Rocket Booster

I got my Covid-19 booster shot just in time for the Omicron Variant to start the whole mess all over again.

The Hottest Toys Of '84

Toys R Us flyer
November 29, 1984

I spent a good part of my pre-k childhood trying to feed a stormtrooper action figures to the Rancor.

The Food That Bites You Back

Food Freaks
Horror Decor (2021)

These awesome stickers are available at Horror Decor, and I had to have 'em!  The artwork by Matthew Skiff mashes up classic horror movie villains in the style of one of my favorite lines of action figures when I was a kid, Food Fighters.

There are five stickers in the pack - Cheesy Krueger, Jumbo Dog Jason, Chucky Cheeseburger, Leather-Fried Chicken, and Frosted Cenobite.

They're on sale for six bucks right now, so get 'em while the gettin's good.

So I've Got That Going For Me, Which Is Nice

Caddyshack Gopher Traxs
Serendipity Ice Cream (2021)

Earlier this year, I found Serendipity's ice cream flavor that was inspired by The Goonies.  It was called Sloth & Chunk's Rocky Rooooaad, which was a dark chocolate stuffed with almonds and marshmallow chunks.

This one was inspired by my favorite comedy film of all time, Caddyshack.  It's called Gopher Traxs, which is made up of vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and a salted caramel swirl.  Very tasty!

They've got one more movie flavor that I'd like to try.  It's called Oh Fudge Peppermint Cookie Fudge Sundae, and it's inspired by A Christmas Story.  So far, I've only been able to find Serendipity Ice Cream at Giant and Wawa, and neither of them had it yet.

It's The Biggest Shopping Day Of The Year, I Tell You...

Life Is Cruel socks
Tears For Fears (2021)

Who says socks can't be the perfect holiday gift?  Don't get me wrong, I love Tears For Fears.  I've been a fan of their music since I was five years old, I've been to see them in concert twice, and I'm going to see them again when they go on tour for their new album.  However, I've got to draw the line at $20 socks that say "life is tough" and "life is cruel".

It's not quite as strange as the Ropeless Jump Rope or the Harlem Globetrotters email that I got on Black Friday, but it's up there.

Happy Thanksgiving

Dad came over for Thanksgiving dinner, and Little Harvey has been glued to his side since he got here.

An Italian Thanksgiving

Aldi's stocks some pretty awesome seasonal goodies throughout the year.  Some of the things that I found earlier this month were Turkey Cranberry and Bourbon Sweet Potato Ravioli, and a jar of Pumpkin Chipotle pasta sauce.  They're not going to replace turkey and stuffing for Thanksgiving day, but they made a delicious lunch earlier this week.

I'm looking forward to seeing if they have any interesting ravioli flavors for Christmas season.

The Return Of The Amish Comic

Raymond The Amish Comic
Cinema & Drafthouse - West Hazleton, PA

A few months before the pandemic began, we went to see Raymond The Amish Comic on the night before Thanksgiving.  It was only two years ago, but with all of the craziness that has happened in the world since that night, it feels like it could have been a hundred.  At the time, we had never heard of the phrase "social distancing", and if you had said coronavirus to me, I would have thought you caught something from a bottle of beer.

Raymond wasn't able to perform in Hazleton last year at this time when the world was still shut down, but I'm glad to say that he's back in 2021.  He was hysterically funny as always.  If you ever have a chance to see him, definitely don't miss it.

It was a very nice night out with the family, and a great kickoff to Thanksgiving weekend.  Hope to do it again next year!

Back To The Conyngham Brewing Company

I've been working my way through the draught list at the Conyngham Brewing Company.  Last time, I had the Grodziskie, the Jalapeno Lager and the Gruit.  Last Saturday, I tried three more.  From left to right, they are Ginger Lemongrass Saison, Into Darkness, and Shipwreck Stout II.

I enjoyed all of them, but the Ginger Lemongrass was by far my favorite of the three.  Into Darkness was very good, but it's also very sweet.  It would be perfect to have while sitting in front of a fireplace watching the snow fall on a cold winter night.

Admire As Much As You Can

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
Tower Theater - Upper Darby, PA

We originally had tickets to see this exhibition on Halloween, but it got crossed up with our plans to go to the Mahoning Drive-In for Dee Wallace Night.  As luck would have it, my dad had tickets to the same show for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, so we just swapped tickets.

We got the VIP package, which includes a VR experience at the end of the exhibit and a poster print of The Starry Night from the gift shop.  We also got to skip the line, which was pretty cool since they were doing timed entries due to the Covid pandemic.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience is being held in cities all over the world.  It has already finished its run in Brussels, Linz, Naples, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Hangzhou and Holon, and is currently being exhibited in New York, Boston, Houston, Miami, Seattle, London and Berlin, among other places.  Locally, it's being shown at the historic Tower Theater in Upper Darby, just outside of Philadelphia.

There were several rooms with displays, including a timeline of the life of Vincent Van Gogh, facts about his art, and lit displays of many of his most famous works.  These included my favorite of his paintings, Cafe Terrace At Night, which he finished in 1888.  There was also an app that you could download and use as you were going through the exhibition, but I couldn't get it to work on my phone.

It was pretty crowded, and the lighting made it difficult to take pictures without a reflection (especially for the written displays), but it was very nicely put together and a lot of fun to walk through.

This is a moment where I really wish I had headphones.  It was a beautiful three dimensional display of a vase with Van Gogh's artwork projected onto it, with peaceful music playing.  It was sort of nestled down a short, dark hallway with benches on the left and right hand side where you could sit and get lost for a while.  Well, you could have if not for the nonstop conversation from random strangers.  I get it.  This display is for everyone, and folks have the right to chit chat with each other, but I really do wish I could have sat here by myself for a little while.

This display was the centerpiece of the display that showed the influence that Japanese artwork had on Van Gogh's own work.  He never had the opportunity to travel to Japan in his short life, but in letters to his brother Theo, he admired the Ukiyo-e woodblock paintings.  Many of his works blend elements of this style with his own.

 

There was a three dimensional walk-in display of the three paintings that Van Gogh did of his bedroom.  This reminded me a lot of the Seward Johnson work that we saw at Grounds For Sculpture earlier this year.

The exhibit had a display that puts The Bedroom paintings into context.  Van Gogh lived in this room at 2 Place Lamartine in Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône in the South of France from 1888 - 1889, so when you look at these three works, you are seeing, through the artists eyes, the place where Van Gogh slept in the years that they were painted.

 

On May 8th, 1889, Van Gogh committed himself to the Saint Paul de Mausole asylum.  He had a studio space at the asylum where he finished 150 paintings and nearly 100 drawings in a single year.  Many of these works are of the asylum itself, including the entrance hall, which he painted in 1889.  It was represented at the exposition by a three dimensional display.  It wasn't quite as deep as the one of The Bedroom, but definitely very cool.

The main event of Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience was a large sitting room with high definition projectors on all sides of the room.  It really is something that has to be experienced because a written description or a photo isn't going to do justice to how incredible it feels to lay back and surround yourself with the works of Vincent Van Gogh.  The projections have animated parts of his work and added voiceovers from letters that the artist wrote to his brother.

We stayed in this room for a long time.  I took a few video clips and stitched them together to a single file.

The video really doesn't capture how amazing this display is.  If you have the opportunity to see this exhibit in a city near you, please do so.  It's not very expensive, and it's definitely an experience worth having.

 

The next room in the exhibition was a studio area with pages to color your own Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece and share it with other art lovers.

I've scanned four of the coloring pages from the exhibit, just in case someone happens to stumble on this page who wasn't able to make it to the exhibit before it closes, or if it never runs in their area.  There were many more available, so if you go, you'll find a lot more than these.

Click on one of the images above to load a full size jpeg to print and color.

Last, but not least, there was a virtual reality experience at the end of the exhibition.  It's included if you get the VIP tickets, but it cost five dollars if you didn't, but it's definitely worth five bucks.  I fully acknowledge that I sound like an old man when it comes to VR, but this technology truly is amazing.  When I was growing up, the two things that pop culture always promised that the future would bring to us is virtual reality and flying cars.  While I don't expect flying cars any time soon, VR is just a few small steps away from creating high definition virtual worlds that are visually indistinguishable from the outside world.

The Van Gogh virtual experience was like walking through an animated world that resembled his paintings, with stops along the way of places and things that inspired his works, with the painting shown alongside these locations.  There was a narration that made it feel like Van Gogh himself was taking you through a tour of a part of his life, starting and ending at his bedroom.

 

The only thing that's a little tricky about coming to the Philadelphia exhibition is parking.  I'm not sure if The Tower Theater has a parking lot, but I couldn't find it if it does.  We just parked on the street about a block up from the theater.  The parking meters have a two hour time limit, so bring quarters and be ready to run out to your car if you need to feed the meter part way through the exhibit.

The Annual Thanksgiving Pre-Show Hoagie

The Gobbler
Wawa - Upper Darby, PA

Northeast PA is Sheetz country, so I have to go a bit out of my way if I want to pick up a Gobbler.  As luck would have it, I was in Philly for the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I was able to get my turkey hoagie.

Wawa makes a few different kinds of Gobbler, but the standard one is made up of chunks of hot turkey with stuffing and cranberry dressing on a classic hoagie roll.

It's a bit of a messy hoagie to eat in the car, but it's well worth it.  You're basically having a Thanksgiving dinner in a bun.  What's not to love about that?

Cinnamon From Mars

Snickers Cinnamon Bun
Mars (2021)

They've come up with a lot of different variations on the Snickers bar in recent years, but I haven't been overly impressed with any of them.  It's not that they weren't good, but the changes didn't really do to much to improve on the original bar, or even to have a significantly different flavor.  They all just kind of taste like Snickers bars with a very slightly different aftertaste or texture.

I'm glad to say that this isn't the case with Snickers Cinnamon Bun.  They definitely have a distinct flavor from the original Snickers bar.  The only thing that's slightly disappointing about them is the name.

This candy bar tastes like a Snickers with cinnamon sugar used in place of sugar.  They're very tasty and worth trying, but nothing about its flavor reminded me of a cinnamon bun.  My guess is that the marketing team found that the name "Cinnamon Bun" tested better with consumers than if they had just called it "Snickers Cinnamon", and I guess I can see their point if that was the case.

Nintendo's Birthday Week

The first two Nintendo consoles to use optical disc media have reached a milestone this week.  The Nintendo Gamecube was released in North America 20 years ago, on November 18th, 2001.  It was followed by the Nintendo Wii, which first became available in the United States exactly 15 years ago today, on November 19th, 2006.

I bought a Gamecube when I was living in Nebraska in the summer of 2002, but I didn't play it too much until many years later.  The Wii is kind of a bittersweet memory for me.  I didn't get the console when it first came out, and didn't even play one until 2010 when I saw a display at the Toys R Us on Times Square when we were in the city to see the A-ha Farewell Tour.  I enjoyed playing it at the store, and my grandparents never know what to get me for Christmas, so I asked for the Wii.  The thing that makes it bittersweet is that 2010 ended up being the last Christmas we all had together as a family when my grandfather was still alive.

Nintendo must really love to release consoles five weeks before Christmas, because in addition to the Gamecube, the Wii U console was also released in North America on November 18th.  It first appeared in 2012 and was the primary Nintendo home console until the Switch was introduced in March 2017.  The Wii U tablet controller is a bit of a hassle, and it doesn't do a great job of staying connected to Wifi, but it's still a pretty good system with a great library of virtual console games that I play often to this day.

MV3

Bryce Harper
2021 National League MVP

This season, the Phillies right fielder hit .309 with 35 homers, and a .429 on-base percentage, and he led all of Major League Baseball with a .615 slugging percentage and a 1.044 OPS.  He put the team on his back and kept the Phillies in the hunt for a playoff spot to the last week of the season.

Earlier today, he was named the NL MVP for the second time in his career, becoming only the fifth player in the history of the sport to win an MVP with two different teams.

Congratulations, Mr. Harper.

Tigers Will Do Anything For A Tuna Fish Sandwich

Calvin And Hobbes
Bill Watterson (1985)

Happy birthday to one of the greatest and most heartfelt works of comedy ever produced.  Calvin and Hobbes was first published in newspapers across the country on this date in 1985.  I don't think I've ever found a character in any work of fiction that I relate more closely to than Calvin, and my love for this comic and my respect for its creator, Mr. Bill Watterson, has only grown as I've gotten older.