Stratovania

It's past Christmas, so here's a post on what we've been up to. I should start by mentioning that Beth's mom had a heart attack this month, which was very disturbing. She's back home from the hospital now and recovering well, but that definitely affected our plans.


On Wednesday the seventeeth, Beth and I went to Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I think this is the first time we went there when it had recently snowed, but it wasn't as cold as it had been in previous years. One installation they hadn't had before was a set of lights representing an orchestra, with the appropriate ones lighting up at different parts of an instrumental version of "Sleigh Ride." There was a podium where you could pretend to conduct, which I did.

They also had giant lilies, butterflies, and birds.

I had a hot apple cider and a soft pretzel while there.

That same week, we set up our Christmas tree.

We'd bought real ones for the past few years, but this time we borrowed an artificial one from Beth's mom's house, and it was over thirty years old. It's nice not to have to worry about the tree shedding needles or requiring water. Felix still likes to sit under it.


This past weekend, we visited my dad in Pennsylvania, and my sister, my brother, and his wife and son stopped by as well. We exchanged gifts while there, and we watched a movie that I'll share my review of shortly. I used to visit my mom while I was in the area, so it made me sad that I can't do that anymore. We drove back on Sunday, and the following day after work, we saw John Waters at the City Winery.

I had thought most of the previous shows of his we'd seen were fairly similar, but this one had a lot of new material. Much of it was non-stop and rapid-fire. He mentioned something about how the worst plot device (or something like that) in one of his movies was the revelation that Tab Hunter was having an affair with Divine's mother in Polyester, and that did seem rather out of left field. He also commented on appreciating the work that went into Wicked, but that making the Wicked Witch of the West, one of his favorite characters when played by Margaret Hamilton, into a singing chanteuse doesn't work for him. He then repeated something I'd heard him say before, that he asked a kid if he liked The Wizard of Oz, and the child said it was mostly just walking. That's even more true of the book than the movie, but I think I've just come to accept that a lot of classic fantasy is mostly travelogue.


For actual Christmas, we visited Beth's mom and uncle, and did our present exchange there.

Among other presents, I received a stuffed Mario Kart banana peel, a T-shirt with Luigi running from a Boo, Rosalina's Storybook, a book on Celtic mythology and another on John the Baptist, a Lily Allen album, a Kent Brockman figure, Mario and Luigi: Brothership for the Switch, and Nostalgia for the DS.

The turkey we were going to have for dinner was frozen solid, so we had take-out Chinese food before we headed back to Brooklyn. And today we both worked, but I got to go home early because of the snow. There were things we had meant to watch before Christmas, but we didn't get around to it for various reasons. We did do our annual viewing of Home Alone, and afterwards Beth watched something online (I just heard the audio) about deleted scenes from the movie. There was a mention of a theory that Kevin gave the police the neighbors' address and then lured Harry and Marv there because he was still afraid he'd get arrested for accidentally stealing a toothbrush, which I guess makes sense in little kid logic. As it was, it seemed weirdly unnecessary, and doing the phony voice might have made the cops suspect it was a prank call. For that matter, not only did he have no guarantee that the burglars would chase him, but they received so many blows to their heads that a normal person probably wouldn't have been conscious enough to run after him. And Home Alone 2 gives no impression that his family ever found out (from the cops, the neighbors, the news, or whatever) that several houses in the neighborhood were robbed while Kevin was home alone, let alone he had a run-in with the robbers.

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

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

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

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


On Tuesday, we saw Sparks at the Greek Theatre.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Beth and I did some other things in California besides OzCon, so here are a few of them. We flew into LAX on Tuesday, and stayed at a motel within walking distance of Knott's Berry Farm, which we visited on Wednesday. The park is surprisingly close to Disneyland, and not far from Kellogg West. Too bad we had to go to Culver City in between the two. It's very common for amusement parks to have an Old West area, and at Knott's, it was probably the biggest section in the park.

You could even sit on a bench with some hookers. Well, dancers, anyway.

They also had parts with fifties and Mexican themes, as well as Camp Snoopy for kiddie rides. I think it might have been the first park to license the Peanuts characters, although they're at a lot of them now. The only berry-themed ride was the seemingly obligatory one where you shoot stuff on a screen, in this case to help bears get stolen pies back from some coyotes.

The guns had pull strings, and it was hard to tell what you were shooting. I kind of wonder why the bumper cars weren't called Traffic Jam. They had several roller coasters, including the Pony Express, the surf-themed HangTime (which included a part where we were suspended at the top of a hill for a little while), Silver Bullet, Xcelerator, and the wooden GhostRider.

That was our last ride of the night, and we were on the last train they ran that day, about an hour after the official closing time. Another coaster, Jaguar!, was closed. The carousel had a lot of unusual animals. We rode ostriches, but I was also fascinated by the cats with fish in their mouths.

The Calico Mine Ride was pretty cool, featuring old animatronics. That was also the one with the know-it-all kid in front of us in line. We rode the Calico Railroad, and a guy dressed as a bandit called me "Bowser" because of my Super Mario hat. We did not, however, have a chance to ride the stagecoach.

On Thursday, we ate breakfast at Denny's, then went on the Sony Pictures tour, checked in at Kellogg West, and ate at a fast food hot dog place called Wienerschnitzel. We also went to a Circle K for the first time in our lives. After OzCon, we met with Stephanie and her dog Chelsea on Sunday and went to the John Waters exhibit at the Academy Museum, which had a good collection of props and memorabilia, including stained glass pictures of some of his characters.

After that, we went to the Oracle Mystic Museum in Burbank, which had an interactive exhibit with moving parts based on horror movies.

The neighborhood where it was located had at least two year-round Halloween stores that didn't allow photographs, and also this elephant.

I wonder if they know Kabumpo.

Before catching our plane back east on Monday night, we stopped at two other museums and a mausoleum. The Bunny Museum in Altadena was something Beth found out about on Reddit, and someone there said they found it disturbing.

It's a small building, but it's absolutely packed with stuff, all rabbit-related. Of course, it came nowhere close to being exhaustive, as bunnies are very heavily represented in our culture. I think humans are genetically inclined to find them cute. One room was all holiday stuff, including Hocus Pocus from Frosty the Snowman.

A kitchen and patio had relevant stuff, and another room had creepier and more adult stuff, like Frank from Donnie Darko, Playboy Bunnies, and weird old masks.

I particularly liked the red guy with horns. Another reminded me of my mom's rabbit mask that I wore when I dressed as Wag for the Munchkin Convention, which apparently Johnny Galecki also owns.

This might have been why the museum was listed as unsettling, although when you're dealing with old toys, some of it is going to be disturbing to modern audiences even when it wasn't intended to be.

Upstairs, they had some original art.

Bugs Bunny, the Trix Rabbit, the Quik Bunny, My Melody from Sanrio, the Energizer Bunny, Harvey, Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh, Roger Rabbit, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the bunny suit from A Christmas Story were all represented as well.

And they had two sets of the Uncle Wiggily Game, which I played a lot as a kid, and which is similar in structure to the Wonderful Game of Oz.

There were also some informational signs, on such topics as rabbit-related expressions, anthropomorphic bunnies, the origins of magicians pulling rabbits out of hats, someone in a bunny suit who followed David Bowie around in 2004, and the meaning of the name of Spain.

I would have liked to have seen some of John R. Neill's rabbit pictures, but no such luck.

After this museum, we visited the Mountain View Mausoleum, which had some cool art and a pretty garden.

Both that and our next destination, the Museum of Death in Hollywood, were suggested by a couple we met at OzCon.

The Death Museum didn't allow pictures, so you'll have to trust me when I say it was very graphic. It included exhibits on serial killers, death cults, taxidermy and preservation, car accidents, and cannibalism. They had a taxidermied dog who had died with Jayne Mansfield. One of the employees had a lot to say about Heaven's Gate, and another was impressed that Beth was able to correctly identify the film Orozco the Embalmer.


That's mostly what we did in California, but I'm also going to include our activity from yesterday, Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Williamsburg, which is difficult to reach from where we live and work. We actually ended up being a few minutes late. The theme was twins, also including doubles, doppelgangers and clones. David Gregory (not the one from XTC) talked about the many Bruce Lee imitators who starred in rip-off movies, and co-host Chris Cummins discussed the various imitations of Archie Comics. Tenebrous Kate discussed the Barbarian Brothers, twin bodybuilders who were somewhat popular in the eighties and nineties, including starring in a movie that was largely a Conan rip-off. Another presentation was on Waluigi, and what the deal was with him, which I don't think anybody knows for sure. He's pretty much only ever around for sports and party games. There was a mention of how, according to Nintendo, he and Wario aren't even related, although since Nintendo went back and forth on whether the Koopalings were Bowser's kids, who knows what their current story is? He does seem to have gained a certain amount of popularity, although that could be BECAUSE of how bizarre and relatively obscure he is. One bit was on Alice Cooper, and how he criticized conformity and then became pretty conservative. I'm not sure I knew that he recently made a transphobic comment, but I do remember him speaking positively of George W. Bush. And Kevin Maher showed clips of characters realizing they were clones or duplicates. The Kindest Cut for the night was of Big Business, a twin mix-up comedy starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, which Beth saw when Clementon Park was closed for rain.

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.

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.

The weekend before last, Beth and I went to South Jersey, where we saw a movie and went to her cousin-once-removed's fourth birthday party. I don't have much to say about it, but the food there was good. And on Tuesday, we visited a ghost town in New Jersey, but we didn't see any ghosts. Or are you not supposed to be able to see them? I don't know.

The town was called Feltville, because it was founded by a guy named David Felt, who owned a mill at the bottom of the hill, somewhere in the general area of this brook.

There are a few houses that have been preserved, as well as one gravestone that predates Felt, but the mill itself is long gone.

I understand they sometimes rent out the barn for events.

The town was abandoned more than once, the last time being in the 1960s. Several people were walking their dogs there, and at least two of them weren't even on leashes. We also saw Lake Surprise, which was nearby, but we'd prepared for it so the name wasn't accurate for us. We ate dinner at a diner in the area, and ice cream at a place called McCool's. I wonder if it was named after Fionn. I didn't notice any Salmon of Knowledge flavored ice cream, but the polar bear in the window might well have liked that.

I had strawberry cheesecake flavor, which I remember liking as a kid but hadn't had in years. I think it's too aggressively sweet for me now.

We have our reservations and flights planned out for OzCon at the end of July, and I've reread The Cowardly Lion of Oz, which is one of the themes of the convention this year. The other is Oz in animation. Is there anything I should watch beforehand? I believe the Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz series geared toward young kids is only available if you pay for Boomerang. Is the Lion of Oz movie any good? I haven't read the book it's based on either, but I have heard the feature is better than the book. I've also written something for the program book, and I'm supposed to write a quiz. That shouldn't be too hard, but I also have to come up with some kind of prize.

We've been giving Reagan fluid subcutaneously for her kidneys. I don't know if it's related, but in the past few days she's been walking awkwardly and hasn't been jumping. We'll have to take her to the vet if this keeps up, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. It's expensive having senior cats.

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.

I guess there are a few things I've done in the past month or so that I should say something about. I already wrote a bit about the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and quite a lot about OzCon and Disneyland. Beth and I also visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden near the end of June, and they had an art installation of birdhouses.

The roses were on their way out, though, although they were still blooming in Anaheim a few weeks later. Different climates and all that.

The following weekend, we attended a graduation party for Beth's cousins.

It's strange that I can pretty distinctly remember when they were born.


Thursday the 7th was the first in-person Kevin Geeks Out in a while, all about murder. These topics are usually pretty loose, and presentations can be about some pretty left-field things, like a series of children's books based on the board game Clue. Each one ended with Mr. Boddy being murdered, but in the next one he explained that he'd somehow survived. Camila Jones was the co-host, and she had a bit on murder holes, which are holes in a castle ceiling through which you can drop things to kill someone. Amber Dextrous else talked about the trope of the butler doing it, something that was considered a cliché a century ago, yet most known instances of that actually being the case are pretty obscure. I believe the first notable case of the butler committing a murder was AFTER someone else recommended not using the trope because it was overdone. There was also something unexpected, a burlesque performance by Perse Fanny, based on Medea killing her own children. They were represented by dolls, whose heads she ripped off, followed by her screaming. The Kindest Cut, an edit of key scenes from a movie, was this time of Theatre of Blood, a 1973 film where Vincent Price plays an actor who murders his critics in scenes from Shakespearean plays. Kevin pointed out how all the critics are snooty British people, while Price's character was American. Then again, I think Diana Rigg played Price's daughter.


This weekend, we went to Pennsylvania for my dad's wedding, which was just at his house. Since it was nearby, we visited Hersheypark the day before. It rained on and off, which meant some of the rides were temporarily closed, but a lot of them opened up again later on. The first thing we rode was the Comet, the oldest roller coaster there, which I remember liking a lot when I was a kid. I went on a field trip there in junior high and just kept riding it; the lines then were pretty short, as it was a school day. Hershey has an app to check on wait times, just as the Disney parks do, but I don't know how accurate it generally was. The longest wait for something called Reese's Cupfusion, a combination ride and game. It went more into Disney territory by having a story, basically that the Reese's factory ran on people's love for the product, and we had to stop some evil candies led by Mint the Merciless (I have no experience with Flash Gordon, but I still caught the reference) from breaking in and stealing the magical power source.

The explanation for why candy was evil was that it didn't pass quality control. But doesn't that mean it's not going to be eaten, and hence will live longer? That kind of thing always comes up when living food appears.

Anyway, you used a laser gun to shoot at targets, and while I did better than Beth at Toy Story Midway Mania, she got about twice as many points as I did on this one. Another one I remembered from my childhood was the Sidewinder, which goes along a track forwards and then backwards. It's still there, but it's now the Jolly Rancher Remix.Next to that is another Jolly Rancher themed ride, Mix'd.

They're really leaning into the candy theming now, when that was pretty rare back in the day. Also nearby in the Storm Runner, which starts right up at a high speed instead of ascending a hill first. In the Midway area, we rode the Ferris Wheel, the Whip, and the Lightning Racer.

The latter is a fairly new wooden coaster that looks like an old one, which runs two trains at the same time, called Thunder and Lightning. The Monorail, Dry Gulch Railroad, and Skyview are all scenic sorts of rides, where you can see stuff that's usually somewhat behind the scenes.

The Skyview is of the sort that just makes a round trip, rather than functioning as transportation. We also rode Fahrenheit, Frontier Flyers, and the Claw.

Saturday was the wedding, the actual marriage part of which was out in the yard, while the reception was in the basement.

On the way back to Brooklyn, we stopped by my mom's house and visited with her. And I suppose that's it for the time being.

It looks like the last time I wrote on here was at the end of March, when I mentioned we were going to see the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra. We ended up not doing that, as we weren't feeling well that day. We did go out on the following weekend, on a short trip to Secaucus to walk on the Marsh Trail and eat at the Olive Garden.

They had a strawberry cheesecake, and I brought home a piece of that. Easter was pretty uneventful, although we did watch a few things on the days before it.

And this past weekend, we went to see John Waters in Atlantic City. Beth's Uncle John was originally supposed to go with it, but he didn't feel up to it, so we brought Dorothea instead. Waters' show was much the same as the Christmas one, except obviously without as much of a focus on that holiday. He did mention it, though, as part of his monologue was about reinventing holidays. It was actually his birthday, and we all sang to him after he had finished. We had seats on barstools on the balcony. Before the show, we went to a few souvenir stores on the Boardwalk. I haven't been there in some time, but were the stores always so focused on smoking paraphernalia? They probably were, but vaping wasn't as much of a thing back then. I really don't consider the two particularly different, but this is coming from someone who's never tried either one and doesn't want to. We had trouble finding a place to eat afterwards. Google Maps said a diner was open, but it wasn't. We ended up going to Chickie's & Pete's, which neither of us had been to before. Beth had wanted to try the crab fries, but ended up not ordering them. That place is a lot more expensive than I would have thought. I had a pizza, and they put the sauce on top of the cheese. I think there's some kind of local New York pizza like that as well, but I've never seen the appeal. It's messy enough with the cheese on top. I'll probably end up having my leftovers for dinner tonight. We were also somewhat unhappy with Friendly's the previous night, as they changed their mozzarella sticks to ones that aren't as good. We just found out today that the normal mini mozzarella sticks are unavailable due to supply chain issues. Is there a cheese ship stuck in a canal somewhere? Seriously, I keep thinking I should make a log of where I do and don't like the fried cheese. I've noticed that it tends to be better when the cheese is stretchy and it uses a breadcrumb batter.

Yesterday, we went to Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where the cherry trees are in bloom. It isn't peak season yet, but they were still quite pretty.

And when we stopped at the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden, I saw a few turtles.

There were also koi, but the water was too murky for me to get decent pictures of them. I also got a comment on Instagram about this bush, so I'm sharing that here as well.

When we got home, I played Animal Crossing just long enough to collect the star fragments I'd wished for on Monday. Over the weekend, I finished the Fort Dragonia part of Chrono Cross, which means I'm officially farther along now than I got back when I played it twenty or so years ago. I'll probably write something about that pretty soon. Also on Tuesday, we watched the Simpsons and Bob's Burgers episodes we'd missed on Sunday. The ending of the Simpsons suggests that Kerry Washington's character will continue on as Bart's teacher, but I have no idea if they're going to stick with that. It had looked like they were trying to make Ned Flanders his regular teacher, but he wasn't even in that episode as far as I can remember.