After last week's false start I finally get under way having opinions about Popeye and Son. All this and other mild diversions are going on in my humor blog, so if you'd like your last chance until the end of this post to read them, here's my recent writing. Some of it isn't even about comic strips or cartoons!
- MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 12
- Finally I checked with an AI search engine which told me her name was Sally Mustang
- Statistics Saturday: Snorks I Still Remember By Name, Forty Years Later
- Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: The Sea Monster
- Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree
- What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Rene Belluso didn’t really reform, did he? August – November 2023
- Or Maybe _Real Life Adventures_ Has Really Ended for Real, Life
- MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 13
With our first Gilroy Gardens visit done, the photo roll advances to ... California's Great America, with our second and last trip. Given circumstances it seems probable this is the last time I'll be to the park so please enjoy evening and night looks at the place, starting with ...
Can you see the park from here? Because it turned out everyone had the idea to watch the fireworks from the amusement park or the adjacent football stadium and we were not out of walking distance but you see how little sign of amusement park there is here.
Finally, we've found our way to the entrance! The gates give some idea how mobbed they expected to be during the day.
And here's the reflecting pool entrance and the double-decker carousel, in the sort of golden light we'd had to leave before experiencing two days before.
So you'll know when my timestamps are by when I start showing pictures of fireworks that all look like every picture of fireworks ever.
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bunnyhugger humoring me with a picture from the lower deck of the carousel, the one with menagerie figures, to wit ... well, you know.
bunnyhugger starting to lose patience with me fussing around at slightly different wrong angles.
GoldStriker and the observation deck in that lovely golden light.
Hometown Square is a little past the carousel and swing ride, and I guess it represents the original center of the park. The park, as you might have guessed, did open in 1976. I don't know what the population 520 signifies; maybe the original staff count?
RAD BLAZER in portrait.
And here bunnyhugger gets her own picture of RAD BLAZER X-TREAM.
Behind the RailBlazer ride is this First Aid station that looks like an overgrown one-room schoolhouse. Note the cupola and bell. It feels like something that's been repurposed from its original construction but we don't know in what ways.
And here's a picture looking east to catch the path to the front of the park by evening light.
Trivia: Gemini XII splashed down 4.8 kilometers from its aim point, and 5.5 kilometers from the recovery carrier Wasp. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were on the deck of the prime recovery vessel 28 minutes after touchdown. Source: On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C Hacker, James M Grimwood.
Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp. Wow, so I'd never before heard about this 1959-60 series, The Man And The Challenge, a TV show about whether Our Hero can endure all the extreme challenges of a John Paul Stapp-like research program, unlike all those other guest stars who aren't as perfectly manly as him. It's not specifically a spaceflight-in-pop-culture thing but it's partway there. According to Wikipedia, in one of the episodes, ``[ Dr Glenn ] Barton experiments with yoga to see if it is helpful in averting tragedy'', which sounds like something which may have aged in ... fascinating ... ways since February 1960.
