My aunt died on the fifteenth, and we drove down to Virginia for the funeral this past weekend. I hadn't seen her in a while, not since my grandmother's funeral about six years ago. And this was just a few months after my mom died. My Aunt Toni was the oldest, four years older than my mom. And today is actually my mom's birthday, so that's weird. The funeral was yesterday at a small church, and I believe it was a natural burial as well. This hasn't been a great year so far in several respects.

I had originally thought we would drive the entire way down on Saturday, but I changed my mind and booked a motel in Maryland, which turned out to be a good idea. Driving gets so tedious. The motel still used actual keys instead of cards, and it had pictures of animals up in the room.

For some reason, the toilet paper was in front of a zebra.

I would think they should have at least used zebra-striped paper in this case. The motel also had real animals, as we saw three cats in a window near the office, and I think the people staying there also had a dog.

The next day, we went to a café in Baltimore, and drove by a book and music store that looked interesting because it had a big stuffed Heathcliff with a banjolele in the window.

There were other decorations inside, and we ended up buying four used books between us.

Across the street was this tea shop with a giant carrot stuck through it, or at least that was what it was made to look like.

That evening, we ate at the Longhorn Steakhouse with some of my relatives and other people. I don't think I've been to one of them before, although I get it confused with the Texas Roadhouse and Lone Star Steakhouse. I'm pretty sure that last one doesn't exist anymore. Regardless, I liked it, and they gave large portions. I had chicken instead of steak, though.

In terms of other stuff that might be worth mentioning, we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Wednesday the sixteenth. A few of the cherry trees were blooming, but most of them were still bare.

The magnolias by the conservatory were in blossom, however. And I noticed this Shinto-style shrine at the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden for the first time.

We were at Beth's mom's house for Easter weekend, but didn't really do anything for it, although she did give us Easter baskets, and we ate at the Olive Garden.

And last Tuesday, we saw John Waters at the City Winery in Manhattan, and that was pretty enjoyable. It was his seventy-ninth birthday that day, which means he outlived my mom and aunt.

I guess I should say a bit about the places Beth and I visited this month, which really aren't that out of the ordinary. On the Thursday before last, we met Tavie and Sean at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. There wasn't much there that was particularly noteworthy, but it's always pretty. I have to say this cactus looks like it wants to dance.

And I thought this picture of the fountain outside the conservatory turned out pretty well.

And we went to Playland last Wednesday, which coincidentally was Ozma's birthday, and it seemed like a lot of stuff didn't work correctly.

There was no music on the carousel, and the animatronics in the Old Mill weren't running.

That's a really old ride and they're probably difficult to maintain, but still. And I noticed the censored picture at Zombie Castle has been sloppily painted over entirely.

I believe this marionette ride was new this year, but it wasn't running.


We visited Beth's family in South Jersey over the weekend, but my car stopped running correctly after leaving the New Jersey Turnpike, and I tend to panic when I'm in situations like that. What made it even worse was that we were bringing the cats down with us. Beth's uncle picked up Beth and the felines, while I waited for the tow truck. Since it was late at night, I was worried about finding a repair place. But it actually turned out somewhat easier than I had feared, as the tow truck driver was able to take it to a dealer not too far from Beth's mom's house and leave the key in the drop box with my phone number. It turned out that one of the engine coils wasn't firing properly, so I had to get that fixed. But I've had the car for fifteen years now, and it's probably time to get another one. The air conditioner rarely works, and it would have been prohibitively expensive to get it fixed. And there's a tire pressure warning light that won't go out even after I've put air in the tires. Anyway, while we were in the area, we went to Clementon Park, but didn't stay that long.

Only a few rides were running, and we both felt sick after a while. I have to wonder if I should mostly retire from amusement parks, but we do still have Great Adventure season passes that we've only used once, and Beth thinks the problem might have been the off-brand motion sickness pills we took. I do like that they have a Pizza Hut in the park, and we split a personal pan pizza. Pizza Hut is nostalgic for me, despite our now living in Brooklyn where there are pizza parlors everywhere.

I'm back on the medicine that lowers my blood sugar quite a bit, but also suppresses my appetite and upsets my stomach, which I'm sure didn't help at the amusement parks. I wasn't able to finish the omelette I had for dinner on Wednesday, and I suspect it's no good now. Also, while I'd been working from home two days a week, that's been suspended until the end of the month, presumably because a lot of people are on vacation. And I'm still wondering if I should go to the Oz Convention in North Carolina next month. I feel like I should, and I'm sure I'd have fun, but it sounds so complicated. For that matter, I'm not even entirely sure I can get the time off from work. Oh, and the vet estimated that Nellie was born last August, so I guess she's fully grown now.

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.

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

I suppose I should start this post with last Saturday, when I attended a Zoom event for the International Wizard of Oz Club, based on the women of Oz. There was a lot of discussion of Ozma, and it came up how she was a trans icon. The thing is, how I mostly understand gender is that it's a case of how the individual identifies, regardless of what traits or sex organs they may have. Ozma is, quite literally, a girl trapped in a boy's body, but there's no indication in The Marvelous Land of Oz that Tip sees himself as anything but a boy. He tells Glinda he'd rather stay a boy, and Glinda tells him he has to go back to being a girl because it's what she was assigned at birth. I'm not saying Ozma can't be considered trans, just that there are some differences there. As someone mentioned, though, Tip largely wants to stay a boy because he thinks girls can't have adventures, even though he's familiar with Dorothy. Maybe Glinda wants a girl on the throne of Oz not just because she doesn't approve of transformation, but as part of a grander plan. As silly and stereotypically girly as Jinjur is, she's rebelling against a patriarchal society in the Emerald City. Glinda, on the other hand, is a woman who rules a country and keeps an all-female army who are implied to be the most powerful fighting force in the land. She's basically creating a matriarchy while also restoring the old royal line. Of course, all four major countries of Oz had female rulers until recently, although two of them were tyrants. L. Frank Baum definitely seems to have been receptive to the idea that gender is largely a social construct. Chick the Cherub was never assigned a gender as they weren't raised by parents, and is what we might now call non-binary. There was some mention of the two-spirit concept in Native American culture.

I probably wouldn't have watched the Oscars at all if Beth hadn't put them on, but I did end up seeing part of the ceremony. We all know what the main takeaway ended up being, but honestly I think it was only a big deal because the whole thing is usually just so rote and pompous, so the audience welcomes anything out of the ordinary. I'm not saying it's boring, just somewhat disturbingly indulgent. My friend Becca mentioned how Chris Rock directed Good Hair, about Black women's issues with hair, so he really should have known better than to make a joke about a Black woman's hair situation. Even if he didn't know she had alopecia, appearance-based jokes like that are generally punching down. I've also seen the argument that Jada Pinkett-Smith was perfectly able to defend herself, and Will Smith slapping Rock out of some sense of defending her honor is pretty misogynistic. I don't blame him for being pissed off, but I'm sure that's hardly the first occasion of an offensive joke made in a totally casual manner. In the long run, I think calling him out would have been much more effective than hitting him. But that wouldn't have immediately become a template for a whole bunch of memes.


On Tuesday, Beth and I went to see Sparks at the Town Hall. She's been obsessed with them recently, and this was actually her third show in four days, but I only went to the one. While she's the bigger fan, I do enjoy what I know of their music. It's often funny, absurd, and nerdy; and the music tends to be upbeat with a sense of urgency. They started with "So May We Start" from the movie Annette. The brothers are interesting to watch on stage. Russell, who's always the lead singer, dances around very energetically, and he's seventy-three now. He has an impressive singing range, too. Ron, who writes most of the songs, sits at his keyboard for most of the show, looking straight ahead and somewhat aloof.

He did do his signature arm-swinging dance during "The Number One Song in Heaven," and spoken-word bits in "Shopping Mall of Love" and "Suburban Homeboy."

Beth was talking about the latter song recently, and how it's interesting that it came out around the same time as Ben Folds's "Rockin' the Suburbs," and they're both about white suburbanites pretending to be gangsta. That said, they're different kinds of suburban white pretenders, young angry boys in Ben's song and upper-class WASP-y adults in Sparks'. One of the lyrics is "We've got that old-school mentality, Oxford and Cambridge mentality." Anyway, it was a very enjoyable show. Our next musical event is a performance by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra on Sunday, a very different sort of experience.

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.

We've been pretty busy recently. This past Thursday was my birthday, but I couldn't think of anything to do, and figured it was one of the few days I didn't have to go anywhere. What do people do for their birthdays anyway, other than going out to eat? I think the last time I had a birthday party was when I turned eight. Not that I really want to, but at the same time it makes me sad to think of how there's hardly anyone I could invite. The day before that, we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where we saw a lot of fall foliage, including in the bonsai room at the conservatory.

The rose garden had several non-rose plants, but there were a few roses still blooming.

They had a few things set up for the upcoming Lightscape, which we should be seeing next month.

On Friday, we drove down to my dad's house. His girlfriend's birthday is the same day as mine, and my nephew's is the next day (he's four now), so he invited us down there to celebrate. Not that we did that much celebrating, but I did see people I hadn't seen in a while. My uncle was staying there, and my brother and his son came over. My dad had also raised the possibility of going to Hersheypark, which I agreed to. This makes four amusement parks for Beth and me this year.

They had started up the Christmas Candylane thing, so they had some decorations around the park, and the Carrousel was playing Christmas music.

I always feel a little weird doing Christmas-related stuff before December, although I guess that's kind of an arbitrary time limit. It was more crowded than we would have thought, and also colder. In addition to the Carrousel, we rode the train, the Claw (a pendulum ride), Wildcat, Wild Mouse, Whip, Ferris Wheel, and Laff Trakk.

My dad, his girlfriend, and my uncle arrived later than we did and left earlier, but we did ride two rides together. We didn't really know what the Laff Trakk was, and the line was slow-moving, with funhouse mirrors on some of the walls the line wound past. It turned out to be an indoor roller coaster with cars that spun around sometimes.

That sure is a visible uvula!
It was similar to the Exterminator at Kennywood, but nowhere near as rough. The Wild Mouse was the roughest thing we rode that day. A lot of the rides weren't even running, although maybe the Comet could have been if Santa hadn't chosen to land his sleigh there. What were you thinking, St. Nick?

Come to think of it, Comet is the name of one of the reindeer. After leaving the park, Beth and I ate at the Cocoa Diner, where we'd also gone last year. We met my mom and sister for dinner the next day, and my sister-in-law was at my dad's earlier that day. As far as presents go, I got a Kindle Paperwhite from Beth, a stuffed Wiggler from my brother, and a book of Kirby art from Beth's Uncle John.

Yesterday, we had tickets to see the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We went with Tavie, and none of the three of us had seen it before. My dad was talking about how he saw the show when he was a teenager. I expect it's changed some since then, but I don't know that the sensibility has; it's pretty old-fashioned.

The Rockettes came out in a few different outfits, the weirdest being a group of toy soldiers who were eventually shot with a cannon and...killed, I guess. It ended with them all slowly collapsing. Kind of dark, really. Another segment had a bunch of dancing Santas. We'd been previously alerted to the meta-referential nature of part of the show, with Santa saying at the beginning that he had to go to Radio City, and the set including a facade of the outside of the building. The whole "New York City is awesome!" angle makes it seem like it's mostly geared to tourists, which Beth and I would have been before 2015. There were a lot of projections, and a scene with Santa flying in his sleigh was in 3D, with glasses provided. Another oddity is that it was secular most of the way through, then suddenly at the end, they had a nativity scene and Wise Men. We were originally supposed to sit in the balcony, but when we got there they upgraded us to the orchestra, presumably because not that many people want to see the show before Thanksgiving. The angle where I was sitting did cut off the R when they had a light-up sign reading "Rockettes." Would the Ockettes be Dr. Octopus' dancing girls? When we got home after the show, we found out they were going to do work on the garage in our building, so I had to find a place to put my car until after work today. I drove around for a while looking for a space on the street, then Beth suggested I use a nearby public garage. I don't know how people who regularly park on the street manage it. I didn't even keep my car in the city until we had a permanent parking spot, except occasionally when I needed to drive and would sometimes spend over an hour driving around the streets, which I had to repeat if they were doing street sweeping.

Today has been pretty uneventful, which gives me a chance to catch up on a few things. Well, "catch up" might be a bit generous. I've had little time recently to play video games, practice guitar, or write posts; and I've done a little of all three this evening. I did have a birthday party in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I'll try to participate in the Thanksgiving dinner if I have time. There's a mythology post I've been working on but haven't finished, and there are new They Might Be Giants and Tori Amos albums that I've listened to but haven't had the chance to fully absorb.

Well, at least I was. After our first road trip to Pennsylvania to visit amusement parks, we did another one this past weekend, going to Kennywood. The name is kind of confusing because Dollywood exists, but it had that name for more than thirty years before Kenny Rogers was born. Beth had been wanting to go since childhood, when she saw a documentary film called Kennywood Memories, which she showed me a few weeks ago. It was made in the eighties, so obviously some things have changed since then, but many were still there. I hadn't been in western Pennsylvania since graduating from college, and I very briefly considered visiting my old school, but it was out of the way and I don't know what I would have done there anyway. We did stop to see Beth's relatives who had bought a bed and breakfast, where they still live, but they don't take guests anymore. We spent Friday night at a motel, then drove to the park on Saturday morning.

We were able to go on most of the rides we were interested in, the main exception being a roller coaster called the Skyrocket that's right near the entrance, but we decided to save for later. This is one of those parks that closes everything before the official closing time, so we ended up not being able to. The first thing we rode was the Old Mill, a classic dark ride that's been changed a few times. For a while, it was Garfield-themed. Currently, it tells the story of a skeleton in the Old West, complete with appropriate music. The skeleton's name is Harold, which is my dad's name, and that made it more entertaining. There are three wooden coasters, the Jack Rabbit, the Racer, and the Thunderbolt.

It's a little confusing when parks give different rides the same names. Clementon Park also had an old wooden coaster called the Jackrabbit, but it wasn't the same. And I've seen Thunderbolt used for the ride that's like the Musik Express except the cars are suspended, and a relatively new coaster at Coney Island that neither of us have ridden yet. The Racer runs two trains at once, and they end up on opposite sides during the course of the ride. I'm sure it's based on a simple principle, but I haven't looked into how it works.

Phantom's Revenge was originally the Steel Phantom, but was renamed in 2001 after significant renovations. I'm not entirely sure what the Phantom is getting revenge for, but there you go. Another coaster, the Steel Curtain, is themed around the Steelers.

I'm not a sports guy at all, but it was amusing that they had sportscasters doing the safety announcement. That one has a really steep first hill. The Exterminator is a Crazy Mouse sort of ride, but indoors and largely in the dark. It was a lot rougher than I expected.

By the way, it's not far from the Black Widow (not affiliated with the Marvel character), so I suspect the Exterminator isn't doing their job. The Whip and the Turtle were both installed in the 1920s.

The former has sixteen cars instead of the twelve I've seen on other Whips, and is out in the open air.

The Turtle was originally the Tumble Bug, which used to be a pretty standard ride but is now the only one still operating. What's less old is the sample of Dana Carvey saying "turtle" that they play during the ride. Also worthy of note is Noah's Ark, which is a walkthrough but presumably still counts as a ride because the boat park rocks back and forth.

You enter through a whale's mouth, and there are a lot of animal props, as well as some trick floors. According to the documentary, the air jets were originally installed to blow up women's skirts, but I'm not sure that would be legal anymore, even though I doubt too many people still wear skirts to amusement parks. The park has two kiddie sections, Kiddieland with smaller versions of the classic rides, and Thomas Town that's based on Thomas the Tank Engine. They made a big deal in the film of the Potato Patch, which sells fresh-cut French fries with various toppings. The wait for this was worse than most of the rides. Aside from that, Beth had a corn dog and a funnel cake, and I had a stromboli and a water ice.


After leaving the park, we went into Pittsburgh to ride something else, the two inclines on Mount Washington. We parked into a garage for the Monongahela, and a lot for the Duquesne. There might have been a lot for the former, but I didn't think to look for it before driving there.

Called funicular railways, they counterbalance by having one car coming down the track while the other is going up. The gift shops weren't open when we got there, but I noticed that some of the merchandise for the Duquesne Incline had a cute anthropomorphic version of the car.

I'll admit to having a rather irrational fear of heights, but only when I can really process them, so not on roller coasters or planes or anything. I'm less afraid that I'll fall than that I'll drop something. But I did get some pictures of Pittsburgh from above, including the confluence of the three rivers.

We spent that night at my dad's house, which he just bought last year. The next day, my brother and his wife and son were over at my dad's for a little while, and I finally got to give them the Christmas presents I'd bought months ago. Then we met my mom and sister for dinner at a place called Snap Custom Pizza in Exton, where they'll make a pizza to order, sort of like a Subway sandwich.

I have to go back into the office full-time on Monday, which is annoying. I don't have any particular safety concerns, but since working from home was apparently effective for a while, why is it necessary? I've heard something about wanting to justify the cost of the subways, so if that's the reason, I guess it ultimately comes down to money over people. I suppose I should be glad that this was delayed for over a year, but it just feels like a case where we're given a better option, then it's taken away with no given reason.

We'd been planning to do the Creamy Acres Night of Lights for a while, but positive COVID tests got in the way of that. Last weekend, everything worked out all right, so we finally went. Due to social distancing restrictions, we drove through instead of taking a hayride. As such, I was only able to get pictures from my side of the car, and a lot of them came out blurry.

I know Beth took a few other ones, but I've been having trouble transferring pictures.

On Monday, we did some shopping at the Nintendo store in Rockefeller Center, and saw the tree while we were there, albeit from a distance.

Then, on Tuesday, I attended a virtual get-together with Michael Booth and some other Oz fans, which was fun. A few people read some of L. Frank Baum's Christmas-related stories.

We spent Christmas at Beth's mom's house, but it was just the two of us and the two people who live there, so I don't think it counts as a superspreader event. (That term doesn't even really sound bad. It just sounds like people are trying to see who can butter their bread the fastest.) Stuff I received included three Carl Barks collections, a book of art from the Mana series of video games, a copy of Vampires and Oz, Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island, Janelle Monae's The Archandroid, and Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam.

We also got a new kettle, as our old one just stopped whistling this week.

Beth was telling me about how Christmas Day is always disappointing after the buildup, and while it's not as bad for me, it does kind of fizzle out. For me, I guess I kind of feel on holidays like I'm supposed to be doing something special, so I feel a little guilty when I just do the same stuff I do every day, although I generally do anyway. We're probably going to visit my family next weekend, but I haven't made any specific plans.

I'm still playing through Dragon Quest XI for the Switch. I finished what I guess is the main game, defeating Mordegon and seeing the credits, but there's still more to do. Basically, you go back in time and try to fix the mistakes you made the first time, and also beat the evil being behind Mordegon.

I finished the first challenge in Drustan's Labyrinth, but haven't managed to take out the powered-up Arboreal Serpent. The only other Switch game I currently own is Paper Mario: The Origami King, which I started but haven't played much of. There's still a fair amount of DS/3DS stuff I need to get back to.

I'm going to write a little about the winter holidays, although really that was only a few days with regular work days in between them. I did take off Christmas Eve, though. Beth and I drove down to her mom's house, where we went on the Christmas hayride at Creamy Acres that we'd been on for the past few years. They have a lot of light displays set up.

We also watched Home Alone and A Very Brady Christmas.We never get up early on Christmas Day anymore, but we did eventually open our presents. I'm running out of ideas on what to get Beth, as she already has a huge backlog of books and video games. I ended up getting her a Sega Genesis Mini and Super Mario 3D Land, which I believe is the first game in which Pom Pom appears.

I received Volume 2 of the Dragon Quest Monsters+ manga, the Mountain Goats' Beat the Champ, the Decemberists EP Traveling On, and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.

I also got a watch and some clothes, which I'm glad to have but don't find particularly interesting to write about. My original plan was to go to Pennsylvania to visit my family on Friday, but I got a flat tire on the New Jersey Turnpike on Christmas, and wasn't able to get a replacement until Monday. Well, I might have been able to if it weren't for the fact that I kept getting disconnected from the shop whenever I tried to call them, so I wasn't able to get in the order for the new tire. We ended up driving down on New Year's Eve instead, stopping to eat at Denny's on the way. It was almost midnight when we got to my dad's house, so we were awake at the beginning of the year, not that it really mattered. A lot of holidays lose much of their appeal when you're no longer a kid, but that's especially so when the main attraction is staying up late. The next day, my brother Karl and his wife Kelly showed up with their son Calvin, who's two years old, and two is also the number of times I've seen him so far. He's very active, and frequently switches from one activity to another in short order. He liked the toy duck that quacks when you push it, which I picked out. The gifts I received that day were the Mountain Goats' Beautiful Rat Sunset, Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe III, and Stella Glow. I honestly don't know much about the two video games I got, but I suppose I'll find out in the future. That evening, we took my mom out to dinner at a place near her called Mod Pizza. Pizza with a thin, crispy crust isn't usually my favorite, but I did enjoy it, and there are a lot of choices of toppings. Then it was back to work today.