Entries tagged with language

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Alloween

Halloween is over, but I still have some spooky stuff to write about. Last Saturday, Beth and I went to Deno's Wonder Wheel Park on Coney Island, as it was the last weekend in the year the rides were running. We went on the Wonder Wheel, the Spook-A-Rama, and the Phoenix, the last of which is a small, slow roller coaster. They did have some Halloween decorations up, including a building entrance shaped like a zombie head.

I also always enjoy when rides have murals with seemingly random things in them. Like, this was what was in the back of the bumper car enclosure.

I get the cars and the car model, but a football player, Captain America, and the Statue of Liberty? If it's a patriotic thing, then why does the Statue look like she's been injured?

In the evening, we saw Weird Al at Carnegie Hall, with Emo Philips opening. This was the first time I'd ever been there, and I didn't even practice, just took the subway. It was the same kind of tour as the last time we saw him, with Al and his band playing mostly his original songs. They pulled out a few unexpected ones, like "Velvet Elvis" and "Good Old Days." When introducing "One More Minute," Al talked about how they performed it on network TV back in 1986, and the network insisted on censoring the line "I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue," which already doesn't make sense, but then they made it much worse by just bleeping the word "tongue." "Skipper Dan" is based on a time when the guide on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland mentioned his failed acting career, but Beth wondered after the show that it might have been awkward for Weird Al to just go on rides without being hassled. Maybe he went in disguise. For "Nature Trail to Hell," an appropriate choice for Halloween, he did the organ part on a midi accordion. Both "Craigslist" and "Albuquerque" were extended, the former including a long bit of free-form nonsense in the part about his being on a phone call with his mother. I know there was something about the snakes rising up, a phrase Al has used before. "Albuquerque" not only had more kinds of doughnuts and the band playing the beginning of the song again after the part about the narrator losing his train of thought, but also an apology for using the word "hermaphrodite." He said that, in that context, it was just a medical term. While Al generally manages to avoid problematic humor, he does have a tendency to use some mildly offensive words presumably just because they sound silly, particularly "midget" and "albino." And in the song, a later line refers to the hermaphroditic person as a man. "Dare to Be Stupid" was performed with a lounge arrangement. For the encore, there was a cover of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," then a mostly-acoustic medley of "Amish Paradise," "Smells Like Nirvana," "White & Nerdy," "Word Crimes," and "Yoda," the latter including the chant. This is the best of the pictures I was able to take from our seats in the back row.

We visited Tavie and Sean on Sunday, and watched some Halloween stuff, or actually rewatched it in my case. You can see my thoughts on revisits to The Halloween That Almost Wasn't and Return to Oz here. After that, we looked at a house in Flatbush that really went all out on Halloween decorations (well, I guess the owner went all out, not the house itself, although you never know during the spooky season).

We didn't do much on actual Halloween, aside from watch a few other things. We voted yesterday, and today we saw The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.

It's closing soon, so Beth bought tickets for it. She saw it before years ago, but I've only seen the 2004 movie version, although I did hear my dad's CD of selections from it a lot as a kid. It's a very impressive show, complete with a lot of lighting tricks and pyrotechnics. Although it wasn't really intentional that we saw it on Halloween week, I guess it's sort of appropriate, even if the version of the Phantom in the musical is much less monstrous in appearance than in other takes on the character. He's presumably somewhat supernatural as well, although I guess that's kind of ambiguous. A lot of his tricks are based on mechanics and stealth, but he did curse Carlotta. Or maybe that was psychosomatic. Still, if he has the ability to control minds to some extent, maybe Christine wasn't entirely in control of herself when she went down into the sewer with him. Otherwise, she comes across as kind of absurdly naive. I've heard, probably mostly from Beth, that there's a certain contingent who think Christine should have gotten into a relationship with the Phantom and who don't like Raoul. What did Raoul even do, aside from being upper class? She compared it to people who hate Cosette in Les Miserables, although it's not like Eponine was a serial killer. I remember reading a quote from Terry Pratchett, who wrote the Discworld equivalent of the story in Maskerade, that the message of the musical is that you can get away with murder if you're charming. I might have to read the original book; I understand it's not very long. If I do, I'll probably do a bit of comparison and contrast.

Speaking of spooky music, there's one short piece that I've heard over and over again in different contexts, but never knew what it was called or the original source. For instance, I remember hearing it in elementary school music class with the lyrics "We are here to scare you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo." Anyway, it's called "Mysterioso Pizzicato," and it was originally used in silent film scores as a theme for villains. I thought of it recently because I was looking up the music to Wizards & Warriors, which uses it as the boss theme.

Watch on YouTube

Current Music: Donkey Kong Country orchestrated

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Re-Animated and It Feels So Good

Last weekend was the Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. Beth and I have been to most of these, and there's not as much to say about them anymore. It does seem like they're downplaying the question-and-answer panels, and while I get that this is time when the guests aren't able to sell stuff, they've always been the main thing we do. The first three were only a half hour each.

First was Roger L. Jackson, the voice actor behind Ghostface in the Scream films, as well as Mojo Jojo in The Powerpuff Girls, Doc Brown's father in the Back to the Future game, and the talking mucus creature in Mucinex commercials. He actually did voices throughout the panel, which was pretty cool. I've only seen the first Scream, and there are supposed to be more guests from the series next time, so maybe I should get caught up on that.

Next came Ray Santiago and Dana DeLorenzo from Ash vs. the Evil Dead, which I've never watched. I'm not against watching it, as I liked the original Evil Dead movies (Beth didn't, for what it's worth); but as it was, I didn't get much out of the session.

Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who were in Re-Animator and a few other films together, did the next panel. Barbara was in the back of the room (with her daughter, I think) before it started, and she walked past Beth and said, "Excuse me" on her way. We saw Re-Animator, but it's been a while. What I remember best was Jeffrey talking about how they were filming Castle Freak in Italy around the beginning of the O.J. Simpson trial, and there was a headline referring to O.J. as the new Othello. There was a wait before the next panel, and everyone who wasn't a VIP had to line up in the cold. I suspect they didn't alter the plans after they found out it was going to be below freezing. Fortunately, it wasn't for that long.

The panel for Dexter, had Erik King, C.S. Lee, and David Zayas, but not Michael C. Hall, even though he was there. Although I didn't actually look around the autograph rooms, apparently Anthony Michael Hall was at the convention as well, and I have no information as to whether anyone mixed them up. I remember, some years ago, someone told me I looked like Michael, which probably wasn't meant unkindly, but I'm not sure what I think of being compared to a guy known for playing a serial killer. I've never seen Dexter, but the panel was a pretty big draw.

Finally, we had four people involved with the Friday the 13th franchise: Warrington Gillette, Derek Mears, Steve Miner, and Kane Hodder. Warrington was the original Jason in Part 2, but the story I've heard is that he didn't want to do the stunts, so Steve Dash took over the role. Dash was a pretty regular Monster-Mania guest until his death a few years ago, and I don't think Gillette was before, and I have to suspect that wasn't a coincidence.

Masks and vaccinations weren't required at the convention, and I'm not sure that was the best idea, especially considering how tightly packed the seats were, but the authorities have long since stopped pretending to care. I didn't particularly want to wear a mask for that long anyway, but I would have if it had been recommended; I don't feel qualified to make these decisions for myself. As of last week, we no longer need to wear masks at our desks at work, although they're still required when dealing with the public and recommended in the hallways. The desks aren't that close together, and there aren't that many people in my office, so that's probably a good compromise. They still require masks on the subway, but I miss when they were uncrowded, although I guess the MTA wouldn't. It's weird how, even though mask rules stuck around for a while, everybody basically just stopped insisting on social distancing, I guess because it was difficult to enforce. I'm sure it was pretty much impossible on the subways.

Today is Pi Day, and five days ago was Mario Day, although both of those only work with the American way of writing dates, which really doesn't make a lot of sense. Speaking of things we do differently here, I just recently saw something online about how the letter pi is actually pronounced pretty much the same as our P in Greek. I've also seen people insist that omicron is pronounced with a short O, but Duolingo always uses a long one. So does Lrrr, for that matter.

Of course, it's pretty standard for foreign words to be pronounced differently when incorporated into another language, but while it's sometimes because a sound really isn't used in the new language, other times it seems totally arbitrary. But since the English P can also be used as a variable, maybe pi is pronounced differently on purpose. I didn't think until today to look up why that's what the number is called, but according to Wikipedia it's short for periphereia, meaning periphery or circumference. By the way, I also understand they skipped over xi when naming COVID variants so people wouldn't associate it with Xi Jinping, even though it's pronounced totally differently. They only ever talk about the really prominent variants on the news anyway, so it kind of seems like they went right from delta to omicron.

I actually did play a bit of a Mario game on Mario Day, specifically Paper Mario: The Origami King. I beat the Scissors on my second try, took a few to get through the first-person shooting segment with the airship cannon and the paper planes, and still haven't gotten through the part with a bunch of origami troops chasing you through a volcano.

There are too many ways to die instantly in this part of the game. Still, I haven't totally given up. I mean, I eventually finished that river rapids section. I realize that trying something until you get it right is a standard part of video games, but it can be so frustrating. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I finally managed to get some star fragments after looking up how to wish on shooting stars. I also have some Pisces fragments, but Celeste hasn't given me a recipe that uses those. I checked up on where I left off on Final Fantasy IX, and I'm up to Deathguise, one of the last few bosses. He totally kicked my party's butts, though, so I'm going to have to level up some more before trying that again. From what I've seen online, he's kind of a wake-up call in that respect. And because I apparently don't have enough games already in progress, I started on Dragon Quest Builders, which Beth gave me for our anniversary.

Current Mood: exhausted

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Driving Aloud

I've been busy for a while now, between going to my grandmother's memorial service and transferring a bunch of files from my computer, so I'm going to go back some time with this entry. On the Wednesday before last, Beth and I saw Robyn Hitchcock at Murmrr, which is a venue inside a synagogue, or at least that's what it looks like. The show was originally supposed to be him with Tanya Donnelly, and I was kind of looking forward to seeing her. I don't know that much about her, but I know she was in the Breeders and Throwing Muses, and I've enjoyed some of their stuff. Unfortunately, she had laryngitis, and had to cancel. That did mean a lot of Robyn, who did two full sets. Most of it was solo on acoustic guitar, with his giving increasingly complex and bizarre instructions to the sound guy before each song. He played the beginning of the second set on piano, and Emma Swift accompanied him on some other songs.

I can't remember all that was in the set, although I know he didn't do my recommendation, "The Bones in the Ground." That's okay, though. He played "Balloon Man," "1970 in Aspic" followed by "1974," "Madonna of the Wasps," "One Long Pair of Eyes," "The Lizard," "Cynthia Mask," "Queen Elvis," "Flavour of Light," "Glass Hotel," "Chant/Aether," "The Cheese Alarm," "Raymond Chandler Evening," "Virginia Woolf," and "Queen of Eyes." I know the ones he played on piano included "The Man Who Invented Himself" and "Ted, Woody and Junior."

He closed with "Visions of Johanna" and another Bob Dylan cover. He mentioned that he considered Dylan the Morrissey of the 1970s, which makes a certain amount of sense, although Morrissey seems like a total creep nowadays and I don't really know about Dylan. There were some albums for sale, but I think they were all ones I already owned. A few of his records seem hard to come by, or at least not cheap. Is there a reason why CDs of Queen Elvis and Globe of Frogs cost so much on Amazon? I might end up having to get used copies.

There's really not much to say about what happened between that and last Wednesday, when, after work, Beth and I visited a small Kmart on the bottom floor of a Sears in Flatbush. She's really nostalgic about Kmart, and I guess I am too, as I grew up with them and they're so rare these days. On Thursday, we drove down to Beth's mom's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and I don't have much to say about that other than that Uncle John made a dessert kugel with fruit in it, and the contrast of textures between the noodles and the rest of it was weird.

I wondered about the name because I knew "Kugel" was German for a bullet, but apparently the connection is that the word originally meant a ball or sphere, and early kugels tended to be round.

We drove the rest of the way to Virginia on Friday, and that's an annoyingly long drive. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "I wonder why they put the South so far south." Somehow, however, as tiring as driving is, in a way it's better than being a passenger, because I have more control. My subconscious mind apparently thinks this is a big deal, as I frequently have dreams about being frustrated at someone, usually a parent, who won't let me go home when I want to. We took I-95 much of the way, and I noticed they had a lot of RV dealerships along the highway. Beth likes to mess with the radio, and she noted that the religious stations down there seem more hardcore. There was one where some guy was insisting abortion was human sacrifice, which, regardless of your views on abortion, seems to misunderstand the concept of sacrifice. Religious radio stations are kind of fascinating, very insular and fearful, yet constantly advertising themselves with terms like "hope" and "inspiration." I guess that just proves I'm not part of their in-group. My grandmother was a believer in God and Heaven and all that, so I hope she made it to Paradise if it actually exists. What I couldn't listen to on the radio was someone complaining that the Democrats were taking over Virginia because the cities had all the power. If he's right, I'd say that's a good thing. But really, when cities do have more power (and they don't always), isn't that simply because they have more people? Is this dude arguing that voting should be based on area instead of people? I think it's largely Virginia's fault that we have the electoral college, so I guess they haven't changed much in the past 250 years. Anyway, the memorial service was held at my grandmother's church on Saturday, and afterwards we went back to her house to have ham on rolls. Beth and I later stopped for another meal at Ponderosa, which they don't have in our area anymore.

Current Music: Allan Sherman: The Streets of Miami

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issues,
language

There are no words for me inside your dictionary

All right, here's something that I found worth addressing. The makers of Oxford's Junior Dictionary decided to reflect a "modern, multicultural, multifaith society" by removing words associated with British history and Christianity, as well as several sorts of animals and plants. If the point is to make the dictionary "multifaith," then why not add words reflecting other religions, like, say, "rabbi" or "imam"? (These particular words might well already be in this dictionary, but I think you get my point.) And while I do think some of the words they put in are good additions, why "blog"? Isn't that really a slang term anyway? And "EU" is an abbreviation for a proper name, which would make it doubly invalid in Scrabble. Now, if this were an unabridged dictionary, I'd expect those words to be in there. Bit isn't it more important for a kid to know what a raven is? How else are they going to read Poe?