STOLEN KINGDOM - the documentary about urban exploration and backstage pillaging in Disney theme parks - is really terrific. Remarkably distills many years of hyper-niche drama and mystery into an airtight 74 minutes, revealing the psyches of a variety of notorious personalities along the way.

I irritated my ulnar nerve by sleeping funny on a plane. The nerve needs rest so that it can heal, but that means I can't use my dominant hand for most everyday tasks. Typing this post took 3x longer than it should've. With all the work I need to get done, not ideal!

Visited Six Flags Magic Mountain for the first time in a year-ish yesterday. Operations have meaningfully improved. Every open coaster was running two trains, with reasonably swift dispatch times. Short queues. Twisted Colossus and Scream were closed without notice, but that's Six Flags for you!

Programmed a double feature of ANIMAL HOUSE and THE HOUSE BUNNY last night. The latter is... so *weird.* Anna Faris is game as always, but it's a PG-13 movie about an orphaned Playboy bunny sexifying a loser sorority. The rating is a dead-weight anchor, neutering the comedy and mandating innuendo.

I’d love to win the lottery so I could fund Jane Schoenbrun’s films indefinitely

BUFFET INFINITY has the sauce. I’ve seen chatter around here singing its praises, but frankly I think folks are underselling the unique blend of absurd humor and cosmic horror. Drops on Shudder soon, but it’s worth the money to rent, too. Go in as blind as possible.

You know you’ve really settled into a neighborhood when the staff at your go-to Thai carryout place greet you by name. (Pink Pepper in Hollywood is great!)

I have no reason to be there (so it's easy to make this decision), but after that first deadly collision, I concluded I wouldn't fly into Washington, D.C. until the current administration leaves office.

Steve Herman@newsguy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NYT - A military helicopter carrying President Trump came within less than a mile of a passenger jet above Washington on Tuesday. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/us...

vibe check

What in the world is this tagline? I’m pretty sure Ebenezer was *always* Scrooge. There’s no before/after. It’s his literal last name!

Really dug the JAWS exhibition at the Academy Museum. Thorough, packed with neat artifacts, and frequently clever in its efforts to engage visitors. Learned quite a few things! The new Marilyn Monroe exhibit, sadly, was a disappointment. Shockingly surface level and mostly a collection of costumes.

We finished the assembly cut for my new movie, PREVIOUS TENANT, after some pickups on Sunday. Deeply proud of our cast and crew. Took me quite a bit longer than I would've liked, but one's wedding, a three-week honeymoon, and a new job tend to introduce delays.

I just don’t think you can in good faith use the word “immersive” to describe any of the new Universal Kids Park’s lands. They are empirically not. I get Universal marketing is going to abuse the word like everyone else, but I’m also seeing “creators” say it without irony, and it’s… revealing.

Truthfully didn’t expect the “Shrek Is Love, Shrek Is Life” corner of the internet to melt down over the updated Shrek 5 character designs. That crowd really seemed to believe they could compel Dreamworks to radically reanimate a film deep in production…

So, uh, what exactly is the plan now that a third of the country is so breathtakingly stupid (and manipulated, yes) that they no longer believe elections are legitimate when Democrats win? Not rhetorical! Threads is a wasteland of bots, grifters, and genuine folks alike declaring fraud in Cali.

Seeing "pay $99 down plus 12 monthly payment" advertisements for Disneyland Magic Keys on socials. Is the demand finally waning // did they finally hit their price ceiling?

Hard to overstate the seismic implications of this weekend's box office. Two low budget horror films (one entirely original) -- stemming from young filmmakers who cut their teeth in YouTube shorts -- trouncing the second weekend of a STAR WARS film. Lot of chickens coming home to roost.

All that said, though? If you can game the system and navigate the queues effectively, Tokyo DisneySea is exceptional. Every environment is immaculate. Every ride is very good to outstanding. It is a miraculous place. If you love this form and have the means, you owe it to yourself to go.

DisneySea, while easily one of the top 3 theme parks in the world, is not without major problems. The biggest is its layout, which is awkward, cumbersome, unintuitive, & plagued with choke points. One must generally pass through the relatively narrow caverns of Mysterious Island to cross the park.

I’m not sure on-ride POV videos are doing many of Tokyo Disney’s latest attractions justice. They can’t capture the enormity of the scenes, the dozens of thoughtful details in any given moment, or the dynamic motion of the ride vehicles.

As some have said, Fantasy Springs is lush and splendorous, but it does feel tangential (at best) to DisneySea. Appreciated efforts are made to incorporate the port theme, but one wonders if it wouldn’t be more at home as another expansion to Fantasyland, which is geographically right behind it.

Whenever we encountered a clearly overwhelmed Western group, we recommended the spectacular Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage, DisneySea’s one major attraction that never generates queues more than 20 minutes. Not a single group had heard of it. It became my mission to spread the good word of Chandu.

Anecdotally, we observed three times the number of Westerners in DisneySea vs Disneyland. I suspect many only visit one and choose the more unique park. We also noticed many didn’t do their research and were taken aback by the queues. Many exhausted families on benches, distraught.

Some observations… the Japanese clearly and justifiably take an immense amount of pride in their parks, but Tokyo DisneySea, especially. Their passion for the 25th Anniversary offerings and even simple decoration was striking.

No one does dark rides like Tokyo Disney, period. In addition to classics like Pirates & Mansion, you’ve got the new Fantasy Springs rides, 20K Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Sinbad, Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek… It’s staggering.

The “unlimited priority pass” is as powerful as it sounds. We breezed by a 240-minute wait for Anna & Elsa’s Frozen Journey three times. We prioritized attractions without priority pass on our follow-up days at each park. This worked exceedingly well.

We chained together two back-to-back vacation packages. This was expensive, but for a once-in-a-lifetime trip, invaluable. By my rough count, we did about 90 attractions. We never waited more than 15 minutes for *anything,* and we enjoyed the top headliners multiple times each.

Okay, finished our Tokyo Disney leg of the trip. 2 days at Tokyo Disneyland, 2 days at Tokyo DisneySea. Some more thoughts while I’m on the bullet train…

The Hotel MiraCosta almost exclusively plays the score from The Fifth Element, for some reason

Tokyo Disneyland is running a Vanellope von Schweetz “candy” festival, its latest in a series of expansive park overlays. Very apparent they expected the new Wreck-It Ralph ride to be open by now. That said, the little parade for it is cute, and the song infectious. “Yummy yummy, we love sweets!”