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.

Last weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, and we went on Saturday. I'm sure I've already written about how there aren't as many question-and-answer panels as there used to be, and I don't know whether this is because the convention organizers don't want to do them or the guests don't. The first two panels this time were with Craig Sheffer and William Fichtner, neither of whom we really knew, although they were both in some movies we've seen. The latter was a guy the Joker killed near the beginning of The Dark Knight.

The third was Heather Langenkamp, who talked among other things about how it was kind of weird to show her son A Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time, although she doesn't have a problem with kids watching horror movies.

For the longer panels, the first had Melissa Barrera, Tony Revolori, and Marley Shelton, who were in some of the later Scream movies.

The final session was a Hellraiser reunion with Doug Bradley, Ashley Laurence, Simon Bamford, Barbie Wilde, and Nicholas Vince.

Clive Barker was at the convention, but couldn't attend the panel for health reasons. There was some discussion of the Hulu remake, and a few of them mentioned that they liked the aesthetic, but not how much it differed from the original story, and downplayed the original BDSM themes. I'd heard something before about how the first movie was really more about Julia, but people liked Pinhead so much that he basically took over the franchise, even though he's usually a supporting character. Bradley also talked a bit about Barker's screenplay for Hellraiser III, which ended up not being made for weird legal reasons. It would have had Pinhead being resurrected in a vat in a church, and the Great Pyramid turning out to be a Lament Configuration housing the first Cenobite. Instead, we got CD-Head.

The air conditioning in my car hasn't been working. Actually, what happens is that it works at first, but soon cuts out after I start driving. I took it to the dealer, and they said it would cost upwards of $3000 to get it fixed, and it didn't seem worth it. It's definitely made for some uncomfortable rides, however. It hasn't just been incredibly hot in this area recently, but the air just feels gross and oppressive even when it isn't that hot. It makes me want to leave the apartment even less than usual. At the convention, it was warm even inside the hotel for the first few panels, then too cold in the bigger room for the last two.

While down in South Jersey, we went to a Spirit Halloween, and I took my usual pictures of costumes with weird generic names. And it isn't even just rip-offs of copyrighted characters that get these names. They're not even particularly funny, just odd.

Just don't say "Undead Guy" three times.

I guess the difference between a classic and a sassy nurse is slightly shorter stockings? Or is it the needle?

And is a bull scarecrow a real thing? There was an Oz book where the Scarecrow was turned into a bear, but not a bull.