By Jakob Slader
One of these days I'm gonna dump the corporate theme park life -- the endless free "commemorative" T-shirts, the discount corn dogs, the name tag, the ability at the merest whim to change the way people stand in endless stanchioned queues awaiting there to enjoy 123 seconds of (nearly) complete theme park excitement. No, no, one of these days I intend to leave all this behind (hopefully the day before the IRS shows up wanting to know about $87,000 in medical deductions for my colonic irrigation therapy to help me through this terrible "black light and Day-Glo dark ride" phobia) and do the one thing in this meta-entertainment world that, in our heart of hearts, all of us in themed entertainment want to do...
Yeah, Jackson! A wacky shack! A mystery spot! A Tiltin' Hilton. A whatever you wanna call it!
Alright, Ms. &/or Mrs. Sophisticate, pretending like you don't know. Fine, I'll play along. A wacky shack (or whatever colloquialism you prefer) is one of those rustic "voodoo" houses with all the walls that are kicked out at weird angles that's seemingly plopped on the side of a hill with walls all around it so that the people inside don't have a view of the horizon, where water flows up hills and people can stand on the walls and people grow or shrink just by moving from one side of the room to the other. That kinda thing. Basic, no frills, low- to no-tech, pure showmanship and hokum, classic side of the road with a gift shop / gas station / corn dog stand on this side. The real deal. The theme? "There's one born every minute and that one is you, Clem, so gimmie yer five bucks and c'mon inside! I'll guarantee you that if you don't have the time of your life, I'll feel really, really bad about it."
Aw, what a life it will be, living the "P.O. Box address, park it next to the burned out bus" lifestyle! But I can't go at it looking like this. Off will come the requisite "creative type in the themed entertainment biz" goatee, or maybe I'll just let it grow out in a semi-kempt "Ted Kaczynski wanna-be" kinda growth. And the all-black wardrobe is history, too. In the Wacky Shack wold it's gonna be safari clothing or maybe Hawaiian print shirts and Levi's that have seen the far-side of too many washings. And a hat: "Art Bell, King of the Desert Radio" or "Jeffrey Concrete, Inc." And I've either got to lose about 75 pounds to give myself that "wandering in the wilderness" look or gain 75 pounds to give me the "wandering through the 'paranormal' section of the used book store eating dough nuts" look.
And then: to the Wacky Shack!
Now, the usual way these delights of skewed perception works is that some under-paid high school kid or Ornamental Horticulture MBA burn out or a former VP from Imagineering takes the suckers . . . uh, that is, the guests through the different rooms of the Shack, showing off how all of the basic principles of the Universe . . . (pause for dramatic punch) . . . Do Not Apply Here! After that it's the usual assortment of water flowing uphill, of "un-magnetizable" glass balls rolling uphill, how it is possible to lean a chair against the wall wherein a rube, uh, that is, a volunteer may sit there, suspended with just the two back legs of the chair sitting on a narrow strip of wood that's been carelessly nailed in place.
Guests, of course, soon come to believe that There really Is Something Weird Going On Here, because first of all, seeing is believing and they are definitely seeing all the stuff the spieler is showing off. The second, more "internal" reason that they know that things here ain't like there are in the real world is that they all feel vaguely like if they don't hold on to something, they will go tumbling off into space.
The reason they feel this, of course, has little (hell, nothing) to do with the non-application of the basic rules of the Universe here, but because (and here is the big spoiler, so I do apologize) the entire place is tilted at a 25 or so degree angle. Your eyes are convincing the rest of your body that, well, maybe you aren't leaning over at a near "oops!" angle and that everything is OK. That and the line of hooey delivered to them by the spieler and by the fact that they just ponied up $5 and wanna have a little fun before they go and buy a "mumified" Fiji Mermaid (a Godzilla remake body with a WWF action figure head stuck on top and baked in the oven for 45 minutes at 300 degrees) in the gift shop while they wait for the grease in the corn dog vat to heat up so that they can have breakfast.
Now, for the longest time, as I would sit in meetings, hearing discussions about story arc and THRC and special effects budgets, my mind would wander off to my little Wacky Shack in the sky (or Solvang, or where ever...). At these times, I figured that I'd take the Academy of Dissident Scientists route with my Skack and claim that all of the weirdness in my Wacky Shack (and doesn't that sound like a euphemism for something sexually embarrassing?) is because a UFO crashed here some many decades ago and is still there and the "antigravity propulsion motor is still running, still causing a hole in the space-time continuum, hence the weirdness. I figured that I'd go out and find the remains of a 1958 Caddy and bury it so the fins stuck out of the ground near the entrance to the Shack. You know, go for the "reto-kitch" thing in the design.
But of late, mostly since I've been eating these turquoise brain candies, I've been thinking more along the lines of doing the extremely outrageous, of telling the yokels . . . uh, that is . . . naw, "yokels" it is, exactly what it is that they are seeing: reveal the tilted walls, the lack of horizon, the oddities of everyday life on this planet (OK, just those that apply to, like, gravity and standing upright, and that weird little stirrup-shaped thing in your middle ear and all that), all completely truthful and out in the open. But do in a completely unhinged "I have seen great and amazing things and now I'm going to sit next to you at the counter at Denny's and tell you all about them" kind voice.
Well, whichever path to Wacky Shackdom is to be my choice, I know that, in my heart of hearts, this is what and where I have always belonged.
Or not . . .
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