Stratovania

Since I know you were just dying for an update, I'll mention that I'm still working my temporary data verification job, and I went to a job pool on Thursday. This is something New York does with city jobs, where they get several eligible candidates together and interview them one at a time. Sometimes they'll hire somebody, and sometimes not. From what I heard, they were looking to hire two people from this pool, but only chose one. I didn't think I had much of a chance anyway as I don't have much relevant experience for a paralegal position. Officially, though, education will usually substitute for experience when applying for these jobs, even if the education isn't in anything related to the job.

Beth had wanted to do something Halloween-related this past weekend, and our original plan was to go to an event in Mullica Hill. (I should warn you that the site auto-plays music, because apparently a kid from the mid-nineties made it.) The problem with that one is that you have to pay for everything even if you don't want to do all of it. They were supposed to have coupons for the opening weekend at their website, but I wasn't able to get them to load. They also said Wawa had coupons, but the two Wawas I tried told me they hadn't gotten any in yet. So instead we went to the one in Glen Mills, although we only took the hayride. It drizzled on and off while we were there, and the ground was really muddy. One thing I tend to find fascinating about haunted rides in general, whether Halloween hayrides or ones at amusement parks, is how they tend to be all over the place. Like, you'll go through a hillbilly-themed area, then next there will be dinosaurs.

The hayride wasn't too far from where my mom lives, but she wasn't around. We did visit my old hometown while in the area, though. I remember seeing a news story earlier this year about Donald Trump remarking on how all the industry had left the area. Obviously he was jerky about it, but it's basically true, as both the smelly paper mill in the middle of town and the Pepperidge Farm factory closed down years ago. The old site of the latter is now the location of a brewery and restaurant. We went by my old elementary school, which when I was a kid had two connected buildings, one of stone and one of brick. The stone one is now long gone.

Although it was dark, it looked like the playground that people from the neighborhood helped build is gone as well. Mind you, that was after I was no longer a student there. When I was in elementary school, all the playgrounds had Big Toys.

I had a dream that night not about elementary school (and yes, I still have such dreams fairly often), but about college. A lot of my school dreams include my realizing that it doesn't make any sense for me to be there, and then often coming up with some kind of weird explanation. While high school dreams are just irritating, the college ones tend to be more nostalgic. I liked college for the most part, although there were some really frustrating aspects to it. When I look back, I think I went through school with the attitude that teachers were...well, not really AGAINST me, because I often got along better with them than with the other kids. But I tended to feel like I was on my own, and if I was having trouble I should keep it secret instead of asking for help, because I was supposed to get everything done myself. That's probably more true of primary and secondary school than of college, but I kind of carried over that way of thinking. That and a tendency to leave assignments until the last minute. Outside of academics, I had more of a social life than I ever had previously, but I felt there was something lacking there as well. I liked it at the beginning of the year, when most people tended to be friendly with each other. After that, I still had friends, but I never really felt they were CLOSE friends. I guess I still kind of feel that way. Maybe that's partially my fault, but prior to college I usually felt like I was generally just viewed as a curiosity.

We actually had something to do on both Saturday and Sunday, which is kind of unusual. On Saturday, I had to go to Flushing Meadows to take a civil service test for Paralegal Aide positions. I'm not sure how well I did, as it seemed a little more difficult than most such tests. Afterwards, I met up with Beth to visit the Queens Botanical Garden, which is really quite small, and a lot of the gardens were closed for winter anyway.

Not that it felt like winter; I found myself carrying my jacket because it was too warm while wearing it. As much as I like being able to go outside without a jacket, it does make me concerned for the future. Like, are we all going to burn to death next summer? We'll all take turns; I'll get mine too.

Regardless of the unseasonable warmth, not too much was in bloom, but there were a few roses still intact.

After the gardens, we visited the old site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs at Corona Park. They Might Be Giants filmed their video for "Don't Let's Start" at the New York State Pavilion from the '64 fair, which is still there, but you can't go in it anymore.

Well, at least you couldn't when we were there.

It looked like they were doing renovations, which means they probably got rid of that chipped-up map.

Both Johns from TMBG visited the fair when it was a going concern, as did my dad and Beth's mom. All my mother-in-law will say about it is how uncomfortable her shoes were, though. Right near there is the Queens Museum, which had an exhibit about both fairs.

It's pretty fascinating, largely because I don't think they would ever have anything like that these days. I mean, nations and corporations getting together to present an optimistic view of the future? Who'd put money into that in our current climate? I guess Epcot Center preserves a lot of the feel. It's interesting that they still have the Omnisphere and some other stuff fifty years later.

I compared some maps of the fairgrounds to what's there now, and apparently there's a skate park where the Astral Fountain used to be. There's a message in that, but I'm not totally sure what it is. Another exhibit at the museum showcased the work of Zhang Hongtu, a Chinese artist who moved to New York in 1982. His art combines Chinese themes and criticism of the hypocrisy involved in Chinese communism.

We ate that evening at Kane's Flushing Diner, which wins points with me because they had free refills on soda and gave us garlic bread before the meal.

Yesterday was our friend Stephanie's annual holiday party. She knows a lot of people, so there were quite a few guests there we didn't know, but a few we did. It was held at a bar in Park Slope that has both indoor and outdoor parts, but due to the unseasonable warmth, we mostly stayed outside. It did get a little chillier after an hour or so, but never that bad. We won a few prizes for answering trivia questions.

I had a dream a few nights ago that John Flansbugh of TMBG and his wife Robin Goldwasser were my neighbors, but I was too nervous to speak to them. Not that I usually talk to my neighbors anyway, but I have to suspect that would be really awkward, especially if I ever wanted to listen to any of their music. Not to mention that I've heard quite a bit about TMBG fans who really didn't respect the band members' boundaries. Still, it's not like I've ever had even remotely famous neighbors in the past. Well, okay, the woman who lived across the street and dated my dad for a while wrote some children's books that are fairly well-regarded, so maybe that counts. The dream I can remember from last night involved my being asked to go to school (I guess it was high school) in the middle of the night to test some software. It turned out there were a whole bunch of people there and I had to wait in line. And even though I came alone, Beth and Tavie also showed up for some reason, as did our cats.

bethje and I were supposed to go to the doctor and get our IDs and voter registration switched over to New York, but I got a call a few hours ago saying that the doctor wasn't going to be in today. Since the doctor's office is near the motor vehicle department, we're just going to do them both on Wednesday. It's kind of a shame, as I'd wanted to get them over with, and besides I can't check things out from the library without a New York ID. Speaking of which, I made a brief trip to Secaucus last week to return a book I still had checked out, and it wasn't quite as weird as I thought it would be. I have a thing about places I can no longer go back to, or that if I do they'll be totally different. I have so many dreams about the first house I lived in, the house in Virginia where my grandparents lived for most of my life, and my old college dorm. Seeing as how they're dreams, they're never exactly like they were in real life, but they still awaken melancholy nostalgia in me.

We did finish our taxes, but we still don't have jobs. I talked to a temp agency last week about a records management job at an architectural firm that sounded like something I could do, but the firm filled it without the agency, or at least that's what they told me. It's strange how, when I have a job, I never seem to have enough time to do anything. Then, when I'm unemployed, I spend a lot of time staving off boredom. It's not that there aren't things I COULD be doing, just that I'm not really in the mood. And of course there's always the money issue. I want to try more restaurants in the area, you know? I've been replaying Dragon Quest III a little bit, and have made it to Baharata. I remember the upcoming battle with Kandar being a real challenge for me before. Playing through a game I've already finished, especially a turn-based role-playing one, is sort of like seeing an old friend, the difference being that games don't change like people do. Okay, it's on a different platform (Game Boy instead of NES), so it's a little different. For instance, you can look inside pots and dressers. Still, it's mostly the same, and it's not like there are any significant story points to uncover. In other game news, my Sims 3 has refused to load twice when trying to get my Sims back home from an adventure, and I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that. Since The Sims 4 is out now, I doubt there will be any more Sims 3 patches. Any suggestions for how to fix that problem?


Last night's Simpsons was a little uncomfortable for me in that I've really become sympathetic to the cause of preventing prejudice against overweight people, and I feel that the show just reinforced the idea that being fat is unhealthy. There isn't always a direct correlation there, and even when there is losing the weight isn't necessarily as simple as eating fewer doughnuts and going on a walk occasionally. Not to mention how often I come across people claiming that they're only putting down heavy people because they're worried about their health, which I believe is now known as Concern Trolling. That said, it did seem a little more sympathetic to Homer than some past episodes have been in that respect, and I really liked the first act with Bart and Lisa writing a new town song. So I guess if Hans Moleman was mayor thirty years previously, he isn't really only thirty-one years old?


I also watched the first disc of the first season of Veronica Mars, a recommendation from SamuraiFrog, who has similar tastes to mine and is a major Kristen Bell fan. I like it so far, although I have to wonder if it goes a little too far over the top in terms of how intelligent and competent Veronica is and how much trauma she'd been through. But hey, a lot of really successful characters have been the tragic genius type. It's also interesting how detective stories pretty much always have a bit of the ends justifying the means built in. I have to wonder how much of that is true for real-life private detectives, as you'd think following somebody around and taking pictures of them in compromising situations would pretty much always be immoral, but some degree of this sort of thing might be necessary at times. Sort of like drone strikes, I guess; I don't like the idea that they could be used against innocent people, but it's probably better that Khaddafi was taken out quickly without a land war in Libya. On a lighter note, this disc was next on my queue after John Carter, and I guess if they'd had the same director, the show would have just been called Veronica.

I had a dream two nights ago about a video game with really good character graphics. There were life-like humans, dogs, cats, and even an iguana. You cycled through the looks like in the original Sims. As it was a dream, even though this was supposed to be a game, a lot of it just took place right in front of me. It's like my subconscious doesn't bother including details like screens and controllers. Then again, I've had so many dreams about trying to type on a keyboard and failing miserably that this was probably for the best. I think the game itself was a Mario Kart one, and even though messing around with the character design was the first thing I did, I wanted to play as a Mario character when I did the actual racing. I know you can race as a Mii in the Wii and Wii U installments, but I wonder why you'd want to when you could be a Mario character. Mind you, I've never liked rendering myself, even in simple formats. Since Mario Kart 8 and The Sims 4 both came out recently, that probably influenced the dream.

It's been a while since I've played The Sims 3, yet there's still part of me that thinks I should get 4. I doubt I will, though, at least not until the price goes down. What I've seen of it suggests that there isn't much of an advantage to it over earlier installments aside from improved graphics. Sims 3 finally let you freely wander around the neighborhood, which was the main thing I thought would improve Sims 2. On the other hand, the fact that most of the characters are under computer control means much less freedom over relationships and such. I was trying to develop somewhat of an ongoing story with my Sims 2 neighborhood. I also thought Sims 3 removed some of the challenge, particularly as far as building skills and making money were concerned. Some of the life goals seemed way too easy to achieve, while others were practically impossible. I noticed this with the goal of having multiple lovers at the same time, which would have been fairly easy in the original Sims (a Sim could have an affair when their significant other was on the property, as long as they weren't in the same room) and more difficult but still feasible in Sims 2. In Sims 3, two-timing was much harder. My main concern, however, is the same one I had when I obtained 2 and 3. I grew attached to the Sims I was controlling, and there was no way to carry them over to the next installment. Sure, I could (and did) make Sims with the same appearance and personality, but they didn't have any of their old memories. I understand that the technology wouldn't allow such transfers, but it basically meant playing a new game would erase everything I'd achieved in the last one.

I probably should spend at least some of my free time writing, since there's an Oz story I'm supposed to be editing. It's easy to plan these things out, but hard to get down to doing the actual work. I do write WordPress posts, but that seems like much less of an accomplishment. I did watch Tangled last night, but since I already wrote a post about it, I'm not going to do another one.

Last night, bethje and I walked the entire length of the boardwalk in Coney Island. That was pretty exhausting, and we still had to take the subway and bus back home. I'm still tired out from doing that. Honestly, my feet started hurting pretty soon into the walk. I'm totally out of shape.

The most recent Futurama episode bugged me because Mars was supposed to have been destroyed back in "A Farewell to Arms." Was this one supposed to take place prior to that one, or are we supposed to disregard what happened in the earlier show? Either way, it was rather confusing and sloppy. The story was pretty good, with some fun bits involving Dr. Zoidberg and the Robot Mafia, but the lack of continuity really bothered me.

It seems that all my dreams these days are either about moving or about being back in school and having missed classes. I'm always trying to look up my grades on a computer, only to have something go wrong. Actually, computers are always malfunctioning in my dreams, even if all I'm trying to do is play a game. I did have one recent dream about being at an Oz convention and there being a tray of tasty-looking desserts, though, so that's something.

Finally, here are some links to check out:
Speed Demos Archive - I'm pretty sure I linked to this before, but Beth was looking at some of these yesterday, and they are pretty addicting. I can only imagine how much skill and practice it would take to make all those jumps and such without even hesitating.
MYth - Manga-style comics based on Greek mythology
The Muppets in Thor - An amusing crossover with Kermit claiming the power of Thor, and a rather melancholy ending
Darrell Spradlyn's Oz gallery - Includes some more obscure characters, and while most are in a style similar to John R. Neill's, he also does a few in anime style.

I'm always having dreams about being back in school and missing exams. Just this week, I had one where I was trying to make up one of my missed exams, and I couldn't remember why I'd missed it. I think that was the same dream in which one of my classes involved making clay alligators and bringing them to life, and this didn't strike me as being at all unusual.


The latest Futurama episode revealed that Professor Farnsworth's parents are still alive, no mean feat when the Professor himself is over 170 years old. There must be something about the Farnsworths that keeps them alive and kicking even when old and decrepit. I do have to wonder why, with the family theme, Cubert never showed up. I'm not sure the writers really know what to do with Cubert, who strikes me as never having been a particularly popular character. It's also pretty awkward that he and Dwight are still kids when everyone else has grown older. Well, at least the Professor has, because he turned 160 in "A Clone of My Own" and mentioned about ten years later that he was entered his eighteenth decade. Anyway, exact ages aside, I tend to enjoy episodes that give us some background for the characters, and this was no exception. It's too bad about what happened to the Professor's brother Floyd, though. Okay, we don't know exactly what happened to him, but we know it wasn't good. Also, while I agree with the criticisms of The Matrix, how heavy-handed did they have to be about it?

Finally, here are some recommendations:
The Infosphere, the Futurama wiki that I usually consult for information about the show
Narnia Deconstruction, which I referenced in my latest WordPress post
Jacek Yerka, painter of excellent surreal fantasy scenes

I haven't been writing here much recently, but I have basically set this journal aside for stuff about my personal life, and that's been very boring as of late. I still haven't found work, so I mostly sit around all day, and that's not as much fun as it's cracked up to be. bethje wants to go to Applebee's as often as possible, and the rest of the time I'm mostly eaten frozen pizzas. (I mean, I heat them up, but they start out frozen.) We also watched two movies in the past week. One was Crash, not the one about racism (which we'd already seen), but the David Cronenberg one about sex and car crashes. And when I say that's what it was about, I mean it was pretty much the whole movie. People had sex in crashed cars, and one guy (played by Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies) filmed car crashes. It was different from anything else I've seen; I'll give it that. The other was Superbad, which was pretty funny. Much better than The 40-Year-Old Virgin, although now that I look at it, Judd Apatow was only the producer on Superbad, not the director. So I guess there's really no reason why they'd be at all similar.


I am pretty excited about the new season of Futurama. I know "The Bots and the Bees" was advertised as a tearjerker, but while it definitely had a sad ending, it was nowhere near the depression level of something like "Jurassic Bark." It says a lot for the show that we can feel bad for Bender when he's a rotten character in most ways. I liked seeing his parenting techniques. Strange that he wouldn't have known robots could reproduce when he had a son in The Beast with a Billion Backs, but whatever. The episode did try to explain why robots would be made with the ability to reproduce, but it's still weird. I guess that's just the kind of thing you have to roll with even when it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Last night's other episode, "A Farewell to Arms" (now THERE'S a title the significance of which you don't get until the very end), gave us a good take on Fry and Leela's relationship. The plot twist wasn't all that unexpected, as it figures that the Martians would have been more concerned with their world than ours. Doesn't the destruction of Mars change a lot of the status quo, though? The Wongs lived there and made much of their fortune from the planet, and the Professor worked at Mars University. It looks like there's a future episode called "Viva Mars Vegas," so maybe that will explain how everyone is compensating.

Finally, I've had several weird dreams that I thought were worth writing about. In one, I was in high school and something embarrassing happened to me. From what I can remember of what happened, it made no sense. Something involving getting an erection while on the toilet, and it being over some girl I really didn't find attractive. Anyway, I told a few other kids, hoping they'd understand my embarrassment, but instead they spread it around and everyone in the school was making fun of me. Eventually, it switched to an even more nonsensical setting, still at school but where I was riding in an elevator (yeah, because schools can afford them) and I had to reach the eleventh floor to get out of the building. The elevator kept missing the floor, though, and all these other kids kept getting on and mocking me. While the details made no sense, I think it was more or less a reflection of how I usually felt back when I was in secondary school. Later that night, I dreamed about my car breaking down, and it turned out that the last time I'd had it serviced someone had put a wooden frame between the body and the wheels. Yet another dream involved interviewing and hearing a lecture about becoming miners on some alien world, but it sucked because the hours were long and you were only allowed to return to Earth to visit once every several years or something. This one sort of sounds like it could be the germ for a science fiction story, but maybe not. It was followed by a conversation with Beth about how we both had the same dream, but of course in real life we hadn't. Another night, I dreamed I was at some party, and I remember little of it, although the venue kept changing around. I think sometimes it was just my family, and other times a whole bunch of people. I do remember that at one point I was playing The Sims, and there was some bit in the game where a baby was kidnapped and the family had to get it back. The thing was, it was pretty much entirely a text-based interface in the search for the baby, probably inspired by The Sims Medieval. Last night's dream involved an Oz Convention at my high school, and I was attending despite having exams, or something like that. And that's about all I can remember right now.

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"Gaming system game"? That's a bit awkward, Writer's Block person. Anyway, I have to say The Sims 3, which I've played as recently as yesterday. It's getting a bit tedious at this point, but I'll bet if I started playing again I would do so for several hours. I'm also playing Final Fantasy III on the DS, but I've found the caves I had to explore recently to be more irritating than fun. I now have the key to the Kingdom of Eureka, so I'll have to see how that works out, but I'm not sure when I'll do so. I tend to play console games more when I don't have computer access. Finally, I've started on Golden Sun for the Game Boy Advance, and will probably write about my early impressions this week. My obsessive-compulsive mind has had a bit of difficulty figuring out when to write about games (i.e., how much should I have finished before writing?), but I'm currently favoring an entry on my first impressions and then a later one when I've either completed the game or gotten as far as I can. Since I play mostly role-playing games, they tend to be a bit on the long side.

Today is L. Frank Baum's birthday, and if you look here, you can find a podcast of Baum's short story "The Littlest Giant," in which I do the voice of the Giant King Goola. I have a pretty high voice, not all that appropriate for a giant, but Jared lowered my part and added echo, so it sounds a lot better than I would on the fly. And if you're interested in stuff I've done (and I hope you are), I also contributed to the 2012 issue of Oziana.

I had a dream I was back in second grade, with my original second-grade teacher. There was some quiz on several subjects, including the Smurfs. I was doing pretty well on it, but didn't have enough time. The dream unraveled when I realized the premise made no sense. So why second grade? I don't know. In some ways, that was the last time I felt I fit in with my classmates. I'm not sure I totally did, but I least I was comfortable with them. It was also the last year I really had a birthday party. So I guess there's a bit of nostalgia there. Not that I have any desire to be a child again, but I do want to recapture the best parts of my childhood. Another dream had Amanda Palmer calming me down when I accidentally wore mismatched socks to work, which kind of sounds more like an after-school special than a dream.

Am I alone in thinking Thanksgiving is a pretty lame holiday? You'd think I'd like a day devoted to eating, but turkey is something I can have a little of and not need more for a while. Why couldn't it be about eating shrimp? Anyway, even though I worked that day, it wasn't until evening and I was able to have dinner with bethje's family. Her mom is one of eight, so they have a pretty large family. Not all of them show up, but enough do to make the basement awfully crowded.

On Friday, I took Beth to see Peter Tork at New Hope Winery. There had been a Monkees tour earlier this year, but it was canceled prematurely, and she likes to see the former Monkees when they come to the area. He played with his band Shoe Suede Blues, and neither of us are all that keen on blues music, but it was pretty good. They did four Monkees songs in their set: "I'm a Believer," "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You" (I guess he felt Neil Diamond wasn't getting enough promotion already), "Daydream Believer," "Last Train to Clarksville," and "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone."
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I'm always having dreams about going back to either high school or college, and last night was no exception. I was taking a whole bunch of college classes, and I was horribly disorganized. Mind you, this was the case when I really was in school, but it was even worse in the dream. I wasn't keeping track of my schedule, or of when assignments were due. The most interesting bit was that one of my classes, which was for theater or something (I never really took any theater classes) was taught by Amanda Palmer.

Speaking of unqualified teachers, here are the final two episodes of the Super Mario World cartoon:

A Little Learning - In this one, the Princess is working as a schoolteacher in Dome City, teaching kids including Yoshi and Oogtar. Was she doing this job and working as an operator at the same time? Do the kids get the day off when she's kidnapped by Bowser? And what's happening to her own kingdom while she's hanging out in Dinosaur Land? These questions aside, it's not a bad idea. When Oogtar arrives for school, he gives the Princess an apple that has a tiny Wiggler inside, which Peach calls a "worm." Let's hope she's not teaching zoology. Hip and Hop Koopa, seeing the opportunity to pull some pranks, decide they want to attend school. Their father forbids it, but they go behind his back and enter the classroom right when the Princess is leading her students in the Pledge of Allegiance "to the flag of the United Lands of Dinosaur World."

What IS the governmental system there, anyway? Oogtar does his best to get the new students into trouble, but it's not like they can't handle this task perfectly well themselves, as when they throw fireballs around at recess. They kept these in their backpacks, which makes me wonder what they're made of. An unspecified amount of time passes, and the Princess declares that there will be a science fair. Hip and Hop's exhibit appears to be one of those vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes, but it's actually hooked up to a magma pit in the Valley of Bowser. King Koopa discovers this and learns that his youngest sons had sneaked off to school. In the mayhem that follows, the volcano erupts and everyone runs away to a song that's sort of reminiscent of "Rock 'n' Roll High School." Mario reroutes the pipe to Bowser's bedroom, and that's the end of that episode.

It's interesting that Mario and Luigi had a fairly minor role in this one, and the latter didn't even have any lines. I wouldn't have minded seeing a little more of the Princess in her teacher role, but there's only one episode left, and it's mostly a flashback.

Mama Luigi - Finally, we get the story of how the Mario team arrived in Dinosaur Land in the first place, in the form of a bedtime story that Luigi tells Yoshi. The green-clad plumber says that they went there for a vacation after they'd banished Bowser from the Mushroom Kingdom. Yeah, don't show us how they managed to do that or anything. King Koopa apparently arrived in Dinosaur Land before the Marios did, and he has Chargin' Chucks capture the Princess. Luigi is confronted by a Sumo Brother who isn't on a platform, so his stomping just opens up the ground below him. In either a bizarre coincidence or a careful plan on the Sumo's part, there's a long vertical drop right below where the ground opens, and Luigi lands on a balloon that helps him descend. After a short ride on a skull raft, Luigi arrives on a platform, and hits the blocks above it. One of them contains Yoshi's egg, which for some reason has red spots even though Yoshi is green.

The baby dinosaur imprints onto his rescuer, and starts calling him "Mama Luigi," hence the episode title. Luigi runs into two dinosaurs, and initially thinks Yoshi is their baby (they're obviously of a totally different species, but I think we can cut the plumber some slack here), but runs away into a warp pipe when he learns they actually want to eat him.

They call the baby a "Yoshisaur," which is presumably how Luigi knows the newborn Yoshi's name. The Brooklynite ends up in a water world, where he dodges a Rip Van Fish and some Porcu-Puffers, and has the help of dolphins in escaping a Torpedo Ted. When they reach the shore, Luigi and Yoshi find themselves surrounded by Wigglers, which the dinosaur promptly eats.

It's at this point that Mario shows up, saying he's escaped from Bowser's "Coney Island Disco Palace," and that he wants to return with Luigi to rescue the Princess. Actually, before he can relay this information, he's eaten by Yoshi, but the dinosaur decides he doesn't like the taste. The three make it into the Neon Castle, and during the song, Luigi is crushed by a giant spike and flattened. Mario reinflates him with a balloon, which is really more the sort of physics you'd see in a Wario game, but I don't think those existed yet at this point. When they reach the throne room, Yoshi eats everything in sight, including the throne. Bowser shows up and sends Mechakoopas after the intruders, but Yoshi eats those as well. He then uses his tongue to take a key from King Koopa's hand, and spitting it into a keyhole results in him, Mario, Luigi, and the Princess all returning to Dome City. Boy, these magic keys sure are convenient! Note that Dome City was deserted when the Marios got there, and there's no indication as to what happened to the cave people or how they were restored. Yeah, I know the focus of this episode was the bond between Luigi and Yoshi, but it left a lot of unanswered questions. Also perhaps worth mentioning is that the baby Yoshi eats more than five enemies, but doesn't grow to full size.

One thing I never really got about the Mario cartoons is why they never really had proper season premieres or finalés. The Writers' Bible for the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon reports that Bowser had been sent to a Banishment Zone but managed to escape, but we never see this. Why aren't Mouser and Triclyde working for him anymore, and why did he suddenly start involving his kids in his schemes? This could have made for an interesting transitional episode, but we didn't get anything of the sort. Yeah, I'm probably asking too much of a cheap cartoon cooked up to advertise Nintendo games, but it's not like that would have taken any more work than any other episode, right?

Anyway, since that's it for this show, here's a poll to see what I should cover next. I doubt anyone really cares, but if you have any opinion at all, you might as well voice it.

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