Jim Hill
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Much Ado About Nothing
Jim Hill explains how he ended up on staff at LaughingPlace.com.
( I promise. There'll be a real story in this spot come Thursday)

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The entry over in the Alt.Disney.Disneyland forum this past weekend trumpeted "JIM HILL RETURNS" -- all in capital letters.

Those who know me well -- particularly old friends in Florida and California -- could probably hear me cringing all the way up here in the woods of New Hampshire.

Why? Because the guys over at AmusementPark.com were trying to turn a non-event into something newsworthy.

When the swallows return to Capistrano ... That's news.

When General Douglas McArthur returned to the Philippines in 1945 ... That was really *BIG* news.

When Batman Returns ... Well, that was one awful movie. There's no real point in bringing that up here.

But when Jim Hill -- an average schmoe who's lucky enough to have a job where he gets paid to write about the Walt Disney Company, theme parks et al -- returns to the Internet, that's not the sort of thing you should put in capital letters.

Why? Because -- to be honest -- I don't like being the news. Reporting the news, yes. Being the news, no.

Which is what has made this past month kind of difficult for me -- given my very public firing from MousePlanet and the brouhaha that followed.

What exactly happened there? Well ... Do you know the TV show, Survivor? Well -- in Survivor-type terms -- the easiest way to explain what went on was that I was voted off the site by the MP tribal council.

Given that I still have friends who work at that site, I don't entirely feel comfortable going through the whole who-said-what-to-whom side of things. Let's just say that Al Lutz and I had very different opinions concerning MousePlanet's future. I gave him my take on what could be done to improve the site ... and he gave me the gate.

So my apologies for those of you who were surprised by my sudden disappearance from that site. (I know I was.) But the whole MousePlanet debacle did teach me one thing - how true that old cliché is: "You should never put all your eggs in one basket." Which is why I've now begun placing my eggs ... er ... articles on all sorts of sites all over the web.

Those of you who are interested in reading the stories I've written for the "Orlando Weekly" (which primarily cover news about the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida) will find them archived at OW's official site by following this link. Doobie & Rebekah Moseley -- the nice folks who run LaughingPlace.com -- have been kind enough to regularly post a link in to my most recent "Eye Drive" column as part of their daily "Headlines" section. Look for that item to run on Thursday or Friday.

As for AmusementPark.com ... I just started working with these guys. This is the site that hopes to become *THE* place to go if you're looking for up-to-date info about the theme park industry. So, sure, I'll be doing stories there about the Disney parks ... But I'll also be writing in-depth pieces about the Mouse's many competitors: Sea World, Six Flags, Paramount, Universal et al. You can read my AmusementPark.com debut piece -- which reveals some great behind-the-scenes secrets about Universal Studios Florida's "Men in Black: Alien Attack" attraction -- by following this link and checking out their "Hill Street News" section.

I'm also looking into doing articles about the film industry -- with a particular emphasis on animation as well as films that feature lots of special effects -- for Harry Knowles' "Ain't It Cool News" web site as well as Joe Tracy's "Digital Media FX." Add to this the two Disney related book projects that I'm not really at liberty to talk about right now (But -- if you liked my "Western River Expedition" series -- you're going to love these books) and you can see I've got a pretty full plate these days.

But -- for now -- my primary home on the web is going to be LaughingPlace.com. Why? Putting it simply, the Moseleys are friends of mine. What's my history with these guys? Well, I began exchanging e-mails with Doobie & Rebekah -- congratulating them on particularly well written LP stories or nice photographs that they'd run -- back in the spring of 2000. They did the same for some of my MousePlanet stuff. And -- when the "Orlando Weekly" began running my "Eye Drive" column last fall -- the Moseleys were the first to post a link to those stories in their "Headlines" section on their site.

Why? Simply because that's the sort of people Doobie & Rebekah are. They didn't view my "OW" stuff as the work of an enemy -- that guy who writes for MousePlanet -- competition that must be stifled at all costs. Rather, they saw my "Eye Drive" columns as a fun feature written by a friend of theirs that LaughingPlace.com readers might enjoy seeing. How can you *NOT* like people who behave like this? Who always make a point of trying to be kind, decent and fair?