Stratovania

I had been meaning to see Curious Nature, the Alice in Wonderland exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden, for some time now. And, like the White Rabbit, I was pretty late in doing so, finally getting around to it in its last week, along with Beth. It was pretty enjoyable, and most of the stuff was clustered around a single area. The thing I had the most trouble finding was Alyson Shotz's mirror sculpture on the edge of the forest, which I walked right past before noticing.
The conservatory had items modeled on Victorian gardens, like the ones at Oxford in Lewis Carroll's time.
We ate at the Pine Grove Cafe and split a cookie with a picture of Alice on it.

It was all right, not great. And I still don't know whether looking-glass milk is good to drink. I don't even like drinking the regular kind. At the store, I bought a keychain and two pairs of socks, one with Alice and another with mushrooms. There were a lot of mushrooms around the place. A model cottage built by Andre Kong that referenced Alice growing to enormous size inside the Rabbit's house had bricks made of mushroom.

And one of the exhibits at the library included information on how common the use of psychedelic drugs was in the Victorian era, how they might have influenced Lewis Carroll's work, and how the connection was strengthened during the psychedelic movement in the 1960s. I'll admit that I think the drug thing is sometimes overemphasized in relation to Alice, not because there's no chance Carroll was referencing hallucinogens, but because I think the association is more that such drugs produce a dreamlike state than that the whole thing was one big drug trip. But then, I've never been high, so what do I know?

Another exhibit highlighted the scientific discoveries of the time, and mentioned The Water-Babies as a book that tied evolution to Protestant morality.

There were also works by Abelardo Morell, Agus Putu Suyadnaya, and Patrick Jacobs, the latter of whom contributed miniature dioramas.

The library seemed somewhat Carrollian in form itself, as only the even-numbered floors were accessible. I assume the others are for staff only, but the building doesn't look tall enough from the outside to have six stories. Outside the rose garden was a display of the white roses that were painted red.

There were a surprising number of roses still in bloom in the garden itself, but then, it was an exceptionally warm day for the end of October.

At the Reflecting Pool, there was a big topiary Rabbit.

There were a few other themes going on besides the Wonderland one, including some giant pumpkins (I assume these were set up before anyone knew about the recent Family Guy episode about that topic) and people and a horse with pumpkin heads.


Last Saturday was a Kevin Geeks Out show at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park, usually the easier one to get to, but this time the trains weren't all running. It was weird to have this in the daytime, and Kevin Maher had to make an effort to say "today's show" rather than "tonight's." The show was about horror television, including a montage of dream sequences, a look at the Crypt-Keeper's sartorial choices (complete with appropriate puns), an overview of Punky Brewster and Benson episodes where characters were murdered, and a game where we had to guess whether Elvira ever appeared on certain shows. The final clip was of her on the Super Mario Bros. Super Show; she was on there twice, and I'm pretty sure neither one made the DVD collection.

I tried the French toast sticks, which were good. After the show, we met Tavie and walked around Green-Wood Cemetery, where we've been many times, but it's so big that we ended up in a place I don't think we'd seen before. It had this pond.

Then we looked at the house that goes all out for Halloween, which is owned by a playwright.


We voted on Monday the twenty-eighth, and the polling place for early voting was closer than our usual one, so that was a good idea. If we'd voted on Halloween, however, we could have gotten special voting stickers. It's nothing unusual, but the election looks pretty bleak, and I'm dreading the aftermath. I don't really get why people support Donald Trump anyway, but it's even more worrying that he's even allowed to run after all the crimes he's committed. And the Supreme Court is basically in his pocket at this point. It's like there's no real safety net for the country anymore. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he'll win, but a lot of damage has already been done.

On Halloween itself, we saw a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Kings Theatre. This is the third time I've seen it with audience participation, the first time having been in college, when I didn't know what to think of it. I kind of thought it was going a little too much for shock value, and I don't think I really appreciated camp at the time. I guess it's a pretty weird thing to go into without context, and I don't think a campy sci-fi musical comedy is that strange by the standards of the seventies, if perhaps more overtly sexual than was normal for the time. Beth was always a fan, and I came to like it more later on. And the songs were always good. Barry Bostwick showed up to introduce the film, and someone helped him stretch out his leg.

There was also a costume contest, and the winners were two people in striped outfits with tall hats, making me think of They Might Be Giants' "Don't Let's Start" video. I don't know what they were actually supposed to be.


They still had Fright Fest at Great Adventure this weekend, and we had season passes that we'd only used once, so we went on Saturday.

We ate at Friendly's before getting there, and they had these cool bat-lamps.

They had mazes set up for the occasion, but those cost extra. We largely concentrated on rides we'd only been on once, like the Jersey Devil Coaster, Joker, Kingda Ka, and Green Lantern. I think we'd been on El Toro once before, but I can't remember for sure; it might have been our first time. That's a wooden roller coaster that goes really fast, making it pretty rough. We also rode the Giant Wheel, SkyScreamer, Skull Mountain, and Nitro.

We're planning to go back again for Holiday in the Park.

I guess the first thing I should mention is that we sort of have a new cat, and I say "sort of" because she's not living with us yet. Beth's mom got a kitten from her sister's farm, intending to give her to us, but we should kitten-proof our apartment before bringing her to Brooklyn. Anyway, I named her Nellie, and so far she mostly seems interested in running around and playing. She's very active, and hasn't yet shown much interest in just sitting with people. She doesn't seem afraid of anybody, though. I feel bad that she wants to play with the dogs, but they're not interested.


Beth and I both had our birthdays last week. On the day after hers, we had a pretty busy day, visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, eating at a cafe, attending a lecture at Green-Wood Cemetery, and seeing a movie.

The lecture was about cremation, including its history and how it was done at that location. It's been standard in India for ages, but it took some time to catch elsewhere, including in the Americas. Even though the Pope has said it's okay, it's apparently still not popular in Catholic families. There was a time when there was a theological debate over whether bodily resurrection would be possible with ashes. Now it's probably just a matter of tradition. They also mentioned that it's not very energy efficient, and involves burning fossil fuels. I don't see any reason to preserve my body after I'm dead, but I guess that's more a decision for anyone still alive who might care than for me. I haven't yet made my post about the movie Thanksgiving, but I should have it up soon. I didn't do anything on my birthday except going out to eat at the Olive Garden; I feel we went out to do stuff so often in October that I was a little burned out, and didn't have any ideas anyway.

Presents I received included two Carl Barks collections, the newest Belle and Sebastian album, and the book Fight, Magic, Items by Aidan Moher, which is about Japanese role-playing video games from a Western perspective.

Beth also bought me the Switch remake of Super Mario RPG while we were at Target. I finished the original back in the early 2000s, and I remember it being frustrating in parts, but I'm sure it'll be fun to revisit when I get around to it. I kind of got stuck in I Am Setsuna, so I've put that aside for the time being. And I started Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, but haven't gotten very far as of yet. It's cute, but I've had a little trouble with the battle system. And I'm still playing Animal Crossing, and I did the Turkey Day thing on Thursday. I realized I hadn't planted any white pumpkins on my island, so that's been taken care of. I also got "K.K. Birthday," which I think is the last of the K.K. Slider songs in the game, but I don't think there's any reward for that.

Super Mario Wonder looks fascinating, but as much as I love Mario, I'm not great at platform games.

Beth's mom made Thanksgiving dinner for us, and we were originally going to go to Creamy Acres for the Christmas hayride on Friday, but she wasn't feeling well. We'll try to do it some other weekend. We did have lunch with my mom, sister, sister-in-law, and nephew today. I've done a little bit of Christmas shopping, but not that much.

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.

After being cancelled last year, the Monster-Mania Convention was held in Cherry Hill this past weekend, so I suppose I should say something about it. Our friend Dave, who's an artist and musician, was there with his wife Krissy in one of the dealer rooms, so we checked in on them first. This was their first time going there. We mostly attended the question-and-answer panels, starting with Richard Brake and Jeff Daniel Phillips, who had been in Rob Zombie's 31 and 3 from Hell.

I hadn't realized that Brake had also played Joe Chill in Batman Begins. Based on his parts in the Zombie films, it's weird that he would have had a role where he didn't talk much. I understand he was also the Night King in Game of Thrones, or at least one of them, but I never watched that. He was born in Wales and now lives in London, but he spent his formative years in the American South and has a bit of a Southern accent. The next was with P.J. Soles, who was in Carrie and the first Halloween, and had a brief appearance in The Devil's Rejects where Sid Haig punched her and stole her car.

She talked about being in Stripes, which I haven't seen, and how Bill Murray was really moody while not on camera. On the other hand, she was also in Rock 'n' Roll High School (haven't seen that one either), and said the Ramones were pretty unassuming, and that she was initially confused by their music as she mostly listened to folk-rock stuff at the time.

Chris Durand, Michael Myers from Halloween H2O, did the next panel. There was a wait after that for the next panel in a different room, with Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich from Scream, who moderated the Q&A themselves.

Both that one and the one with Richard Brake had a lot of talk about removing shirts. The last guest to do a panel was Danny Trejo, who's always interesting.

People like a good redemption story, after all. It really wasn't very many sessions compared to previous conventions. They'll often have a few with a whole bunch of guests who worked on the same movie or franchise, and the maximum they had here was two at a time. I don't know if that was for health reasons or because no one really wanted to do them. I suspect some guests choose not to do them because that's time they could be making money from autographs and merchandise sales, but I don't know that for sure.

After the convention, we ate at the Cheesecake Factory for the first time. I found it surprisingly expensive for a place with a name like that, but I probably wouldn't get the pretzel and cheese fondue appetizer again anyway, not because it was bad but because that plus the meal was a little much. I still haven't finished my pasta or tried the slice of cheesecake I brought home. I'm hoping it's good, as that's what their name emphasizes, but that doesn't always work out. I mean, are olives the specialty at the Olive Garden? I also found out the next day that I'd left my credit card there, and while it wasn't that far out of the way, that area is confusing to navigate even with the GPS. We ended up getting home pretty late, and I had to get up earlier than usual today, so that wasn't fun. I had jury duty today, and I have to go back tomorrow for further questioning or narrowing down or something. I've had jury duty several times and never been selected, but I don't know what's going to happen this time. So far it's mostly just been waiting, and I finished both of the books I brought today, Philip John Lewin's The Spellcasters of Oz and Angelica Shirley Carpenter's Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist. The thing is, I have a digital book due back at the library in a few days, but I'm not allowed to bring electronic readers.

I turn the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything today. Forty-two is a number Lewis Carroll used a lot as well, and I've written on the topic of recurring numbers before. Friday was Beth's birthday, but I couldn't think of anything to give her. I did order a few things, one of which came today, but she's gotten harder to shop for, as she already has a lot of books and buying DVDs isn't really necessary anymore.

To go back even further, on Wednesday, we saw a presentation on Halloween at Green-Wood Cemetery, which I have to wonder if they had to delay for some reason. It was pretty interesting, and the presenter brought some old decorations with her. One thing I particularly recall is how older decorations often focused on the harvest, while now the only real remnant of that aspect of the holiday is the pumpkins. We went to Friendly's on Friday, then to the Olive Garden on Saturday and Applebee's on Sunday. Today, we went to Pizzeria Uno, which isn't all that exciting as it's right around the corner and we go there fairly often, but I couldn't think of any better ideas. I really don't think the shrimp and crab dip is as good as it used to be, though. There are apparently no longer pieces of shrimp in it, unless they just messed it up that time. Maybe next time we can try the garlic bread instead. As for my presents, Beth gave me St. Vincent's MassEducation, Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn for 3DS, and a book of Dragon Quest illustrations; her mom gave me some shirts; Uncle John gave me Volume 1 of the Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive (the one covering the games I'm more familiar with, I through VI); and my brother gave me FF and DQ mangas.

I attended my first monster truck show yesterday. It's not something I would have thought of doing on my own, but it was fun. Beth had never been to one either, but she'd been interested for a long time, so she suggested going to Monster Jam when there were commercials for it at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey (pretty close to where we used to live in Secaucus). They had shuttle buses running there from Port Authority, so it was pretty easy getting there. We'd been to the IZOD Center before, but this was the first time we'd been to the stadium, which is where the Giants and Jets play. The show was in three parts: racing, two-wheel stunts, and freestyle. It got a little repetitive, but it was quite impressive to see the trucks going airborne, spinning around on their sides, doing flips, and more. They flipped over a few times, which was pretty disturbing, but they took it in stride. I was interested in the names of the trucks, which were a bit of an odd mix. There was one that was just called Monster Energy after its sponsor, but I don't think any of them others were named that way.

Gravedigger was there, and also a truck called Son-Uva Digger, which I guess was named in honor of the more famous one. Another was Monster Mutt Dalmatian Ice, which seems like they just used every single name suggestion people came up with.

That was one of only two with a woman driver. And Kraken, although named after a giant cephalopod, looked to me like it had a frog-like face.

Oh, well. Ray Harryhausen got the Kraken wrong first. Beth and I were both hoping for some trucks crushing cars, but maybe that's a different kind of show? I wonder if I would have liked this as a kid. There were a lot of really excited children in the audience. It's like how I sometimes wish I'd gotten into pro wrestling in my younger days. Oh, also, someone complimented my Super Mario Bros. T-shirt.

I don't have much else to say, but I feel I should mention that I was noticed in the Don't Let's Start podcast in relation to a newsgroup post I wrote years ago suggesting a connection between the song "Fake Out in Buenos Aires" and Jorge Luis Borges. I mentioned it again when I looked at the Then: The Earlier Years bonus tracks. I actually came across something recently mentioning how Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings, which I was obsessed with in high school and which was mostly descriptions of mythological beings, included a few that Borges just made up, including the peryton. My post on the Yellow Emperor also mentions a story in the book that doesn't seem to have any actual mythological source.

Our landlord is selling the building where we live, and we have to leave by the first of next month. We had been thinking of moving anyway, but it's complicating the process. I don't think anyone likes moving, but do they have recurring bad dreams about packing like I do? Actually, I've been so concerned about finding a new place, as well as other unrelated things, that I haven't even been thinking that much about packing, but I'm still dreading it. I did get an extension on my temp job, so if it lasts until the current projected end date, I'll have had it for more than a year. It seems to be easier to find a new home when you have a job.

On Tuesday, Beth and I went to an underwater puppet show. It's something she'd heard about on WNYC, and I knew nothing about. The puppets were spongy and mop-like, giving the effect of sea creatures swimming around. It was accompanied by a solo pianist playing Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. Pretty reminiscent of one of the more abstract segments of Fantasia. After the show, they let us go backstage and see the workings of the puppets in the tank.


Thursday was our fourth Kevin Geeks Out show, hosted by Kevin Maher. Each show has a theme, although the different presenters can go in very different directions within that theme. Most of it is clips from and discussion of movies and television, although some other media occasionally sneak in as well. This time, the topic was detectives. One presentation was on the hard-boiled detective genre, focusing largely on Sam Spade and including clips from two versions of The Maltese Falcon. (It was made three times, but he said the second one was terrible.) It's a genre where I haven't read any of the authentic stuff, but pretty much every writer has done an homage or parody of it at some point. Robert Rankin's recurring character Lazlo Woodbine, who narrates in the first person no matter how the rest of the book is written and purports to only work in four locations (he usually ends up in more, but makes excuses), comes to mind. We saw some bits from a cartoon with Garfield as Sam Spayed. Yeah, they went there.

Another, by Maher himself, was on how pretty much every private detective on TV in the eighties was a Vietnam veteran, including the Equalizer, Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, and the A-Team. There was a discussion by Gena Radcliffe (who apparently knows our friend Tavie; it's weird how many previously unknown connections we're discovering) on cartoons that ripped off Scooby-Doo, all made by Hanna-Barbera themselves, with mystery-solving teenagers and a talking animal or other similarly gimmicky character. The presenter mentioned how so many of them have a character who looks and sounds like Shaggy, but this is never addressed even when they cross over.

There was one that covered Cadfael, a British show based on a series of books about a monk in twelfth-century England who did primitive sleuthing and forensic analysis. I don't think I'd heard of it before, but it's a fascinating idea. Another addressed Dick Tracy, and the bizarre special where Leonard Maltin interviewed Warren Beatty in character as Dick, years after the movie flopped. It gets particularly weird when the character talks about Beatty. The final presentation focused on Murder, She Wrote, and included clips from an exercise video Angela Lansbury released during the time she was on the show.

Aside from moving, my other plans for the future include the Oz Convention in August, for which I'm currently trying to work out my rooming situation. I'd wanted to bring a costume, but most of the ideas I've had so far weren't totally practical, especially considering that I'm flying there. I considered Orpah, the merman from The Giant Horse of Oz, but I don't know what to use for the crutches, and even if I did I couldn't easily bring them on the plane. I do have another idea, but I don't know if I'll end up doing it.

Within the past few days, bethje and I attended a performance of Les Miserables at the Imperial Theater and the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. I wasn't originally supposed to go to the former, but the person Beth had originally planned on going with canceled. I read the book a few years ago at Beth's behest, and one thing I noticed about the musical interpretation was that it came across as much more sympathetic to Eponine. Victor Hugo presented her as ugly and annoying, while in the play she's the one everyone tends to identify with. I can't help but suspect the main reason Marius wasn't interested in a relationship with her is that he didn't want to have to meet her parents. After the show, we ate at the Heartland Brewery, which Beth considers her favorite restaurant in New York City. I can't say I have one of those, at least not yet. The food is quite good, but expensive. I can't say I've ever tried the beer, but I'm not a fan of beer anyway. It kind of seems wrong to go to a place that advertises itself as a brewery and NOT have beer, but I guess that's like saying you're doing Burger King wrong if you don't get a burger, or that you shouldn't build any animal other than a bear at Build-a-Bear Workshop.

Speaking of feeling like I'm doing something wrong, I've attended the Monster-Mania Convention many times, and I'm still not sure I'd really consider myself a horror fan. I guess I am by extension, since Beth has shown me a lot of stuff she liked, and it's not like I didn't enjoy it. I'd probably feel more at home at an Oz convention, and there actually WAS one of those this past weekend, but it was in California. I would like to attend that sometime, though. Maybe next year. Anyway, the two of us mostly just attend the question-and-answer panels, but they weren't as interesting this year as some of them have been in the past. When a guest shows up but doesn't do a Q&A, I always wonder if they weren't asked or they chose not to. It DOES take up time they could use to make more money signing autographs, but it's also a sign of goodwill. Sid Haig is always a good panelist, and he was supposed to do a Q&A last time, but was too sick to attend. Still, however, he didn't do one this time either. Another guest I would have thought would be a shoe-in for a panel was George Wendt, if only because I think the audience yelling out "NORM!" would have made it worthwhile. And yes, Wendt was in a horror movie, the 1986 House, as was Richard Moll who played Bull on Night Court. I wonder if he ever does conventions.

Guests who did have panels included some actors from the Godzilla films, Mitch Peleggi (Director Skinner from The X-Files), Denis O'Hare, Danielle Harris and George P. Wilbur from the Halloween series, Alex Vincent and Brad Dourif from Child's Play, Malcolm McDowell, and several actors from Scream.
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We've gotten into the habit of eating at the nearby Friendly's after the convention, and this time was no exception. I do kind of wish someone else we knew attended these conventions. Looking through the posts of other attendees on Facebook, I did come across this. I don't know the guy, but I DO know the person who drew the picture that's on his shirt. I probably would have freaked out if I'd seen it in person, but I think he was there the day before we were.

Hey, I've finally written another short story! I don't know why, but my writing often seems to come in short bursts. I'll be totally unmotivated for months, then suddenly sit down and crank out a draft in just a few sittings. I'll get to the actual piece in a little bit, but first some background information.

One topic I find myself frequently coming back to is that of fiction and mythology set on the Moon, particularly that predating mankind actually making the giant leap to there in 1969. Earlier this year, I examined the short film A Trip to the Moon, as well as the alleged visits by Lucian of Samosata and Baron Munchausen. And about four years ago, I gave a brief overview of lunar folklore from around the world, including the Man in the Moon and other supposed inhabitants of the place. One element that interested me was that, while many cultures see a man when they look at the Moon, it's common in China and Japan to see a rabbit instead. Then there's the fact that the Man in the Moon makes appearances as a rather eccentric character in a few works by L. Frank Baum. He's the protagonist of a story in Mother Goose in Prose, puts in a brief cameo in Queen Zixi of Ix, and is depicted in one of John R. Neill's illustrations for Ozma of Oz. Chris Dulabone's recent Three-Headed Elvis Clone Found in Flying Saucer Over Oz uses the character as well. And there's a brief mention in Ruth Plumly Thompson's The Enchanted Island of Oz of King Rupert of Kapurta "looking thoughtfully up at the moon," which I've seen interpreted (although I forget just where) as an indication that he might want to visit there. So I decided to take an idea I'd had for some time and tie it all together, resulting in a story that's both a sequel to Enchanted Island and a mixture of Moon mythology. Enchanted Island was published in 1976, but since it's based on a manuscript Thompson wrote in the fifites, Joe Bongiorno's Royal Timeline of Oz places it in 1953. This date means that I could have Thompson's characters visiting the Moon some time before the Apollo 11 mission (or ANY space missions, for that matter), but unfortunately also meant I couldn't tie in Yankee's lunar orbit from Yankee in Oz. The idea of the Man in the Moon's wife being a giantess actually comes from a Thompson short story, "The Giant Who Did Not Believe in People," which appears in her Wonder Book. Anyway, without further delay, here's the story:
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So, what do you think? Too loony for you, perhaps?

Last Thursday was bethje's birthday, and after we had both finished work, we went out to eat at the Olive Garden. I had the Tour di Mare and was sick afterwards, but I don't know that it was from that. Regardless, my favorite part of it was the shrimp and crab ravioli, and I wish they still had that as a separate dish. Then we went to the movies to see Wreck-It Ralph, which I reviewed on my WordPress. There's not too much to report about Friday or Saturday, although we did eat at the recently reopened Denny's near Beth's mom's place. Not that that's too exciting, but I enjoyed it. They have that Hobbit menu now, but I didn't order anything from it, although the Hobbit Hole Breakfast did sound good. Maybe if I go back there again before they're finished with that menu. Speaking of which, I'd sort of like to re-read The Hobbit before the movie comes out. I found my annotated edition, so maybe I'll start on that after finishing The Woman Who Died a Lot. I also just recently obtained The Mark of Athena.

Today is my own birthday, and I'm usually pretty depressed on my birthday. Not so much because I'm getting older, a leading cause of birthday depression if greeting card jokes are properly representative, but more because of loneliness. It's sort of a selfish loneliness when you get right down to it, though. I'm jealous of people whose friends throw them birthday parties, but it's not like I do anything special for anyone else's birthday. But then, people should know me well enough to realize I'm terrified of making the first move. I spend a lot of time alone by choice, but I do like to be the center of attention. I'm grateful for the Facebook comments, of course, but the birthday thing reminds me I still haven't mastered the art of making and keeping friends. My mom and siblings did come to visit today, and we went out to the Olive Garden. I got something different this time and didn't get sick, so that's good, right?