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Random Carousel Fact #1

The earliest known image of a Carousel is a bas-relief from Byzantium in 500 AD.

From A Pictorial History of the Carousel by Frederick Fried



I am looking for a reproduction of this image. Apparently it involved baskets rather than horses.

The Great Carousel Hunt: Part the First

Let the record show that the Great Carousel Hunt has begun!

Place: The Balboa Fun Zone, a small amusement-park on the Balboa Peninsula, in place since 1936.

Time: Last Wednesday.

Note: Yes, I still have an appointment to ride it with my sister, but that is all right: The Quest Charter not only permits riding any given carousel more than once, it encourages it.

The Phantom Empire

I watched it again the other night, this time with friends.

It was as wonderfully silly as I remembered.

Note: it is possible to watch it all in one night by fast-forwarding through the songs and plot summaries. I don't really recommend doing so, however. Something is lost when the songs are gone, and it's still quite a marathon.

If possible, give yourself at least two nights, preferably more. It is a serial, after all (On the other hand, something is gained by watching it with other people; compromises are sometimes necessary).

There is a lovely article about it here. I particularly enjoyed the history of the robots--I had already fallen in love with them & decided that I simply must have one. Now, I may have to go find the other two movies they "star" in:

Despite all the time and effort that went into creating Murania, the filmmakers chose not to construct their own robots. In fact, the robots were purchased from the Western Costume Company, a Hollywood institution that began supplying wardrobes to the film industry as early as 1912. The robots, which were primarily made out of cardboard, had been used previously in the Joan Crawford and Clarke Gable musical Dancing Lady (1933), where they were shown infringing upon Crawford’s personal freedoms.

Unlike other films that used robots as menacing villains or easy cannon fodder, the robots in The Phantom Empire were shown helping the citizens of Murania: they operated machinery, forged iron, opened doors, stood guard, and did other manual labor. As Queen Tika asks in the film, “Is that not better than living on the surface; mechanical men doing all the labor?” (The robots survived The Phantom Empire shoot and made a third screen appearance years later in the Columbia serial Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (1951).)

Carousel Hunting

Ok, so going to Disneyland has reminded me of how much I love carousels.

And how few of them I've ridden, even of the ones in the area--it's always "later." So, my mission this summer is to ride as many as I can.

That, of course, means I have to find them, so I'm asking folks to "donate" carousel locations, though I'm sticking to S California & primarily to Orange County.

Carousels I'm aware of and plan on visiting are:

The Disneyland & CA Adventure Carousels (of course).

I'm told there is one at the Santa Ana Zoo

There is the one in the Balboa Fun Zone

Also, there are some at:
San Diego Zoo
Fashion Island
South Coast Plaza

I know there are others, but my googling skills are failing me here. Help?

Of Herons and Popcorn

I learned today what keeps the herons coming back to Disneyland: Popcorn.

Oh, they don't eat it, but the ducks and the fish do.

And when people throw pocorn (or bread) into the water for the ducks, the fish come up to help themselves--and then the herons can scoop them up like, well, popcorn.

The year's weirdest animals - environment - 31 December 2008 - New Scientist

These are marvelous. There's Wolverine the frog, a zombie caterpillar, and, best of all, a sea slug that does its own gene-splicing.


Really. If you do nothing else, watch the sea slug video.

The year's weirdest animals - environment - 31 December 2008 - New Scientist

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The Broken Hourglass: Still Writing

I worked more on The Broken Hourglass yesterday & today. I really am almost done with this quest.

However, having spent such a long time writing it, I am now written out.

So--more later on quests, the limitations and freedoms of game writing, and the stuff I always forget.

For now, I will say that a) I'm tired and b) Yes, it was fun.

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Gardening!

I was going to blog about my beautiful garden, but I spent a long time out there today, weeding, watering, and cleaning, and I'm just too tired to write coherently.

So, here are some pictures, instead.

Oh, and as a PS: I did get some writing today for The Broken Hourglass, in between trips to water and weed. Not a lot of writing, the garden was pretty demanding, but some. I hope that by Monday the current quest will be finished.

Vlad

A while back, I included a warning about buying palm trees without researching first.

This is why.

Your five-gallon palm tree with short spines at the base of each frond may get rather larger.

Tomatoes!

Every year, for three seasons of the year, we buy those pink, plastic, pseudo-tomatoes at the grocery store, the ones you put in salads to add a little color or on hamburgers because hamburgers should have tomatoes on them.

And I think they are pretty much pointless, and the only reason for tomatoes is tradition.

And then each summer, we grow tomatoes, and I realize that, after all, tomatoes are really tasty, and I really like them.

This year, we have tomatoes early because a great, sprawling, and by now kind of ugly and out of control, vine of them lived through the winter, and it has started to produce and ripen. They aren't the best tomatoes we ever grew, but they are tomatoes, real tomatoes with real flavor.

So there's a reason we keep them around.