THE ROLLING STONE FIRE-TWEET TALK NOT ENOUGH & WALT DISNEY LIVES

SOME THINGS ARE MORE COMPLICATED   

Courtesy of Rolling Stone & Huffington Post 

    Mainstream and social media are afire with comment about Rolling Stone putting the alleged Boston Marathon bomber on the cover.  

  "Making him a star" some cluck. Phooey! As more than one respondent said, it's good journalism to probe as the sub title says, "How a popular, promising student was failed by his friends, family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster." I want to know and more than a few of my friends have asked the same thing, in some wonderment.

   And to those cluckers and tsk tskkers, the same photo has played front and center in a lot of other media since April.

   I love Twitter and it's almost instant presentation of events.  As I've written, it's like the new version of the old wire machines that filled the radio and TV newsrooms of my youth-a constant stream.  But, where the AP and UPI and Reuters wires were detailed and in depth, social media is brief and in the case of the Rolling Stone cover, the trend is fueled by personal comment, often snarky and usually always too brief on which to base logic or argument. 

    And Rolling Stone has published a few other "controversial" covers.

Courtesy of Rolling Stone & Huffington Post 

  In fact the Huff Post found a few other historic covers that generated talk, and sales!

Courtesy of New Yorker and Huffington Post 

Courtesy of New Yorker and Huffington Post 

Courtesy of Huffington Post and Texas Monthly 

Courtesy of Esquire and Huffington Post

THE WORLD CHANGED ON THIS DAY

     Sunny southern California was the site in 1955 when Walt Disney gained a kind of immortality, at least in part.

        DISNEYLAND opened on this day back then.  The Disneyland legacy is profound, more than just the amusement and wonder of the parks and entertainment complex. A virtual science of crowd management, logistics, marketing, concept development and much more has followed.  You know there is something magic about being the happiest place on earth.  Still works.

ANOTHER HAPPY PLACE

     See you down the trail.

HAPPY IS RIGHT & CALIFORNIA BOYS

THE DAY THE MAGIC BEGAN

    Fifty-seven (57) years ago today, Disneyland opened in Anaheim California and America was changed.

      We were married and making our first trip to California when I saw the magic kingdom for the first time.  Lana had been there as girl, shortly after the opening in 1955, but to me it was always the place I saw on television or in magazines and desired to visit. Until that day in 1969 when we passed through the front gates and onto a sun blessed main street it had been an aspiration.  

       I was overwhelmed by the light, the color and yes the true happiness the place exuded.  Years later I would meet with Roy Disney and other of the wizards and learned how things were painted, planted, laid out were all done to maximize the visual aura and appeal. It worked.  Of course the natural infusion of light is simply a California "special effect," but everything else was designed to capture, hold and maintain a youthful innocence, suspension of disbelief and joy.

       It was a natural extension of California light, color and mood, enhanced by the design and creative genius of Walt, Roy and their teams.  I have since learned there are real life main streets that come close to the same vibe as the Disney version.  Not surprisingly, most of those idyllic  villages are also in California, dotted around the golden state. Yet you can find them elsewhere, though too rarely.

      I wonder, though, if local communities would work as hard to maintain those charming towns, villages and small cities if it were not for the model of Main Street in Disneyland?  All too many places in America have seen their hometown main streets disintegrate under the competition of shopping malls. 

       And in what might be the ultimate "proof" of my hypothesis is how so many shopping mall developers have now begun to create "life style" centers, you know those rows of shops, restaurants and plazas that look like they were modeled after Main Street in Disneyland.

       It was July 15, 1955-the middle of the year, the middle of the optimistic '50's in the middle of the century that a kind of magic was loosened on America.  Where else but in

California would it be forever right, to be forever young of heart?

PERPETUAL ADOLESCENCE 

Spotted at a winery

AND THE PERFECT SEGUE

See you down the trail.