Let's Go Surfing, Babe

[vovat]

It's been a trying week, but there are a few things I did not too long ago that I wanted to discuss. Beth and I went to the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island on Saturday, 17 June. I have a bunch of pictures of it at Facebook and Instagram. I've occasionally had someone who was in the parade reply to pictures of themselves, and this time it happened with a woman who rode in a wheelbarrow pushed by a clown. She did a performance the whole time, and apparently fell out at one point.

There was also someone with a car made largely of balloons with a bike in the middle, which she had trouble steering. Beth pointed out that it had a distinctive balloon smell.

Speaking of stuff you can inflate, I was kind of fascinated by the giant beach ball on a string.

A few different bands played Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," and I have to wonder if that was coordinated ahead of time.

There were several lobsters and a few different Ursulas, and a walrus who interacted with the crowd.

Walrus don't need no chicanery.
We were considering getting Nathan's afterwards, but instead we got hot dogs, shrimp, and clams at another place on Surf Avenue. Then we got caught in a flash rain while eating, even though it hadn't rained at all during the parade. And we rode a few rides at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park.

That same weekend was Father's Day and Juneteenth, which we both got off from work despite being white. But then, we also get off what's now called both Columbus and Indigenous People's Day, and we're neither indigenous nor Italian. Beth got wrist surgery that Wednesday, and I had to pick her up from the hospital. The following week, she went to several Sparks shows, but I only joined her for one, as did her Uncle John. This was at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, near Philadelphia, and Russell kept calling it "Philadelphia adjacent." They play the same set at every show, and it includes a lot of stuff from their new album. I'm glad they kept in "Shopping Mall of Love," which is one of the few where Ron gets up from the keyboard and has lines.

They're all spoken, but still.
Yeah.
He also still dances during the instrumental part in "The Number One Song in Heaven."

An old one they brought back for this tour is "Beaver O'Lindy," which switches between quiet waltz-style verses and a loud chorus. Russell is still quite active, and moves around a lot.

We'll be seeing them again later this month, with They Might Be Giants opening. Afterwards, we ate at a place called Four Seasons Diner and Restaurant, even though I thought a diner was a kind of restaurant. I'm not sure whether Rudy Giuliani ever gave a speech there.

Our main concession to the Fourth of July was to watch 1776, although I do have this picture from June of Beth being uncharacteristically jingoistic.

And we tried the Grimace Shake from McDonald's, which was pretty good.

I'd say it tasted like fake berries. When you eat a lot of fruit-flavored things, you get a taste for both how real and artificial fruits differ. Imitation orange and grape are good, while cherry and watermelon seem way off. Beth said it reminded her of bubblegum, but that also often has artificial fruit flavors. I have no idea how the meme of people dying drinking the shakes comes from, but it seems a little mean-spirited. I'm more interested in how Grimace apparently has a brother who's a king, and how he lost the other two arms.

I've probably mentioned before how I had a dream as a kid where Grimace wanted to eat me. Not that I was afraid of him or anything, at least that I can remember; it was just a really bizarre dream. I think it also involved my sister swinging on a rope.


I've beaten Live A Live, although it does have multiple endings, and I don't think I'll be getting all of them. I'll probably write a more detailed post about that when I have the time. I started I Am Setsuna yesterday, but have only played a little bit so far. I'd seen something about Crystalis recently, and it turns out it's part of the NES app on the Switch, so I decided to check it out. I like it, but I haven't managed to defeat the first boss, the vampire with the chaotically flying bats. I'll keep trying, but there's a reason I usually stick to turn-based except in special circumstances. I'm surprised I made it as far as the Moon in Super Mario Odyssey (even if I couldn't get through that part underground with the flying Dry Bones), although the unlimited tries probably doesn't hurt, and I think games are just generally more forgiving now than back in the NES games. In terms of video games, I'm pretty excited about some of the new ones that have been announced recently. Super Mario Bros. Wonder has an even more cartoonish and psychedelic appearance than other Mario games, and that's saying something.

And Elephant Mario is amusing.

Peach and Daisy are both set to be playable characters, and I wonder (ha ha ha) about whether they'll have different move sets.

I understand it also has Blue and Yellow Toad, and they're more or less placeholder characters. There's also another Peach solo game, and a new Dragon Quest Monsters featuring Psaro from Dragon Quest IV.

I might have to play through the rest of the DS version of DQ4 soon. I finished the NES version a long time ago, and made it up to Psaro on the DS some years previously, but didn't beat him. I understand you can recruit him after that. It sounds like, in the DQM game, his father is shown to have been the Demon Lord before him, and there's something about his thinking the hero from 4 destroyed his village. I'm not sure how that works out in terms of the timeline.

There's a lot of stuff going on this month, so I'm sure there will be something else to write about here, although I don't know when.