Skip to main content

Walt Wednesdays

Walt Disney statue at the center of the Magic Kingdom

I'm starting a new weekly series on Walt Disney, as I progress on my current writing project.

I'm calling it Walt Wednesdays. A fascinating personality, Walt Disney's dreams-turned-reality are "rite of passage" theme parks for over 100 million annual visitors, with parks now spanning the globe from California to Florida to Tokyo to Paris to Hong Kong (and soon mainland China).

Walt Disney is also current. The worship of tech superstars like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg is something not unlike the jeers and adulation that Disney received in his day. What's surprising to some is how much of an innovator that Walt Disney was with his theme parks. Interactive storytelling. Audio-animatronics. Monorails. The wealth of new discoveries applied in his parks are hidden behind a facade of old-time America that has its own innovations if visitors look close enough at the facades.

Walt once said, "Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done, and done right." I'll take his words as inspiration and get on with some more writing.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New York Pause

Heading to the Helmsley Sometimes I work in NYC, and this is my office.  More precisely, there is a desk in the upper floors of this distinctive building that has a major thoroughfare running through it that I inhabit while typing up documents and conducting meetings in the city.  It is nothing exceptional, usually the work and sometimes the desk at which I sit, but the surrounding city is commanding, ever-thriving, and never-still. If I pay close enough attention, I am reminded of the countless things that make this city unique among the many cities I have had the pleasure to live in and visit.  But on this brisk morning, when winter gusts barrel down Park Avenue as I hustle the blocks from Lex to the building entrance security guards, I pause long enough to snap this picture.  That pause is enough reminder that I am lucky to be here, and New York City is ready to give me its best shot (I'm still not sure if the city is better personified male or female).  But that is all t
2 comments
Read more

Party Like It's 1999

A coworker sent me a meeting invitation to the end of the world.  Fitting.  I'm not sure if I should accept or not (suppose it depends on your views of the end of the Mayan calendar ), but somehow it reminded me of the Prince song on a related subject . Fitting as well that this coworker was not born when Prince extolled the virtues of partying like it's 1999 (side note: I did party like it's 1999 while studying abroad in Milan at that time, which was a heady experience with the coming of the Euro and all.  How times have changed, how the mighty have fallen...).  Time change, sometimes faster than we think, and our cultural references become dated.  Perhaps just like the Mayan calendar falling out of fashion over the last few centuries, until its end becomes a modern cultural phenomenon - or not, depending on your view of things. In either case, it's worth partying like it's 1999 regardless because hey, it will be Friday when this all goes down, and Fridays
Post a Comment
Read more

A Little Bit of Proust

Somehow I started to read Proust. The blame goes to Alain de Botton , a writer whose witticisms deconstruct modern thinking and make intellectualism seem but a trifle and a whim. He wrote a book in 1997 called "How Proust Can Change Your Life" which distills the enigmatic French novelist into a self-help dispenser of pithy ideas. How clever I found Mr. de Botton to be when I dipped my toe into the vagaries of Proust; I picked up volume one of "In Search of Lost Time" and instantly fell into the deep end. What author dares to run sentences onward into the stratosphere that sometimes seemingly mellows behind the stars of a bright night, but never so much as an introspective person that wretches for the meaning of a simple thought, sometimes stumbling, but always emerging strongly as that same night in starry sky, almost an homage back to Van Gogh, whose rich paintings greatly represented the mood of a generation - and generations often afford a few mis-steps in l
2 comments
Read more