Stratovania

We're back from California, and I'm rather exhausted. We flew in very early on Sunday, and spent the first few nights there with Stephanie. On Monday night, we went to the LA Haunted Hayride, which included several mazes as well as the hayride itself.

They played clips from Elvira throughout, many from her Mistress of the Dark movie, and there was a haunted house devoted to her. Another was Monae Manor, which had clips and samples of Janelle.

There's a video where she's beheaded. I wonder if there's any connection between the two of them, aside from being queer and glamorous. The other maze was some hillbilly thing. And the Scary-Go-Round was a carousel with flamboyantly attired bone horses.

They had hay bales to sit on, and in one area they were made into chairs, which of course made me think of the Scarecrow's straw throne at the Tin Castle, because I'm like that.


On Tuesday, we saw Sparks at the Greek Theatre.

Fortunately Russell Brand wasn't there, at least as far as I know, but Russell Mael definitely was.

I don't think that, when that movie came out, I even knew the Greek was the name of a venue, although it didn't take me long to figure it out. I also didn't notice any Dionysus or comedy and tragedy masks, so should they really even get to use that name? We were in the standing room area in the front, and I don't really mind standing during a show, but I do mind when WAITING for the show. This was the last show on the tour, and the setlist was the same as all the others. I did notice that Russell waved his finger while singing the chorus of "Reinforcements."

Ron was wearing bright red Air Jordan shoes, and he actually talked a little bit towards the end.

His dance during "The Number One Song in Heaven" wasn't as long as it was last year, but he is eighty now.

That said, I have no idea how they stay in such good shape. Is it really just diet and exercise? Beth and Stephanie showed up in the picture the band took after the show, but I'm obscured, probably somewhere behind Ron's arm.


We rented a car on Wednesday and drove out to Santa Clarita so we could go to Six Flags Magic Mountain the next day.

It was fun, and not very crowded. There was only a short wait for most of the rides we went on. We rode on Goliath, which was closed the other time we visited; and on the Teen Titans Turbo Spin, which is like a Gravitron that tilts.

The Riddler's Revenge is a standing roller coaster that seemed similar to Green Lantern at Great Adventure, which was taken out last year. It kind of hurt my head, and wasn't too comfortable in the crotch area either.

The swing ride was called Swashbuckler, which is confusing, as that's the name of a totally different ride at Great Adventure.

This looks like it's from a Decemberists album cover.
You'd think they'd at least keep these things consistent across Six Flags parks, or at least I would. They did Fright Fest at night, and one of the scare zones was sort of a steampunk dark Wizard of Oz kind of thing.
They had creepy Winged Monkeys and some factory-themed stuff, as well as a Wicked Witch on stilts.

I do seem to recall they had a lion with an axe, though. Isn't that mixing characters?

There was also what seemed to be sort of an Alice in Wonderland area with scary playing cards and chess pieces.


The next evening, we went to Knott's Scary Farm, the Halloween event at Knott's Berry Farm, which we could walk to because our motel was very close by. The motel had some interesting garden statuary, a combination of (what at least I thought was) traditional Indian stuff and more modern things.

Maybe the owners are Buddhist, although my mom also had a Buddha statue in her garden and she wasn't. As opposed to the previous evening, the park was very crowded, and it's probably just going to get worse as the season goes on. The waits for Xcelerator and Ghost Rider were well over an hour, although the one for the mine ride wasn't that bad. The haunted walkthroughs were included in the admission, and we went to two of them, one Old West themed and another based on slasher movies and theaters.

The latter kept playing that "let's all go to the lobby" jingle. And we saw a show, Le Magnifique Carnaval di Grotesque, which was mostly dancing and circus-style acts, but there also seemed to be a bit of an attempted story about a girl trying to find the ringmaster's magic staff. That bit wasn't even introduced until after a harlequin had danced and silently (well, mostly) joked around, though.

The show also included a guy balancing on a gradually increasing pile of stuff, which Beth said stressed her out.

The meal we got at the barbecue place was a surprisingly large amount of food. I had rotisserie chicken with macaroni and cornbread, and I didn't finish all of it. But then, the sides weren't really that good. Still, it definitely filled me up.

On Saturday, we met Paul and Carolyn to visit the Medieval Torture Museum on Hollywood Boulevard. It has both models of torture implements and graphic depictions of their being used on dummies. There's also stuff you can interact with, like some kind of morbid Franklin Institute. One of the first things we saw there was an iron bull that, according to legend, was heated up to torment a person inside. The model, at least, is surprisingly intricate. If all you're going to use it for is to kill people, why bother giving it such detailed features?

But then, a lot of this kind of thing was spectacle. I can't even imagine watching a public execution. The late Charlie Kirk apparently thought children should see them. Even the stocks, which are pretty minor as far as these things go, seem incredibly hateful. Why would I want to ridicule someone because they broke the law?

It was probably mostly just people who didn't like the prisoner for some other reason, but the authorities encouraged it. Along the same lines, the museum had a weight that went around a person's neck and a barrel that people would have to sit inside for a while, both punishments for public drunkenness.

My gut reaction was that the star was some kind of antisemitic thing, but I guess not.
The informational plaques did say that the pendulum like in the Edgar Allan Poe story was probably not really used, and that the iron maiden (also called, as I found out at the museum, a Nuremberg Virgin) didn't exist in the Middle Ages.

There was an exhibit about execution by saw, which was what happened to the prophet Isaiah according to apocryphal sources, as well as something Art the Clown did in the first Terrifier movie.

These scales were based on the idea that anyone who weighed less than a certain amount was a witch. I think the other categories are just fun additions, although I'm intrigued by the idea that angels are particularly heavy. Maybe it's like how Rosalina is a heavyweight in Mario Kart. I guess this must be where Monty Python got the idea for the bit about a witch weighing the same as a duck. And there were these face hole cutouts of a sexy dominatrix and a slovenly man with his gut hanging out, which I think says something about sexism in society.

I won't say they weren't funny, however.

Our plane was scheduled to leave before 9 at night, but it ended up being delayed. The particularly annoying thing is that we didn't find this out until after everyone had already gotten on the plane, and there were announcements that there was a malfunction with a fire alarm, and it would have taken hours to fix it. Obviously I'm no expert, but doesn't this seem like the kind of thing they'd find out before letting anyone board? I normally don't even mind airports or flying that much, but I hate how slow everything is. And someone said something about having to exchange our tickets for new ones, which ended up not happening, but it made me feel helpless and trapped. I also kept getting updates on my phone giving new departure times, which would come and go with nothing really happening. Can't they wait to make these announcements until they're certain, instead of constant guessing? It would still be frustrating, but less confusing. Anyway, we're back at home now, and went back to work today. Right now, I'm doing the laundry.

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.

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.


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.

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.

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.<
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.


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.

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.

I went to the doctor (but not to the mountains) on the Friday before last because they wouldn't let me get a refill on my medicine otherwise, even though this doctor didn't prescribe it for me in the first place. Then, due to some kind of mix-up, I wasn't able to get the prescription until Tuesday anyway. It's very frustrating that the doctor, insurance company, and pharmacy can't work these things out amongst themselves. I signed up to get my medicine by mail order, but even though the doctor said he okayed it, there was no record of that at CVS Caremark. I ended up having to give them all my information again. I like my current doctor pretty well, but I hate that a doctor visit is inevitably going to include someone asking if I check my blood sugar, which I haven't been doing. I know I should, but I don't want to be shamed for not doing it. The doctor's assistant also mentioned last time that I'd gained weight, but my weight fluctuates a lot without any noticeable catalysts. And I was a scrawny kid, so I'm not really all that concerned about it.

On Thursday, Beth and I went to see our friend Dave's punk band, Dead on a Friday, perform at a bar in Williamsburg (the one in Brooklyn). Here's a picture she took:

It was for the release of their new album, which Beth bought there. Also in attendance was Emmy-winning writer Matt Koff. Two days later, we visited the Museum of Natural History, which has free admission for the year with a New York City ID card. It still costs extra to see special exhibits, though. We weren't able to spend more than three hours there, but we were able to see most of the stuff they had, and we can always come back later. The planetarium is currently closed, but it's scheduled to reopen in late November. (By the way, was actress Hayden Panetierre named after the Hayden Planetarium?) Here are some pictures I took at the museum:
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You can find more at my Flickr account and my Facebook.

I haven't been writing much about dreams recently, but there have been some recurring themes as of late that I thought would be worth mentioning. I've had a few where I was carrying around a big stack of magazines, often including pornographic ones, and not knowing what to do with them. I had a dream a few nights ago about going to an Oz Convention where no one would talk to me and I couldn't find the merchandise. It wasn't really a bad experience, but those things frustrated me. I haven't been to an Oz Convention since the big one in 2000. I'm debating whether or not to go to the Winkie Convention next year, which is in Portland, Oregon. I kind of wish I'd gone while they were holding it in San Diego, since I've never been there before, but I have been to Portland. And last night, one of my dreams involved being at my dad's house while he was playing some game with a bunch of guests, and even though I wasn't playing, he wouldn't give me any straight answers and I kept running into people even when I was trying to use the bathroom.

Tonight, Beth and I are seeing They Might Be Giants at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. I bought a ticket to see Robyn Hitchcock at the City Winery in November; and I wanted to get one for Jenny Lewis in February, but it sold out when I wasn't really paying attention. There's going to be a second show, and I hope to remember to buy a ticket for that one.