Universal Studios Birthday Trip

We took Cass and three of his friends to Universal Studios. The idea was planted by Moses, one of the three kids who came along, a few months back. He joined us last year for Cass's Adventure City party, and when Corrie saw him recently, she asked what should we do for the party this year. He suggested Universal Studios. 

We committed before we checked the prices. (Gulp.) Oh well, experiences are too valuable to trip out on the price tag (gulp), and we're not destitute. Anyway, one of the weird things about the trip, before we get on with the park, are the kids. Last year, the kids who were invited were Moses, Jesse, and Olivia. And Ari, but we couldn't get that worked out. Jesse's family has their own thing happening, and he missed the trip last year. This year it was Moses, Jesse, and Olivia again, only this Olivia was different from last year's Olivia and Jesse made it this year. In any case, that's them above at the globe. Camille was with us, and so was Moses's dad, Tony. We carpooled up to the park, I drove Tony, Moses, Jesse and Cass; while Corrie drover Olivia and Camille, sort of a boys and girls car thing happening. Olivia and the boys got along totally fine at the park, so there wasn't an issue there. 

Having Tony there with us was so helpful. Just an extra pair of adult eyes with us as we traveled with five kids, three who were not me and Corrie's, and four who weren't Tony's. We pulled it off, and everyone had a great time. 

So, Universal Studios theme park has multiple levels, but really only two are for rides and other guest things. The Upper lot is the area in the vicinity of the entrance, and the Lower lot is at the bottom of four or five massive escalators:

I took the preceding picture along one of the platforms in between the escalators. Those suckers move people maybe 17 stories (by a rough calculation) from the Upper lot to the Lower lot. By any measure, a covered-yet-outdoor escalator dropping---or raising---you 17 stories is quite an experience.

The first ride we did, because the kids wanted to right away, was on the Lower lot (so we did all the Lower lot stuff first) was the Jurassic Park ride. It was fun, and we all got a little wet, all of us besides Tony, who, because of where he sat, got totally soaked. He spent the rest of the day getting dry. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

Next we did the Mummy ride, as high quality a roller coaster as they offer. Camille was able to ride, and it was great. Afterwards, we went to the Mario Land:

It had some neat vistas, and we rode the Mario Kart ride. It was in Bowser's Castle, and here the line was one of the longest we stood in, and yet was less than a half-hour.

The ride itself gave you a fancy visor and controlled your trip around a track as you "raced" and blasted enemies. It was standard virtual ride, and I came in second place to Tony in our little octet as far as high-score rankings went.

We walked through the Simpsons land after stopping for lunch right outside Mario Land, and while some of the 3D Simpsons stuff is off-putting, other stuff is kinda neat:

The Simpsons land is on the way to the old-school, famous Tour Ride, which we did next. A covered tram ride for over 30 minutes? Sign me up. The ride hasn't changed much over the years, with the Jaws part of the ride unchanged for fifty years.

The Bates Motel part of the lot is also the same, but this time there was an actor playing Norman, stuffing a corpse into his trunk, and then chasing after us  brandishing a large chef's knife:

Along the tram ride was the wreckage of an airplane for the Tom Cruise "War of the Worlds" movie from 2005. Turns out they purchased the airplane from one of the airplane graveyards, transported it to the backlot in pieces, wrecked it some more, and here we are. You get a sense for how big the wreckage really is:

Eventually we made our way back to the Upper lot and headed towards the Harry Potter land. It was done very well, and if I knew more about Harry Potter, it probably would have landed differently.

There are two rides with entrances right next to each other: one in the castle/mountain structure below, and one right next door snaking through the trees. The one inside the castle/mountain is a combination of Soaring Over California and the Haunted Mansion, maybe, with a combination of long serious buckled-in benches that get lifted and jolted in front of immersive screens, but also being on a track that winds around other, non-screen decorations.

We rode the other ride first. It was a very cool, very family-friendly roller coaster that Camille could ride, and she loved it. When we went over to the castle ride, Camille was too small, and while she was a bit upset, she and Corrie just went back and did the other roller coaster a second time.

Once we were done with the castle ride, everyone wanted to jump back in line and do it again. Everyone except me. I was cool on doing it again, as the screen-stuff got me a little queasy. So, that time Corrie joined them and Camille and I did her roller coaster again, a third time for her. She loves roller coasters!

Soon after, we decided to head towards the exit, as we knew it would take nearly an hour to snake back to our cars. I did snap a picture of Travis Bickle's cab as we worked our way out:

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. Because of the protests against ICE blocking one of our homeward bound freeways, we took surface streets through Koreatown before bombing home along the 110, across the bridges at the ports, and safely landing only slightly later than we'd told parents. The kids all had a good time, and there were no meltdowns. It wasn't too hot and, while it did get quite crowded after 1 or 2 pm, the crowds weren't too bad, and there were no long waits for rides.

Score one for us parents. Happy Birthday Cass! Love you!

Revisiting the Disney Vault, Part 1

We've been watching the Disney feature animation movies in order for the last few months, but for most of them the better term is likely rewatched. 

Anyway, I wrote something nearly 14 years ago that, after looking at it again, needs to be fully rewritten. At least the last half of it. Some of the movies I can't remember ever seeing, and a few I wanted to make some notes about before I get deep into the weeds.

1985's The Black Cauldron has a few things I never remembered going for it:

• The opening line spoken is by John Huston and says something like, to paraphrase, "...even the gods were afraid of this evil king, so they put him into a pit of molten iron when he burned alive, and they cast a cauldron imbued with his evil spirit..." and I'm like, Damn! This is a kids movie? We don't give enough credit to movies from the 80s;
• The tiny ball of light that follows the warrior princess around seems digital, and the smoke coming off the cauldron in a few scenes is certainly digital, one of the earliest digital flairs in animated features;
• The dragon/evil bird chase scene is very dramatic. I'd splice a clip here if I could figure out how.

2004's Home on the Range was far better than I had been willing to give credit. Likely shunned now due to Rosanne's outsized role (she's not on the Google search cast list lol), the animation style is more cartoony than most of the post-Little Mermaid fare, and the backgrounds are very reminiscent of Looney Tunes with Wiley and the Roadrunner. Unlikely heroes as a theme, turning old-west tropes on their head, very pretty animation with an albeit extended after-school episode feel and a running time under 80 minutes make it not terrible.

We just watched this for the first time last night. It was Disney's first fully digitally-animated feature (since Dinosaur had bits of live-action backgrounds and thus isn't considered fully digitally animated). I remember seeing posters and thinking "Uggh..."

I don't remember why I was thinking that, but I'm pretty sure I never gave it a chance. But it wasn't until last week that I even watched the trailer. Whoa! That trailer inspired excitement about finally getting to it on our journey.

It does not get enough credit for being as weird as it is. The animation style seemed to make sense pertaining to the limitations the animators dealt with: it's like a Silly Symphony or Looney Tunes movie come to rubbery 3D life. But it works for telling the story it's trying to tell. It's about wanting your dad's approval and getting gaslit on a huge scale. And alien invasion. It's pretty damn weird. And Gary Marshall is the dad...? That's weird, too.

I wanted to get to other films that I hadn't seen before, and I probably will. Like Brother Bear and Meet the Robinsons. How about how beautiful Paris looks in Hunchback? Or how tough that movie is to watch, as Corrie puts it, "I watch these movies to escape reality, not necessarily to have reality shoved back in my face," what with the Cardinal is a crazed murderous pervy incel, who happens to be a very powerful political figure.

Good Books and GOOD Books

Have you read a book and said to yourself, 'Hey, this is pretty good'? Maybe you thought about a friend or whomever who may like the book, and maybe you even suggest it to them, or loan them your copy. To me that's a good book.

For me, an example of this has been Stevenson's Treasure Island. It's really good, and Bob Stevenson is a heckuva writer.

Then, maybe, there's a book that once you start, you find yourself consumed by, where, once you get really into it, it starts to take on your non-reading time. It encompasses your brain activity when you don't have the book in your hands, and then all you can think of is getting back to it. Once I got back to it, this book engulfed me during a Farm trip a few years back:

Once the main character Daniel get's going on his trainings, I struggled to put it down. Full disclosure: I picked this up years back, and only on a plane ride to Texas when I got three hours of solid, uninterrupted reading time that I ended up getting to the can't-put-down portion.

If you look close to the cover above, you can see who wrote the introduction: our own Thomas Pynchon. It was through my international Pynchon people that I heard about this author in the first place. And, if Pynchon is a writer you're fond of, this book will be for you.

So far I talked about capital-G Good books, and even italicized capital-G capital-B Good Books. Now I want to talk about a different kind of GOOD book, a type of super-book. My most recent example:

I joked once that there are good books (you like them and they're enjoyable, and you talk to people about them), and then there are good books (you think about them when you're not reading them; they may begin to overtake your waking, non-reading brain real estate), and then you have a super-book, an all caps GOOD book. 

For me, the distinction between these books is this: the GOOD book not only takes over my non-reading waking hours, filling my stream-of-consciousness with it's characters and themes and scenes, but it makes me lament not spending my time writing. What the hell am I doing with myself? I should be writing! Books like Shadow Country exist!

That's the distinction.

• Good books you tell other people about;
• Good Books you obsess over when you're not reading them;
• GOOD books you obsess over when you're not reading them, but when you do read them, you're so inspired that you figure you should be writing instead of reading.

It's funny in a certain way that the second book is Shadow Country by Peter Mattheissen. While Thomas Pynchon wrote the intro for Jim Dodge's Stone Junction, Mattheissen was one of Pynchon's favorite authors. And, while Pynchon remains one of my favorite authors, I can't say if I've for sure been so inspired to write while reading his books. Both Against the Day and Gravity's Rainbow have inspired me to do different things...and maybe being older adds to the drive...but still.

Finding inspiration to act from reading a novel is pretty great. Yay literature.

Minor League Shirts in My Drawer

The minor league t-shirt and jersey/mascot game remains strong. While it was a 1970s-80s era soccer team that gave us our Surf moniker and jersey (which Corrie said was very easy to pick out of the parade during our Dodger Stadium walk), the minor leagues of baseball are still a hotbed of weirdo stuff.

I joined the fray by buying one of the Salish-language Spokane Indians t-shirts:

I got a gift from my mother that lead me to basically having a collection of minor league t-shirts. She sent a funny alternate for her local Wichita Wind Surge team, the Wichita Tumbavacas (which I can only assume they're using in a "cow tippers" kind of way, as it literally translates to "cow tombs"):

Then I saw a saucy alternate for the Moorehead Marlins, a coastal Carolina team that decided to lean in to the Blackbeard history and (alternately) name themselves the Crystal Coast Booty Divers. The pirate diver is part of their alternate logo, and he appears on the saucy edition I bought:

I wanted to get one of these shirts before they were unceremoniously discontinued. Looking at these pictures here makes me think I need an iron for these t-shirts...jeeze! What's happening in my drawers?