Murder, Marriage, and Merciless Mints

[vovat]

I guess there are a few things I've done in the past month or so that I should say something about. I already wrote a bit about the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and quite a lot about OzCon and Disneyland. Beth and I also visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden near the end of June, and they had an art installation of birdhouses.

The roses were on their way out, though, although they were still blooming in Anaheim a few weeks later. Different climates and all that.

The following weekend, we attended a graduation party for Beth's cousins.

It's strange that I can pretty distinctly remember when they were born.


Thursday the 7th was the first in-person Kevin Geeks Out in a while, all about murder. These topics are usually pretty loose, and presentations can be about some pretty left-field things, like a series of children's books based on the board game Clue. Each one ended with Mr. Boddy being murdered, but in the next one he explained that he'd somehow survived. Camila Jones was the co-host, and she had a bit on murder holes, which are holes in a castle ceiling through which you can drop things to kill someone. Amber Dextrous else talked about the trope of the butler doing it, something that was considered a cliché a century ago, yet most known instances of that actually being the case are pretty obscure. I believe the first notable case of the butler committing a murder was AFTER someone else recommended not using the trope because it was overdone. There was also something unexpected, a burlesque performance by Perse Fanny, based on Medea killing her own children. They were represented by dolls, whose heads she ripped off, followed by her screaming. The Kindest Cut, an edit of key scenes from a movie, was this time of Theatre of Blood, a 1973 film where Vincent Price plays an actor who murders his critics in scenes from Shakespearean plays. Kevin pointed out how all the critics are snooty British people, while Price's character was American. Then again, I think Diana Rigg played Price's daughter.


This weekend, we went to Pennsylvania for my dad's wedding, which was just at his house. Since it was nearby, we visited Hersheypark the day before. It rained on and off, which meant some of the rides were temporarily closed, but a lot of them opened up again later on. The first thing we rode was the Comet, the oldest roller coaster there, which I remember liking a lot when I was a kid. I went on a field trip there in junior high and just kept riding it; the lines then were pretty short, as it was a school day. Hershey has an app to check on wait times, just as the Disney parks do, but I don't know how accurate it generally was. The longest wait for something called Reese's Cupfusion, a combination ride and game. It went more into Disney territory by having a story, basically that the Reese's factory ran on people's love for the product, and we had to stop some evil candies led by Mint the Merciless (I have no experience with Flash Gordon, but I still caught the reference) from breaking in and stealing the magical power source.

The explanation for why candy was evil was that it didn't pass quality control. But doesn't that mean it's not going to be eaten, and hence will live longer? That kind of thing always comes up when living food appears.

Anyway, you used a laser gun to shoot at targets, and while I did better than Beth at Toy Story Midway Mania, she got about twice as many points as I did on this one. Another one I remembered from my childhood was the Sidewinder, which goes along a track forwards and then backwards. It's still there, but it's now the Jolly Rancher Remix.Next to that is another Jolly Rancher themed ride, Mix'd.

They're really leaning into the candy theming now, when that was pretty rare back in the day. Also nearby in the Storm Runner, which starts right up at a high speed instead of ascending a hill first. In the Midway area, we rode the Ferris Wheel, the Whip, and the Lightning Racer.

The latter is a fairly new wooden coaster that looks like an old one, which runs two trains at the same time, called Thunder and Lightning. The Monorail, Dry Gulch Railroad, and Skyview are all scenic sorts of rides, where you can see stuff that's usually somewhat behind the scenes.

The Skyview is of the sort that just makes a round trip, rather than functioning as transportation. We also rode Fahrenheit, Frontier Flyers, and the Claw.

Saturday was the wedding, the actual marriage part of which was out in the yard, while the reception was in the basement.

On the way back to Brooklyn, we stopped by my mom's house and visited with her. And I suppose that's it for the time being.