I went up to Shady Hollow for Halloween, because it seemed appropriate. That's where Washington Irving wrote his Headless Horseman story, and he's buried there. They've got to have crazy celebrations, I thought, but after a 90-minute train ride I discovered the city offered nothing more than thousands of SUVs circling the downtown streets, dropping kids off at karate and picking up drycleaning.
Back at Grand Central, though, I found a wonder. Disney had converted an entire working train into a promotion for A Christmas Carol, covering it with billboards and replacing the seats with scale models of all the sets, photos of the stars, and interactive displays showing how they did the special effects. In the last car, the pièce de résistance: have a computer snap your photo and it'll morph your face with Scrooge, Tiny Tim, or some chick who looks like Julia Roberts.
I snapped my photo, morphed it with Tiny Tim, and the result was fabulous. My wrinkles were gone, my eyes were no longer yellow, and my sallow, sunken cheeks were red and full as apples. I gave them my name and email address so they could contact me when the photo was done. Clinging tight to my claim check, I raced home to fetch my photo and post it online.
There's one sad fact about the internet: it exists solely to force you to send personal information to capitalist enterprises so they can spam you every five minutes and convince you to buy worthless crap. After giving Disney my details at Grand Central, now I had to open an account at Wal-Mart -- yes, Wal-Mart -- to claim my photo. It was an amazing photo, I reminded myself, so adios privacy. I gave them everything they wanted, relatively sure that tomorrow morning a Greeter would be at my door at 7 a.m. wanting to power-walk to the nearest location with me.
Once I'd officially joined Wal-Mart, I checked my photo status. Not ready. Check back. If it still don't show up in seven days, get in touch.
Seven days elapsed. I emailed.
They emailed back pretty quickly, though at 10 at night, which I take to mean "Our customer service is in New Delhi!" Evidently my name, address, password, and eighteen-digit claim number weren't enough to identify me. Now they needed my mother's maiden name, Social Security number, and guesstimated weight of Rue McClanahan. You know, just for security. Just to see what was happening with that pic.
I emailed everything they wanted, and once again they replied at ten that night. Here it definitely turned spooky. "We received your email and to ensure we provide you with accurate information, we are researching the matter," they said. "We will call you with the requested information within the next 2 business days. Please respond with an updated contact number or your preferred contact method so we can resolve the issue."
Yes, now they needed a phone number.
And that's exactly what I needed: some Iowa housewife calling me when the sun came up, saying, "Mr. Hans, we still haven't found your photo, but did you know Glade Electrical-Outlet Adventures come in tangerine-vanilla now?"
Honestly, I don't need to talk to anybody. Nobody needs to call me. And for sending photos around, my preferred contact method is EMAIL. Because the pony express moves so slow.
So, now I have to send them a third email -- SUBJECT: RE: TO ASSIST IN YOUR RESEARCH REGARDING THE MATTER OF A PHOTO OF A DUDE MORPHED WITH TINY TIM. I'm already guessing how they'll reply to that: "We're hot on the trail. Please send us your underwear."
Really, you should have seen the Christmas Carol Train. Fabulous. Literally millions of dollars were sunk into this thing. And then Disney partners with Wal-Mart, where Two Dollars Means Two Hours of Hard Work.TM
I'm letting it go. It doesn't matter. Who cares about a computer-generated photo of me looking attractive? Put it in perspective. I mean, if they'd been subcontracted to process NASA's photos, they'd probably still be waiting for John Glenn's sperm sample and we'd still think the moon was made of cheese.
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