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've done several things I thought were worth writing about so far this month, so here's an overview. On Sunday the 8th, we went to see Micky Dolenz at the City Winery in Philadelphia, which is just as cramped as the one in New York. Beth's mom really enjoyed it, and she and Micky's sister Coco apparently coordinated their outfits.

Most of it was the same as what Beth and I had seen before, including the between-song banter. He did include "No Time," however, which he'd done with other Monkees, but not by himself when I'd seen him. There's one song he always does that Beth and I didn't know, and Beth's mom recognized but didn't know the name of. Beth looked it up, and it's "Gimme Some Lovin'", originally by the Spencer Davis Group.

Both Beth and I had our birthdays recently, her on the fifteenth and me on the eighteenth. I am now four dozen years old. For hers, we went to Great Adventure.

They were only open until 7 PM, and we ended up only spending about four hours there.

It wasn't very crowded, so we were able to ride most of what we wanted to. We went on the Flash for the first time. It's one of those roller coasters that goes back and forth to build up speed, with part of the ride being backwards. It's all right, but not one of the better coasters there. Several of the rides were closed, and others closed down early, with a lot of food places doing the same. We had a meal plan, but didn't get to use it. We did eat at the Olive Garden on the way home. On my birthday, I had to go to an interview. Okay, I guess I didn't HAVE to go, but they could have scheduled it for a different day. It just felt kind of wrong. Beth gave me three presents, Princess Peach Showtime for the Switch, the first volume of the Animal Crossing manga, and a digital copy of one of Amelia Carruthers' fairy tale books.


This past Saturday, we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, as I was interested in the Jim Henson exhibit.

We ended up not spending a lot of time there, since we mistakenly thought it closed later than it did, but we saw a lot of what they had. The third floor detailed the history of moving image technology, including magic lanterns, zoetropes, and old video cameras.

I'm not sure I realized how big television cameras were in their early days.

They had a lot of stuff in the Henson exhibit, obviously including The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, but also items from Sam and Friends, Labyrinth, Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and the very short-lived Land of Gorch from Saturday Night Live.

I think the Swedish Chef puppet is the one that the museum originally received without hands, as the puppeteer would just use his own hands.

By the way, Beth hates the Chef, and she's seen Fraggle Rock but I haven't.

She'd also seen some of The Great Space Coaster, which I don't think was mentioned at the exhibit. We did the thing that records you with puppets, and I made an Anything Muppet.

I had forgotten that Henson died in 1990; for some reason I thought it was slightly later than that. Another exhibit had merchandise, including a Barney Rubble ashtray and Bugs Bunny dolls where it looked like he was wearing a superfluous rabbit suit.

There was some stuff from The Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, which are favorites of Beth's.

And there were a few props from the film version of The Wiz, including a camera suit that I think appeared in the Emerald City, which definitely fit with the museum's theme.

We stopped by Nintendo NYC in Rockefeller Center, and while we didn't buy anything, I do tend to like their holiday decorations.


Finally, yesterday, we saw Robyn Hitchcock at the Bowery Ballroom. He did shows two days in a row, and I can't remember why we chose the second. The opener the previous day was his wife, Emma Swift, but when we saw him it was a band called Sharp Pins. I think this was the first time I saw Robyn with a full band.

His voice was hoarse from the previous day, but he was still able to make it through the set. And he did his usual bizarre between-song banter, talking about how his grandmother wore Ray-Ban sunglasses before they were popular, how he considered "Alright Yeah" to transcend good and bad, and that he saw the Balloon Man as an innocent figure, but the Shuffle Man as a villain. The latter was one of the newer songs they played, along with "Socrates in Thin Air." Also included was "America," and I think of the lyrics to that one occasionally. Emma joined the band to sing on "So You Think You're in Love," "Flesh Number One," "Oceanside," and "Queen of Eyes."

One of the earliest recordings of Robyn's I ever heard was a live album recorded in 1998 that was on eMusic in the early 2000s, and "SYTYIL" was on that, as was "Driving Aloud," which was also part of the set. I believe it was also the first time I saw "Brenda's Iron Sledge" and "Insanely Jealous" played live. Lenny Kaye, whom I don't really know anything about but apparently worked a lot with Patti Smith, joined on guitar for the encore, which consisted of "I Wanna Destroy You," the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing," and Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm."

Interestingly, the Beatles song was also played on the PA right before the show. It looks like the setlist from Saturday was very similar, but they got better covers for the encore. Oh, well.

I waited too long to request the day after Thanksgiving off from work, so the current plan is to have dinner with Beth's family on Saturday instead. I don't know what we'll be doing on Thursday, but probably not much.

Is it just me, or do I look deranged here?
Beth and I have been pretty busy as of late. On Wednesday, we saw Neko Case at the Beacon Theater.

The last time we saw her, there was some issue with the opener, and she was really irritated. This time, she seemed pretty enthusiastic. She introduced "Baby, I'm Not (a Werewolf)" as being about menopause, which she had a surprisingly positive attitude about. And "That Teenage Feeling" was inspired by the guitar player, Paul Rigby, whom she considers one of the most un-jaded people she knows. She did the drum solo during "Oh, Shadowless." I mentioned to Beth that her sets generally don't include anything from her first three albums, and she thought it was because she hadn't really developed her sound back then. The opener was a band called Des Demonas, and they were all right, but I had trouble understanding the lead vocals. EDIT: I forgot to mention that the pre-show music included "The Rhythm Thief" by Sparks, "Melt the Guns" by XTC, and "Green Green" by the Young Fresh Fellows. I wonder who chooses those. Neko did not perform her Sparks cover in the show, however.


The following day was Kevin Geeks Out at the Nitehawk in Prospect Park, and the subject was John Carpenter. We've seen several of his movies, and not surprisingly, there was a good amount about Halloween, including a guy playing Dr. Loomis undergoing an ethics board review. Another was a discussion of how Michael Myers seems to like clean laundry and hate messy sheets. One presentation was a supposed defense of Ghosts of Mars that turned out to be anything but, as it's a film that takes place in a matriarchal society, but isn't actually that progressive in its treatment of women. That's a movie we haven't seen, and I'm not sure we need to. At one point, Kevin Maher asked whether The Thing was a hangout movie, while admitting that he's not entirely sure what one of those is. I don't think I'd ever even heard the term before, and it's not clear whether it's the audience or the characters who are supposed to be hanging out. Maybe both? Somebody made the point that it might be more of a workplace movie, since it's not like the characters were at a research station in Antarctica just for fun. The Kindest Cut was of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager that was basically a take on Christine, but with a spaceship that had a psychic link to its pilot instead of a car. And Cece Dynamite did two burlesque performances, one as Michael Myers and the other as one of the ghosts from The Fog.

We drove to Pennsylvania on Friday night to visit Knoebels on Saturday. The park didn't open until 2 PM (except for some kids' activities), and we had to check out of the motel at 11 AM, which meant we had time to kill. Beth found a place in the area where you could ride a cart into a defunct coal mine, so we did that.

The mine cart thing was interesting, if rather bleak in its discussion of mine work. The guide talked about how dangerous it was and how the mining companies arranged things so the workers had no real take-home pay.

He also said his son worked in the mines (they're still in operation in the area, although that particular one isn't), and while I'm sure it pays better and has more safety precautions now, I still wouldn't want to do it. We saw a petrified tree, which was where the coal came from in the first place, and part of which had been donated to the Smithsonian.

And fortunately, we didn't have to jump from one cart to another because the tracks were broken.

No bananas, either.
They also had a steam train people could ride, but we didn't have the time. As it was, we didn't get to Knoebels until around 3:30.


This weekend was the last one for the Hallo-Fun event, and it was probably the most crowded it's been while we were there.

There are two rides that have total makeovers for the season, the train and the antique cars, and both have long waits. We missed the train ride both last year and this one. They stop the line when they think people will no longer be able to get on before closing, but if you're not there, there's no way to know that they're doing so. We did ride the cars, however, and several other things besides. The Whipper had some flashing lights for the occasion, and the Phoenix had some Halloween decorations as well. I appreciated that they had skeletons set up next to the pool, which was obviously not open.


We often go to Dorney Park after Knoebels, since it's basically on the way home. The route the GPS told us to take this time was mostly back roads that were quite dark and winding. It did give me the occasion to learn that my car has a setting that will turn off the brights automatically if it senses another car coming. What can't modern cars do? Set the clock ahead for Daylight Savings Time, apparently. I guess it will be correct again soon.

The park was open until 11, but we didn't stay anywhere near that long. I think we were both pretty tired after everything else.

There are a few things I would have wanted to ride if I'd had the energy, but I'd ridden them all before, so it was no big deal. One of them was Steel Force, which was temporarily closed when we got to it, and didn't reopen until we'd gone to a different area. We didn't do any of the mazes they had set up Halloween, as they cost extra. We watched a performance by the Spectral Sisters, and while I think it was the same as last year, we missed the beginning that time.

A bee joined us for part of that show.

And we got a picture of Beth with the puking pumpkin, which has become a bit of a tradition.

I posed in front of a witch's house and a pumpkin dwelling, which I don't think was Jack Pumpkinhead's.

I believe Dorney might have the only Ferris Wheel I've been on that had seatbelts. It really seems like the rules for safety restraints vary a lot. I noticed in the early 2000s that carousels started getting belts, although they don't always seem to be enforced.

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.

Last Tuesday night, we saw Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark at Terminal Five in Manhattan. I didn't know a whole lot about them, although I had heard some of their songs before, and we listened to some of their other stuff recently in preparation for the show. We were actually supposed to go in October, but Andy McCluskey had to get surgery, and now he has titanium in his knee. And he's still very active on stage, dancing around when he's not playing bass.

His voice also sounds exactly like it did back in the day. The band's music tends to be very energetic snyth-pop, and most of the songs had videos playing on a screen. Before playing "Tesla Girls," Andy made a point of saying that he wasn't going to get political or mention Elon Musk. "If You Leave," the one we both knew best, was preceded by a mention that it was in a John Hughes movie. So was "Tesla Girls," actually. Other ones I recognized were "Joan of Arc," "Enola Gay," "Electricity," and "Pandora's Box," the latter of which is about Louise Brooks.

Wasn't there also some news story recently about the name of the Enola Gay being censored? They didn't reference that one.

The opener was Walt Disco from Scotland, and while nothing they played stood out for me, they were pretty good.


Yesterday, we got last-minute tickets to "Weird Al" Yankovic at Madison Square Garden. This was the first time I'd been to that venue, but Beth had been there before. This was part of the Bigger and Weirder Tour, which had a larger band than the standard four-piece that's played with Al for decades, including two horn players.That allowed them to include songs in the set that weren't normally played live, including the They Might Be Giants style parody "Everything You Know Is Wrong" and the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young take-off "Mission Statement."

The extra members all joined in on the costume and theme changes as well.

And backing vocalist Monique Donnelly dressed, sang, and danced as Lucy during "Ricky," which apparently hadn't been played live in forty years prior to this tour.

I remember Al saying before he was retiring his Michael Jackson parodies due to the allegations against him, but they were both back for this tour, "Fat" in its entirety and "Eat It" as part of a parody medley. The medley also included "It's All About the Pentiums," and the allegations against Diddy are more relevant today than the Jackson ones. I don't think I'd ever heard "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" live either. I get the impression that dumb forwards are now more common on Facebook than in email, or at least they are for me, but the song is still relevant otherwise. For "Polkamania!", they did the usual thing of showing sped-up versions of the original videos on a screen.

One thing I wondered about recently is why "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto didn't come right after the Bruno Mars song, but I know there has to be a flow for the medley to work. As with the stripped-down tours Al did earlier, each show includes one straight cover, in this case Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." The opener for the show was Puddles Pity Party, an abstract performance art kind of thing with a sad clown singing a strange mix of songs. This included an old non-Al parody, the Gilligan's Island theme to the tune of "Stairway to Heaven" (this kind of thing works with pretty much anything in common meter), with an interlude about Kevin Costner. I was wearing a TMBG T-shirt and Beth a Sparks one, and we both got compliments.


There isn't too much else I would consider worth mentioning. We did meet my sister at a waffle place in Cherry Hill, where the owner said he used actual Belgian dough. That's probably not the kind of thing I'd notice myself, but some people who probably know better than I do say it makes a difference. They did have quite good food. I had a breakfast waffle with ham and eggs, and a sweet one with strawberries and bananas.


Speaking of food, I don't think I've written on here about how we've been getting meal delivery kits for a while now. We originally tried Gobble, then switched to Every Plate, which is cheaper. Beth never learned to cook and I can only make a few things, so we mostly had frozen food and takeout prior to this. It's annoying because it's an extra thing to do on work nights (not every work night; we get three meals a week) and it means washing a lot more dishes (or, more accurately, the same dishes over and over), but I'll definitely say it's improved my diet, although I still do tend to leave out onions when they're part of the recipe, as well as hot ingredients because we're both wimps in that respect. We've both noticed that the potato wedges tend to be quite good, even though all I really do is cut them, add some oil, and heat them in the oven. And I tend to be pickier about potatoes than most people I know.

Well, I'll see ya. Sayanora, sayanora, ayonawa, adinawa.

I've been feeling pretty lethargic recently, and haven't even felt like playing video games that much. I have done a few things in the past few weeks that are probably worth talking about, though. It was Beth's mom's birthday on the twenty-fifth of last month, and we visited and went to the zoo in Bridgeton, where I felt the need to pose with animal statues.

Beth was wearing her Frasier hat, so I tried to get a picture of her with some cranes, but it didn't come out very well. There were several peacocks wandering around the place.

One of the lemurs was sitting on a sliding board.

These pigs with long ears and tails were interesting.

And they had some leopards and tigers that reminded me of our cats in a few respects.

Black cats usually remind me of panthers. I believe black panthers are actually leopards, but cougars are also sometimes called panthers. These designations aren't always that specific. One of the lemurs And my mother-in-law shoved me into a lion fountain. Somehow, I survived.


On the first of this month, we saw Scott Thompson perform as Buddy Cole at the City Winery, which is a pretty inconvenient venue, but they've had a few things we've been interested in.

The last show we saw there was John Waters, and while Scott is younger, they both came from a time when being gay was much more dangerous and subversive, and seem somewhat bemused by that community today. Then on that Thursday, we saw a Kevin Geeks Out show at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg. It was about advertising, with topics including how slogans are used in movies and television, with Kevin Maher mentioning that he thought there would be more characters using them as one-liners when killing somebody. He made up for it with a video of various Arnold Schwarzenegger kill scenes with somewhat relevant slogans dubbed in. Steve Young, a former writer for David Letterman, had two segments, one on collectible playing cards advertising local businesses, often with bizarrely lazy art; and another on records of stock clips and jingles to play in radio commercials. On our way back to the subway, I noticed some art by Molly Crabapple, who did a lot of work for Max Fractal (formerly Kim Boekbinder), and whose book I own.

Our next show was EXTC at (Le) Poisson Rouge in Manhattan last Thursday.

I believe the concept started when Terry Chambers, the drummer for XTC on their first five albums and a bit of the sixth, did some shows with Colin Moulding. Colin isn't part of the touring band now, but Terry still plays, and the set includes songs from after Terry had left the band. It's done with the blessing of Andy Partridge, who stopped playing live after a panic attack in 1982. The rest of the band consists of Steve Hampton on lead vocals and guitar, and Terry Lines on bass and backing vocals.

The songs were all performed quite closely to the studio recordings. Steve didn't replicate all of Andy's vocal oddities, but I'm not sure Andy could anymore either. It was a fun time. I bought a CD there, but I haven't listened to it yet.


I'll also mention that I got my sketchbook from Becca Whitaker, whom I've known online for a long time, and it's full of colorful pin-ups based on popular media. There's a section of cereal mascots, which is up my alley even though I don't eat a lot of cereal. Mermaids and horror icons are also well-represented. For my copy, she drew Artemis and Jack Pumpkinhead.

And today, I received these from Vylirium.

There's a lot of cool art online, and I haven't really put any of it on display, despite having lived in the same place for almost seven years. I need to clean up first, and it's difficult to get motivated. You'd think being able to decorate would BE the motivation, but I guess we're back to the lethargy again.

This is something I wrote last year, partially to wrap up some loose ends surrounding Clocker and Kadj the Conjurer from Ruth Plumly Thompson's Pirates in Oz. As is my wont, I also worked in a few references to some post-canonical Oz works. It feels unfinished, though, like it needs to go somewhere else. Any suggestions are welcome.

ROBOTS OF OZ
By Nathan M. DeHoff

“And what can we do for you, sir?” inquired the Frogman, who stood at the entrance to Ozma’s throne room, where the Royal Ruler was holding court.
“I have reason to suspect you have several items that used to belong to me, as well as an old prisoner of mine,” answered the tall man in faded robes.
“Prisoner? Are you, then, a jailor?”
“Not by choice, certainly, but I was the only one willing to take this particular fellow after he fell out of favor with the people of Menankypoo.”
“Menankypoo? Isn’t that in Ev?”
“Not politically, but geographically, it essentially is. It’s where I live.”
“Then how did you get here to Oz?”
“That’s my secret.”
“All right, but you should know that magic is forbidden here in—”
“I’m well aware of that, and I haven’t practiced any magic since coming to this fine country. Well, unless you count this walking stick.”
“It’s magical?”
“To an extent. It saves up energy and transfers it to me, to keep me moving more efficiently.”
“I would imagine that’s acceptable, but you probably should check with the Ruler. One of my closest friends has a Magic Dishpan that she inherited from her ancestors, and she’s allowed to keep it.”
As soon as Ozma had finished speaking with a farmer who wanted to keep locusts off his fields, the Frogman announced Kadj from Menankypoo. The man approached the throne, where Ozma sat with the Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger on either side of her, and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz just behind the seat.
“Menankypoo? That place out in Ev where people talk in flashing lights?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes, although I am not a native, and hence am incapable of communicating in that fashion. I have come here because I think you might have some of my magic in this palace.”
“I don’t see any reason why we would have taken any of your magic from Menankypoo,” said Ozma. “The only interaction we’ve had with them was to restore them after they’d been thrown in the sea by pirates.”
“I doubt being underwater affected them much. But anyway, I don’t know that you necessarily took my magic on purpose, but it does appear to have ended up here. The Standing Stick and Hardy-Hood invented by my daughter Cinderbutton, and a man with a cuckoo clock head by the name of Clocker.”
“Yes, I remember them!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Old Ruggedo brought them here the last time he invaded, and we didn’t know where they came from in the first place.”
“I’d almost forgotten about Clocker,” mused the Wizard. “I was trying to replace his bad works with good, but haven’t been particularly successful. He’s still in a closet now.”
“That seems rather cruel to a living thing,” observed Ozma.
“I do not know that he is a liv-ing thing,” objected Tik-Tok, the mechanical man made of copper, who stood near the throne. “He works on clock-work, as I do.”
“You’re both right, in a way,” said Kadj. “He’s a combination of biological and mechanical components. He was supposed to serve as a wise man for the King of Menankypoo, but his subjects didn’t much like the ideas Clocker put into his head.”
“Can you really expect much when he has a cuckoo for a brain?” asked Scraps, the Patchwork Girl.
“I’m afraid that was one of Mooj’s ideas. I don’t think he turned out too well either, although perhaps you’d know better than I do.”
“The same Mooj who turned me into an alarm clock?” shuddered the Cowardly Lion.
“Perhaps. He was a master clockmaker who worked for Smith and Tinker, who if I’m not mistaken were also the creators of your copper man.”
“You mean Jomo?” asked Dorothy.
“Jomo? Oh, yes, the coppersmith. He came to work at the firm around the same time as Mooj, actually.”
“I thought Jomo WAS Smith and Tinker,” said Scraps.
“He was a vital part of the organization, but of course he worked for Mr. Smith and Mr. Tinker themselves, before they disappeared.”
“So there WERE a real Smith and Tinker?” inquired the Wizard. “I’ll admit I’ve been confused on that point.”
“Why, of COURSE there’s an actual Mr. Tinker! His first name’s Ezra, and I met him in Kansas!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Why had I forgotten about that?”
“I’m afraid there may have been some magic at work there,” replied Kadj.
“But Jomo doesn’t USE magic!” demanded Jellia Jamb, the head of the palace staff.
“No, he didn’t, but I did. So many people were asking for Smith and Tinker after they disappeared that I had Jomo drink some of my Identi-Tea, so he and those around him would think he WAS them. After that trouble with the Nomes, though, he left for Oz, as Mr. Wainwright had done before him.”
“Did you work for Smith and Tinker, too?” asked Dorothy.
“Occasionally, although I was never an official part of the firm. I occasionally provided magical assistance.”
“I did not think Mis-ter Smith and Mis-ter Tin-ker used ma-gic,” stated Tik-Tok.
“No, which is why they needed my help. Of course, in a magical land, even those who don’t practice magic still make use of it sometimes. I mean, if you look at Tik-Tok, it takes much less energy to wind him than he has after being wound. It takes a bit of manipulation of the laws of thermodynamics to accomplish that.”
“I’ve always thought the same about people not dying here in Oz,” added the Wizard.
“Even the most non-magical of inventors occasionally needs a conjurer.”
“But I thought conjurers just did tricks, like the Wizard used to before Glinda taught him real magic,” said Betsy Bobbin, causing the court magician to blush.
“That’s one meaning of the term, as in a conjuring trick. It can also mean someone who calls demons.”
“A demon? But aren’t they evil?” asked Trot.
“That’s a common misconception. Some are, like the ones who live in the caves near the Laughing Valley, but there’s nothing inherently bad about the term. It comes from the Greek, meaning a tutelary spirit.”
“Mr. Baum did write a book about the Demon of Electricity,” said Dorothy.
“Yes, I’ve met him. In my particular case, however, while I have worked with demons, the title ‘Conjurer’ refers largely to my having studied under the Wizard Conjo.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard of him,” said the Wizard of Oz.
“He’s very reclusive, but he also can’t help showing off.”
“Then you knew that old clock-face Mooj?” asked the Patchwork Girl.
“Yes, he worked for Smith and Tinker. He had some kind of accident while working on a clockwork project, and he somehow managed to augment his own head with clock parts. After that, he seems to have grown increasingly…odd. He became obsessed with finding a device that could regulate time itself, said to be hidden somewhere in a place called Seebania.”
“Maybe that’s why he took over the kingdom,” said the Wizard.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He seemed to have rather…loose morals, especially after the accident. There might be some kind of inherent difficulty in mixing organic brains with mechanical ones, which could explain how Clocker became so sinister.”
“My friend, the Tin Woodman, had flesh parts replaced with metal ones, and he’s not sinister at all!” objected the Scarecrow.
“Yes, but the Emperor isn’t really mechanical, is he?” mused the Frogman. “He’s just formed of metal parts. Meddling with brains, however, could be considerably trickier.”
“My brains work just fine.”
“But they’re the only brains you’ve ever had. Remember what happened to the Glass Cat when the Wizard tried to replace her pink brains with transparent ones?”
“Yes, that was a mistake,” sighed the Wizard, “although I still think it could have worked if I’d done it gradually instead of all at once.”
“I wouldn’t try it.”
“I’m not going to, since she prevented Ozma from being kidnapped and all. I’m just not sure changing brains is a lost cause.”
“I’m not sure about that, but I do know that neither Mooj nor Clocker turned out well,” declared Kadj. “What happened to Mooj, anyway?”
“Ozma turned him into a drop of water,” explained the Wizard.
“Well, if he was continuing down the same path he had been, there might not have been a better choice.”
“He threatened Ojo, who gave me most of MY brains,” announced Scraps, “and pushed his father off a cliff.”
“Well, maybe I’d better take a look at Clocker,” declared Kadj. “Do you still have the Standing Stick and the Hardy-Hood?”
“The Stick, yes,” answered Ozma. “We gave the Hardy-Hood to Roger, the Read Bird from the Octagon Isle.”
“I suppose I don’t necessarily need it back, but it’s rather frustrating to come home from vacation and find that your cave has been burgled.”
“Speaking of mechanical people,” said the Frogman, “our next case is that of Ozwoz the Wonderful, who has 2000 magically controlled wooden soldiers.”
“What an odd coincidence.”
“That’s how things sometimes are in Oz,” confirmed the Wizard.
A man in sharp Gillikin clothes, with a broad-brimmed feathered cap, a long cape, and a rakish mustache, entered the room, where he was shown by the Soldier with Green Whiskers to a seat facing Ozma’s throne.
“Salutations, my fair young Queen!” said Ozwoz politely, doffing his cap to his monarch. “I understand you called me here to discuss some matters with my army.”
“Yes, from the information we’ve gathered,” began Professor Wogglebug, as he walked back and forth before the Gillikin’s chair, “you have been practicing illegal magic, and having hostile intentions toward travelers, as per your attempts to have your army of wooden soldiers fire upon the Princes of Pumperdink and Regalia, and the Red Jinn of Ev.”
“Oh, yes, but we got on quite well afterwards. We even traded, and I find my never-empty cookie jar to be quite useful when I’m working and don’t have time to get a meal.”
“But only because they had magical protection to keep themselves from being shot full of holes! Not everyone who comes by your home has that, I’m sure.”
“To be fair, not many people come there at all, and those who do leave promptly without my soldiers firing a single shot.”
“Is it really necessary to have your own personal army?” asked the Scarecrow.
“Perhaps not necessary, but well within my rights, and a useful precaution in case of thieves or invaders. Many countries in Oz have their own standing armies, and I have heard nothing of your trying to disband them.”
“But those are countries with their own populations, not just one person!” objected the Wogglebug.
“It is still my own inherited territory, and the population is not strictly relevant. Consider it my own personal country, Ozwozia, if you wish. Besides, if you consider the army itself, the population is 2000.”
“2001, counting you, right?” questioned the Scarecrow.
“No, as I gave my vanguard soldier, Johnwan, to Prince Randy. Perhaps I shall make another, to keep the number round, but so far I have not felt the need.”
“I prefer square numbers, myself,” put in the Woozy, who had just awakened from a nap.
“By my cal-cu-la-tions, that would re-quire Oz-woz to ei-ther give a-way a-noth-er six-ty-three sol-diers, or make an add-i-tion-al twen-ty-six,” said Tik-Tok.
“I don’t know that your wooden soldiers really count as a pop’lation,” stated Dorothy.
“Do you consider your own mechanical man to be a citizen?” questioned Ozwoz.
“Well, yes, but he thinks and talks and acts. If your soldiers are all like Johnwan, they only do what they’re ordered to.”
“I am on-ly a ma-chine, and do what I am wound up to do,” said Tik-Tok, “but I app-re-ci-ate your ac-cep-tance of me as part of Oz-ma’s court.”
“You’re not only a machine. You’re our friend!” exclaimed Betsy, giving the copper man a hug.
“And you can’t appreciate anything unless you have feelings,” added the Shaggy Man.
“Mere-ly a fig-ure of speech, I as-sure you.”
“I think he’s embarrassed,” remarked Trot.
“Even if your army can be legally excused, there’s still the matter of your practicing illegal magic,” continued the educated insect.
“I am, as I have explained before, a Wozard, and there are no laws against wozardry in the Land of Oz.”
“That’s the sort of legal loophole that’s common in the Outside World, but we try to avoid such things here,” said the Wizard. “The practice of magic is illegal without a license, regardless of what it’s called. Besides, what IS a Wozard?”
“Why, the practice of wozardry, a sort of thaumaturgical art that specializes in the manipulation of matter and energy for the purposes of maintaining control over…er, the nature of reality and the safety of…humanity?”
“You just made it up, didn’t you?” asked the Patchwork Girl, pointing at the Wozard.
“Not entirely. I found the term in a book, referring to the Prince Ozmonga, whom I believe to be a relative of mine.”
“And you’re sure that wasn’t just a mistake?” asked the Wogglebug.
“A bug, if you will,” said the Scarecrow, earning him a frown from the Professor.
“I examined it with a spelling spell, and it said it was a real word,” said Ozwoz.
“Which means you WERE practicing magic,” said the Scarecrow.
“A perfectly acceptable bit of wozardry.”
“Which you still haven’t really defined,” said the Wizard.
“And you just decided you were a wizard, didn’t you?”
“I, ahem, suppose that’s true, as I was using the term before I knew any actual magic. Once I learned it, the title stuck.”
“And what makes your wizardry different from, say, your mentor Glinda’s sorcery?”
“It’s a bit of a gray area. I have learned that many who consider themselves wizards specialize in scientific magic and the use of tools and machines, but that’s not always the case.”
“Then you can be a wizard without knowing exactly what one is, but I can’t do the same as a Wozard?”
“Then wozardry is only different from wizardry because you SAY it is?” asked Jack Pumpkinhead. “Then couldn’t anyone practice magic if they came up with their own name for it?”
“If it comes to that, other places in Oz have magical properties and practitioners. Randy’s Kingdom of Regalia has a prophetic amethyst ball, and a sage practiced in scrying. Blankenburg has its water of invisibility. The Kingdom of Patch has its Spool of Succession.”
Scraps groaned at the mention of this item, but let Ozwoz continue. “The King of Bear Center has both a magic wand and a magically powered pink bear.”
Trot began saying, “He did get the wand from the fairies, which is—"
“And the Yips have a magic dishpan.”
“That DOES happen to be a family heirloom,” said the Frogman.
“I have magical heirlooms as well. And I feel that, as the ruler of Ozwozia, I have the right to my own magical possessions and my standing army. My experiments have harmed no one.”
“But the bullets could,” said Betsy.
“They are for self-defense. I’ve never tried to invade another country, unlike, say, the Queen of Oogaboo.”
“You seem rather well informed for a recluse,” stated the Cowardly Lion.
“Oh, I keep up with the news, as best I can.”
As this had about wrapped up the testimony, Ozma began deliberating with some of her courtiers, while the Wizard asked Ozwoz, “By the way, do you have any knowledge of clockwork?”
“My soldiers operate in a different manner, but I have studied it somewhat. Why do you ask?”
“Assistance with altering the mechanical man made partially by Kadj here.”
The Conjurer and the Wozard followed the Wizard into his laboratory, where he opened the closet holding the now motionless Clocker, a man about twelve feet tall with a wooden head and clock face. As he had a fleshy outside dressed in fancy clothing, opening him was a task the magic-workers were a bit squeamish about, but Kadj was able to do so with a switch on his back. Once the three of them began looking around at the Clock Man’s inner works, they all competed with each other to find things they could improve. The Conjurer removed a few extra screws he found in the shoulders, thinking they might be making the man screwy. The Wizard tightened a few bolts and replaced the rusting mainspring, although Kadj had to help in shaping it properly. Ozwoz used some of his All-Purpose Polish on both Clocker’s head and as much of his insides he could. He also insisted on making a remote control device, in case an emergency shutdown was required. As they worked, the Wizard wondered aloud how many more mechanical people there were around.
“Smith and Tinker built another partially organic person, smaller than Clocker here, although I don’t remember what happened to him. There’s also the Giant with the Hammer that the Nome King bought. I’ve heard tell of a cast-iron giant made by King Scowleyow, but I have no idea how it ran. I’ve also heard tell of a whole tribe of mechanical people in the Deadly Desert.”
“Well, what do we do with the cuckoo?” inquired Ozwoz. “Give it something to eat?”
“What do cuckoos eat?” asked Kadj.
“Chocolate cereal?”
“I don’t think a mechanical bird would eat anything,” pondered the Wizard. “Still, it couldn’t hurt to give it some of my special nectar, good for curing throat maladies and sour voices.”
The magicians wound up the Clock Man and closed up his body, and then waited as the minutes ticked by until it was three-fifteen. The cuckoo popped out of Clocker’s forehead and handed a slip of yellow paper to the Conjurer, which read, “I am completely operational, and all my works are functioning perfectly.”
“Hmm, looks a bit sinister to me,” observed Kadj.
“What, being polite and formal is sinister now?” objected Ozwoz.
Ozma, who had finished deliberating, told the Wozard that, thanks partially to his service in helping to repair Clocker, she would not punish him for his past use of magic, and that he would be allowed to keep his soldiers, provided she never use them to attack anyone without proper cause. He would, however, be forbidden to practice any magic, no matter what he called it, at any time in the future without proper express permission. Ozwoz figured it was the best he could hope for, and returned to his Gillikin home. Kadj wrapped a cloak around himself and Clocker and leapt into the nearest fireplace, making them both disappear in a puff of smoke.

THE END

Beth and I saw Rufus Wainwright at Tarrytown Music Hall on Thursday the 6th. His sister Lucy was the opener, and she also sang on a few of his songs.

He's a great musician, but so many of his songs are depressing. I guess it runs in his family, since I remember my dad having an album by his mom and aunt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and those were also good songs that were pretty much all downers, and often about death. Rufus even made a joke about a Leonard Cohen cover actually brought the mood up a bit. The song in question was "So Long, Marianne," although he also did "Hallelujah" as his last song, with Lucy on backing vocals. His second to last was "Going to a Town," which was also the name of the tour, and he wore a T-shirt with some lyrics from it. He also played another political song that he wrote at seventeen, called "Liberty Cabbage."

Last weekend was Monster-Mania in Cherry Hill. The first panel we saw was with Dana Kimmell, who was in Friday the 13th Part 3. We watched most of those movies in quick succession and I tend to forget which one was which, but the stories from people working on them are still interesting.

Then came Lauren Lavera and Elliott Fullam from the second and third Terrifier films.

Roger Jackson's main reason for being at a horror convention was that he's the voice of Ghostface in the Scream series, but he's also Mojo Jojo on Powerpuff Girls and a lot of other voices.

He said that Mojo was originally intended to have a Peter Lorre kind of voice, but Craig McCracken suggested throwing in a bit of samurai. He also gave some examples of when he voiced a whole bunch of cats and dogs for some video games. The first evening panel was with Eli Roth, who mostly talked about the company he's founding that allows for investment from fans.

And there was someone in the audience who yelled every time he mentioned one of his movies. And from The Return of the Living Dead were Miguel Nunez, Linnea Quigley, Thom Matthews, and Beverly Randolph. Miguel was very talkative, but the others had some good anecdotes as well.


I probably don't need to mention that the political situation in this country seems to be pretty much hopeless at this point. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how people can still support Trump when he's constantly bullying and threatening people. Yeah, I know about the leopards eating faces and how his supporters think it's only going to be other people who get hurt, but isn't his attitude off-putting anyway? I feel like that kind of behavior has been normalized way too much, and a lot of people just expect it. I guess at this point it doesn't even matter too much whether he still has supporters in the populace in general when the Supreme Court is on his side, and the Democrats seem eager to maintain a status quo that doesn't really exist anymore.

I didn't want to write about this right away, but my mom died on the Thursday before last. She hadn't been feeling that well recently, but it was still very unexpected. I hadn't seen her since November. My sister told me about it when I came home from work. It's weird, because it didn't really hit me all at once, but when something reminds me of her, I just feel how weird it is that she isn't around anymore. It's sort of an empty feeling. There was a burial on Saturday at a Quaker natural burial place in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. In attendance were my sister and brother, his wife and son, my mom's brother and his wife, and my dad and his wife. I guess that's a little strange, as they had been divorced for over thirty years. There was no formal service, but we helped to inter the coffin, although I wasn't very good at pulling the rope and one of the employees had to help me. Afterwards, we ate at a nearby cafe, and there was a petting zoo next door with goats, turkeys, and chickens.

So yeah, I've been depressed recently, but still trying to do the things I would otherwise, since that's kind of how I deal with bad stuff. But at the same time, I can't help feeling a bit guilty, like I don't know the proper way to grieve. I did get to thinking about what I want done with my body after I die, and I'm really not sure. I do like the idea of having a headstone, for some reason. When I see gravestones, I almost always have no idea of who the people are, but I get ideas in my head based on the little information that's there. I don't know if it makes sense to anyone else, but death itself doesn't scare me so much as non-existence does.

The previous week or so was pretty busy. On Thursday the fifth, there was a Kevin Geeks Out that was different from the usual format. Kevin Maher wrote his own parody of a Hallmark Christmas movie, which was about a vampire lawyer from New York going to a small town in Vermont and falling in love with a werewolf. It was mostly just people performing, although it did have costumes and stock projected backgrounds to set the scenes. As such, they could include the sort of jokes common in radio comedy, where they wouldn't work if you could see what was happening. There was one bit about a piece of art that the protagonist loved and thought would win a contest, which was later shown to be nutmeg with googly eyes. And the inhabitants of the Vermont town had different regional accents, like a Minnesota one for the woman who owned the local diner. There were a few presentations of the more normal sort, one about courtroom scenes in holiday movies and another about how vampires and werewolves hate each other, but they were presented in-character. I get the impression that the rivalry between vampires and werewolves in fiction is fairly recent, like that between elves and dwarves. Interestingly, Tolkien actually used both, the Elf/Dwarf thing being well-known, but there are references in Beren and Luthien to how much vampires hate werewolves, even though both serve Sauron. But in folklore, there was a lot of overlap between vampires and werewolves. Dracula could control wolves and turn into one.


On Sunday, we went with Beth's mom and Uncle John to Batsto, where they had exhibits about the village in the old days, with the mansion being open to guests.

There also had free hot apple cider and cookies, and horse-drawn carriage rides.

We also visited one of the new Spirit Christmas stores, where we walked around the whole place but didn't buy anything.

I did stand in the giant Santa boots. And I like these snack-themed pillows, although I don't know if I'd want to own one.


Tuesday was a Micky Dolenz show at the City Winery in Manhattan, held in the upstairs area where we hadn't been that often before, if at all. They have tables so people can eat food and drinks, but it's an awkward way to watch a concert when the seats aren't actually facing the stage. We'd heard most of the songs he did and his introductions to them before, but he did do Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," and he mentioned that Stephen Stills was Peter Tork's roommate, and he also auditioned for the Monkees.

There were two Christmas songs in the mix, "Riu Chiu" and "Run Rudolph Run," which the band played without Micky. That song sounds a lot like "Johnny B. Goode," which was also in the setlist.

Paul Schaefer introduced the show, talking about how he worked with Don Kirschner and doing an impression of him, and he played keyboard on a few of the later songs.

Then we saw Micky again on Sunday at the Bergen Performing Arts Center. Beth had bought tickets for that one before the New York show was announced, and tried to sell the tickets, but was unsuccessful.

It was mostly the same, but he did play Elton John's "Your Song," which he hadn't at City Winery. He introduced it by talking about how he and Elton wore the same T-shirt at a party in Los Angeles.

There was also a screen, they had an intermission, and Paul wasn't there. This was after we tried to find a store in a nearby mall and not only didn't, but most of the stores were closed on a Sunday during the holiday shopping season.

I know online ordering has killed a lot of physical shopping, but I'm sure there would still have been some. It might be some weird county rule, as some of the Targets around there were also closed.


We had tickets for Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Thursday, and it was pretty similar to past years, but not exactly the same. Everything looks really pretty lit up while you're there, but it doesn't photograph that well. It was really cold out that night, despite the weather generally being incredibly warm for this time of year as of late, which was another reason I didn't want to take a lot of pictures. The Singularity and the butterflies in the pond outside the conservatory were cool.


They Might Be Giants played at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn on Friday night (the thirteenth), and it was a longer than usual show with no opener and an intermission.

It's a big venue, and it looked pretty full. John Flansburgh said at the beginning that they were showcasing John Henry, and they did eight songs from that album: "Snail Shell," "Unrelated Thing," "Spy," "No One Knows My Plan," "Dirt Bike," "Meet James Ensor," "Out of Jail," and "The End of the Tour." John Linnell did a bit presumably based on an old record commercial during the improvisational bit of "Spy," which I think he also did the last time we saw the band live. And Flansburgh mixed up the lyrics to "Dirt Bike," but since it's not a song they do often and a lot of the words are just "[da-da-da] dirt bike," that's understandable. They recently brought back the Stick, which is literally a big stick that Flans bangs on the stage for "Lie Still, Little Bottle," a bit that theyhadn't done in a long time.

Horn players Mark Pender, Dan Levine, and Stan Harrison joined the band on some songs, and Dan Miller played the solo at the end of "Damn Good Times" from the balcony.

Flans also talked about how he was responsible for the drones flying over New Jersey.

We finally got our Christmas tree on Tuesday, and decorated it yesterday. I know it's late in the month, and we ended up getting a smaller one than usual, but that means it took less time to set it up.

I don't know that I'm feeling that festive just now, but it's something I would have regretted not doing. I've never been someone who disliked the holidays; they were just a lot easier when other people were setting them up.