Roundabout Way to Mokele-Mbembe

Oh jeeze, try to follow this stupefying line...

At Free Comic Book Day, I picked up this for nostalgia reasons:

Remember the show? I do. Cass asked me, What's this? And I said, besides a very cool David Mack cover, it looks like a comic based on a television show from the '80s that I remember fondly. I tried describing the show to him: a regular guy is given a super-suit by aliens and has difficulties controlling the powers as he navigates his new responsibilities. A super-hero show a bit ahead of its time.

But, it turns out, William Katt, the actor who played Ralph Hanley (originally Hinkley, but changed after the Reagan shooter, er, de-popularized the name), got involved in the production of this upcoming series. His face is so ably painted by David Mack right there. 

I went and looked up some info on Katt, and was reminded about a movie where he played Sean Young's husband, and she was a biologist and explorer on the hunt for a monster in the African hinterlands. 

Oh, yeah, I thought when I saw the name on Katt's filmography, I remember that movie. I was very fond of it, and was trying to describe a scene to Cass later: "So, there's an African dude, a local who's all sick, and they ask him what's wrong and he motions to his stomach, and then they ask him what he ate, and in the dirt he sketches it, his food---and it's a brontosaurus!"

Nevermind that Cass was like, "What?" and I remembered that we use terms like sauropod now instead of the recently abandoned 'brontosaurus,' but eventually he got the idea.

Sean Young plays an American researcher in search of mokele-mbembe in the movie titled "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend." She and Katt end deep in the central African rainforest saving a baby sauropod, while the father is killed by a national military and the mother is caught.

It's silly and mostly forgotten today. But when I was looking up info on the movie, the name mokele-mbembe was hyperlinked to its own background, which was extensive.

Apparently, mokele-mbembe is similar to Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Loch Ness monster, in that it's a cryptid, that is, a legendary animal that's unverified by current evidence. Instead of a hominid, it was described variously as larger than a hippo but smaller than an elephant, or half-elephant/half-dragon, or four-legged with a very long pointy-thing on it's face. That last one I think was translated by someone else as 'four-legged with a very long neck.'

It turns out that a few very serious expeditions to search for evidence of a living mokele-mbembe have been outfitted in the recent past, all with the thinking that the animal is a sauropod relative. And you may think: Okay...that's kind of...interesting.

But, it needs to be said: These expeditions were outfitted and funded by recent-Earth creationists, an apparently well-heeled group of very religious christians, either incidentally or purposefully ignorant to the realities of geology and deep time, who were trying to prove---by way of finding a living sauropod---that the Earth was only 5 or 6 thousand years old.

They were, um, unsuccessful in their expeditions.

Most historians of linguistics and the area think the legends that form the basis of mokele-mbembe are based on the black rhino, an animal that hasn't lived in the jungle areas where the stories come from since before written history. That at least passes the sniff test: big animal, once did share the space with humans, left before stories were written down so those stories had to pass by word of mouth and oral tradition...those dots are easier to follow.

Anyway, seems like a roundabout way to get to "once again irritated by purposefully ignorant religious people," but here we are. Maybe I'll show the kids the Baby movie, or the Greatest American Hero show, but both of those are only available on streamers like Tubi or Pluto.

So, there's that.

Yeah.

Had to Join the Fun

 Happy Birthday Homer!

That's, er, 70 years old today. Wow.

I was Bart's age when the show first aired, and now I'm older than Homer is regularly shown to be, depending on the season, 36 or 38 years old.

And, I have a son a few months younger than Bart is. Hard to wrap my brain around that stat, by the by.

Crazy how time flies when...your favorite show is on television for...36+ years?

Mission Impossible Notes

While visiting Solvang one of the past trips, likely the most recent Thanksgiving, Cass and Uncle Val were perusing the menu on their enormous television. Cass probably said, "Whoa! What's that?" and Uncle Val surely said, "Aw, Cass! That's Tom Cruise and he's awesome. This is a Mission Impossible movie!" and he hit play. I came in later and the 7th film in the series was playing, Dead Reckoning is its subtitle.

I caught most of it, and knew about some of the scenes (like the motorcycle off the cliff), and can say I enjoyed it, mostly. It doesn't really have a conclusion as much as it ends, and the credits roll, and we get ready for the second half, the 8th film in the franchise with the ominous subtitle The Final Reckoning.

I came across some think pieces about the badassery of Tom Cruise in the ridiculous stunts throughout both this franchise as well as other Cruise-related films, and felt compelled to go back and rewatch this series.

But "rewatch" isn't accurate, since I hadn't ever scene any of the Mission Impossible movies. I did watch the 1988 reboot series, with Stefano's son Tony DiMera in the rubber-mask-on-face role and Peter Graves as the boss-man, and enjoyed the espionage content as much as any ten-ish year old.

But by 1996, when Mission Impossible the First was released, I was deep into my classic-movie rabbit-hole and had a Tom Cruise-shaped middle-finger blotting out projects he starred in. Even Corrie saw it and, against type for her, remembered a fair amount of it.

It was after the think pieces about action set pieces that I perused the Web...could I find a box set of DVDs reasonably priced...where were they streaming...and then last month, Corrie and Cass announced: Mission Impossibles, 1 through 5, leaving Netflix on April 30th.

Since we only watch the television in earnest on weekends, after 3pm, let's say we had some intense Tom Cruise afternoon/evenings. Brian dePalma, John Woo, Joss Whedon...directors from all over the "action" world come in and do their thing. Jon Voit, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg (playing the Ving Rhames role), Alec Baldwin(?), Jeremy Renner(??), even Angela Bassett and Henry Cavill and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Emilio Estevez?

The flow of women isn't quite James Bondian, but it's a thing, and you hope they develop someone beyond "hot for Ethan Hunt" or "someone for Ethan to be hot for." Is his wife (Michele Monaghan) someone who fits that bill? Nah...I guess the best foil would be Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Maybe Agent Carter from the last two...?

Anyway, after four or five of these movies, while talking with Corrie, I realized that I didn't have a favorite. None of them were, for me, like, this is the one I'd watch again for pleasure, or, this is the one that hits all the right story beats.

That changed, though, for me. I do have a favorite now, and I'll give the reasons, similar to my bullet-point thesis about why Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is the best Mission Impossible movie. It's number 6, so there's a ton of history built up, but watching them in order in close time to each other helped with the characters.

• It has Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg and nobody else on the team burning up time---no Jeremy Renner, no extra helpers beyond perpetually wobbly Alec Baldwin;
• It has two ladies for Ethan Hunt (Cruise, if you didn't know by now) to be complicated with, both his ex-wife (Michele Monaghan) and a MI6 British counterpart Ilsa, who both have complicated feelings for him, and he can't have either, nor does he really want either;
• The bad-guy group again has a stupid collective name (the Apostles)
• The bad-guy brains-of-the-op is smug and revenge hungry, but doesn't give me anxiety like the late, great Hoffman;
• The bad-guy muscles-of-the-op is awesome and menacing;
• Cruise ready to go with the CIA op team in the catacomb is peak "Ethan Hunt is still, actually, the good-est good-guy" moment.
• It has dual simultaneous nuclear bomb-disarming teams working against the clock (naturally) while Ethan chases down the other badguy in a helicopter. It's a helicopter chase scene.

I don't think I've ever wanted one helicopter to ram another helicopter as bad as when I watched this scene. There have been a few times in my life when I've wanted to holler and cheer while watching a scene. This helicopter scene as as close as it's been in a while. (In the first Expendables, when Sly dumps the fuel on the badguys on their fly-by and then blasts it just to ignites it? That was one...)

The Burj-Kalifa excursion; the motorcycle off the cliff to parachute to the train; the bar is set pretty high, and while the helicopter chase from "Fallout" isn't the same as these two scenes, it's part of a satisfying whole. Which led me to:

• Fallout is the 6th film, meaning you know the goodguy team will win---those stakes are pretty nonexistent. I mean, "They're gonna nuke the food supply for two-billion people!" is a pretty good pickle to have to solve, but you never think they won't, and I'm fine with that. It's in witnessing the execution that the fun happens.

To recap: two complicated love-interests with no actual romance happening; no extra people on the team; awesome badguy boss that doesn't give me anxiety like PSH; helicopter chase scene while everyone else is diffusing nukes; Angela Bassett.

Maybe Final Reckoning will be the bestest best. I reserve the right to change my opinion, but it's a tall ask for this viewer to be better than Fallout.

May the 4th

We've got March 14th (Pi Day), and now we claim May 4th as Star Wars Day, or at least we lean into it some more. At first I was confused. Why May 4th? Say it out loud, I was told: "May the 4th be with you."

Ohhhhkkkaaaayyy. 

And now Disney+ is also leaning heavily into it, with their splash screen heavy duty with Star Wars stuff. Awesome...now we, the capital-N Nerds have at least two days.

There's also, going on year 20-ish, Free Comic Book Day, the first Saturday in May. At our local shop it was quite well-attended:

Cass and I waited in lone to make a donation to a local food bank and grabbed some free stuff. This year it looked like there was a competition going on:

Some of the comics were labeled "Free Comic Book Day", while others were labeled "Comics Giveaway Day." Um...what?

It turns out the FCBD label and logo was owned by Diamond Distribution, who had a de-facto monopoly over the distribution of most of titles available. It began to unravel when DC Comics broke away, and once Marvel joined them, their days were numbered. Diamond went under and the distribution rights went (mostly) to two different companies, Universal and Penguin, but only Universal has the rights to the logo and name, so, to compete, Penguin's distribution arm went with CGD. 

Is this the only year we get this competition? Are we, the readers and fans, the true winners?

Can we claim Life Day, November 17th, too?

Happy May Day

May 1st is the International Labor Day, and for the workers in the world, Huzzah!

And, for the day (kinda like on 420 this year) as an adjacent topic, let me share something I think gets lost in the American educational system, or, really, the teaching-history part of school, age 5 to 18 (besides the Parkers and the Harrisons): the founding of Haiti.

I remember lessons on the Mongols and the Mughals, but not the Franks nor the Saxons. We got some Mesopotamia history (good) but almost no Mesoamerica (lame).

Did you know that Haiti was the only country in the world that was founded by a rebellion of enslaved people? Enslaved Africans and natives from the island, called Haiti (or 'Ayti') in Taino, had a successful insurrection and threw out their French oppressors. 

Is it shocking that we were never told about that in school? The enslaved rebelled, successfully, and founded a nation. Is it shocking that few countries came to its aid when the Spanish side organized and engaged them in war? Is it shocking that in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, the international response seemed like a shoulder shrug and a juvenile, "Sucks for you, bro?"

I think we should find a way to celebrate Haiti and its founding as an important step in the Enlightenment era. It was the first country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery, obviously; but they're also the most likely to be declared a failed state...obviously, especially when no one wants to help.

Also, I want to learn more about Simon Bolivar and South American revolutions---which all happened after Haiti, by the by.

Anyway, maybe this is all stemming from witnessing the slow motion dissolving of the American democratic experiment, aided and abated by a pro-fascist group of terrified bigots. Maybe we all should fly the flag of Corsica, the large Mediterranean island that is currently a French holding, but remains a difficult place to colonize and/or subdue. The flag is called "the Moor's head," and represents marginalized people battling occupiers:

Anyway, Happy May Day!

And, if you're interested...

At the Dentist

I was at the dentist, waiting in the lobby with Camille for a 5pm (WTF?) appointment for some X-rays and a cleaning, and the television was on up in the corner of the room.

When I'm there in my own, I usually read in their outdated magazines and ignore the H&G Network shows they air in perpetuity. (Everybody else is on their phone, obviously.)

This time Camille was goofing around in my lap and paying half-attention to the show, and we caught some of the premise. It was a show about "winning the lottery" on getting a house. Cool, I thought, people won a house?

The host is a slender gay Asian man, highly tattooed, and he approaches the 'winners' and makes a scene where they all celebrate and show off for the camera, and the 'winners' are couples. At the end of the celebrating, he asks, "So...how much money are you giving me to find your new house?"

So...these 'winners' really just won the chance to have a TV show follow them as they shop for a new home? And have this cool personality do the legwork for them? Right? That's what I could gather in the few minutes this first episode aired.

So, the tattooed Asian guy is asking how much will you give me, the music crescendos and then cuts out, and the couple announces: "One-hundred thousand."

Um...okay...besides 15 months in Austin and 6 months in Sacramento, I've spent the last 26 years living in San Luis Obispo, New York City, and Southern California, three places that have more cars in the $100k price range than houses.

$100k? For a house? IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE IN AMERICA TODAY?

The answer is, yes, absolutely this is possible. In fact, the specific episode of this show was filmed in Cincinnati, where, as per the show's structure, the host finds three places that fit their desires and budget, and he did this exact thing. One cost $110k, one cost $87k, and the last cost $84k.

Two houses that cost less than one-hundred-thousand dollars.

That must be my California showing.

We waited a while in that waiting room, even watching the beginning of the next episode, where a couple in South Florida won a lottery and wanted to upgrade their home, and they had a half-million to spend. And, a half-million will get you some crazy stuff in Jupiter, Florida, it can at least get you 780 sq. ft. in Long Beach.

For all the waiting, this is a pretty cool dentist. They rock you in and out, once you get out of the lobby. Plus, we ride bikes over there. Pretty sweet.

Mario Galaxy and Promethazine

The trip to Solvang at the beginning of April was great, but while there I came down with whatever the kids had: my body was achy and run-down, my face was all congested, and I had a hearty cough. One day in the morning before work, my eyes felt like I was having a hay-fever attack, or some other kind of allergic deal, but I don't normally have allergies. So...

After a second day of painful eyes, terrible sleep, a nasty cough and a stuffy nose, I went to checked out. They took mercy on me and gave me a script for eye drops, some nice decongestant, and a plastic hip flask of promethazine.

Back in the summer of '98, Vallejo-based rapper Celly Cel released his most famous single, "Pop the Trunk." I mention this random tidbit because this song was the first time I ever heard of promethazine, as guest rappers UGK (Underground Kingz) rap the lyric "Sippin' on promethazine, poppin' the trunk." (The song still hits, for what it's worth.)

Cut to the next Saturday and I feel pretty much better, and we're headed wit the kids to go see Mario Galaxy in the theater. I did enjoy the Super Mario Movie from a few years back: it was a low-stakes story that tried to 1) make the gameplay feel like a natural part of the world the characters (from Earth) were thrust into; and 2) stuff a bunch of easter eggs into the movie, foreground and background. Mission accomplished on both fronts. It's absurd, but fun.

This movie, the sequel, Mario Galaxy, felt like the best outcome for making the gameplay from the more advanced Super Mario Galaxy games feel natural and/or novel, with easter eggs galore, and Yoshi! I especially liked how Yoshi kinda shows up and immediately gets adopted into the crew, with only Toad being like, "What's with the dinosaur?"

But, the movie theater in 2026 has reclining seats, swivel trays like a college classroom built-in desk, and they sell beer.

Saturday afternoon, bike riding to the movie house, taking a big swig of codeine-powered promethazine, getting a big tall beer, kicked back in a recliner watching a low-stakes feast for the eyeballs with my kids? 

Living the dream!

Now, if I could only get some time for me and Corrie...just the two of us...

Birthdays are for Those who Love You

A great line from "That '70s Show" is when Red Foreman, the patriarch of the family is upset about having to do this or that for his own birthday, and he pines, "Isn't it my birthday? Isn't this day for me?" And Kitty, his family-and-household-running wife laughs and says, "No! It's for the people who love you!" And she sends him on some kind errand (or commands he take his pants off, I can't remember exactly).

M birthday was this past week, and I'm pretty sure my kids were more excited than I was.

They were on Spring Break and went shopping. They picked out a bunch of clothes, which is nice, because clothing is one of the few things I care very little about, and they have better taste than me anyway.

They wrapped them, stuffed the wrapped presents into random bags, then stashed the bags around the house and had me "scavenger hunt" for them. Then they mostly sat in my lap as I opened each one, breathlessly watching.

It was a good time, even as we try to figure ourselves out in this world.

The Pelagic Nature of Long Drives

Sometimes, as the mind wanders during hour two of a five hour stint along Interstate 40, I start to imagine the highway like the open ocean's water column, its verticality mapped onto the horizontal axis.

Tiny drifts of plankton, moving up the column to eat even tinier oceanic rotifers, and, as the sun descends behind, and the hours pile up and we start driving towards night, it's almost like we're heading higher and higher into the safe darkness.

The tiny animals that drift up in the night and then back down as the sun brightens the sky constitute the biggest mass migration on earth, and it happens daily. Trillions upon trillions of organisms feel a margin of safety once it gets dark, and then stuff happens. They move up and feed on smaller things, and larger animals eat them.

And larger animals eat them. And tiny fish eat them and become plentiful. Eventually they school in enormous numbers, and away the food chain goes.

The life cycle in the open ocean, the pelagic life cycle, and my brain spends half its energy on surrounding traffic, and the other half imagining that we're just a marine mote riding up and down the column.

Interstate 40, from Barstow to Amarillo, is long, straight, and far more mellow than the similarly long and straight I-5, or even I-10. I-40 is quiet, populated by few trucks---slow moving larvae in the column---and virtually no jerks that feel they must be in the fast lane going the speed limit. 

I thought that I wrote this piece before, and when I couldn't find it under my searches, I thought I should type it up. Why now? I have no idea. I've been hammering away at a large project and needed to decompress, and haven't been sleeping well, and maybe that's been bringing me back to these weird metaphors for the slow 1800-mile boogie.

Also, I like the idea that something could be titled "The Pelagic Nature of Long Distance Interstate Driving," and that then the title could seem too verbose for a blog post, and that it could be edited down to what we see here.

Maybe that's what this is about. Maybe its about Artemis II hurtling back to Earth today. About solitude, about making slow progress, about placement in the vast sea on earth...also, about the funny looks people give you when you use a word like 'pelagic' in normal conversations.

Me: Can I get the receipt on 8? (Corrie tracks the cost for work.)

Attendant: 'Course. (Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt) Long drive, huh? Where y'all coming from?

Me: Ooph...southern California. On the road to past Amarillo...

Attendant: Wow! Howzit going so far?

Me: (Still in a daze) Well...you know, just contemplating the pelagic nature of the drive...

Attendant: ..........

I think I have something here to explore more later. Always procuring projects, like Sick-Boy and his "contacts." (Also, random Trainspotting reference!)

Springtime in Solvang

We took a nice weekend trip to Auntie Anne's, and both my dad and brother made it for the weekend too! This was the first time we'd seen my brother in the flesh since 2020, and it was the first time we saw my dad since the reunion trip in 2024.

The kids get to play with the dogs, get to play with the Playstation 5, get to play in a backyard and front yard, and this time, got to play with grandpa and Uncle Dan.

One thing we got to do was an Easter Egg Hunt outside of the Solvang hamlet...or maybe it was inside, but it was at one of the historic Wells Fargo stagecoach stops:

Here you can see Cass (and a few other boys) ready to jump the line to head out looking for eggs:

We're not really Easter people, or people who celebrate Easter, and this kind of social activity is a remnant of family activities. It was fun, but I can go either way. I wouldn't have pursued it, but I'm also not ready to refuse to attend once invited.

All in all, it was a very nice trip getting out of LA metro for a weekend. Thanks to Auntie Anne and Uncle Val for hosting, and thanks to my dad and brother for making the trip, which for them was certainly more challenging and longer to accomplish.

St Paddy's 2026

I got home quick and Corrie and I went to a local bar. It was a Tuesday, March 17th this year. That's Green Pasta night at our house. We did our corned beef, potatoes, and Lacinato kale (snobs are we) the previous Sunday, so dinner was going to be fast.

After a beer and a shot of whiskey, and another beer, we were sixty-bucks lighter (WTF?). I was having a conversation with a random drunk older lady, the kind of conversations that are had often, especially with me and/or Corrie and the random stranger.

The conversation was going well, and this lady was fiery. We were having a good ol' time, and eventually I showed her pictures of the kids. What followed was her freaking the hell out that I "allowed" Cass to have his long hair. "Aren't you his dad? Don't you have any pride in being a dad? How can you let him do that to himself?"

What the fucking fuck are you talking about, was mostly my response. But I didn't bother to listen. He's a compassionate, intelligent, funny, athletic, and daring little iconoclast, and anybody who questions his future or intentions or place on Earth because of his hair can rightly go fuck off.

We had our pesto and broccoli, watched our Simpsons episode, and took care of bath night. Besides an annoying drunken boomer casting aspersions at me and my son, it was a pretty cool day. 

It was like most days really, but it did have us---me and Corrie---sneaking off to a bar for a quick taste. That kind if thing may happen more often if it weren't so dang expensive. Plus the bartender lived in Bed-Stuy a few years before us, so we got along pretty well.

Anyway, Happy St. Paddy's!

Banana Ball!

Our former roommate, groomsman, and good buddy Ryan contacted us weeks ago with an offer: he'd won a chance to purchase Savanah Banana tickets. Would we like ot join him on a particular day? Why, yes, we said. And that day was this past Friday night.

The game was at the Big A, the home of the Angels down in Anaheim, and it was a full house. That picture above doesn't capture how full the place was. Seems like it's not that full that often. 

Anyway: Banana Ball, baby!

If you're unfamiliar with the Savanah Banana brand of baseball, you just need to think of the Harlem Globetrotters for baseball. They put on a show, they play some ball, and everyone has a good time.

There are some rule differences that had me thinking of Futurama's Blernsball game. 

In the barnstorming league there are six teams, and they travel around and play each other in similar circumstances and under the same rules. According to their website, it looks like every game is sold out, which shows that there is an appetite for this kind of game, this Banana Ball.

The teams that play in the Banana Ball Champions League are the titular Savanah Bananas, the Party Animals, the Firefighters, the Texas Tailgaters, the Loco Beach Coconuts, and being resurrected in both name and spirit, the Indianapolis Clowns.

When Corrie was checking the Banana's opponent for our game, she said, "Um...looks like the Bananas are playing...the Red Shoes?" And when we tried to look closer at the image, it seemed like they were clown shoes, maybe?

But I was very excited when it became clear the matchup we got to see was the Bananas versus the Clowns. The OG Clowns were the progenitor to today's Savanah Bananas, played on the Negro League circuit, and employed a teenage Hank Aaron.

The warm-up routines were very exciting and silly, and nearly each half-inning there were competitions and/or dance numbers. And when the baseball game was being played, it was fast-paced. The reason for that is built into the rules.

Baseball is a game, a sport, a 'National Pastime.'

Banana Ball looks like baseball, but it has some major rule changes, some of which make for a more interesting product. To wit...

1. The final score is based on how many innings you win, and to win an inning, you need to score more runs than the opponent.
2. Every infielder must touch the ball on a strikeout before the batter is out, meaning that if they run fast enough, they'll almost surely reach base on a strikeout.
3. THERE IS A TIMER. Once the kid-guest announces, "Start the clock!" in unison with fans who know, a big 2-hour countdown timer starts on the scoreboard and does not stop until the 9th inning. They game will be called over if it's not the 9th by two hours. This wrinkle is better than any pitch-clock. These pitchers get after it.

The inning-winning wrinkle causes some weird moments that halp speed the game. Above, if you look closely, you'll see the first run scored in the game was by the home-tram, the Bananas, in inning 5. Because thge Clowns didn't score in the top half, once that guy came across the plate, that half-inning was over and the top of the 6th started. If all you're trying to do is win innings, it all moves so much faster. 

It was the same thing for the 6th inning above, and for the 7th, when the Clowns scored 4 runs, they were still losing 2-1, because they'd only won the one inning. 

Any bottom-half on an inning can be a walk-off. Pretty cool.

This was a great time, and so much fun, and shows that America and its kids really do have quite an appetite for baseball games. And I could support a Banana Ball extension. Corrie joked that they should shift the narrative to Banana Ball as the thing with the Savanah Banana phenomenon, and maybe she's right.

I mean, they eventually let the guy on stilts pitch, and is anything on a baseball diamond more exciting than that?

WTF History

This started as a conversation...as most of my eventual journeys down various rabbit holes do.

Blond haired, blue eyed kids at our kids' school are few and far between, but some of them are from the Ukrainian diaspora. So when Putin invaded and started the first land war in Europe since WWII (besides the breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing ethnic cleansing? Civil wars don't count?), we had a few conversations about some of the historical background.

Much later---as in quite recently---in the wee hours of the night, before bed, Corrie and I put eyes on one of the Youtube programs we like: an episode of SciShow about a Persian silver horde found buried in England. 

In the episode, if you don't feel like watching it, it turns out that the Vikings buried treasure hordes all over their conquered or occupied lands. Historians aren't sure why, but one suggestion was that the treasure would be used to purchase favor when needed in their political shenanigans. One of the Vikings main bits of treasure was silver. They loved silver. One of the hordes recently dug up in England turned out to be from Persia. The science behind the isotopes in the impurities being a fingerprint from where it was smelt and cast was fascinating, and the Persian foundry was unmistakable.

And it turned out that the Vikings got around. Like, all over. 

Today the Scandinavians we tend to lump together and call "Vikings" never would have called themselves that, and that the term "viking" may have really been a term that meant "to arrive and murder." But one of these tribes that got far, like to the Volga far, called themselves the Rus. The Volga is the river that runs from Kyiv down to the Black Sea (and has headwaters even beyond Pripyat, if you're a fan of HBO's "Chernobyl"), and it seems like it was this group, the Rus, that traded with Persian traders north of the Black Sea for their silver during their travels and trade route developments.

This is where my ears perked up. The Rus?

I have a very cool history book, an Atlas of the Medieval World, that's very small and very dense, as it tracks Europe and the near East (today's Middle East) from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Each page is a crisp outline of language family incursions, invasions by all types (Magyar, Mongol, Turkic, etc), and one thing it said I always pondered in my own time. 

It mentioned that at one point the Western Slavic language branch (the closely related Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian) broke away from the other Slavic languages and became distinctly different. And I generally mulled that over in my head through the years...about how Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians were just that different from the other Slavs found in Europe proper...that seemed, I dunno, proper in some kind of way?

But seeing this show about a Viking silver horde in England, likely from the Rus, brought me back to the conversation I had with Cass a few years back.

See, as I told the Boy, the trio of Russia, their close allies in Belarus, and the Ukrainians all claim the Kievan Rus as their origin story. The Kievan Rus was the name of the original kingdom and lands held in the Volga valley around present day Kyiv, before the term Muscovite was coined around their newer homeland, Moscow (handwaving the details, certainly). They all felt like Kyiv was their origin spot, and felt like it was theirs to take back or defend with their lives.

These people were called Muscovites for a time, but the less formal general Rus was also used, and eventually that became the basis for "Russia" and "Belarus" that we've anglicized today.

But, it wasn't until just the other day that I understood that the Kievan Rus was just a gang of Vikings, and that they founded an empire and had their own familial lineage (the Rurikid) as the monarch from the year 862 until 1598, when Ivan the Terrible's feeble son died of dropsy and scurvy. For fifteen years that are called in Russian history courses "the Troubles" took place: after the last of the House of Rurik (Feodor, Ivan's youngest boy) fell, the Polish-Lithuanian empire invaded and occupied Moscow. 

In 1613, after driving out the occupiers, the council elected the next tsar, and it was Michael I, and thus started the House of Romanov, the family that was Tsar until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. From 862 until 1917, with basically two family lines running all caps-RUSSIA, and the first was a freaking Viking.

And now the reason the Western Slavic branch being so different makes sense: it assimilated with a Northern Germanic/Scandinavian language.

Anyway, as I checked some of this stuff out, I learned that the Rus were also called, historically, the Varangians, which essentially meant "I agree to work for you." One group worked as the personal bodyguard to the Byzantine emperor, hence the records of their name. One of their bosses: Rurik...the same as the guy asked to settle disputes and run the show in Novgorod, founding Russia.

Most historians think this is apocryphal, or legend, but his brother Oleg could have been the true founder. Anyway...holy hell!

Vikings attacked France, and their king ceded beachfront land to them, these Norseman. They assimilated, became Normans after a French name change, and after a hundred and fifty years, invaded and conquered England.

They got around! But I didn't need to tell anyone that...

Camping at Pinnacles 2

Last year on the same weekend we went camping at Pinnacles National Park. That had been our second tent camping trip with the kids, and this was our third. Our spot was different, but we did, again, have to set up the tent in the dark.

But it was fine.

Last year, because of the drive and the sleeping in, we missed the long-ish hike at Bear Gulch Caves. This year, we made it. Last year I thought the area was pretty, but, like, sure. Condors...it's nice. Fine. National Park level, though?

But after doing the Bear Gulch Cave hike? NOW I get it.

One issue is that you need to take a shuttle up to the parking area, since it fills by 8:10 am, and maybe earlier. The road is tight and has just a single loop at the end, of a quaint parking area.

But the environs, as we went along the hike, were beautiful:

You start out along a wooded canyon walk, with striking red-rock walls:

But the walk is so nice, and the temperature was so pleasant, and the breeze was easygoing, and the elevation was minimal...so wonderful...

Then we got to the caves proper (after a quick fakeout), and the kids demanded to be in front. 

Flashlights or headlamps were necessary to navigate this cave, so I, with only my phone, followed close behind the kids, who each were given flashlights.

Certain spots you had to get down an your haunches or hands and knees to pass through, and our kids were fine with it, because, you know, small and bendy are kids.

After a while there was a nifty stairwell to mark the start to the way out of the cave:

And if you ever have questions about which way to go...there are handy directions:

After the stairs in the murky darkness, and the spray painted directions, you get outside proper, and a new stairwell shows up and slinks on up beyond a nerve-racking suspended boulder:

Up top there was a no-swim reservoir with nice reflections, and we got a chance to snack.

But the walk out was also very pretty:

After the reservoir and hiking back down, we returned to the campgrounds and relaxed. It was a fast, lightning trip, as we left the next morning.

One issue is that Pinnacles, along CA 25, is annoying for us to get to. We discovered it one day as we drove with a baby Cass from the Bay Area back to LA, and traffic along US 101 sucked, we jumped off at Hollister and leisurely headed south along CA 25. 

Nested between 101 and I-5, the area is neither the desolate base of the coastal range coupled with the Great Valley (I-5), nor is it the outer edge of the coastal range and seaside proper in places (US 101). It's firmly in between. It's scenic, rolling hills and oak trees, and this past weekend it was very green.

When we first saw a National Park along the drive, and it had a cool name---Pinnacles---we thought about making a trip there, and when we finally made plans with other people to make the drive, the idea was that it was halfway between our people living in the East Bay and us living in LA metro.

Our East Bay people have since moved to SLO-environs, so this drive---north to King City and then northeast for forty minutes to the spot, isn't such a challenge. For us, it's a bit further. The trip either has us going up and down the Grapevine, then to Coalinga, and then up from there; or, heading to King City up the 101, and over and up. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Anyway, it was worth it! Getting to see friends, getting to meet new people, and they had a kid so all the kids got to play together, and sleeping in a tent makes for an interesting weekend.

I'll just leave this, the shot of Spring springing, lush greenery with ferns and all:

Genetics and the Basque

I was always fascinated by the language and ethnic group isolates in Europe, the Basque.

Living in the Pyrenees straddling the borders of Spain and France, the Basque people boast an insular cultural identity, as well as a language that is neither Indo-European (like Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Slavic, or Baltic) nor Finno-Urgic (like Finn, Estonian, or Magyar). It has no known larger family or connection anywhere in the world.

Mysteries abounded about the people, and they had their own stories about where they came from, about how they were the original people in Europe, how they took over the caves from the Neanderthal. Maybe I made that last part up.

But a recent genomic study showed that a modern Basque person's genome, once sequenced, was indistinguishable from Iron Age remains from a nearby necropolis. Multiple thousands of years later, at least a hundred generations, and the genomes were the same. This was from before the Celtic, from before the Roman and Greek, and, apparently from before the Proto-Indo-Europeans arrived.

It looks like they were from the first Europeans...at least remnants from one of the earliest waves of human arrivals, which is pretty cool.

And then there's the language. So different than any Indo-European language, so different from Finno-Urgic...I'm not a linguist, but maybe I would have been if things broke differently (at least that's what I've been told), and how languages work in their own context I've always found interesting.

I snatched this visual for how the Euskara (the Basque language) works, and while it's different, it seems logical:

Now, like other languages that are tenseless (and I'm not sure Euskara is tenseless), they use verb aspect to delineate whether or not an action has completed (essentially past tense), as well as the regular use of the ergative case, one of the more confusing grammar-related concepts around (that a deep-dive doesn't clear up as much as show how many grammar rules one has forgotten in thirty years).

Nowadays, my interest in the mystery of where the Basque came from has fallen off in favor of a different mystery: how, over the course of five- to six-thousand years, were they able to keep to themselves so diligently?  Historically, mountains slow armies, not keep them out forever. The Celts, the Romans, the Germanic-tribes, the Moors, even Franco's bullying and murder only led to losing some of their language heritage, which they've since gained some of it back. It has to have been a conscious effort. 

Today, the people and language have given us names like the Bay of Biscay, as well as the city name of Bilbao.

Kinda makes me want to see what other languages trace back so far in specific places...I'm thinking the Amazon basin, Papua/New Guinea, or maybe even the aboriginal languages of the Americas or Australia...

Magic Kingdom First Timers

It has been a long week. It feels like months have gone by since last Saturday. But that's mostly because of taking the kids to the Happiest Place on Earth, and still recovering nearly a week later. And what a trip it was. It certainly spoiled them and will forever alter their perspective on the Disneyland theme park experience.

Where's Waldo at Big Thunder Mountain

When I say it will spoil my kids, what I mean is that this trip was NOT a representative experience of 'going to Disneyland.'

What's the main state of being on any trip to a Disney theme park? Why, waiting in line, of course. What happened on this trip?

Virtually no lines!

Have you ever gotten a terrible sunburn waiting out here on this sunny plateau in line for Space Mountain seen below?

Me too! Some of my worst (in memory) sunburns I got right there in the sunny switchbacking second floor waiting, but on this day with my own kids I had to slow down the speed-walking just to take the picture.

I joke, but Space Mountain was the only ride with more than a fifteen minute wait...at maybe 17 minutes. We finished eating around 1:30 pm and were done with the Space Mountain experience by 2. So surreal.

Besides the Matterhorn, this was the last ride we wanted to do, and we finished by 2 pm!

Let me start over. This trip had been in the works for a while, and cousins were coming in from far away, as well as elders coming from further afield.

We didn't tell our own kids until the night before, at dinner. Like, "So...do you wanna go to school tomorrow, or go to Disneyland?" The Boy didn't beloieve us while our daughter lost her mind.

When we arrived at the Park, we met up with everyone else in Fantasyland---through the big castle---and essentially walked onto the Mr. Toad ride. This ride is a cult classic, as it follows Mr. Toad as he steals a car, dies, goes to hell, and eventually escapes back to the land of the living.

Peter Pan had a bit of a wait, as it's one of the better rides in the area, behind Mr. Toad, so we walked right up to and on both Snow White and Pinocchio, with zero wait time. Next we did Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, one of the best rides in the park. We walked right up to it, waited for two trains, and got on. UNHEARD OF.

Camille, Lorenzo, and Luna liked it so much that we all rode it again, and Camille had her hands up the entire ride.

Then Pirate's of the Caribbean---again walked right onto a boat. WHAT? Then to the Haunted Mansion. Walked right into the big mustering room where the ride starts. WTF? We walked right onto the former Splash Mountain/current Tiana's Bayou ride. I remember waiting 150 minutes for that ride the year it debuted.

Like a fuzzy headed doofus I put Camille in the front and sat right behind her, and both of us were soaking wet for a few hours afterwards. Rookie move...she was in tears, but came out of a funk soon enough.

Seven minutes of walking the snaking path up to Indiana Jones. Walked right by and got onto the annoying It's a Small World ride. Came back by to do Peter Pan. Star Tours was a walk-on. The laser-gun Toy Story video game was a walk-on.

We did all of this BEFORE LUNCH. I can't stress this enough: that's easily an entire day's worth of time, and we were sitting down to eat around 1 pm.

After Space Mountain, my mom wanted Cass to drive her around in the Autopia ride, so Camille was my escort, while Corrie got a chance to ride the very exciting Bench ride.

Driving Mr. Daddy

Family was behind us, too, and we got some cool pics of them

Sometimes the fact that it was quiet meant we were going to ride the ride, like It's a Small World. Other times, like with the Matterhorn, or the Star Wars Land, we were determined to do it.

The Matterhorn, despite new bobsled cars that separate you from your partner, still acts like a kamikaze chiropractic visit.

Eventually we weaved our way to the Star Wars Land. This was after heading to Toon Town, riding the nifty track-less cartoon ride, then letting the kids play for nearly an hour at the playground and ride the kiddie Gadget's Roller Coaster.

After that, we split up with many of our party, as they moved onto California Adventure. We didn't opt for the park hopper passes, and instead went to Galaxy's Edge, a corner of Anaheim with a few billion dollars sunk into it:

It's super serious. There are nominally two rides here, but experiences is a better term. One has your group snaking through the inner bowels of a base, being assigned roles (pilots/gunners/engineers) and then have you act out those roles during a flying-the-Millenium-Falcon mission.

But that was noting compared to the las ride/experience, Rise of the Resistance. In this, er, ride, you're pushed into an escape bus/ship with everyone else in line for the ride (about 30 people deep). But the ship is intercepted by the Empire, riders are then captured by Stormtroopers and sent to interrogation rooms, where they eventually escape because the droids controlling their transports are repurposed by the resistance. It's a silly, rip-roaring sequence of a movie that you, as a rider, are in.

It was an exhausting end to a rich day. We went to dinner and then headed home. We told the kids, over and over, that the reason that the multi-day park hopper tickets are the best value for locals is because you never get to ride this many rides on a single day. I never understood it. The park was busy and full, but we barely waited for anything.

We might've walked ten miles. It felt like we walked ten miles.

Cass took the map he had been using to guide us around and marked with an "X" all the things we did.

I'm tired all over again just looking at it.

What a day!

Morning Light and Fog on the Coast

Sometimes the light in the mornings looks like its playing tricks on your eyes:

But then the picture turns out okay, and you tell yourself that here's another day where we can trust our eyes.

Alyssa Liu, Hell Yeah! Olympic Notes 3

1

I was trying to explain to my kids about Alyssa Liu.  I normally loathe the tiny featurettes that showcase the backgrounds of the (only) American athletes at Olympic games (summer or winter), but I happen to put eyes on the complete four minute feature for the figure skater out of Oakland.

She was the youngest national champion? At 13? I've since seen that 2019 routine in Detroit...a little girl kicks ass at some highly difficult and highly technical things. It's...cool. The tension gets to her as she comes off the ice, and then again once her score is announced (first place! national champion!) and the tears flow both times. But she was a kid.

In 2022 she was at the games in Beijing, and she came in 6th or 8th, but, at 16, at her first Olympics, she showed up and did well, but didn't medal.

And then she quit. Retired...whatever. She wanted her life back. She traveled to Everest base camp. She pierced her own frenulum. It was on a skiing trip where she felt a kind of exhilaration, the kind of exhilaration that she used to get from skating, and so she decided to go back to skating.

I only summarize the video and common knowledge to give the context for trying to explain to my kids how this girls is so free, how she cares so little for placement and medals and tension, who only wants to show off what she is capable of. Unafraid of the results is when you'll be truly relaxed, when your brain is finally convinced it's not life or death, you can be free. Peak performance has such a better chance to follow when this level of zen is achieved.

Just look at how relaxed and chillin' she is:

This is from an interview with Mike Tirico after the event, and I get that it's easier to be relaxed after winning. She's wearing the gold medal, because of course. Watching her skate---both the short program and the free-skate---was such an experience when you see them in the context of everyone else. Stress...life or death...tears...tears of relief versus tears of gut-wrench...a weary stoicism...the gamut of post-skate emotions runs the relief-to-heartbreak racetrack.

Except for Alyssa. And that was what I wanted my kids to get, to feel. The lightness and the smiles and the relaxation. It may not be the only way to reach peak performance, but it's surely the emotionally healthiest.

All that, and I tend to support and follow my Nor-Cal people...your Marshawn Lynches, Dame Lilliards...even Aaron Rodgers up to a certain point. Add Alyssa Liu to the list!

2

A few years back I felt like NBC's coverage was about shoving snowboarding events down our gullets. I think it was early in the X-Games-ification of the Winter Olympics. Now with being able to stream the events I want to watch (Alpine skiing, short-track, women's figure skating), it seems like having curling shoved down our gullets this year is easier to mitigate. 

I mean, curling's cool and all, but yeesh...

3

Random things to finish up thoughts on Winter Olympics: 

1. Did you know that when you cross-country ski your heart rate is up to about 90% capacity? About 90% of what it can do as a human? WTF?
2. If I can stream the events that have passed, how come I can't stream ice dancing? Not that I want to, but I know it's impossible to find anyone other than the one American team...

One last thought that get's it's own bullet point:

• I heard the Winter Olympics described as: the overlapping of two supremely weird groups: the mountain people and the rich people.

Can you imagine? To be a giant slalom skier takes...money for outfits and skis and passes for the mountain. To be a sprinter you need...feet? Space to run? Jamaica is the top per-capita sprint running nation in the world. Would it be surprising that "poorest" slalom olympian in Cortina this year would probably eclipse the most well-to-do Jamaican sprinter is terms of financial security?

Skates of the Season: Olympic Notes 2

I love the differences in the same basic things. It's a nerdy proclivity I have. Anyway, I think I have a new favorite spectator Winter Olympic sport. All in due time...

I've been ice skating before! I even got Corrie ice skates for Decemberween! In both instances---the skates I got for Corrie and the skates I rented when I went skating---were of the figure skating variety.

Marc, one of our New York people (and star of the first year of this blog), had hockey skates and while I checked them out, I never wore them. I did, though, mentally spaz out at the differences and similarities between their designs:

Hockey

Figure Skating

But there's another style of skating I remember usually most often every four years: speed skating. And their skates are wild:

Speed Skating

I even found this cool graphic, and it's the kind of thing I would have enjoyed putting together myself if I was 1) more knowledgable about ice skating, and 2) artistically inclined for infographics:

But then I saw the different comparison chart/infographic. And it has the different styles for the different kinds of speed skating: so-called "speed" and "short track":

And that brings me to short track speed skating.

This could be the best thing to watch. There is a stressful pace, a ramping up of speed, true danger, cramped spaces, and a muted physicality that belies the awesome punitive and draconian rules: if you make a mistake and knock someone out, you get penalized and they move on. The finals of one 13.5 lap races (the 1500m) had 9(!) racers, because 3 had been 'advanced' because of other people's mistakes in earlier races. I rewatched it with Cass, and it had both of us wobbling on the couch like we were watching that chase scene from OBAA.

Also, shout-out to the Korean 17 year old half-pipe snowboard gold medalist, Ga on Choi. She beat her mentor and the heavily favored American Chloe Kim (from Torrance! (local shout-out)) after taking a terrible spill in a practice run, nearly doing a header on the way down from a big move.

She came back and nailed some huge moves and took home the gold. Chloe, to her credit, was very excited and ran over to embrace the newly gold-crowned and sobbing teenager.

Downhill alpine skiing and short-track speed skating are two of my new favorite things...