Stratovania

Happy Solstice, Yule, or whatever you want to call it! We've had our Christmas tree up for a while now, and I posted pictures of it elsewhere online, but not here. It's smaller than last year's, but I see that as a good thing. Much easier to carry in and out of the building. I always feel kind of bad that there's no point in putting ornaments on the back of the tree, because it just seems so uneven. The orange pterodactyl is new for this year.

They had several kinds of colorful dinosaurs like that at Target. (And yes, I know a pterosaur is not really a dinosaur.) Whenever we get a tree, Wally likes to sit underneath it, while Reagan ignores it.


I suppose the first pre-Christmas activity I should mention is seeing the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center on the last day of November. We were off to the side in the back of the third circle, and had an obstructed view, but it was still enjoyable. I'm really not familiar enough with ballet to give details, but I usually appreciate the mice and the kids coming out from Mother Ginger's skirt.

The Thursday after that, we saw the Kevin Geeks Out Christmas Special at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park. There's always a list of the performers on the website after the show, but I always forget who did what. I know Camila Jones discussed Christmas movies, and how any film with a scene taking place on or around Christmas could technically count in that category. She also questioned a line from White Christmas about mixing fairy tales with buttermilk and liverwurst, and was confused as to what it actually means. There was a bit about the animated New Kids on the Block Christmas special, which involves Donny befriending a kid who turns out to be dead. Someone else did a multimedia bit about her mother rather passive-aggressively showing her the decorations at her house. There were also talks on Furbys and It's a Wonderful Life. And there was an updated video presentation of Santa Doesn't Need Your Help. Kevin hosted two games, the Santa suit one and Ott or Not, the goal of the latter being to guess whether a film was rated better or worse than a very early movie of a guy named James Ott sneezing. I actually won the Santa suit one a few years ago, and every other time was eliminated very quickly. It's mostly all luck, even if you have a photographic memory for celebrities in Santa suits, as there are always some pretty obscure choices.


Last Thursday, we went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We were there last year, but I think they expanded it a bit this time. Sadly for us, it was cold and rainy that day, and the way the lights were positioned in the dark in some places made it hard to see. I liked the flowers and birds made of lights.

The next day was a concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, with a good mix of holiday classics. And yesterday, we saw the tree in Rockefeller Center, and stopped at the nearby Nintendo store.

Make more than one trip, Luigi!
It was really crowded, and they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. I noticed a lot of sticker books, and the Pikachus in wedding dresses were cute. Bowser Jr. was apparently trying to blend in with them.

Even though I've lived in New York City for almost eight years, I still kind of feel like a tourist in that area.

I guess I should write about some of the holiday-related things we've done recently, since there have been several. We have our Christmas tree set up and decorated, although we weren't able to figure out how to get the star on top.

Wally likes to sit underneath it, and usually doesn't mess with it, although he did knock a few ornaments off at one point, and at another time I caught him and Reagan fighting under it. Don't they know about peace on Earth?


Last Sunday, Beth and I went with Tavie and Ade to see John Waters at City Winery, which is now way out on the docks in the Hudson River. He did a lot of the same bits as at shows in previous years, but also some new stuff, including some material related to the pandemic. I had a flatbread pizza while there, with pepperoni, sweet sausage, and hot honey. Then, on Wednesday and Thursday, we went to two different garden events, Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and GLOW and the train show at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. The former was along a well-marked, linear path, which was convenient. Tavie, Sean, and her aunt went with us on that one.

Despite the capital letters, I didn't see any gorgeous ladies wrestling at the other garden. No average-looking ladies wrestling either, for that matter. I believe this was the first time the BBG did an event like this, and the second for the NYBG. The latter was a little more confusing because there were a few different routes, but still not all that many of them.

It had tunnels you could walk through, and an ice scupltor who was making a reindeer when we saw him.

The train show has been going on for longer, and it features model trains running around buildings, many of them models of actual historical buildings. According to the introductory film, they were made out of natural materials.

Neither garden really had a lot related to specific holidays, aside from a few Christmas trees. I bought a gingerbread man (well, I guess I don't know for sure it's a man) at the second one, and...it was all right, but not as good as I remembered them being. Not sure if that's due to a change in my taste or just the recipe they used.


On Saturday, we went to a party at Ade's house in Montclair, and then returned to Brooklyn for a holiday concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra at St. Ann's Church.

This was part of the same series as the one we saw for Halloween. Works in the set included "Joy to the World," "White Christmas," God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Silent Night," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," as well as a few medleys. And today, we went to Sheepshead Bay to see a film version of The Nutcracker performed by the Bolshoi Ballet.

It was choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich, with Margarita Shrainer as Marie and Semyon Chudin as the Nutcracker Prince. Marius Petipa was credited with ideas for the Grigorovich version, and I understand his family name is French for "iron foot," kind of weird for a ballet dancer. It makes me think of Pittypat the Rabbit from L. Frank Baum's John Dough and the Cherub.

I saw the Nutcracker Ballet at a college years ago, and Beth and I recently watched the 1993 film with Macaulay Culkin, which had George Ballanchine's choreography. I'm not really that knowledgeable  about dance as an art form, but I did notice this gave a more significant role to Marie and the Prince, who were sidelined in the second act in other performances. After the movie, we ate at the Roll N Roaster. Beth had a roast beef sandwich, and I had some fried shrimp. They have a special deal where, if you spend forty dollars, they give you a small pizza for free. The pizza only costs five dollars on its own, but we were trying to add items until we were able to get a free one. Beth compared it to The Price Is Right. It's the sort of pizza that's essentially a cracker with cheese and sauce, but for what it cost, I can't complain.

We don't have any other official events planned before Christmas, although we do plan to look at lights in the area sometime this week. You may recall that we saw the Radio City Christmas Spectacular before Thanksgiving, and I guess it's good we went then, because they've since canceled the remaining shows due to increases in COVID cases. I'm tempted to blame it on people who refuse to get vaccinated, but I haven't actually researched it, and don't plan to. I really prefer not to think about the pandemic when possible, which I realize is kind of a luxury. That's not to say that I don't take basic precautions, which you pretty much have to do in New York. It's always weird when I go to other places and there's way more lax about such things. The movie theater today required masks in the lobby, but not in the theater, as long as there wasn't a big crowd. I'll occasionally come across discussions about whether entertainment should address the pandemic, and I saw an interview with a Simpsons writer that said the show didn't even try to mention it. The thing is, I think dealing with tragedy through entertainment can be very effective. A lot of funny media came out of the Cold War, for instance. I guess I just have trouble finding anything humorous or even all that interesting about sickness; it's a slow, dreary, tedious sort of tragedy instead of an exciting one. But hey, it's all subjective.

Halloween is coming up, and we're in the midst of a pandemic, and there's still an inexplicable amount of support for our dangerously destructive president. Like Milhouse Van Houten said, I only like it when I'm pretend scared. But anyway, Beth and I went to the Creamy Acres Night of Terror on Friday night.

They had the haunted hayride, but I feel they didn't really maintain social distancing. They didn't pack people onto the wagon like they usually do, but it was still pretty crowded. The ride itself had some neat creatures and effects, including one part where you ride through a giant beehive. There were also a corn maze and two haunted houses, one pretty typical and another with a lot of creepy clowns and 3-D effects. Walking around wearing 3-D glasses is already difficult, and it's even harder while wearing a mask, as that can fog them up. And for some reason, I'm much worse than children at finding my way through what are supposed to be pretty straightforward mazes. I accidentally went through the wrong door at some point, and ended up in a back room, with nobody stopping me. It was a while before someone showed up to direct us back to the maze. Neat effects, but not all that well implemented. I think this was the first year they did this one, though, so maybe they haven't worked out all the bugs.

We've watched a few Halloween-related things on TV recently. I've written about a few of them on WordPress already, and will continue to do so. I've also written about my initial thoughts on Dragon Quest XI for the Nintendo Switch. I've recently finished with the tournament in Octagonia. And I've received my copy of the 2020 Oziana, which includes the first part of a story I co-wrote. I wonder if I should review it now, or wait until it's publicly available. I'm sure it doesn't make much difference overall, but I don't want to annoy the few people who might actually want to read about it. There's an online Oz event coming up on the twenty-fourth, which includes a costume contest. I haven't worn a costume in years, but I always used to like to. I do want to go to a Halloween store soon and get some accessories and such for costumes I've been wanting to do, but I don't know if I'll have anything ready by then.

We sent away for a DNA test for our cats, and fortunately they don't have any of the genetic diseases they tested for. I was hoping the results would be a little more elaborate, like how the 23 and Me results say whether you're genetically predisposed to like sweet or salty snacks. I guess with cats, it could be something like a preference for fish or chicken. Actually, Wally will sometimes lick salt from crackers and chips, and we still don't know why. We're taking the cats to the vet tomorrow. We changed from the pills we'd been giving Reagan to a liquid, which is easier to give her, but she still often tries to spit it out afterwards. I hope she's getting enough of it for it to help.

I started working from home this week. It's convenient not to have to get ready or go in to work, which I pretty much dread doing. On the other hand, I have two monitors at work, and while I thought that setup would be confusing when I first saw it, it's actually invaluable for what I do because I have to switch back and forth between things a lot. I'm working from a laptop now, which means just one small monitor. I've done my best to adjust, but it's still frustrating. It's also surprisingly exhausting, considering how sedentary it is. I can't say my life has changed that much due to the pandemic. In a way, an order not to leave home unless it's to buy groceries is a convenient excuse for me; I've always been kind of a shut-in. I am sorry I had to miss some concerts, but even then I'm not sure I regret it too much, because I like being AT concerts but not the process of GOING there. I'm sure nobody likes getting ready for things, but I don't know that they have the level of anxiety about it that I do. I can say I'm tired of hearing about Coronavirus, but with the caveat that I do want to be informed if there are significant developments. It's not that I don't care, but that I feel like it's dominated a lot of online discourse and television news, and nobody is really saying anything new. When the only advice they can offer is "wash your hands," it's pretty pointless. When was that NOT a good idea? I've gone through periods where I obsessively washed my hands, although I don't know that I did so for twenty-second intervals. I feel that there was already even more of a sense of helplessness in our society with the rise of authoritarianism, but the virus is making it way worse. That's part of why I want NOT to have to think about it unless there's something feasible I can do.

On a much less significant but still irritating subject, apparently there's now no way to turn off autoscrolling on Tumblr, which is something I disabled years ago. I need defined endpoints, Tumblr! I tend to have a systematic approach to my online activity, not a system that would necessarily make sense to anyone else, but it does to me. When a site changes format, I have to readjust, and that's hard for me. This is supposed to be fun stuff, not work. But even more importantly than that, why force a certain model on users, and why make changes nobody asked for? There seems to be a general trend with social networking sites to make sure that, once people have become comfortable with how they work, they mix things up again for no reason. Why does Facebook default to showing the timeline in non-chronological order? At least there you can change it, although it still tends to reset every once in a while. I'm also annoyed by the Twitter app on my phone constantly scrolling back to the top instead of retaining my place, but that might genuinely be a bug instead of something intentional. I seem to recall reading somewhere about how the tech industry refuses to leave well enough alone, and always has to come up with new innovations even when what they have is fine. I guess that's business in general. Maybe my experience is different from that of other people (it frequently is), but it seems like, while I've always been aware that social media are for-profit and run by big corporations, that really didn't so much affect how people used them. There were ads, of course, often ones for such obscure products and services that I had to wonder how anyone made any money from them, but they usually left user content alone. I think that still tends to be how e-mail works. Then there was a big to-do about Tumblr no longer allowing nudity. I wasn't on Tumblr for nude pictures, but I liked the anything-goes approach, and in a way it made me feel less guilty about looking at risque images than if I were going to an actual porn site. Even worse than the content regulation, however, was how messy it made the site in other respects. Their crappy algorithms kept removing stuff that wasn't even remotely smutty, and I could no longer access Tumblrs that were flagged in the usual way. I still can't figure out any way to look at the archives for these pages. And while I've never been banned on Twitter, I know some fairly innocuous accounts that have been. I can't say I'm totally against content regulation, because there are people who post death threats and such, but it seems to be implemented rather arbitrarily, and more often against people who DON'T have a lot of followers or a big platform. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is able to say all kinds of things that break the rules, and nobody does anything about it. And we're constantly hearing about Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey hanging out with Trump. Look, I know these sites are run by greedy, soulless billionaires, but couldn't they be less blatant about it? Zuckerberg came right out and said Elizabeth Warren would be a threat to Facebook because she wanted more regulation of tech companies. Yeah, I'm sure that would impact users' ability to forward memes and post pictures of their kids and pets.

Speaking of pets, Wally turned seventeen yesterday, and his last bloodwork at the vet was good. He's on thyroid medication, but it's regulated. He does seem to be losing weight, though, and we don't know why. We might take him back to the vet for another test.

This past weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. Beth and I go to these regularly. For the first few, we went on all three days; but after a while they started only really having events on Saturdays, so there isn't a lot of point to going to the other days. For us, that is; other people go in order to meet celebrities and get autographs, and I'm sure that's the bigger money-maker for the convention. The night before, we stopped at Red Lobster on the way down from Brooklyn. I don't think either of us had eaten there in two years or so. It's still good, but not good enough to go there that often. She tried a Crabfest special, while I stuck with shrimp. On Saturday, we drove to the convention, and fortunately they have a dedicated parking space aside from the one at the hotel itself, which fills up really quickly. This time, they reduced the length of the daytime panels from an hour (well, generally less than that, really) to a half hour each. It moved things along quickly, but there were some guests I might have liked to hear from a bit more. The first panel was with Shawnee Smith, who was in the original Saw movies. Then came Beverly D'Angelo, who had some interesting stories.

When someone asked about her appearance on The Simpsons as Lurleen Lumpkin, she mentioned that she wrote "Bagged Me a Homer" and never signed over the rights, so she continued to get residuals for it. She sang much of it, too. She also discussed how she lived near Frank Zappa, and she met Matt Groening through him. His house was since bought by Lady Gaga, and there are always a lot of cars outside. Next was Kathy Najimy, who mentioned having been a big fan of Bette Midler some time before starring in Hocus Pocus with her. (That's a movie I still haven't seen. Beth saw it at the theater with her uncle.)

She also talked about how Peggy Hill's interest in Boggle came from her, and the character's bad Spanish was how a lot of Americans in California spoke the language. The last of the daytime panels was Devon Sawa, and I didn't know much about him, although I did see the original Final Destination some time ago.


After a fairly long wait, here were two later, hour-long panels, the first being several of the actors who played Cenobites in the Hellraiser movies: Barbie Wilde, Nicholas Vince, Simon Bamberg, and Doug Bradley. Clive Barker also showed up for part of it, although he left early.

He and Doug knew each other from way back when they both lived in Liverpool. Doug addressed the story about how he was offered the part of either Pinhead or the mattress delivery man, which is technically true, but it was always intended that he play Pinhead. There was just a moment where he thought maybe he should take a role where you could see his face. Some other discussion involved how there might have been more to the story of the second film if they hadn't run out of money. The final session was with Robert Englund, who talked about how he wouldn't necessarily mind playing Freddy Krueger again, but knew he couldn't do it for much longer, and thought they should go with someone younger.

He said he'd heard a rumor about Kevin Bacon taking the part (or maybe that was just Robert's own suggestion; I can't recall for sure), but as a guy mentioned afterwards, Bacon is only eleven years younger. I wouldn't be surprised if they do make another remake at some point, although the 2010 one with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy got bad reviews (and deservedly so, in my opinion). I should mention that we saw someone dressed as Falkor from The Neverending Story, not really horror-related, but a great costume.

Dave Hagan, who runs the convention, said that next year he wants to try having a sort of spin-off highlighting other pop culture, because he's had guests who were interested in attending but didn't fit the theme, not that I'm entirely sure what Beverly D'Angelo has to do with horror. Dave also wrote a novel, which I bought for Beth. Our tradition is to eat at Friendly's afterwards, although we go there quite often when we visit New Jersey anyway.

Today, we went to a birthday party for Beth's young cousins before returning to Brooklyn. They have four dogs there, and they all want to be around her uncle Harry, even though two of them technically aren't his dogs.

Now we're back home again. We don't like to leave for long, because the cats like to have people around. I understand yesterday was Black Cat Appreciation Day, and we weren't even around ours.

I haven't written on this particular blog in a few weeks. For that matter, I've only written sporadically on my WordPress. There have been several events in that time I feel are worth mentioning. My dad and his girlfriend were up in the city a few weeks ago, and we went with them to Burger Bistro and to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. My dad was interested in seeing our place, but it's still not really in an appropriate condition for guests. When the scope of something is overwhelming, it's difficult for me to even start. I mentioned before that, for Easter, Beth and I had dinner at her mom's house. I've finished drafts of a few new Oz stories. I feel I always have to specify "drafts," even though I sometimes don't do anything else with them, because I don't want to discount the editing process. If anyone wants to read them, let me know. One of them is a Super Mario Bros. crossover, an idea I had way back when there were only three main series Mario games. I like the idea of crossovers, but it can be really difficult to get two different fictional worlds to interact in a way that makes sense. More often, I tend to just sneak in brief references to other works I like, without really explaining them. I have ideas for a few more tales, but I don't know how long those will take me. And I made macaroni and cheese, which turned out to not have as much flavor as I'd hoped. I used cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. I guess I'm a bit of a cheese snob, in that I grew up on sharp cheddar, and stuff like American cheese and Velveeta just seem dull to me.

Yesterday, our friends Tavie and Sean got married, and had their reception at a place called Le Petit Café in Carroll Gardens. It's a nice place, but we were all packed in pretty tightly. There was no room to dance or kids to run around, which are things that often happen at wedding receptions. Beth wore a new dress, but while I did get a few pictures, none of them came out that well. You can see one of them on Facebook if you're interested. It's weird, because I always wonder why people don't want pictures of themselves on social media without screening them first. Then, when that happens to me, I'm like, "Okay, I get it now." For me, it's mostly because my hair doesn't behave. Speaking of marriage, Beth and I just recently saw a stand-up set by another guy we've known for a while, Matt, who is now a Daily Show writer, and he's also married now. We don't see him that much, but we have friends in common, so you'd think we would have known about that before. In my experience, marriage doesn't change much in the dynamic between couples. I mean, it's really just a bureaucratic thing, when you get down to it. But I think it totally affects how other people view you, "wife" or "husband" just sounding so much more serious than "girlfriend" or "boyfriend."

At one point, Tavie was talking about how her cat Neelix likes Sean better, and I mentioned how our Wally prefers Beth and Reagan prefers me. I've heard it was similar with my grandparents and their male and female cats. It's strange, but I don't think there's really anything to it on a grand scale. And when I lived with Beth's cousins Patti and Dorothea, they had a cat named Cracker whom they said preferred men. I know I got along well with him. I walked by a cat café earlier on Friday, and I've never been to one of those. I'm kind of afraid I'd want to adopt another cat, when we already have two who are on pricey medication.

Both of our cats have been having problems recently, as I believe I've mentioned in the past. Reagan has an allergy to dust mites, and we tried antihistamines, but they didn't work. We're now giving her shots, and she's surprisingly calm about that. It seems like she doesn't mind the shots as much as she minds being held to get them. We also still have some steroid pills to fight the pain, and for a little while she'd take them in those Pill Pockets that are clay-textured treats to put pills into, but now she won't eat them even without the pills in them. We took Wally to the vet this week, and we're going to start him on pills for his thyroid tomorrow. I feel bad for them. It hasn't stopped Reagan from trying to take our food, though.

We didn't do much for Valentine's Day, but I did give Beth a card and some chocolates, as well as a crocheted Octorok from Etsy and a Super NES Mini, although that last one was somewhat self-serving. We don't currently have a setup conducive to hooking up a console to the TV, but hopefully we will someday soon. I've never played Earthbound, and I'm interested in it. But then, I'm interested in a lot of games, especially of the role-playing variety. Beth gave me Phantasy Star 0 for the DS, and I haven't had a chance to try that one yet either. Today, we went out to eat at Burger Bistro, our delayed Valentine's dinner. I don't think it was particularly romantic, though. I think I'm somewhat romance-impaired.

It's a three-day weekend for both of us, which is a relief, but it's also going to make the next two-day weekend seem disturbingly short. So often for me, the most basic things seem overwhelming and like a waste of time. I guess that's the human condition, but I sometimes wonder if other people think that much about it. Things have been going pretty well in some respects, but I still feel hassled by minor obligations. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist if my current health plan covers it; it's been years since I last went to one. I've never found therapy to be all that helpful for me, and thinking back to when I did go to a therapist, having to go into the office was just another hassle. It tended to make me nervous, too, kind of the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

Yesterday, Beth and I went with Tavie, Sean, and Stephanie to Sleepy Hollow for the Halloween events. These are always really popular, and you have to buy tickets well in advance, which sucks if the day you chose turns out to be rainy or something. Fortunately it wasn't last night, but it was a lot chillier than it's been. That SHOULD be typical for this time of year, but recently it hasn't been. We attended the same two events we did last year, although Tavie, Sean, and Stephanie weren't there with us then (but a different Stephanie was). These were Horseman's Hollow and the Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze, both walk-throughs.

I didn't notice any particular differences from last year. They still had the Pumpkin Zee Bridge, even though the name of the Tappan Zee Bridge has been changed.

Maybe next year it will be the Mario Gourdomo. It's really impressive. Before the events, we ate at a Greek place where Tavie had been before. They give you a lot of food, and I wasn't able to finish all of it. Well, I usually don't finish salads, and often not French fries either, but the broccoli steamed with lemon was actually pretty good, and I still couldn't eat all of it. My main course was calamari.

Speaking of food, I came across this article on autism and picky eating, and it makes sense to me. I've always been considered a picky eater, even by myself, and this probably explains it to some extent. I do have a weird aversion to certain food textures. And I love peaches, but I hate the skin, which is why I often stick to nectarines. I can totally identify with wanting to get food items with alterations because one ingredient I don't like can ruin the entire experience. Most restaurants are pretty good about that. What bothers me is when the menu doesn't say everything that's in a dish, so I end up with surprise onions or something. Onions are another thing where I hate the texture. So is mayonnaise. As far as I can tell it doesn't taste like much at all, but it just feels so gross and slimy. There are things where I can change my mind, like how I like the texture of mushrooms now, although I still only like them with other things, not by themselves. And yeah, I have trouble with spicy foods, although I think it depends on the spices, because occasionally I've eaten something well-spiced that I actually enjoyed. I'm just not sure I can really run a taste test or anything. I remember getting fish with some kind of spice at the college dining hall, and it made me feel sick for a while when I only ate a few bites. And I don't think it was even a particularly hot spice; it just seemed like it to me. In some ways, though, I probably AM just picky. There are foods that don't offend my senses, but I still don't like them.

In other news, Reagan's face seems to be clearing up, but Wally was diagnosed with Stage One kidney disease. From what the vet said, cats can live several years with that; it's not, in her words, a death sentence. We do need to take him for check-ups more often, though. He's fifteen now, and I want him to last forever, but I guess that's not how these things work. Poor Wally. He seems to be doing all right, however. Both cats adjusted quickly to the new place.

I miss having the cats around, but they couldn't stay with us where we're currently living, so they're at Beth's mom's house. I saw them this past weekend for the first time in about a month, and they were pretty aloof.

Reagan, who used to want attention from me all the time, wouldn't even come out from under the bed the first night, and that made me sad. Later, however, she got up on the bed and wanted me to pet and scratch her for quite a while.

I wonder if she doesn't fully trust me now. I'm not sure I blame her if she doesn't. She has a habit of rubbing her face against things, and while that's normal for a cat, she does so frantically and urgently that I think she's hurting herself. The area above her eyes looks kind of scratched up, and we thought it might have been from fighting with Wally, but we're pretty sure now she does it to herself. They both spend most of their time upstairs in the room where I sleep when I'm there (Beth and I sleep apart there, not for reasons of modesty, but because the beds aren't very big), probably because it's less noisy and the dogs don't come up there. I don't think they have anything against the dogs, but they like to have their own space. While we were down there, we also went to a birthday party for Beth's aunt's friend, although the aunt in question didn't attend.


I never said anything about Kevin Geeks Out on the week before last. It was a night of supercuts, which are basically a movie or television episode trimmed down to its most significant parts. They show one at each of his shows, but this particular show was nothing else. The cut-down movies included a kung-fu wizard film, a made-for-TV Tobe Hooper movie with a particular focus on Hooper's hatred of neckties (his bad guys, including the psychotic redneck Leatherface, pretty much always wear them), and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. I haven't seen any of the Godzilla movies, but that title always stuck with me. It apparently was one of the least successful films in the series, but what struck me was how everyone basically seemed to take a gigantic atomic reptile at face value by this point. Well, that, and how over-the-top the acting was for the English dub of the main kid, who was a total Godzilla fanboy. There was also a video essay on monsters leering at human women. One thing I'm kind of sorry we didn't see was Wonder Woman fighting a Nazi gorilla, but that was an audience choice up against Jeff Goldblum as the Big Bad Wolf on Fairy Tale Theatre, and how could you not vote for the latter?

I've already written about how I couldn't beat Rhapthorne in Dragon Quest VIII, so I switched to Kirby Triple Deluxe for a little while. Maybe I'll write about that this week, if I get the chance. I also checked out where I'd left off in Dragon Quest VI, but while I remembered what I had to do next, I couldn't quite recall how I'd gotten there. From what I recall, it's one of the more convoluted games in the series. And OzCon is coming up later this week, so I'm excited for that and nervous about the trip there.

Dewey was the first dog I knew for his entire life. I was afraid of dogs as a kid, but Beth had dogs her whole life, so I started to get used to them when I stayed with her. Now I'll try to make friends with dogs on the street. Beth adopted Dewey after her previous dog, also a dachshund, died, about two years after we'd started dating.

He was very loving, and while Beth was his favorite (at least when she lived with him; more on that later), he was friendly with pretty much everybody.

He loved being under the covers, and one time when he was a puppy and there were no covers on Beth's bed, he tried to crawl into a pillowcase. He also used to be able to grab on to a set of toy rings and hang by the strength of his jaw, something he obviously didn't do for that long, but it was impressive. Dachshunds have a reputation for being smart and stubborn, and Dewey could definitely be both of those. He had a bark that he only used when he wanted to come inside. When Beth would play her clarinet, he'd howl along. And I don't think it was because he didn't like it, as he'd go right to her when he heard her playing.

He also liked to wear costumes, and we'd try to take him out for Halloween. In different years, he was Freddy Krueger, a pirate, a bee, and the Big Bad Wolf.

It's not uncommon for dogs to enjoy dressing up, but it's probably best not to try that with a cat. When Beth and I moved to Secaucus, we tried taking Dewey with us, but he was too set in his ways. I think it was confusing to him that we didn't have access to a yard, so he couldn't go outside whenever he wanted. So we brought him back down to Beth's mom's house, but he always loved seeing us when we came to visit. Four years ago, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and Beth's mom gave him pills. Not only did he manage to live another four years, but I'm pretty sure he's the longest-lived dog Beth's family has had. As you can tell from the dates, he died a few days after his sixteenth birthday. Last weekend, we took him on a car ride and gave him ice cream, two of his favorite things. I think he appreciated that. He died in his sleep yesterday morning. It's going to be so weird not having him around.