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vovat
Halloween is over now, and I hope you're enjoying all the saints and all the souls. It's gotten cooler after some really warm days for October. I like not having to wear a jacket, but eighty degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) is just too much at this time of year. Anyway, here are a few things Beth and I went to recently.
On Friday, we visited the Queens County Farm Museum, which is not just a museum but an operating farm in Queens, dating back to 1697.
They had a few fall events, including a hayride and a corn maze. The former was short, and not haunted or anything, just a ride around the farm. The latter, known as the Amazing Maize Maze, was only the second one we'd been to, the other a smaller one in Delaware.
The way it was set up was that there were nine different mailboxes to find, each of which had a piece of a rough map of the maze. It was frustrating, because I could sometimes see the boxes, but not know how to get to them. Don't kids do these sometimes? We started around 4:30, and it officially closed at 5:30, at which point we'd only found maybe six of the mailboxes. While trying to make it back out again, though, we somehow came across the remaining ones. I suppose the trick is to not look for them. We saw several animals, too.
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I also bought two apple cider doughnuts while there, and was hoping to get a small bottle of apple cider, but we didn't have time after the maze. I did already buy some cider at the grocery store a few days earlier, though.
On Saturday, we saw a Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra performance. We had season tickets to these in the past, but this is the first one we'd attended in a while. It was called Eerie Happenings, and had spooky music, including Mendelssohn's Chorus of Druids and Witches from Die erste Walpurgisnacht (which is actually at the end of April), Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and several Dies Irae pieces. The conductor joked that he couldn't mention Mickey Mouse or Fantasia by name. The Dies Irae is a Gregorian chant about the end of the world quoted in a lot of other stuff, and they played versions by Mozart and Verdi. Beth asked which one I liked better, and I preferred the latter, as it was more exciting. Liszt's Totentanz also uses it, but in a different style. After the show, we went to a place called 8-Bit Bites, of which there are a few locations in the city. It has a fun aesthetic, with lamps shaped like Super Mario question blocks, and a door that makes the sound of Mario growing bigger when it's opened.
There are a few different machines with multiple games on them, but we didn't play any. I had a chicken sandwich and a berry milkshake with pieces of Crunch Berries in it.
On actual Halloween, we saw a comedy show at the Bell House hosted by Joe Pera and Dan Licata. I didn't know what to expect from it, as all I really knew was that Pera was a comedian known for his slow, sincere delivery. Dan's style was rather more abrasive, and they did several bits together. I think interesting delivery was kind of a theme with some of the other comedians as well, although I'm not sure if that's part of the act or just how they talk. Joe dressed as Black Adam, and Dan wore a witch's hat. A few people in the audience for both this and the concert wore costumes, but neither of us did. Joe had a fairly lengthy discussion about lamb meatballs with a guy dressed as David S. Pumpkins. Before the show, there were kids going trick-or-treating at various businesses, which I knew was a thing, but it just wasn't what my neighborhood was like growing up.
