“In this book you’ve got real monsters, and as a solution to the problem of how they live in a world where people are not monsters, they all work at a monster-themed amusement park. Sort of like Adventureland, except with zombies instead of disaffected youth. Although there is a mummy who seems to be a disaffected youth, so maybe even MORE like Adventureland than I thought.
I was thinking about about Disneyland. Because that’s the obvious analogue when someone talks about a theme park, right? The Magic Kingdom as it’s called. The Home Of Mickey And His Pals. The Cryo-Crypt of Walt’s Frozen Head.
Here’s what sucks about Disneyworld. It’s too…Disneyworld. Nobody gets hurt, nobody makes a mess, and the whole thing is so polished that it’s fun, but horrifying at the same time. You don’t say that guys in costumes came over. You call them cast members. Shit like that.
So what’s a fella like me to do?
Enter: Haunted Trails.
Just your average Chuck E. Cheese, except that it’s got a Halloween theme.
This place was not too far from my grandma’s house, so whenever we went to visit, we’d make the trip.
Okay, it wasn’t perfect. There were cheesy parts. And it was in a shit neighborhood, so there was a good deal of kid on kid panhandling going on, something that I didn’t know much about other than when a kid asked for money, I would hold my grandma’s coin purse, which she loaned me for the afternoon, and say No. Not because of some nascent boostrapper attitude or something. Because I was a kid, and I was at the stage of development where I was inexperienced enough to have no real opinion on straight-up asking someone for cash, yet mature enough to do the math on the fact that if I gave someone a token, I didn’t have it anymore. Oh, and also, I was pretty well developed as far as a sense of people being your friend because they want something, sadly.
But I think this is more fun than Disney. I suppose there’s a price you pay for a good time that’s little less safe, and when I say “safe” I’m not saying that I was about to be shived by a sharpened mini golf putter for a Haunted Trails token. I just mean that when something is super safe you can be reasonably certain that nothing outside your normal realm of comfort will go down.
And I guess that’s what signals fun for me. Think about it. Booze, drugs, nights out, cities, dating. All of the time, you trade just a smidge of your safety for something fun. I’m certainly not saying that the less safe something is, the more fun it is. If I lived by that logic I’d just go ahead and litter the floor of my apartment with broken glass and dangle knives from the ceiling. What I AM saying is that most fun things have just a small element that feels a little unsafe. Blood fountain, strange neighborhood, or a kid giving your grandma’s coin purse a hard stare while he fashions a bludgeoning tool from the kazoo he won with 8 tickets.
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