Stratovania

23 November was the beginning of Great Adventure's Holiday in the Park. They were only open for seven hours, but we ended up coming in about an hour after they opened and leaving before closing. We were both really tired towards the end.

A whole section of the park was closed, but we did go on nine different rides.

I believe Kingda Ka and Green Lantern are closing for good, and the Skyride is no longer operational.

The Teacups were decorated as Gingerbread Twist, but they weren't playing holiday music on the Carousel.

It did play "Dixie," a song that would be fun if it weren't for all the historical baggage. There were several spots where you could take pictures with holiday-themed characters. The ones I had pictures of were the Snow Queen and King and the Poinsettia Prince and Princess, not exactly holiday heavy hitters, but their outfits were cute.


We spent Thanksgiving at Beth's mom's house, as per usual. We didn't really do anything on the day other than have dinner, or at least I didn't. On the following day, we went to the Creamy Acres Night of Lights, which was pretty much the same as usual, although they might have made it a bit longer. We rode in the wagon, and it was colder than I expected it to be. They still had Santa firing a pretzel from a cannon into a bag, which seems like an inefficient way of loading things.

He was also riding in a hot air balloon, playing baseball, and ski jumping.

The guy has a lot of hobbies. There were also some indoor displays, but when I say "indoor," the doors were open and it was cold.

These nutcrackers were certainly feeling it.

This section had a bunch of characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas, and a lot of stand-ins (apparently what those pictures with the holes for faces are called).

They were made with little kids in mind, however, so we had to duck down for some of them.

They had some cows and a goat, but they stayed inside their shelters, which was a good idea on their parts.


On Saturday night, we met up with Stephanie, who was in town between flights, and ate at a place called Lulla. I had the agnolotti, which was pasta stuffed with cheese, covered with bolognese sauce. Then we saw a late-night showing of Gladiator II, but I already wrote about that.

We don't have the cats with us here this week, which is weird and kind of sad.

It does mean I don't have to refill the food or water for a while, though. I'm anxious about how many things we have to do in December. On my calendar, I have two doctors' appointments, Kevin Geeks Out, They Might Be Giants, and Micky Dolenz. I also need to get a new car, and while there isn't a particular time period for that as I don't drive that much, it would be nice to do that before the inspection for my current car is due. And that's not counting shopping, or getting a tree, or watching relevant media. Yes, some of those things are for fun, but there's still hassle involved. I've been playing Octopath Traveler a lot recently, but most of it has just been leveling up. There are some major difficulty spikes in that game. I did finally beat Miguel, but most of the other third chapters haven't been working out for me.

So far this month, we've seen a concert, gone to two amusement parks, and done a few Halloween activities, so I might as well write about them now. We also got stuck in traffic a few times and got COVID and flu shots, and I had bad side effects from medication. Those aren't as enjoyable to reminisce about, however.
On the first Sunday of the month, Beth and I went to Tarrytown to see Neko Case, which ended up being a strange and kind of disturbing experience. The opener was Amaad Wasif, who, during one of his songs, apparently decided it would be a good idea to go into the audience and sit in people's laps. I didn't see any of this from the balcony, but from what we saw online afterwards, one guy objected to it and pushed him away. He then returned to the stage and said someone punched him, which the guy and other people sitting nearby insist he didn't. I don't actually know what happened, but he left after that, and Neko didn't come on until about an hour after she was scheduled to do so. She was angry, and while she still did the show, she never explained what was actually bothering her. I'm sure it had to do with what happened to the opener, but neither she nor the venue provided any details, and the guy who pushed Wasif had already been kicked out. Is the whole audience being punished, like some kind of Full Metal Jacket crap? She still performed well, and seemed to calm down a bit over the course of the set, but it ended up being quite short. They apparently had a fill-in bass player who didn't usually play that instrument, and this was the first time we saw her with a saxophone player, although he mostly played keyboard. Somehow we ended up sitting in the exact same seats as we did when we saw Ben Folds at the same venue. Since it's October, they had a lot of Halloween decorations up in town.
We had some pizza before the show, and the window of the place had this monster slice on the window.

The following weekend, we traveled to Pennsylvania to visit two amusement parks, and a lot of stuff went wrong. Knoebels was doing Hallo-Fun, and we left home later than we'd wanted to. Then there was a long line of cars just to get in, as it didn't seem like the traffic lights were set up to handle that much traffic. We were there for two hours or so. It was pretty fun when we actually got inside, but we didn't have time to do that much.

We rode the Rock-O-Plane, an old sort of ride that was new there this year. It loads sort of like a Ferris Wheel, with only a certain amount of cars low enough at any time for people to get in and out of them. The cars rock around, although you can stop them from doing so with a brake.

I believe it was also the first time we rode their Tea Cups, which were the same sort of ride that Beth knew as a Crazy Daisy.

And the line for the Phoenix had this graveyard for old rides.

We didn't get a chance to go on the Haunted Pioneer Train, which had a really long line.


Dorney Park, which we visited on Sunday, has Halloween Haunt, and I took another picture of Beth with the puking pumpkin.

They have a new ride, the Iron Menace, a roller coaster with a straight vertical drop.

The park has a backstory for this ride involving the fictional McTavish Steel, whose owner died under mysterious circumstances and went on to haunt the old mill. There actually is a McTavish Steelworks in Manitoba. To fit the theme, they also redesigned the nearby glider ride and changed the name to MT Buckets.

We also rode the Cedar Creek Cannonball, which last year we hadn't realized was going to close early for the Halloween events.

And it was the hundredth anniversary of the Thunderhawk. We visited two of the temporary haunted houses, Blackout and Blood on the Bayou. The former was introduced as a candy factory, but was really just a bunch of dark rooms. I guess the introduction was just misdirection, although a candy-themed haunted attraction could have been interesting. The latter was based around a pop culture representation of Louisiana that's probably nothing like the actual place, including alligators and fortune tellers.

And we saw part of a show by a group called the Spectral Sisters, who were pretty similar to the Puppini Sisters, doing swing versions of pop songs, including 10,000 Maniacs' "Because the Night," Heart's "Crazy on You," and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising."


Thursday the seventeenth was Nightfall at Green-Wood Cemetery, which includes a mix of things, both displays and performances. It seemed like there wasn't as much as in previous years, although that could have just been our timing or the paths we took. The ways through the graveyard are marked off with lights, but some of them do branch off. There were performers from the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, a one-man band who played "Tequila" and a sword swallower.

Morbid Anatomy did a series of lectures, of which we heard the one about Ra's journey through the underworld in Egyptian mythology, as told in the Amduat; and another on symbols of time and mortality in funerary decoration. And a band was playing songs from the earlier part of the twentieth century, the ones we were there for being from the 1910s and 1930s, with a different lead singer for each.


We visited South Jersey this past weekend, and did a few Halloween-related activities while there.

On Friday, we went to the Creamy Acres Night of Terror, which consists of a hayride and three walkthroughs. From what I remember, it was pretty much the same as last year.

There was a drive-through called Glow in Washington Township, which was a bunch of light displays loosely themed around old Route 66, although some of them didn't seem to relate to much of anything.

It had monsters and other seasonal stuff, but wasn't scary in the sense of people jumping out at you or anything; you just drove through and looked.

And that night, we went to Terror at the Junkyard for the Scullville Fire Department in Egg Harbor, which involved driving along a lot of dark roads, rather scarier than the maze or hayride, but obviously not as theatrical.

One performer seemed particularly into his role, stomping on the wagon and singing a song about waking the dead. And that's about all that's worth writing about for now, but there should be some more later in the month.

Beth and I did some other things in California besides OzCon, so here are a few of them. We flew into LAX on Tuesday, and stayed at a motel within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm, which we visited on Wednesday. The park is surprisingly close to Disneyland, and not far from Kellogg West. Too bad we had to go to Culver City in between the two. It's very common for amusement parks to have an Old West area, and at Knott's, it was probably the biggest section in the park.

You could even sit on a bench with some hookers. Well, dancers, anyway.

They also had parts with fifties and Mexican themes, as well as Camp Snoopy for kiddie rides. I think it might have been the first park to license the Peanuts characters, although they're at a lot of them now. The only berry-themed ride was the seemingly obligatory one where you shoot stuff on a screen, in this case to help bears get stolen pies back from some coyotes.

The guns had pull strings, and it was hard to tell what you were shooting. I kind of wonder why the bumper cars weren't called Traffic Jam. They had several roller coasters, including the Pony Express, the surf-themed HangTime (which included a part where we were suspended at the top of a hill for a little while), Silver Bullet, Xcelerator, and the wooden GhostRider.

That was our last ride of the night, and we were on the last train they ran that day, about an hour after the official closing time. Another coaster, Jaguar!, was closed. The carousel had a lot of unusual animals. We rode ostriches, but I was also fascinated by the cats with fish in their mouths.

The Calico Mine Ride was pretty cool, featuring old animatronics. That was also the one with the know-it-all kid in front of us in line. We rode the Calico Railroad, and a guy dressed as a bandit called me "Bowser" because of my Super Mario hat. We did not, however, have a chance to ride the stagecoach.

On Thursday, we ate breakfast at Denny's, then went on the Sony Pictures tour, checked in at Kellogg West, and ate at a fast food hot dog place called Wienerschnitzel. We also went to a Circle K for the first time in our lives. After OzCon, we met with Stephanie and her dog Chelsea on Sunday and went to the John Waters exhibit at the Academy Museum, which had a good collection of props and memorabilia, including stained glass pictures of some of his characters.

After that, we went to the Oracle Mystic Museum in Burbank, which had an interactive exhibit with moving parts based on horror movies.

The neighborhood where it was located had at least two year-round Halloween stores that didn't allow photographs, and also this elephant.

I wonder if they know Kabumpo.

Before catching our plane back east on Monday night, we stopped at two other museums and a mausoleum. The Bunny Museum in Altadena was something Beth found out about on Reddit, and someone there said they found it disturbing.

It's a small building, but it's absolutely packed with stuff, all rabbit-related. Of course, it came nowhere close to being exhaustive, as bunnies are very heavily represented in our culture. I think humans are genetically inclined to find them cute. One room was all holiday stuff, including Hocus Pocus from Frosty the Snowman.

A kitchen and patio had relevant stuff, and another room had creepier and more adult stuff, like Frank from Donnie Darko, Playboy Bunnies, and weird old masks.

I particularly liked the red guy with horns. Another reminded me of my mom's rabbit mask that I wore when I dressed as Wag for the Munchkin Convention, which apparently Johnny Galecki also owns.

This might have been why the museum was listed as unsettling, although when you're dealing with old toys, some of it is going to be disturbing to modern audiences even when it wasn't intended to be.

Upstairs, they had some original art.

Bugs Bunny, the Trix Rabbit, the Quik Bunny, My Melody from Sanrio, the Energizer Bunny, Harvey, Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh, Roger Rabbit, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the bunny suit from A Christmas Story were all represented as well.

And they had two sets of the Uncle Wiggily Game, which I played a lot as a kid, and which is similar in structure to the Wonderful Game of Oz.

There were also some informational signs, on such topics as rabbit-related expressions, anthropomorphic bunnies, the origins of magicians pulling rabbits out of hats, someone in a bunny suit who followed David Bowie around in 2004, and the meaning of the name of Spain.

I would have liked to have seen some of John R. Neill's rabbit pictures, but no such luck.

After this museum, we visited the Mountain View Mausoleum, which had some cool art and a pretty garden.

Both that and our next destination, the Museum of Death in Hollywood, were suggested by a couple we met at OzCon.

The Death Museum didn't allow pictures, so you'll have to trust me when I say it was very graphic. It included exhibits on serial killers, death cults, taxidermy and preservation, car accidents, and cannibalism. They had a taxidermied dog who had died with Jayne Mansfield. One of the employees had a lot to say about Heaven's Gate, and another was impressed that Beth was able to correctly identify the film Orozco the Embalmer.


That's mostly what we did in California, but I'm also going to include our activity from yesterday, Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Williamsburg, which is difficult to reach from where we live and work. We actually ended up being a few minutes late. The theme was twins, also including doubles, doppelgangers and clones. David Gregory (not the one from XTC) talked about the many Bruce Lee imitators who starred in rip-off movies, and co-host Chris Cummins discussed the various imitations of Archie Comics. Tenebrous Kate discussed the Barbarian Brothers, twin bodybuilders who were somewhat popular in the eighties and nineties, including starring in a movie that was largely a Conan rip-off. Another presentation was on Waluigi, and what the deal was with him, which I don't think anybody knows for sure. He's pretty much only ever around for sports and party games. There was a mention of how, according to Nintendo, he and Wario aren't even related, although since Nintendo went back and forth on whether the Koopalings were Bowser's kids, who knows what their current story is? He does seem to have gained a certain amount of popularity, although that could be BECAUSE of how bizarre and relatively obscure he is. One bit was on Alice Cooper, and how he criticized conformity and then became pretty conservative. I'm not sure I knew that he recently made a transphobic comment, but I do remember him speaking positively of George W. Bush. And Kevin Maher showed clips of characters realizing they were clones or duplicates. The Kindest Cut for the night was of Big Business, a twin mix-up comedy starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, which Beth saw when Clementon Park was closed for rain.

We drove down to Pennsylvania last weekend, and went to Hersheypark on Saturday, as we still had extra tickets that we bought in April. I think it was the next to last possible day we could use them. It was cold, especially for my toes, but still not AS cold as you'd expect for that time of year. We got there quite a bit later than we wanted to, as the valve came off one of my tires when I was trying to put air in it. Fortunately, we were still near my dad's house, and he and Margaret were able to take off the tire and bring it in to get it patched. After that, however, the tire pressure warning light on my dashboard stayed on, even though the air level was fine. I'd just gotten my car serviced, but I waived the suggestion to have the tires replaced, as it was expensive, and would probably take a lot of time as those tires are hard to come by. I brought it in again today to have that done. We probably should get a new car soon, as I've had this one since 2009, but that's a big decision. But anyway, we rode Wildcat's Revenge for the first time, as it was still under construction on our last visit.

It's a refurbished version of the wooden roller coaster Wildcat with steel parts added, like what they did with Twisted Colossus at Magic Mountain.

They still had the Christmas decorations, a little awkward to see after Christmas, but it's technically still Christmastide until Epiphany.

The Dry Gulch Railroad was lined with lights showing the gifts from the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Afterwards, we ate at the Cocoa Diner, which I guess is somewhat of a tradition now, mostly because it's open late and has a very recognizable name. I've never bothered to check whether cocoa is actually on the menu there.

On Sunday, we exchanged gifts with my family. My siblings and my brother's wife and son were over at my dad's in the afternoon, and we had lunch with them; and later we had dinner with my mom. I was pretty late getting some of the presents, as I'm a terrible procrastinator. That said, even if I'd bought them early, I'd probably still feel like I was doing last-minute shopping. I received copies of Lin Carter's Dragonrouge (the sequel to Kesrick), Mark S. Smith's The Early History of God, and of Super Mario Wonder. I suspect Beth would be better at that game than I would, but I'll give it a try. My sister also gave us a stuffed cat that wasn't originally intended as a gift, but her cat inexplicably hated it.

We showed it to Nellie, and she seemed pretty indifferent. We rang in the New Year at Beth's mom's house, which didn't involve that much ringing, but Nellie did have bells on her collar.


Last night, we went to see Spamalot, which was a present for me from Beth, along with the soundtrack album. As you probably know, it's Eric Idle's reworking of Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a just as meta-referential Broadway musical. From the little I've read, some of the other Python members were confused by the whole thing, and I know Neil Innes took issue with not getting royalties for the songs he wrote, "Knights of the Round Table," "Brave Sir Robin" and "Run Away" (the latter was cut from the movie, but is in the show). I'm not sure what the royalty situation was for the Finland song, which I understand Michael Palin wrote. I found it very enjoyable, although it seems like most of the best jokes were the ones everybody already knew from the film, and expanding on some of them didn't make them funnier. Some of the adaptations to a different medium worked, however, like the Holy Hand Grenade exposing the killer rabbit's puppeteer, the expanded cast of French stereotypes, and how the Holy Grail was found (which of course it wasn't in the original). It also worked in a lot of other classic Python references, which is understandable. The story was streamlined a bit, with some of the side characters becoming the knights (as opposed to just being played by the same actors). The main new character was the Lady of the Lake, presumably because there weren't any significant women in the movie, and she was played as a total diva. There were a few more topical references as well, including George Santos appearing in a list of famous Jewish people involved with Broadway.

On Saturday, 16 September, Beth and I made our third annual trip to Dorney Park, where they had just started their Halloween thing. None of the waits were bad, but they did close some of the rides early, and we hadn't been aware of that ahead of time. They also closed off some of the paths through the park after dark, and there were a lot of kids running around recklessly. I don't think we rode anything new this time, except for the Cedar Creek Cannonball, which wasn't running on our previous two trips.

I might have ridden it as a kid, but I can't remember for sure. The park has two train rides, but I've never been there when both were operational. I did get a little sick, not seriously so, but my stomach felt uncomfortable. I think one of the worst rides for my general health is the Revolution. They had a lot of advertising for the Iron Menace, which is scheduled to open next year.

Last Saturday, we visited the Creamy Acres Night of Terror again.

The Moon was pretty cooperative. I understand we missed the Harvest Moon by one day.
It was mostly the same as last time, with a hayride and three walkthroughs, including one with 3-D glasses. The ground was muddy, but that wasn't anyone's fault. They had a flood warning in New York the day before, but fortunately Beth and I were both working from home. We posed for some pictures with a skeleton, who was pretty big, but not quite in Gashadokuro territory.

We also went to a Spirit Halloween, where the main things I wanted to photograph were costumes with off-brand names.

I don't even really understand the Serpent Queen, since I'm pretty sure "Medusa" and "Gorgon" aren't trademarked. We bought some T-shirts there, but haven't worn them yet.


Monday was Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park, which is a lot easier to get to than the one in Williamsburg. It was on fast food, and included a good mix of stuff. Emily Menez talked about vegetarian options at fast food places (there aren't many) and compared them to ones in fiction. Michael Williams did a pre-recorded bit on Australian fast food, and how it's common to have beetroot on burgers there. Sounds gross to me, but I usually get fast food sandwiches without any of the vegetables anyway. KFC in Australia tried having cartoon mascots for a brief time, a fox and a chicken hawk with Southern (American) accents.

And I really don't know why Burger King is called Hungry Jack's there. Audrey Lazaro discussed Jollibee's and its mascots. Mr. Yum struck me as being similar to Wimpy, with his suit and tie and association with hamburgers.

They kept the character, but made him younger and less formal.

Wimpy does have his own restaurant, although I've never been to one. Popeyes, the chicken place, was apparently not named after the sailor, but did use him in advertising up until 2012.

Co-host Camila Jones did a match-up between pizza chain founders. Burlesque dancer Perse Fanny did a McDonald's themed striptease. And Max Bank did a bit as advertising executive Donny Deutsch, whom I'd heard of because he used to have a talk show on CNBC for some reason, which included a part about coming up with Uncle O'Grimacey. The Kindest Cut this time was the 1978 movie Starhops, which not only has a title presumably inspired by Star Wars, but even opens with a parody of its crawl. There was a bit about how Clara Peller from the Wendy's "Where's the Beef?" commercials did a rap with Coyote McCloud that seemed very similar to an earlier song using Rodney Dangerfield clips, and Adam Bernstein recorded his own parody for this show. And Kevin made a non-canonical but valid point about how Ronald McDonald is Grimace's best friend, but Grimace isn't Ronald's. The Grimazuzu picture is from a bit that was never fully developed, but I have written about both Grimace and Pazuzu pretty recently. We didn't actually eat fast food that day. The grilled cheese sandwich I had at a nearby café was made pretty quickly, but I don't think it counts. But then, Pizza Hut qualifying must be a pretty recent thing, as I remember having pretty long waits there when I was a kid. Or maybe they just felt long because I was impatient.

Two weekends ago was Monster-Mania. The problem is that we usually spend most of our time there at the question-and-answer panels, but due to the writers' and actors' strikes, people weren't allowed to discuss their work. They could still be there and sign autographs, but there weren't any panels. Beth had already paid for it, though, so we still went, but didn't spend a lot of time. We walked around the dealer rooms and bought some drawings from an artist named Jen Tracy. She got a haunted one, and I got Tik-Tok.

I also thought her Medusa drawing, which we didn't buy, was really cool. And we watched part of a game show called Curse Your Luck, a play on Press Your Luck with horror movie characters instead of Whammies.

There was a trivia part, but it was difficult for the audience to play along. The screen was too small to read, and the hosts didn't finish the questions if a contestant answered them before they were done reading. We did learn that Friendly's has the mini mozzarella sticks again, at least at the location we went to, although Beth says they taste different than they did before. It's hard to tell, as it's been so long, but I think I got what she meant.

This past Wednesday, we went to Playland, where we both felt kind of sick after going on some pretty tame rides. Beth swears by motion sickness pills, and thinks the ones I bought just weren't up to the task. I also bought more pizza than we could finish, because I wasn't sure how big the personal ones were. And I'm usually capable of eating a lot of pizza. But anyway, it was pretty fun, but there wasn't anything new, although I think it was the first time we rode Catch a Wave. There used to be something quite similar at Clementon Park, where it was called the Falling Star.

I mentioned last year that the Derby Racer seems slower now, and one of the employees confirmed that, although he didn't know the reason why that happened. His guess was that there was an injury. I also mentioned the Old Mill, actually the first thing we rode on our first visit to the park, but I didn't talk about the sign that says it has a "dark and forbidding atmosphere."I guess things have changed since 1929, and dragons aren't as scary when they audibly creak anyway.

I always like to take pictures from the Ferris Wheel, and I guess it's a good thing I'm calm enough about it now, because I used to get really nervous when that kind of ride (not this particular one) would stop at the top to load more people. I'm still kind of scared I might drop something, though.


We've been watching the new Futurama episodes, and from what I've seen and the descriptions of the ones that have yet to air, it kind of seems like they're overdoing the commentary on current events. They've always done that, but not quite that often. I'll wait until I've actually seen the entire season to pass judgment, though. Also, I downloaded the Steam version of Final Fantasy X some years ago and decided to check it out this weekend. There's a guy who ends up 1000 years in the future and befriends a guy voiced by John DiMaggio, which is pretty familiar. I'll probably write more about the game once I've gotten a little further into it or it becomes too frustrating for me to want to continue, as FF8 was.


Finally, tomorrow is Ozma's birthday. How are you going to celebrate?

There was a Sparks concert at the Hollywood Bowl with They Might Be Giants opening, so Beth and I made the trip to Los Angeles (the one in South California, not the one in South Patagonia). Fortunately, we were able to stay with our friend Stephanie, who put us up and put up with us. Her dog Chelsea was also very friendly, and it was nice to have a pet around after losing ours. When we got in on Thursday, after sleeping for a while, we went to a place called Vidiots for a screening of Gigantic, the TMBG documentary. I hadn't actually seen it straight through since when it came out in 2002. It's a little weird, because it kind of skips over most of the nineties in terms of the band's history, or at least feels like it does. Afterwards, director A.J. Schnack was there with Johns Linnnell and Flansburgh to ask some questions.

They mentioned how Mink Car, the album they were making when a lot of the footage was filmed, was kind of a lost album that had apparently gone out of print. It came out on 11 September 2001, and the label that released it went out of business not long afterwards. Flans said something about the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Swatch Watch campaign being the major turning point in the music world, and the Sid and Marty Krofft special with the Brady Bunch kids. And he mentioned The Truth About Cats and Dogs being the median between good and bad movies. I've never seen it, but I do remember thinking Janeane Garofalo was more attractive than Uma Thurman at the time, although that may not still be the case today. They had done a long interview earlier that day, so they didn't take audience questions, but I couldn't think of anything to ask anyway. The next day, we did karaoke. Beth sang Sparks' "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us," I sang Frank Black's "Headache" and the Monkees' "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?", and we both did the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" with the genders switched. I didn't think that it would have been appropriate to do Frank's "Los Angeles" instead. On Saturday, we had brunch with three of Stephanie's friends, who were pretty elegant. I had the berry French Toast.

The place we went had its own hens, and I tried to get some pictures, but they didn't come out that well.

And in the evening, we saw Pee-wee's Big Adventure at the Alamo Drafthouse, the first time I'd seen it on the big screen. They had a replica of Pee-wee's bike in the lobby, so finally it really IS at the Alamo, or at least was for a while.


Sunday was the day of the show, and we had box seats, yet it was still the farthest Beth has been from the stage at a Sparks concert. TMBG opened with "Damn Good Times," which had been in my head before that, as it mentions karaoke.

The trio of horn players joined them for a few songs, including "When Will You Die," in which Linnell worked "the horns" into the lyrics about the band.

That's not the song they're playing here, though.
During the improvisation at the end of "Spy," Linnell did a bit that sounded like it was from a commercial for a record of 1930s music. There were no surprises in the set, but I understand they'd been playing "Authenticity Trip" at recent shows, and that mentions the Hollywood Hills, so it would have made sense in that respect. Of course, it's also pretty obscure, being on an album that I don't think was released to stores. Every show of the Sparks tour has the same setlist, although they cut out two songs this time, specifically "The Toughest Girl in Town" and "Escalator." Stephanie mentioned that they're very strict about curfews at outdoor venues in the area. Interestingly, Russell did do a longer introduction for "We Go Dancing."

The Maels talked about how they'd seen the Beatles play at the Bowl when they were kids. It's interesting that the backing band for Sparks is kind of hidden in the background. Russell does introduce them, but they're not showcased. The Johns give a lot more attention to their band, although they still don't generally participate in the creative process...except on the children's albums, for some reason. A few people left the show early, including the other people in our box and the ones in the next box over. It's an unusual venue in the sense that they let you bring in food. Beth bought some Sparks souvenirs that hadn't been sold at other shows on the tour, plus a TMBG Hollywood sign T-shirt and a Flood tote bag. I got some Flood socks, so now all I need are some Flood pants.


Our original plan was to go to Magic Mountain on Monday, but that's difficult to get to without driving, and I had forgotten to bring my glasses. So we went to Universal Studios instead. I had wanted to see Super Nintendo World, and it does look really cool, but it's very small.

Most of the individual themed areas at the park are pretty small, but especially that one; and there really aren't too many rides in the place. The first thing we rode was the Simpsons Ride, a motion simulator with a narrative about Sideshow Bob trying to kill the family at Krustyland, and then elsewhere in Springfield.

In the line for the ride, TV screens show clips from various episodes, most of them related to amusement parks, plus a few bits recorded specifically for the ride. There do seem to be a surprising number of theme parks in the Springfield area, although Itchy & Scratchy Land is a few days' drive away according to its debut episode. There's a reference to how the Simpsons Ride replaced the Back to the Future one, with Professor Frink going back in time to try to stop Krusty from buying Doc Brown's lab, and Christopher Lloyd did the voice. The Mummy ride is a roller coaster with a lot of stuff to see, and at one point little tentacles grab at your feet, while Jurassic World is a log flume with dinosaurs, and the Transformers ride shakes you around a lot. I thought the voice for Wheelie sounded like Rob Paulsen as Yakko Warner, but apparently it's really Tom Kenney. That one requires glasses, presumably so you can see more than meets the eye. It's funny how many rides there and at the Disney parks have narratives about the ride going wrong. The only ride in the Nintendo area was the Mario Kart one, and it malfunctioned when we were close to getting on, although we did eventually get to ride. It was fun, although rides that are also games can be a little overwhelming. They put a LOT of work into the decorations you see when you're in line, starting with Yoshi's Island stuff and then making its way into Bowser's Castle.

I'd previously seen pictures of the bookshelves, which have many interesting titles. Who knew the Koopa King was that avid of a reader?

There were games in the Nintendo area you could play for an extra fee, mostly geared towards kids, but we didn't participate in that. A lot of Super Nintendo World kind of looked like one of those clocks with a bunch of stuff happening, in that everything moves around in a preset pattern. I wouldn't have minded getting a picture with Princess Peach, but our timing didn't work out. We did, however, get to meet Scooby-Doo, and with hardly any line.

Turns out it was really the guy from the amusement park.
Aren't the Hanna-Barbera characters now owned by Warner Brothers? I'm sure there are all kinds of complex licensing deals involved. The Simpsons are now a Disney property, but that didn't happen until some years after the ride opened. I remember when Scooby was at Kings Dominion in Virginia back in my childhood. We didn't realize that the studio lot tour ended at 8:15, so we missed that, and it was one of the things that interested me the most. I was less excited about the Harry Potter area, as it's hard not to think about J.K. Rowling's bigotry, but we did go on the two rides there. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is a virtual reality thing with appearances from many of the actors in the movies, and it was the roughest thing we rode.

The other, Flight of the Hippogriff, is a short roller coaster. For some reason, the train you ride in is made to look like wicker, which is pretty cool. Beth got a T-shirt with a Chain Chomp on it; while I bought some Mario Kart boxers and magnets, and a Bowser keychain. And I got a sunburn on the back of my neck. I understand it's even easier to get burned in Southern California than it is where we live, as there are hardly any clouds. Where's Lakitu when you need him?

We're back home now, but we'll be going to California again soon, as the events we wanted to attend there were too far apart. The next trip is for OzCon, but we'll also try to visit Magic Mountain.

Halloween is over, but I still have some spooky stuff to write about. Last Saturday, Beth and I went to Deno's Wonder Wheel Park on Coney Island, as it was the last weekend in the year the rides were running. We went on the Wonder Wheel, the Spook-A-Rama, and the Phoenix, the last of which is a small, slow roller coaster. They did have some Halloween decorations up, including a building entrance shaped like a zombie head.

I also always enjoy when rides have murals with seemingly random things in them. Like, this was what was in the back of the bumper car enclosure.

I get the cars and the car model, but a football player, Captain America, and the Statue of Liberty? If it's a patriotic thing, then why does the Statue look like she's been injured?


In the evening, we saw Weird Al at Carnegie Hall, with Emo Philips opening. This was the first time I'd ever been there, and I didn't even practice, just took the subway. It was the same kind of tour as the last time we saw him, with Al and his band playing mostly his original songs. They pulled out a few unexpected ones, like "Velvet Elvis" and "Good Old Days." When introducing "One More Minute," Al talked about how they performed it on network TV back in 1986, and the network insisted on censoring the line "I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue," which already doesn't make sense, but then they made it much worse by just bleeping the word "tongue." "Skipper Dan" is based on a time when the guide on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland mentioned his failed acting career, but Beth wondered after the show that it might have been awkward for Weird Al to just go on rides without being hassled. Maybe he went in disguise. For "Nature Trail to Hell," an appropriate choice for Halloween, he did the organ part on a midi accordion. Both "Craigslist" and "Albuquerque" were extended, the former including a long bit of free-form nonsense in the part about his being on a phone call with his mother. I know there was something about the snakes rising up, a phrase Al has used before. "Albuquerque" not only had more kinds of doughnuts and the band playing the beginning of the song again after the part about the narrator losing his train of thought, but also an apology for using the word "hermaphrodite." He said that, in that context, it was just a medical term. While Al generally manages to avoid problematic humor, he does have a tendency to use some mildly offensive words presumably just because they sound silly, particularly "midget" and "albino." And in the song, a later line refers to the hermaphroditic person as a man. "Dare to Be Stupid" was performed with a lounge arrangement. For the encore, there was a cover of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," then a mostly-acoustic medley of "Amish Paradise," "Smells Like Nirvana," "White & Nerdy," "Word Crimes," and "Yoda," the latter including the chant. This is the best of the pictures I was able to take from our seats in the back row.


We visited Tavie and Sean on Sunday, and watched some Halloween stuff, or actually rewatched it in my case. You can see my thoughts on revisits to The Halloween That Almost Wasn't and Return to Oz here. After that, we looked at a house in Flatbush that really went all out on Halloween decorations (well, I guess the owner went all out, not the house itself, although you never know during the spooky season).

We didn't do much on actual Halloween, aside from watch a few other things. We voted yesterday, and today we saw The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.

It's closing soon, so Beth bought tickets for it. She saw it before years ago, but I've only seen the 2004 movie version, although I did hear my dad's CD of selections from it a lot as a kid. It's a very impressive show, complete with a lot of lighting tricks and pyrotechnics. Although it wasn't really intentional that we saw it on Halloween week, I guess it's sort of appropriate, even if the version of the Phantom in the musical is much less monstrous in appearance than in other takes on the character. He's presumably somewhat supernatural as well, although I guess that's kind of ambiguous. A lot of his tricks are based on mechanics and stealth, but he did curse Carlotta. Or maybe that was psychosomatic. Still, if he has the ability to control minds to some extent, maybe Christine wasn't entirely in control of herself when she went down into the sewer with him. Otherwise, she comes across as kind of absurdly naive. I've heard, probably mostly from Beth, that there's a certain contingent who think Christine should have gotten into a relationship with the Phantom and who don't like Raoul. What did Raoul even do, aside from being upper class? She compared it to people who hate Cosette in Les Miserables, although it's not like Eponine was a serial killer. I remember reading a quote from Terry Pratchett, who wrote the Discworld equivalent of the story in Maskerade, that the message of the musical is that you can get away with murder if you're charming. I might have to read the original book; I understand it's not very long. If I do, I'll probably do a bit of comparison and contrast.

Speaking of spooky music, there's one short piece that I've heard over and over again in different contexts, but never knew what it was called or the original source. For instance, I remember hearing it in elementary school music class with the lyrics "We are here to scare you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo." Anyway, it's called "Mysterioso Pizzicato," and it was originally used in silent film scores as a theme for villains. I thought of it recently because I was looking up the music to Wizards & Warriors, which uses it as the boss theme.

On Thursday evening, we went to see Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk Cinema in Park Slope. That one is more convenient to get to than the one in Williamsburg. Before the show, we got some food at Dog Day Afternoon, a nearby hot dog place. I had the kielbasa with mustard. Kevin Maher's co-host this time was Amber Dextrous, and the theme of the evening was dinosaurs. Kevin started by listing the various types of media stories involving dinosaurs, including the period piece, the period piece with liberties, time travel, dimensional travel, the lost world, and the dinosaur theme park. The liberties usually mean humans living alongside dinosaurs, The Flintstones being the obvious example, but there were plenty of old movies that did the same thing in a less intentionally comedic way. The example for dimensional travel was Land of the Lost, but I actually thought of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was addressed later on in the show. For theme parks, Kevin forwent the one everyone knows in favor of the Martin Short film Clifford. I forgot if there were any more categories; I guess dinosaurs on another planet could be one, but that's kind of just the lost world with space travel. Paleontologist Riley Black, who had consulted on the Jurassic Park franchise, did a remote segment discussing prehistoric animals. Corey S. Powell talked about whether dinosaurs and humans could be friends, bringing up Sleestaks, Barney, and Dino. And Chris Cummins had some thoughts on comics featuring dinosaurs, starting with a batshit crazy Chick Tract that I remember talking about before, and also bringing up how DC's Star Spangled War Heroes series eventually started using dinosaurs. He showed some of his favorite dinosaur-related panels, including Fred and Barney talking about participating in a genocide from the gritty Flintstones comic, and the Kool-Aid Man meeting the Purplesaurus Rex.

I'm kind of surprised he didn't include this Spider-Man one that I see a lot online.

The Kindest Cut was something called Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills, with a medicine man turning Beverly D'Angelo into...well, you can figure that out from the title. They finished with a clip from the last episode of Dinosaurs, where Earl accidentally causes the Ice Age and extinction. I actually saw that one when it was new. Incidentally, they showed a few clips from Tammy and the T-Rex before the show, and I thought the dinosaurs from that movie looked similar to the ones from Dinosaurs. I don't think there's any real connection, but it was made during the run of the TV show.


On Saturday, we went to Six Flags Great Adventure. We used to go there kind of a lot, and even had season passes for a few years in the early 2000s, but it's been a while since our last visit. While we went to a lot of amusement parks last year, this wasn't one of them, even though it's fairly close. It's in central New Jersey, so it's about the same distance from where Beth grew up and where we live now. Fright Fest, their Halloween event, had already started, so there were a lot of appropriate decorations, and at night some employees walking around in costume, many of them dragging shovels along the pavement.

If nothing else, that's certainly a grating sound. Perhaps because it's so long before October, the park wasn't all that crowded, and most of the rides had pretty short lines. The longest wait we had was for Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, and that was more because of the way the ride works than because there were all that many people waiting; there's no way the lines can't move slowly for something like that.

It's a park that really focuses on roller coasters, and there are a lot of them there. We rode two that hadn't been there on our last visit, the Joker and the Jersey Devil Coaster. The former is one that not only goes along a track but also flips the cars around, while the latter has a narrow track that's quite twisty.

One weird thing about both of these is that they don't have anywhere to temporarily leave loose items while you ride, so Beth and I took turns on them. If the lines had been longer, I probably would have sprung for a locker. Skull Mountain, Nitro, Superman, and the Runaway Mine Train were all the same as they ever were, as far as I could tell.

Batman: The Ride is the same, but they got rid of a lot of stuff to see while waiting in line, and Alfred no longer does the ride announcements. We'd only been on the Dark Knight Coaster once before, but I remember it as having TV screens along the route, and they aren't there now.

Medusa was briefly rebranded as Bizarro, with a new paint job and some relevant decorations added along the track; but it was later restored to how it was before. I have no idea why the rebrand didn't stick, but I like the classic design better anyway. Presumably because it's right next to where the Joker is now, the small coaster Blackbeard's Train is now Harley Quinn's Crazy Train.

It's short, but they ran each load of passengers twice. I don't know if that's standard practice or just because there weren't many people in line. Kingda Ka and El Toro, which apparently both have a lot of problems, were both closed. We've ridden both before, but the former was having technical difficulties when it was new as well. The non-coaster rides we went on that I haven't mentioned yet were Houdini's Great Escape, the SkyScreamer, the Swashbuckler, Justice League: Battle for Metropolis, Cyborg Cyber Spin, the Big Wheel, the Carousel, and Parachute Training Center. I'd never been on the first one, although it's been there for a long time; I don't think I really noticed it before. The seats move up and down a bit, but most of the movement is illusionary, with parts of the room moving around. The SkyScreamer is like the standard swing ride, but goes up a lot higher; while the Swashbuckler is the kind of ride that pushes riders against the outside.

Battle for Metropolis is the kind of ride that's also a game, where you ride along a track and shoot at stuff on screens, with a story involving trying to rescue some captured members of the Justice League from the Joker and Lex Luthor. I don't think we'd been on any rides of this sort prior to this year, when we went on three (this, Toy Story Midway Mania at Disneyland, and Reese's Cupfusion at Hersheypark). By the way, Six Flags seems to have started doing candy promotion themselves in addition to the Looney Tunes and DC Comics stuff, with Mars as their sponsor.

Ferris wheels used to scare me despite being very tame rides, and I think the reason was that, due to the way they have to load, you're just stuck sitting up in the air for a while. Other rides go a lot higher, but don't stay there long enough for you to really absorb it. But the Giant Wheel didn't bother me this time. 


We don't see a lot of plays, but Beth was drawn in by an online ad for Death of a Salesman, so we saw it at the Hudson Theatre on Monday. She didn't really know anything about it, while I sort of did. I think it was something I was supposed to read in high school and didn't, but was able to gather the gist of it from class. Maybe I would have read it if I hadn't had so many other assignments at the same time. Or maybe I was just lazy. I don't know. Anyway, this production has Black actors playing the Loman family, with Wendell Pierce as Willy and Sharon D. Clarke as Linda, both reprising their roles from the recent London production.

Andre De Shields appears as Willy's rich brother Ben, who pretends to be wise but is really just full of crap, kind of like the Wiz.Its critique of measuring success through money and the American dream is still relevant today, although nowadays I'm pretty sure even a more successful traveling salesman wouldn't be able to afford a house in Brooklyn. Before the show, we ate at a nearby family style Italian place, which was quite good, and not that expensive when you consider that we were sharing the entree, baked ziti bolognese.

Okay, I guess that's all there is for now. It's supposed to get a little on the chilly side this weekend, but our building really cranks the heat up starting around the fall, so we'll probably still need fans and such.

Last Thursday, we went to Playland, an amusement park in Westchester County, New York. It's owned by the county, but it's been under new management for a few years, and they got rid of quite a few rides since the last time we were there. To be fair, they also added some, but it often seemed like a downward trade, and some of the newer ones weren't even running that day. It was already a small park, and now there's even less there. We ended up riding most things twice. One of the recent ones, Catch'n Air, is pretty rough and doesn't really do that much, so while it's new, it doesn't feel like a modern ride. The one with the motorcycles that you can raise into the air is pretty cool, although very small.

And why would they keep the Music Express but get rid of the similar but superior Thunder Bolt? I'm sure they had their reasons, but I don't know what they are. There used to be two different dark rides, Zombie Castle and the Flying Witch, really close to each other, and both were so generic that I couldn't have told you what was in which. Only Zombie Castle is there now, and they blurred out some zombie woman painted on the wall behind where you get on.

I really have no idea why, but fortunately I was able to find a picture I took years ago, so you can see what it looked like before.

The most entertaining thing about this ride is the use of old, scratchy voice samples. Another kind of cheesy ride is Ye Old Mill, where you ride a boat through caverns inhabited by gnomes and trolls.

I do think it used to splash you with water towards the end and now it doesn't, but that's probably for the better.

The Derby Racer is a favorite of mine, although I remember it going faster. Whether that's nostalgia or actually true, I couldn't say for sure; but I have to wonder if someone decided a ride with no harnesses or anything running at that speed was unsafe. It was also the first time we rode the Go-Karts or the Bumper Cars, and some people are weirdly competitive on stuff like that.

I feel I should also mention that one of the horses on the Carousel had lost its tail.

I hope Owl doesn't use it as a doorbell. It rained on and off during the day, and the cool part about that was a very visible rainbow. We actually first saw it from the Dragon Coaster, but couldn't take pictures until afterwards.

Speaking of dragons, it seems like the park is now downplaying Coaster, their dragon mascot. He's still there, as on the one sign I shared here, but not as much as he was before.

The other thing we did that's worth writing about was to see Tim Heidecker at the Bell House on Monday night.

His show had two parts, the first being a stand-up routine that he did in character as an angry but clueless right-winger, yelling at the sound guy, fumbling with props, mispronouncing simple names, and saying Justin Trudeau was worse than Hitler. He also did some pretty clever wordplay. After that came his set with the Very Good Band, and while he still made jokes and some of the songs were on the comical side, most of it was pretty straight country-tinged rock.

Vic Berger, the guy whose video edits will forever make me associate Donald Trump with airhorns, played keyboard and some guitar. Tim also did a solo bit where he covered Bob Dylan's 1981 song about Lenny Bruce, and made fun of how lazy the lyrics were.

While in Gowanus, I noticed a picture on a wall of Nefertiti, and a drawing of the Tower Tarot card on the sidewalk

It's way more concrete than most fortunes.