vovat | It's Time to Play the Music (Reply)

We've done several things I thought were worth writing about so far this month, so here's an overview. On Sunday the 8th, we went to see Micky Dolenz at the City Winery in Philadelphia, which is just as cramped as the one in New York. Beth's mom really enjoyed it, and she and Micky's sister Coco apparently coordinated their outfits.

Most of it was the same as what Beth and I had seen before, including the between-song banter. He did include "No Time," however, which he'd done with other Monkees, but not by himself when I'd seen him. There's one song he always does that Beth and I didn't know, and Beth's mom recognized but didn't know the name of. Beth looked it up, and it's "Gimme Some Lovin'", originally by the Spencer Davis Group.

Both Beth and I had our birthdays recently, her on the fifteenth and me on the eighteenth. I am now four dozen years old. For hers, we went to Great Adventure.

They were only open until 7 PM, and we ended up only spending about four hours there.

It wasn't very crowded, so we were able to ride most of what we wanted to. We went on the Flash for the first time. It's one of those roller coasters that goes back and forth to build up speed, with part of the ride being backwards. It's all right, but not one of the better coasters there. Several of the rides were closed, and others closed down early, with a lot of food places doing the same. We had a meal plan, but didn't get to use it. We did eat at the Olive Garden on the way home. On my birthday, I had to go to an interview. Okay, I guess I didn't HAVE to go, but they could have scheduled it for a different day. It just felt kind of wrong. Beth gave me three presents, Princess Peach Showtime for the Switch, the first volume of the Animal Crossing manga, and a digital copy of one of Amelia Carruthers' fairy tale books.

This past Saturday, we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, as I was interested in the Jim Henson exhibit.

We ended up not spending a lot of time there, since we mistakenly thought it closed later than it did, but we saw a lot of what they had. The third floor detailed the history of moving image technology, including magic lanterns, zoetropes, and old video cameras.

I'm not sure I realized how big television cameras were in their early days.

They had a lot of stuff in the Henson exhibit, obviously including The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, but also items from Sam and Friends, Labyrinth, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and the very short-lived Land of Gorch from Saturday Night Live.

I think the Swedish Chef puppet is the one that the museum originally received without hands, as the puppeteer would just use his own hands.

By the way, Beth hates the Chef, and she's seen Fraggle Rock but I haven't.

She'd also seen some of The Great Space Coaster, which I don't think was mentioned at the exhibit. We did the thing that records you with puppets, and I made an Anything Muppet.

I had forgotten that Henson died in 1990; for some reason I thought it was slightly later than that. Another exhibit had merchandise, including a Barney Rubble ashtray and Bugs Bunny dolls where it looked like he was wearing a superfluous rabbit suit.

There was some stuff from The Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, which are favorites of Beth's.

And there were a few props from the film version of The Wiz, including a camera suit that I think appeared in the Emerald City, which definitely fit with the museum's theme.

We stopped by Nintendo NYC in Rockefeller Center, and while we didn't buy anything, I do tend to like their holiday decorations.

Finally, yesterday, we saw Robyn Hitchcock at the Bowery Ballroom. He did shows two days in a row, and I can't remember why we chose the second. The opener the previous day was his wife, Emma Swift, but when we saw him it was a band called Sharp Pins. I think this was the first time I saw Robyn with a full band.

His voice was hoarse from the previous day, but he was still able to make it through the set. And he did his usual bizarre between-song banter, talking about how his grandmother wore Ray-Ban sunglasses before they were popular, how he considered "Alright Yeah" to transcend good and bad, and that he saw the Balloon Man as an innocent figure, but the Shuffle Man as a villain. The latter was one of the newer songs they played, along with "Socrates in Thin Air." Also included was "America," and I think of the lyrics to that one occasionally. Emma joined the band to sing on "So You Think You're in Love," "Flesh Number One," "Oceanside," and "Queen of Eyes."

One of the earliest recordings of Robyn's I ever heard was a live album recorded in 1998 that was on eMusic in the early 2000s, and "SYTYIL" was on that, as was "Driving Aloud," which was also part of the set. I believe it was also the first time I saw "Brenda's Iron Sledge" and "Insanely Jealous" played live. Lenny Kaye, whom I don't really know anything about but apparently worked a lot with Patti Smith, joined on guitar for the encore, which consisted of "I Wanna Destroy You," the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing," and Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm."

Interestingly, the Beatles song was also played on the PA right before the show. It looks like the setlist from Saturday was very similar, but they got better covers for the encore. Oh, well.

I waited too long to request the day after Thanksgiving off from work, so the current plan is to have dinner with Beth's family on Saturday instead. I don't know what we'll be doing on Thursday, but probably not much.