Tag Archives: Disney

Blog

Spiffiness

March 1, I have decided, is a spiffy day. Behold:

1) My editor told me my revisions were spiffy and formally accepted HEXED a month before it was due to be delivered. I don’t think it’ll ever get old to hear that I’ve written an acceptable novel. :)

2) I inserted an allusion to Sheriff Buford T. Justice in Chapter 4 of HAMMERED. Any day in which one alludes to Sheriff Buford T. Justice is a spiffy day.

3) I have rediscovered Apples n’ Cinnamon oatmeal after a long hiatus. I wonder why I ever left.

4) Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” is now stuck in my head and it’s not that bad. I could just as easily have something abominable stuck in my head, like a Disney song or something from Spongebob Squarepants. Instead, I’m stuck with a spiffy chase scene song with banjos. Banjos are good on March 1.

Uncategorized

The New Mustached Villain

My curiosity bids me ask, why do male Disney villains have acres of space between their noses and upper lips with razor thin mustaches resting on top of said lips? I’m actually just thinking of Jafar and the Shadow Man, the latter being the latest Disney villain in The Princess and the Frog.

In many ways, it seems that Disney just took Jafar and recycled him into this new setting. Like Jafar, the Shadow Man is very tall and skeletally thin; he wields a cane with a globe on top that’s eerily similar to the scepter Jafar used in Aladdin; he has a tall, black hat like Jafar’s monstrous headgear; and then there is the aforementioned mustache.

What can we conclude, then, about facial hair? A long, white, ZZ Top beard means you’re wise and ready to save Middle Earth; thin, black, and trimmed means you want to rule over Agrabah or New Orleans; a brown, bristly beard suitable for sanding down petrified wood means you’re Chuck Norris.

Gandalf can still take Chuck Norris any day of the week, by the way.

Uncategorized

In the old stories, everybody died

I shocked my students yesterday when I told them that stories didn’t used to have happy endings. Before the corporate giant of Disney, the bad guys used to win, because the tales reflected the truth of the world: the powerful ate the weak.

Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, and the same wolf ate the first two of the three little pigs.

The Little Mermaid died in Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale; she didn’t get married and sing happy songs with crustaceans.

Goldilocks? The bears ate her. Hansel & Gretel? All cooked crispy in the witch’s oven.

And fairies, by the way, aren’t cute little creatures with wings that want to help out Peter Pan and sprinkle children with pixie dust so they can fly. One of the reasons I wrote HOUNDED was to depict fairies as the heartless enemies of man they originally were in Irish legend.

Perhaps Disney’s most infuriating episode of meddling with the past is Pocahontas. The real Pocahontas died at age 22 of tuberculosis or pneumonia. She didn’t live happily ever, painting with all the colors of the wind with her raccoon and hummingbird friends.

Sorry, kids, I don’t mean to be mean: I just think Disney’s like high fructose corn syrup. It’s not real, it’s not good for you, and you shouldn’t swallow any of it.