austin_dern

The past week of my humor blog hasn't all been about comic strips, but it's been closer than usual. Here, judge for yourself:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 35
• Statistics March: Mostly I'm Waiting Until May To Talk About Dick Tracy
• Statistics Saturday: Best Tax Preparation Practices
• Thank You, Bank Urgent Message System
• What's Going On In Flash Gordon? So are you covering Flash Gordon again? December 2024 - February 2025
• What's Going On In Judge Parker? Why did Sam ask Sophie to hack drone footage? January - April 2025
• What's Going On In Flash Gordon? Didn't you just do Flash Gordon? February - April 2025
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 36

And now ... the end of our anniversary at Indiana Beach!

I would be surprised if this were the origin place of elephant ears. But I also dig that flying elephant art in the upper right. I can't identify the tiger in the lower left and I have no explanation for the sun-headed clown on the corner.

And here's the season's schedule for shows. There's something implausibly wonderful about the cover band names here.

A peek inside the park's historical museum for a view of stuff like old water show posters, a park event where everyone celebrated Gene Staples for making the world less awful, or in the center here, a ballroom cocktail waitress outfit.

More miscellaneous things at the museum, including a sign for Norway Dam/Lowe's Bridge, whatever that is, and a picture of ... 1980s Tom Hanks as David Letterman ... in the upper right there.

A sign I hadn't seen or suspected, and that might have given away the secret of our commemorative brick. Or maybe not. It seems like it's a chance to get an Indiana Beach-branded brick for home uses. We didn't get one, though.

Back at the ice cream stand and also other pictures of performers who'd been at Indiana Beach at some point. A sign there says 18 musicians who'd played the Indiana Beach ballroom are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

There was some kerfluffle with the taco stand at Indiana Beach that I can't remember except I believe the important thing is new park owner Gene Staples apologized so much and the old taco stand came back. Anyway here's a comic foreground to present your kids as food around I.B.Crow.

Another picture of our brick and its companions on our way out.

And here's a water fountain, down at the end of the park. I remember seeing it turned off in past years, but I don't remember whether it was running when we visited in 2023.

And a last look at the Hoosier Hurricane as we walked the bridge back to our car. It looks great in the evening light and it's just a bit of a shame my work schedule didn't allow us the time to see it at night. This time.

Trivia: Paul Revere's objectives for his famous ride were to warn that British soldiers were approaching Concord for the military stores there, and to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that they were to be arrested. Source: Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes, Christopher Hibbert.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 58: Let Us Look To Lettuce, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

I've mentioned the parking situation many times in this report about Motor City Fur[ry] Con 2025, but let me give you the last report on that. It's not surprising that the con hotel would see its lot filled up, or almost filled up, most of the weekend. Very annoying was that the lot at our hotel, the second overflow hotel, was also almost always full up. (The first overflow hotel, where we ordinarily would stay, often filled up its lot Saturday night, but there was an extra parking lot not really clearly assigned to anyone that we could use as backup. This second overflow hotel had no such auxiliary.) Several times I was able to find a single spot left open, although one of those was for Platinum Exclusive Treasured Members or whatever the loyalty program wants. But you know what was available every day?

Someone at our overflow overflow hotel had a truck. One of those preposterous things that's the size of your dad's first house. And he (assuming a pronoun here) had parked it like two feet over the line, possibly owing to an inability to see the lanes marked on the ground so far below. We grumbled about this every time we saw it. And then at some point there was nowhere left to park except the 80% of a space left by Truck Owner.

So what was there to do? I let bunnyhugger out and pulled into the remains of the spot. It would be impossible to open my passenger-side door, but it would also be impossible for Truck Owner to open the driver's side door and I had hopes that his coming out to this bother would maybe prompt him to hire a pilot boat to steer him into an actual lane next time.

No such luck. As far as I could tell this truck never moved the whole weekend. I had to go back and park in that same portion of a space a second time, and never inconvenienced Truck Owner at all, so far as I can determine. I'm left wondering what they were doing that they left the truck in the same spot for three nights. It's not like there's an abundance of things in walking or bus stop range of the hotel; even if they were just going back and forth to the convention, it was a like 10 or 15 minute walk one-way and it was often raining and windy all weekend. You'd think he'd have at least driven over once.

Well, Sunday as we got things ready to check out, of course, pressure was off our hotel's parking lot. I was able to snag something close to the front of the hotel and load up well enough. Parking at the convention was packed, the number of people leaving the con early balanced by the number of people who'd checked out of the overflow hotels and now had to park there. The number of cars parked would keep dwindling over the day --- we went out a couple times for reasons that seemed sufficient then, and ran into people who hoped to be home before the storm --- and near the end of the con I finally moved my car to not just the front row of the parking lot, but the second-nearest spot in the lot, just past the spaces reserved for handicapped people. At the end of the whole thing, we had a fantastic parking space.

We're closing in now on the end of the day at Indiana Beach. I had work the next day so we couldn't stay to, like, midnight. But just you watch and see how close we got!

The haunting inscription of 4-28-1955 carved into the boardwalk. I don't think we would be cursed if I failed to photograph it but why take the chance?

The Shafer Queen, the boat, which I think wasn't running that day. But we see it here from the vantage point of the new ride going out over the river ...

And there are its inspection stickers and maker's plate! A Cyclone from 1978, serial number 13398.

The operator's booth and the start of the Cyclone's ride. It's not the same ride as the Serpent that used to be at Kokomo's, but it's a similar size and feel of a ride.

Now over to the carp-feeding area, where all the fish in the world want you to tend their needs!

Better hurry! Looks like some of those fish are getting ready to evolve on you!

Trivia: After the Crédit Mobilier's widespread bribery of members of Congress and the Executive branch came to light a Congressional investigative committee finally recommended the expulsion of two congressmen. They were instead censured. Source: An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, John Steele Gordon.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 15: 1953, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What’s Going On In Judge Parker? Why did Sam ask Sophie to hack drone footage? January – April 2025 as yes, you get a second comic strip plot recap in a single week! What could ever beat that?

The next panel that I went to was the Plush/Inflatables/Puppets panel. bunnyhugger went off on her own for something else; I forget what. I think it was a tabletop roleplaying game that she was interested in. There were several of these over the weekend and she's always eager for the chance to play something as we don't have a good gaming group. There are her parents and they're happy to see us but her father only really likes rolling dice and her mother is certain she doesn't understand the games.

The Plush/Inflatables/Puppets panel was an informal hangout --- all the things which looked something like a SIG were hangouts --- and I brought out Latham, my guinea pig puppet, for his big outing of the weekend. As usual he got a good response from people since he is about the right size and shape for a real guinea pig and it's thinkable that someone might sneak one in the way it's not plausible someone might sneak in a dragon. I did a lot of explaining his basic gimmicks --- mostly why he wears a plastic ring around one leg --- to different people and was mostly well-received.

There were a couple inflatables shown off, filled up and set down on the floor where you could pose for pictures (sniff). And a good number of plush as well, including one person who had a fox plush maybe four feet tall and pretty hefty. The giant fox plush was popular for photographs as who doesn't want to be buried under a fox, in this fandom, and a couple pictures of the fox riding the big inflatable dog were taken by everyone.

One of the puppeteers from the show was there, but I didn't get any further discussion with them. I'm not hurt by this; I'm not even sure what more I'd say.

We returned to our hotel room to get fursuit parts, so that bunnyhugger could dress as Velveteen and make good on the (mild) bother of driving home and back for it. But when we returned to the convention hotel she didn't suit right away, going instead to a meetup for Women and AFAB Persons. Meanwhile I did some other exploring on my own, among other things getting to the video game room for the first time. This was, first, extremely hot, and second, pinball-free. The Surfers in Hospitality was all the pinball there was. (Whoever brought their little pure-mechanical pins table didn't bring it back this time.) I did get to play a couple rounds of Quick And Crash, the shooting game that explodes a coffee mug if you do it right. Not too many, though, since this was very popular and there was a line almost every time you looked in.

I also got onto the Super Mario Brothers arcade cabinet and played a couple rounds, sometime even getting close, I think, to beating World 1-1. I don't know what I was doing wrong. When I wasn't being killed by turtles or plummeting I would just run out of time, something so shocking to bunnyhugger that I believe if I'd confessed this inability at the wrong time it might have cancelled our wedding. Yes, I know the B button is for running. I'm just not good at the game is all.

Finally after this bunnyhugger got out her fursuit bag and became Velveteen, the plush rabbit who looks vaguely disapproving of all this going on, thank you. We got time in both walking the floor and at the dance, although not so much time at the dance: She had forgotten her earplugs and was willing to take only a short time before getting somewhere quieter. I had also forgotten earplugs but had found a couple slightly dusty older ones in my messenger bag that I was using. (I don't remember why the wax earplugs for sleeping weren't used. I assume we must have just forgot to bring them to the convention hotel and they had been left safe and sound in our hotel's room.)

When we had enough dance, and walking around the hotel for the daily exercise, we returned to Hospitality to find the pinball machine broken and hopeful that it would be repaired Sunday. One of the pop bumpers had broken Friday night and it was in good shape Saturday morning, after all, but this good repair work wouldn't last.

Back at our hotel we confirmed the sad news: checkout time here was 11 am, so we'd have to get up no later than 10 to have a chance of packing everything up. This after we'd had to make several rounds of the hotel parking lot before I found a spot bunnyhugger is still angry about. More on that to come.

Now back to the pictures, and Indiana Beach of last June.

Here's the Falling Star, a Moby Dick-type ride, at the top of its arc where you can see the star roundels underneath. Also in the background is the station for Hoosier Hurricane.

Went past one of the gift shops and happened to notice an old cash machine in the window, along with a note about ``All cottages are to be charged a cleaning deposit''.

Beyond this wall of ivy is the Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain. Don't believe me? Well look just a little to the side ...

There! The two-car train is at the loading station on the left, with the elevator off on the right. As you can see, it's a wood coaster.

There's the next train on the elevator up. There's no room for a lift hill without demolishing the Superstition Mountain dark ride structure and then it would hardly be a Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain, would it?

Train coming out of the lift elevator. The ride is built into what had once been a dark ride, so it is a heck of an intense ride.

Trivia: Analysis of just how strongly the space shuttle's thermal protection system tiles needed to be was not done until well after many tiles had been manufactured and the first, failed attempts at installation had been done. Not due to any particular shortage of ability to do the analysis; simply that other items had been higher priority and there had been good reason to suppose the initial estimates of pressure loads were correct. Source: Development of the Space Shuttle 1972 - 1981, T A Heppenheimer.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 15: 1953, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Returning to Motor City Furry Con and, more or less, Saturday. I'd picked out a furry --- pinball, actually --- T-shirt to wear Saturday but then decided to set out in my red panda kigurumi, since I don't wear that enough. Figured I'd change back when I felt like. It turns out I never did feel like, and spent the whole day in suit. This got a bit hot at times; it's fleece, after all, and I was wearing cargo pants underneath as the best way to be sure I had my phone and car keys in a secure place. The kigurumi pockets aren't even deep enough to fit my hands, let alone a thing. It did have the advantage that the tail is easier to keep managed than my coati tail, though, which keeps wanting to fall down in a most out-of-character way.

As mentioned the day saw a lot of panels of interest to us. We joined, late, the panel ``Before Furry: Funny Animal Comics'', which advertised itself as talking about the ancient days of primordial furry art, you know, like the 80s and 90s. It turns out that this would have been our best chance to see Lightspill, a friend from SpinDizzy Muck, who was at the convention and that somehow we never did catch. They told me after they'd gone to the panel but had to leave partway through, suggesting we passed each other without noticing.

Anyway the panel did get back to the really old stuff, complete with pictures from the funny animal comic books that I've discovered are easy reading and pretty good learn-to-draw reference material. They even had a couple truly vintage comic books out there, such as one issue of Fawcett's Funny Animals, where Captain Marvel Bunny (Hoppy) appeared. I got to actually touch this ancient thing, in the minutes they had at the end to invite people up to see and look through some of their old comics.

But the bulk of what they had, and of what we saw in the presentation, was 90s stuff, including stuff I recognized from when it was new. One item, clips from Joe Ekaitis's T.H.E. Fox (a web comic that started in the 80s(!)) even came in handy since it was fresh in my mind when a friend asked about an old furry comic he sort-of remembered. And there were things like Gene Catlow's illustrated trip report to Confurence VIII, that I remembered from when it came out on SCFA/Yerf.

We hung around a while after, looking at the comics and talking with twitchers --- the second day of our meeting up with him some --- until bunnyhugger asked if we shouldn't get to the variety show. So we should have: I had misread the schedule and thought we had a half-hour, so we joined it already in progress.

And the progress! First of all, it was a variety show, mostly people singing or lip-synching to something already recorded. But it was also a variety show making use of the convention's theme, which you may have inferred from my subject lines here: Don't Panic. It was a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme, something it's astounding we hadn't seen before. It's almost stunning enough people still remember the books to support a theme like that. It did give all the convention materials a great graphic design style, and gave the show a central pretext. That pretext: that this was the dinner show at Milkybone's, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Also stunning: the hosts for this show were puppets! They'd set up a small puppet booth at one end of the stage and had a pretty good white dog of some kind as the main host, and a moose as subsidiary character, with a couple others popping in and out for specific bits. Puppets! In furry! We had no idea there was going to be a variety show, but a variety show with puppets? If we'd had any hint we'd have volunteered.

After the show we stuck around to catch the puppeteers and tell them how much we appreciated seeing that. The dog's puppeteer explained he had build the rigging for the puppet stage at the last minute and was kind of surprised it worked at all and everyone agreed this was a great development. Yes, it was.

Back to Indiana Beach in pictures here, with some more pinball:

Continuing the games; after Scooby-Doo we get a bunch of modern Stern, with Batman '66, Elvira's House of Horrors, and the Mandalorian.

More pinball. After The Mandalorian we get the Led Zeppelin pinball which, um, well, there's people who enjoy that. We didn't get it at our local venues because the operator looked at the game and said ``nah'', as most people have.

And one more row! The left are the two Pinball 2000 games, Star Wars Episode I and Revenge From Mars. Next to that, a special edition of Jersey Jack's inaugural The Wizard of Oz game.

And it's a whole Jersey Jack row here with Wizard, Dialed In, and Willy Wonka.

The site has also got the Stern Insider Connect thing going so you can log in to games and have your data tracked by another company.

bunnyhugger and I played a tight game of Aladdin's Castle, and she won in a squeaker, the kind of win everyone loves most.

Trivia: The first public references to Yuri Gagarin's flight as Vostok 1 came in a Pravda publication the 25th of April, 1961. Before then the spaceship-satellite had been referenced as Korabl Sputnik VI. Gagarin's call sign was revealed the 25th of April to have been Swallow. Source: This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, Loyd S Swenson Jr, James M Grimwood, Charles C Alexander. NASA SP-4201.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

So I just assumed when the landline rang at 9 pm it was bunnyhugger calling to apologize for coming home late from work. No; it was my father, whom, yes, I have owed a call for a while. But also I had this morning texted him to ask if I could go to, like, Lowe's and have them cut a piece of glass to replace the broken one of our kitchen clock. He explained to me a couple times over the morning that no, a place like Lowe's is only going to be able to cut rectangular glass. What I need is someplace like a stained glass store, they'd have the equipment for cutting circles. It happens there's a stained glass place just a couple blocks away from us so I'll be able to stop in and see what they can do, or at least if they can recommend anybody.

His call this evening, then, was the eager follow-up to hear if I had gotten the glass replaced or what. He's 81, while he keeps busy he does have things he needs to do. And yes, he likes hearing my voice and I like hearing his and all. It just caught me unexpected.

So unexpected, in fact, that when he asked about what else was going on I mentioned my missing camera and then realized I didn't know how to explain where I had been when it disappeared. I left it at ``an event'', figuring vagueness was easier than explaining a furry convention. (I have been so elusive about the whole furry thing with my parents, which is weird because they would be extremely understanding --- they asked me, in the 80s, to consider whether maybe I wasn't dating because I was gay, and that if I was they would be happy to have anyone I was interested in over for a confidential date --- but I just have never felt up to explaining it.) The nice thing is he's got a point-and-shoot camera he hasn't used in ages and if he can find it, he'll send it. No idea what it might be or what it'll be like, but a camera's better than no camera.

Speaking of cameras here's photos from Indiana Beach! And all the Cornball Express we can eat. For example ...

And here's the Cornball Express, from near its launch platform. One of the great things about Indiana Beach is how overbuilt it is, and how many things are atop other things, giving nice views like this.

Rear seat on the Cornball Express ready and waiting for us.

Rocky's Roundup, their carousel. It's a small model and probably a Chance fiberglass, but I'm not positive.

And here's a view of the carousel and the Hoosier Hurricane tracks above. You also get a little view of the Roundup logo, which used to feature Rocky Raccoon but now is just a carousel horse image that looks like it might be stock art.

More of the heaping of stuff: the near railing is for the train, the cement wall for the log flume, the stairs to get up to the log flume and the Hoosier Hurricane, and way off in the distance are midway games and shops.

The queue for Hoosier Hurricane takes you above the track, allowing for nice aerial shots like this.

Trivia: When the South Sea Company bubble began to burst in the summer of 1720 investors hired the accountant Charles Snell to investigate the books. Prime Minister Horace Walpole swiftly pressed the Act To Restore Publick Credit bailing out and restructuring the company and incidentally preempting the audit. Snell was hired after the company finally crashed. Source: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, Jacob Soll.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

One thing and another we arrived at Indiana Beach later than we hoped. This would be a tough problem because, it being Sunday, we had a hard deadline to leave at like 8 pm. I hadn't taken Monday off, or even partially off, so couldn't just drive until 3 am or anything like that. With our originally setting off a little late, and taking longer at the Cass County Carousel than we expected, and getting lost trying to enter and exit Logansport, Indiana, we lost precious time at Indiana Beach which, it being Sunday and warm and clear, we figured to be packed. bunnyhugger fretted that we wouldn't have enough time to be worth the driving and the cost of tickets; I felt like we'd feel whatever we did would be enough. We would have benefitted greatly from another two hours or so but, well, we had the time we could get. Maybe next year I'll take the day after off too, or at least the morning off.

Indiana Beach was busy, yes. Not as brutally packed as we feared, though. There was a substantial wait for Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain --- the wooden coaster built into what had formerly been a dark ride, and one of the most intense rides you can get --- but that was the only important one for us. Also we had no trouble riding it; JTK had gone to Indiana Beach more than a half-dozen times last year and twice this year before finally getting a ride. We also found the time to go into the House of Frankenstein, the walk-through haunted house attraction, as we have every time we've been to the park on our anniversary. Unlike last time, we didn't get stumped on the room with the thirteen doors. In fact, we kind of hoped that the fair-sized group that was there ahead of us, and seemed stumped, would be mystified by our disappearance from it. No such luck; they stumbled onto the same way out that we did, or they found another one we weren't thinking of.

And, you know, we got onto most of the roller coasters, not just LoCoSuMo. The important ones besides that were Hoosier Hurricane and the Cornball Express, and we got to the Cyclone too. The All American Triple Loop, which we last rode in Mexico City as La Quimera, was not operating --- while it officially opened this season it's not stayed open much --- and we skipped Steel Hawg, which like Triple Loop is off on a weird side jag of the park, in spaces that used to be paid parking. I forget whether we got on Tig'rr Coaster or just kept gauging the lines for it. I know we got on the carousel, Rocky's Roundup, as that was one of our first rides to seek out. That's a small metal kiddie carousel, a 1950s Allan Herschell that's less interesting than a 1902 Gustav Dentzel carousel like at Logansport. But we're hardly going to turn that down, not least because Rocky is a raccoon, secondary mascot for the kiddie sections of the park.

Something which happened as we walked along the concrete 'boardwalk' was bunnyhugger staring down at the bricks. As with Cedar Point --- and the Cass County Carousel, and many other places --- Indiana Beach has been selling fundraising bricks. We have one at Cedar Point. bunnyhugger said she was looking at funny ones, or looking for ones JTK had told her about, or things like that. I suspected nothing. You, aware that I do sometimes put thought into what I mention here --- and remembering how I described bunnyhugger's inexplicable disappointment at not going to Indiana Beach for our anniversary --- may have figured this out.

For among the many new bricks laid down the last year or so is one of ours, our names --- and the hope 'Fascination Forever' --- engraved and laid down on a brick near where the swing ride over the river is. (Fascination being a roll-a-ball game that used to be everywhere, and now has retreated to mostly places that we go, such as Indiana Beach.) We have a little part of the park that's ours together, at least until the brick breaks.

bunnyhugger had actually bought this brick last year, but Indiana Beach was vague and unfocused about reporting when it was actually installed, and even vaguer about where. One of JTK's side projects last time he tried to ride Lost Coaster was been going through bricks and finding where ours might be, and how to describe where it was in a way that bunnyhugger could sneak into the park without, like, having a map in her pocket that might make me suspicious. There was even a security leak: when we caught up with JTK and his family at Cedar Point last year his wife --- forgetting that this was a surprise --- mentioned our brick at Indiana Beach. I had supposed she made the understandable mistake of conflating the brick we had at Cedar Point with the bricks for sale at Indiana Beach, and so immediately forgot, no harm done.

In short, it is possible to fool me about something just by having bunnyhugger say, ``I want to fool you about [ thing ]. So start thinking [ other thing ] instead'' and I'll go along with that.

We did not leave the park at 8 pm, although we were good about making our 8 pm ride our last of the day. Driving back the satellite navigator favored our taking the western course, driving more or less north and driving back across I-94, a surprisingly legitimate course that only went a bit wrong when I tried to improvise my way around some construction traffic, so we ended up going farther west than we should have.

When we finally got home we exchanged gifts, a thing I'd suggested putting off so we would have something to look forward to after the sadness of leaving the park. My gift to bunnyhugger was two connected things to fill way too much wall space: the playfield and the upper playfield of a Popeye Saves The Earth pinball. The game design may be ... challenged, but the playfield art is fun, with a lot of that Python Anghelo marginalia funny-animal stuff that's a joy to keep looking at. I had seen these at Pinball At The Zoo, and snuck them out into the car when bunnyhugger was being angry at pinball. That one almost had a security breach; MJB, of the Sparks Pinball Museum in Chesterfield, started talking with us and mentioned seeing me carrying the playfield. I was able to shush him without bunnyhugger noticing, though; wearing masks is great for giving sotto voce instructions right in front of someone.

She, meanwhile, observed that the 12th is the linen anniversary, and gave me a linen-covered book, filled with photographs --- prints --- from our honeymoon, bringing back sights and memories I hadn't reflected on in far too long. It's beautiful and it's stayed at my bedside since, ready anytime I need to smile and can't just hold bunnyhugger for it.

And that was our anniversary.

And now a couple pictures of Velveteen, and home, and Velveteen at home, on Halloween last year:

bunnyhugger has started putting Halloween lights in the bushes out front, and plastic pumpkins in all our front-facing windows. Our organic pumpkins are on the steps here.

Here's what our jack-o-lanterns look like illuminated under their own power. We might have used stronger matches to light the picture.

And here's Velveteen posed with Wintergreen, the Bayol carousel rabbit, here in his new home and with a mask on for Halloween.

You see how authentically the eyes are to the side of the rabbit's head.

A plush and a carousel rabbit give you the side eye here.

And a last picture of that corner, giving you a slightly better idea how small Wintergreen is. Note the county fair best-in-class blue ribbon on the picture hung in the upper corner there, because bunnyhugger just keeps getting county fair ribbons like that.

Trivia: On the second and final ballot to award the location for the 1952 Summer Olympics Helsinki received 15 votes (the minimum needed to win). Los Angeles and Minneapolis received five votes each, and Amsterdam three. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. In the first round Detroit had two votes, Chicago one, and Philadelphia zero.

Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books I picked up a couple weekends ago at the bookstore next to the hipster bar.

Our next noteworthy event was our anniversary, 12th of its kind. We had to decide what to do for it. I had a clever idea, which disappointed bunnyhugger.

It comes to carousels. In Cass County, Indiana --- not quite at Indiana Beach, but nearby from our perspective in mid-Michigan --- is an antique Dentzel carousel. A Gustav Dentzel carousel, not one of those William Dentzel carousels you've seen everywhere. Gustav was the patriarch; almost none of the carousels his business carved are still operating. And if that weren't impressive enough, the Cass County carousel still operates the brass ring game, where riders on the outer row can reach out and try to grab a ring good for one free ride. We've wanted to get there, and keep thinking of it when we think of going to Indiana Beach, but never think to check when they're open or where precisely they are.

So I checked. Could we get there on our anniversary? Incidentally for this I tried Apple Maps for like the first time since everyone was laughing at it and uh, yeah, it's not bad actually. Anyway in distance certainly; it's closer than Cedar Point and we day trip there all the time. Piggybacking that on a trip to Indiana Beach would be even better, as long as the ride was open. And here was the sticking point. Their web site gives hours, but web site hours rarely keep up with the truth. Their Facebook presence, though, that had a post specifically stating what their hours would be the 4th of July. It had a couple-weeks-old post about their hours for that weekend. From this I supposed that they were open weekends when they could and they were absolutely going to be open the 4th of July.

Thus the idea I pitched. For our anniversary, go to Michigan's Adventure --- but the real fun would be the 4th of July, going down to Indiana Beach and also, hey, the Cass County Carousel was open so we could go there.

I thought bunnyhugger might be disappointed not to go to Indiana Beach for our anniversary --- we'd done that twice before --- but hadn't imagined how much she would rather go down on our anniversary rather than the Thursday after. Even with the promise of the carousel. She stated her belief that the carousel was open most weekends on the web site hours and that the occasional Facebook posting was just reinforcement, not the exception. And she certainly found my Michigan's Adventure idea disappointing for reasons I could not imagine. Did not imagine, at least.

Well. If all we wanted to do was go to Indiana Beach, we'd want to get up around 9 am anyway and hit the road by 10, so, I could call first thing in the morning and ask if they were running the carousel. So that's what we planned. A few tired moments after 9 am on our anniversary we got the confirmation: the Cass County Carousel was running, and we would aim for that to start our anniversary.

Back to Halloween night, now. Let's see what bunnyhugger looks like in her new fursuit, at the hipster bar where we play pinball. Yes, more of that. She's that good-looking.

Velveteen does not approve of how quickly she got the bonus.

Only thing I'm sorry about with this picture is there's no telling where the ball is; a good action shot of that is fun.

And I like how here Velveteen and the playfield almost exist in a void. The side of the game is hidden in shadow, but also by the edge of a booth.

This set of costumers were a safe bet to win the costume contest.

Velveteen having a pretty good game on Monster Bash, considering that ever since it moved to this location it's been brutally hard.

The costume contest going on. Sorry the light is appalling but that's what it was.

Trivia: American athletes to the 1920 Antwerp Olympics rioted aboard the Princess Matoika, the rusted troop carrier bringing them to Belgium. Apparently the sea was rough, the food awful, and the 108 male athletes in below-decks cabins miserable. (Female athletes and a few officials had top-deck cabins.) Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: John Adams, David McCullough.

This week my popular humor blog drew the highest compliment that can be awarded a humor blog: my dad texted me to say how it cracked him up. Can you spot which of the below entries did it? I'll tell you after the set.

• MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 5
• Statistics April: In Which People Look To Me For Something Not Comic-Strip-Related
• Statistics Saturday: Some Minor Star Wars Characters, So Far As You Know
• Here's Something That Seems to Avoid Comics Kingdom's Newest Broken-Ness
• Might It Even Take Me to East Amwell? No, Probably Not That Far
• What's Going On In Gil Thorp? Why are Gil Thorp characters addressing the reader? February - May 2024
• Next They'll Tell Me ‘Goethals' Was a Real Person
• MiSTed: Jaded Views, Part 6

It was the one about the Outerbridge Crossing, which he --- like everyone --- had assumed was not named for a person literally named ``Outerbridge''. I mean, come on, what kind of reality is that to be in?

Sign promising that you'll get a good show if you feed the carp (quite true) or the geese that are totally not lifted off a forgotten Columbia Studios cartoon.

Wishing fountain that's not far from the fish-and-goose sign. It's extremely modernist in its construction, with the centerpiece a metal bowl with a few cutouts. It feels aesthetically challenging to the rest of the park and I'd love to know why it, and some similar sculptures, are here.

Door leading to some manner of gift shop. Also the blocks by the side spell out, crossword-puzzle style, (horizontally, top to bottom) 'DONT', 'DO', 'STOP', and 'MAY', and (vertically, left to right) 'DOTS', 'TOY', 'DO', and 'PUP'. This means something.

Picture showing the sign for the Boardwalk Shops, seen reflected in the puddle from the log flume overflow.

View of the Cornball Express station as seen from the steps leading to the Hoosier Hurricane. It's got quite the look of a small warm space in the middle of a NASA rocket launch gantry.

Rocky's Round-Up, seen from above and with the lights on in the dark so it looks even more like a toy.

Yet another view of the Boardwalk Shops, and other stores, with the cinematic wet pavement reflecting so much light.

Tracking shot of the Indiana Beach chariot on the carousel. My best of this set of attempted trick photos. You can see the LEDs flickering off and on in the streaks of the poles and such.

bunnyhugger organizing herself for the ride, plus a view of the center post by night.

Once again I am impressed that something painted white and with a nearby light will be very bright against the dark night backdrop. I'm also very impressed with this object permanence thing but I don't think it'll catch on.

Wooden carving of I.B.Crow that's placed near the water's edge. Also near the bathrooms. The main thing is it's not near any light sources and I always forget to photograph it until I have to use my flash.

Frankenstein's Castle bringing its own green illumination to the night. Everything's closed up by this point but the animatronics are still inviting folks to try the place out.

Trivia: Good and Plenty was first manufactured by the Quaker City Confectionary Company of Philadelphia in 1893, and is the oldest branded candy still on the shelves in United States stores. Source: Sweets: A History of Temptation, Tim Richardson.

Currently Reading: The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, Samuel Flagg Bemis.

After the Puppeteering SIG petered out we went across the hall to the Rodents SIG. This, as usual, involved a bunch of people introducing themselves and their rodents or, in my case, their relationship with rodents. Yes, there were cats popping in too. There were also people in suit, including someone in an Emperor Rat costume that was amazing for being extremely pear-shaped. I'm not sure how he could fit his thighs through a door, let alone manage getting up or down steps.

Where the SIG diverged from any that bunnyhugger might have run is that after everyone had the chance to talk a bit, the event moved downstairs, joining the Pipsqueakery area to look at actual rodents, plus rabbits, plus a pigeon and some goats and some baby chicks and all. The thing most astounding to me, here, is that the Pipsqueakery allowed people into the enclosure --- including people in fursuit, despite their limited visibility and diminished flexibility in case they start to fall. The Emperor Rat particularly was trying to coax any of the rats into his paw but they were suspicious of what the heck all this could even be about. One can understand where they're coming from.

We also finally got to the dealers den, which opened late due to the bomb scare and all. It had a new location, held in the detached building in back of the hotel. It's the one where my failed Raccoons and Procyonids SIG had been a couple years ago. The location doesn't seem to have hurt the den's popularity any, though; the place was just shy of being too busy for me to be comfortable. Along the way bunnyhugger reconnected with someone who'd done some of her oldest sketchbook art and I, at least, thought really hard about this t-shirt showing the ``dragons of the American Midwest''. It had this nice collection of what looked like 70s fanzine dragon art of dragon shapes, many of which looked to me like geographic in-jokes. Drawn by some Michigander, I assume, because the Ohio dragon had some particularly insulting name and pathetic appearance. While I support the making of stuff like this, though, I didn't need to buy it.

We missed the memo about Closing Ceremonies being pushed back an hour, so did more sniffing around and trying to catch people and, I'm pretty sure, getting more of the diet Faygo varieties they had in Hospitality. When Closing Ceremonies did start, though, it saw a lot of the familiar notes. Also two startling ones. The first is that the Pipsqueakery would not be Motor City Furry Con's charity next year. They'd put in a new convention bylaw that the same charity couldn't be picked more than three years running. I'm not sure I would rate that as worth a rule --- you could just make the choice --- but do understand the logic in spreading the charity potential around and not making an automatic choice out of the thing. (That said, there's danger in picking an animal-related charity, as see the doubts we had but could never substantiate, or refute, about that guy with the sloth from back in like 2014 or 2015 or so.)

The other was the announcement for next year's theme: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We were startled that we'd never encountered that theme at a furry con before. Surely someone's done it in at least one of the estimated 760 furry cons of the past ten years but, considering how core it was to the Gen X Nerd sense of humor it ... probably should have been used in the 90s, if cons had themes back then, and this might be the last time it could. (Do young nerds still read/listen/watch it, or do they just know that 42 is a funny number for some reason?)

A very small surprise is that they didn't ask people to help them out by clearing chairs away so the main ballroom could be repurposed to the Dead Dog Dance. Instead we spent the time between the two events somehow meeting more people and popping in to Hospitality. And then, for the dance, bunnyhugger once again suited as Velveteen, this time inviting me into the Headless Lounge to help her get in suit. Previous times she'd done the important dressing --- the part she needed help with --- in our hotel room but as we didn't have that, I had to come into an area I'd previously never visited. It was ... about like you'd expect, people in partial or no fursuit drinking cold water and letting fans blow cold air on them.

Still, all fun stuff ends, too soon, and the dance was among them. We went to Hospitality again, where the beer was running out (the popcorn was not) and foiled our resolution to set out early, so we wouldn't be getting in to our hotel room ridiculously late. If it were any other weekend, we'd have stuck around another hour or so and headed for home. But this was April 7th. The Eclipse was tomorrow.

Let's enjoy a touch more of Indiana Beach; getting to the evening now, which comes fast when you would rather stay out for an extra day or two.

Here's the Hoosier Hurricane (above) and Cornball Express (below) as seen from the platform of Tig'rr Coaster (to the right).

And here's Tig'rr, with the tig'rr holding the ride sign.

Rocky's Toybox is the name given to the kiddieland rides, which include the Rocky's Roundup carousel. So far as I'm aware there isn't a full-body picture of Rocky, at least on park signs.

Oh, and here's the kiddieland Ferris wheel, an Eli Bridge company #6, complete with LED packaging so it looks much brighter than it would have when new. It's underneath the Hoosier Hurricane.

Hand-painted signs, some of them accurate (such as pointing to the Skyroom Restaurant, the Boardwalk Grill, and the offices) and some obsolete (21 was a roll-a-ball game) outside the museum.

More views of the museum, which has a great set of old signs and such set in the window.

Trivia: The airship Macon had a top speed of about 85 miles per hour. The Sparrowhawk aircraft it carried were faster, and risked stalling out when slowing to dock with the mothership, done at not less than 63 mph. Source: When Giants Ruled The Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, John J Geoghegan. The planes docked to a hook underneath the blimps, to maximize your chances of noping out of that.

Currently Reading: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, Jacob Soll. Embarrassed to realize I was conflating Jean-Baptiste Colbert and John Law, who for crying out loud are from different centuries and one different Louis, which makes me realize oh, that's why everyone treated me like that in middle school.

Happy doctorversary, dear bunnyhugger.

So Sunday I repeated my morning raid of the breakfast buffet, naturally. We got going as close to check-out time of 11 am as possible. We didn't actually get out before 11, or even all that close to it, but we figured we didn't have anything to get to at Motor City Furry Con until noon so what was the rush? And then we saw the fire truck parked across the entrance and gathered what had been going on. We parked a while in the strip mall opposite the convention hotel (and not far from ours) and reflected on how we understood now why there were so many groups of furries hanging around outside the McDonald's and all. We had decided to take the daily walk --- bunnyhugger never misses her half-hour daily walk --- on the golf course grounds, but we were waylaid by more folks we hadn't seen in years who were at the con and ended up talking with them, learning about such things as the Pine Shrine, until we saw the fuss of the hotel getting cleared and everyone moving back in.

I forget now what we hoped to get to at noon, and for some reason Motor City's web site no longer shows this year's schedule (in past years they'd leave it up until the next convention's schedule was ready), so it doesn't matter. We were left wondering what they'd do about the scheduled events as the convention got back together. Holding the dealer's den and artist's alley open an extra hour, and moving the closing ceremonies back an hour, were the big things. We didn't know about closing ceremonies moving and so had an unexpected hour to kick around in the afternoon.

There were two panels we wanted to get to, though. The first was a surprise to see on the schedule, a puppeteering panel. Puppeteering used to be a major thread of furry conventions, and when the professionals stopped doing that bunnyhugger and I tried running it for a few years with our scraps of knowledge. But we hadn't tried that since before the pandemic began and we were startled to see someone was doing it again. So we brought a couple of our puppets in and waited eagerly to see who was doing this and what they had to share.

We would wait a long while. While a half-dozen or so people showed up and a few people drifted in and out, the organizer never showed up. After a half-hour or so someone who seemed connected to the convention explained that there had been something where because of (reason) the rooms for the puppeteering and the Rodents events --- set a half-hour apart, the only things overlapping on the original Sunday schedule --- had been swapped and that was probably the source of the confusion. I think we had the sense that the presenter was going to come to our room --- nothing seemed to be happening in the Rodents SIG room --- and ultimately, while we talked a bit with other people who puppeteered or wanted to, whoever was leading the panel never appeared and we never got a clear idea of what we should be doing instead.

I hope there's a puppeteering panel next year and also that we find it successfully.

Now, let's see if we can't get back to Indiana Beach a little:

The Musik Express/Himalaya, seen from the back. As it's also either entrance or exit you get a sense of how crowded the land-starved park is.

The board-free boardwalk, looking up its length, as the sun gets seriously into setting. The bricks in the lower middle are inscribed with the names of people sponsoring them.

Animatronic welcoming us to Frankenstein's Castle, the walk-through haunted house that we didn't go to, for the first time.

The steps leading up to the Hoosier Hurricane and also Rocky's Rapids. If you peek in the background, on the right, you can also see where some of the eating pavilions have a sign for the 'UPPER' level, which was closed that day.

Cornball Express and Tig'rr Coaster seen in motion together.

And peeking down from the Hoosier Hurricane platform to see Rocky's Roundup carousel looking even more toy-like than usual. Note that the chariot has shields with the initials 'I' and 'B' for some reason.

Trivia: Legend has it that in returning from the Spanish campaign of 778, Charlemagne passed through Roquefort and, served cheese by the monks of St-Gall, immediately started cutting out the moldy blue parts. The monks convinced him the blue was the best part of the cheese and, in the end, they were tasked with providing the emperor two wheels of Roquefort a year until his death in 814. Source: Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky describes this as ``not well-documented'' and I admit I'd be skeptical, among other things, of an eighth century cheese resembling a modern cheese in any important way.

Currently Reading: The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, Jacob Soll.