Stratovania

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

They were also playing with one of the bags.

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

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

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

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

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

It's now that weird period between Christmas and New Year's that doesn't entirely feel like it should exist. It was one thing back when I was in school and had the whole week (and change, depending on when the holidays fell) off, but working over this period makes me more aware of it.

I had originally intended on posting this a few days ago, but I haven't been able to for various reasons, so I'm adding some other things we've done.


On the weekend before last, Vicki Lawrence did a show near where Beth's mom and uncle live in South Jersey, so we went down and saw it with him. Her uncle is the one who introduced her to Mama's Family, and I mostly know about him from Beth. She talked about her start in show business and first meeting Carol Burnett, whom people thought she looked like. Her current husband did makeup for the show, and she and her former husband used to go on dates with them. He's the one who wrote "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," which she sang at the show, as well as the Mama's Family theme, which she wrote, but they didn't use the lyrics. She mentioned that the Carol Burnett "The Family" sketches that led to the later show were done in a Southern accent to be like "Tennessee Williams on acid." She then did about half the show in character as Thelma Harper, with her observations on modern society and current events, including doing a rap. Then she came back as herself for a tribute to people she'd worked with who are gone now.

Earlier that day, we went to eat at Lucille's Luncheonette, a mostly breakfast place that closes early, and has a statue of the Jersey Devil in the front.


We'd brought Nellie down to South Jersey, as she'd lived there for a while before, and doesn't seem to mind the car ride. Felix is nervous even here, so we were afraid he'd be even worse in a strange place, and left him up here. It seemed to work out all right, except when she came back, he hissed at her. Apparently there's a thing where, if a cat picks up weird smells while away, even other cats who know them don't always recognize them at first. I think they're getting along again now, although she can play pretty rough.
Our last two cats never wanted to sit in this pumpkin.

They sat up here pretty often, though.


On Thursday, we saw Ben Folds in Tarrytown, of Headless Horseman fame. Ben was messed up on medication for bronchitis, and seemed to forget parts of songs sometimes. He cut "Annie Waits" short, then explained his condition and started playing something else. He talked a bit about "Still Fighting It," saying that when his son was born, it looked like he was having a really bad time. It's kind of weird to hear that song now, as it mentions something potentially happening "in twenty years or so," and it's been more than that since then. I get the impression that having kids makes you more aware of the passage of time. There were three Ben Folds Five songs in the setlist, "Eddie Walker," Don't Change Your Plans," and "Kate." We ate at a nearby burger place before the show, and there was a yarn store next door to the venue with this colorful sheep outside.

This past Sunday, we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Since we're members, we usually go on member-only weeknights, but both today and last Tuesday were closed for private events. A week ago, we went to Green-Wood Cemetery instead.

On Sunday, it was pretty crowded. The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and a lot of people were gathered in that area.

There were also magnolias and a lot of different kinds of tulips near the conservatory building.


Yesterday, we saw John Waters at the City Winery in Manhattan, and it was his seventy-eighth birthday. He covered some of the same topics he did when we've seen him speak in the past, but had plenty of new stuff as well. I don't have any pictures of that, because they weren't allowed. I did get some pictures of the place right near the venue, which is called Tiny Island, and has a big hill with a good view and, for some reason, a lot of hypnotic spirals.


I've had a cold for a while now, which isn't that common for me, or at least it hasn't been in the past. I've been taking medicine, and for the most part it's not an especially big deal, but my head has been feeling congested. I'm not sure what the best way to deal with that is. I haven't much felt like writing recently, except for these posts, but I do have some stuff that I've finished at least in draft form, and I'm wondering if I should share some of it. It's pretty much all Oz stuff.

Merry Christmas to anyone who celebrates, and I guess anyone who doesn't as well, although maybe you prefer not to be reminded of it! It's weird to think about how Christmas traditionally had twelve days, but for me it's basically over on the first. I've even seen some people doing Twelve Days activities that END on the twenty-fifth. We do still have to exchange gifts with my family around New Year's, though. Since the last time I wrote a life update, we saw the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, got our own, and attended a holiday concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra.

I've already written about most of the stuff we watched this year on WordPress, although there were a few repeat viewings as well, including Rudolph, Frosty, Garfield, the Grinch, Claymation, and Home Alone. Beth got the complete DVD set of Tales from the Darkside for her birthday, so we watched the Christmas episode of that first.

Called "Seasons of Belief," it's about a dad telling his kids (one of whom is Six from Blossom) a story he makes up on the spot about a monster called the Grither, who lives at the North Pole and goes after anyone who says his name. The kids' mom and uncle join in on scaring the jingle bells out of the children, even improvising lyrics about the monster to the tune of "O Come All Ye Faithful." SPOILER AHEAD! It ends with the Grither showing up and killing the parents, the implication being that belief brought it to life. You only ever see his arms, which are gigantic. END SPOILER. Earlier on, the mom mentions that, if kids don't believe in Santa Claus, then their toys will break, which is much more subtle a punishment than being hit with a switch or stuffed in a bag. Tavie and Sean came by on Thursday, and we watched Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, a rewatch for Beth and me. They gave me a DuckTales T-shirt, which reminds me that we still need to watch the newer series.

On Christmas Eve, we saw the Christmas episode of The Odd Couple, "Scrooge Gets an Oscar," where Felix really wants Oscar to play Scrooge in the play he's directing, but Oscar wants nothing to do with it, as he and his ex-wife were married on Christmas Day. Of course he changes his mind after having a Scrooge-themed dream.


We'd tried two other times to go to the Creamy Acres Night of Lights, but Beth's mom was sick the first time, and the second it was sold out. We finally went on Saturday evening. During the pandemic, they changed it from a wagon ride to a drive-thru, but more recently they've had both. I don't really like driving through, though, as the view isn't as good. The wagon takes the same road as the cars. Most of the lights were the same this time, but they're always fun.

The music played during the ride included a Christmas song adapted from the Flintstones theme, even though they could have chosen from a few actual Flintstones holiday songs instead.


They had a giant inflatable Bumble near the entrance, and a Grinch a little further on.

I also noticed some rather sinister-looking decorations inside.


Beth and I tend to sleep late when we don't have to get up for work, although I sometimes find myself waking up and doing something for a little while before trying to get back to sleep. I played a little bit of Animal Crossing, and delivered presents for Jingle, the reindeer who comes to visit for Toy Day. As with Easter and Bunny Day, it's an equivalent of the Christian holiday that only keeps the more secular elements. Santa Claus is mentioned, but doesn't show up.

Anyway, we didn't open our presents until afternoon. Beth gave me tickets to see Spamalot in January, as well as a CD of the original cast recording.

That's something that's likely up my alley, but I hadn't really thought about seeing. Along the same lines, Uncle John gave me a set of Song of Ice and Fire books. I remember starting to read the first one and not being that invested in it, but I'll definitely give it another chance. Then maybe I'll need to watch the TV show. We'll see about that. I'm late to most popular things. Nellie enjoyed playing with the wrapping paper.

She's staying back in New Jersey for the next week. And tomorrow we have work, because we don't do Boxing Day in this country.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think the cat in the picture is for Beth, through process of elimination, but it's there anyway because it's cute. Maybe someday I'll be able to get all my Mario stuff organized, but we don't have a whole lot of room.

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.

On Thursday evening, we went to see Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk Cinema in Park Slope. That one is more convenient to get to than the one in Williamsburg. Before the show, we got some food at Dog Day Afternoon, a nearby hot dog place. I had the kielbasa with mustard. Kevin Maher's co-host this time was Amber Dextrous, and the theme of the evening was dinosaurs. Kevin started by listing the various types of media stories involving dinosaurs, including the period piece, the period piece with liberties, time travel, dimensional travel, the lost world, and the dinosaur theme park. The liberties usually mean humans living alongside dinosaurs, The Flintstones being the obvious example, but there were plenty of old movies that did the same thing in a less intentionally comedic way. The example for dimensional travel was Land of the Lost, but I actually thought of the Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was addressed later on in the show. For theme parks, Kevin forwent the one everyone knows in favor of the Martin Short film Clifford. I forgot if there were any more categories; I guess dinosaurs on another planet could be one, but that's kind of just the lost world with space travel. Paleontologist Riley Black, who had consulted on the Jurassic Park franchise, did a remote segment discussing prehistoric animals. Corey S. Powell talked about whether dinosaurs and humans could be friends, bringing up Sleestaks, Barney, and Dino. And Chris Cummins had some thoughts on comics featuring dinosaurs, starting with a batshit crazy Chick Tract that I remember talking about before, and also bringing up how DC's Star Spangled War Heroes series eventually started using dinosaurs. He showed some of his favorite dinosaur-related panels, including Fred and Barney talking about participating in a genocide from the gritty Flintstones comic, and the Kool-Aid Man meeting the Purplesaurus Rex.

I'm kind of surprised he didn't include this Spider-Man one that I see a lot online.

The Kindest Cut was something called Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills, with a medicine man turning Beverly D'Angelo into...well, you can figure that out from the title. They finished with a clip from the last episode of Dinosaurs, where Earl accidentally causes the Ice Age and extinction. I actually saw that one when it was new. Incidentally, they showed a few clips from Tammy and the T-Rex before the show, and I thought the dinosaurs from that movie looked similar to the ones from Dinosaurs. I don't think there's any real connection, but it was made during the run of the TV show.


On Saturday, we went to Six Flags Great Adventure. We used to go there kind of a lot, and even had season passes for a few years in the early 2000s, but it's been a while since our last visit. While we went to a lot of amusement parks last year, this wasn't one of them, even though it's fairly close. It's in central New Jersey, so it's about the same distance from where Beth grew up and where we live now. Fright Fest, their Halloween event, had already started, so there were a lot of appropriate decorations, and at night some employees walking around in costume, many of them dragging shovels along the pavement.

If nothing else, that's certainly a grating sound. Perhaps because it's so long before October, the park wasn't all that crowded, and most of the rides had pretty short lines. The longest wait we had was for Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, and that was more because of the way the ride works than because there were all that many people waiting; there's no way the lines can't move slowly for something like that.

It's a park that really focuses on roller coasters, and there are a lot of them there. We rode two that hadn't been there on our last visit, the Joker and the Jersey Devil Coaster. The former is one that not only goes along a track but also flips the cars around, while the latter has a narrow track that's quite twisty.

One weird thing about both of these is that they don't have anywhere to temporarily leave loose items while you ride, so Beth and I took turns on them. If the lines had been longer, I probably would have sprung for a locker. Skull Mountain, Nitro, Superman, and the Runaway Mine Train were all the same as they ever were, as far as I could tell.

Batman: The Ride is the same, but they got rid of a lot of stuff to see while waiting in line, and Alfred no longer does the ride announcements. We'd only been on the Dark Knight Coaster once before, but I remember it as having TV screens along the route, and they aren't there now.

Medusa was briefly rebranded as Bizarro, with a new paint job and some relevant decorations added along the track; but it was later restored to how it was before. I have no idea why the rebrand didn't stick, but I like the classic design better anyway. Presumably because it's right next to where the Joker is now, the small coaster Blackbeard's Train is now Harley Quinn's Crazy Train.

It's short, but they ran each load of passengers twice. I don't know if that's standard practice or just because there weren't many people in line. Kingda Ka and El Toro, which apparently both have a lot of problems, were both closed. We've ridden both before, but the former was having technical difficulties when it was new as well. The non-coaster rides we went on that I haven't mentioned yet were Houdini's Great Escape, the SkyScreamer, the Swashbuckler, Justice League: Battle for Metropolis, Cyborg Cyber Spin, the Big Wheel, the Carousel, and Parachute Training Center. I'd never been on the first one, although it's been there for a long time; I don't think I really noticed it before. The seats move up and down a bit, but most of the movement is illusionary, with parts of the room moving around. The SkyScreamer is like the standard swing ride, but goes up a lot higher; while the Swashbuckler is the kind of ride that pushes riders against the outside.

Battle for Metropolis is the kind of ride that's also a game, where you ride along a track and shoot at stuff on screens, with a story involving trying to rescue some captured members of the Justice League from the Joker and Lex Luthor. I don't think we'd been on any rides of this sort prior to this year, when we went on three (this, Toy Story Midway Mania at Disneyland, and Reese's Cupfusion at Hersheypark). By the way, Six Flags seems to have started doing candy promotion themselves in addition to the Looney Tunes and DC Comics stuff, with Mars as their sponsor.

Ferris wheels used to scare me despite being very tame rides, and I think the reason was that, due to the way they have to load, you're just stuck sitting up in the air for a while. Other rides go a lot higher, but don't stay there long enough for you to really absorb it. But the Giant Wheel didn't bother me this time. 


We don't see a lot of plays, but Beth was drawn in by an online ad for Death of a Salesman, so we saw it at the Hudson Theatre on Monday. She didn't really know anything about it, while I sort of did. I think it was something I was supposed to read in high school and didn't, but was able to gather the gist of it from class. Maybe I would have read it if I hadn't had so many other assignments at the same time. Or maybe I was just lazy. I don't know. Anyway, this production has Black actors playing the Loman family, with Wendell Pierce as Willy and Sharon D. Clarke as Linda, both reprising their roles from the recent London production.

Andre De Shields appears as Willy's rich brother Ben, who pretends to be wise but is really just full of crap, kind of like the Wiz.Its critique of measuring success through money and the American dream is still relevant today, although nowadays I'm pretty sure even a more successful traveling salesman wouldn't be able to afford a house in Brooklyn. Before the show, we ate at a nearby family style Italian place, which was quite good, and not that expensive when you consider that we were sharing the entree, baked ziti bolognese.

Okay, I guess that's all there is for now. It's supposed to get a little on the chilly side this weekend, but our building really cranks the heat up starting around the fall, so we'll probably still need fans and such.

I guess I have a few things to write about here. On the last day of April, Beth and I went to Coney Island.

We rode the Cyclone and ate at Ruby's. I had jumbo shrimp, and the mozzarella sticks were surprisingly good. Not as good as some, but still good.

And, a week ago today, we saw Tori Amos at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn.

We had seen Ben Folds play there back in 2017, and at that show as well as this one, the balcony had a lot of empty seats. The pre-show music included a lot of sea-related songs, including two Beatles songs with Ringo on lead vocals, and Beth suggested this might have been to coincide with Ocean to Ocean. But then, we don't actually know who chose the music. The openers were Gracie and Rachel, who are considered chamber pop, which I didn't know was a genre but that does fit what they played. One played keyboard and the other violin.

One of their songs was a plainsong version of Kreyshawn's "Gucci Gucci," and they said she went to high school with them in Berkeley, California. That said, I can't say I was familiar with the original song. Tori was supported by a drummer and bass player, as is pretty standard, although we've seen her do solo shows a few times.

She played "Black-Dove" and "Past the Mission," which are favorites of mine. When she did "Take to the Sky," I noticed she didn't do the high parts. That's forgivable, but I kind of noticed it because we recently saw Sparks, and Russell Mael, who's quite a bit older, can still hit the high notes. She also played a bit of "I Feel the Earth Move" in the middle of that song. During "Josephine," the stage lights formed the French flag.

On the way back to the subway, a girl told Beth she liked her shoes, and we tried to remember when the last time we saw Tori was. It looks like that was also in 2017.

Sunday was L. Frank Baum's birthday, and I attended an online event celebrating that the previous day. I even did my own presentation. I had missed the last International Wizard of Oz Club event about games, which is up my alley, but that was the day we were at Coney. Sunday is also when I decided our cat Reagan's birthday is, since we don't know the real date. Regardless, we're pretty sure she's sixteen now.

Sunday was also when Kevin Maher presented a collection of video clips dealing with carnivals and amusement parks. There were a few from the Simpsons episode "Bart Carny," including the bit with the crappy haunted house, which I love. The collection included both Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park" and the alternate version he did of it for a Kennywood commercial. Also included were the part of Charlotte's Web with Templeton singing about the fair; a Tunnel of Love bit from a Popeye cartoon; Spider-Man fighting Dr. Octopus on Coney Island; Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman battling on a roller coaster (I've been watching this series, but haven't gotten to that episode yet); a scene from Roller Coaster, which we haven't seen but we know Sparks did the soundtrack for it; and another clip I vaguely recognized that turned out to be from Darkman. It ended with the way too long vomiting scene from Problem Child 2. I kept thinking of other things that could have been used, but obviously it couldn't include everything.

OzCon International is only one day (and the previous evening) this year, but we're still planning on going there, although we haven't made the arrangements yet. We're also going to Disneyland for a few days.

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.