Stratovania

It's past Christmas, so here's a post on what we've been up to. I should start by mentioning that Beth's mom had a heart attack this month, which was very disturbing. She's back home from the hospital now and recovering well, but that definitely affected our plans.


On Wednesday the seventeeth, Beth and I went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I think this is the first time we went there when it had recently snowed, but it wasn't as cold as it had been in previous years. One installation they hadn't had before was a set of lights representing an orchestra, with the appropriate ones lighting up at different parts of an instrumental version of "Sleigh Ride." There was a podium where you could pretend to conduct, which I did.

They also had giant lilies, butterflies, and birds.

I had a hot apple cider and a soft pretzel while there.

That same week, we set up our Christmas tree.

We'd bought real ones for the past few years, but this time we borrowed an artificial one from Beth's mom's house, and it was over thirty years old. It's nice not to have to worry about the tree shedding needles or requiring water. Felix still likes to sit under it.


This past weekend, we visited my dad in Pennsylvania, and my sister, my brother, and his wife and son stopped by as well. We exchanged gifts while there, and we watched a movie that I'll share my review of shortly. I used to visit my mom while I was in the area, so it made me sad that I can't do that anymore. We drove back on Sunday, and the following day after work, we saw John Waters at the City Winery.

I had thought most of the previous shows of his we'd seen were fairly similar, but this one had a lot of new material. Much of it was non-stop and rapid-fire. He mentioned something about how the worst plot device (or something like that) in one of his movies was the revelation that Tab Hunter was having an affair with Divine's mother in Polyester, and that did seem rather out of left field. He also commented on appreciating the work that went into Wicked, but that making the Wicked Witch of the West, one of his favorite characters when played by Margaret Hamilton, into a singing chanteuse doesn't work for him. He then repeated something I'd heard him say before, that he asked a kid if he liked The Wizard of Oz, and the child said it was mostly just walking. That's even more true of the book than the movie, but I think I've just come to accept that a lot of classic fantasy is mostly travelogue.


For actual Christmas, we visited Beth's mom and uncle, and did our present exchange there.

Among other presents, I received a stuffed Mario Kart banana peel, a T-shirt with Luigi running from a Boo, Rosalina's Storybook, a book on Celtic mythology and another on John the Baptist, a Lily Allen album, a Kent Brockman figure, Mario and Luigi: Brothership for the Switch, and Nostalgia for the DS.

The turkey we were going to have for dinner was frozen solid, so we had take-out Chinese food before we headed back to Brooklyn. And today we both worked, but I got to go home early because of the snow. There were things we had meant to watch before Christmas, but we didn't get around to it for various reasons. We did do our annual viewing of Home Alone, and afterwards Beth watched something online (I just heard the audio) about deleted scenes from the movie. There was a mention of a theory that Kevin gave the police the neighbors' address and then lured Harry and Marv there because he was still afraid he'd get arrested for accidentally stealing a toothbrush, which I guess makes sense in little kid logic. As it was, it seemed weirdly unnecessary, and doing the phony voice might have made the cops suspect it was a prank call. For that matter, not only did he have no guarantee that the burglars would chase him, but they received so many blows to their heads that a normal person probably wouldn't have been conscious enough to run after him. And Home Alone 2 gives no impression that his family ever found out (from the cops, the neighbors, the news, or whatever) that several houses in the neighborhood were robbed while Kevin was home alone, let alone he had a run-in with the robbers.

I've been feeling pretty lethargic recently, and haven't even felt like playing video games that much. I have done a few things in the past few weeks that are probably worth talking about, though. It was Beth's mom's birthday on the twenty-fifth of last month, and we visited and went to the zoo in Bridgeton, where I felt the need to pose with animal statues.

Beth was wearing her Frasier hat, so I tried to get a picture of her with some cranes, but it didn't come out very well. There were several peacocks wandering around the place.

One of the lemurs was sitting on a sliding board.

These pigs with long ears and tails were interesting.

And they had some leopards and tigers that reminded me of our cats in a few respects.

Black cats usually remind me of panthers. I believe black panthers are actually leopards, but cougars are also sometimes called panthers. These designations aren't always that specific. One of the lemurs And my mother-in-law shoved me into a lion fountain. Somehow, I survived.


On the first of this month, we saw Scott Thompson perform as Buddy Cole at the City Winery, which is a pretty inconvenient venue, but they've had a few things we've been interested in.

The last show we saw there was John Waters, and while Scott is younger, they both came from a time when being gay was much more dangerous and subversive, and seem somewhat bemused by that community today. Then on that Thursday, we saw a Kevin Geeks Out show at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. It was about advertising, with topics including how slogans are used in movies and television, with Kevin Maher mentioning that he thought there would be more characters using them as one-liners when killing somebody. He made up for it with a video of various Arnold Schwarzenegger kill scenes with somewhat relevant slogans dubbed in. Steve Young, a former writer for David Letterman, had two segments, one on collectible playing cards advertising local businesses, often with bizarrely lazy art; and another on records of stock clips and jingles to play in radio commercials. On our way back to the subway, I noticed some art by Molly Crabapple, who did a lot of work for Max Fractal (formerly Kim Boekbinder), and whose book I own.

Our next show was EXTC at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan last Thursday.

I believe the concept started when Terry Chambers, the drummer for XTC on their first five albums and a bit of the sixth, did some shows with Colin Moulding. Colin isn't part of the touring band now, but Terry still plays, and the set includes songs from after Terry had left the band. It's done with the blessing of Andy Partridge, who stopped playing live after a panic attack in 1982. The rest of the band consists of Steve Hampton on lead vocals and guitar, and Terry Lines on bass and backing vocals.

The songs were all performed quite closely to the studio recordings. Steve didn't replicate all of Andy's vocal oddities, but I'm not sure Andy could anymore either. It was a fun time. I bought a CD there, but I haven't listened to it yet.


I'll also mention that I got my sketchbook from Becca Whitaker, whom I've known online for a long time, and it's full of colorful pin-ups based on popular media. There's a section of cereal mascots, which is up my alley even though I don't eat a lot of cereal. Mermaids and horror icons are also well-represented. For my copy, she drew Artemis and Jack Pumpkinhead.

And today, I received these from Vylirium.

There's a lot of cool art online, and I haven't really put any of it on display, despite having lived in the same place for almost seven years. I need to clean up first, and it's difficult to get motivated. You'd think being able to decorate would BE the motivation, but I guess we're back to the lethargy again.

We saw Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park the Thursday before last. The theme was sidekicks, and there were several presentations on that topic. One interesting thing is that two of these were Christmas-themed at a time way out of season, one about Krampus and another espousing the possibility that Hermey from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer could be a psychopath, comparing him to Norman Bates. Also addressed was how sidekicks are often framed in ways that diminish them, even when they're technically more competent than the heroes. A discussion of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet (the latter canonically being the former's nephew) pointed out how calling the character "Lone" when Tonto does a lot of the work isn't really fair, and that Bruce Lee's Kato was the one who did most of the fighting. There was also a mention of Dick Tracy's racist sidekicks from the sixties animated series, Joe Jitsu and Go Go Gomez. Not that I think these characters were intended to be offensive; that's just how it comes off with how they're written. The Kindest Cut was of a movie called Sidekicks, described as a combination of The Karate Kid and Walter Mitty, as the boy in it is constantly daydreaming about fighting alongside Chuck Norris. The game we played was about who out of two characters is the sidekick, based on the opinions of ten people, and some of them were ties.


The other day, we went to a Franz Ferdinand show at the Brooklyn Paramount. We'd gone there a few months ago for Ben Folds, but that time they had chairs, and this time it was standing room only. The opener was a band called Telescreen, and I had no strong opinion about their music, but they seemed to attract some obnoxious fans who yelled a lot. I don't know how many of them were the same ones who insisted on moshing during the headliner. What's weird about that is that I noticed a sign at the entrance that forbade moshing, and I didn't think it was anything we'd have to worry about. I've never understood wanting the possibility of being seriously injured or doing that to someone else at a concert. I'm lucky nothing worse happened than a guy stepping on my foot. The performance itself was good, though, with all the hits and everything. The set did not include "The Fallen," which normally wouldn't merit a mention, but I had just mentioned to Beth recently that they should have changed the lyric to "Who gives a damn about the profits of Tesla?" Alex Kapranos still has a lot of energy.

I know he had a kid recently, which is what one of the songs on the newest album is about, but he didn't say anything about that onstage.


Last night was a Bruce McCulloch show at the Bell House. I think it was pretty similar to the last time we saw him. I can't remember for sure, but some of it was definitely familiar, and some not. It was a combination of monologues, songs, and just jokes. He quoted a newspaper review of an earlier performance in Wayne, New Jersey, about how it (or possibly the Kids in the Hall in general?) had a narrative that even Frank Zappa couldn't understand, then he kept calling back to that.

There's something else I wanted to get off my chest, which is that I saw a post on the OzCon International Instagram about how Emma Ridley, who played Ozma in Return to Oz, although her voice was dubbed by somebody else. I had followed her on social media for a while, but she turned out to be a fervent Trump supporter, and I don't know whether this is a relatively recent development or not. I know some people who have met her before have mentioned her being really friendly, but that doesn't preclude awful politics. She's shared some really obvious lies about how he's actually trying to help people, and fight child trafficking and bring about world peace, which makes no sense if you know anything at all about Trump, and of course he's been well nigh impossible to avoid for pretty much my entire lifetime. While I don't recall seeing anything specific about it, she's apparently also transphobic, which is kind of ironic if you know about the character she played. So some people called out the post, and it looks like it's just been deleted.

The previous week or so was pretty busy. On Thursday the fifth, there was a Kevin Geeks Out that was different from the usual format. Kevin Maher wrote his own parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie, which was about a vampire lawyer from New York going to a small town in Vermont and falling in love with a werewolf. It was mostly just people performing, although it did have costumes and stock projected backgrounds to set the scenes. As such, they could include the sort of jokes common in radio comedy, where they wouldn't work if you could see what was happening. There was one bit about a piece of art that the protagonist loved and thought would win a contest, which was later shown to be nutmeg with googly eyes. And the inhabitants of the Vermont town had different regional accents, like a Minnesota one for the woman who owned the local diner. There were a few presentations of the more normal sort, one about courtroom scenes in holiday movies and another about how vampires and werewolves hate each other, but they were presented in-character. I get the impression that the rivalry between vampires and werewolves in fiction is fairly recent, like that between elves and dwarves. Interestingly, Tolkien actually used both, the Elf/Dwarf thing being well-known, but there are references in Beren and Luthien to how much vampires hate werewolves, even though both serve Sauron. But in folklore, there was a lot of overlap between vampires and werewolves. Dracula could control wolves and turn into one.


On Sunday, we went with Beth's mom and Uncle John to Batsto, where they had exhibits about the village in the old days, with the mansion being open to guests.

There also had free hot apple cider and cookies, and horse-drawn carriage rides.

We also visited one of the new Spirit Christmas stores, where we walked around the whole place but didn't buy anything.

I did stand in the giant Santa boots. And I like these snack-themed pillows, although I don't know if I'd want to own one.


Tuesday was a Micky Dolenz show at the City Winery in Manhattan, held in the upstairs area where we hadn't been that often before, if at all. They have tables so people can eat food and drinks, but it's an awkward way to watch a concert when the seats aren't actually facing the stage. We'd heard most of the songs he did and his introductions to them before, but he did do Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," and he mentioned that Stephen Stills was Peter Tork's roommate, and he also auditioned for the Monkees.

There were two Christmas songs in the mix, "Riu Chiu" and "Run Rudolph Run," which the band played without Micky. That song sounds a lot like "Johnny B. Goode," which was also in the setlist.

Paul Schaefer introduced the show, talking about how he worked with Don Kirschner and doing an impression of him, and he played keyboard on a few of the later songs.

Then we saw Micky again on Sunday at the Bergen Performing Arts Center. Beth had bought tickets for that one before the New York show was announced, and tried to sell the tickets, but was unsuccessful.

It was mostly the same, but he did play Elton John's "Your Song," which he hadn't at City Winery. He introduced it by talking about how he and Elton wore the same T-shirt at a party in Los Angeles.

There was also a screen, they had an intermission, and Paul wasn't there. This was after we tried to find a store in a nearby mall and not only didn't, but most of the stores were closed on a Sunday during the holiday shopping season.

I know online ordering has killed a lot of physical shopping, but I'm sure there would still have been some. It might be some weird county rule, as some of the Targets around there were also closed.


We had tickets for Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Thursday, and it was pretty similar to past years, but not exactly the same. Everything looks really pretty lit up while you're there, but it doesn't photograph that well. It was really cold out that night, despite the weather generally being incredibly warm for this time of year as of late, which was another reason I didn't want to take a lot of pictures. The Singularity and the butterflies in the pond outside the conservatory were cool.


They Might Be Giants played at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn on Friday night (the thirteenth), and it was a longer than usual show with no opener and an intermission.

It's a big venue, and it looked pretty full. John Flansburgh said at the beginning that they were showcasing John Henry, and they did eight songs from that album: "Snail Shell," "Unrelated Thing," "Spy," "No One Knows My Plan," "Dirt Bike," "Meet James Ensor," "Out of Jail," and "The End of the Tour." John Linnell did a bit presumably based on an old record commercial during the improvisational bit of "Spy," which I think he also did the last time we saw the band live. And Flansburgh mixed up the lyrics to "Dirt Bike," but since it's not a song they do often and a lot of the words are just "[da-da-da] dirt bike," that's understandable. They recently brought back the Stick, which is literally a big stick that Flans bangs on the stage for "Lie Still, Little Bottle," a bit that theyhadn't done in a long time.

Horn players Mark Pender, Dan Levine, and Stan Harrison joined the band on some songs, and Dan Miller played the solo at the end of "Damn Good Times" from the balcony.

Flans also talked about how he was responsible for the drones flying over New Jersey.

We finally got our Christmas tree on Tuesday, and decorated it yesterday. I know it's late in the month, and we ended up getting a smaller one than usual, but that means it took less time to set it up.

I don't know that I'm feeling that festive just now, but it's something I would have regretted not doing. I've never been someone who disliked the holidays; they were just a lot easier when other people were setting them up.

We brought our new cat, Felix, back from the shelter the Friday before last. I assume he's named after the cartoon, but I can't say I know too much about it, other than that he has a bag of tricks. I haven't seen this guy use such a bag, but maybe that's the trick. The first few days, he hid under the bed most of the time, and Nellie was hissing and growling at him. I know that can be a thing for cats, but I was hoping it wouldn't with her, since she was still a kitten and usually gets along with everybody. She did eventually stop, however, and now she tends to follow him around.

He's gotten better about exploring the apartment as well, although I still have an unfortunate tendency to startle him. Beth thinks it's because I move around loudly. If he's in a calmer mood, he really likes to be petted, and will lean into your hand. He's a very handsome cat. It takes a lot of stress off my mind that I know he's eating, drinking, and using the litterbox. I know he eats Nellie's kitten food even though I've put out regular cat food for him, but I can't really avoid that unless I feed Nellie at specific times, and that's a hassle. I don't think it's hurting him to eat kitten food, but it means I have to buy it more frequently.


On Thursday, we saw the Kevin Geeks Out show about mental health at the Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park, the easier one to get to. It seemed shorter than usual, and there was no Kindest Cut. Whether it actually WAS shorter, I don't know. But anyway, it was fun. There was discussion on how media, especially back in the eighties and nineties, tended to show mental illness that didn't reflect any actual disorders, or if someone does have a diagnosis, they show totally unrelated symptoms. They also have an uncanny ability and desire to help seemingly normal people. One of Kevin Maher's bits was about psychiatric professionals in horror movies, and how they're usually portrayed as awful, examples being Nightbreed, Friday the 13th Part VII, Cult of Chucky, and Poltergeist III, in the latter being used in a way that pretty much contradicts the first movie. He ended it by saying that the doctor in Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is much better, but also looks like Bill Maher.

One thing I've seen mentioned before that I don't think came up at the show was how fictional media rarely make distinctions between psychologists and psychiatrists; therapists are always prescribing medicine. I guess this is just to make things simpler. Max Bank did an in-character segment as an acting coach who teaches method acting for portraying the mentally ill. Another presentation was about how characters in shows for young children are often way more chipper than they were back in the seventies or so, complete with clips of how Daniel Striped Tiger from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood being incredibly depressed. I'm sure this is the kind of thing that goes in cycles to some degree and doesn't apply to every kids' show, but it was an interesting look. And there was a game where the audience guessed whether a particular brand had ever said anything about mental health on social media.

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.

Halloween is over now, and I hope you're enjoying all the saints and all the souls. It's gotten cooler after some really warm days for October. I like not having to wear a jacket, but eighty degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) is just too much at this time of year. Anyway, here are a few things Beth and I went to recently.


On Friday, we visited the Queens County Farm Museum, which is not just a museum but an operating farm in Queens, dating back to 1697.

They had a few fall events, including a hayride and a corn maze. The former was short, and not haunted or anything, just a ride around the farm. The latter, known as the Amazing Maize Maze, was only the second one we'd been to, the other a smaller one in Delaware.

The way it was set up was that there were nine different mailboxes to find, each of which had a piece of a rough map of the maze. It was frustrating, because I could sometimes see the boxes, but not know how to get to them. Don't kids do these sometimes? We started around 4:30, and it officially closed at 5:30, at which point we'd only found maybe six of the mailboxes. While trying to make it back out again, though, we somehow came across the remaining ones. I suppose the trick is to not look for them. We saw several animals, too.<
I also bought two apple cider doughnuts while there, and was hoping to get a small bottle of apple cider, but we didn't have time after the maze. I did already buy some cider at the grocery store a few days earlier, though.


On Saturday, we saw a Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra performance. We had season tickets to these in the past, but this is the first one we'd attended in a while. It was called Eerie Happenings, and had spooky music, including Mendelssohn's Chorus of Druids and Witches from Die erste Walpurgisnacht (which is actually at the end of April), Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and several Dies Irae pieces. The conductor joked that he couldn't mention Mickey Mouse or Fantasia by name. The Dies Irae is a Gregorian chant about the end of the world quoted in a lot of other stuff, and they played versions by Mozart and Verdi. Beth asked which one I liked better, and I preferred the latter, as it was more exciting. Liszt's Totentanz also uses it, but in a different style. After the show, we went to a place called 8-Bit Bites, of which there are a few locations in the city. It has a fun aesthetic, with lamps shaped like Super Mario question blocks, and a door that makes the sound of Mario growing bigger when it's opened.

There are a few different machines with multiple games on them, but we didn't play any. I had a chicken sandwich and a berry milkshake with pieces of Crunch Berries in it.

On actual Halloween, we saw a comedy show at the Bell House hosted by Joe Pera and Dan Licata. I didn't know what to expect from it, as all I really knew was that Pera was a comedian known for his slow, sincere delivery. Dan's style was rather more abrasive, and they did several bits together. I think interesting delivery was kind of a theme with some of the other comedians as well, although I'm not sure if that's part of the act or just how they talk. Joe dressed as Black Adam, and Dan wore a witch's hat. A few people in the audience for both this and the concert wore costumes, but neither of us did. Joe had a fairly lengthy discussion about lamb meatballs with a guy dressed as David S. Pumpkins. Before the show, there were kids going trick-or-treating at various businesses, which I knew was a thing, but it just wasn't what my neighborhood was like growing up.

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.

It looks like the last time I wrote on here was at the end of March, when I mentioned we were going to see the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra. We ended up not doing that, as we weren't feeling well that day. We did go out on the following weekend, on a short trip to Secaucus to walk on the Marsh Trail and eat at the Olive Garden.

They had a strawberry cheesecake, and I brought home a piece of that. Easter was pretty uneventful, although we did watch a few things on the days before it.

And this past weekend, we went to see John Waters in Atlantic City. Beth's Uncle John was originally supposed to go with it, but he didn't feel up to it, so we brought Dorothea instead. Waters' show was much the same as the Christmas one, except obviously without as much of a focus on that holiday. He did mention it, though, as part of his monologue was about reinventing holidays. It was actually his birthday, and we all sang to him after he had finished. We had seats on barstools on the balcony. Before the show, we went to a few souvenir stores on the Boardwalk. I haven't been there in some time, but were the stores always so focused on smoking paraphernalia? They probably were, but vaping wasn't as much of a thing back then. I really don't consider the two particularly different, but this is coming from someone who's never tried either one and doesn't want to. We had trouble finding a place to eat afterwards. Google Maps said a diner was open, but it wasn't. We ended up going to Chickie's & Pete's, which neither of us had been to before. Beth had wanted to try the crab fries, but ended up not ordering them. That place is a lot more expensive than I would have thought. I had a pizza, and they put the sauce on top of the cheese. I think there's some kind of local New York pizza like that as well, but I've never seen the appeal. It's messy enough with the cheese on top. I'll probably end up having my leftovers for dinner tonight. We were also somewhat unhappy with Friendly's the previous night, as they changed their mozzarella sticks to ones that aren't as good. We just found out today that the normal mini mozzarella sticks are unavailable due to supply chain issues. Is there a cheese ship stuck in a canal somewhere? Seriously, I keep thinking I should make a log of where I do and don't like the fried cheese. I've noticed that it tends to be better when the cheese is stretchy and it uses a breadcrumb batter.

Yesterday, we went to Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where the cherry trees are in bloom. It isn't peak season yet, but they were still quite pretty.

And when we stopped at the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden, I saw a few turtles.

There were also koi, but the water was too murky for me to get decent pictures of them. I also got a comment on Instagram about this bush, so I'm sharing that here as well.

When we got home, I played Animal Crossing just long enough to collect the star fragments I'd wished for on Monday. Over the weekend, I finished the Fort Dragonia part of Chrono Cross, which means I'm officially farther along now than I got back when I played it twenty or so years ago. I'll probably write something about that pretty soon. Also on Tuesday, we watched the Simpsons and Bob's Burgers episodes we'd missed on Sunday. The ending of the Simpsons suggests that Kerry Washington's character will continue on as Bart's teacher, but I have no idea if they're going to stick with that. It had looked like they were trying to make Ned Flanders his regular teacher, but he wasn't even in that episode as far as I can remember.

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.