Arthur de Wolf, Walt Disney World transit map

I’m a sucker for a nice map. A couple of years ago, I posted about Walt Disney World and Disneyland maps. As a nice by-product, we were then hired to design a new souvenir map for Disneyland. I can’t show this to anyone due to the contract, but believe me, it’s good. A kind follower of burningsettlerscabin recently sent me this remarkable map of Walt Disney World by Arthur de Wolf. Holy cheese and crackers, I am blown away. This is one of those times I find myself saying, “I wish I’d done that.” It’s reminiscent of Massimo’s 1972 New York Subway map. Fortunately it isn’t like the most confusing map I’ve ever used for the Tokyo Subway system. Try to figure that one out. Now I know why I see photos of passengers being shoved into trains in Tokyo. They obviously are all lost and endlessly changing trains to find the way home.

Massimo Vignelli, New York Subway map, 1972

Tokyo Subway map

Tokyo Subway pushers, Shinjuku Station

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One of the upsides of being obsessive is having perfectly organized drawers. One of the downsides is that I become engrossed in the wrong story. When we read Wuthering Heights in high school I was bored to distraction by Cathy and Heathcliff. Whiney, whiney, whiney. I wanted to know what happened to Heathcliff’s tortured wife, Isabella. Unfortunately, she is only a secondary character and we are left to imagine her story.

The same is true in the case of What’s Up Doc?. Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand play the main characters, Howard Bannister and Judy Maxwell. But, I only care about Madeline Khan’s character Eunice Burns. She has a nice wig, wears good Republican dresses, and is quite concerned about maintaining traditional behavior. Eunice is incredibly annoying and wonderful. And as they say, if someone has dressed with propriety and buttoned every single button, they must have a huge fire inside to be contained.

Eunice: I’m not looking for romance, Howard.
Howard: Oh?
Eunice: No, I’m looking for something more important than that, something stronger. As the years go by, romance fades and something else takes its place. Do you know what that is?
Howard: Senility?
Eunice: Trust!
Howard: That’s what I meant.

I know that I’m supposed to like Ryan O’Neal’s confused professor character and Barbra Streisand’s wacky free spirit, and they’re fine. Unlike Wuthering Heights that leaves me hanging, What’s Up Doc? gives me the satisfaction of knowing Eunice Burns’ fate. I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say she wins the big prize. As she should.

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It’s the old story, 500 channels and there is nothing to watch. But, back in the olden days, sonny, it was much worse. When I went to the family ranch back in the 1970s, we had one television that received transmissions from an antenna mounted on the tallest pine tree. This allowed us to get one station sporadically. That one station seemed to endlessly play cop shows, or Emergency. I don’t think I ever understood the premise of The Streets of San Francisco, but there were many scenes of cars flying over a hill and bottoming out. There probably wasn’t much of a premise, i.e. no “high concept”. All shows had a grizzled old cop/editor/pizza shop owner, but with a big heart, and a young rookie and brash cop/reporter/single girl. The title sequence for Streets of San Francisco makes up for any lack of concept. It’s not as good as Hawaii 5-0, but close. And there is that voice over that you can never forget, “a Quinn Martin Production.”

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