and his or her parents. This isn't nostalgia; it's plain foolishness, and the nips and tucks we saw being performed on the worst sections clearly aren't cutting it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the boardwalk should be replaced by concrete, which I know has happened in some safety-conscious seaside communities. What's needed is greater vigilance over a national institution. Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to the amusement-related issue behind this post: An end to the in-flight movie, at least as they are shown on most commercial flights.
What got me going on this was a New York Times article. Apparently, studios are now preparing edited versions of R-rated films like Shooter and Fracture for airline use, upsetting parents, who are already on edge over in-flight showings of PG and PG-13 fare like the recent King Kong. I always wonder where reporters find these parents, and half-suspect that some sort of namby-pamby Christian organization offers them up for outraged commentary that a paper can then hang a culture-wars story on. But the griping sounded genuine and not canned, and I can only imagine the inconvenience for parents who, having manhandled their children onto the plane, now have to shield them from shorn-but-still-offensive imagery being beamed about the cabin.
[And I can further imagine the inconvenience for stewards and stewardesses, who, already having to cope with passengers disgruntled by the mysterious delays plaguing our distressed air-traffic system, then have to deal with skyrocketing stress-and-anxiety levels brought on by revenge-thirsty nailbiters like Shooter. If our recent 12-hour ordeal getting home from Milwaukee, a less-than-two-hour flight under now non-existent normal conditions, had been punctuated by Shooter, God knows what kind of damage might have been wrought by our tired, angry fellow passengers, who were seething like snakes on a plane by the time we took off.]
Movies have been a regular part of the airline experience since 1961, when TWA showed the Lana Turner picture By Love Possessed. I used to enjoy them, and I know Lora finds them calming, as easier-to-digest mind candy than reading. But moviegoing in coach is lately just another annoyance. Even if you don't buy the headphones (or plug yours own in), there's no escaping the visual white noise of, say, The Holiday, with Jude Law making puppy-dog eyes at the increasingly brittle Cameron Diaz, which I watched out of half-closed peepers on a recent trip to Arizona. Now, The Holiday is the sort of soporific pablum that is ideal for a plane ride. I can't imagine any parent protesting, except that it's not 100% family-friendly, what with its singletons hooking up, or a cartoon, though it is somewhat cartoonish. The problem is, like airline food, it's not very nourishing, and forced exposure to it is likely to bring on cramps, or gas. Worse, the feature, which is already trimmed for content, or time (it used to be that the airline platter could only hold a two-hour movie, which meant that some of Jude and Cameron, in their 134-minute opus, wound up on the carrier-room floor, unless the process has gone digital), is preceded and followed by empty-headed ads, news shorts, and TV shows, which sharpens the dull ache of in-flight ennui.
Enough, I say, with the all-cabin movies. Get rid of them. A better alternative is the seat-back console, with its more varied programming, but you only seem to get those in business or first-class cabins (another vestige of the class war) or on airlines that are willing to pony up for the expense. More and more, of course, passengers are simply forgoing the airlines altogether, and bringing their own DVDs aboard for use in their portable players or laptops. Which creates its own editorial problems; I once sat next to a guy watching soft-core porn, which would have given parents conniption fits (I admit I liked it more than The Holiday). I certainly have enough DVDs to bring, but I find watching them too self-conscious an experience, and, again, unrewarding, as the carts knock into my legs and passengers climb over me as I squirm in my aisle seat. But if you are going to bring them, be sensible in your choices. Baltimore-bound for my wedding two years ago, a train passenger next to me contentedly watched Peter Sellers in Being There on his computer, a classy, visually inoffensive, and perfectly reasonable pick. And a good omen.
So. Patronize your local amusement parks, cautiously. Beats flying. If you must fly--and having a bad experience in the unfriendly skies is akin to being a first-time crime victim, you don't know how soul-depleting it is until you've actually experienced it--skirt the in-flight cultural controversy and the cinephilic misery by blocking out the watered-down movie provided as best you can. If you do supply your own screening material, make it something civilized and uplifting, that your comrades-in-wings can share without residual embarrassment. And get back to work on Tuesday.
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