Monday, October 31, 2022

10-31


It's the finest day of the year, and I'm traveling.  My body clock continues to be mis-working, because even though our plan was to get up at seven to make the seven-thirty train two blocks away, by six-thirty I was awake and showered.  Jeff's philosophy is that it's better to be early than late, so we packed up our stuff and headed out.  I wanted to thank the staff here, but they looked at me like I was way out of line, so I have yet to understand the European way of doing things.  I had packed an apple and a Coke Zero in my backpack, and we took the Tube one last time (I asked a bloke if I could sit down beside him and he blinked and said, "Wha?  Of course."), getting off at King's Cross, then lining up to go through passport control.  We are required to take all the things out of our pockets and put our belongings in trays, which go through detectors, and I did so . . . only to wait an inordinate amount of time waiting for my stuff to come through.  

Well, when it did, I found a puddle inside the tray: the Coke Zero had seemingly leaked and/or exploded inside the backpack.  This was unfortunate and did not please me, despite what you would guess.  I carried my more-than-dripping backpack to the nearest trash can and emptied it as best I could into it.  A row or two away, an employee was cleaning up the floor where someone had dropped their coffee cup, and when I asked her for some paper towels, Jeff looked at me like I had decided to start beefing my stroganoff there in the terminal.  That also did not please me.  

Eventually, I made it through customs and found a restroom where I could try to clean out my backpack.  They had no paper towels there (which again, unfortunate), but I held the bag open in front of the air hand dryers over and over again as their five second cycles ended and started again.  Yippee.

Finally, I thought I had it dry enough, but after we stood to get on the train to Paris, I noticed yet another unsightly puddle where my bag had sat.  Happy Halloween.

Now we're leaving England and on our way to Paris.  The celebrity of this visit, sleeping next to Emily, is Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff.  I've never liked her or found her very attractive, but this look-alike is nice.

The ride was uneventful, but when we got to Paris rail station, I didn't know how to do things, and had a bit of an incident because of it.  So, in England they have these things called Oyster cards, where you put money on a card, and swipe the card going into and out of the Underground stations (it also works on the big double-decker buses too).  It is pretty brilliant, and supremely useful.  In Paris, you have to buy your ticket from a little kiosk, then feed that ticket (about the size of a movie stub back in the day) into a machine that eats it and spits it out at the top.  Emily explained it to me, but when we were going through a checkpoint, I expected the ticket to come out where I'd inserted it, not at the top, so while I looked for it, the five or six seconds they give you to get through the gate were counting down, so when I tried to go through, the doors closed on me.  Literally, I was stuck in there, with my shoulder, arm, and backpack on one side of the entrance and the rest of me on the other.

The offending ticket.

Now, thank God Jeff and Emily were there with me, because Jeff used his hands to pry the doors open again, while Emily pulled my backpack inside, or I would've been stuck there, calling for help in a language nobody around me understood.  It bothered me for, oh, the next hour, thinking about it.  And now it's bothered me again . . . just like those damned self-closing doors in Cloud City bothered me as a little kid, wondering what would happen if you waited just a second too long stepping through one of them.  Fudge, now I'm thinking of old people or fat people or little kids going through, not knowing you have a very short time limit to get through the gates, and getting stuck, caught, or smashed in there like a mouse in a trap.  Shudder.

Eventually, we took a subterranean train to take us to Chessy, which I believe was the city Disneyland is in.  It went fast, up and down, underground and over it.  I've been on more trains this week than I have my whole life leading up to this trip.  An old beggar lady (she might have been a nun, I'm not judging) approached me on the train for a hand-out, and it was the first time that had happened this trip.  I would be approached twice more on that same train (once by a child, once by a twenty-something kid), but I find it odd that there were only beggars in Paris, of all the places we went (there were bullshit artists in Venice, but that ain't the same thing).

We were staying in the Hotel New York, which Jeff had stayed in before and said I would like because it had--get this--a Marvel Comics theme.  And man, it was not subtle.  There were paintings everywhere, decor, memorabilia, and life-sized statues of Iron Man (three inside and one outside).  

We had to go through Security to get in the building (which was unusual), and our room was on the Captain America floor, with a huge mural outside the elevator doors (the floor above us was dedicated to Thor). 

This ain't a great picture (or even good), but the soap was molded into the shape of the Avengers logo.

There are two Disney parks, just like in Anaheim, and we had those tickets where you could go to either one.  They had been there a bunch of times, so the only thing they hadn't been on were the two Marvel rides, built since their last visit.


Before we went into the park, Jeff wanted to eat (pretty much the default mode for him), and proposed we go to the big steakhouse beside the park.  But I was worried about the prices, and Jeff said, "Don't worry, I got it."  That was super generous, in a week of unbelievable generosity, but man, when I saw the prices . . . I felt dirty about it.  I'm talking: putting on your big sister's bra and prancing around in front of her mirror-level dirty.*  This effing place was so expensive that when I asked for ketchup, they provided me with a little personal two Euro bottle, that was just for me.

The Disney parks were open, and the crowds were very, very large, which (it turned out) was due to it being a fall break at many schools in the European Union, and also Halloween Day.  When leaving London and entering Paris, I had waved at and/or congratulated anyone I saw wearing a costume, but by the time we'd walked through the strip mall of Disney shops outside the parks, I had stopped doing so--there were just too many.

I have to tip my hat to the thousands of European souls that liked Halloween enough to go somewhere to collectively celebrate it, but it did make for a lot of congestion, especially trying to get into the park's gates, and anywhere there were rides.  We went into Disneyland, and headed toward Phantom Manor, and just before we got there, a huge spider was crossing the cobblestone sidewalk, and the attendees were shrieking and pointing at it.  It was not quite tarantula-sized, but it was bigger than any spider I've run into outside of the desert.  I took it as a cool Halloween omen . . . until Jeff said that somebody was bound to stomp on it.

We made our way to the Phantom Manor, where the line was insanely long (understandably so, considering the date).  But that's what we were there for.

I had wanted to see Phantom Manor for years, and I had plenty of time to wait, as the line snaked all around the property, and we watched those with the new Fastpass-equivalents bypass all of us to go on ahead (this was a delightful scam wherein those willing to pay nine Euros FOR EACH RIDE could skip the line and enter on the other side, when, honestly, part of going to parks like this is standing in the line . . . heck, it may be an integral part).  It's very similar to Disneyland's The Haunted Mansion, but all in French--just like all the rides there--but with a more morbid, actively scary theme to it.

Basically, Phantom Manor has a story to it, about a beautiful young woman named Melanie, whose evil father (I didn't realize he was the father on the ride, I just figured he was basically me) keeps her from her interested male suitors, and locks her away in a haunted house until she gives in to despair and essentially becomes a ghost.  The Phantom is a very coolly-designed ghost that shows up multiple times during the ride, and was initially voiced by Vincent Price, only to have all that dropped when French officials insisted the dialogue be in French instead of English.

A couple of years ago, however, they came up with a way to have their gâteau and eat it too by having one line in English, followed by one line in French, and they restored Vincent Price's narration, at least in part.

It has a lot of the Anaheim park's charming characters, like the singing busts and Madame Leota, but at the beginning, you get this awesome scene of the broken-hearted bride standing by a huge window with a raging storm outside, and at the end, there are all these rotting corpses popping up and reaching for you in a delightfully non-kid-friendly way.

I've mentioned that I haven't written anything but this (damned) blog on my Eurotrip, but at the end of the ride, when the ghost of Melanie the Bride appeared and said (in English and French), "Will YOU marry me?" it really made me want to write a scary story where that exact thing happens.

I mentioned congestion in the park before, and while it did exist, it was in certain parts of the park, like where the parade or fireworks were, but in other spots, there was virtually nobody.  We went into the section where the Indiana Jones ride was, and the sign said the wait was thirty minutes, so we went inside.  The wait wasn't thirty minutes, though . . . it was nothing.  There was literally no line for Indiana Jones et le Temple du Peril, but there were also no lights once you got on it.  So, we went on an outdoor rollercoaster in the dark, cool night, and then got off, went around, and got on it again.  It's a fun coaster, but it didn't even have John Williams music playing on it, so it didn't feel like Indy Jones in any way to me.  We did it three times (still with zero line) until Jeff said he couldn't stand it anymore, then we walked through the COCO-decorated Mexican Afterlife portion of the park, and then . . . well, nothing.

They seemed to be closing early (to me, anyway, I don't know what was really going on), but while the fireworks went off over Sleeping Beauty's castle, a mass exodus out of the park was created by the employees, and oddly, instead of making everyone go out through the main gates, they opened the backstage portions of the park where only employees are allowed, and that's how we left Disneyland.**

The other park, Walt Disney Studios Park, was open an hour later, and we went inside, but only to look at the souvenir shops, which all had the same things for sale, and do battle with the crowds, all of whom had the same idea as us.

They had these big inflatable ghosts outside the park, and Emily wanted to take a picture with them, but the crowds were thick enough we told ourselves we'd hit it up the next day, when the crowds were thinner.  But the next day, they were gone.

Had they ever truly been there to begin with?

We made our way back to the New York Hotel, which was about a half mile away, but Jeff was grateful it wasn't the hotel he'd stayed in the first time, which was another mile down the road.

But wait, there's more!


*Jeff spent on this one meal what I spend in an entire week on food.

**It may sound cool that we got to go through a section nobody gets to go through, but it was just trailers and tables and the backs of attractions, and felt like we were walking behind a Walmart or something.


Rish Outcast 234: Murder Maze


In a surprise Halloween episode, Rish presents his short story "Murder Maze."  Of course, every day is Halloween in his world.

To download this be-otch, Right-Click HERE.

To support this be-astard on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Manslaughter Maze" Moretto.

Note: You're getting this episode early, because . . . well, beneficence, really.  You hardly deserve it.

Sunday, October 30, 2022

10-30

Day 7

Today was our big sightseeing day in London.  And the weather was the absolute epitome of how they describe the weather here: overcast, windy, rainy, gray.  But it wasn't bad.  In fact, worried about the cold, I wore my heaviest winter sweater (the one I take to the cabin in case I can't make a fire quickly enough), and that was probably too much.

Happy Halloween, ladies.

Jeff and Emily got up at five, as they usually do, and left me in the room to go get breakfast between six and nine, so I think it was the one day this whole trip where I got to sleep in.  I didn't get any breakfast, though, and they showed me photos of the empty streets and them cavorting in the rain.

There was an NFL game there in London that afternoon, so the abhorrent Americans were out and about, wearing their football jerseys and eating with their mouths open (showing off those beastly cosmetically-straightened teeth of theirs).  So that was a negative, but hey, it was also the day before Halloween, so there were folks out celebrating that, which is a plus.


We took the Underground into London, then walked around for a few hours.  I found a few--not a lot, but enough--Halloween decorations, despite the fact that the business district (even the pubs, four-star restaurants, and dentists' offices) was all closed.*  This was the most elaborate decoration I saw, so I used it for my October 31st Facebook message:

Jeff and Emily had been on a tour up and down the Thames, so they suggested we do the same today.  We also went by (and inside) the London Eye, the giant wheel from that first episode of "Doctor Who."

Yes, I'm aware it was not the FIRST episode of "Doctor Who."  But I'm also aware of the kind of people who would take issue with that statement . . . so it stands.

There were thousands and thousands of tourists throughout this section of London, to see the palace, to see Parliament, to see the towers and the bridges and the streets and the famous buildings.  Whether there were too many tourists, or London's streets are simply too small, I'll let you decide.  But in the morning, when we were alone in the business district, it didn't seem so small anymore.


I already said I could get lost anywhere, but come on!

This was what appeared to be the oldest and most run-down part of the Underground/Tube, so I got a picture with Jeff of it.**


I'm sure a tour of the sights of London is something you only need to experience once, but I got two in as many days.  

Apparently, we've been calling the Elizabeth Tower "Big Ben" all our lives, when it's the bell inside the tower that's Big Ben.

We also went up in the Ferris Wheel, with a bunch of strangers, and took turns taking pictures from each vantage point.  Everybody was pretty civilized and patient in there, but I understand, if you were stuck up there with a madman, a Jehovah's Witness, or Barnaby the Flatulent, it would be a totally different story.


We did quite a bit of walking, with Jeff depending greatly on his new walking stick.







One of the things I had wanted to do in London was pee at a urinal that a hundred other men that hour had used without flushing.  But another thing I had wanted to do was eat fish and chips in a pub or restaurant.  We found one across from the Thames (located conveniently right next to the London Dungeon!), and I was surprised to discover that the staff at the fish and chips place were all done up as murder victims.  While I personally love it, seeing servers with fake blood running down their faces might not be the most appetizing thing for customers to see.


While we're on the subject of things I wanted to do while in Europe, I had set an admittedly-weird goal of seeing the Gherkin Building in person, and getting a picture with it.  So, here is a picture of me with it:


The jerk and the gherk.

And here is a picture of me grasping the Gherkin (Warning: explicit content):

Later, Emily asked if we had any interest in seeing the Globe Theater, which is a recreation of the original Globe, which was built in 1599.  It was financed by American actor/director Sam Wanamaker, when he discovered that there were no replicas in the UK, and a mere plaque (now a parking lot) where the original Globe stood.






It was really cool, and everything was astoundingly period-accurate and reverent to the Bard.  Even the hand sanitiser dispensers were in theme:


At the end of each night, I open up my laptop and try to catch up on what's happening (shockingly, I've gotten about two emails each day that I've been gone, despite me usually getting between ten and twenty a day back home), while Jeff and Emily go to sleep.  I blog a little bit, but haven't been good to post the entries (which I don't really care about, as long as I'm writing up a little bit of what I do each day).  There's no way I would remember any details if I waited until I came home to write it down (which will be a pain when it comes time to podcast, I'm sure), and many times each day, I think, "Oh, that's interesting; I'll have to remember to mention that in my blog later."  And then I don't.




*Just kidding.  Only one of those things is real.

**Jeff seems pretty averse to taking pictures (in fact, he is averse to using his cellphone), but Emily likes to.  She'll often make me and Jeff line up somewhere to pose for a picture, and later, she and I did so with each other, while Jeff hung back and looked surly.  Emily's iPhone camera is about five times better than my Android camera is (okay, maybe only four times better), and some of her pictures of the same thing I took a picture of look like two different locations, due to the colors and detail.  It's pretty strange.










Saturday, October 29, 2022

10-29

Day 6

You know, I'm not often sick.  Oh, maybe three days a year I'm feeling bad enough to call it a sick day.  But I've been sick for several days in a row this year: first back in April when the Star Wars Celebration was happening, and now in October when I'm on my Europe trip.  There was a time when I would've laid the blame at the feet of a vengeful God.  But now I'm wondering if it isn't some kind of self-inflicted psychological thing.  Wouldn't be the first time.

I'm muddling through, though (a couple of days later, I found out Jeff was sick too, with the exact same symptoms).

Today's major activity was a cycling tour through London.  I don't know what it cost (Emily booked it), but we each got one of those bikes with an electric motor in it, and I'd never been on one before (I've also never ridden a polar bear either, if you're boasting about all the stuff you've done).  Our tourguide was a dude from Marikesh (I forget what his name was--but Emily had it written down, and since she's right next to me, she even spelled it for me: Younes), and I liked him because he spoke with the exact same accent as Nandor the Relentless on "What We Do In The Shadows."  

There was a group of about ten of us, all with bikes, and we were not only supposed to follow Unus the Untouchable, but were supposed to do it single file.  None of us knew the area, how to navigate the insane bike lanes (it was like a video game out there--one of those cruel video games you give up on after dying three seconds in), or knew where we were going.  But amazingly, only one person got lost on the whole tour.

If you have ever known me IRL (that's In Real Life, if you don't speak Klingon), it's a pretty good bet you can predict which one of us it was.  I once got lost in my little town of nine hundred people . . . and I was in a car.

So, there was a family that was riding together, and they were right ahead of me, and for some reason, the dad decided to run a red light to stay with the group (Unus had told us not to, and that the rest of us would wait for them), and his wife and kid thought, "Okay, we'll run it too."  But me, I thought, I've seen how people are driving--ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BLEEDING ROAD, FOR PUCK'S SAKE!!!--and how short the light cycles are here, so I'll wait.  But nobody else did.  

When the light finally changed, I rode hard forward, but could no longer see any of my bicycling group.  I guess they turned left to turn right . . . and if that makes sense to you, you must live in the UK.  So I rode around looking for people on e-bikes, and eventually, Unus the Untouchable found me* and led me back to the other nine, who were taking pictures of the British government buildings.


Because the tour moved so fast (and I was always lagging behind), I didn't get to even LOOK at the front of this statue of Winston Churchill . . . but it turns out that Emily did.


We went all around town, and saw many things, wherein Unus would briefly tell us about them (like Gabriel's wharf, the Globe theater, the London Eye, the Thames, Parliament, a shoppe that stocked Dr. Pepper, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the spot where King Arthur beheaded Morgana), and I thought it could've been three hours instead of just two.




We've had lots of rides on the train these past few days.

Jeff and Emily

One of the day's activities was to go to the cane store to get Jeff a walking stick (and an umbrella), so we went to James Smith & Sons, a London cane shop that has existed for two hundred years.  There were swarthy young employees inside the shop, but the man who helped us was an older, distinguished gentleman with an accent so cultured and classy that my IQ went up sixteen points just talking to him.

This appears to be the only photo I took inside the cane shop.  I was sure I'd taken a better one, but it's not on my phone.

Jeff ended up getting a walking stick (out of the wood and topper of his preference), cut to his arm length, and an umbrella that was also tailor-made for him.  He considered getting a cane that doubled as a chair, but it was deeply uncomfortable (we've all sat on things we shouldn't have over the years, and this experience was nearly as shameful).  It boggles my mind that a store could exist that only sells the one thing, but it also makes me feel hopeful about the human race that such things exist, at least somewhere.

Jeff really wanted to see HALLOWEEN ENDS, and we went to two theaters to find one that had it.  I had heard only bad things, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.  Having seen all the installments (except for the second HALLOWEEN 2), I'm glad I saw it, and the movie did some unique things, with varying levels of success.  

I had brought my laptop with me, and it made my bag so heavy that only a bodybuilder wouldn't complain about it.  I think it's clear I'll have to start saving up for a new one soon (it's partly my own darn fault because I asked Dell to get me a laptop with a DVD drive in it, and they said, "What the eff?  Why would you want that?" and I told them so I could take it to the cabin and watch videos on it, and they said they'd see what they could do.  But sadly, the DVD ROM stopped working early in the year, so it's just dead weight now . . . and a lot of it).  At the rate I've been making money, I should have enough in about 2041.  


Over the last few days, I feel I have seen every inch of the London Underground (while of course that's not true, I've seen the old bits that date from the end of the nineteenth century, to the new stuff they built in the twenty-first), but it's been interesting to see how many people they can stuff in there at a time (Saturday night was the worst, when there were so many people trying to get on the trains that they made announcements redirecting the lines to the doors that are marked No Entrance.  We were absolutely jammed in there, with no room to maneuver, all the seats taken, and every one of the hand grips for standing passengers taken also.  I checked just now, and the daily average number of riders on all the lines is 1.8 million.

*This name I keep calling him is not (necessarily) a racial slur.  It's just that there was an X-men villain called that, and it's pronounced the same way.  I don't remember things that happened on this trip, even though it was mere hours before, but I can remember an ultra-obscure Marvel Comics character (he had a red suit) that will never, ever come up again.