Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (31 page)

One of the few real novelties at Epcot is the use of smell to
aggravate illusions. Of course, no one knows what dinosaurs
smelled like, but Exxon has decided they smelled bad.

At the other end of Dino Ditch the seats rearrange themselves
and there's a final, very addled message about facing challengehood tomorrow-wise. I dozed off during this, but the import seems
to be that dinosaurs don't have anything to do with energy policy
and neither do you.

If you have the right attitude, these exhibits are swell. They're
Tilt-O-Whirls for intellectuals. They excite all kinds of thrilling
mental terror about the banality of American thought, electrify you
with horror at the myopia of corporate perspective, and create
marvelous suspense as you consider what's in store for our society
now that we've lost not only our visionary capacities but even our
simple avarice. I mean, why can't you buy a Mickey Mouse phone
in the Bell pavilion?

Maintaining the right attitude is a chore, however, and one I
abandoned after the intensely stupid Kodak "Journey Into the
Imagination." Epcot Center is a family attraction, so I didn't expect
to see the things that occupy my own imagination. Still, Kodak
could have done better than this jumble of redundant Jules Verne
machine parts blowing colored bubbles through chemistry-set tubing and dangling crude unicorn cutouts from the walls. The nation
that produced Mormon theology, Edgar Allan Poe and the Reagan
Administration's economic policy deserves more.

There is supposed to be an interesting 3-D movie somewhere
at Kodak, but I was desperate to get out of the place. It was twenty
degrees hotter inside than it was in the midday sun. Like the rest of
the buildings in Future World, the Kodak pavilion's sleek functionalism is for strictly decorative purposes. Even a company with
as little imagination as Kodak should know better than to have a
greenhouse roof in Florida.

The remaining pavilion is sponsored by Kraft. It's called "The
Land," and I can't tell you what goes on in there. I stepped inside
and didn't see anything made from an organic substance. This
included their food. I didn't go on the ride for fear they'd make me
eat some of it.

All these exhibits seem more involved with literal than figurative tomorrows. They're as up-to-date as next Monday. Visiting
Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read,
"Soon you'll be finished with dinner."

The other half of Epcot Center is called "World Showcase,"
and it consists of nine national pavilions arranged around a phony
lake. An objective look at the world as presented here results in
these conclusions: Earth is made of cement painted to look like
different parts of Los Angeles, and its salient feature is overpriced
gift shops.

"Mexico's" gift shop is housed in a vividly bogus Mayan
temple. The sales floor is supposed to represent a Mexican marketplace. Seeing a Mexican marketplace portrayed as clean, quiet,
safe and expensive is, somehow, as alarming as seeing a pyramid of
human skulls in downtown Kansas City.

A clean, quiet, safe and expensive "Germany" is, on the other
hand, soporiferously convincing. For a moment I thought I was in
Germany. I left as quickly as I could.

"Italy" has so little to do with things Italian that I wonder if
maybe this isn't some kind of revolving exhibit that, on other days
of the week, is labeled "Belgium," "Seattle" and "Sydney, Australia."

The only interesting pavilion is mainland China's. They used
some real wood and real ceramics in their reproduction of an
ancient Peking temple. And they have a pretty movie about China's
big, weird landscape. Political points are deftly made-"How
wonderful it must have been when everyone could first enter the
Forbidden City." But I'm not sure I want to live in a world where
Exxon needs to take lessons from the Chicom hordes who murdered
our boys at the Yalu. Also, their movie is shown in 360 degrees,
which assumes we white devils have an extra set of eyes on the
back of our ears.

"America" has accurately horrible food and inaccurately horrible young people dressed as members of the Continental Congress and singing "Turkey in the Straw."

I don't know why Mickey Mouse isn't in the "France" exhibit.
You see him all over Paris where he is considered an existential
figure of stature equal to Camus or Jerry Lewis. But it was worth
Epcot's $15 admission ticket to see a glass of "lait" on a French
menu.

"Japan" has the best gift shop.

"Canada" is surely indulging in a bit of good-natured selfmockery with a national display so dull that its centerpiece is a
one-quarter scale replica of the Chateau Frontenac, a second-rate
luxury hotel built in Quebec City in the 1920s.

I picked up one of the toys for sale at the "United Kingdom"
pavilion. I leave it to your imagination where it was made.

With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished
something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have
created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life.
Unvarnished reality would be preferable. In fact, it might be fun.

"United Kingdom" could feature green-haired teenagers wearing diaper pins through their lips and spray-painting swastikas on
the fake bull's-eye pub windows. "France" could be manned by
snarling Parisian garcons bullying the naive tourists into ordering
peeled mice in heavy cream. "America" could be the very stretch of highway through Kissimmee, Florida, that leads to Epcot's gatesa thousand Dairy Queens, RV parks, pee-wee golf establishments,
and souvenir stands selling cypress knee clocks and shellacked
blowfish. All the Mexicans next door could be trying to sneak in.
We could buy cars from General Motors, gas up at Exxon and drive
over to the Bell System where, if they have any sense, they'll give
us free whiskey so we'll make nine-hour phone calls to old
girlfriends in Taos. When we've spent all our money doing this, we
could go to Kraft and get free government-surplus cheese-food
substances. And, if Disney still wants to make Epcot Center
futuristic, they could do so by blowing the place up with an atom
bomb.

APRIL-MAY 1986

The Europeans are going to have to feather their nests with somebody else's travelers checks this year. The usual flock of American
pigeons is crapping on statues elsewhere. Sylvester Stallone
canned the Cannes Film Festival. Prince won't tour this side of the
sink. The U. S. Junior Wimbledon team is keeping its balls on the
home court. And Trans-Atlantic rubber-neck bookings have taken
a dive. Some say it's fear of terrorism. Some say it's Chernobyl
fallout. Some say it's the weak dollar. But all of that ignores one
basic fact. This place sucks.

I've been over here for one gray, dank spring month now, and I
think I can tell you why everyone with an IQ bigger than his hat
size hit the beach at Ellis Island. Say what you want about "land of
opportunity" and "purpled mountains majesty above the fruited
plain," our forebears moved to the United States because they were
sick to death of lukewarm beer-and lukewarm coffee and
lukewarm bath water and lukewarm mystery cutlets with muckycolored mushroom cheese junk on them. Everything in Europe is
lukewarm except the radiators. You could use the radiators to make party ice. But nobody does. I'll bet you could walk from the Ural
Mountains to the beach at Biarritz and not find one rock-hard,
crystal-clear, fist-sized American ice cube. Ask for whiskey on the
rocks, and you get a single, gray, crumbling leftover from some
Lilliputian puddle freeze plopped in a thimble of Scotch (for which
you're charged like sin). And the phones don't work. They go "blatblat" and "neek-neek" and "ugu-ugu-ugu." No two dial tones are
alike. The busy signal sounds as if the phone is ringing. And when
the phone rings you think the dog farted.

All the light switches in Europe are upside down. The electrical plugs are terrifying with nine or a dozen huge, nasty prongs,
and you'd better wear rubber boots if you come within a yard of
them because house current here is about one hundred thousand
volts. Not that that makes the appliances work. This electric
typewriter I'm pounding, for instance-I'd throw it out the window
but it's one of those silly European windows that, when you push it
open from the right, comes around from the left and smacks you in
the back of the head.

The Europeans can't figure out which side of the road to drive
on, and I can't figure out how to flush their toilets. Do I push the
knob or pull it or twist it or pump it? And I keep cracking my shins
on that stupid bidet thing. (Memo to Europeans: Try washing your
whole body; believe me, you'd smell better.) Plus there are ruins
everywhere. The Italians have had two thousand years to fix up the
Forum and just look at the place.

I've had it with these dopey little countries and all their poky
borders. You can't swing a cat without sending it through customs.
Everything's too small. The cars are too small. The beds are too
small. The elevators are the size of broom closets. Even the
languages are itty-bitty. Sometimes you need two or three just to get
you through till lunch.

It's not like the Europeans have been very nice hosts either.
The whole month here has been one long shower of shit about
America, just because we took a punch at the Libyans. There were
huge demonstrations in Germany, Italy and Spain. In West Berlin
twenty thousand young bucketheads turned out. In Barcelona a
group of protestors vented their fury on that symbol of American
imperialism, a McDonald's. In London thousands of peace mongers blocked the main shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street,
staging sit-down strikes and throwing bottles at the police. Thousands more Brits came out to holler in Manchester, Cardiff and
Glasgow and at the military bases on the Clyde and in Oxfordshire.
According to various opinion polls, 66 percent of the British
deplored our behavior as did 75 percent of the West Germans, 32
percent of the French and 60 percent of the Italians. In Belgium a
friend of mine was stopped on the street by a policeman and told he
should be ashamed to be an American.

The cover story of Time Out, London's equivalent to New York
magazine, was OVER ARMED, OVER EAGER, OVER HERE. A
British TV comedy program showed a puppet skit with President
Reagan as the Jordanian who tried to blow up an El Al airliner and
Mrs. Thatcher as the dim-bulb pregnant Irish girl duped into
carrying the explosives. The New Statesman ran an editorial explaining how U.S. defense policy can be understood only in light of
American football. "Defense, to the average redneck," it said,
"means hitting your opponent hard before he sees the ball." An
article in the magazine New Socialist said that in the U.S. world
view "non-Americans are simply not people," claimed that, "To be
President, you have to be mad or an actor," and asked itself, "Does
not the United States need a hostile relationship with the Soviet
Union to contain discontent at home. . . ?" Another article in the
same magazine began, "It is the United States which is clearly the
greatest evil to peoples seeking just rights of self-determination."
(New Socialist is not, by the way, some nut-fudge fringe publication
like it would be in the States. It's the official organ of the Labour
Party.) As Paris Match put it, "Le point de vue europeen etait
different et tons nos responsables plaidaient pour une action plus
discrete." Whatever that means.

Actually, the only discrete people I've met here were Libyans,
the employees of Libyan Arab Airlines in Paris, who never referred
to our rocketing and bombing each other as anything but "this
difficult situation."

I was talking to the Libyans because I never wanted to go to
Europe in the first place. I was headed for Tripoli. It was a dream
by-line: "From our correspondent on the Line of Death." But daily
life kept getting in the way. Taxes were due. I owed a 4,000-word story to Gerbil and Pet Mouse Monthly. My girlfriend was restive.
She pointed out I'd forgotten Christmas and that when I'd taken her
out for New Year's, I'd taken her out in the backyard to blow off
M-80s under the garbage cans.

I set to work with a will, emptying checkbooks, wrestling
accountants, interviewing small rodents, scouring the bargain bin
at Cartier's. By Monday, April 14, I had everything paid, written,
kissed, made up and in the mail. My safari jacket was packed, my
tape recorder loaded. I zipped shut my official foreign correspondent duffel bag, fixed myself a drink and flipped on the eleven
o'clock news. "BOOM!" My friend Charles Glass, ABC-TV's Middle East correspondent, was holding a telephone receiver out a
window of the Grand Hotel in Tripoli. "We're not sure exactly
what's going on," shouted Glass at the phone. I was. Those weren't
the Nicaraguan contras out there pounding Mad Mo, the terrorbombing Sheikh of Shriek. "It would appear that the United States
has launched a military action against Libya," shouted Glass,
trying to sound grave. But you could hear the boyish enthusiasm
creeping into his voice the way it always does when a reporter
manages to get himself right smack dab in the middle of something
god-awful.-