Stratovania

It's been a pretty busy week, and a pretty rainy one as well. On Monday, Beth and I went to see The State perform live at the Palladium in Times Square, which I believe is where they filmed their show back in the 90s. Eight of the eleven are part of the Breakin' Hearts and Dippin' Balls Tour, and the new performance was a mix of sketches from the show with some new material, or sometimes old stuff repurposed for a new context, like the sketch about a college dorm safety lecture from people with tape on their faces instead became a talk about theater safety, Barry and Levon tried to sell reverse mortgages, and an expanded "Froggy Jamboree" gives the characters a dark backstory.

Older sketches included Louie at the Last Supper, the mailman who delivered tacos instead of mail, the Bearded Men of Space Station 11, and "Porcupine Racetrack," which was the closer.

While changing scenes, they played some bits from the CBS special and a pre-State project where they reenacted weird stories people told them. Since Michael Showalter was one of the members who wasn't there, they made a joke out of getting an audience member to play Doug.

Before the show, we ate at Jollibee for the first time, and I liked the chicken and the peach and mango pie. I wonder what their spaghetti is like. Beth saw the show again on Tuesday, while I stayed home to watch Clone Wars episodes (I've now finished watching the sixth season), play Animal Crossing, and write a post about monster shamans. Less exciting, to be sure, but I've come to appreciate evenings where I don't have to do anything, even if that thing is purely for fun.


Thursday was the fall event at Green-Wood Cemetery that I think we've been to twice before, but the name isn't always the same. This time, it was Nightfall: Danse Macabre. I can't say it was much different from before, but a lot of what you see depends on timing. Some performances repeat with only short breaks in between, while others are only at specific times. We saw fewer of the circus performances than in previous years, although we did see some fire eaters and someone playing what sounded like music from the Legend of Zelda soundtrack on a harp.

There were two different theremin performers, and a shadow puppetry performance about a girl who befriends some crows.

As usual, getting around was a little difficult, as it was dark and the paths at the cemetery twist all over the place anyway. There were lanterns marking the proper roads, but it was still hard to figure out which way we were going, even with a map.


On Friday night, we went to see the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band at City Winery. The band has David Wain on drums and Ken Marino on lead vocals, plus some of their friends and collaborators. Craig Wedren, who did music for The State and related projects (and is married to Thomas Lennon's sister), plays guitar, David's son Henry saxophone, and Amy Miles does backing vocals and some percussion. It's all very casual, but still sounds really good, and some of the people involved are professional musicians even if the leads aren't. They play covers (mostly from the sixties through the eighties, although a few later songs made their way in) and make a lot of corny jokes. They also had several guests who did a song or two, including Paul Rudd playing Gerry Rafferty (it didn't make a whole lot of sense even in context), David Yazbek, Kevin Allison, and, most exciting for me, John Flansburgh, who sang "Born to Run."

Amy introduced him as a friend of hers, and I actually was first aware of her because she and Flansburgh's wife Robin Goldwasser were in a band, The Last Car, that opened for They Might Be Giants a few times. I believe David met her on the set of Wet Hot American Summer; she was married to actor A.D. Miles at the time, although they've since divorced. In terms of connections, it's also interesting that Yazbek did a song from an upcoming musical about Elmer McCurdy, who was already the subject of one by frequent TMBG collaborator Brian Dewan. I've heard that Joe Lo Truglio had played Rafferty before, and that Weird Al has played with the band. It was a surprisingly long show, about three hours long with one fifteen-minute intermission. And it was mostly standing room (there were seats, but they cost a lot more), so it wasn't too kind on my feet. I also had my backpack with me because I brought it to work, but I might have used a smaller bag that day if I'd remembered about the standing.

I find myself not wanting to use Twitter that much these days, even though I still have one-off thoughts that seem well-suited to that format. It just seems like nobody reads my tweets, and my feed is a lot less interesting. I don't think Elon Musk directly messed up my personal experience, but his general toxic, chaotic management has driven a lot of people away. Or maybe it's just my own perception that's changed. The change from the cute bird to a letter of the alphabet doesn't help matters; it just seems a lot less friendly now. I have a Bluesky account, but I'm not following that many people (and even fewer are following me), so it's kind of slow. I've also read some stuff recently on how Google (and probably other sites as well) has basically sold out to advertisers and donors with particular agendas that you don't even necessarily get results for the words you actually typed. Apparently you're more likely to get popular results that are sort of related to your search. It seems similar to how YouTube and apparently Tiktok have algorithms that constantly suggest related things that are selected more for being popular than relevant, and are sometimes actively dangerous. It appears to be how Musk wants Twitter to operate, too. I'm sure that, at times, it's just the computer program not working very well, but I think there's an undertone to the whole concept of not trusting the user to seek out these things themselves.

I feel like there's a general trend on the Internet of homogenization, like you don't see as many personal websites anymore. Of course, a lot of these sites were terrible and boring, but they were still personalized in a way that things really aren't these days. This makes it easier, in that users don't have to learn even the tiny bit of HTML I did in order to put stuff online, so it's not all bad. There's somewhat of a pattern of increased corporate control, but not always in ways I can specifically identify, so it's more of a general feeling on my part. And there's the current obsession with the word "content," as if writing, art, research, music, etc. are all just commodities these days.

Personally, when I make posts on my WordPress, I do so casually, but I want the information to be accurate and fairly thorough. Too often, I'll do a Google search and it will result in the Wikipedia page, some other sites that just copy Wikipedia, stubs on wikis, and unsourced conspiratorial stuff. I realize I could do some more thorough research, as I did learn something about that in school, but it's probably not worth it for a short post that will get maybe ten readers. I just feel that some of this can't be so obscure as to barely register on the whole Internet.

This weekend, Beth and I visited two different Pennsylvania amusement parks, Knoebels north of Harrisburg, and Dorney Park near Allentown. Neither of us had been to the former before, and the last time I went to Dorney was around thirty years ago. Knoebels is a small, rather quaint family-owned park with a lot of older rides, which started in 1926. Their mascot is a chipmunk named Kosmo, and other cartoon animals could be seen around the place.

Admission to the park itself is free, and you can pay either a flat rate for unlimited rides all day (which is what we did) or buy individual ride tickets. One particular ride, a dark one called the Haunted Mansion, requires separate admission, and I'm not sure why. We did go on it, though. A few rides were closed, including the other dark ride, the wooden bobsled roller coaster, and a water ride called Sklooosh!, the latter of which I didn't particularly want to ride anyway, but the name is fun to say. It looks to have a Viking theme.

We did ride the newest steel coaster, Impulse, and two wooden ones.

Twister, from 1999, lived up to the name, and was rather rough. We weren't chillin' with that Twister. The Phoenix was built in 1947, and moved to Knoebels from Texas in 1985. I can't even imagine how you'd go about transporting a roller coaster, but it happens much more often than I would have thought. The Grand Carousel was the first one I remember riding that still had brass rings, although they were only accessible from the outer row, where the horses didn't move. We went on the Motor Boats without really knowing how they worked, and it turned out that you had to steer them yourself. I'm not sure if we got a bad one or I just couldn't figure it out, but it responded very slowly and I kept running into the sides. The Pioneer Train was for all ages, but the seats were small, so I felt like Ian Maxtone-Graham in his tiny car while riding it.

I suspect some people would be too tall for it, especially as it goes through some low tunnels. The Cosmotron is an indoor Music Express kind of ride with a laser show on the ceiling. The building it's in looks like a shack with a satellite dish on top. Is it supposed to be some UFO enthusiast's cabin in the woods?

The Scenic Skyway is a chairlift that runs up and down a nearby mountain. I'll admit it made me a little nervous, not because I thought there was a chance of a person falling off, but because I was afraid of dropping something and then never finding it. I have a fear of heights, but generally only when I can really process how far up I am, so it's not like tall roller coasters or airplanes bother me that way. We had dinner that night at an affiliated restaurant called the Nickle Plate, which unfortunately was not affiliated with the Tin Woodman, then drove on to Allentown. We tried to buy tickets to Dorney online, but apparently they sell out, and then you have to pay an extra twenty dollars per ticket at the park itself.

I can't remember exactly the first time I went to Dorney, but I know Hercules, at the time the tallest wooden roller coaster in the world, was new then, so it might have been 1989. That one lasted until 2003, when it was deemed too costly to maintain, so it was replaced with one called Hydra the Revenge. I appreciate the mythological reference there, as it was the Hydra coming back to get revenge on his killer. The traditional account of Hercules' death is that he put on a coat soaked in Hydra venom from his own arrows, so it's even somewhat accurate.

They had stuffed Hydras at the gift shop, but they only had one head.

I also went to Dorney on a class trip in junior high, and maybe one other time? In addition to Hercules, I remember a small, fast coaster called the Laser, and I understand it's now touring around Germany. I tended to think Dorney was somewhat less enjoyable than the other parks I visited as a kid, with fewer good rides and no real themes to anything. Beth was interested in it as she has an interest in classic rides, and among other things they still have a Whip from 1920 in operation.

By the way, the one at Knoebels was called the Whipper, so is there a Whippest anywhere? I believe I'd ridden the other wooden coaster from 1924 back in my youth, when they'd first named it Thunderhawk. It's still there, and we rode it.

Dorney was also where the scenes of Sonny Bono's segregated amusement park in Hairspray were filmed, so even then it must have been considered old-fashioned. They've added a lot more stuff since my last visit, but there are still a fair number of classic rides, or at least newer versions of classic rides. My tastes have changed since then anyway, partially as I've reached the age where some of the rides make me queasy or hurt my head, which pretty much never happened in my childhood. I'll still ride pretty much anything, but the good rides are now not the thrilling ones so much as the ones that don't cause pain. I was worried that the park would be really crowded, since it was a Saturday and all, but it really wasn't. Beth figured most of the people were at Wildwater Kingdom, which makes sense as more people showed up once the water park closed. Dorney itself closed at 7 PM, their explanation being that they couldn't get enough people to work there, which often translates to their not paying very well. But anyway, we got to ride most of what we wanted to. Steel Force and Talon are pretty cool coasters, and the Demon Drop is basically the same as the now-defunct Stunt Man's Free Fall at Great Adventure.

There are two train rides, one of them, the Zephyr, reviewing some park history. There was another blast from the past after we left, because we ate at Perkins, and I haven't been to one of them in years either. Now I can't help associating them with Tiger Woods having an affair. I had pancakes and an omelette, and I brought home some apple pie for later. We got back home late last night, and I'm still pretty worn out.

It's been a pretty busy week for me, at least relative to how my weeks usually are. I already wrote about my anniversary dinner on Monday and seeing Aladdin on Broadway on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I started a temp assignment, my second since moving to New York, and the first that lasted more than a day. I've heard it might last until June, but I never regard such estimates as set in stone. I'm definitely hoping it lasts a while, as it's something I can put on my résumé when looking for future jobs.

Also on Wednesday, I saw Kim Boekbinder play at Pianos.

I've been a fan of hers for a while now, but haven't seen a solo show of hers. I learned of her existence when Vermillion Lies, her band with her sister Zoe, opened for Amanda Palmer in Philadelphia eight or so years ago. I believe she actually lives in the city, but travels a whole lot, or at least that's what her social media suggest. At this show, she played a set about forty-five minutes along, accompanied by a bass player and a drummer.

Kim played guitar and keyboard, although on some songs she just sang.

The set was heavily electronic, which seems to be the main direction she's been going recently. Many of the songs were from her 2013 album The Sky Is Calling. She wore an interesting outfit, starting out with a jacket and later removing it and leaving her colorful dress.

I introduced myself after the end of the set and told her I saw her before years earlier, and while she was nice about it, I'm always afraid I'm just being annoying when I say anything to a performer I don't know personally. On the other hand, I also feel I'm missing out if they hang around to talk to people and I DON'T say something. Why can't I ever come up with witty comments that cause minor celebrities to remember me? Well, maybe it's for the best; I've known too many people who didn't seem to respect artist/fan boundaries.

Today is the sixteenth anniversary of when Beth and I first met in Philadelphia after talking on the computer for a few months, and once on the phone. Beth loves the phone, and I find it awkward, but it was fun conversing with her that time. It was actually the night before I left school for winter break. Eight years ago, we met at the train station and went to the art museum, then returned to the station to eat some terrible pizza. I don't think that pizza place is even there anymore, although I haven't been to 30th Street Station in some time, as we usually take the bus when going through Philadelphia. Our official dating anniversary is the tenth of July, which is when I said on the phone that we could be a couple. It's generally easier to say the art museum was our first date, though, even though I didn't see it as a date at the time. Otherwise, I think the first time we went out while officially an item was to the Franklin Institute. We argued a lot that day, and I don't remember exactly when it was anyway. We had considered getting married on the fifth of March, but it didn't work out that way. What should we do to celebrate?

Since it had been a while since I'd seen my grandmother in Virginia, bethje and I decided to go down there this weekend, since I had both Saturday and Sunday off. On the way down, I ended up with a flat tire, probably due to rough roads. I'm pretty much helpless when it comes to things like that, and since it was Saturday nothing seemed to be open anyway. I tried using that Fix-A-Flat stuff, which they had at the gas station where we were stuck, but even though it was just a little hole it didn't appear to do anything. I called roadside assistance so they could put my spare tire on. It's not even changing the tire that I'm concerned about so much as putting the jack in the right place. I really should learn, though. My spare is one of those tiny ones (Beth calls it a doughnut), so I couldn't drive on it for long. The roadside assistance guy suggested a nearby Walmart, but they didn't have my size tires. Neither did another Walmart or a Firestone place. According to the guy at Firestone, they're pretty rare tires, which I certainly didn't know before. I guess next time I buy a car, I'll have to ask how common the tires are. It turned out that the only nearby place we could find that was open and had the right kind of tire was a used tire place, and I don't know that I totally trust the tire he put on. Last time I bought a used tire (this was for my first car), I was later told that it was rotten. Still, better than nothing, or driving 300 miles on the spare. It took us ten hours to make what should have been between a six- and seven-hour drive. My mom was down there for her high school reunion (it's bizarre she goes to those; I certainly never plan to), so we went out to eat at Cheddar's, which was pretty good. They don't have those up here, you know. On Sunday, after getting the tire replaced, we drove back and went to Shoney's for dinner. That's another place we don't have up here, but it wasn't that great, although I am always excited when the salad bar has fruit. Small pleasures, I suppose. I remember going to Shoney's quite a bit when on trips down south as a kid. They had these little comics for kids featuring a character named Shoney Bear. All in all, the trip was a rather harrowing experience, but at least we got to see this weird soda machine at the tire place.

According to a Facebook friend in South Carolina, a lot of small businesses in the South have those. Oh, and toward the end of the trip back, Beth decided to read me some Missed Connections on Craigslist. These people DO realize that the girl who smiled at them on the subway isn't necessarily interested in a relationship, right? More than that, however, the whole idea of asking out strangers is just so bizarre to me. Also, if you're thirty-two and totally desperate to get married, even to someone you don't really know, then you don't get to say you have "no drama." And by the way, that's not a Missed Connection.

Since bethje is all about trying to recapture the magic of youth, we went on two haunted hayrides this past weekend. I don't recall going on any of these when I was actually a kid. About the only thing I do remember was a haunted house where the monsters would turn nice if you told them you liked their house. Later that same year, I went on a haunted trail, and was confused when the cast didn't respond to "I like your trail." I really did jump to conclusions there, didn't I? I've been on several of these hayrides with Beth over the years, though. I enjoy seeing the creativity that goes into them. Pretty much all of them have people with chainsaws, and it's also not uncommon to have someone hitting the wagon with a baseball bat or other such implement. The latter is probably what I'd want to do if I were to participate. I couldn't be a chainsaw guy, because I'm clumsy and would probably drop it. Anyway, the one on Saturday was at a mulch place in Winslow Township, and we went through their maze as well. The maze part was actually rather frustrating, because it was really dark and I had to feel along the walls to figure out where I was going. I figured there would only be one way to go, but somehow I managed to get lost. I didn't take any pictures on the hayride (that would have been rude), but I liked this witch that they had inside their gift shop.

They're probably for sale everywhere, but I still thought it was neat. On Sunday, therealtavie and her boyfriend went with us to Marlboro. The hayride there cost quite a bit more, and really didn't seem worth the extra charge. I don't think there's any official guideline for how much you can expect to pay for a haunted hayride. What I found most memorable about this one was the guy coming up to Tavie and yelling, "Spooky, spooky, spooky, spooky! Wassup!"

Halloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid, and I wasn't that old when I reached the point where I preferred handing out candy to trick-or-treating myself. I got to see all the other costumes that way. As an adult, it's a little disappointing, as holidays in general tend to be. I only work until 4 PM this year, so I guess I could do something on Halloween night, but what? It's not like you get any trick-or-treaters when you live on the second floor of somebody else's house.

There's nothing like the holiday season for making a fellow feel guilty for having no clue what to get anybody. Isn't exchanging gifts supposed to be fun? When it comes to be an obligation rather than something pleasant, aren't we abandoning the spirit of the season? I guess it's different when you have kids, but even then it appears to be overly common for people to worry more about how much they're spending than whether the kids will actually like the presents. Still, it's pretty much common courtesy to get something for someone when you know they're doing the same for you. I don't know. I just wish I could go back to feeling the way I did around the holidays when I was a kid, but what adult DOESN'T want that? Well, maybe the ones who had terrible experiences at the holidays, but that goes without saying.

Anyway, in case anyone cares, I'd like to direct your attention to another Oz story I wrote recently. When I was writing about brownies for my WordPress blog, I remembered the story about the Reddies in Ruth Plumly Thompson's Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, and how I always thought the rough account Glinda gives could use some expansion. I actually came up with a beginning for it years ago, but I've since lost it. No big deal, though, as I hadn't gotten very far. Blinkie and her associates were from L. Frank Baum's The Scarecrow of Oz, but it was Phyllis Ann Karr's Gardener's Boy that gave the three unnamed witches the names Bilkie, Bikkie, and Bittie. I went with this, although I didn't actually use all the names in the story. The fifth witch, Bleakie, was my own addition. Jakgar was actually a character I invented for a collaborative story on the old Oz Club message board. I'd also already named the last King of the Quadlings Jandor IV; I'm not sure whether the Jandor in this new story should be the same one or an earlier monarch of the same name, but probably the latter, as Jair is specifically identified as Mogodore's great-grandfather in Jack Pumpkinhead. As such, I assumed people still died at this point in Oz history. This is getting to be a lot of background information, and I'm thinking back to how my Creative Writing teacher in college said that this stuff should be included in the story itself if it's important, but I think a lot of it would interrupt the flow. I forced myself to write the story in a few days, so I'm sure there's a lot that can be edited. Any comments are more than welcome.

In other news, I'm working on my typical end-of-the-year mix. I've pretty much given up on burning these mixes to CDs (although I probably should, if only to preserve them in case of data loss), so I'm not sure whether I should limit myself to the length of a CD or not. Any ideas? Even if I do make it longer, it won't be MUCH longer, as I've already put on songs from all the new albums I can recall hearing this year. I realized that I hadn't included anything from Paley & Francis, though. Regardless, would anyone be interested in hearing the mix when I'm done with it?

A large part of what I blog about isn't political, and I've had engaging discussions on various topics with people whose political beliefs are quite different from mine. Still, I can't help feeling that people with conservative political views have it in for me. It might not be personal when Al Sharpton has dinner with Bill O'Reilly, but for me it kind of is. Look at it this way. The conservative viewpoint is that anyone can get rich, and we shouldn't bother helping out those who aren't because they're just not trying hard enough, right? Well, for me, this isn't just theoretical. I've had years of failure in trying to find gainful employment, and I don't see it as entirely my fault. But to someone with a conservative attitude, I'm basically a drain on society. They don't say this directly to me, but it's what I get when I read between the lines. In some ways it's worse than religious people thinking I'm going to Hell. I don't appreciate that, but I don't believe in Hell, and I still have to live in society as much as I try otherwise. I don't mean to imply that I'm particularly badly off, since at least I have A job, and my wife bethje supports me when I need it. I'm privileged in some respects, but due to the fact that I've never been self-sufficient, I see myself more as a Have-Not than a Have. Maybe President Obama and John Boehner can play golf together and discuss these issues without taking it personally, but, well, they're both rich. It's not like that for me. Besides, it seems like conservatives prefer the fire-under-your-ass method of motivation, and while that might work for some people, it doesn't for me.

On another note, I had a dream last night (or, more accurately, this morning or early afternoon) that I was in college and the Minus 5's gun album had inexplicably become popular. I wish this would become true, but I doubt it will. Anyway, I've had a lot of college dreams recently, and I remember one where it made me feel trapped. Kind of weird, considering that I thought college was mostly freeing for me. I sometimes resented having to go to class and do homework, but that wasn't so much curtailing freedom as it was just a pain in the ass. For the most part, I liked that I could usually do what I wanted when I wanted. Not that my activity was particularly restricted at home, but I still felt I had to answer to someone, which wasn't the case living on campus. I do think the resident assistants in my building were a bit too determined in enforcing quiet hours. That didn't seem to be so much the case when I stayed in another building for summer classes. Is this because it was the summer, or maybe because my normal building was the honors dorm? I don't know. I know the Honors College had a reputation of being snobbish, which is totally unfair. There's a HUGE difference between a shut-in and an elitist! There were some people there who seemed to be studying all the time, though, which I never really understood. Did these people WANT to enforce stereotypes, or what? Oh, well. To each their own, I suppose. Unless you want to play Frisbee over the sidewalks, that is. I just remember this recently, and how no one seemed to care how dangerous it was. The paranoid part of me wonders if those kids only did that when I was around. But that's not true, right? Right?

By the way, I have a job interview and a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so I'm doubly scared.

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This is kind of an old question at this point, but I figure it would be appropriate for me to answer it. Like some other people who answered this, my first favorites were the Winnie-the-Pooh books. I'm told I could first read at the age of three, and while I can't personally remember this, I guess it's true. And yes, the first stories I read were Pooh stories. I also wrote some of my own, although I don't think I fully grasped the style. One story that I came up with before the age of five (I think I drew the pictures, but one of my parents wrote in the words that I dictated) involves Pooh driving to the North Pole in a Volkswagen Rabbit to go grocery shopping. I had somewhat of an obsession with the Rabbit at that point, not because I ever rode in one (I didn't), but I think I just liked that there was a car with the name of one of the Pooh characters, not to mention the rabbit on the back of the car. I think Volkswagen actually stopped making Rabbits for most of my life, although I believe they're around again now. Hey, since it's a German car, how come it's not called a "Hase"?

Later, I really got into the Alice books, and read them many times. My grandmother owned The Annotated Alice, and that was a help not only at making me a fan of annotated books in general, but because it explained a lot of the Victorian English terms that I initially didn't understand. I still enjoyed the book even before knowing them, though, so take that, L. Ron Hubbard!

I think I got into the Chronicles of Narnia when I was about nine, on a suggestion from my great-aunt. It was also around that time that I started reading The Hobbit, although it was a few years before I'd finish it. Same way with Lord of the Rings, actually. I enjoyed them, but as much as I liked Tolkien's universe, the style wasn't much of a page-turner for me. And I think it was due to a combination of The Annotated Alice and a book on holidays that I knew there were multiple Oz books. I was eleven when I read The Wizard of Oz, and not only did I finish it quickly, but I really got into the series over the next few years.

I still read a fair number of books that are classified as Children's or Young Adult, and not just Harry Potter. A lot of the time, I think the recommended age level is a marketing decision, and not always based on the actual contents or writing style, so why not? It is a little confusing in bookstores, though, because I'll end up looking for the same thing in several different sections. How am I supposed to know whether Borders considers Diana Wynne Jones to be Children's, Young Adult, or just plain Fantasy? Actually, I went there last week, and they had one of the Chrestomanci books in Fantasy and another in Young Adult. Oh, you bookstores and your arbitrary shelving! It reminds me of how the music store near my college dorm put Moxy Früvous' You Will Go to the Moon in Alternative, but their Bargainville in Pop. I guess it's kind of silly to even shop at physical book and music stores anymore, since just about everything is cheaper online, but there's something about the physical stores that I find more enjoyable.

bethje and I finally got around to watching last Sunday's Simpsons, American Dad, and Bob's Burgers (Family Guy was a rerun). I think the Simpsons episode did a good job of parodying eighties sitcoms, and Bart's attempt to sell nuclear secrets to China for a minibike was an interesting twist. I noticed quite a few jokes that I think were really stretched out, though, like the bit with the initials on the vans and the ending in general. Overall, though, I think it worked. I'm kind of surprised by the joke about the World Trade Center address, not because I found it offensive, but because I have to suspect someone still would (or at least pretend to be in order to generate publicity).

Since it's Halloween, I figured a retrospective on costumes I've worn in the past would be apropos. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the vast majority of these. I wonder if my parents do. I'll have to find out, and maybe I can make a more colorful post on the subject next year. I never was really into the scary costumes; most of mine were just supposed to be fun.

• The first costume I remember wearing was a panda suit that my mom made. I guess I was lucky in that my mom was willing to make me costumes, so I didn't have to settle for those horrible pre-made eighties costumes. I'm pretty sure I wore this one the year my sister was born, which would mean I was not quite four. I also wore it in kindergarten.
  
• When I later decided I wanted to be a cat (for some reason, I was obsessed with cats and terrified with dogs, but never actually had either until some years later), my mom economically decided to make just a mask and a tail, the latter of which she attached to the old panda suit. It worked pretty well, too, from what I remember.
  
• My elephant costume that I first wore in either first or second grade was one of my favorites, not just because it was pretty easy to assemble (aside from the mask, all I really needed was a gray sweatsuit), but also because I reused it (with a few modifications) to dress as Kabumpo at a few Oz Conventions.
  
  
• At least once, I was a stegosaurus, using another costume that my mom made from one of those sewing patterns. When she used to drag me to fabric stores as a kid, my only source of enjoyment was looking at the Halloween costumes in the pattern books.
  
• I think it might have been once in junior high and once in college that I wanted to dress up, but had absolutely no ideas, so I just put on an assortment of odds and ends. Kind of lazy, really, but fun, at least for me.
  
• At two Oz Conventions, I was Wag, the giant white rabbit from Kabumpo in Oz. The mask I wore for this one was a rather creepy wooden one that my mom bought for some reason. Added to that were ears, a furry top, and blue pants with a tail pinned to the back.
  
• One of my favorite Oz costumes was Kaliko, the current King of the Nomes. This one consisted of gray facepaint, a wig teased up to approximate the gravity-defying hair that the Nomes have in John R. Neill's illustrations, a light gray suit that used to be my dad's, a paper crown, and a scepter made of a broom handle with a polystyrene ball wrapped in shiny red paper. I wore this one again in school that year, and that was my senior year of high school. I remember someone photographing me for the yearbook, but it wasn't used.
  
• Another Oz one was Pigasus, the winged pig. This one was made up of a mask, a pink sweatsuit, and white wings with fake feathers stuck to them. I wore this at the Munchkin Convention in 1997 (I think), and again for Halloween.
  
• My laziest Oz costume was Vaga, the bandit chief from Grampa in Oz. I know I had a bandana, boots, and wooden daggers, as well as the red handkerchief specified in the text.
  
• In my post-college years, I mostly wore store-bought costumes, including a knight, a pirate, and a doctor. Last year, bethje and I went to a Halloween party with therealtavie, and we used costumes she had around the apartment. Beth was a witch, and I was a fairy.
  
  

This year, I have to work, so I'm not dressing up at all. Kind of a shame, huh? Really, though, since I'm too old for trick-or-treating and too unpopular to be invited to parties, I'm not sure how I'd really show off a costume anyway.

When thinking of the state of video games in my childhood, one of the main issues that comes to mind is the constant competition between Nintendo and Sega. Sega's goal was to catch up with and then surpass Nintendo, and while they didn't accomplish this in the eight-bit era, they had a major boost in releasing a sixteen-bit system before Nintendo did. This was also the time period when Sega pimped their own mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, as a cooler alternative to Nintendo's Mario. I get the impression that Mario had a reputation as a goody-two-shoes, so Sonic was made to be more of a bad-boy type. Sure, he was on the side of good, but he had an attitude. I suppose it was a bit like Bugs Bunny when compared to Mickey Mouse. And I remember looking in gaming magazines that covered more than one system, and some of them had a quite a bit about how superior Sonic was to Mario. Come on, just because Nintendo and Sega are in competition, that doesn't mean the players and reviewers have to be, does it? Well, maybe, since it was probably more common back then for people to have only one sixteen-bit game system, so you sort of had to choose a side. I was always more of a Nintendo and Mario fan, and while Sonic was a fun character, I kind of think they were too obsessed in the early days with giving him a bad-boy attitude. Mario might have been a goody-goody, but he was hardly perfect. Hey, he's an overweight Italian plumber, not Prince Charming! That said, I always liked Luigi better, due partially to his being more pessimistic and not as relentlessly cheerful (in related media, anyway, and eventually in the games themselves). As for the games, well, I've really only seen the early Sonic games played, and while they have a lot to recommend them (particularly in the graphics and music departments), they seemed much more straightforward than what Mario was doing at the time.


Now, Sega is no longer making their own game systems, and a fair amount of the stuff they develop is for Nintendo. Never saw THAT coming back in the early nineties, did you? Mario and Sonic have even teamed up to participate in the 2008 Olympics. Now that the two old rivals appear to be on friendlier terms, how about some more team-ups between them? Mario and Sonic were both veterans of cartoon shows, although I think the companies that made the characters are now rather embarrassed of them. So we'll probably never see a cartoon that includes both Mario and Sonic, but as someone who has nostalgic feelings for the old Mario cartoons (Sonic not so much, but then I only watched the syndicated weekday show, which by most accounts wasn't as good as the Saturday morning one), I'd like to see such a thing.