Twitterpated

• 01:39 I love how American Idol refers to the in-show Ford commercials as "music videos." #
• 01:57 @eehouls But it all fits! Mexicans and Middle Easterners both like spicy food! #
• 12:26 Did the rapper TI name himself after the electronics company? #
• 12:56 Has there ever been an outer space version of the Iliad, in which Helen's face is said to have launched a thousand starships? #
• 13:07 Could Carrie Underwood sound any LESS passionate in "Before He Cheats"? #
• 14:05 @colleenanne No, I guess I was thinking more of Indian food. #

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Jason Goes to Cherry Hill: The Final Saturday

So, bethje and I have been attending the Monster-Mania Convention...well, technically since it started, although we didn't really do much at the first one. The twelfth was held this weekend, and we went today (by which I mean Saturday, even though it's actually past midnight). As of late, we've mostly just been attending the question-and-answer panel sessions. One with Alice Cooper was scheduled at 5, but due to the long line to get in, it started rather late. At least this time they came up with a way to make sure no one was cutting in line, but I still think it would be a good idea to move the convention to a larger venue. Dave, the guy who organizes the convention, said something about how he thought the lousy economy might lead to less attendees, but such didn't seem to be the case. Actually, though, a fair number of people were only there to see Alice, so the room cleared out considerably after his panel. I've never been into Alice's music (which isn't to say I DISLIKE it, just that it's not something I seek out), but he seems like a nice guy, and had some interesting stories. Particularly intriguing to me was his account of how he collaborated with Salvador Dali, who ordered a cup of hot water at a bar, and then poured honey into it. After Alice came the Phantasm reunion, with the director and two of the actors. One of them was Reggie Bannister, who kind of strikes me as the poor man's Clint Howard (and here you thought CLINT HOWARD was the poor man's Clint Howard). Maybe that's partially because he plays an ice cream man in Phantasm, and Beth introduced me to a so-bad-it's-good B horror movie called Ice Cream Man with Clint in the title role. The rest of the panels were all devoted to the Friday the 13th series, the first with people who had played Jason, the second with Jason's victims, and the third with some of the stars of the not-very-good remake. And, well, that's pretty much it. We ate a local diner on the way back home, and now I'm at the computer and writing this account of the convention.

I Could Be Dreaming

I had several dreams that I found worth remembering. I can't recall too much about the first one, but it involved a family of young pop stars whose song titles were based on a pattern. Each one had a root word preceded by the name of a season. I don't remember any of the root words, but if one of them were "time," there would be songs called "Wintertime," "Springtime," "Summertime," and "Autumntime." I'm not sure whether each kid had his or her own season, or how it was arranged. I think the same dream somehow involved Mega Man and Mario games.

Another dream had my riding a bus while carrying a whole bunch of large items that I wanted to throw away. The bus driver was friendly and tried to make sure everyone found their destinations even after leaving the bus, but I just wanted him to go away so I could find a trash can.

Then there was a dream about a board game that involved the term "Christmas herbs" at one point. And no, I wasn't smoking any Christmas herbs before having it. :P And either in that same dream or a slightly later one, I was watching a cartoon that seemed to vary between being The Simpsons, Futurama, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, DuckTales, and something else that wasn't anything like any of those. I remember a voice-over by Zapp Brannigan describing the episode, and a scene where Mario was fighting a Bowser-shaped vehicle underwater. Then there was some scene at a science lab, where the scientists were complaining that a villain had destroyed their greatest resource, gold. Someone replied by saying something like, "No, our minds are our greatest resource!" (I'm not sure whether I should be proud or ashamed that I can subconsciously come up with realistic-sounding cartoon dialogue.) Another scientist mentioned that the late head of their department wouldn't have given up in this situation, and a bunch of others praised their former leader. One said, "I had a daughter for him!", and another followed this with, "I gave up having a daughter for him!"

Yet another dream related to the Dragon Quest series, and most specifically to Dragon Quest IV. As I believe I've mentioned before, there are wandering item merchants and innkeepers in Torneko's quest, but nowhere else in the game. In the dream, they showed up at other times as well, and there was also a service that could transport you places based on their zip codes. I didn't know there WERE zip codes in the game (there aren't in the real one, of course, unless there's something significant I missed), but then I found a list of them. I found myself transported close to a building that was sort of like a greenhouse, and contained a puzzle involving parrots and trees that I was never able to solve.

I can't remember too much about it, but there was also a dream that had something to do with some guy debating whether to help the opposite side in a war, and my wearing a costume to school. Or maybe those were two separate dreams. It can be difficult to tell sometimes.

The last dreams I can recall involved Oz stuff, which was exciting for me, but probably not so much for most of the people reading this. {g} One involved my looking for a character named either Jack O'Candle or Jack O'Calendar, who appeared in the frontispiece of the original edition of one of Ruth Plumly Thompson's early Oz books (I think it was The Hungry Tiger of Oz), but wasn't pictured in my own Del Rey copy. The next bit of this dream involved a girl whom my subconscious decided was Jenny Jump, but didn't really fit her character that well. She was talking about making breakfast and lunch, and how she was trying to avoid her best friend. Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot also showed up in a cafeteria of some sort, but all three had bright blonde hair. I normally think of Betsy as a strawberry blonde and Trot as a brunette, like how Eric Shanower draws them, but I decided that they were experimenting with dyeing their hair. I do a lot of that in dreams, especially Oz-related ones, proving that my inner consistency nerd never sleeps.

By the way, happy belated Pi Day, happy birthday to poisonyoulove, and happy death anniversary to Julius Caesar. I wonder if the latter is throwing a party in Limbo, which I think is where Dante placed the guy. I guess Brutus and Cassius aren't invited, though, what with their being busily engaged in being eaten by Satan. If there is life after death (and I don't think there is, but it's an interesting idea to contemplate), I wonder if murder victims ever forgive their murderers.

The Quotable Michael Flanders

I just recently received The Complete Flanders & Swann as a late Christmas gift from my mom. Some of the humor on it is more or less specific to England in the fifties and sixties (there are a few jokes about the Profumo Affair, for instance), but a good deal of it holds up pretty well. Here are some of my favorites among Flanders' spoken-word bits.

"It has in fact been calculated that, in this country alone, over 30% are subclinically neurotic, or as a psychiatrist would say, 'stark staring bonkers.' Over 30%. Just think, that's every third person. Happily, there's only two of us."

"Down with the French-speaking Walloons and freedom for Flanders, that's what I say. That's where my forebears came from. Well, three of them, anyway. Who's been sleeping in my porridge?"

"We know perfectly well that if there's no newspapers, I mean, if there's a strike or a public holiday or something, nothing happens! It's marvellous!"

On air travel: "We've calculated it is safer to fly than it is to cross the road. Mind you, I gave that up years ago. Where I live, in Kensington, near the air terminal, we have these airline buses whizzing about, you know. I think the drivers have instructions to keep the odds favourable."

"Off to the airport, and you know you're getting close because you see this big notice saying, 'Beware low-flying aircraft.' There's not a lot you can do about that. Take your hat off."

On national songs: "Whatever you say about the Germans (and who doesn't?), what a marvellous song that was. 'German, German Overalls.' Now there's a song!"

On how the locals probably reacted to the building of Stonehenge: "Well, you may call it megalithic culture; I call it vandalism. I suppose you realise this is about the last nesting place for mammoths in the whole of Wessex, what with them building up the Long Barrows and the Round Barrows and the Bell-Shaped Barrows. They've started carving out these white horses in the hillside now, have you seen that? I don't know, it's some sort of ad for mead, I think."

In his introduction to the double-song "Kang and Jag": "The first is the Kangaroo Tango, the theme song for a new all-Australian musical, and this is an aboriginal cast recording."

"It has perhaps been rightly said that today, an honor is not without profit, except in your own country."

"We never found a decent rhyme for 'Khrushchev' until he'd gone. 'Did he fall or was he pushed off?'"

On the proliferation of cursing in public: "I am very much opposed to this. I mean, there are very few of these four-letter words left. If they all come into common use, we'll have nothing left for special occasions, will we?"

On American food: "Seems a shame to be on a diet with all these marvellous things to eat you have over here that we don't have in England, like English muffins."

If you're happy and you know it, that's a sin

It kind of seems like The Simpsons is only worth watching nowadays when they come up with a non-traditional plot idea. I liked the puzzle/mystery theme that they used for this episode, and I appreciate that they managed to make it work without stretching the reality of the show all that much. Well, except for the ending, that is; that seemed like it would have been better suited for a Halloween episode. There were also a fair number of little jokes that worked well, like the play on the fox/chicken/grain brainteaser, the appearance of the Philly Phanatic, and the snake cut up to resemble the Gadsden Flag.

So was the Family Guy episode held over for so long because it was made not long before O.J. Simpson was on trial again, and they wanted to wait until it was again as irrelevant as it was originally planned to be? That's my guess, anyway. Of course, now it feels pretty dated, and I thought a fair number of the jokes came across as more awkward than funny (and I'm not just talking about the O.J. ones). American Dad was pretty good, though, both in its main plot and the subplot with Roger and Haley, and it was nice to learn more of Stan's back story. I wonder if we'll ever see his estranged brother who was briefly referenced at one point.