vovat: (santa)

Christmas is over now, so I should probably write something about it. We were at Beth's mom's house again, and the cats came with us. It was the first Christmas Felix spent with us, and he seemed to enjoy it, except when he hit his head on the coffee table because Nellie popped out of some wrapping paper and surprised him.

They were also playing with one of the bags.

Not all of our presents had arrived by Christmas Day, but between then and now, I received the Dragon Quest III HD remake, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, a book publication of the Super Mario Adventures comic that ran in Nintendo Power, The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, Volume 2 of Kirby Manga Mania, Andy Partridge's My Failed Songwriting Career Volume 2 (I don't have the first one yet, but I don't think you have to be familiar with that to listen to the second) and My Failed Christmas Career, a movie-style Cat Mario figure, a T-shirt with Bowser from a series where I already have the Luigi and Yoshi ones, a soft Koopa shell, a Ruby Slippers mug, and some Marvin the Martian socks.

I was trying to make a Bowser face, but I suck at imitating facial expressions.
I also gave Beth a similar big, soft Mario-related thing.

I ended up getting some duplicates, but I supposed that's likely to happen when you send the same list to different people who aren't coordinating with each other. I feel like there was a lot of stuff I wanted to do but didn't, and I know it's the same way with Beth. It seems like a lot of my holiday memories, even dating back to childhood, are of things I thought of but never did. I'm a procrastinator in general, and it's hard to get in the mood to prepare for Christmas when both of our birthdays are in November. Aside from the new Ben Folds Christmas album, I didn't even listen to holiday music from my own collection (as opposed to the stuff on the radio and in stores; I heard plenty of that). We did do our annual rewatch of Home Alone, as well as seeing the original Grinch, Frosty, and Garfield Christmas. A lot of the latter is the Arbuckle family doing the same stuff they do every year, even if it's silly and doesn't make sense, because that's just what they do. I can relate to that to an extent. It's not like Home Alone is even that great of a movie, but it's become what we do.

In other news, we bought a new car, as our old one seemed to be on its last legs. The new one is a Hyundai Venue in a color called green apple (not to be confused with candy apple red with a ski for a wheel), and we had to wait extra time to get it. Next year's green is a different color that looks more like gray, so there weren't a lot for sale. It's technically an SUV, and I've generally been kind of against those, but it seemed the most practical choice. It's not much wider than the Honda Fit, and our parking space in the garage is pretty narrow. It wasn't a Christmas present and didn't have one of those giant bows from the commercials, but I did want to buy one before I had to get another emissions inspection on the Fit. We'd had the Honda since 2009, so the Venue has features that are new to me but probably pretty standard now, like a backup camera. It also has a moonroof, which Beth is excited about.

Anything else I should mention? We did go to the Nintendo store in Rockefeller Center and saw the tree there, although we planned it poorly and had to go around the block to get from one to the other.

It's now that weird period between Christmas and New Year's that doesn't entirely feel like it should exist. It was one thing back when I was in school and had the whole week (and change, depending on when the holidays fell) off, but working over this period makes me more aware of it.
vovat: (Autobomb)
I'm sure it's not polite to mention it, but today is my birthday. Guess how old I am.

I've written before about L. Frank Baum's recurring usage of that number. Unfortunately, it's also the number of our president-elect, because for some reason the precedent was set by Grover Cleveland for non-consecutive terms to count as separate presidents, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Beth's birthday was on Friday, and we spent a lot of it driving.


On the Saturday before last, Beth wanted to go to a place she'd just found out about on the Internet, the American Treasure Tour in Oaks, Pennsylvania. We drove there with her mom and uncle. It's located inside a warehouse building, and is the collection of one particular person who prefers to remain anonymous. It fills two rooms, one for musical instruments and one for toys, although there's a lot of overlap and a fair amount of stuff that doesn't fit either category. Much of the music room is dedicated to self-playing instruments, like player pianos and band organs.

One organ played "Dancing Queen," and I would have thought their era would have been largely over by the seventies, but I think I've occasionally heard even newer stuff on carousel organs.

It also has a lot of dolls and dollhouses, and some miniature sets of scenes from movies, including a few Oz-related ones.

The toy room also has a Tin Woodman and Munchkin Mayor.

One part of the music room had a lot of phones.

There's a lot of old advertising stuff, and items and displays from stores, restaurants, and circuses.

A giant jack-in-the-box from Kay-Bee Toys contains a soldier who calls himself Mr. Kay-Bee, and sings songs. Kay-Bee was still around in my younger days, and they still used toy soldiers as mascots, but I didn't know any of them had names.

One part has a bunch of Coca-Cola polar bears, and another some RCA Victor dogs.

And there are some interesting pairings with stuffed animals in the seats of cars and motorcycles, some toys and others ones made to drive on actual roads.

Could you really trust Foghorn Leghorn to drive a tractor, or Dopey from the Seven Dwarfs to fly a plane?

Did Yoshi run away, so Mario had to ride a horse instead?

And what do Kermit and Petunia think of Miss Piggy and Porky Pig taking a drive together?

This car with the Burger King and Ronald McDonald (or at least their heads) hanging out together does look official, though.

An early Chuck E. Cheese animatronic gave the mouse a gruff New York accent, which I don't think he had in the more recent commercials I recall seeing.

And R2-D2 was hanging out with some cotton candy and popcorn robots.

There's a tram tour around much of the toy room, and the driver has to turn very sharply in narrow passages, so I'm glad I'm not in charge of that. This lumberjack and giraffe were in a different part of the warehouse complex.


Last Tuesday, Beth and I saw Ben Folds at a venue near where I work, which was convenient for me.

His opener was Lindsey Kraft, who also played piano and had a pretty similar style.

Her performance was pretty loose, with her telling the story of her relationships and other life events, sliding casually into the songs.

Ben played one set, and then had another that was all requests delivered by paper airplane. I know not all of them made it to the stage, as I saw a few lying on the floor, which is a shame. I threw one of them that landed near me, but not hard enough to get it to the front, and I don't know whether anyone else passed it along. Ben commented on how a lot of the requests were for mellow songs, and there were also several for stuff he did for movie soundtracks that he couldn't remember anymore, including the cover of the Clash's "Lost in the Supermarket" for Over the Hedge. At one point, he attempted a Bruce Springsteen cover that turned into "Sweet Caroline" when he thought his voice was sounding more like Neil Diamond. They do both have similar vocal tones. This show was seated, but it was all folding chairs. We have tickets to see Franz Ferdinand at the same place later on, and it's standing room only.

This past weekend, we went to Pennsylvania to see my family. Before we got to my dad's house, we ate at Fuddrucker's for the first time in a while. There used to be one near Beth's mom's house, but it closed down years ago. On Saturday, we went with my dad and his wife to Columbia, and visited a museum that used to be a church.

They had a large train set, and a guy working there told some ghost stories.

Another place nearby was showcasing some sculptors from Baltimore.

And we drove to a nearby overlook above the Susquehanna River.

That evening, we had dinner with my brother and his wife and son. It's my nephew's seventh birthday tomorrow, and I don't see him very often. He's still very energetic, and I don't think he gets that from our side of the family. I still need to get him a present. The next day, we got frozen yogurt with my sister, and I briefly saw my mom, who's not doing very well right now. My brother gave me a Baby Fozzie Bear from McDonald's in the eighties, and my sister a pack of Wizard of Oz trading cards and the Switch version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I have the GameCube version of that, but our GameCube is still at Beth's mom's house. And this morning, Beth gave me Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, also for Switch. Not all of my presents for Beth have even arrived yet, and her birthday is over already.
vovat: (zoma)

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.
vovat: (Jenny Lewis)

Beth and I did some other things in California besides OzCon, so here are a few of them. We flew into LAX on Tuesday, and stayed at a motel within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm, which we visited on Wednesday. The park is surprisingly close to Disneyland, and not far from Kellogg West. Too bad we had to go to Culver City in between the two. It's very common for amusement parks to have an Old West area, and at Knott's, it was probably the biggest section in the park.

You could even sit on a bench with some hookers. Well, dancers, anyway.

They also had parts with fifties and Mexican themes, as well as Camp Snoopy for kiddie rides. I think it might have been the first park to license the Peanuts characters, although they're at a lot of them now. The only berry-themed ride was the seemingly obligatory one where you shoot stuff on a screen, in this case to help bears get stolen pies back from some coyotes.

The guns had pull strings, and it was hard to tell what you were shooting. I kind of wonder why the bumper cars weren't called Traffic Jam. They had several roller coasters, including the Pony Express, the surf-themed HangTime (which included a part where we were suspended at the top of a hill for a little while), Silver Bullet, Xcelerator, and the wooden GhostRider.

That was our last ride of the night, and we were on the last train they ran that day, about an hour after the official closing time. Another coaster, Jaguar!, was closed. The carousel had a lot of unusual animals. We rode ostriches, but I was also fascinated by the cats with fish in their mouths.

The Calico Mine Ride was pretty cool, featuring old animatronics. That was also the one with the know-it-all kid in front of us in line. We rode the Calico Railroad, and a guy dressed as a bandit called me "Bowser" because of my Super Mario hat. We did not, however, have a chance to ride the stagecoach.

On Thursday, we ate breakfast at Denny's, then went on the Sony Pictures tour, checked in at Kellogg West, and ate at a fast food hot dog place called Wienerschnitzel. We also went to a Circle K for the first time in our lives. After OzCon, we met with Stephanie and her dog Chelsea on Sunday and went to the John Waters exhibit at the Academy Museum, which had a good collection of props and memorabilia, including stained glass pictures of some of his characters.

After that, we went to the Oracle Mystic Museum in Burbank, which had an interactive exhibit with moving parts based on horror movies.

The neighborhood where it was located had at least two year-round Halloween stores that didn't allow photographs, and also this elephant.

I wonder if they know Kabumpo.

Before catching our plane back east on Monday night, we stopped at two other museums and a mausoleum. The Bunny Museum in Altadena was something Beth found out about on Reddit, and someone there said they found it disturbing.

It's a small building, but it's absolutely packed with stuff, all rabbit-related. Of course, it came nowhere close to being exhaustive, as bunnies are very heavily represented in our culture. I think humans are genetically inclined to find them cute. One room was all holiday stuff, including Hocus Pocus from Frosty the Snowman.

A kitchen and patio had relevant stuff, and another room had creepier and more adult stuff, like Frank from Donnie Darko, Playboy Bunnies, and weird old masks.

I particularly liked the red guy with horns. Another reminded me of my mom's rabbit mask that I wore when I dressed as Wag for the Munchkin Convention, which apparently Johnny Galecki also owns.

This might have been why the museum was listed as unsettling, although when you're dealing with old toys, some of it is going to be disturbing to modern audiences even when it wasn't intended to be.

Upstairs, they had some original art.

Bugs Bunny, the Trix Rabbit, the Quik Bunny, My Melody from Sanrio, the Energizer Bunny, Harvey, Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh, Roger Rabbit, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the bunny suit from A Christmas Story were all represented as well.

And they had two sets of the Uncle Wiggily Game, which I played a lot as a kid, and which is similar in structure to the Wonderful Game of Oz.

There were also some informational signs, on such topics as rabbit-related expressions, anthropomorphic bunnies, the origins of magicians pulling rabbits out of hats, someone in a bunny suit who followed David Bowie around in 2004, and the meaning of the name of Spain.

I would have liked to have seen some of John R. Neill's rabbit pictures, but no such luck.

After this museum, we visited the Mountain View Mausoleum, which had some cool art and a pretty garden.

Both that and our next destination, the Museum of Death in Hollywood, were suggested by a couple we met at OzCon.

The Death Museum didn't allow pictures, so you'll have to trust me when I say it was very graphic. It included exhibits on serial killers, death cults, taxidermy and preservation, car accidents, and cannibalism. They had a taxidermied dog who had died with Jayne Mansfield. One of the employees had a lot to say about Heaven's Gate, and another was impressed that Beth was able to correctly identify the film Orozco the Embalmer.


That's mostly what we did in California, but I'm also going to include our activity from yesterday, Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Williamsburg, which is difficult to reach from where we live and work. We actually ended up being a few minutes late. The theme was twins, also including doubles, doppelgangers and clones. David Gregory (not the one from XTC) talked about the many Bruce Lee imitators who starred in rip-off movies, and co-host Chris Cummins discussed the various imitations of Archie Comics. Tenebrous Kate discussed the Barbarian Brothers, twin bodybuilders who were somewhat popular in the eighties and nineties, including starring in a movie that was largely a Conan rip-off. Another presentation was on Waluigi, and what the deal was with him, which I don't think anybody knows for sure. He's pretty much only ever around for sports and party games. There was a mention of how, according to Nintendo, he and Wario aren't even related, although since Nintendo went back and forth on whether the Koopalings were Bowser's kids, who knows what their current story is? He does seem to have gained a certain amount of popularity, although that could be BECAUSE of how bizarre and relatively obscure he is. One bit was on Alice Cooper, and how he criticized conformity and then became pretty conservative. I'm not sure I knew that he recently made a transphobic comment, but I do remember him speaking positively of George W. Bush. And Kevin Maher showed clips of characters realizing they were clones or duplicates. The Kindest Cut for the night was of Big Business, a twin mix-up comedy starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, which Beth saw when Clementon Park was closed for rain.

Pet Project

Jul. 2nd, 2024 06:39 pm
vovat: (Default)

It's been ages since I wrote a life update post. I have a draft saved of something I wrote at the end of April, so I'm going to incorporate that, but not lead with it. I think the most significant thing is that Beth's uncle's dog Mabel died last week. She was one of a litter of three, one of whom was adopted by Beth and the third by another uncle; but Clancy stayed in South Jersey when we moved to Secaucus and then Brooklyn.

He's the only one who's still alive, and he's not doing that well. They're three-quarters Chihuahua and one-quarter Jack Russell Terrier, but it's Clancy who shows the latter the most. He's still nervous like a Chihuahua, but he's stocky instead of tiny. Mabel was a sweet girl, if a little too eager to assert her authority when she thought other pets were after her stuff. When Nellie lived there, she took a liking to Mabel and tried to play with her, but she wasn't that interested. So anyway, that's really sad. Poor little Mabel.


The last two times we visited Beth's family, we took both cats down with us. Felix is pretty outgoing when he's down there, but getting him into the cat carrier is difficult. He's surprisingly slippery for such a big cat. The time before last, when we were trying to leave, Nellie hid under a pile of bags, and I'm not sure she would have been able to get out on her own. When she's not scared, she spends a lot of time lying on her side, often in doorways.


On Sunday, 28 April, we made a trip to Great Adventure. We have season passes, and had to get them redeemed. As it was, we got there pretty late, and didn't have the chance to ride much stuff. We were further frustrated by how so many rides now won't just let you leave your stuff on the side when you get on. Two years ago, this was the case with the Joker and Jersey Devil, but I figured that was because they were rides that didn't stop to let the passengers on. But now it's also the case with Superman, which was never like that before. There are lockers you can use at each ride, but they cost money, and that seems like a cash grab. We haven't been back since then, and we need to in order to get our money's worth. The fact that it's been oppressively hot recently has not been conducive to theme park visits. We also want to go back to Knoebels at some point, and to Knotts Berry Farm when we're in California for OzCon.


The Saturday before last was the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, which we attended despite the heat. It was pretty harsh, but not as much so as I'd heard predicted, so I guess that's something. I always take a lot of pictures and have trouble deciding which are my favorites. I did notice a few recurring themes that I used when sharing pictures on Instagram, including rockets, ships, sharks, environmentalism, and food and drinks.

I recognized the mermaid in the wheelbarrow from last year.

There were also at least two different Ursulas, someone with a bird head and an egg, a family of goldfish, Frog Mario, and Prince with tentacles (Octoprince?).

We had hot dogs from Nathan's before the parade, which worked out a lot better than trying to get them afterwards. There used to be a Nathan's cart near where I worked, but I haven't seen it there since the pandemic. And I saw this guy with Luigi's body and Mario's clothes, but not as part of the parade.

I did get more engagement on Instagram than is typical for me, but I guess I'd also look for pictures of myself if I were in the parade. I'm also on Threads now, although that's basically just an extension of Facebook and Instagram, isn't it? Bluesky is my main Twitter substitute now, and even there I probably post more replies than original thoughts. I pretty much just put links to my posts on actual Twitter these days. (And yeah, I know it's technically not Twitter anymore, but does anyone who doesn't own stock in it call it X?)

I've reached the part in Final Fantasy X where I got to ride an airship and meet this game's version of Cid.

I did take note of something that seems to happen a lot in video games, which TV Tropes calls Gameplay and Story Segregation, where the party's strength in a cutscene doesn't really match up with what happens in battle. You fight several guys with guns on the way to reach where Yuna is being held captive, then one guy with one gun stops the whole group from approaching her. And why do both this and FF9 have a part where your healer is out of commission?

I guess that's all for now. I want to write something about the screwed-up situation in American politics, but that should probably get its own post. For now, I'll leave you with Beth and Slowpoke.
vovat: (Bast)
Nellie and Nathan.jpg
I guess the first thing I should mention is that we sort of have a new cat, and I say "sort of" because she's not living with us yet. Beth's mom got a kitten from her sister's farm, intending to give her to us, but we should kitten-proof our apartment before bringing her to Brooklyn. Anyway, I named her Nellie, and so far she mostly seems interested in running around and playing. She's very active, and hasn't yet shown much interest in just sitting with people. She doesn't seem afraid of anybody, though. I feel bad that she wants to play with the dogs, but they're not interested.
Nellie 1.jpgNellie 2.jpg

Beth and I both had our birthdays last week. On the day after hers, we had a pretty busy day, visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, eating at a cafe, attending a lecture at Green-Wood Cemetery, and seeing a movie.
Esplanade.jpgRedwood Bonsai.jpgMaidenhair Bonsai.jpg
The lecture was about cremation, including its history and how it was done at that location. It's been standard in India for ages, but it took some time to catch elsewhere, including in the Americas. Even though the Pope has said it's okay, it's apparently still not popular in Catholic families. There was a time when there was a theological debate over whether bodily resurrection would be possible with ashes. Now it's probably just a matter of tradition. They also mentioned that it's not very energy efficient, and involves burning fossil fuels. I don't see any reason to preserve my body after I'm dead, but I guess that's more a decision for anyone still alive who might care than for me. I haven't yet made my post about the movie Thanksgiving, but I should have it up soon. I didn't do anything on my birthday except going out to eat at the Olive Garden; I feel we went out to do stuff so often in October that I was a little burned out, and didn't have any ideas anyway.
Birthday Stuff.jpg
Presents I received included two Carl Barks collections, the newest Belle and Sebastian album, and the book Fight, Magic, Items by Aidan Moher, which is about Japanese role-playing video games from a Western perspective.

Beth also bought me the Switch remake of Super Mario RPG while we were at Target. I finished the original back in the early 2000s, and I remember it being frustrating in parts, but I'm sure it'll be fun to revisit when I get around to it. I kind of got stuck in I Am Setsuna, so I've put that aside for the time being. And I started Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, but haven't gotten very far as of yet. It's cute, but I've had a little trouble with the battle system. And I'm still playing Animal Crossing, and I did the Turkey Day thing on Thursday. I realized I hadn't planted any white pumpkins on my island, so that's been taken care of. I also got "K.K. Birthday," which I think is the last of the K.K. Slider songs in the game, but I don't think there's any reward for that.

Super Mario Wonder looks fascinating, but as much as I love Mario, I'm not great at platform games.

Beth's mom made Thanksgiving dinner for us, and we were originally going to go to Creamy Acres for the Christmas hayride on Friday, but she wasn't feeling well. We'll try to do it some other weekend. We did have lunch with my mom, sister, sister-in-law, and nephew today. I've done a little bit of Christmas shopping, but not that much.
vovat: (Bowser)
Grocery Store Death.jpg
Halloween is over now, and I hope you're enjoying all the saints and all the souls. It's gotten cooler after some really warm days for October. I like not having to wear a jacket, but eighty degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) is just too much at this time of year. Anyway, here are a few things Beth and I went to recently.

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On Friday, we visited the Queens County Farm Museum, which is not just a museum but an operating farm in Queens, dating back to 1697.
Farmhouse Plaque.jpg
They had a few fall events, including a hayride and a corn maze. The former was short, and not haunted or anything, just a ride around the farm. The latter, known as the Amazing Maize Maze, was only the second one we'd been to, the other a smaller one in Delaware.
Amazing Maize Maze.jpg
The way it was set up was that there were nine different mailboxes to find, each of which had a piece of a rough map of the maze. It was frustrating, because I could sometimes see the boxes, but not know how to get to them. Don't kids do these sometimes? We started around 4:30, and it officially closed at 5:30, at which point we'd only found maybe six of the mailboxes. While trying to make it back out again, though, we somehow came across the remaining ones. I suppose the trick is to not look for them. We saw several animals, too.Goat.jpgGoat Again.jpgSheep.jpgCows.jpg<Chickens.jpgLlamas.jpg
I also bought two apple cider doughnuts while there, and was hoping to get a small bottle of apple cider, but we didn't have time after the maze. I did already buy some cider at the grocery store a few days earlier, though.

Eerie Happenings.jpg
On Saturday, we saw a Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra performance. We had season tickets to these in the past, but this is the first one we'd attended in a while. It was called Eerie Happenings, and had spooky music, including Mendelssohn's Chorus of Druids and Witches from Die erste Walpurgisnacht (which is actually at the end of April), Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," and several Dies Irae pieces. The conductor joked that he couldn't mention Mickey Mouse or Fantasia by name. The Dies Irae is a Gregorian chant about the end of the world quoted in a lot of other stuff, and they played versions by Mozart and Verdi. Beth asked which one I liked better, and I preferred the latter, as it was more exciting. Liszt's Totentanz also uses it, but in a different style. After the show, we went to a place called 8-Bit Bites, of which there are a few locations in the city. It has a fun aesthetic, with lamps shaped like Super Mario question blocks, and a door that makes the sound of Mario growing bigger when it's opened.
8 Bit Bites.jpg
There are a few different machines with multiple games on them, but we didn't play any. I had a chicken sandwich and a berry milkshake with pieces of Crunch Berries in it.

On actual Halloween, we saw a comedy show at the Bell House hosted by Joe Pera and Dan Licata. I didn't know what to expect from it, as all I really knew was that Pera was a comedian known for his slow, sincere delivery. Dan's style was rather more abrasive, and they did several bits together. I think interesting delivery was kind of a theme with some of the other comedians as well, although I'm not sure if that's part of the act or just how they talk. Joe dressed as Black Adam, and Dan wore a witch's hat. A few people in the audience for both this and the concert wore costumes, but neither of us did. Joe had a fairly lengthy discussion about lamb meatballs with a guy dressed as David S. Pumpkins. Before the show, there were kids going trick-or-treating at various businesses, which I knew was a thing, but it just wasn't what my neighborhood was like growing up.
vovat: (Autobomb)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

There was a Sparks concert at the Hollywood Bowl with They Might Be Giants opening, so Beth and I made the trip to Los Angeles (the one in South California, not the one in South Patagonia). Fortunately, we were able to stay with our friend Stephanie, who put us up and put up with us. Her dog Chelsea was also very friendly, and it was nice to have a pet around after losing ours. When we got in on Thursday, after sleeping for a while, we went to a place called Vidiots for a screening of Gigantic, the TMBG documentary. I hadn't actually seen it straight through since when it came out in 2002. It's a little weird, because it kind of skips over most of the nineties in terms of the band's history, or at least feels like it does. Afterwards, director A.J. Schnack was there with Johns Linnnell and Flansburgh to ask some questions.

They mentioned how Mink Car, the album they were making when a lot of the footage was filmed, was kind of a lost album that had apparently gone out of print. It came out on 11 September 2001, and the label that released it went out of business not long afterwards. Flans said something about the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Swatch Watch campaign being the major turning point in the music world, and the Sid and Marty Krofft special with the Brady Bunch kids. And he mentioned The Truth About Cats and Dogs being the median between good and bad movies. I've never seen it, but I do remember thinking Janeane Garofalo was more attractive than Uma Thurman at the time, although that may not still be the case today. They had done a long interview earlier that day, so they didn't take audience questions, but I couldn't think of anything to ask anyway. The next day, we did karaoke. Beth sang Sparks' "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us," I sang Frank Black's "Headache" and the Monkees' "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?", and we both did the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" with the genders switched. I didn't think that it would have been appropriate to do Frank's "Los Angeles" instead. On Saturday, we had brunch with three of Stephanie's friends, who were pretty elegant. I had the berry French Toast.

The place we went had its own hens, and I tried to get some pictures, but they didn't come out that well.

And in the evening, we saw Pee-wee's Big Adventure at the Alamo Drafthouse, the first time I'd seen it on the big screen. They had a replica of Pee-wee's bike in the lobby, so finally it really IS at the Alamo, or at least was for a while.


Sunday was the day of the show, and we had box seats, yet it was still the farthest Beth has been from the stage at a Sparks concert. TMBG opened with "Damn Good Times," which had been in my head before that, as it mentions karaoke.

The trio of horn players joined them for a few songs, including "When Will You Die," in which Linnell worked "the horns" into the lyrics about the band.

That's not the song they're playing here, though.
During the improvisation at the end of "Spy," Linnell did a bit that sounded like it was from a commercial for a record of 1930s music. There were no surprises in the set, but I understand they'd been playing "Authenticity Trip" at recent shows, and that mentions the Hollywood Hills, so it would have made sense in that respect. Of course, it's also pretty obscure, being on an album that I don't think was released to stores. Every show of the Sparks tour has the same setlist, although they cut out two songs this time, specifically "The Toughest Girl in Town" and "Escalator." Stephanie mentioned that they're very strict about curfews at outdoor venues in the area. Interestingly, Russell did do a longer introduction for "We Go Dancing."

The Maels talked about how they'd seen the Beatles play at the Bowl when they were kids. It's interesting that the backing band for Sparks is kind of hidden in the background. Russell does introduce them, but they're not showcased. The Johns give a lot more attention to their band, although they still don't generally participate in the creative process...except on the children's albums, for some reason. A few people left the show early, including the other people in our box and the ones in the next box over. It's an unusual venue in the sense that they let you bring in food. Beth bought some Sparks souvenirs that hadn't been sold at other shows on the tour, plus a TMBG Hollywood sign T-shirt and a Flood tote bag. I got some Flood socks, so now all I need are some Flood pants.


Our original plan was to go to Magic Mountain on Monday, but that's difficult to get to without driving, and I had forgotten to bring my glasses. So we went to Universal Studios instead. I had wanted to see Super Nintendo World, and it does look really cool, but it's very small.

Most of the individual themed areas at the park are pretty small, but especially that one; and there really aren't too many rides in the place. The first thing we rode was the Simpsons Ride, a motion simulator with a narrative about Sideshow Bob trying to kill the family at Krustyland, and then elsewhere in Springfield.

In the line for the ride, TV screens show clips from various episodes, most of them related to amusement parks, plus a few bits recorded specifically for the ride. There do seem to be a surprising number of theme parks in the Springfield area, although Itchy & Scratchy Land is a few days' drive away according to its debut episode. There's a reference to how the Simpsons Ride replaced the Back to the Future one, with Professor Frink going back in time to try to stop Krusty from buying Doc Brown's lab, and Christopher Lloyd did the voice. The Mummy ride is a roller coaster with a lot of stuff to see, and at one point little tentacles grab at your feet, while Jurassic World is a log flume with dinosaurs, and the Transformers ride shakes you around a lot. I thought the voice for Wheelie sounded like Rob Paulsen as Yakko Warner, but apparently it's really Tom Kenney. That one requires glasses, presumably so you can see more than meets the eye. It's funny how many rides there and at the Disney parks have narratives about the ride going wrong. The only ride in the Nintendo area was the Mario Kart one, and it malfunctioned when we were close to getting on, although we did eventually get to ride. It was fun, although rides that are also games can be a little overwhelming. They put a LOT of work into the decorations you see when you're in line, starting with Yoshi's Island stuff and then making its way into Bowser's Castle.

I'd previously seen pictures of the bookshelves, which have many interesting titles. Who knew the Koopa King was that avid of a reader?

There were games in the Nintendo area you could play for an extra fee, mostly geared towards kids, but we didn't participate in that. A lot of Super Nintendo World kind of looked like one of those clocks with a bunch of stuff happening, in that everything moves around in a preset pattern. I wouldn't have minded getting a picture with Princess Peach, but our timing didn't work out. We did, however, get to meet Scooby-Doo, and with hardly any line.

Turns out it was really the guy from the amusement park.
Aren't the Hanna-Barbera characters now owned by Warner Brothers? I'm sure there are all kinds of complex licensing deals involved. The Simpsons are now a Disney property, but that didn't happen until some years after the ride opened. I remember when Scooby was at Kings Dominion in Virginia back in my childhood. We didn't realize that the studio lot tour ended at 8:15, so we missed that, and it was one of the things that interested me the most. I was less excited about the Harry Potter area, as it's hard not to think about J.K. Rowling's bigotry, but we did go on the two rides there. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is a virtual reality thing with appearances from many of the actors in the movies, and it was the roughest thing we rode.

The other, Flight of the Hippogriff, is a short roller coaster. For some reason, the train you ride in is made to look like wicker, which is pretty cool. Beth got a T-shirt with a Chain Chomp on it; while I bought some Mario Kart boxers and magnets, and a Bowser keychain. And I got a sunburn on the back of my neck. I understand it's even easier to get burned in Southern California than it is where we live, as there are hardly any clouds. Where's Lakitu when you need him?

We're back home now, but we'll be going to California again soon, as the events we wanted to attend there were too far apart. The next trip is for OzCon, but we'll also try to visit Magic Mountain.
vovat: (Default)

It's been a trying week, but there are a few things I did not too long ago that I wanted to discuss. Beth and I went to the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island on Saturday, 17 June. I have a bunch of pictures of it at Facebook and Instagram. I've occasionally had someone who was in the parade reply to pictures of themselves, and this time it happened with a woman who rode in a wheelbarrow pushed by a clown. She did a performance the whole time, and apparently fell out at one point.

There was also someone with a car made largely of balloons with a bike in the middle, which she had trouble steering. Beth pointed out that it had a distinctive balloon smell.

Speaking of stuff you can inflate, I was kind of fascinated by the giant beach ball on a string.

A few different bands played Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," and I have to wonder if that was coordinated ahead of time.

There were several lobsters and a few different Ursulas, and a walrus who interacted with the crowd.

Walrus don't need no chicanery.
We were considering getting Nathan's afterwards, but instead we got hot dogs, shrimp, and clams at another place on Surf Avenue. Then we got caught in a flash rain while eating, even though it hadn't rained at all during the parade. And we rode a few rides at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park.

That same weekend was Father's Day and Juneteenth, which we both got off from work despite being white. But then, we also get off what's now called both Columbus and Indigenous People's Day, and we're neither indigenous nor Italian. Beth got wrist surgery that Wednesday, and I had to pick her up from the hospital. The following week, she went to several Sparks shows, but I only joined her for one, as did her Uncle John. This was at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, near Philadelphia, and Russell kept calling it "Philadelphia adjacent." They play the same set at every show, and it includes a lot of stuff from their new album. I'm glad they kept in "Shopping Mall of Love," which is one of the few where Ron gets up from the keyboard and has lines.

They're all spoken, but still.
Yeah.
He also still dances during the instrumental part in "The Number One Song in Heaven."

An old one they brought back for this tour is "Beaver O'Lindy," which switches between quiet waltz-style verses and a loud chorus. Russell is still quite active, and moves around a lot.

We'll be seeing them again later this month, with They Might Be Giants opening. Afterwards, we ate at a place called Four Seasons Diner and Restaurant, even though I thought a diner was a kind of restaurant. I'm not sure whether Rudy Giuliani ever gave a speech there.

Our main concession to the Fourth of July was to watch 1776, although I do have this picture from June of Beth being uncharacteristically jingoistic.

And we tried the Grimace Shake from McDonald's, which was pretty good.

I'd say it tasted like fake berries. When you eat a lot of fruit-flavored things, you get a taste for both how real and artificial fruits differ. Imitation orange and grape are good, while cherry and watermelon seem way off. Beth said it reminded her of bubblegum, but that also often has artificial fruit flavors. I have no idea how the meme of people dying drinking the shakes comes from, but it seems a little mean-spirited. I'm more interested in how Grimace apparently has a brother who's a king, and how he lost the other two arms.

I've probably mentioned before how I had a dream as a kid where Grimace wanted to eat me. Not that I was afraid of him or anything, at least that I can remember; it was just a really bizarre dream. I think it also involved my sister swinging on a rope.


I've beaten Live A Live, although it does have multiple endings, and I don't think I'll be getting all of them. I'll probably write a more detailed post about that when I have the time. I started I Am Setsuna yesterday, but have only played a little bit so far. I'd seen something about Crystalis recently, and it turns out it's part of the NES app on the Switch, so I decided to check it out. I like it, but I haven't managed to defeat the first boss, the vampire with the chaotically flying bats. I'll keep trying, but there's a reason I usually stick to turn-based except in special circumstances. I'm surprised I made it as far as the Moon in Super Mario Odyssey (even if I couldn't get through that part underground with the flying Dry Bones), although the unlimited tries probably doesn't hurt, and I think games are just generally more forgiving now than back in the NES games. In terms of video games, I'm pretty excited about some of the new ones that have been announced recently. Super Mario Bros. Wonder has an even more cartoonish and psychedelic appearance than other Mario games, and that's saying something.

And Elephant Mario is amusing.

Peach and Daisy are both set to be playable characters, and I wonder (ha ha ha) about whether they'll have different move sets.

I understand it also has Blue and Yellow Toad, and they're more or less placeholder characters. There's also another Peach solo game, and a new Dragon Quest Monsters featuring Psaro from Dragon Quest IV.

I might have to play through the rest of the DS version of DQ4 soon. I finished the NES version a long time ago, and made it up to Psaro on the DS some years previously, but didn't beat him. I understand you can recruit him after that. It sounds like, in the DQM game, his father is shown to have been the Demon Lord before him, and there's something about his thinking the hero from 4 destroyed his village. I'm not sure how that works out in terms of the timeline.

There's a lot of stuff going on this month, so I'm sure there will be something else to write about here, although I don't know when.
vovat: (Bowser)

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.
vovat: (tmbg)

On Friday night, we saw a much-delayed They Might Be Giants show at the Bowery Ballroom. It was originally delayed from September 2020 because of the pandemic, as many concerts were. Then, last year, right before the day it was rescheduled, John Flansburgh got into an accident caused by a drunk driver. He seems to have recovered well, based on how active he was at this show. It had earlier been advertised as a celebration of the anniversary of Mink Car, but since it ended up as part of a run of shows where they play everything from Flood, that's what it became. They actually didn't play all the songs from that album, as they skipped "Hearing Aid," despite its being on the setlist. And I guess they didn't actually perform the song "They Might Be Giants," but it was their walk-on music, so I'd say that counts. The only one they ended up doing from Mink Car was "Man, It's So Loud in Here," but I understand the song "Mink Car" was part of the set on the following evening. A three-piece horn section made up of Mark Pender (formerly of the Max Weinberg 7) on trumpet, long-time collaborator Dan Levine on trombone, and Stan Harrison on saxophone.

According to Flansburgh, Stan came up with the horn arrangement for "The Darlings of Lumberland." During "Istanbul," all three horn players did extended solos, two at the beginning and the other at the end. One fascinating thing they'd been doing recently is performing "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" backwards, which they recorded and then played back in reverse at the beginning of the second set. That must have taken a lot of practice to get even sort of right, and the finished product this time was pretty much entirely comprehensible. Of course, the band has been experimenting with stuff like that since early in their career. On their setlists, they write it as "Stillub," which I guess is "Bullets" phonetically backwards.

Towards the end of the show, John Linnell had technical problems with his keyboard, so he ended up playing his part of the closer, "New York City," on the accordion. Throughout the concert, a screen behind the band showed occasional animated bits, or sometimes just close-ups of the musicians. At one point, the Johns brought up George Santos, and Linnell shared his theory that he's actually two dogs in a suit. But we never DID find out who ate the babies.


The band strongly recommended N-95 or other medical-grade masks while attending, and this was actually the first time Beth or I had worn those. They're pretty uncomfortable, but I guess someone could get used to them if necessary. I remember seeing some people insisting that cloth masks aren't good enough, and while I'm sure these other masks are more effective, I don't really understand how it would be practical to wear a single-use mask every day during the time when masks were required or highly recommended. Maybe if your work or whatever provides them, it's different. After the show, we stopped to get some food at McDonald's, and we got a Luma Happy Meal toy.

The toys are advertising the upcoming movie, which is presumably an origin story, so it's kind of weird that one of them is of a character (or character type, I suppose) who wasn't introduced until the 2000s.

There's not a whole lot else I can think of to report, aside from stuff about media that I'll cover on WordPress. One thing that has been on my mind is that our refrigerator has been having problems, first getting too warm. We had a guy in to fix it, who shamed me for having too much food (that's weird, right?), but after that it got too cold and a lot of our stuff froze. I like frozen yogurt, but not THAT way!
A different repairman came today, and it seems like the problem is that the thermostat that regulates the temperature wasn't reliable. It looks like it's working normally now, but that did cost kind of a lot.

I've stopped taking guitar lessons for the time being, and that wasn't even really intentional on my part. The place I was taking them seems to have a lot of turnover, and I've had a few different teachers. While I'm not exactly starting from scratch each time, it's hard to explain what I already know. The time I could get wasn't really convenient for me, so I kept having to cancel, and eventually they just didn't schedule lessons for me. I do practice most days, though. And I guess that's about it.
vovat: (santa)

I guess I'll write about what I did for Christmas, because I'm sure everybody wants to know. On Saturday, Christmas Eve, Beth and I met my family (my mom, sister, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew) at Jimmy John's in Pennsylvania. This place isn't affiliated with the sandwich chain, and I think actually predates it by a long time.

I'd gone there several times when I was a kid, but not in a long time. Their main thing is hot dogs, and they have thick skins, which took me a little getting used to but I got to like them. They have several model trains set up in the place.

And they sell Desert Storm trading cards, which seems kind of bizarre to me, but what do I know?

All of the presents I gave my nephew Calvin were bug-themed, and my sister gave him a bug thing as well. That was kind of a strange coincidence. I received a Wizard of Oz board game and a DVD of the two Tom and Jerry/Wizard of Oz crossovers. I'd heard about them a while ago, but have never seen them. That evening, we drove through the Night of Lights at Creamy Acres, along with Beth's mom, Uncle John, and cousin Dorothea. I prefer doing that on a wagon, since you really don't get as good of a view in a car, and it's much harder to take decent pictures. They were only running the wagons on certain days, however, and that particular day was so cold that I wouldn't have wanted to ride in one anyway.

The previous night, my fingers had gone totally stiff while I was trying to put air in my tires. Then we watched some Christmas-related television, which I already wrote about.

Presents I received on Christmas Day included the first volume of Kirby Manga Mania, Kirby: Planet Robobot for the 3DS, Edward Einhorn and Eric Shanower's adaptation of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, and a little book of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, which was...kind of a joke, I think? I'm still not entirely sure. Beth gave me Kindle versions of some books about fairy tales, and today I received some other things from her, a T-shirt with Luigi and some Koopa Troopas, a Mario star light, and a stuffed Polterpup. I also got a Porcupuffer from my brother.

I think the cat in the picture is for Beth, through process of elimination, but it's there anyway because it's cute. Maybe someday I'll be able to get all my Mario stuff organized, but we don't have a whole lot of room.
vovat: (Bowser)
Beth and I both had birthdays last week. She's now forty-three, and I'm forty-five. Too bad that's a number that's now closely associated with Donald Trump. I understand some people find birthdays depressing because they're an indication that you're getting older, but that doesn't bother me so much. What does depress me somewhat is that I feel I always let my birthday go to waste, like it's a day when I'm allowed, to an extent, to make things about me and do what I want, but for the most part I don't. This year, we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Beth's birthday on Tuesday. Strangely, there were still some roses blooming, if usually only a few on an otherwise barren bush.

And there were a lot of squirrels around.

I often find myself taking pictures of plants that have unusual names, or at least ones I consider unusual.

There's a kind of rose called Peach Drift, which makes me think of Super Mario Bros. 2.

After the garden, we went to eat at a Georgian restaurant. We'd ordered from there before, and I really liked the Acharuli Khachapuri. This time, I had Khinkali, dumplings with beef and pork filling; and while the meat was spicy, I still would probably get them again. I guess I tend to associate "spicy" with "hot," as is often the case with Mexican or Indian food, but that's not always the case when it comes to...west Asian? I'm not quite sure what you'd consider Georgia and other nearby countries in that respect. My birthday was Friday, and after work, we went to a Hard Drive comedy show in Manhattan. A lot of the jokes were video game related, including a presentation of world events interpreted through gamer culture, but the comics covered other topics as well. The music before the show included the training music from Punch-Out!! and the surf version of the Chocobo theme.


I'd looked up the guitar tabs to that, the main Super Mario tune, and the overworld music from Super Mario World; and play them occasionally for fun. It might not be a bad idea to get a video game music book. I got Beth Mario and Zelda piano books a few years ago, but we don't really have room for a keyboard right now, and the notation doesn't really translate well to a different instrument, or at least it doesn't for me. I'm still technically taking guitar lessons, but scheduling problems means I haven't actually had one in a while. The place I go, which is right down the street, is more focused on kids, and there's a lot of turnover for the instructors. Anyway, after the show, we ate at Katz's, which was nearby. We'd only been there once before, although I've occasionally gotten food at their stand in the mall in between. It's kind of stressful with all the different lines and instructions, and both times it was so crowded that we had to hold our trays for longer than I was comfortable with. That said, it was much less crowded than it had been when we passed the restaurant on our way to the show, and there were lines outside the building. The food is quite good; I had the same thing I think I did previously, a half pastrami sandwich and chicken noodle soup.

We had another sort of combined birthday dinner yesterday at the Olive Garden. As birthday presents, she gave me a kalimba, the new Pixies album, and the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia.

Last week was kind of a weird one at work, as my office is changing locations. The new place isn't far away, and it's actually one subway stop closer. I know I'd heard about the move prior to the pandemic, but they had to delay it a few years. Aside from that, I'm constantly wishing for more free time, then wasting it as soon as I get some. It's kind of annoying because there's so much I want to do and never get around to. That's especially true of writing. But I think a lot of it isn't just having time, but the general idea that there isn't anything I have to do for a significant amount of time. I'm so hung up on upcoming obligations even if they don't turn out to be anything big when they actually happen. I've gotten back into playing a lot of Sims 4, and one of the expansion packs I installed gives all of the Sims fears that don't always make a lot of sense. I'd kind of think only the ambitious ones would be concerned about being in dead-end jobs, but no, it's all of them. Interesting idea, I guess, but not all that practically executed. I try to check in on Animal Crossing once or twice a week, preferably on Saturday evenings so I can get a new K.K. Slider song, but as of late I've often been busy around then. I feel like I've gotten to the point where I just keep seeing the same stuff over and over again, except for the few things I still need to complete collections. I didn't get a chance to play on my birthday, but the neighbors did wish me a happy belated one yesterday.
vovat: (Bowser)

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.
vovat: (Bowser)
This weekend, we visited Beth's mom and uncle in New Jersey, then my family in Pennsylvania. We hadn't seen each other since before Christmas, so we gave them the gifts we'd gotten for them, except my sister's present hadn't come yet. For my nephew, I found a cute-looking board game and a Tyrannosaurus that eats Play-Doh and belches. Kind of gross, but little kids love that kind of thing. And my mom seemed to like the wren-shaped planter I bought at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We got an Olive Garden gift card from my sister, and my mom gave us some food. So did Beth's mom, for that matter. Someone had also found my old Garfield hand puppet, although he needs to be cleaned.

Beth recognized it as an early design, since his eyes don't overlap.


The night before that, we watched The Sparks Brothers, a documentary on the band Sparks, which Beth has recently gotten interested in. She's recently gotten music by them and by Harry Nilsson, both of whom Neko Case covered on her 2009 album. She covered Robyn Hitchcock on the one after that, and I'm a fan of his, but Beth doesn't care for him. Anyway, Sparks is a band that's been around since the early seventies, but I'm mostly unfamiliar with them, and their music seems like something I would like. Beth has noted some similarity to They Might Be Giants, especially with Ron being the more introverted, esoteric one, sort of like John Linnell. I've never known Linnell to have a Hitler mustache, though. They've also worked in a lot of styles, used synthesizers quite a bit, and their lyrics are funny without totally veering into novelty stuff. Weird Al appeared in the documentary, and his "Virus Alert" was a Sparks style parody, although I didn't know that when I first heard it. His earlier song "I Remember Larry" was done in the style of Hilly Michaels' solo work, and he drummed for Sparks in the 70s. I just haven't had the opportunity to listen to music like I used to. I've started listening to a few podcasts recently, and those are even more difficult to find the occasion to listen to, as they require more attention.

I feel like I haven't accomplished much recently, and I mean in terms of stuff I do for fun. I haven't been writing anything except blog posts, and even in terms of video games I've mostly been playing ongoing ones (Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Sims 4), so there's no real progress. I did make it to Shangri-Spa in Paper Mario: The Origami King, and having Kamek as an ally is pretty cool.

On a whim, I started making notes on Ozian family trees, basing them on whatever references I could find, including some pretty obscure ones. Joe Bongiorno's Lost Histories from the Royal Librarian of Oz gives family relations for some of the early rulers in Oz, both ones from the books and newly invented ones. I actually read something the other day about how it's common for fantasy writers to do too much worldbuilding as opposed to actual stories, and I'm not even inventing my own fantasy world.

I think I've already mentioned that my work has gone back to being fully in the office, and there's no indication that they'll bring back remote work despite the increase in COVID cases. I'm probably not as worried about that as I should be, but I do think that, practically, the government in general has stopped even pretending to care about health issues. Dr. Fauci even admitted that the CDC reduced necessary quarantine time because it was hurting business, even though you can't have business if everyone is sick. The only real concession is that we still have to wear masks, which is a good idea if we're required to go to public buildings, but wouldn't it be easier if it weren't necessary to do that so often? Wearing a mask in public was a lot less of a hassle when it was only for an hour or so per week. But when I say that, I still went grocery shopping back when there was a stay-at-home order (really more of a stay-at-home suggestion), and the employees there still had to go in to work and wear masks. No one really seems to be enforcing social distancing anymore, and that probably should be a thing even when there's no pandemic. That said, I never much liked the term; it comes across to me (and probably nobody else) as kind of pretentious. I've seen some people online insist that Biden isn't doing any better than Trump was at fighting Coronavirus; apparently these people forget that the last president insisted it was a hoax and/or a Chinese plot. But it is true that Biden is part of the same system that works to maintain the status quo. While Democrats are better than Republicans in this respect, it still doesn't seem to be a major priority for them; it's more "Let's get things back to normal" than "Let's make sure we're better equipped to handle such things in the future." The news I see suggests the government is more worried about inflation and supply chain issues, even though those things have to be exacerbated, if not outright caused, by much of the workforce getting sick and/or dying. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the anti-science crowd that tries to insist masks and vaccines don't work, but there need to be societal solutions as well as individual ones. It's like, there are definitely reasons to be suspicious of authority, but telling people to take basic safety precautions are not among them. Putting business over health is such a reason, but as far as I can tell, nobody is even trying to hide that.
vovat: (santa)

Christmas is over now, even if traditionally there's more than a week of it left. I've noticed that some promotions using the idea of Twelve Days of Christmas use the twelve days BEFORE the twenty-fifth, rather than after. Last week, we went to Tavie's new apartment in the evening and watched a bunch of stuff, some of which I reviewed in my big Christmas media post. She gave me a 3D printed Tin Woodman in Return to Oz style.We went to Beth's mom's house on Thursday night after work, and that week we did our annual viewing of Home Alone. While I don't think either of us would consider that a great movie, it's not a hate-watch either. On Christmas Eve, Dorothea came over, and we watched Christmas Evil and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Beth and I had already seen those (twice in the former case), but Dorothea hadn't. It was surprisingly warm on Christmas Day, which was good in a way because I really don't like getting bundled up to go out, but it can't be good for the plants. Presents I received included a book of They Might Be Giants setlists, a guitar book of country songs, the games Legend of Legacy for DS and I Am Setsuna for Switch, a stuffed Buzzy Beetle and Boom Boom, two Mario T-shirts and a Wizard of Oz one, the Mountain Goats' Ghana, and Molly Crabapple's Drawing Blood.
Most of the stuff I bought for Beth hasn't arrived yet, but I did give her Yoshi's Crafted World, since she really liked Woolly World.

I've always been somewhat of a last-minute shopper, and since I don't know when I'll be able to give presents to my family, I'm delaying even more on those. I've also been trying to not use Amazon for everything, but that's kind of difficult. I mean, there have been albums I tried to buy directly from the band's or label's site, and they just directed me back to Amazon. Anyway, we're back in Brooklyn now.


I played the Toy Day event in Animal Crossing on Friday, which I don't think I'd done before in any version of the game. There's a reindeer named Jingle who shows up and asks you to deliver presents for him, and there's also a toy exchange between neighbors. I think I accidentally gave one of them the same present he gave me, but that's kind of difficult to avoid without a spreadsheet or something, and most of the gifts given are from among the same few toys anyway. I assume Toy Day is a way to acknowledge Christmas without dealing with the religious aspects. Even Santa doesn't actually appear, although Jingle says he works for him.

It must suck when your birthday is also your busiest day of the year.
You can get items from Nook Shopping related to a lot of holidays that aren't otherwise mentioned, including some exclusive to Japan. AC is a game that I kind of feel I should play at least a few times a week, and while that's good in a way, it also means there are a bunch of games that I want to play and still haven't. Last week, I tried to fight the Ice Vellumental in Paper Mario: The Origami King and got clobbered. I have more idea how to proceed next time I try, but those timed puzzles are way more frustrating than anything in AC. So far, I've found the Vellumental battles way harder than the ones with the Legion of Stationery. I've watched a few video game playthroughs online, and I can't help feeling a little guilty that I didn't just play them, even though some of them are difficult to come by and I don't think I'd be very good at them. But it's not like I'm trying to get credit for playing them, more to understand the world-building each game adds. Still, I wish I had more time and energy to devote to actually playing games.

I'm still taking guitar lessons, and Beth bought a book of Christmas songs for me a few weeks ago, and trying them out has been fun. The book includes some more recent stuff that I didn't try playing, including something from The Polar Express and another called "Text Me Merry Christmas," which sounds like a pretty low bar. I mean, I do that with some people, but I'm not trying to get with them. Apparently the song was co-written by the late Adam Schlesinger (continuing the tradition of Christmas songs by Jewish writers) and Kristen Bell sings on it, which makes it seem more legitimate than the title suggests. Beth also said that I should try Duolingo, so I've started with Greek, I guess mostly because I'm a fan of Greek mythology. Of course. classical Greek is different from modern Greek, but apparently not AS different as most languages are from their counterparts over 2000 years ago. But I do remember that the letter psi is the one that looks like a trident, the symbol of Poseidon; and the word for water is nero, like Nereids. I suppose there's no connection to the Roman Emperor of that name; I think "nero" in Latin might mean "black." Then again, in Revelation, the beast associated with Nero is said to have come out of the sea, so who knows? The Duolingo format is kind of weird, because it just jumps right in with translating sentences, admittedly very easy ones at first, but when I took languages in school they'd always start with the basics. There was no overview on verb conjugation, so when that's something I have to do, I often mess it up.
vovat: (Bowser)

On Wednesday, the day of the equinox, Beth and I attended Moonrise, a fundraiser at Green-Wood Cemetery.

They had musical acts and refreshment stands throughout the place, and you could go inside the catacombs and a mausoleum.

The music in the catacombs was pretty weird, avant-garde stuff with the performers coming and going. At one point there was just a trombone, then a bassoon and some other woodwind instrument were added in.

It was kind of difficult to find the way around. Staff would give directions, but since all the paths there wind around a lot, they weren't always easy to follow. And while most of the ways to relevant places were lit up, not all of them were.

Occasionally there were signs that just said "This Way" and nothing else, like we were in a cartoon.

The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus performed throughout the evening, and we saw some contortionists, acrobats, and a sword swallower.

We also got to ride the trolley, which is actually a bus made to look like a trolley, as there aren't any trolley tracks. Wine tasting was included with the price of admission, but I generally don't care for wine and Beth only wanted a little bit, so that wasn't of much use to us in particular. They did have Pepperidge Farm Chessmen, which reminded me of my childhood. I think I used to like them more for the design than the taste, which isn't to say they were bad; they're just pretty standard butter cookies. I still eat cheddar Goldfish crackers all the time. Pepperidge Farm has its headquarters in Connecticut, but they actually used to have a factory in my hometown, although it's long since closed. I'm sure they remember.

Futurama did this joke first, but it was all audio.

We haven't really done much of anything this weekend, as Beth isn't feeling well and I usually don't go out on my own unless there's a really good reason. I've started going into the office full-time again, and while I'm sure I'll get a little more used to it over time, it now kind of feels like I've been working a week when it's only been a day or two. And it's not even the work itself that's tiring, just the whole production. I did want to mention my weird dream last night about Animal Crossing. There was some argument over Thanksgiving dinner (I saw a picture on Tumblr yesterday with the turkey character from the game, so that might well have inspired this part), so Tom Nook trapped everyone, including my character, in a pit. There was some way to manipulate things to flood the town, and it ended up not hurting anybody but just changing the landscape. I still play New Horizons when I get the chance, but since I've paid off my house and built the necessary bridges and inclines to make everything accessible, I'm not totally sure what to do other than just wander around. I probably should reorganize my house sometime; it's a shame that even in a completed house, you can only display a little bit of everything you collect. I also haven't collected any bamboo or star fragments, which are necessary for some do-it-yourself projects.

I'm sure anyone who cares knows that they released a partial cast list for the upcoming animated Super Mario Bros. movie, and the general consensus I've seen on social media is that it's annoying how they mostly chose celebrities over professional voice actors. And Chris Pratt isn't too popular a choice since it's come out how he's a right-wing homophobe, but I'm sure the majority of moviegoers neither know nor care about that. It is kind of difficult to imagine Charles Martinet's Mario voice being used throughout a full-length picture, but I'm also not saying he couldn't have done it.

Source
I do like that Foreman Spike is in it, as he's a bit of an obscure pull.

There seems to be a major trend these days of people guessing what will be in upcoming media based simply on a trailer or even less, and while I have no problem with people doing that if it's fun for them, I feel such articles or videos have a very short shelf life. I did notice that most of the characters confirmed so far are from earlier games, which COULD mean it's only going to cover things up through the first SMB game, but that's a huge supposition at this point. As a connoisseur of Mario-related media, I have to say that most of it isn't, strictly speaking, all that good. But a lot of it is still FUN, and I hope the film is as well.
vovat: (Bowser)
After work on Friday, Beth and I went to see Michael Ian Black at Carolines on Broadway in Manhattan. Before the show, we stopped at Nintendo World, which I think is actually called Nintendo NYC now, where I bought a Donkey Kong T-shirt. This was one Beth had bought me for a gift, but it turned out to be too small, and when we went back to do an exchange they still only had smalls and mediums. She got me something else instead, but they have large ones now. I'd been low-key collecting the Mario enemy plush toys they sell there, but it's been a while since they last changed their stock. I know there are some I don't have, especially as I wrote about Wigglers the other day, and I know there's a plush Wiggler. For some reason, I'm not as interested in the main characters. I love Mario, and Luigi probably even more, but a stuffed animal of a human seems a little off. If anyone wants to give me one, though, I won't complain. Speaking of video game toys, though, why do Square-Enix figures cost so much?

As with the movie theater the previous day, we had to show proof of vaccination at the entrance and wear masks in the lobby, but we were allowed to remove them in the room where the show actually was. There were two openers, and I can't remember the name of the first one. I do remember he was from Foster-Glocester, Rhode Island, and he made a lot of jokes about growing up in the woods.

The second, Jocelyn Chia, was originally from Singapore and was a lawyer for a while before pursuing comedy.

Michael had recently moved to Georgia, as he apparently wasn't making enough money to keep paying for his place in Connecticut. He did a few bits he had before, like the ones about extreme snack foods and his daughter's graduation.

I understand he's done a few more episodes of the snack podcast he did with Tom Kavanaugh, but neither of us have listened to them yet. He did do a Cameo from the stage, for a person who said he was a stepping stone to Paul Rudd.


After the show, we rode the Ferris Wheel that's temporarily in Times Square. That was pretty fun, but I got the impression the employees weren't really in accord, which was frustrating. The tickets were for a specific block of time, and one guy told us that everyone with a 9:00 ticket should come to the front of the line, only for someone else to send us to the back again. I feel like a simple policy should have prevented confusion like that.

Our cat Reagan is on a few different kinds of medicine. We'd been giving her two kinds of liquid, and she'd immediately try to drool out as much as possible. Recently, we started on a pill, and she hated it so much that she'd try to hide under the bed when it came close to the time we usually give it to her. I guess from her point of view, we torture her every day for no reason, then act like it never happened the rest of the day. It costs extra, but we're going to get that kind of medicine compounded into a liquid, since that's at least a little easier. When she's not hiding, she spends a lot of time in this box that we put on its side, and I'm loath to get rid of it even though we've had it for a few weeks and space is at a premium.
vovat: (Bowser)
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.

June 2025

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