Let's get back to the countdown of songs that manage to be MORE inappropriate for an Angels 7th inning stretch than the current self-aware disaster, The Foundations' "Build Me Up Buttercup". We're stuck with that song for the foreseeable future, but this countdown is here to remind you that it could always be worse.
Here we are, #1 on the countdown, and it's a two-for-one. Today I look at a song each from The Dickies and Sparks, both of which touch upon what a world dominated by Disney and it's fictional figurehead, Mickey Mouse, would be like. It's more Brazil than Happiest Place on Earth. After the jump, the frightening vision of Mickey Mouse's reich, that will leave you trembling with fear: The Dickies-"Stukas Over Disneyland" & Sparks-"Mickey Mouse"
Mickey's on the production line
i'm a super mouse in time
everybody's doing the goose step out in Anaheim
Mastermouse gonna feel no fear
Mickey's gonna lead us to the new frontier
everybody wants to be the perfect Mouseketeer
Welcome to Apocalypse Mouse
Orange County, specifically Anaheim, is ground zero for the Battle for Humanity. Disneyland plots every day to extend the reach of The Mouse out beyond Anaheim, and into the farthest corners of Orange County, and then the world, turning it all into one Fast Pass-friendly theme park, hellbent on driving you first to insanity, then to lobotomized glee, and finally to donning a Tomorrow Land uniform to fight against any and all detractors to The Mouse. Disney once had controlling interest in the Angels, and it was a period of time that was very similar to a hostage situation in which the captors slowly break the will of their prisoners through a sprinkling of humanitarian gestures here and there...like changing the team name to Anaheim...only to break them down again with Team Branding pistol-whips such as those horrible, horrible uniforms and the Joseph Gordon-Levitt snuff film, Angels in the Outfield. I like to think the coup de grace delivered by the team itself in 2002, the winning of the World Series, was the point where Disneyland realized they needed to retreat; they weren't going to win this war against the insurgents, not this time, at least. In an alternate universe, the team is still owned by Disney, and every game is a grueling exercise in torture and mind control; a Katella Death March, in which our minds and wallets are what is at stake, as wells as our beloved team's dignity and dedication to winning(and not wearing ugly uniforms).We goose step from Main St. Disneyland to the gates of the Big A for each game, with the Stukas of Disney's Goofywaffe flying over head.
Back before Orange County was turned into Stalag Disney, you could go out at night and not be afraid of the Suede Denim Electric Light Parade Police taking you and your uncool niece away for compulsory Imagineering Modification. You were free to work in areas of expertise that didn't include putting subliminal messages in Selena Gomez songs, or finding out ways to make objects in cartoons look like phalli. You could watch an Angels home game without being forced to clap for the Rally Pluto, all while wondering in the back of your mind if those stories you heard about what they did to the Rally Monkey were true. It's all very, very chilling and the memories of what it was like before The Mouse had it's grasp on everything only makes the heart ache and yearn that much more.
Jiminy Cricket wrote a victory speech
with Knotts Berry farm right in reach
our liebestraum has been extended to Huntington Beach
Most depictions of dystopic societies, in film or literature, have the people and the government serving as pawns and minions to some sort of corporate body. The concept is generally simple: they have money and therefore do what they want, as long as more money comes in. Disneyland would pull this on a massive scale, slowly eating the state of California up in it's greedy and power hungry appetite. Things might not be bad at first, but eventually the memories of a land in which all the stop lights didn't have mouse ears on them, and you weren't woken up each morning by a roving, animatronic Minnie Mouse Sleep Detection Sentry, would be distant and fading. One of the first things they would destroy in our hearts and minds, as better to cripple us emotionally, would be the Angels. Like I already mentioned, they somewhat tried to do this already, but were beaten back. The endgame, of course, would be to have the team be an extra arm of the corporation, and to ultimately play other cities and countries in high-stakes contests, culminating in the losers giving up their land rights and automatically making the winner king of that domain. Yes, that's right...it'll basically be Rollerball. Disney will use this new method of warfare to constantly show the futility of individual effort, to show the people that they either adapt to, and obey, The Mouse, or they will get left behind.
Got an SS ticket i'm feeling fine
spent five long hours just standing in line
passed inspection got my ears on straight
gonna fire up my engines 'fore it gets too late
i just can't wait
Walt Disney was only afraid of one thing, and that was Rasputin(and his surviving family members). That in itself is a chilling revelation, as normally there would be a laundry list of people in the world which would have the ability to strike fear into ones heart. But Walt Disney feared nobody but The Mad Monk, and while it's said that he was actually afraid of being sued by the family members that were still alive for the use of Rasputin's likeness, I have it on good authority that Rasputin was still alive and loomed over the Disney empire's early days. Rasputin is now gone, and so is Walt Disney, but the legacy is still alive, and waits eagerly to get it's grasp on the entire Platinum Triangle, then the world.
So, The Dickies' "Stukas Over Disneyland" lays it all out in an eerily prescient manner. The final undoing of Orange County would be a takeover by Disneyland, divebombers overhead while Mickey wrings his hands. Jiminy Cricket and Goofy leading us all into the stadium, and then the forced Laughter Camps after each win or loss, at the site where the Honda Center used to be before it was destroyed during a flexing of Captain EO's power via Laser Dance Super Michael Jackson Beam Of Death. Remember, though: The Future Is Unwritten.
Ronald Mael, from Sparks, spells it out perfectly at the beginning of this classic Saturday Night Live performance, in what is another harrowing vision of a world populated by nothing but Disney as far as the eye can see(he also gives a lesson in satirical skanking at the 1:45 mark):
"The mouse is a member of the rodent family, distinguished from the rat in that it is smaller in size. It usually measures 6 inches in length, approximately 15 centimeters, and weighs 1 ounce(which of course is 28 grams). The mouse IS responsible for much of the world's pestilence and destruction. When the mouse is not scaring women, eating Saltine crackers from cupboards or ingesting huge amounts of saccharine in laboratory experiments, the mouse has been known to enter the world of entertainment. One such mouse is named Mickey."
I can imagine a time, decades into the reign of The Mouse overlord, where this Sparks song is played during the 7th inning stretch, and it works quite effectively. It not only gets people up out of their seats with a charging, New Wave beat, but also deplores everybody in attendance to clap their hands right off the bat. It's a tongue-in-cheek Mickey Mouse pep rally song, in which you're told that if a mouse can be special, well so can you. It's all lies, of course, meant to take the people's minds off of the dark, twisted things the Magic Kingdom is up to. Except we never have to get to that point. We could, of course, heed Sparks and The Dickies' warnings of a world ruled by Disney and inhabited by such horrors as Churro Checkpoints and Mouseketeer Conscription.
Can you raise both your hands and clap 'em
Can you say, "sure, I'll always try"
Can you make friends among people and animals
Basically, everything is easy
Give it a try, you'll see I'm right
Cause if a mouse can be special, well so can you
40,000 people screaming for a mouse. And not the ones that may or may not have inhabited Anaheim Stadium in the past years and menaced the concession stands and laundry stations. This one doesn't really exist, except for in our own minds, which in some cases is more dangerous than actually being tangible...think Orwell's Big Brother or The Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. We need to scream and cheer for our team, for the fight of the people, for the fans who deserve to see their team win, not a logo of an entertainment dynasty. Maybe I'm just delusional enough to think that one corporate or big money ownership is different than the other. After all, Arte Moreno is no slouch when it comes to making dough off of somewhat similarly nefarious techniques, if you are one who absolutely hates the commercial advertising and billboard industry. But he is a man, not a mouse. And when it comes time to watch the Confetti Concussion bombs being dropped from low flying Stukas, while riot geared Frontier Land wranglers use Indiana Jones-licensed bullwhips to keep the rest of the Halos faithful in tow, just remember the salad days of Arte Moreno, The Rally Monkey and The Foundations' "Build Me Up Buttercup".
The horror. The horror.