Stratovania

I'm sure it's not polite to mention it, but today is my birthday. Guess how old I am.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Another place nearby was showcasing some sculptors from Baltimore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Happy Solstice, Yule, or whatever you want to call it! We've had our Christmas tree up for a while now, and I posted pictures of it elsewhere online, but not here. It's smaller than last year's, but I see that as a good thing. Much easier to carry in and out of the building. I always feel kind of bad that there's no point in putting ornaments on the back of the tree, because it just seems so uneven. The orange pterodactyl is new for this year.

They had several kinds of colorful dinosaurs like that at Target. (And yes, I know a pterosaur is not really a dinosaur.) Whenever we get a tree, Wally likes to sit underneath it, while Reagan ignores it.


I suppose the first pre-Christmas activity I should mention is seeing the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center on the last day of November. We were off to the side in the back of the third circle, and had an obstructed view, but it was still enjoyable. I'm really not familiar enough with ballet to give details, but I usually appreciate the mice and the kids coming out from Mother Ginger's skirt.

The Thursday after that, we saw the Kevin Geeks Out Christmas Special at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park. There's always a list of the performers on the website after the show, but I always forget who did what. I know Camila Jones discussed Christmas movies, and how any film with a scene taking place on or around Christmas could technically count in that category. She also questioned a line from White Christmas about mixing fairy tales with buttermilk and liverwurst, and was confused as to what it actually means. There was a bit about the animated New Kids on the Block Christmas special, which involves Donny befriending a kid who turns out to be dead. Someone else did a multimedia bit about her mother rather passive-aggressively showing her the decorations at her house. There were also talks on Furbys and It's a Wonderful Life. And there was an updated video presentation of Santa Doesn't Need Your Help. Kevin hosted two games, the Santa suit one and Ott or Not, the goal of the latter being to guess whether a film was rated better or worse than a very early movie of a guy named James Ott sneezing. I actually won the Santa suit one a few years ago, and every other time was eliminated very quickly. It's mostly all luck, even if you have a photographic memory for celebrities in Santa suits, as there are always some pretty obscure choices.


Last Thursday, we went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We were there last year, but I think they expanded it a bit this time. Sadly for us, it was cold and rainy that day, and the way the lights were positioned in the dark in some places made it hard to see. I liked the flowers and birds made of lights.

The next day was a concert by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra, with a good mix of holiday classics. And yesterday, we saw the tree in Rockefeller Center, and stopped at the nearby Nintendo store.

Make more than one trip, Luigi!
It was really crowded, and they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. I noticed a lot of sticker books, and the Pikachus in wedding dresses were cute. Bowser Jr. was apparently trying to blend in with them.

Even though I've lived in New York City for almost eight years, I still kind of feel like a tourist in that area.

After work on Friday, Beth and I went to see Michael Ian Black at Carolines on Broadway in Manhattan. Before the show, we stopped at Nintendo World, which I think is actually called Nintendo NYC now, where I bought a Donkey Kong T-shirt. This was one Beth had bought me for a gift, but it turned out to be too small, and when we went back to do an exchange they still only had smalls and mediums. She got me something else instead, but they have large ones now. I'd been low-key collecting the Mario enemy plush toys they sell there, but it's been a while since they last changed their stock. I know there are some I don't have, especially as I wrote about Wigglers the other day, and I know there's a plush Wiggler. For some reason, I'm not as interested in the main characters. I love Mario, and Luigi probably even more, but a stuffed animal of a human seems a little off. If anyone wants to give me one, though, I won't complain. Speaking of video game toys, though, why do Square-Enix figures cost so much?

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

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

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

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


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

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

Since the balloon had been a popular toy for some time by the period in which the Oz books were written, it's not too surprising that they would appear as characters in the series. The first example of living toy balloons (as opposed to the non-living hydrogen-filled balloon that the Wizard used to reach Oz in the first place) appears in The Tin Woodman of Oz, in which the main characters visit Loonville, a forest clearing in the Gillikin Country inhabited by the Loons. They're made of rubber and filled with air, aside from the king, who contains a lighter-than-air gas and is tied to his throne with a string. The king's name is Bal Loon, and he was appointed ruler because he had less common sense than any of his fellows. Other notable Loons are Panta and Til, the former of whom was an advisor with a rather inflated opinion of himself, and the latter the one in charge of mending and re-inflating punctured Loons. The jokes behind Bal and Panta are obvious, but what does "Til Loon" mean? Well, someone who read the original handwritten manuscript reported that it was originally "Sal Loon," but that didn't go over too well at the time. Because a kid reading a play on the word "saloon" will automatically want to shoot whiskey, right? Don't ask me what the logic is behind this. I guess Wal, the Loon from Belgium, didn't play a part in this particular story for whatever reason. {g} This video includes the Loonville portion of the recent computer-animated take on Tin Woodman, and gives King Bal a surfer dude kind of voice. I'm sure that wasn't what Baum was thinking of when writing the character, but it works pretty well.



While the Loons are the only balloon people in Baum's Oz books, Thompson introduced some of two of her additions to the canon. In Hungry Tiger, Ozma is kidnapped by a giant balloon man named Atmos Fere, an explorer from the Cloud Country who descends to the surface of the Earth using a pair of iron boots. Ozma punctures him in order to escape, but when the two get to understand each other better, they become friends. A blacksmith in Ev named Rusty Ore re-inflates Atmos, and he and Ozma eventually join Evered of Rash in his search for the missing Rash Rubies.



Finally, in Gnome King, Peter Brown encounters Sandaroo, the Lord High Bouncer of Balloona, on a street corner in Philadelphia. He is described as having a "dark and merry" face, and "his long pointed beard and slouch hat gave him the appearance of a merchant from some far country." He sells Peter a green balloon, which turns into a bird and tries to take Peter to Balloon Island, where he would serve Queen Luna as an airrend boy. As the balloon bird relates, the Queen's servants were always exploding, so she had Sandaroo search abroad for a more solid one. We never get to see Balloona, as Peter lets go of the bird's leg and lands in the Nonestic Ocean near Ruggedo's Island, but the descriptions given by the bird make it sound like not only the people are inflated like balloons, but so is the island itself. If there's some kind of link between these balloon countries, it's never explicitly stated, but maybe Loonville was settled by exiles from Balloon Island, or vice versa.



By the way, happy birthday to fellow Oz fan graycardinal!