Stratovania

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 visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the Tuesday before last, and Clementon Park that Saturday. There wasn't much new at the former, but they did have a sign about how inaccurate the term "horsechestnuts" is.

So much of the latter is the water park now, and we didn't go on anything there, so it left us with only a few rides.

The Tilt-A-Whirl and the Hellcat weren't running, but I didn't mind that with the latter, as it's very rough.

The sign does not lie.
Some other people at the park were obsessed with the eagle at the top of the roller coaster, and I don't know how long it's been there.

We rode the Ring of Fire for the first time, and it was the first time I'd ridden a Super Loops sort of ride at all. I think I first saw one of them in the movie Big, and wondered if it was like a coaster loop without the coaster. I guess it's a little different, because it builds up momentum before going all the way around. While it didn't burn, burn, burn, it was uncomfortable.

The C.P. Huntington train was taken out of service a few times, although we did ride it twice. I get the impression they had to overhaul the engine, as it's now noisy and smells of gasoline, and it was sometimes difficult for the engineer to get it started. And I rode both the zebra and the dragon on the carousel.

They serve Pizza Hut there now, and I hadn't had that in quite a while. Do they even have old-style Pizza Huts anymore? The last one I ate at was an Express, and while the food seems to still be the same, I miss the stained glass lamps and the strangely dim light.


This past Saturday, we visited Long Beach Island in New Jersey for the first time. I actually had a provisional job offer there once, but I figured it was too far away, and there was no guarantee that the job would last anyway. According to Beth, around where she grew up in South Jersey, people going to the beach said they were going "down the shore," which I can't recall hearing when I was young. We first visited Seaside Heights, which has a boardwalk and a little amusement park called Casino Pier. While there, we rode Xolo Loca, Pirate's Hideaway, the Ferris Wheel, Hydrus, and the Skyride.

Xolo Loca, named after the Xoloitzcuintle dog, is a small roller coaster with spinning cars.

I thought Pirate's Hideaway might be a dark ride, and I guess it is in a general sense, but it's really just a coaster that's mostly indoors. They also had an odd assortment of statues, including Paul Bunyan, a hobo alligator, a chicken on steroids, and what looks like Mighty Mouse with his face erased and then drawn back on.

As funny as the writing on the hobogator is, I can't help but think some kids would WANT to be bitten.
You can't actually get onto the beach there without a pass. I didn't have any particular desire to do so anyway, but monetizing just walking somewhere is kind of scummy. The other place we visited was Jenkinson's Boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, which is more geared towards kids.

There, we rode the train (also a C.P. Huntington) and the carousel, as well as a coaster called Tidal Wave, which was largely the same as Xolo Loca, but had a beach theme instead of a Mexican one. Both boardwalks had a lot of arcades, focusing more on games where you can win prizes than ones you just play.

Spider-Mario says, "With great-a power-ups comes great-a responsibility!"
There are several games called Cut 2 Win or something similar that involve cutting down a big stuffed animal in a case, and I don't think I'd seen that kind before.

They had a lot of stuffed seagulls with food, too.


We ate the Rainbow Diner in Brick (home of the late Rachel Cosgrove Payes) afterwards, and my obsession with kids' menus where the foods are named after cartoon characters continues. Shouldn't the Super Mario be the spaghetti, or maybe mushrooms? I associate Snoopy with pizza and cookies, although the Turtles are even more pizza-obsessed. Diners don't often have pizza, though. And clownfish eat plankton and other tiny organisms. The one thing they got correct is that Donald Duck really does seem to eat a lot of turkey, despite being a bird himself.

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.

Beth and I went to the Monster-Mania Convention on Saturday. As usual, we mostly just attended the question-and-answer panels, rather than getting autographs or anything. There are occasionally guests there I wouldn't mind meeting, but it's always so crowded. Fairuza Balk was there, and she was in Return to Oz, a favorite of mine; but would it have benefited me much to get an autograph? I don't know. Anyway, the first guest we saw was Phil Fondacaro, whom I mentioned when I talked about his role in Ghoulies II.

He was in Return of the Jedi, Troll, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Willow, and plenty of other stuff. He talked about how most of his earlier film roles involved wearing full-body costumes, but he gradually became able to do speaking roles without the suits. Then came Monica Keena, who was in Freddy vs. Jason, and discussed how she was terrified of Freddy Krueger as a kid.

C.J. Graham, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, Part VI, who addressed his part as Jason's father (also a serial killer, apparently) in a fan film.

The late Steve Dash also makes an appearance in it as a sheriff. Then came the Soska Sisters, identical twins Jen and Sylvia, whom I'd never heard of but who seemed to be involved in a little bit of everything, particularly filmmaking and comic writing.

They have a theatrical release coming up with a remake of David Cronenberg's Rabid, and wrote a comic story about Black Widow breaking up a pedophilia and torture ring. After a break when they showed a few old movie trailers and Looney Tunes cartoons, came Dolph Lundgren.

I knew he was in Aquaman, but I hadn't realized he recently reprised his role as Ivan Drago in Creed 2. He also talked a bit about his part in Masters of the Universe, and did Sylvester Stallone impressions. The final panel had actors from the original Halloween film and from last year's sequel.

One was Jibrail Nantumbu, the kid who talked about cutting his toenails, who was pretty hilarious. He mentioned that he hadn't seen all of the movie, just his own part. Also there were Will Sandin and Sandy Johnson, the young Michael and Judith Myers from the first film. It was pretty fun, even though I was tired throughout most of it.

Speaking of conventions, I want Beth to come with me to OzCon in July, but while I'll hopefully have paid time off by then, she won't. That makes it difficult to plan summer excursions, when there are a bunch of things we want to do. It also means that, if we do go to Pomona, we wouldn't be able to participate in Disneyland Day. We were considering going back to Disney World in 2018, the tenth anniversary of our first trip there, but it didn't work out.

I haven't written here in a while, but I have a few things I wanted to mention that I didn't think would fit into my WordPress format. I doubt anyone else cares, but I still try to keep those posts topic-specific, while this entry will likely be all over the place. My last temporary job ended a month ago, but it looks like I'm going to be starting another one in the middle of August. I've also been volunteering, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep that up while doing the other job. The volunteer work has involved organizing Rube Goldberg cartoons, so far his comic strip Boob McNutt, which ran from 1915 (although it wasn't syndicated until 1918) through 1934. The title character is a well-meaning idiot who routinely fails at various tasks. Goldberg is best known for his elaborate machines that perform simple tasks in overly complicated ways, and the early Boob strips always began and ended with the character in bizarre death traps.

Perhaps feeling bad for his creation, who did generally TRY to do the right thing, Goldberg later gave him a love interest, and one who actually loved him and was pretty in a Gibson Girl kind of way.

Also featured in the strip were Bernice the Siberian Cheesehound and the identical twins Mike and Ike from an earlier Goldberg project. For two years in the early 1930s, Boob joined two professors in collecting and transporting exotic animals, many of them in the style Dr. Seuss would later popularize.


Thanks to Tavie's promotion, Beth and I saw Kevin McDonald twice in the past few days. On Thursday, he did a show that was recorded for a podcast, featuring interviews with Wallace Shawn and Brad Roberts.

Shawn talked quite a bit about My Dinner with Andre (which I haven't seen), and mentioned that he didn't really get the humor in The Princess Bride.

He also played Sherlock Holmes in a sketch about Kevin really awkwardly trying to cover up the fact that he'd murdered his wife. Roberts, the lead singer for Crash Test Dummies, performed "Superman's Song" (which he said was the first real song he wrote) and "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm."

My dad actually had CTD albums when I was growing up. In the interview, they brought up Andy Partridge, whom Roberts said was the most nervous person he'd ever met. I know the Dummies covered at least two XTC songs, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" and "All You Pretty Girls." Last night, we saw a sketch show that Kevin wasn't in, but he had taught the class that performed them, and did the introduction. He actually told the same story at both shows, about an ill-fated show that he and Scott Thompson did for a fraternity benefit at the University of Toronto back in 1985.

We had considered going to the New York Botanical Garden to see (and presumably smell) their corpse flower, but we never got the chance. When will we ever be able to experience the scent of rotting flesh? The Oz Club Convention in Philadelphia is coming up this weekend, and Monster-Mania the weekend after that, so we'll be pretty busy. I'm also seeing Cracker do an acoustic show at City Winery next Friday.

I've been a little more active on Instagram as of late. My account is nathandehoff, and I'm not really sure why I decided to go with my name instead of one of my usual user names. I've noticed the somewhat odd phenomenon there of people following my account, but if I follow them back, they'll unfollow me. What's the point? Is it just ego, or is there some way to make money by having a lot of followers? I read something last night about Donald Trump buying fake followers on Twitter, apparently to make his account look more popular. I'm not running for president, though, and I'd rather spambots NOT follow me on social media. I have almost 2000 followers on Tumblr, but maybe twenty of them ever like or reblog more than a single post. Most of the others appear to be either spammers or people who last updated over a year ago. It probably helps my follower count on Tumblr that most of what I post is not my original work. My Instagram is just pictures I've taken, which means mostly cats in awkward positions and stuff I saw lying on the sidewalk. So while I like people to follow me, I can fully understand why they don't. Just stop it with the bait-and-switch game. There are better ways to get my attention if you really want me to check out your page. Also, with so many social media outlets, I sometimes wonder where to post any one particular thing.

On Saturday, bethje and I stopped by the Hamilton Mall on our way to Atlantic City, and man, that place was dead. I have to wonder if malls in general aren't the cool hangout spots they were back in my childhood, but this one was hit particularly hard. They DID have plenty of shoe stores and places you could buy fancy dresses for your three-year-old, though. That used to be one of the few malls around that had a pet store, and now it's been replaced with one of those little kid dress shops, which probably means the lingering odor of dog poop remains in those dresses. Seriously, I'm glad the pet store closed down because keeping puppies in cages with wire on the bottom is cruel, yet it was still the most fun store to visit there. One fairly new store that was actually pretty cool was one that sold old video games and comics. I kind of feel I should have bought something since I want them to stay in business, but I already have a bunch of video games I haven't played. While I didn't catch this exchange, Beth says she heard a woman make a patronizing comment to her boyfriend, something like, "I'm happy that you're happy." Way to fulfill gender stereotypes, lady! Fortunately, earlier that same day I saw a little girl reading an Avengers comic in a doctor's office waiting room, so that kind of balances things out. I've never been a comic reader, or at least not much of one, but I'm a comic-readers' ally. Speaking of which, we watched the 2008 Iron Man movie last night, and I agree with Beth that it was a little overly long and slow-paced, but I still liked it. I remember reading that Stan Lee wanted Iron Man, a rich weapons developer with a cocky attitude, to be someone all the hippie comics fans of the time would want to hate but couldn't help but like. I remember a Sunday morning cartoon that was split between Iron Man and the Fantastic Four, and I generally liked the latter's stories better. I feel that this would also be a good time to plug SamuraiFrog's ongoing reviews of Marvel Comics from the 1960s.

In Atlantic City, we didn't do any gambling (we generally don't; it's more about walking on the Boardwalk for Beth, and it's not like we have that much money to spare), but we did check out a few of the arcades. The new thing now seems to be claw machines that only have, like, four things in them, but they're expensive things like iPods and jewelry. Do you think anyone has ever actually won at one of these? We both tried out a Wizard of Oz game that involved firing quarters at other quarters in an attempt to knock them off a ledge, but neither of us got anywhere at it.

We did see some other guy who was racking up the points on it, but who knows how much money he put in? Those games are misleading anyway, because you can't keep any of those quarters you knock down. Instead, you just get tickets you can exchange for crappy prizes. Like, if you get 15,000 of them, you can get this smiling piece of pizza.

I think it's smiling because it knows I don't like olives or peppers, and hence it won't meet its death at my mouth. Other prizes on display included a blender and a Cuisinart. I can just imagine someone saying, "We need some new kitchen appliances. Let's hit the arcade!" And here's a prize at another midway that puzzled me:

Where the heck is Pooh's nose? Did he have to have it amputated after too many bee stings?

Speaking of tacky things, the first of "Weird Al" Yankovic's videos for his new album came out today, and it's a parody of Pharrell's "Happy" (the song that it's apparently illegal for Iranians to dance to) called..."Tacky." LiveJournal apparently won't let me embed videos, so here's the link. Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, and Jack Black all make appearances in it. By the way, looking at the list of stuff that Al is parodying, another parody target and a song in the polka medley both feature Pharrell. He must be cleaning up with the royalties from Weird Al.

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Maybe Animal Crossing, as it's pretty peaceful there. The only real danger comes from shaking trees with beehives in them. And while having anthropomorphic animals as neighbors might be freaky at first, I guess I could get used to it. I also quite like the aesthetics of the Mushroom Kingdom from Super Mario Bros., but don't so much relish the idea of having to jump over a bunch of turtles every time I went to the store for orange juice.

Speaking of the Mushroom Kingdom, I found the most recent Captain SNES strip interesting in light of my own speculation about the relationship of Goombas to Toads. I also have to give props to the comic's author for his ability to turn simple gags into significant plot points. Braveshroom appeared as a joke back in this comic from almost ten years ago, and is still around.

This week's Simpsons episode had an interesting premise, but it gave me the feeling of something that I hadn't seen being parodied, with that whole Bus 23 thing. I did like it, though, especially the part with Bart trying to do something bad with the keys but ending up helping people instead. The Cletus joke was pretty gross, though. Homer's joyride in the Duff Blimp was less enjoyable, but a nice callback, considering how he missed out on the chance of a blimp ride back in "Lisa the Beauty Queen." And all the plots came together at the end, which was a nice touch. One bit where I think they dropped the ball was having Nelson be the one who'd been held back really often. Wouldn't the obvious choice for this have been Kearney? Since Bart and Nelson were in kindergarten together, as per "Lisa's Sax," I don't think Nelson has been held back yet. The Bob's Burgers episode was good, but the Family Guy was all over the place. I mean, I guess it was supposed to be, and it's not like they don't have irrelevant gags that go on too long in most other episodes, but it just felt even more disorganized than usual. Also, did you notice that when they parodied the American Dad opening with Joe, it was the old opening with the newspaper gag?

In other news, I've been thinking about how I'm more of an analytical fan than a critical one. Maybe this distinction doesn't make sense to anyone else, but I guess what I mean is that I'm mostly interested in how imaginary worlds fit together, and that includes accepting material from entries that aren't quite up to snuff. There seems to be a lot of agreement that The Cowardly Lion of Oz and The Scalawagons of Oz are fairly weak parts of the series, but I still use them in my research. I guess I was thinking of this because I saw people being really critical of the Star Wars prequels, and while they do have their flaws, I'm more interested in what they add to the mythos. Mind you, I really didn't like the midichlorian thing, but I've never been all that keen on only people with the right genetics being able to use magic (and The Force is, for all intents and purposes, magic). It's the same way in Harry Potter, really. If you're a Muggle, you're out of luck. I tend to see it more like other skills, where there's a genetic component, but that doesn't mean the people who don't have a natural knack for something can't do it if they practice enough. It's like the Wizard of Oz says in Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz: "Magic is like any other science--it takes practice. Of course, if you are a born fairy like Ozma and the former rulers of Oz, working spells and charms just comes natural--like playing the piano by ear. But if you are not a Fairy, you must study witchcraft and sorcery as I have done with Glinda the Good. It only has been by continuous study and research that I have managed to perfect myself in the arts of wizardry." That's a personal preference, though, and you can make magic work however you want in your imaginary universe. Kind of weird that we wouldn't hear a thing about these midichlorians in an entire trilogy about The Force and the Jedi, however, isn't it?

I do, however, have a tendency to be a bit obsessed with continuity. Getting back to The Simpsons, I realize the show isn't going to have perfect continuity, especially with time passing and the characters never aging. Still, I like a certain amount of consistency, which is why, for instance, I think saying Ned Flanders was sixty was a dumb move. And "Viva Ned Flanders," the episode in which this was stated, isn't even bad. It's just that this doesn't fit with what we knew about the character. I am not, as a general rule, a comic reader, but from what I've read and heard ABOUT the most popular comic titles, the creators seem to want to have it both ways. They'll come up with really complex continuities, then throw them out and reboot everything once they've gotten too convoluted, which sounds like a compromise that will please nobody. I think part of why I haven't gotten into comics is how confusing all the continuity stuff is. I know the main characters, but not everything they've been involved in recently, so where would I start? I have begun reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, however, since I've had it suggested to me before. I found it a little hard to tell what was going on in the first volume, but the second one is pretty good so far. The convention for serial killers was clever, and I like all the references to mythology. Maybe I'll offer a more complete review at some point.

I was going to close with a bit on Harold Camping's doomsday prediction, but I decided that was better suited for a WordPress post. So I guess that's it for now.

When I think of extremely masculine characters in mythology, the Norse god of thunder immediately comes to my mind. The huge, muscular, red-bearded warrior seems to personify everything the Vikings would have considered manly, and their ideas on the subject really aren't too far from those of our own society. Mind you, the area of the world where the worship of Thor originated now enjoys a higher standard of living than we do. It's like they went through the "might makes right" phase centuries ago and are now able to concentrate on social issues, while the United States is still mired in a warlike mentality. Not that I believe all societies go through the same stages. I mean, look at the Middle East, the former cradle of civilization, where they're still fighting the same absurd territorial disputes they've been involved in for thousands of years. But anyway, this post isn't supposed to be about societal development, but about Thor.


The thunderer was one of the most popular deities in Germanic culture, enjoying greater success than his father Odin among the lower classes. If I'd had the choice, I probably would have favored the one-eyed wanderer over the hammer-bearer. Then again, according to this page, worshippers of Odin practiced human sacrifice while those of Thor did not. The red-bearded one seems to have spent a good deal of his time fighting the giants, the traditional enemies of the Aesir. His main weapon was, of course, his hammer Mjöllnir, a powerful weapon with an abnormally short handle, which is quite possibly why he had to throw it. The story has it that the dwarves known as the Sons of Ivaldi made several items of great value for the Aesir, including Odin's spear Gungnir. Loki then bet the dwarven brothers Sindri [1] and Brokkr that they couldn't make more beautiful artifacts, and turned into a fly to try to sabotage their work. Loki lost the bet, but the hammer's handle came out short thanks to his interference.


In addition to the hammer, Thor also wore a belt and iron gloves that increased his strength. He travels in a thundering chariot driven by two goats, Tanngrisni ("gap-tooth") and Tanngnost ("tooth grinder"). I've said before and I'll reiterate that the Norse gods really knew how to accessorize. He was able to roast the goats when hungry, and then bring them back to life and vitality with the power of Mjöllnir. That is, except when a farmer's son broke one goat's leg bone, so that the animal now walks with a limp.


One thing I'm kind of curious about is how well Thor got along with Loki. I've always kind of had the idea that, while Loki was friends with Odin, Thor really didn't like him much. In the known Norse myths, however, Thor and Loki are often seen working together. True, Loki was responsible for ruining Mjöllnir's handle, but it doesn't look like that was the result of a personal grudge against Thor. While I'm not that familiar with Thor's Marvel Comics series, I believe they DID make Thor and Loki enemies, so maybe hearing about that was how I got the idea. I don't know. Loki has always struck me as someone whose primary motivation is having fun, so I suppose it's not too difficult to see him as sometimes working with and sometimes against the thunder god.


Thor's family life is recounted in some Norse legends, but it's kind of sketchy. His wife is the golden-haired fertility goddess Sif, but the giantess Járnsaxa is the mother of one of his sons, Magni (meaning "strong"). Magni is said to have rescued his father from underneath the foot of the giant Hrungnir, accomplishing this when he was a mere three days old. Thor has another son named Modi (meaning "anger") and a daughter named Thrud, but I don't believe their parents were specified. The sons are mentioned as inheriting Mjöllnir after Thor and the Midgard Serpent kill each other at Ragnarok.


[1] For what it's worth, I believe Sindri is also the name of Björk's son. I don't know if there's any connection there.

Continuing with my rodent theme, my next victim (of description, that is) is Mouser from Super Mario Bros. 2. He's basically a giant mouse in sunglasses who throws bombs. The way to defeat him is to throw the bombs back at him, as he's apparently too dumb to avoid them. Some explosives expert he is! The original Doki Doki Panic, on which SMB2 is based, had Mouser as the boss (or three different Mousers as bosses; it's hard to tell) of Worlds 1, 3, and 5. When Americanized and Mariotized, the final Mouser was replaced with the rock-chucking crab Clawgrip (or "Clawglip," as the credits mistakenly call him). In Super Mario Advance, Mouser is the boss of Worlds 1 and 6, with the mechanical Robirdo in World 3.


As with most Mario enemies, there isn't a whole lot of official information on Mouser. The instruction booklet says he's vain and uses his bombs to destroy good dreams. One of Valiant's Nintendo comics, "A Mouser in the Houser", provides some unofficial back story for the character. He was originally the king of a society of giant mice living beneath the Mushroom Kingdom, until he betrayed them and joined forces with King Koopa. Why Koopa and not Wart? Well, the cartoons and comics tended to streamline things by making Bowser the ruler of the enemies from SMB2 as well as the ones from games in which he actually showed up, which actually kind of makes sense, as later games portray Shyguys and other SMB2 enemies as members of the Koopa Troop. Wart did make a few appearances in the comics, but it was pretty much always Koopa commanding Wart's old henchmen. If I remember correctly, one of the issues that I was reading at a store included a letter to the editor asking why King Koopa commanded Wart's troops, and the reply was that Bowser has a higher rank. In the Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoons, in which Wart never appeared, Mouser showed up quite frequently as King Koopa's right-hand man...er, mouse. He was voiced by the same guy as Toad, but had a bad German accent. Or was it a bad Russian accent? It's sometimes hard to tell. Also, his name was pronounced to rhyme with "Bowser," which isn't how I would say it.


Other possible relatives of Mouser and his kin are the Nomadimice from Paper Mario, who live in the Dry Dry Desert. Their leader, Moustafa, is a descendant of Mousta, the first ruler of the lost Dry Dry Kingdom. A few other games include enemies known as Little Mousers, or Squeeks.