Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!

Remember that phrase? "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"? It was from the Wizard of Oz, and it showed us all there was no great and powerful Oz...just some dude throwning switches. Such is - sadly - the case when you go to Disney World. You think you're in Orlando, but you're not. You're actually in one of the seven theme parks that make up "Greater Orlando", only 1 of which is actual Orlando itself.

The first theme park is the area where Disney, Sea World, and Universal Studios are. No need to elaborate, except to point out that they are actually in Kissimmee, which is a Seminole Indian word meaning, "Three T-shirt...10 Dollah."

The 2nd theme park is located west of Orlando and north of Disney. This park is called, "The Tiger Woods Experience". If you make $50 million annually, with no ceiling on your earnings, you can take part in the TWE. Nothing but "A-Listers" in sports and hollywood living here. Arnold Palmer, Westley Snipes, Tiger...you get the picture.

Theme park 3 is located east, southeast of the city, and is known as "The B-list Expess." These are the poor and unfortunate athletes and tv people that make $25 million a year, but not $50 million as a base. Annika Sorrenstam of LPGA fame is an example of a resident.

The fourth theme park, running east to west across the entire north of the actual Orlando, taking in cities such as Apopka, Winter Park, Winter Springs, Longwood, Lake Mary, Oviedo, and Sanford, is called "Caucasianland." Caucasionland is where the working middle, uppper middle, and moderately upper class permanent Florida residents live. I in fact, live in Caucasionland. It takes about $100,000.00 to $5 million a year to live here.

All the above are what you see in the tv ads, the tv shows, the brochures, etc., and they call themselves Orlando. But they're not.

Two more theme parks lie to the Northwest and the due south of actual Orlando. To the northwest, you have "The Animal Kingdom." Nooooooo, not that animal kingdom....this one. They are family owned and family run farms; have been for 150 or so years. Cattle, pigs, horses, etc. They are self supporting and staunchly country in nature.

The sixth theme park is due south, and runs east to west like Caucasionland does. It's where the last vestiges of the once-thriving Central Florida citrus industry once was. There are still some citrus groves, but not many. There are farms with crops and vegetables, and lots of Fern farms. This theme park - by nature - is what is known as "Hispanoville." Years ago they were called migrant workers. They then became immigrants, soon followed by the term Illegal immigrants, and they are now undocumented workers or some such shit. Same time, same channel, new title. The fifth and sixth theme parks get no mention on TV or in advertisements. Sometimes they get in the pages of National Geographic, but that's about it. Which brings us to theme park number 7, the actual Orlando.

This would be the place you all think you're going to when you come here. Theme park #7 is called "Crime Spree Island." This is the place that is the actual zip code and tax code Orlando, and stretches east to west from Disney to The B-list Express. You will NEVER EVER hear of this Orlando in anything, even though it is the true Orlando. 85% African American, 9% Hispanic, 3% Asian, and 3% White, this place is a jungle not unlike any major metropolis in America. The school drop out rate, the single parent rate, the homeless rate, the domestic violence rate, the drug crime rate, the murder rate, and the desperation rate, all equal or exceed national averages.

But you don't know this.

In 2006, Orlando set a personal record with 92 murders. In 2007, they bested that with 108 murders, and in 2008, the newest trend is towards multiple slayings, which is great for the statistics. If a 15 year old blows away his entire immediate family - plus grandma and grandpa - that covers a whole week that may have slowed things down. Pretty neat, huh? There are 39 schools in Orlando proper: 21 Elementary, 13 Middle, and 5 High Schools. The drop out rate is 9.8%, and that includes the middle and elementary schools. You can count on one hand the number of schools that pass the state competancy grades, with only 1 of the 5 getting a C. The rest scrape by with D's. Conversely, the Caucasionland schools are numero uno in the state, and have ranked between 5th and 9th Nationally the last 10 years. Caucasionland fills school seats at Harvard, Stanford, and Notre Dame. Crime Spree Island fills jail cells and wall space at the Post Office. If you took Orlando by itself, it would have been 3rd in the nation in murders per capita last year. It was not, because they include the TWE, B-List, and Caucasionland in Orlando as a whole in their figures, so its murder rate falls out of the top 100.

But you don't know this.

The mayor and the governor are not going to stop tourism - and the billions of dollars annually - by telling you this. So when your kids in Fargo ND are stoked about coming to Orlando, they have no idea that they are going nowhere near Orlando.

They are headed to the sanitized, plasticized, scrubbed and washed, freshly painted, Old Spice Body sprayed, version of the world the local politico's call: Orlando.

I wish it was Orlando, but it's not.