IT MIGHT BE THE OLDEST RIDE IN THE PARK, BUT IT STILL HAS THE LONGEST LINES. WOO! What to do with only three hours to spend at the Magic Kingdom during our retreat outings today? Four of us vowed to cover Mts. Splash and Space, plus either Pirates or the Haunted Mansion, plus shopping for the kids. And here's what happened:

Entering the park at 2pm with instructions to board the monorail back to the bus at 5pm, we proceeded as follows: Go directly to FastPass pickup for Splash Mountain. (Entrance allotted for 4:15p-5:15pm.) Walk quickly across back the back end of Fantasyland to Space Mountain. Can't pick up a second FastPass, but we decided to accept a 50m quoted wait time given how hot it is here. Wait ended up being only about a half-hour, and, damn, that ride just rocks. I am not a coaster fan by any means, but that was just a sweet set of banks, drops and darkness-assisted single file disorientation. Ran into the tail end of the Dreams Come True parade on the way back towards Adventure/Frontierland (hi Flora, Fauna and Merryweather!), then caught short line for Pirates of the Caribbean -- and holy crap are the Capt. Jack Sparrow animatronic robots kickass. At this point it's 4pm, so with 15m to kill before Splash Mountain we caught the Toy Story cowpokes staring a parade and did light shopping. Then, Splash Mountain ... and we got to the front pretty quickly ... and the ride shut down. Technical difficulties. Damn. They think it's 10-15m from reopening, but we don't have the time for that and shopping. Chose the kids, headed back to Main Street, grabbed appropriate paraphernalia, caught the Flag Retreat, and back on the monorail we went.

What struck me during this brief revisit -- other than the fact that the plan was perfect but Disney failed us, and that OMG am I glad that when we first took Lucy here it was on a Thursday morning, not Saturday afternoon -- was how many nice little unnecessary things there are around the Magic Kingdom, the little musical acts and greeters that fill all the nooks and crannies beyond the featured characters, parades and attractions. These interstitial retro remnants of Walt Disney's vision for the park help fill the narrative universe in creating a space that's more than just a collection of rides and characters, but a reincarnation of a pristine American past that may never have really existed, but is awfully nice to visit for a while.

GREETINGS FROM SUNNY ORLANDO: I'm here for the weekend for a firm retreat, and our dinner/festivities on the New York lot of Universal Studios left me with three questions regarding the Universal characters who greeted us and circulated throughout the evening:

• What, if anything, is the enduring appeal of Woody Woodpecker and Betty Boop for contemporary audiences?
• Is Judy Belushi Pisano adequately compensated for the travesty of a faux-Blues Brothers revue we witnessed? Our "Joliet" Jake Blues was insufficiently stout, and how do you not have them perform "Sweet Home Chicago"?
• Setting aside the question of whether it misapprehended the audience in the first place to have The Man in the Yellow Hat, Curious George, Jimmy Neutron and Dora the Explorer as characters circulating during an all-grownups law firm event -- were my eyes mistaken, or did Dora have a tramp stamp last night?
  

The House Next Door: 5 for the Day: Jeff Bridges

"NATURAL SOURNESS": The House Next Door's Sheila O'Malley pens an appreciation of actor Jeff Bridges and five notable roles of his:

Jeff Bridges is untouchable. Has he ever repeated himself? It seems that his curiosity about his fellow man and his openness to stepping into another person's shoes keeps him from repetition. He also, unlike many big movie stars, does not have a set persona. There isn't such a thing as a "Jeff Bridges role." He is too versatile for that. Perhaps his ego is uninvolved. Perhaps he has nothing to prove. What constitutes genius in an actor?

There are many possible answers, and we all have our own criteria. For me, it is a willingness to put aside self, and make me believe, without a doubt, that he is that other person. My goal when I go to the movies is to get lost. Jeff Bridges seems singularly uninterested in reminding us of who he is. There is a catalog of indelible characters he has not just created, but inhabited... and they live on in my memory, as separate from who he is as an actor. Some actors are what I would call precious when they create characters. They make a fetish of things like gestures, walks, accents... It's a "show." The actor hovers over his character protectively, wanting to be congratulated or noticed for all the work he has done. Jeff Bridges is beyond that.

FULL FIGURES AND HALF-TRUTHS: So another season of ANTM came and went, and I awoke from a nap late yesterday afternoon to find ALOTT5MA management poking me with instructions to open up a thread. By now, you know that Whitney won, and when you think about it, the only thing surprising about it was that Tyra decided to postpone her orgy of self-congratulation about picking a full-figured model, presumably until she had a chance to put Whitney on her talk show. Whitney looked stunning in the walk-off (especially in that pink dress), took some great pictures and consistently good ones, fits the Covergirl/Seventeen Magazine Top Model précis, and to my thoroughly untrained eye has no less a likelihood of success in the niche field of full-figured modeling than any of the other winners has in the business of general modeling. More importantly, she satisfies the real qualifications for topmodelhood: spokespersonality with a garnish of empowerment and an inability to draw attention away from Tyra’s fierceness (not to be confused with ferocity). Once you acknowledge that winning Top Model opens the door to no more non-tie-in modeling jobs than winning, say, Flavor of Love, and you accordingly narrow the selection criteria, the choice this season (at least among the final three) was easy. Don’t embarrass Covergirl, don’t require subtitling on your “My Life as a Covergirl” segments (Jaslene and Anya eye each other uneasily), do give Tyra a reason to tout herself as the Branch Rickey of the fashion-adjacent industry for breaking the size-8 barrier.

For me, though, the real story this season was how irritating I found it. It was an ugly season from the beginning, which always annoys me because “most attractive non-beautiful model” is a bit like “tallest average-height person.” And it only got more ridiculous when they kept eliminating the most model-like women in favor of contestants who looked old and ugly (Dominique) or plain and harsh (Marvita, who, to my surprise, I liked). Query: if “edgy” is so much more important than “pretty,” what explains the success of luminous but edgeless judges Tyra and Paulina (not to mention the victories of Whitney – whose name I tellingly keep typing as “Whitey” – Saleisha, Caridee, Nicole, Eva, Yoanna, and whatshername Brady, who have nary a sharp edge to share, lookswise)? And every time Tyra trots out old chestnuts like “we can’t see your personality” (translation: “you’re too well-adjusted for us to write you a redemption arc”) or “you don’t want to be here” (translation: “you are insufficiently enthusiastic about Tyra”) it makes me forget why I ever watched this show in the first place. I feel like I’m probably through with this show. I’ve felt that before, only to be brought back in by a pretty cycle, but after the way that the show ruined the last pretty cycle – giving the title to the Saleishuleta, who knew Tyra, went to Tyra Camp, and modeled for two Tyra shows before going on the show – I can’t imagine the prospect of seeing my favorite contestant eliminated in Week 6 in favor of an old-looking drag queen with a goiter and Tourette’s is going to bring me back.

AND SPEAKING OF PRETTY WOMEN: SI swimsuit cover model Marisa Miller tops this year's Maxim 100 list.

MERCY: Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" is one of the 25 recordings added this year to the prestigious National Recording Registry. Among the others honored this year: Michael Jackson's Thriller album, Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears," and New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading the newspaper comics to kids during a newspaper strike in 1945. Tragically excluded from the list, this NSFW dance remix of Bill O'Reilly's Inside Edition rant.

HE'S THE ONE THAT THEY WANT: Woo! Taylor Hicks will join the critically lambasted, but highly commercially successful production of Grease currently playing Broadway as Teen Angel. Members of the Soul Patrol are cordially invited to visit and mourn his career as a legitimate recording artist.