Stratovania

After OzCon ended on Sunday, we rested for a while back at the motel, and then went to get dinner at a place called Joey with Stephanie. I had a crispy chicken sandwich. She wasn't feeling well, and we were still tired after all that Ozzing, so we went our separate ways after that. We did see her dog Chelsea for a few minutes, though. On Monday, our flight was late at night and we had to check out of the motel at 11, so we stopped a few places mostly to kill time. One was a comic shop in Burbank called House of Secrets, which we'd seen on the way there.

It's at the intersection of Lamer Street, which must have been some jock's idea. (I'm kind of behind the times with my jokey stereotypes, aren't I?)

Comic stores generally tend to have interesting decor, a mix of various pop cultural figures.


Moe Szyslak was scowling at customers next to a Rom the Space Knight omnibus, and there was stained glass window of Mjolnir.

I bought two Disney comics before leaving. Then we ate at a Sizzler, another restaurant we used to have in the northeast, but not anymore. I remember going to one near Sesame Place. And this child on a poster was right about the cheese toast.

There was a convertible with a teddy bear in it in the parking lot, but we never found out any details behind it.

Our next stop was the Travel Town Museum in Griffith Park.

It's focused on the railroads of the area, and is mostly free, although the train ride does cost money. It's not an actual historical train, but more like one at an amusement park.

There was an exhibit on Fred Harvey, the train hospitality magnate, and there's kind of an Oz connection there as Judy Garland was in a movie called The Harvey Girls.

The song "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" was written for it.

While there, I bought a bottle of orange cream soda. Later, we stopped at a game store called Geeky Teas and Games, which is also a cat rescue. There was a sign on the door of one room that said not to meow at the kittens, and I assume it was meant for me specifically.

Tabletop role-playing was something I always thought I'd probably have gotten into if I'd had friends growing up. Dungeons & Dragons has been so influential on the fantasy genre that concepts from it are pretty much unavoidable for me. I ended up buying Mille Bornes, a game I played a lot as a kid, and an Owlbear charm.

That kind of seems like a creature that would appear in an Oz book, doesn't it? No tea, geeky or otherwise, however. I overheard someone mentioning the Magic: The Gathering/Final Fantasy cards, for which I've seen a lot of cool art online recently.

Then we met up with Paul and Carolyn, whom we met at OzCon last year. They also brought dogs, three of them in fact. We got pizza and visited some filming sites in the area, specifically Michael Myers' house from Halloween and Pee-wee Herman's from Big Adventure, both of which had since been painted.

On the way back to the airport, we stopped at Randy's Donuts for the first time.

The doughnut that Homer Simpson used to stop the monorail is based on their sign, but I didn't know that back when that episode aired. We got to the airport later than we intended, and as it's difficult to sleep on a plane, we were awake for a long time before finally getting home. And it's way hotter here in Brooklyn than it was in LA, so we probably should have just stayed, but I do have a job, and my stuff is here.

Since we were married on Leap Day, Beth and I celebrated our anniversary on the first of this month, and went to the orchid show at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

The orchid part was all indoors, much of it in a simulated tropical environment. I can say I didn't know that much about orchids, but there are a lot of different kinds, in many different colors.

Also in the conservatory was a cactus that looked like a bunch of snakes, although snakes usually aren't that scary.

The rest of the garden was, not surprisingly, pretty chilly, and not a lot was blooming. We did, however, take a tram ride around the place. I also thought that this rock looked like it would have an item inside or under it.

Maybe if Link were there. The NYBG is bigger than the one in Brooklyn, but not as big as Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. It contains the last vestige of the forest that once covered much of the area. Afterwards, we went to eat at the Olive Garden. The last few times I've been there, I've gotten rigatoni with five-cheese marinara sauce and sausage.

This past weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, and while we were on the way there, we stopped at a kitschy candy store called Rocket Fizz.

Maybe this woman made her family disappear.
Tavie had taken some pictures there, and Beth found out that there was one in Marlton.

There's a lot of interesting stuff, including the kind of potato chips my teacher gave out in elementary school and a bunch of socks with brand logos, including Diet Coke, Bubble Yum, Swedish Fish, and Froot Loops.

None of those were anything I felt strongly enough about to want to wear on my feet, although I do drink a fair amount of Diet Coke, and I used to eat Swedish Fish in high school and college. They also had a lot of weird themed sodas, including a Monkees banana nut flavor that we bought, as well as tributes to Ritchie Valens, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and...Fidel Castro?

Beth also picked up a Zagnut bar, Jimmie Stix, and some Dutch licorice cats for her mom. I ended up getting a blueberry muffin Kit Kat, a little Pac-Man machine with some kind of candy that I haven't checked out yet, and a deck of Wizard of Oz playing cards with no candy involved at all. I had a pack of cards like those before, except with those it was just one picture on the backs, and here it looks like there are other images from the movies on the card faces.

I did notice a few items that appeared to be pro-Trump, although they had stuff that made fun of him as well. I remember, a few years ago, passing a souvenir shop in Manhattan that had both MAGA and Black Lives Matter hats. I guess that's what you could call mercenary merchandising.

As for the convention itself, I've noticed a gradual decline in the number and length of events that are free with admission, like question-and-answer panels and film introductions by people involved with them. There are still a few, though. The first one on Saturday was with Amie Donald, who played the titular robot girl in M3GAN, but didn't do the voice.

She has a New Zealand accent, and I'm not sure how well that would have worked for the character. Then came Adrienne Barbeau, followed by Brooke Smith, the woman who rubbed the lotion on her skin in Silence of the Lambs.
There were two bigger panels in the evening, the first featuring final girls from the Friday the 13th series, with Adrienne King, Amy Steel, Kimberly Beck, and Melanie Kinnaman.

And the one for the Terrifier films had several people on the production side as well as the actors.

Before it started, Leah Voysey sang the relentlessly catchy Clown Cafe song, with Elliott Fullam accompanying her on guitar.

David Howard Thornton, who played Art the Clown, did a pantomime of killing someone.

I also bought some Mario-related pictures from Dallas Pritchard of Studio 327.


On Sunday night, we got home in time for Beth to watch the Oscars, while I sort of half-watched them. As usual, I hadn't seen most of the movies that had been nominated for anything. We did see Elvis and Tar, and Turning Red was in the animated category. I do think I should probably see Everything Everywhere All at Once, and I'm sure I'll see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at some point, although I'm behind on the Marvel movies. From the online comments I've seen about the ceremony, yeah, a fat suit probably shouldn't be winning any makeup awards; a commercial for The Little Mermaid during the broadcast is weird, but the whole thing is kind of a commercial anyway, so whatever; and Warner Bros. taking credit for movies they bought the rights to but didn't make seems rather similar to Elon Musk paying to call himself the founder of Tesla. I have no issue with Florence Pugh's outfit, though.

I guess I think she's just generally cute, though. It's weird how Janelle Monae's dress looked red on stage, but pretty bright orange elsewhere.

It stands out a lot more when the orangeness is obvious. And speaking of unusual colors, I have to give props to The Rock.


I haven't gone to the movies that much recently, but Beth was talking about wanting to see Scream 6, and there's the Mario movie coming up. From what I've seen in the trailers, it almost looks like they're throwing in too many references, although we don't know that everything there will be included, or will be particularly important even if it is. I guess it's just kind of weird to me because, from what I understand, it's loosely an adaptation of the original Super Mario Bros., yet they're including stuff that wasn't introduced into the series until decades after that. Then again, I'm pretty sure that, even if the movie is really successful, they're not going to make one based on each and every Mario game. I mostly like the designs, although Peach's head and eyes look kind of disproportionate to the rest of her.

I guess it's not the first time she's been depicted with a strangely large head for her body, though.

I have an ultrasound coming up on Thursday, and the cats have to go to the vet on Friday. And I'm not entirely sure how we're going to work out our summer plans, since Beth and I both have things we want to do in California in July, but in different parts of the month. For now, here's a picture of Reagan as a bat.

Happy Solstice, Yule, or whatever you want to call it! We've had our Christmas tree up for a while now, and I posted pictures of it elsewhere online, but not here. It's smaller than last year's, but I see that as a good thing. Much easier to carry in and out of the building. I always feel kind of bad that there's no point in putting ornaments on the back of the tree, because it just seems so uneven. The orange pterodactyl is new for this year.

They had several kinds of colorful dinosaurs like that at Target. (And yes, I know a pterosaur is not really a dinosaur.) Whenever we get a tree, Wally likes to sit underneath it, while Reagan ignores it.


I suppose the first pre-Christmas activity I should mention is seeing the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center on the last day of November. We were off to the side in the back of the third circle, and had an obstructed view, but it was still enjoyable. I'm really not familiar enough with ballet to give details, but I usually appreciate the mice and the kids coming out from Mother Ginger's skirt.

The Thursday after that, we saw the Kevin Geeks Out Christmas Special at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park. There's always a list of the performers on the website after the show, but I always forget who did what. I know Camila Jones discussed Christmas movies, and how any film with a scene taking place on or around Christmas could technically count in that category. She also questioned a line from White Christmas about mixing fairy tales with buttermilk and liverwurst, and was confused as to what it actually means. There was a bit about the animated New Kids on the Block Christmas special, which involves Donny befriending a kid who turns out to be dead. Someone else did a multimedia bit about her mother rather passive-aggressively showing her the decorations at her house. There were also talks on Furbys and It's a Wonderful Life. And there was an updated video presentation of Santa Doesn't Need Your Help. Kevin hosted two games, the Santa suit one and Ott or Not, the goal of the latter being to guess whether a film was rated better or worse than a very early movie of a guy named James Ott sneezing. I actually won the Santa suit one a few years ago, and every other time was eliminated very quickly. It's mostly all luck, even if you have a photographic memory for celebrities in Santa suits, as there are always some pretty obscure choices.


Last Thursday, we went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We were there last year, but I think they expanded it a bit this time. Sadly for us, it was cold and rainy that day, and the way the lights were positioned in the dark in some places made it hard to see. I liked the flowers and birds made of lights.

The next day was a concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, with a good mix of holiday classics. And yesterday, we saw the tree in Rockefeller Center, and stopped at the nearby Nintendo store.

Make more than one trip, Luigi!
It was really crowded, and they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. I noticed a lot of sticker books, and the Pikachus in wedding dresses were cute. Bowser Jr. was apparently trying to blend in with them.

Even though I've lived in New York City for almost eight years, I still kind of feel like a tourist in that area.

Wednesday was our last day at Disneyland, and it wasn't even a full day. We returned to the main park, and the first thing we rode was Peter Pan's Flight.

This is another one where you ride past scenes from the movie, this time on a suspended pirate ship with some stuff beneath you.

I do hope whoever designed this sign of a smiling Peter above instructions for adults to supervise their kids recognizes the irony.

It's probably a legal requirement to display such rules, but isn't that against everything he stands for? Maybe they should have put Nana on the sign.

I got some frozen apple cider at Maurice's Treats, and then we made our way over to the lake, which has several attractions that are only open in the daytime. There are two boats you can ride, the steamboat Mark Twain and the sailing ship Columbia. We ended up on the former, simply due to timing.

Next came Tom Sawyer Island, where you take a smaller boat to an island with a lot of steps and some crazy bridges.

And Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes is one where all the passengers row. I'm not sure whether this is actually necessary, but it's definitely a different experience from most rides. I had kind of a difficult time getting into the correct rowing rhythm. Maybe they needed one of those drums. Our next stop was Galaxy's Edge, and while we'd walked around the one at Walt Disney World, we didn't really do anything there. This time, we went on both of the rides there, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run and Rise of the Resistance.

On the former, the part before the actual ride has the pirate (but not of the Carribean) Hondo Ohnaka recruiting a crew to steal some coaxium fuel, borrowing the ship from Chewbacca.

Riders are divided into groups of five, each with two pilots, two gunners, and one engineer. Beth and I were the pilots. It's kind of like Midway Mania in that it's both a ride and a game, but I think was worse at this one. I couldn't help thinking that, if a group of kids rode this, they could potentially get way too serious about it. The wait for Rise of the Resistance was said to be sixty-five minutes, and you had to pay extra for a Lightning Lane pass, which we didn't do. The ride was having problems, so our wait ended up being longer than that. A lot of Disney rides have an introductory story before you actually board, but this one was even more complex than usual.

You meet BB-8, Rey (in hologram form, albeit much better quality than the ones in the movies themselves), and Lieutenant Bek, an original character for the ride. He's from the same species as Admiral Ackbar.

Anyway, you enter a Resistance ship with a moving floor and windows showing space, then you're captured by the First Order, taken onto a star destroyer, and made to walk down a corridor lined with Storm Troopers.

The Resistance comes to the rescue, and you ride an escape pod all over the place to dodge your captors. Kylo Ren shows up a few times during the ride. I saw a few costumed characters in Galaxy's Edge, but the only one I got a picture of was Chewie.

I noticed some Storm Troopers asking kids to give allegiance to the First Order. We also got Diet Coke in collectible bottles, which we still have.

The final thing we rode was Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and I'm probably more entertained than I should be by the safety announcement, delivered in character in a wacky hillbilly accent. "This is the wildest ride in the wilderness!"

We left the park later than I'd intended, and by the time we'd gotten some food from Monty's Good Burger (the vegan equivalent of In-N-Out; I had the "chicken" tenders and thought they were all right, but the texture was kind of weird), returned the rental car and gotten a ride to the airport terminal, we just barely made it in time for our flight. The flight itself went off without a hitch, but we were both exhausted afterwards. And that's it for the time being, although I should probably go back and talk about some things we did before the trip in a future post.

Yeah, I know the title doesn't rhyme, but "horse" doesn't rhyme with "cross" the way I say it, either. Yesterday, I drove down to Asbury Park with Beth, and it was a lot more crowded than I suspected. I guess everyone wants to go to the beach, or "down the shore" as they in those parts. There was also a show at the Stone Pony that evening. We've been there before, but not in years. The last time was when we saw They Might Be Giants at that venue.

We've been watching The Sopranos, and the boardwalk is where Tony's dream where Big Pussy is a talking fish takes place. It's easily recognizable from the part where the boardwalk goes through a tunnel; you probably know what I mean if you've been there.

We didn't see any talking fish, but we did visit the Silverball Retro Arcade. Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. We had to park really far away from the beach because all the lots were full, but the bright side of that is that we ended up parking on the street and didn't have to pay. We checked out a Cuban restaurant near there, where Beth had a really big Cuban sandwich and an empanada, and I had a ham and cheese sandwich. Yeah, kind of boring, but I'm not that adventurous with food. It had Swiss cheese, which is too sour when it's raw, but pretty good when melted, which it was. The arcade place was interesting. There's a fee to get in for a set amount of time, but all the machines are free to play once you're there. Each one has a description accompanying it.

While mostly pinball, there were a few classic arcade machines, including Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Super Mario Bros., Centipede, and Millipede, plus one with a bunch of different games.

You probably know by now that I'm deeply invested in video games but not actually good at most of them. I did play a bit of Dig Dug. I had to try out the Wizard of Oz pinball machine, which was very elaborate.

The thing is, since you have to keep your eyes on the ball, you can't really pay much attention to what else is going on. Or at least I couldn't. That seems to have been the trend when the machine was made.

Beth tried one called Fun House, which they talked about on an infomercial for an arcade machine warehouse in Pennsylvania. It has this weird dummy head you can hit the ball into. Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, that infomercial referenced the bit with the Wicked Witch of the West and the hourglass multiple times. I also found it fascinating that old pinball machines tried to simulate other games, like baseball and horse and car racing.

There were a few shuffle alleys as well, but they all seemed to be out of service, unless I just couldn't figure out how to start them. After that, I had a peach water ice, and I haven't had water ice in a long time.

I have jury duty tomorrow. I've been summoned many times, but never been selected for a jury. I just hope I don't have to go in that many days, as we were considering taking a trip next weekend. It should at least be a good opportunity to get some reading done. I just got Phil Lewin's new book, The Spellcasters of Oz. I can't bring my Kindle, though, so I suppose I'm limited to physical books. I've been feeling kind of restless recently; there are a lot of things I COULD do, but I haven't really been in the mood. I just bought Super Mario Odyssey when I heard the price went down, and there are a few other games I own that I want to check out, but I'm already in the middle of some others. I've already established that I'm not good at action games, but Odyssey looks so impressive that I kind of want to at least give it a shot. I had a dream last night about trying to finish a game that I think might have been Dragon Quest IX, although it didn't actually look like it. That really IS a game where I reached the final boss years ago but never beat him, though.

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.

It's the Fourth of July today, which means...actually, I'm not really sure what it means. Fireworks, I guess, but I'm not seeing any. bethje actually went to see fireworks in Philadelphia on Saturday night, but I was too cranky to go with her. Our dog Clancy is terrified of fireworks, by the way, so this hasn't been a particularly good weekend for him. It hasn't been that great for ME, either, since I had to work early in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday. We did play Trivial Pursuit for a little while on Saturday night. I enjoy the game, but I'm not as good at it as you might think. And I'm still getting further behind on the Internet. I thought maybe I'd catch up when I'd finished with my classes, but apparently not. One thing I am proud of is that I finished my rewrite of Prince Pompadore in Oz. I'd finished most of it a few years ago, but couldn't quite figure out the ending. Now I should probably see if there's anything I need to edit for The Royal Crab of Oz. I want to get both of them published, but I'm still not sure how. There's always print on demand, but what's the use of an Oz book without illustrations? I know several people who have done illustrations for Oz books, actually, but I don't think any of them work for free. By the way, why is coming up with ideas so much easier than actually writing them?

Two young children's board games that have withstood the test of time are Chutes and Ladders (originally Snakes and Ladders, and still known by that name in other countries, but apparently Americans don't like the idea of kids sliding down serpents) and Candy Land. I can only recall playing the latter once, in kindergarten, and being upset when I ended up getting sent back a considerable distance. But that's actually what both of these games have in common, aside from the fact that literacy isn't required. I guess the lesson for kids is that, no matter how successful you are, one little thing can ruin everything. Maybe the American banking industry should have spent more time playing these games. In Chutes/Snakes, the spaces specify what bad things you're doing that result in taking a slide--breaking a cookie jar, tormenting a cat, blowing up a bus full of nuns--but Candy Land has no such embedded moral lessons. I guess life in a country made of candy is just random, which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense.


The Wikipedia article on Candy Land has some interesting information on different versions of the game. I guess it would have been around 1983 that I played it, so the version with the characters would have been available, but I think I can only remember the locations. I do find the character changes over the years interesting. Apparently, in this decade, Frostine was demoted from a queen to a princess, and Lolly totally lost her royal title. Maybe in the next edition, King Kandy will change to a democratically elected president. Also, the fat green Plumpy no longer graces the game board.


Also worth noting is that Hasbro (which now owns Milton Bradley) sued an adult site called candyland.com over the domain name, and won. The domain name now redirects to Hasbro's page on the game.


Incidentally, I have to wonder if Candyland has any diplomatic relations with the food-related people of Oz. Maybe the reason that the Marshmallow Twins haven't appeared in an Oz book is that they're busy working as ambassadors to King Kandy's court. {g}

Okay, first of all, I'd better reveal the answers to that lyrics quiz.

1. What's the matter with the songs he's singing? Can't you tell that they're pretty lame? "It's Still Billy Joel to Me," by "Weird Al" Yankovic (nova_one, rockinlibrarian, revme)
2. I can understand why you'd want a better man, but why you wanna make him out of me? "Spitting in the Wind," by the dB's. I don't think I would have gotten this one either.
3. The color of infinity inside an empty glass. "Experimental Film," by They Might Be Giants (carvinkeeper12, petie_s, zimbra1006, nova_one, revme)
4. I know that you're in there. I can see you. You're saying you're okay. I don't believe you. "Learn to Live with What You Are," by Ben Folds
5. So I guess I'll give it up. Yeah, I guess I will. What's the use in pushing when it's all uphill? "(Believed You Were) Lucky," by 'Til Tuesday
6. Take off into space from this terrible place, won't be 'round for a year. "Weather Perfectly Clear," by the Fastbacks
7. I'm gonna [title], like a pussycat. "Pounce," by Nellie McKay
8. Never thought I'd fall, but now I hear the call. "I'm Gettin' Sentimental Over You," by TMBG (revme)
9. On the way home from the party, neither of us said a word. "Scotch Grove," by the Mountain Goats
10. One part sad and two parts brave. "To the Stars," by Erin McKeown
11. "Why do cupids and angels continually haunt her dreams like memories of another life?" is printed on her shirt in capitals. Oh, come on, I was sure someone would get this! It's "Trompe le Monde," by the Pixies.
12. Billie, you're a miracle, and God knows I need one. "My Only Friend," by the Magnetic Fields (zimbra1006)
13. Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace. Molly is the singer in a band. "Ob-Li-Di, Ob-La-Da," by the Beatles (carvinkeeper12, burningofroissy, little_octagon, petie_s, zimbra1006, nova_one, rockinlibrarian, vilajunkie, revme)
14. There was a face on a hoarding that someone had drawn on. "Better Off Dead," by Elton John
15. I spring up from the ground. I stretch myself up and look around this whole world. "Spring Succeeds," by the Olivia Tremor Control

As usual, a few really easy ones, and mostly ones even I wouldn't be able to guess. This game never works out as well as I would hope.

Also, happy belated birthday to leolapyre, and here are some cartoon reviews for your reading pleasure.

Simpsons: This one actually had a halfway decent plot, but wasn't particularly funny. Even parts that seemed like they SHOULD have been funny, like the dream sequence, really weren't. Come on, how do you mess up an appearance by the ghost of Oscar Wilde? And Homer's becoming a supertaster was never resolved. Also, was this Lunchlady Doris' first speaking role since Doris Grau died?

Sit Down, Shut Up: No, the second episode wasn't an improvement over the first. And the combination of bad drawings with actual photographic images is pretty bizarre.

Family Guy: With all of the TV and movie clichés that the show has mocked, I don't think they'd done the one with the popular kid dating a loser before. Not a bad episode overall, but it did come across as yet another one where the plot really just fizzled out at the end, possibly due to lack of time. And nothing really came of the Stewie subplot, although his tough-guy behavior was kind of amusing.

American Dad: I liked it, but I have to wonder why they'd choose to show two Stan and Steve bonding episodes in a row.

Happy birthday to rockinlibrarian! You probably won't be interested in the rest of this post, but these first two sentences are just for you! {g}

In The Emerald City of Oz, we get our first detailed description of the Royal Athletic College run by Professor Wogglebug. The field in back of the college building is described as follows:

In one place they played football, in another baseball. Some played tennis, some golf; some were swimming in a big pool. Upon a river which wound through the grounds several crews in racing boats were rowing with great enthusiasm. Other groups of students played basketball and cricket, while in one place a ring was roped in to permit boxing and wrestling by the energetic youths. All the collegians seemed busy and there was much laughter and shouting.

What's interesting is that a few of these sports are distinctly American, while I don't think cricket ever caught on in this country. Also, when young baseball pitcher Peter Brown visits Oz in the Ruth Plumly Thompson books, none of the natives seem to be familiar with the sport. But then, there's no indication that he visited the college, and the Wogglebug might well have wanted to introduce sports largely unknown in Oz, in order to show off his worldly knowledge. There are references to other sports and games scattered throughout the series as well. The Scarecrow shows Jack Pumpkinhead how to play quoits in Land. Prince Pompadore, Peg Amy, and Wag play hopscotch in Kabumpo. Scalawagons has the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman starting to play a weird form of squash involving ripe bananas. In Lucky Bucky, there's an entire community devoted to games, inhabited by hop-scotching grasshoppers, leap-frogging frogs, cricket-playing crickets, croquet-obsessed crows, live playing cards, and a teapot king whose greatest passion is playing checkers. But we don't see too many games that are specific to Oz. Forbidden Fountain mentions ozball courts in the palace grounds, but there's no indication as to how it's played. And Grampa makes reference to a game called scrum, which has elements in common with chess, checkers, and parchesi.

Several fans have invented, or at least mentioned, Ozzy versions of existing games, including Ozingo, Scrozzle, and Ozopoly. I find the last one particularly intriguing, but also somewhat out of place for Oz. Isn't it supposed to be a land without economic competition? Then again, that's not always consistent from one book to another, and it's not like Monopoly is all that realistic in the mundane world either. The spirit of people wanting to bankrupt each other might be, but when in Lurline's name do people buy entire streets, and why would you have to own three particular ones before building anything on them? I do have to wonder what the properties would be in an Ozopoly game. If they were Emerald City streets, then they would presumably all be green, and that wouldn't do for the color set rule. Maybe they would be landmarks from throughout the country, or the crazy villages that adventurers stumble into from time to time. Also, I have to think an Oz version of Risk, perhaps including Nome armies, would be pretty cool.