The Writing Wombat

A Great Basin and a Lonely Road

A.B. Kelly · October 23, 2024 · Blog Entries, Musings · Driving, Great Basin National Park, Highway 50, national park, nevada, travel, travelblog · No Comments

Earlier this year, I visited five national parks.

Why not add a sixth?

I had the first week of October off as a quarter break, and my mom had always wanted to see Great Basin National Forest. I’d always wanted to drive Highway 50, the “Loneliest Road in America,” so it seemed a great time to tick both of those boxes.

I didn’t bring Daughter on this trip, since she had school and Great Basin wasn’t high on her list. This worked out better for me, since there’s no way she would’ve done Highway 50. If she were included in this trip, we would’ve flown into Salt Lake City.

So her path to 63 is still stalled out at six. If you can call it “stalled out” if she’s added four in a span of seven months. And we might or might not hit Joshua Tree when we visit SoCal for Christmas. Stay tuned…

Baker, Nevada

Although we didn’t fly into SLC, we did in fact circle through there to get to Great Basin. We hit a Boise State Football game and the Golden Spike National Monument (where the first transcontinental railroad was connected) just north of Salt Lake. The whole round trip was over 2,000 miles. Good thing I had a rental car.

So we actually started at the eastern edge of Highway 50, coming in from Utah, which was the opposite of how I always envisioned driving it. Who knew a road goes BOTH directions?

My initial thought, before even getting into Nevada, was that Highway 50 might be the loneliest for humans, but not for bugs. We went over a mountain that Google tells me is called King Top, but which at the time I could only assume was the River Styx, shortly after sundown. Holy Hell! How many plagues deep are we when the locusts kamikaze against the front of your car?

I had literally washed the windshields an hour earlier.

We stayed at a place right on the border of Utah and Nevada, calling itself a hotel and casino, with a very liberal use of both words.

And by “right on the border,” I mean it pretty much straddled it. The hotel portion of the property was in Utah, while the casino portion, obviously, was on the Nevada side. Bear in mind, Nevada and Utah are in different time zones. They told us our check out time was 10:00 am. I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask WHICH 10:00 am, considering the hotel office was in the casino portion.

This played havoc with my electronic devices not just when we were at the hotel, but the entire next day. My car believed we were in Pacific Time, while my watch thought we were in Mountain Time. My phone, which was “roaming” for the first time since the Bush administration, tried to split the difference with this beauty of a save screen:

While it seems like it’s a standard screen for traveling, I’m ninety percent sure it hadn’t been giving me the “Local/Home” split the previous day when we were in Idaho and Utah, which are firmly in the Mountain Zone instead of straddling the two zones. Plus this split times showed up the entire day we were in the Great Basin National Park, which is 100% in the Pacific Zone, but I’m guessing, being on the eastern side of a mountain, was getting all of its (roaming) cell phone signal from Utah.

The casino, meanwhile, consisted of about twenty slot machines that didn’t pay out. They didn’t even print a ticket. When you wanted to cash out, you had to go get the bartender to come zero out the machine, then go back to the bar and get some cash out of the till for you. I usually like going from slot to slot, but didn’t want to keep pulling her away from her primary job.

The hotelish/casinoish also had a restaurant. Ish. That was one of the main reasons we booked it. Unfortunately, we were informed when checking in that the restaurant is open 8:00 am to 9:00 pm, every day. Except for tomorrow.

I don’t know if the “except for tomorrow” was because it was a Sunday night. Or the last day of the month. Or because the bartender had to empty out the slot machines. All I know is that we were only staying one night. The person checking us in knew we were only staying one night. So the “except for tomorrow” information, for us, might as well have meant never. She might’ve wanted to lead with the fact that there was no breakfast for us instead of telling us the regular hours that we would never encounter.

Fortunately, we found a solid spot for breakfast in the town of Baker the following morning. I say “fortunately” because it was the only spot in town. If it had totally sucked, it was still where we were having breakfast.

But it didn’t suck.

There were only three things on the breakfast menu, along with three things on the lunch menu. I was a little skeptical when those three breakfast items were a sandwich, a burrito, and a quiche. Those all seem rife for being torn out of a plastic bag and thrown in the microwave. Damn you, Starbucks!

I was thrilled, then, when what I can only assume to be the sole proprietor spent ten minutes in the back putting some TLC into our breakfast. The sandwich featured an egg/cheese “brick” between a cheddar biscuit, both items of which were homemade. The brick didn’t sound appealing, and I’m still not entirely sure how it was made, but the texture was fine and the flavor was good. Kinda like a quiche that’s been run through a vice. And the cheddar biscuit, holy crap! This woman might be the sole reason Red Lobster went out of business.

Plus a very stripped down espresso menu. Lattes and cappuccinos plus a handful of Torani syrups if you absolutely must. I enjoy a coffee shop that caters to people who enjoy coffee instead of sugar bombs.

They didn’t have dinner on the menu, but we noticed there was a back room with a full bar, so I’m guessing when all two hundred town inhabitants get off work, they enter through the other side of the building where they see a dinner menu. Outsiders have to go to the Mexican restaurant, which was the only other dining establishment in town.

We also frequented what might’ve been the only store in town – it had everything from books and clothes to some minor groceries. All in one room.

But the most important thing we got there, the item that ended up dictating the course of the journey back home, was free. A Highway 50 stamp passport. To complete it, you have to stop at all the random little hamlets you’d normally blow past.

Challenge accepted!

Great Basin National Park

In terms of how prepared I was going into a new national park, Great Basin was down on the “I’ve vaguely heard of it” end of the spectrum. My mom was the driving factor here, so I let her do the research.

Her primary interest in Great Basin was not the lakes and mountains and shit I usually focus on, but for astronomy. Being up in the high desert with nary an electrical light in sight, this park is “certified dark sky” and known for stargazing. We had some great views of the sky the night before, especially the few times the damn bugs got out of the way.

There’s an observatory in the park. Unfortunately it’s a) primarily in use at night, and b) closed to the public. At multiple locations, we asked, just out of curiosity, where in the park the observatory was and the only response we ever got was “it’s closed to the public.” Even when we assured them we weren’t going to go bother the scientists or aliens, we just wanted to know where the heck it was, we were told “only the employees can go there.”

Sheesh, even Area 51 has fucking signs!

Great Basin also has a solar telescope, which, follow me here, is in use during the daytime. Even better, it’s accessible to the public. Because the aliens are at work during the day. Unlike the nighttime telescope, employees actually answered questions about the solar telescope and we only had to ask three or four times to learn that the it was located behind the visitor’s center.

Unfortunately, when we went there, we saw no telescope. We hiked up a trail and still no telescope. We returned to the visitor’s center and asked the same employee if we somehow missed it, she responded, “Oh, sorry, it’s only set up Thursday through Sunday.”

Clearly E.T. and the chef at the casino like to take days off together.

Another of the park’s main draws is also currently off limits, but for a different reason. The Lexington Arch, which looks spectacular, currently has a washed out road, adding a couple miles each direction to the regular trail that was already five miles. The wash-out happened in 2013. So I’m sure they’ll get around to it, you know, sometime. Unfortunately, up to this point, the only thing they’ve had a chance to do is change all the permanent maps to tell us the road is “temporarily” washed out.

Fortunately the other main draw of the park, the Lehman Caves, are fully accessible and open midweek. Only two tours with twenty tickets each, so get there early.

I actually thought we had missed the first tour, because the tour was at 10:30 and my watch said it was 10:40. I said as much to my mom, prompting someone nearby to remind me that my watch was in a different time zone. Great, we still have close to an hour!

Unfortunately, the 10:30 tour was already sold out, so we bought tickets to the 1:30 tour, which of course we were going to be an hour early for because of the Baker, NV time warp.

The caves were fun, as are most caves. The stories of Absalom Lehman, who “discovered” the caves (that had been in use by Native Americans for a thousand years), were hilarious. He built a shack over the entrance and, for a dollar, sold you a candle and let you in. He said if you weren’t back in 24 hours, he’d come looking for you.

He also, unfortunately, had a rule of “If you can break it, you can take it,” leading to a number of broken stalactites and stalagmites. Although it does give us a good barometer for how long the various columns took to form. The caves became a national monument in 1922, so we can assume the “new growth” in this photo represents about a century of progress:

Which, of course, just makes the rest of the cave all that much more impressive. So, thanks, I guess, Mr. Lehman? Your assholery destruction of nature’s majesty helps us… appreciate it more?

We took the “short tour,” which only goes into the first chamber, then returns to the entrance. There’s a longer one that was finishing shortly after ours, coming out of a different exit. I didn’t see it as an option on any of the boards, so I assume it needs to be booked ahead of time online. I’ll be checking that out before my next visit. I think it would’ve been much cooler.

The other thing on my “return list” (which is usually the purpose of these unreasearched first trips) are some hikes. The only paved road in the park, which diverts just before the Lehman Caves, is to Wheeler Peak. It kinda looks like Half Dome, and was formed the same way. Although the hike up to the peak doesn’t look nearly as precarious as its Yosemite brethren.

No, that’s not the hike I want to do next time. I don’t care that it’s a standard hike instead of cables that will kill you if you let go. It’s nine miles and a 3,000-foot elevation gain, starting at 10,000 feet. No thanks.

The hike I want to take, instead, scrambles up the snow and rocks toward the front of the mountain. Unlike the behemoth hike around the back side, this one’s “only” five miles with a 1,000-foot elevation gain. That might be doable if I was prepared, and now that I think of it, isn’t Half Dome cooler from the front than the back? Being at the base of a cliff seems more majestic than on top of it. Especially when I can already get views like this without hiking anywhere:

We almost did a shorter hike past a couple of alpine lakes, but opted not to. We only had a little water and no sunscreen, and that sun was scorching up there. It was 100 degrees in the valley that day, and when there isn’t a lot of tree cover, 10,000 feet doesn’t give you a ton of air pressure protecting you, either. As one of my college girlfriends remarked, snow should melt on the mountains “since they’re closer to the sun.”

I wasn’t dating her for her brain.

Plus, we weren’t sure how long the hike would take and we’d already spent primo bucks (8!) for a cave tour in a couple hours. So next time I hit Great Basin, I’m doing a loop that includes both lakes and the glacier on the moraine.

After the park, we hit an archeological dig that would’ve been really cool when it was being excavated. Unfortunately, that was in the early 1990s. When they were done, they filled all the dirt back in, in order to “save it for future generations.” Who will have to dig it up again.

What we were left with was one very torn-apart booklet that explained where in a wide-open desert scrubfield there were some 800-year-old adobe buildings are buried.But we just have to take the book’s word for it.

Highway 50

Finally we headed north to Ely, which I thought was pronounced Elly, but my mom thought was pronounced Eli. We were both wrong. The locals say Ee-Lee. Far be it from me to criticize from afar, but I think that is, obviously, the worst of the options.

Then again, I’ll acquiesce to their demands. They’ve got enough problems. First of which is living in Ely.

Not just because it’s a small town. There are plenty of small towns I would love to live in. Along the Mendocino Coast, maybe, where you have beaches and cliffs and forest all coming together. Maybe someplace in the foothills of Oregon or California, where it only snows two or three times a year – not enough to get sick of and it all melts away so you never have to shovel. The Big Island of Hawaii has some one or two-road towns that could be called paradise.

But high desert amongst the sagebrush? No thanks.

At least Ely had more than one street in their town. The other towns we visited didn’t have that.

Technically, most had at least one street that ran parallel to Highway 50, with some connectors that are best referred to as alleys, but Ely (a town of almost 4,000 residents!) actually had a legitimate T intersection!

Take that, Eureka!

I shouldn’t bag on Eureka. We had a breakfast there that rivaled the one we had in Baker. Same general menu, breakfast sandwiches and burritos, but the sandwich was “build your own.” I opted for a croissant with egg, ham, peppers, onions, and avocado. Solid!

Their coffee options were substantially foofier than in Baker. Options like chocolate hazelnut, cinnamon apple, and chai. While I enjoy a good cappuccino, gimme that chocolate hazelnut.

How did we find this hidden gem? When we got our passport stamped in Ely the night before, the guy at the visitor’s center told us about it. It’s his favorite spot when heading west. So I guess they don’t talk smack about Eureka’s lack of perpendicular streets. When your only claims to fame are being on the loneliest road in America, I guess you develop an affinity for each other.

Unfortunately, the stamp people in Eureka didn’t then give us a secret gem in Austin. I was hoping we’d learn a secret handshake by the end, but most of them were just “here’s your stamp, wanna buy something?”

I also noticed that most of the businesses in those smaller eastern towns sported a “Highway 50 stamp here” sign out front. It’s clearly a draw. However, as we made it farther west, into towns that consider themselves exurbs of Reno don’t give a shit. In those towns we had to go way off Highway 50 to find the Chamber of Commerce or something similar. It’s a good thing I didn’t do my first plan of driving west to east, because I wouldn’t have realized there was a passport until I was halfway done.

Austin was probably the cutest of the towns. It’s more or less smack dab in the middle. A couple houses on the outskirts have “Speed Trap” signs and, sure enough, there was a cop sitting right there on Main Street as we inched through. Part of me thinks it was a setup not to give out tickets, but to get us to slow down enough to spend some money in their town.

After all, I doubt there’s a lot of crime in this town with a population of… huh, Google gives me results ranging from a high of 167 to a low of… one? One person? Is the cop the only inhabitant? Then where the hell do all the other employees in the town live? In the abandoned castle on the outskirts of the town? It’s not like there were a ton of suburbs. Huh, maybe he really was looking to hand out tickets, because he isn’t paying his salary with resident taxes.

As for Highway 50 itself, I’ve been on far lonelier highways. A couple of them on this very trip. Interstate 84, for instance, on the way from Boise to Salt Lake City. Or, for what it’s worth, the portion of Highway 50 in western Utah. Minus the bugs.

What Highway 50 has that those other highways don’t have, though, are the far-off views. While it looks like it’s flat, you’re actually spending large portions of the journey on long, sloping valleys. This allows you to see ten or twenty miles in front of or behind you at any given time. And the road is straight as all get-out. While there might or might not be other cars in that long vision (usually there were), they were pretty damn far off, and it’ll take forever for them to reach you.

As for cars going the same direction as you, let’s just say it was pretty easy to determine when it was safe to pass them. What was a little bit harder was to determine how fast you were going. Fortunately you should be able to see a cop coming from miles away. Assuming there were more cops on Highway 50 than the “Speed Trap” guy in Arthur. I don’t recall seeing many.

According to the stamp passport, this road got its “Loneliest” designation in 1986 when Life magazine sent some reporters to do a vignette. I guess Baby Jessica hadn’t fallen in the well yet and they needed some hard-hitting picto-journalism.

Kinda makes sense since Life was known for taking grandiose pictures and Highway 50 certainly has majestic visuals. However, the story that went with it said you shouldn’t undertake the journey unless you had desert survival skills. Sheesh, I know 1980s cars weren’t known for distance or longevity, but the longest you ever go between civilization is maybe seventy miles.

Although now that I think about it, my first car was a used 1983 Chrysler LeBaron and that thing would’ve probably only overheated twice in that seventy miles. On a plus side, the hour-and-a-half it would take me to drive that distance at the federally-mandated 55 miles per hour would be almost enough to get the air conditioner to start working.

Still, you can see why they were so keen to push the toddler down the well if all they’ve got in the planning room is “Hey, how about we cover a really long, straight road?”

Nowadays, you can zip through it in a handful of hours without finishing your audiobook or ever stopping for gas.

Although you’re going to want to stop for gas early. The closer we got to Reno, the closer we were to California.

And than means higher gas prices.

Welcome back to civilization, Bitch!

Who Shall Lead the Cheers?

A.B. Kelly · October 3, 2024 · Musings · cheerleaders, college sports, sports, volleyball, women's sports · No Comments

Let’s have a nice post today. Try to avoid anything controversial or political.

Hey, how about women’s sports?

Don’t worry, not going to delve too deeply.

But I recently noticed something odd at a recent college volleyball game I took my daughter to. I had to text my friends to ask, “Is this sexist?”

As a general rule, anytime you have to ask a question like that, the answer is yes.

As an example, the Oklahoma City minor league baseball team changed their name this year from the Dodgers (and before that, the RedHawks) to the Oklahoma City Baseball Club.

At first I assumed this was a permanent change, reflecting a new trends in team names. Soccer teams in Europe regularly go by “Football Club.” When the Washington Redskins decided to drop their controversial name, they went with that moniker. Now they’re the Commanders, but I kinda feel like Washington Football Club was cooler, more distinctive. Commanders is so forgettable.

The new hockey team in Utah is going through a similar transition. The were the Phoenix Coyotes last year and the NHL said Utah couldn’t keep the team name. Utah, of all places, should not be allowed to keep team names from old locations after creating the worst juxtaposition in professional sports: “Utah Jazz.” Since they only had one offseason to pick a new name, they’re going with Utah Hockey Club for their first season.

But it turns out that the Oklahoma City Baseball Club already had a new team name ready to go. Then they wondered if the name might be offensive.

Spoiler Alert: it’s offensive. I don’t even know what the possible name was. In this decade, if you have to ask if something is offensive, the answer is always yes. Hell, you could call them the Oklahoma City People and someone, somewhere would be offended.

What annoys me about this story is that they didn’t reveal WHAT the potentially offensive name was. It’s not like they want to have the discussion of whether or not the name is actually offensive. Instead, they want to pay themselves on the back for being sensitive. Call them the Oklahoma City No Offense Buts.

Competitive Offendedness seems to be the real sport everybody’s playing.

My guess is they were looking at returning to the 89ers, which was the team’s name up until the late 1990s. But 89ers refers to the settlers who came to Oklahoma in the Homestead Act land grab of 1889. Of course, that land was grabbed from someone. If you look at a pre-1889 map, it probably shows Oklahoma as “Indian Territory.” Not that the Indians wanted to be there, but there was a whole Trail of Tears thing where the government promised them that, if they moved this one last time, to land that no white person wanted, they’d be fine. If not, they’d be genocided.

Then the white guys decided they wanted that new land, after all.

So yeah, if the Oklahoma City Baseball Club was thinking of returning to the 89ers, maybe taking a year to brainstorm ain’t a bad idea. Come to think of it, if they wanted to return to RedHawks, that might be problematic, too. I think that was on the Washington Redskins’ shortlist, but was determined to be too wrapped up in Native American culture.

Good luck, Oklahoma City Baseball Club.

But to return to my initial quandary, I’m still not entirely sure I was being sexist.

Here’s what I found odd: There were cheerleaders at the women’s volleyball game.

Not many, to be sure. Only nine of them, eight of which were female. So this clearly wasn’t all the cheerleaders on campus. Considering it was a Saturday, I assume most of the cheerleaders were at the football game, which was on the road that day.

I don’t know what sort of calculus goes into which cheerleaders go to the football game and which ones go to the lesser events. In high school, there’s really only one sport per season they cheer at. Football in the fall, basketball in the winter. And half the cheerleaders quit after football because that’s the one they want to cheerlead for.

Plus, a number of high school cheerleaders play other sports. Soccer, softball, tennis, badminton. Most of those sports are in the winter and spring.

So in high school, there are fewer cheerleaders at a basketball game than a football game, but it doesn’t mean they’re the B squad. This usually works out better, because there’s less room in a gymnasium than a football field with a track around it.

The only women’s sport that interferes weigh cheerleaders in fall is volleyball. So I guess they COULD cheer at a volleyball game. But they don’t.

I realize that, in theory, cheerleaders are there to, you know, lead the cheers. Hence the name. Their job is to get the crowd going, to rile up those rubes. They’re there for the fans, not the athletes.

And yet… and yet… The star quarterback ain’t takin’ the drama club president to prom.

Even if we grant that cheerleaders are there for the crowd, volleyball is still a weird sport for them to attend. Football is a game with five seconds of action followed by a minute of inaction. Perfect time to lead some cheers. Game specific cheers, even, like “Sack that quarterback, yeah, sack that quarter back!” or “First and ten, yeah, do it again.”

Volleyball is the opposite, where a rally might take thirty seconds and then another one starts ten seconds later. What are they going to cheer? “That was a block! Hickory Dickory Dock!”

As a result, the volleyball cheerleaders sat in the corner for most of the game. The only times they cheered was during a handful of timeouts. In each set, there’s one media timeout and two team-specific timeouts, although in the game we watched, each team only used one. These timeouts are one minute long, so the cheerleaders don’t even come out to the middle of the court. They stand up, sway a little, shake some pom poms, make one of those human payramidy things, then sit back down.

I did not feel led to cheer.

You know who did some good cheering? The volleyball players!

It’s a great sport where they congratulate each other after each point scored and give each other a “we’ll get ’em next time” after each lost rally. The girls not currently on the court have cheers and dances catered to what’s going on in the game. At this particular game, whenever there was a video review (something that seemed odd considering there was only one camera), the bench players got down on their stomachs and wrapped their hands in front of their eyes as if they were spying on a lion in a safari. Great and timely. And when the review came back in Sacramento’s favor, you know what we did? We cheered.

Plus, the volleyball players were cuter than the cheerleader.

Not that that matters.

Except it kinda does.

No, I’m not going to question or hint at the sexual orientation of the players. But if I were to… Aren’t volleyball players, of all the major women’s sports, the most likely to be heterosexual?

Except for cheerleaders, maybe.

But now, after commenting on the relative attractiveness and sexual orientation of various female athletes, let me state why my initial observation wasn’t sexist.

I wonder what those volleyball players think about the cheerleaders.

This wasn’t intramurals. While Sacramento State ain’t exactly a volleyball powerhouse, it’s still Division I. Considering there’s no professional volleyball (side note, why is there no professional volleyball?), Division I college is pretty much the pinnacle of that sport. I imagine those players worked their asses off to get there. They were probably not only the best volleyball player in their high school, but maybe their entire district. They’ve probably been going to practices for ten to fifteen years.

The cheerleaders, meanwhile, had to… be willing to wear short skirts and wave some pom poms.

Yes, I know cheerleaders have to be fit. They practice and prepare. Most are excellent dancers that memorize complicated routines. Even if those routines consist of the same moves over and over. Some might even be at the school on a scholarship.

But these weren’t those cheerleaders. It was a Saturday on a college campus. The A-squad, and probably the B-squad and C-squad, were all with the football team. This group were the ones who couldn’t figure out an eight-count.

At one point, they did a cheer that went (in the same cadence as counting 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7): S-A-C (Space) S-A-C-R-A-Men-To. Meaning they weren’t really leading cheers for the college, but for chewable mint candies.

So I have to assume the volleyball players rolled their eyes at these cheerleaders. Said, “Do what youre gonna do, ladies, but we’ll keep the crowd excited on our own, thanks.”

Meaning my initial comment WASN’T sexist.

Everything that came afterward? I claim no responsibility.

Summer Vacation on Channel Islands

A.B. Kelly · September 6, 2024 · Blog Entries, Musings · Channel Islands, family vacation, national park, summer vacation, travel, travelblog, Vacation · No Comments

For the summer after my daughter’s fourth grade, year, we used a perk available to all fourth graders to get into national parks for free. After visiting Crater Lake and Lassen Park on consecutive days (not to mention a Treehouse Resort), we were off to Southern California for a jaunt out to the Channel Islands with my mom.

Channel Islands is one of those less-visited national parks. Shocking considering you have to book a boat long in advance, then be at the dock, which is a good hour outside of L.A., by 7:00 am..

Pretty sure they aren’t selling park-specific annual passes.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure Chanel Islands has an entry fee at all. You pay for the boat and it takes you out to an island. Perhaps the boat ride in counts as a de facto entry fee. Except the boat is operated by a private company. Do they bury some graft for the government inside the price of the boat? If so, we totally got shafted. In addition to Daughter’s fourth-grade status, my mom has a lifetime senior pass. Bogus.

If I ever make it to American Samoa, I’m going to demand that the airplane trip is free.

Since the boat ride takes an hour or more, you’re only allowed to visit one island per trip. “Fortunately” for us, a couple of the islands were closed for refurbishment or something, so we only had to decide between two islands. I don’t know how one refurbishes an island, so if you happen to check out Santa Rosa Island after it reopens in 2025 or 2026, you can let me know if it’s retrofitted for 5G or something. I sometimes still get crappy reception despite having the Covid vaccine.

My mom originally wanted to do Anacapa Island, which is the smallest island and the one closest to land, because she believed it was the basis for the book Island of the Blue Dolphins. However, we noticed on the website that people had to use a ladder and large staircase just to get from the boat to the island. That would wipe my mom, in her late 70s, out for the day, and it didn’t look like there was a ton of shade. Wouldn’t be very fun to have her sitting there baking and exhausted while Daughter and I explored the island.

In addition, Anacapa Island has a beautiful selling point of being a bird sanctuary, making it loud and smelling of bird crap. Five star accommodation all the way.

Finally, we found out that it’s actually San Nicolas Island that is of Blue Dolphin fame. It’s inaccessible to the public, which seems like a huge marketing miss.

So to sum up: Anacapa means exhaustion, sunburn, bird poop, and nary a dolphin nor a shipwrecked Native American in sight. Santa Cruz Island, you’re the winner!

There’s a ton of things to do on Santa Cruz. There’s kayaking and there’s hikes and there’s… um… swimming.

Oh, and a visitor’s center. Although don’t expect a visitor’s center like other parks, which are ten percent geology information and ninety percent store. The Santa Cruz Island visitor’s center was basically somebody’s house from a hundred years ago, in which they’d put some information about the Native Americans who once lived on the island. They did have the passport stamp, which made Daughter happy, but they didn’t have a single thing you could buy. What’s the point of visiting a national park if I can’t buy a cheesy “Go Climb a Bird Poop” t-shirt?

The boat company’s headquarters also had the passport stamp available, so Daughter managed to get two different stamps. I told her she should get an Anacapa stamp, too, but she only wants stamps that represent where she’s actually been. So while stamps from both the north and south entrance was a goal at Lassen, she’s not getting some cheap-ass reflection of a place she’s never been.

Damn, I was hoping I could just ebay the Virgin Islands.

If left to my own devices on Santa Cruz Island, I would’ve kayaked. They go into caves that look beautiful. Unfortunately, the ten-year-old and late-seventies-year-old I was with weren’t likely to be the strongest kayakers. If it was on a calm lake, I could maybe take a kayak by myself and hope that the two of them together in one kayak could get where they needed to be, but in the ocean, I assume the best case scenario would be the waves washing them back to shore. Not sure I want to envision the worst case scenarios.

So hiking it was. There were a number of different directions to go. One trail goes along the north side of the island, first to a couple of lookouts, then to another port (Prisoners Harbor) where we could have taken the boat, but which doesn’t have a visitor’s center, so why bother? The other trail goes up and over the middle of the island to a more secluded inlet (Smuggler’s Cove). That looked cool, and as an added bonus, we might be able to see the Island of the Blue Dolphins from it. But that hike was listed as strenuous, which didn’t sound appealing less than a week after I nearly died on a similar hike at Crater Lake.

Okay, fine, I didn’t really almost die. I just took a really long time to get where I was going and felt like an out-of-shape almost-fifty year-old the whole time.

So we opted for the first trail. In addition to only being “moderate,” there were a number of spots along the way where we could double back in case the going got too tough. Those roads back were a shorter distance and a smoother grade than the hike up. You might question why we would have opted for the steeper and longer distance in the first place, but that’s because the view was better, hiking along the cliffs over the ocean instead of a dirt path amongst the sagebrush.

And boy howdy, hiking at sea level! OMG, I could breathe! I kinda forgot about that whole thin vs thick air thing. But all of a sudden I could hike uphill without stopping every hundred paces. I wasn’t trying to parse out my water as if it was the last bit of moisture on earth. Daughter and I did a five-mile round trip and I was still at damn near 100%. If I had known it was going to be like that, I would’ve opted for the strenuous hike over to Smuggler’s Cove.

The hike to Prisoner’s Harbor, meanwhile, was never gonna happen. Santa Cruz Island is not as small as it first appears. We started on the northeast corner of the island and Prisoner’s Harbor was barely at the halfway mark. I figured it was maybe five miles away. But the round trip between the two is 34 miles! Kinda hard to hike that and be back in time to catch the 4:00 boat home.

My mom didn’t make the full five miles. After we saw Cavern Point, the first destination on the hike, we were faced with that first return route. She kept going back and forth about whether she wanted to press on to Potato Harbor with us or return to the harbor and wait for us. I didn’t think she should come with us but didn’t want to come across as a “go away” dickhead. At the same time, I think she also wanted to go back but didn’t want to sound like a “Screw you guys, I’m going home” asshole. What followed was the most passive aggressive debate ever.

In the end, she finally returned to port and let us venture on by ourselves. When we reconvened at the end of the day, we all agreed it was the best option. That turn-back point wasn’t even halfway to Potato Harbor and the path back wasn’t quite as pedestrian as it seemed. It was mostly level, but there were a few spots where the path was thin and steep, cut into granite that didn’t provide a lot of cushion for the pushin’ (of my feet).

Fortunately I had a walking stick.

Daughter had wondered about hiking sticks when she saw a number of people using them at Crater Lake. She asked what they help with, and unfortunately, I wasn’t much help.

In truth, I’ve wondered my whole life how much of the help people gain from hiking sticks are the placebo effect. At best, it maybe helps keep your arms in motion , stops you from getting to where you’re just dragging your knuckles behind you like a gorilla. But it’s odd that ninety percent of hiking tools are designed to lessen the weight and effort, then they top it off with a clunky, anti-aerodynamic deadweight.

But my mom had some of the lightweight collapsible poles, so I let Daughter try them out. She used them like ski poles, swinging both out in front of her, staking them on the ground, then walking through them before moving them back in front. If only this path had some flag-gates to slalom through.

When we parted from my mom, she took one walking stick, we took the other. This might seem like yet another dick move by her son, taking the support away from the elderly, but again, bringing both sticks just makes more burden. Even if they’re collapsible, she was already carrying a water bottle and a backpack. Gotta keep at least one hand free.

And yeah, for the most part, I still don’t get them. They don’t seem to help with balance or momentum. Now that I’m older, they helped a little on the downhill. I put it in front of me to slow down gravity’s momentum. But I mostly see people using them on the uphills, as if their upper body strength is going to be the thing that drags them up to the upper echelons. This ain’t rock-climbing, people.

Daughter and I went on to Potato Harbor, which could either be named for being in the shape of a potato or because that’s where potatoes once grew or were delivered or washed ashore after a shipwreck. I heard multiple explanations, and everyone spoke with absolute certainty that their explanation was correct. Shocking that in a country where less than five percent of the people change their mind from one election to the next, everybody would be certain that their explanation of Potato Harbor is the correct one.

Is it a Potato? Is it a Harbor? The world may never know.

Unless you voted for Dan Quayle, in which case it’s Potatoe Harbor.

Boy, I would’ve been a hilarious blogger in 1992!

The weirdest part of the Channel Islands trip was what came after we finished our hike. It was around 2:00 and our boat back to shore was at 4:00. Not enough time to do another hike or anything. But two hours is quite a long time to occupy ourselves with only a few park benches and informational signs.

Daughter wanted to go in the ocean, so my mom and I hung out on the beach. I made it more than a couple paragraphs in my Jack Reacher book this time, which I’d failed to do when she went “swimming” in Lassen. Not that Daughter was better at occupying herself in the water here. But this time Grandma was there to take the brunt of her “Come play with me.”

As we sat there, more hikers came back. Then the kayaks all came back. A few of those kayakers didn’t seem much more adept than my mom or daughter would’ve been. Seriously, people, how hard is it to get to shore in the goddamn ocean? There are waves coming in, for pete’s sake.

The beach grew more and more crowded as everybody found themselves in a holding pattern after finishing their activities. In most national parks, you can drive out whenever you feel like it. All done for the day? Great. Leave now and grab dinner outside the park instead of whatever crap they’re serving there. Suddenly decide that hiking at sea level was easy peasy and you wanna try Smuggler’s Canyon? Go for it! So long as you’re willing to leave the park after dark.

But on the Channel Islands, you’ve already pre-booked the time at which you can leave the park. One boat leaves at 4:00 and the other at 4:30. Which means a whole lot of sitting around waiting for said boat. Most of us were lined up and rarin’ to go as soon as that bad boy appeared on the horizon.

At least there was a beach to enjoy while we wait. A rocky beach that might slice your feet up, but a beach nonetheless.

But the Channel Islands were lovely. Simple hikes, ocean breezes, and allegedly some caves you can kayak to.

I only have two complaints. One is that we didn’t get to see an Island Fox. The Channel Islands are considered the Galapagos Islands of the North because they all have their own breeds of certain animals. The main one is the Island Fox, which is a different species on each island. The websites implied they were all over the place and would be easy to see one. Not so much. Perhaps if we camped there, they’d all come out in the evening, but we searched the whole way down from Potato Harbor and couldn’t find one.

There’s an island-specific blue jay, as well. We might have seen one of those, but I couldn’t tell for sure. However, I can verify that we saw Huginn and Muninn conspiring before sending some messages back to Odin.

My other complaint is about the visitor’s center. Not the visitor’s center on the actual island. That one I understand. It’s sparse with nothing to buy because the island is pack-in/pack-out. Can’t really have the usual commerce in that environment, to say nothing of the difficulty it would require to boat your employees in and out every day. On a boat owned by a private company that is currently selling every seat.

However, there is another visitor’s center. It’s back on the dock in Ventura. As far as I can tell, it’s got all the usual shirts and knick-knacks and stickers emblazoned with the park’s logo.

I say “As far as I can tell,” because the visitor’s center is only open from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm. Our morning boat left Ventura at 8:00 am and our return boat left Channel Islands at 4:00 pm, with a travel time of a little over an hour. Which means, follow me here, people who visit the park cannot go the park’s visitor’s center. What the hell? They should name it the non-visitor’s center.

Fortunately we live in the internet age, so when I returned home, I ordered some Channel Island stickers for Daughter’s passport. Plus a little coin for myself.

But really, it feels kinda cheap to order these things online. The whole point of the passport is to get us to visit those parks. Not to get us to order shit online.

Or maybe spending money is precisely its goal. Doesn’t matter where.

And, voila!, it’s time to cross American Samoa off the list!

Summer Vacation in Lassen Park

A.B. Kelly · September 5, 2024 · Blog Entries, Musings · family vacation, Lassen, Lassen National Park, national park, summer vacation, travel, travelblog, Vacation · One Comment

Last time I wrote about my family vacation to southwestern Oregon, en route to Crater Lake.

Ever since we took her to Rocky Mountain National Park, she’s been obsessed with visiting them all. As soon as I can figure out the road map to American Samoa and Virgin Islands, we’ll get right on that.

In the meantime, we hit some of the ones in California.

Of course, her main goal in visiting these parks is to procure stamps and stickers for a passport we bought her. Each visitor’s center usually has its own stamp, sometimes two, and it’s the only damn thing that is free there.

They also have stickers, which look like postage stamps, that aren’t free. Nor are they as cheap as postage stamps.

Since Lassen has a visitor’s center at each entrance, that dictated a lot of our plans for the day.

But if she can get the stamps and stickers while I have an excuse to see some new parks, it’s a win-win.

And as long as I can pretend she’s still in fourth grade, it’s a win-win-win.

I believe Lassen might be the closest national park to my house. Technically Yosemite might be a few miles closer geographically, but Lassen is a more direct route.

Yet somehow I’ve visited Yosemite at least forty times while going to Lassen exactly… let’s see, carry the two… zero times.

I’m not the only one. Lassen is pretty far down the list of most visited parks and it’s often described as “Yosemite without the crowds.”

Now that I’ve been there, I can confidently say it’s… not really Yosemite with some crowds. Plus some bubbling mud farts. And rednecks.

First, I’d like to clarify that I visited Lassen before it, and the entirety of Northern California, became a smoldering hellscape of smoke and ash. For most of August, the park was closed as a result of the Park Fire, which is a stupid name because all fire names are stupid, something I noted when Paradise burned down. Call this one the Lassen fire, if you must.

So yeah, Lassen was still open in mid-July when we visited, although you wouldn’t know it. Manzanita Lake was packed. The Bumpass Hell Trail was closed. Burney Falls was closed.

Technically that last one isn’t in Lassen, but it’s so close that it would be silly to make the trek to one without stopping at the other. Like people who go to Australia without checking out New Zealand.

Burney Falls, our first stop on the day, was closed because of construction. Sounds like it’s been closed for a year or so and ain’t coming back until at least next year. They’re making it, I don’t know, ADA compliant or more accessible or some other such excuse that government types use to shut things down for a while. My commute has a bridge that’s had “construction” on it for two years or so, complete with lane redirects, and as far as I can tell, this construction isn’t going to expand the bridge or add any lanes. It’ll just fuck with my commute for two solid years and tell me it was for my own fucking good. Then they’ll increase my taxes to help cover the chaffing.

Fortunately, you could still see the falls, you just couldn’t walk to the falls. That was probably the good news, because if we had spent longer there, we never would’ve made it to the second visitor’s center before it closed at 5:00.

The falls were beautiful. Half cascade, half fall. It spreads out like a mini-Victoria Falls. There are portions of it that just pop out of the rock halfway down.

In fact, the entire river that creates Burney Falls pops out of the ground only a half-mile upriver. I didn’t check it out myself, just heard it from the old man who was trying to alleviate our annoyance that we couldn’t walk down to the falls.

The price to get in, of course, hasn’t gone down from what it was when you could walk to the falls. As if that’s not a key piece of what you’re paying for. As if there wasn’t a free friggin’ parking lot on the other side of the falls that offers more or less the same view of the falls but that doesn’t offer access to the falls. So now the “State Park” gives us the exact same experience as the free parking lot, but charges $10 for it.

No wait, there’s also a store there. Where we spent more money…

The Bumpass Hell trail is usually listed as the top destination inside Lassen. It was closed not for refurbishment, but for snow. In July.

I’m not saying there wasn’t a fair amount of snow around. I’m sure we would’ve had to walk around a couple mounds. We’d had to do something similar at one of the Crater Lake lookouts. But even at 8,000 feet, it had been a pretty damn warm three to four weeks. I assume the Bumpass Hell Trail is like some of those campgrounds I’ve booked before, where it’s not open in mid-June despite the last storm having been in February. But the campsite can’t open until some bureaucrat fits it in his schedule to check that the snow didn’t damage a tree or, in the case of Bumpass, a wood plank.

I wonder if Bumpass Hell ever opened this year. It couldn’t have been there more than a week or two before the fire shut the whole place down. I guess that makes Lassen the only place in this country that can claim 2024 was a year without hell.

Before I get much farther, let me clarify: Lassen is absolutely beautiful. I don’t know that I’d compare it to Yosemite. For sure not Yosemite Valley, which is only at about 4,000 feet elevation because it’s, follow me here, a valley. Most of Lassen is double that. So the landscapes were more reminiscent of Rocky Mountain than Yosemite,

It also doesn’t feature distinct images like Half Dome and El Capitan. Maybe if I traveled there often I might be able to pick Lassen Peak out of a lineup alongside Shasta and Hood and Rainier, but on first viewing, it was just a tall mountain. Although not too tall because I think the trail up it started at 9,000 feet. No way was I attempting that the day after Crater Lake.

There looked to be some other fun hikes, too, that totally warrant a return. The Kings Creek Falls trail looked totally accessible. We almost went on it until we opted for getting home at a reasonable hour. I also noted it was one of those “the downhill comes first” trails I don’t particularly love, but it was a more gradual drop (and then rise) in elevation than Crater Lake. Maybe if we weren’t on back-to-back days, and on a time crunch, we would’ve done it.

Bumpass Hell would be nice to try, too, if I can ever make it there in the ten day period between snow season and fire season.

And maybe I could even tackle Lassen Peak. A two-thousand foot elevation gain, starting at eighty-five hundred? Easy peasey! At least the uphill comes first.

But on this particular trip, we stuck to the lakes.

First up was Manzanita Lake, which was crowded. It’s so close to the entrance that I got the feeling this was basically the closest beach for the towns of Red Bluff and Redding. Hence my rednecks comment. If you’ve never heard of Red Bluff and Redding, California, I’ve now given you all you need to know. Rednecks. And a Sundial Bridge.

I noticed that Lassen had a price for an annual pass to just that one park. I don’t think I’ve seen that elsewhere. Nobody heads up to just Yosemite for an evening. And if they do, they’re probably enough of an outdoors nut to buy the annual pass to all of the parks. But Lassen is close enough to a couple towns that don’t have a lot of beaches, and Manzanita Lake was proof of that. I assume eighty percent of the Lassen-only annual passes never venture farther than two miles from the entrance.

Daughter wanted to swim. I didn’t, especially in one of those mountain lakes where the bottom is basically slime. So, after we spent a half-hour walking to and from the bathroom at the visitor’s center to change into her swimsuit, because all the closer parking lots were full, I sat down on a log near shore to read a book while she walked into the lake.

Then promptly decided she was done and came back to shore.

Like seriously, I don’t think I finished two pages. And these weren’t Game of Thrones pages. I was reading a friggin’ Jack Reacher book. Two Jack Reacher pages probably don’t have a single word longer than two syllables. No sentences longer than five words. I made it about as far as “Reacher said nothing” before she was waving and squawking at me to bring her towel and shoes to the shore.

But she wanted clean feet, so what followed was a never-ending cycle of sit on a log, lift up a foot, get it dirty again, move to a rock, get distracted, clean the other foot, fall back in, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. I shit you not, she probably spent less than five minutes “swimming” and more than twenty minutes getting out.

And I might never find out what Jack Reacher said.

We went through a similar process at Summit Lake. Fortunately that lake was much less crowded, because Manzanita Lake is right by the entrance while Summit Lake is, follow me here, at the summit. So she kinda had the whole lake to herself and stayed in for a good fifteen minutes until some teenagers showed up and made her feel self-conscious.

We stopped by a couple more lakes on the way out that were absolutely beautiful. Helen Lake and Emerald Lake were pristine. Technically we could’ve swam in them, but at 8,200 feet elevation, they were pretty much a degree above ice. But damn, did standing next to them feel great when the valley had been over 100 degrees for a month straight.

My favorite lake, though, wasn’t really even a lake at all. It’s called Hat Lake, and maybe there are times of the year when it’s a legitimate lake, but if my visit was any indication, the times when Hat is a Lake and Bumpass is a Trail are months apart and never the twain shall meet.

When we were at Hat Lake, it was a beautiful brook babbling through a lush, peaceful meadow. Even better, we were the only people there. I guess everyone else took one look, said, “screw that, it’s not a lake,” and raced on to see the “Closed Do Not Enter” barricade at Bumpass Hell. Me, I could’ve stayed next to the stream all day, found a comfy batch of grass to fall asleep in, and woken up in the same spot the next day, never witnessing a mud fart, and I would’ve been content.

It was Daughter’s favorite part of the park, too. Good to know she’s taking after some of my nicer qualities and not just my blood type and allergies.

Then we stopped at the mud farts. Technically it’s sulphur pools, where underground magma pockets turn the surface into boiling liquid. And magma, being sulphur, smells like hard-boiled eggs or, less charitably, farts. Ergo bubbling mud farts.

Which were impressive. But still, after a minute or so, you realize it’s just bubbling mud and you start to realize the smell ain’t going away any time soon.

Oh, and lots of friendly signs tell us what should be obvious, that you shouldn’t try to touch the molten plasma.

Not sure who looks at something that’s literally boiling granite and feels the need to touch it, but… hold on, I teach high school. I probably encounter a hundred people a day who would do that for nothing more than a dare.

And they’d use their penis.

Two parks down, one to go. Time to head off to some islands.

Summer Vacation at Crater Lake

A.B. Kelly · September 4, 2024 · Blog Entries, Musings · Crater Lake, family vacation, national park, summer vacation, travel, travelblog, Vacation · 2 Comments

Did you know fourth graders get into National Parks for free?

Sure, at half of them you still need to pay a reservation fee or whatever, but once you’re at the gate, you just point to a fourth-gradish looking child and tell them to shove their entry fee right up their ass.

Then apologize to said fourth grader for the profanity.

We discovered this last summer when Daughter was between third and fourth grade. I don’t think she technically should have qualified, because the pass we got expired August 30 of that year, meaning it was probably for kids who were finishing fourth grade, not going into it. But her school starts in mid-August, so if the federal government can’t figure out how to classify a fourth grader, who am I to tell them?

We got a new one for this year and have visited five. And since fifth graders don’t have government id’s, guess who’s going to be a fourth grader again?

“She’s a fourth grader.”

“She looks eighteen.”

“She’s really dumb and has been held back a lot.”

After a few days of treehousing and riverboating and… cat-seeing… we finally headed up into the mountains to accomplish our primary goal, which was visiting some national parks whild Daughter gets in for free.

First up was Crater Lake.

I’ve technically been to Crater Lake before, but not really. I headed up there on a weekend in early May once, not realizing that pretty much the entire mountain around the lake is still caked in twenty feet of snow in early May. Hell, even when we visited in late July, there were still substantial clumps of snow.

So on my first visit, they had only plowed the road up to the visitor center (because the beauty of national parks is second only to the commerce of national parks!), from which you could walk to one specific viewpoint on the south side of the lake. Because it was 90+ degrees in the valley, I took a picture of me wearing shorts and flip-flops in the snow, then promptly drove back down to Medford, thinking Crater Lake was almost as worthless of a National Park as Kings Canyon, in which there’s pretty much only one road in and, once you’ve made it to the end, all you can really do is get out of your car, say “Wow, look at that canyon,” then turn back around and leave the park.

Fortunately, this time around, a fair amount of the ring road was open. None of it had snow, but most of the east side was closed for construction or potholes or some of the usual road-closing reasons. I imagine if they’re only snow-free for four or five months a year, ya gotta get all your constructing done at that time. It seems like every time I visit Denver, the entire downtown is torn apart. Then again, I always visit in the summer.

So I can now confirm that Crater Lake has, not only a southern view, but also a western and a northern view. Whether or not there’s an east side of the lake is still a mystery.

You can also view the lake from, wait for it, lake level!

We weren’t sure if we were going to make it down to the lake. There’s only one path down, and it’s all the way on the north side of the lake. The hike is listed as “moderate to strenuous” and it’s the worst kind, where you’re going downhill first. Meaning the return trip was going to be uphill. Even though I’m now of an age where downhills are almost as bad as uphills, I friggin hate those kinds of hikes. For me, it’s rarely about the muscle fatigue, it’s usually the breathing. Downhills don’t task my lungs.

But Daughter wanted to ride that boat, and the boat was, shockingly, only available at lake level.

We had looked up tickets beforehand, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get there from the treehouse. Good thing, because originally, I was debating between the noon and the 2:00 tours. But after we added in Daughter’s 8:00 am horseriding and stopped for lunch right before entering the park, we were barely at the south side of the lake by 2:00. Still a drive around the lake and a moderate to strenuous hike away from our destination.

There wasn’t a ton of cell service around the lake, so even if I had a good gauge on what time we might finally make it to the dock, I doubt I could’ve ordered tickets. So when we finally made it there, we had pretty much given up the fight. I tried to remind Daughter that I gave her the choice that morning of riding the horse or riding the boat, but that was little consolation.

But there were two more boat rides on the day, one at 3:30 and one at 3:45. The 3:30 one was full, plus it was already pushing 3:15 when we got there. The nimrods in front of us had tickets for it and the employee told them they better fucking run to the bottom of the trail if they were hoping to get on it. They left at a brisk walk, and she yelled, “Faster than that!”

I asked if they had any more tickets available for the 3:45 boat, but she wasn’t sure. The internet was shoddy or communication was down or something. The list, a few hours old, showed a few openings, but we would have to walk to the bottom of the trail to find out for sure. I was disinclined to haul ass to the bottom, only to find out it’s full and have to come right back up. But the employee said we should totally do it and told Daughter that she could swim in the lake if the boat was full, so off we went.

I’m not sure if we passed the nimrods on the 3:30 boat, but we passed a hell of a lot of people on the way down. I’m guessing they all had secure tickets. If there was going to be a waitlist, I wanted to make sure we were at the front of it. “Oh, Frank Jones isn’t here? Yeah, I passed that guy three-quarters of a mile ago. Trust me, he ain’t making it. Gimme his spot.”

When we made it to the bottom, turns out they didn’t know if the boat was full, either. They had the same shoddy internet and the same hours-old list.

Instead, we were told to just chill out and wait until the boat was finished loading. Then and only then would they know if the boat was full or not. If not, Daughter could swim for a bit while I got annoyed that we expended energy and muscles to get down here ASAP.

After five minutes or so, they let us on the boat. Magically, the credit card machine had absolutely no connectivity issues.

Since we boarded after all the ticketed passengers, the only spots left appeared to be the jump seat in the back pf the boat. It was a weird setup – whereas all the other seats were on the left or right, with an aisle down the middle, ours was in the middle, right in front of the pilot’s dais. Daughter thought it was VIP, but all I could think was that we’d get the least amount of wind. Plus, in our haste, we hadn’t added any sunscreen and my knees were going to absolutely fry.

Fortunately for us, we had to give up the seats to a couple I’ll graciously call “The Doomed.” Because vulture candy is offensive.

The Doomed were a married couple who I will generously call “unprepared.” They appeared to be about ten years older than me and less than half as healthy. Bear in mind, I ain’t exactly Dwayne Johnson. More like Boris Johnson. Like I said, I thought long and hard about a moderate to strenuous hike at elevation. Clearly the Doomed didn’t.

In another ten years, when I’m (possibly) as old as The Doomed, I assume I’ll be even less inclined to believe I can make the circuit. Especially if, like these two, I don’t make these sojourns all that frequently. So if I was questioning whether or not I ought to be making this hike, then these two should’ve answered the query with a hard fucking no from the first inkling.

I don’t know what ship The Doomed were supposed to be on. I doubt it was ours. When they first appeared on the dock, we were already supposed to have left five minutes earlier, but because of people like me and a handful of others buying up the empty seats, we were still within shouting distance.

Doomed Dude’s shin had a ginormous gash on it. It was mostly scabbed over, but there was still a rivulet of fresh blood. So I’m guessing they had taken maybe an hour or more to hike down the path I’d done in less than twenty minutes. I assume he fell, they’d paused for long enough to it to coagulate a bit, then it had reopened when they started walking again. He also had dust and debris up and down his legs and his hair looked like the guy in Airplane! after he stops giving up sniffing glue.

As for the woman, I don’t think she was injured before approaching the boat. She seemed wobbly, but that might have initially been more a result of exhaustion than injury.

But not for long.

I don’t know where she was trying to go. There was a flat platform secured against the granite, then a long metal ramp descending down to the floating platform that the boat is attached to. On that flat platform are a few containers, kinda like giant ice chests, containing life jackets, making the platform a little crowded. When there were fifty of us heading toward the boat around the same time, some of us stepped off the flat platform, scrambling on the rocks to circumvent the congestion. I doubt that was her goal, since there were only a few employees on the platform at that time, most of them assisting her husband.

Regardless of her intent, she slipped on either a rock or dirt. With the entire boat staring at her and waiting, her upper torso seemed to lean one way while her lower torso went the opposite. Then her ankle rolled and down she went like the goddamned Titanic, rolling off the platform.

Well, shit, now the boat’s gonna be even further delayed.

Somehow all the kings horses and all the kings men were able to load them onto the boat. They asked me and Daughter to give up our jump seat, which was perfectly fine with me, and even better, somebody else moved so we could sit together. The Doomed got a couple of free waters that we had to pay exorbitant prices for.

Hilariously, when the boat finally started, the guide asked how hard we thought that hike down was on a scale of one to five. The woman put up all five fingers, but the dude, looking like something out of ground zero on 9/11, only put up two fingers.

Originally, I thought maybe The Doomed were going to be dropped off at the south end of the lake. There’s no pedestrian path over there (the spot we were at is the only public access spot), but I figured maybe there might be a way for official people to get where they needed to be. Maybe a helicopter pad or something.

But nope, they stayed on the boat for the whole two-hour tour.

The tour itself was kinda meh. Considering our last boat, less than 24 hours earlier, included multi-boat twirlies and free beer, it was always gonna be an uphill battle. I mean, what does stupid Career Lake have to offer? Unparalleled beauty of a natural masterpiece? The clearest blue water you’ll find anywhere? Big whoop! Not once did we catch air from another boat’s wake!

The tour guide left a bit to be desired. Not sure if he was running a tour for the first time or if the distracted, nervous demeanor was just his personality, but he left something to be desired in the excitement department.

He used a lot of “some people see this in the rocks, but I don’t see it.” Part of me thinks it was a shtick to get us to “find” it, but he didn’t fill me with confidence when he said that the volcanic eruption that created the Crater could be seen as far as Montana. “And even… British… Columbia? Is that right? Is that the one that’s in Canada?”

Evidently geology and geography are different practices. And we’ll ignore the fact that British Columbia is probably the same distance from southeastern Oregon as Montana is, so that revelation didn’t add anything to the wow factor. Sure, BC is in a different country, but I don’t think a volcano that blew 6,000 years ago was carrying a passport.

His knowledge of rocks was great, though. He explained how various rock structures were originally fissures inside the ginormous volcano that once stretched across the entirety of the lake. He knew so much about rocks that, when the tour ended, the captain said, “Are you going to talk about rocks some more? Let me run the tour. There’s a great fishing spot over there.”

Then again, his message clearly wasn’t getting through to everyone, since I heard another passenger confidently tell his family “It was a glacier that did it.” Dude, you’re thinking of Yosemite. How many friggin times have you heard volcano today, dumbass?

The best part of the tour was when we filled our water bottles. It’s, allegedly, the ninth cleanest lake in the world. “Allegedly” because the tour guide couldn’t tell us any of the other eight. They were probably in British Columbia.

Regardless of its place on the list, we were on the opposite end from the access point with all those peeing swimmers, so the water should’ve been totally safe to drink. At least before we stopped the boat and leaned over to submerge the bottles we’d just been putting in our mouths. So maybe now Crater Lake is the tenth cleanest in the world. Eleventh if The Doomed got his bloody gash near it.

Speaking of The Doomed, when we all piled out at the end of the trip, they were asked if they thought they could get back up under their own power. I think the answer might’ve been no even if they hadn’t both taken tumbles on the way down. Maybe the falls were all intended to get a free medical evacuation.

So as the rest of us worked our way back up the moderate to strenuous path (which felt much more on the strenuous side this time), we were passed by a number of EMT and paramedic types, one of which had a pretty cool looking gurney unicycle thing. Guessing the standard four-wheeled contraption can’t go up a rocky path of switchbacks. Of course, that meant she’d need at least two, maybe three or four, people to hold it steady as they pushed her back up the hill.

I would’ve paid money to see her rolling off it repeatedly. Especially after the East German judge only scored her first loop-de-loop a seven.

We never saw them come back up. Not because we were tearing the uphill. It was just as painstaking as I expected.

We were some of the last people going up, especially after a pit-stop at the restrooms and Daughter getting a brief swim in the lake. All the employees left around the same time we did. Our tour guide was jogging the whole way. Whatever, dude. Talk to me when you’re fifty. And know where Canada is.

My legs were fine, but my breathing and heartrate weren’t having it. Especially since my dumb ass decided to push it for the first quarter mile. And that water from the lake was now an hour old and not quite as crisp anymore.

We kept leapfrogging the captain. While we were resting, he would move ahead. Then he would rest and we would pass him. We always exchanged pleasantries. He convinced me there was no shame in going slow, even if I’ve got a ten-year old with me that could’ve probably ran the whole damn thing with the tour guide.

He might’ve been of a similar age to The Doomed, but was in substantially better health, which, again, makes me wonder if they had a shot in hell of hiking uphill, regardless of injury. After all, this uphill hike was the captain’s everyday commute. He knew which trees and rocks were best for leaning against, just like I knew which lanes have potholes. Can’t tell whose commute is more excruciating. Mine is mind-numbing, his is leg-numbing. His has a much better view than mine, no matter how creative those personalized plate are.

Eventually, we made it. Probably took about twice as long going up as down. And then, exhausted and out of breath, all I had to do was drive back to a hotel we’d booked in Weed, California. Which was still a good three hours away and, despite getting good online reviews, had soap but no shampoo in the shower and an air conditioner that I had to stand on a chair to plug in and wait another twenty minutes for it to cool down the room.

But, when given a chance, you’ve always gotta stop in Weed, amirite?

Summer Vacation in Oregon

A.B. Kelly · September 3, 2024 · Blog Entries, Musings · family vacation, Hellsgate Jetboats, Oregon, road trip, summer vacation, travelblog, Treehouse Hotel, Vacation · 2 Comments

Using the occasion of Labor Day week, the metaphorical end of summer, to write about my summer trips.

Gonna try something new this week, breaking those trips into four shorter posts instead of one or two long ones, with the goal of posting one per day on this shortened week.

And by short, I mean 2,000ish words each…

Our primary goal was to hit a number of national parks while Daughter still got in free as a fourth grader.

But before we could hit the first one, which was Crater Lake, we spent a few days in southwestern Oregon. This post will cover all you need to know about cats and trees and rivers. Then I’ll be back in the next few days to take you in depth into Crater Lake, Lassen, and Channel Islands national parks.

Tree House

I learned about the tree house resort a long time ago, but had never really found myself nearby. It’s not in a spot that’s convenient to, well, anything. Even Crater Lake, which was our excuse for visiting this area, was nowhere near it. But I doubt I’ll ever be en route somewhere closer.

Besides, once I had shown the pictures to Daughter, there was no way we were staying anywhere else.

A fact I remind her of the first fifty times she asked a variation of “Are we there yet?”

The treehouses are part hotel, part campsite, a fact I wasn’t as aware of as I should’ve been. Other families had brought hamburgers and hot dogs to grill, some even brought ice cream to store in the freezer. We brought… um… some chips for the car.

What we really ought to have brought was water. I can’t remember the last time I was so thirsty as that first night. I bought a Pellegrino from the office and milked it as long as I could, even though I’m not really much of a Pellegrino fan. If they’d had Crystal Geyser, I might’ve traded in my car for it.

Not that I should be too hydrated, because the last thing I wanted was to need the bathroom in the middle of the night. The closest facilities to our treehouse was down some rickety stairs, the bottom four of which went off in a different direction than the rest, so I’m pretty sure if I tried to use them in the middle of the night, I would’ve walked right off the platform and broken an ankle.

Another amenity I’m used to at hotels, but that was missing from the treehouses, is soap. Their website said they had showers, which they do, so I guess I just assumed that shower meant more than “something that sprays water on you from above.” The closest I came to cleaning myself while I was there was putting some of the foam soap from the toilet sink onto a washcloth before jumping in the shower. Needless to say, that’s not stretching across my entire body. Never mind my hair.

Before our excursion to Grants Pass, I told Daughter in no uncertain terms that she was going to shower before we left for Crater Lake the next day. After I attempted to use the shower that night, I told her, “You know what? Just wait till we’re back in civilization.”

The treehouse resort had drastically different treehouse sizes. Many were large, even some multi-houses connected by rope bridges that accommodated multiple families. Some of those groups who were grilling up food seemed to be multiple families who showed up together, and it appeared to be a regular thing for them, maybe a yearly “camping” trip.

Our treehouse was on the dinkier side. It was bi-level, so Daughter could climb a wooden ladder up to an extra nook to sleep on an air mattress. My “bed” wasn’t much more comfortable. Due to the small size of the treehouse, and to allow Daughter to go up the ladder, my bed was a U-shaped couch during the day with an extra piece to fill in the U at bedtime. The final piece didn’t come in as flush as you might want, so when I laid down, it felt like I was on a chiropractor’s table.

As soon as I got home, I had to visit the chiropractor’s table.

Minor gripes out of the way, the treehouse resort was pretty fun. What they called a “Fresh Water Pool” was actually a legitimate pond fed by a mountain stream. Daughter wasn’t expecting how cold the water, but considering it was almost a hundred degrees that day, was quite refreshed once she got used to it.

If you feel like sticking around the premises during the day (since in summer they have a two night minimum), they have zip lines and horseback riding and a Tarzan swing.

Unfortunately, most of those have to be booked ahead of time and aren’t exactly cheap. Plus many of them require minimum parties to book. I get it, since they have to bring in extra staff to work those areas, but which was frustrating when there were only two of us. Our first night, we were informed that horseback riding required a minimum of two people under 220 pounds. There was only one of us that fit that description. The Tarzan Swing, meanwhile, required four people minimum. Both of them, I was told, could be booked if I was willing to pay for all the ghost riders.

I understand that most of the treehouses cater to large families or groups. However, we weren’t in the only small treehouse. The woman seemed shocked, Shocked!, that a treehouse with one couch-bed and one air mattress would only have two people to partake in their activities. And only one under 220 pounds.

That being said, she worked her ass off to get us into the activities we wanted. She said they would let me ride Major, that fat-bearing horse, if we could do it at 6:00 that evening. Unfortunately, we already had plans. And I really didn’t want to ride the fat horse if I could avoid it. As soon as some other kids signed up for the first horseback ride of the following morning, the woman searched the grounds until she found us to give us the option of tacking on. She found Daughter first, who jumped at the chance even before I could assent.

Same thing happened with the Tarzan Swing. Four person minimum, they said. But if anyone else signed up, they’d be sure to let us know. Then they said some of the zip-liners would probably tack it on to the end of their trek. So if we just sort of hung around the end of the zipline at the right time of day, we could pull a Harry Belafonte and jump in the line.

When we got there, the dude said we’d probably go last since the zipliners would already be harnessed up. We were fine with that.

But the zipliners were taking a longer than expected, so he switched gears and took us first. By the time we were finished, there were still no zipliners. Some had come down and not come over to us, so there’s a chance none of them opted for the add-on and they actuality opened up the Tarzan Swing for a two-person minimum. Like I said, they seemed to bend over backwards trying to get us into their activities even if they initially gave us a hard time about a couple of loners.

Maybe that had something to do with the $100 I forked over for the horses and additional $35 for each Tarzan Swing.

Sorry, getting ahead of myself. While I assume you know what “horseback riding” is, you might be unfamiliar with this Tarzan Swing I keep referencing.

As was I.

Which is probably why I let them talk me into it.

After all the back-and-forth about how lucky we were to have it open for just two of us, I wasn’t going to say, “You mean one?” The dude didn’t rally ask if I was doing it or not, he just strapped me in a harness, at which point I was pot-committed.

It’s a rope swing. No big deal. That they attach to a waterski rope that you hold onto behind your head. Okay, got it so far. Then they drive a golf cart in the opposite direction pulling the ski rope, and the idiot holding onto it, fifty-five feet in the air.

What the what?!?

Then you have to let go of the rope and let physics, or maybe evolution, take over.

Daughter went first. I filmed from the bottom and, yeah, she looked high up there, but it wasn’t for very long, and as soon as she was up there, she let go and was sailing through a parabolic arc. The golf cart guy worried she was freaking out or passing out, because she didn’t really make a sound like most, but I could see the smile on her face from my vantage point, fifty-five feet away.

She went again and this time she laughed. As soon as she slowed down, she asked if she could have one or both of my swings. Dude turned to me and said, “She’s only ten? I hope you realize you’re jumping out of an airplane at some point.”

That’s my daughter.

So they strapped my 240 pounds into the same contraption that held her 80. The golf cart was Honey Badger, it didn’t give a shit.

Since you’re kinda lying down at the base of the swing, you have to reach over your head/behind you to grab the ski rope, then it starts tugging and you’re yanked backward and up. It isn’t a rough pull, but it ain’t exactly gentle. Kinda like water skiing, except it’s in the opposite direction. A direction you can’t see.

A direction you CAN see, however, is straight down and holy shit! That ground is fifty-five feet away!

Again, I had just seen Daughter do the same thing, but looking up at an object fifty-five feet in the air is substantially different than looking down from that same height. It might be just a little over halfway between home plate and first base but, well, you wouldn’t want to be dropped from first base. Fifty-five feet is, what, the sixth floor of a building?

And it’s up to me to decide when to let go and start the swing. All you have to do is let go. Easy enough, although Dude told me the longest somebody waited while freaking out was a minute, forty-three seconds. Not the case for me. It’s not comfortable being held up in the air by your arms hanging from a ski rope. The moment he gave me the okay, I was letting go. Hell, on my second ride, I wanted to let go at about thirty feet, but I wasn’t sure if that would fuck with liability.

So I let go. And then I flew.

It was basically a swing. Times ten. You pick up some serious acceleration on the way down. Obviously, as parabolic arcs go, the uphill portion brought me almost as high as the point from which I’d been dropped, only now the ground was behind me, so no big deal. By the time I returned to the pinnacle the second time, I noticed that my leg was shaking. Pent-up adrenaline or potential energy or whatever caused it, it was uncontrollable and hilarious. Honestly, I didn’t really think I was pent up at all before I dropped, but clearly something needed to get out. It happened again on my second swing.

So yeah, two thumbs up on the Out n’ About Treehouses. Just bring your own water and food.

Southwestern Oregon

Since the treehouses had a two-night minimum, we ventured out for a couple stops on the day in between.

First up was the Great Cats World Park. It’s a zoo just for cats. Lions and tigers and… um, jaguars.

As we drove up to the rinky little gravel lot in the middle of Podunk, Oregon, I worried we might be venturing into Tiger King territory. Fortunately, they seemed to at least give half a shit about their animals. Plus both the animals and the tour guides had all their teeth.

The tour guides were very knowledgeable about each of the breeds. They let us know about all the things that were threatening each cat’s existence and, unlike Tiger King, the Great Cats World Park wasn’t top of the list. They also seemed to be rooting against extinction, and for more reasons than its effect on their profits. Either that or they’re very good at faking compassion.

The cats were well fed, primarily because the tour guides kept throwing raw meat to get them to approach because, mind you, most cats are nocturnal, a fact I always remark uponnote at zoos when the “most ferocious predators” are napping in the shade for the entire day. The tour guides, mostly girls between 15-25, had no problem tossing the meat, sometimes with tongs and sometimes with their bare hands. Our first guide’s hands were literally cracking with dried meat juice. Unlike “likes cats and dislikes extinction”, I didn’t have “comfortable handling raw chopped-up porterhouse” high on my list of twentysomething female traits.

Daughter loved the tour. For me it got a little redundant. Especially after we were handed off to a second tour guide (while the first presumably went to wash her hands or contract e-coli) who repeated a lot of the same amazing factoids. But still, I managed to learn some things.

For instance: There’s no such thing as a panther, so both Marvel and the Carolina NFL team are using black jaguars.

Also, none of the jaguars sported a teal color like seen on Jacksonville helmets, making the NFL 0-for-2 on representing felines. I didn’t check to see if any of the lions were named Barry Sanders.

There’s a tiny cat called a Geoffroy’s Cat that was adorable and looked like a domestic cat. We all just assumed Geoffroy was the owner of the park and thought it would be funny to put his own cat in a section of the park during the day. Turns out that, no, a Geoffroy’s Cat is a mean little SOB who will kill another Geoffroy’s Cat. Or Jeffrey’s cat, for that matter.

In fact, the Geoffroy’s Cat is the only feline that will kill its species for no damn reason. Just like real-life Geoffs. I never trusted guys who couldn’t spell Jeff correctly.

After spending time with cats, we visited their favorite locale, water.

(Except for the Otter Cat that evolved specifically to be fine with water, including hair that instantly dried. One of the cooler cats at the park.)

We took the Hellsgate Jet Boats out of Grants Pass. It’s about an hour down the Rogue River to a spot called Hellsgate, which to me just looked like a regular ol’ canyon, then back. We took the last boat of the day, which also included dinner at a rustic mountain lodge themed restaurant, making it a four-hour sojourn.

Their website shows the boats doing twirlies in the river. I figured they’d do it maybe once or twice so we could write fancy reviews. Instead, we spun close to twenty times. Many of them were when our boat was alone, but there were five total jetboats leaving around the same time, and plenty of the spins were done in tandem with those other boats.

The driver alternated spinning left and right to ensure different people got soaked. The front row got it the worst, plus the side people in the first few rows. Honestly, if you were in the middle of row five or six, I don’t think you would’ve gotten more than an occasional spray. Daughter was on the far edge of row three, so she loved it. It was like a four-hour long amusement park rafting ride.

Ironically. when spinning, the side on the inside of the spin got the most soaked. The ones on the outside got the initial splash as their side of the boat cut into the water, and that’s the one everyone saw coming and cowered from. But when we finished our turn, effectively coming to a complete stop, the trailing wave then came over the other side, drenching those on the opposite side.

By the end, most of the boat still didn’t understand those physics. The boat driver said we could do one more spin and asked which direction we wanted to go. The whole front row pointed the direction that instinct, but not experience, told them would keep them dry.

The driver said it wasn’t fair, so we did two more spins, once each direction.

Then I think we caught up with another boat and did it again.

Those were the ones that drenched us all. Because then, instead of waiting for your trail of water to catch up with part of your boat, you’re going straight through the vertical sheet of water tossed up by the other boat. Even the middle of the last row got some of those.

And, of course, we made sure to return the favor to the other boat, now that we were ahead of them. Sometimes we did it with three boats.

Everyone seemed to be having a great time. It probably helped that it was ninety-five degrees that day. The boat driver said their first trips of the season tended to be when the high was fifty-five, and those customers weren’t quite as keen on the splashes.

The dinner was fun. Haven’t had family style with strangers in a while. Feels so 2019.

Daughter isn’t a big BBQ sauce fan, so she was kinda screwed with options of bbq ribs and bbq chicken. But there was plenty of bread to keep her happy. And it’s not like the bbq flavor goes much past the surface of a chicken breast.

The beer and wine was unlimited, too. Sure, it wasn’t good, but beggars and choosers, right? By the time we sat down, the beer had been sitting in a pitcher for a while and was both warm and flat, but it was probably C-minus or Miller Lite, so it’s not like the temperature and carbonation would’ve made it any better. In fact, when we polished off the first pitcher, they brought out a fresh pitcher. I didn’t notice much difference.

Our plates hadn’t even been cleared, much less dessert, when we got the warning that the boats would be leaving in fifteen minutes. Some of the regulars had already mentioned that the service seemed a little off this night, whether from new cooks or new servers. This whole Sophie’s Choice between a wee bit o’ cobbler and spending the night alone out in the elements was a new experience.

Probably not the best time for the waiters to bust out the gratuity buckets.

In the end, we were able to scarf down some cobbler and high-tail it down to the dock, banking on all those old fogeys not making it down the hill as fast as we would. You don’t have to be faster than the bear, only faster than the slowest person.

Even better, all the ribs and cobbler and flat beer stayed inside my body through all the twirlies on the boat ride home. Twice that day, with the Tarzan Swing, I managed the feat of neither shitting my pants nor spewing my guts! Huzzah!

Tweens and Tech

A.B. Kelly · July 9, 2024 · Musings · cell phones, child rearing, children, Internet, parenting, technology, tweens · No Comments

My daughter recently passed her tenth birthday.

Welcome to the Tweens!

There are, certainly, some timeless elements of raising a tween. The moodiness, the acting like a sassy teen one moment followed by curling up into a ball bawling over a broken toy.

And the body odor, which they are only occasionally aware of, and almost never inclined to do anything about.

However, there are additional aspects of raising a kid here in the 2020s that aren’t quite immortal. Back in the 1980s, my mother never had to worry about me messing up her Netflix queue.

In a nutshell, kids need to have tech available to them these days. But kids are also too young to sign up for their own accounts on a lot of said tech. Sure, we can lie on some things, but not as many as you might think.

Which means we have to sign them in as us. Which… kinda defeats the purpose of not allowing kids to sign up for their own stuff?

We ran into this issue on our recent cruise. Kids under thirteen couldn’t have their own log in on the cruise’s app, so we had to sign her in as me. But I was also signed in as me, so while she or I could text Wife, we couldn’t text each other.

In addition, the cruise had an area set up for young kids, and it had activities set up for teenagers. For tweens, it had… the ability to check themselves in and out of the kids area.

I guess they’re called Tweens for more reasons than one. They’re the Taint of childhood. And they smell like it, too.

I mean, you’ve got to be eighteen to enter into a binding contract, right? So thirteen shouldn’t make much difference from ten. If she violates those all-important terms and conditions, they ain’t coming after her whether she’s nine or thirteen or seventeen.

I’ve known we’re in that Brave New World for a few years. One time I took Daughter to curling. She throws two or three shots then decides she wants a corn dog. I was about to give her a twenty when I remembered they don’t accept cash there.

I gave her my card, because it’s not like anyone requires signatures anymore. It’s basically the same as when our parents wrote letters saying the liquor store could sell us beer because it was for them. (The 1970s were real, folks!)

I think I might’ve suffered twenty heart attacks in the five minutes she was getting her corn dog. Because Daughter ain’t the best at holding onto things. If I had given her a $20 bill and she set down the change somewhere and walked away, I’m out maybe $15. If she does the same with my debit card, I’m becoming besties with a Nigerian prince

Last summer, we went to a baseball game in Colorado and were faced with a similar problem. She wanted water. Since there was no way we were letting her to weave in and out of a stadium crowd with our plastic, I went to get her stupid fucking water. What happened while I was standing in line? The Angels hit back-to-back-to-back home runs!

We got her Greenlight, which is basically a debit card that we can pay her chore money into. Anyone who raised a child before 2010 thinks we’re crazy to get plastic for our child, but think long and hard about how little you spend cash.

We still won’t let her go out with it. At some point, she’s going to need to carry it on her own. Keys, too. But she’s not there yet.

When she saves up for something, we give her the card to make that one purchase, then it stays with us. Half the time, we pay for it, then transfer the money back to us. Just like Venmo, which I just checked and, magically, it has a minimum age of thirteen. And since it’s tied to bank accounts and email addresses, it’s not like we can lie about her age, then readjust it in three years.

I dropped her off for a birthday party at Round Table recently. Here’s one of those time-honored Tween Parent traditions. Most events, you have to play wait-and-see to figure out if it’s a drop-off or a parent-stay event. I would’ve been the only parent staying, aside from the birthday girl’s, so I left.

Then I remembered she probably needed money, so I stopped by an ATM because I didn’t have any on me. It was for air hockey and the claw machine and such so, even if she took her Greenlight card, it wouldn’t have been useful. I showed back up ten minutes later to give her cash. Then she asked if I could go get change for it, because she didn’t want to have to engage with the cashier.

Ah, Tweens. The activities and opportunities have expanded, but the responsibility has not.

Again, most of these situations would’ve been the same when my parents was raising me during the Reagan administration. Sure, they might not have needed to break a twenty, or to get a fresh twenty, just to get some quarters for video games, but they would’ve gone to get water for me at the ballgame. Or, more likely, a soda because I don’t think they sold bottled water back then.

The big change is in the technology space. Everything requires apps or accounts that the Tweens cannot own.

For the second summer in a row, I’ve made Daughter sign up for our library’s summer reading program. Unlike back in ye olden days, when we just totally lied and turned in a piece of paper with a bunch of “Read 30 minutes” boxes checked, it’s now in an app that tracks the minutes. Of course, there’ still no proof she actually is reading between the two times she pushes the button, but at least it provides a much more accurate time count.

The summer program must be tied to a library card. So last year, and again this year, I just signed in as myself and changed the name to her. No biggie, because it’s not like I needed some stupid external motivation to ensure I do some reading.

Hold on, let me go check the Kindle Summer challenge.

This year, they turned the quest into a Dungeons & Dragons-ish quest, where you pick a wizard or a faerie or whatnot and the tokens you get for each task are tied to the character. And once you finish one quest, you can restart as another character. Sounds fun.

The parents can play along, too, the hobbit-looking, Brandon-Sanderson-sounding librarian says. That’s not an insult. If I told him he sounded like Brandon Sanderson, he’d probably spontaneously orgasm.

But… she’s on my account. Can I make two people on the same account simultaneously? No. One person per account. So Wife can play along or I can play along, but we can’t have a family-wide competition. Same damn issue as the cruise.

And again, I don;t see the difference between ten and thirteen. If she loses a library book at any point in the next eight years, they ain’t coming after her regardless of the name on the card.

It finally came to a head when we got new phones. Daughter’s had a hand-me-down for a couple years now. For the majority of that time, she only used it to download mindless games, but over the past year, more of her friends are getting their own phones, so they text each other. Mainly emojis and whatnot. As far as I can tell, most developmental professional types are saying phones are fine for ten-year-olds, social media is not. Hell, social media probably isn’t a good idea for adults, either. As fun as it is to learn how vapid your favorite celebrity is, a world in which we mostly interact with people who we know and understand might not be a bad prescription.

They still aren’t allowed to have phones at school, but she’s heading into her last year of elementary school, after which I’m sure it will be game over. I keep seeing debates about whether phones should be allowed in schools. L.A. Unified just banned them and Herr Kommandant Newsom thought that sounded like a peachy idea for the whole state so he can run more commercials in Florida about how California believes in freedom.

Kind of an odd battle to be fighting right now. My district is under the impression it’s illegal for us to ban phones, although I can’t find any court cases to that effect. Guessing there’ll be one the first day L.A. Unified actually tries to implement it. Something about the right to communicate. Besides, if schools are giving laptops to every student, taking away their phone isn’t going to create some utopia where they’re all paying attention. I’ve got students watching unedited Game of Thrones episodes, what the hell do I care if he’s texting someone?

Y’know, we used to pass notes in class, too.

So with middle school coming and any number of other reasons, when Wife and I recently upgraded our own phones, we finally brought Daughter’s into this decade. For the most part, it’s been a success. It’s great for car trips and providing some peace and quiet around the house, because I swear if I have to watch another season of Jesse, I might be committed.

She can also start doing front-end negotiations on play dates so the extent of our social secretarying is getting confirmation from the other child’s parents. You’d be surprised how often they have no idea their own child auctioned off their pool and half their refrigerator.

But there’s some snafus, Unlike the library, where she’s using my account, the Amazon account on Daughter’s phone belongs to Wife. You might’ve had heart palpitations knowing a ten-year-old can go hog-wild on Amazon with no guardrails, but Daughter is either a good soul or not very adventurous. I’m sure that will change at some point and we’ll have to lock it down. Maybe give her her own Amazon account and tie it to her Greenlight card. Except, again, there’s probably some legality behind doing that before she’s thirteen or maybe sixteen. I guess we could remove our own plastic from Amazon and have to enter it fresh each time, but Jesus, who wants to do that? Can you even have a pay-as-you-go Amazon account?

But for now, she uses Amazon responsibly. More responsibly than her parents. Yeah, I know I have ten unread books on my Kindle, I’ve just gotta get that other one. They’re offering double Kindle points this weekend! I have no idea what Kindle points are for, but it’s double!

Daughter, on the other hand, makes wishlists for her birthday and looks for gift ideas for the two of us, even if we’ll be the ones buying it. That goes back as long as there’ve been gifting occasions. I remember picking out things at K-mart get grandma for Christmas, but I sure as shit didn’t pay for them myself. I only had to wrap them, so she’d know it was truly from me.

Now, what Daughter should have done when she found the perfect gift for Wife was to text it to me. Instead, she put it in the cart. Makes sense, because that’s what she’s done when finding something she wants for herself. We tell her to look up lunchboxes or some Taylor Swift bullshit. She finds the item she wants and puts it in the cart. Then the next time we’re ordering toilet paper or toothpaste (but not Kindle books, because those are, of course, one-click buys), her item is sitting in our cart and we can decide whether to add it or save it for later.

Same way it worked at K-mart in 1985.

So she saw a shirt that she thought would be great for her mom’s birthday. And she put it in the cart. Of her mom’s Amazon account.

Then, when Wife said she was going to order something from Amazon, Daughter piped up with that eternal cry of the Tween and beyond: “Don’t look in there!”

There’s got to be a better way.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to send some account info to my Nigerian friend. He swears he’s going to send me some tasteful nudes of Queen Victoria.

A Juneteenth Primer

A.B. Kelly · June 18, 2024 · Musings · Civil War, emancipation-proclamation, history, Holidays, Juneteenth, slavery · No Comments

Happy Juneteenth to those who celebrate.

I have to specify “to those who celebrate,” because it’s still a relatively new holiday. Maybe it shouldn’t be, what with the original Juneteenth happening over 150 years ago.

And some people, certainly, have been celebrating Juneteenth for years. Decades. A century or more.

For the rest of us, it kinda came out of nowhere. Even here in California, where most people are quick to throw out systemic racism as the explanation for everything from climate change to Caitlin Clark, most people’s reaction on Juneteenth is, “Oh wait, we’re celebrating this now?”

We didn’t really get a chance to discuss it. In fact, if we delve a little deeper about Juneteenth, I don’t think it’s a holiday that most of the white progressives, who are right now preparing authentic vegan slave food for their Instagram feeds, would have jumped on board with.

Some throat clearing to begin with. We absolutely ought to celebrate the end of slavery. I like those who refer to it as America’s Second Independence Day. I’d take five holidays devoted to ideals of equality and freedom over, say, Easter or Thanksgiving. The only thing worse than a religion saying sex is bad but celebrating rabbits and eggs in Spring is when we are forced to pretend turkey tastes good. I’d be fine if we just made it a national gravy day, but lets put that stuff on biscuits instead of poultry.

My skepticism about Juneteenth has nothing to do with celebrating the end of slavery. It has everything to do with celebrating Texas.

This might take a little history lesson.

The Civil War ended in late May, 1865. However, because not everybody was following Robert E. Lee’s TikTok account, the fighting went on for some time after that. Texas was one of the holdouts, and on June 19, a Union general pushed into Galveston, which more or less wrapped up the fighting. He issued an order informing or reminding the Texans that the slaves were free. Sort of.

Let’s go back a few years and start with the Emancipation Proclamation. Many people errantly believe Juneteenth is about the Emancipation Proclamation. They also errantly believe the Emancipation was passed in order to free slaves. It wasn’t. It was about ending the Civil War.

In fact, if you read the language of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was proclaimed (not enacted) in September, 1862, it only frees slaves in states still “in rebellion” on January 1, 1863. In other words, it was a carrot to the Confederate States that if they came back to the Union in the next four months, they could keep their slaves. Just like the four states in the Union, which kept their slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation. Good ol’ Honest Abe’s primary goal was to be the president who lost half the country. Whether slaves were freed or not was an afterthought.

No, this isn’t one of those “Lost Cause” Civil War apologies. All you dumbshits with your Confederate flags who claim that the Confederacy wasn’t about slavery are disingenuous and you know it. It was about states’ rights? Federalism? Way of life? Okay, I’ll bite. WHICH “state’s right” was on the verge of being taken away? WHAT was the key component to the “Way of Life” they were trying to preserve? If “owning slaves” wasn’t one of your top two answers to either of those questions, you’re trying too hard.

Oh, and we can debate whether the Confederate flag is racist. Technically, the U.S. flag flew over plantations much longer, summed up excellently by Denzel Washington in Glory. But whether or not the Confederate flag is racist, it is undeniably about treason. Especially when you consider that the Confederate flag they all fly was not the government’s flag, but the battle flag. The Confederate government, the entity passing laws ensuring states rights, was red, white, and blue. The orange one with the cross of stars in the middle was only used on the battlefield. Only used when shooting at the American army. Which is treason.

But while the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves when it went into effect, it did eventually apply to most of the slaves. Since none of the states took Abe up on his whole “Keep Your Slaves” Proclamation, the army had the power to free their slaves if and when they conquered each state. As punishment for the rebellion, not because Abe believed in any grandiose ideas of self-determination.

This executive action was probably unconstitutional. Giving the army the power to take people that the Constitution technically still considered property. I mean, it isn’t as far of a reach as, say, the agency whose job is studying infectious disease proclaiming that homeowners aren’t allowed to collect rent from residents, but the Supreme Court might’ve been brought into the dispute. Fortunately for Abe, the states affected by his action were ignoring the Supreme Court at the time.

Ergo, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free any slaves. So it’s probably not a good idea to use it as our manumission holiday. And we don’t. It was signed on September 22 and went into effect on January 1. January 1 is, obviously, already a college football holiday, and even though some of those athletes now make NIL deals, a day when unpaid men are breaking their bodies so some fancy bigwig university presidents can pocket millions probably isn’t the best day to celebrate the end of slavery.

September 22 is kinda close to September 17, which is Constitution Day. Not that we really celebrate the Constitution. Maybe they could have been combined, reflecting that whole “worth of the individual” thing. If it weren’t for that persnickety detail about the Emancipation Proclamation being unconstitutional.

Besides, labor unions already put a “People should get paid for work” holiday in September.

Personally, I’d like to use the thirteenth amendment as our end of slavery holiday, considering it a) did it the proper way, and b) affected the entire country all at once. After all, Kentucky and Delaware were still allowed to have slaves after the Civil War was over. Like I said, Abe was perfectly fine letting states keep their slaves as long as they played on his team.

Unfortunately, the thirteenth amendment was implemented in mid-December, when we’re all busy with Santa parades and shopping. Unless we’re following my earlier idea of shit-canning Thanksgiving, we can’t really be adding any major holidays during that time of the year. That’s probably why we don’t celebrate the twenty-first amendment on December 5, which is the one holiday I truly think we need. We have a Mexican drinking day and an Irish drinking day. Why not an American one?

Fun little factoid: the state that pushed the twenty-first amendment past the threshold? Utah. They signed off on us having our booze, and ever since then have decided that 3% is quite enough ABV, thank you very much.

So if the Emancipation Proclamation happened in September and went into effect in January, and if slavery was finally outlawed in December, what the heck are we celebrating in June?

It wasn’t the first slave being freed. It wasn’t the last slave being freed.

It was some Texan slaves being freed.

On June 19, 1865 a general in the Union Army occupying Texas issued an order that was basically, “Hey, did y’all not hear that y’all don’t get no slaves no more?”

You might think he didn’t use the word “y’all” because he was a northern general. I assume he did, because the Texans seemed to have understood him.

And, lest we again trick ourselves into thinking this was some grand gesture toward racial harmony, they added a second paragraph to the Juneteenth Proclamation specifically for the slaves, who I’m sure could totally read. It told them that they should stay working where they were already working, they should just get paid for it. They should NOT, under any circumstances, come to the army camps or any other government offices looking for, I don’t know, freedom.

And I’m sure those Texan slaves (who, again, had to be literate because the Proclamation, as far as we know, was not delivered orally) were perfectly fine walking up to the guy who thought he owned them yesterday in order to negotiate a wage. As sure as I am that those plantation owners were totally willing participants in the exchange. After all, a century and a half later, his descendants were going to need a holiday in mid-June.

Some of the other misconceptions about Juneteenth are that it was the first time any of the slaves had heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. Nope. Somehow, even before social media, scuttlebutt spread. I’ve heard some suggest that these were either the first slaves freed or the last slaves freed. The first one is absolutely a no, considering that slaves had been continuously freed as the Union swept across the Confederacy.

It’s also highly unlikely they weren’t the last slaves freed, either. Again, Kentucky and Delaware, by virtue of not joining the Confederacy, were allowed to keep their slaves until the thirteenth amendment was ratified. By most accounts, a lot of those slaves were freed long in advance of the official date, but knowing the uber-wealthy, I’ve got to believe that one or two holdouts considered their slaves to be personal property up until the moment the government told them they couldn’t anymore.

So if it wasn’t the first or last slaves freed, what is it a celebration of? If anything, it’s a celebration of the Union conquering the last enclave of holdouts. It’s a celebration of some slaves being, maybe kinda, freed, so long as they were willing to take advantage of it.

So why are we celebrating it? Because it happened in Texas. After New York and California, our country’s third obsession is Texas. Sorry, Florida.

During the BLM protests in 2020, a lot of discussions occurred about which topics were and were not covered in U.S. history. Most of those conversations were annoying because they were topics that are absolutely covered in U.S. history. Just because the yahoos in the media weren’t paying attention when their teachers taught about Emmett Till and the Freedom Riders and Selma doesn’t mean that history was being whitewashed.

The one that stumped me was the Tulsa race riots. Because, yeah, that’s never really been a major topic. Not just in high schools, but in colleges. But I don’t think the culprit is us not wanting people to know that Black middle classers often faced the harshest retributions. That’s fifty percent of the U.S. History curriculum from 1890 to 1960. I think what it comes down to is… it’s Tulsa. I don’t think Oklahoma appears anywhere in any U.S. history curriculum between the Homestead Act and, I don’t know, Timothy McVeigh?

But Texas shows up often. Because they matter. And if you aren’t sure if Texas matters, just ask a Texan. They’ll tell you.

But should liberals in California and New York be celebrating the fact that Texas dragged its feet on ending slavery? Should they be playing along with “Everything’s bigger in Texas”?

Not just Texas. I’m not sure we should let any member of the Confederacy determine when and how we celebrate the end of slavery in the country.

I’m all ears for a better option.

As Hip as Vinyl

A.B. Kelly · June 11, 2024 · Musings · economics, histoy, music, news, obsolete technology, Pop Culture, records, supply and demand, technology, vinyl · No Comments

One of my favorite things about teaching economics is how approachable it is.

Never understood why most states wait until senior year to broach a system that most five-year-olds can figure out. You have a finite amount of money (or resources) and, as a result, you gotta choose what to use it for. How hard is that?

We’ve all experienced economics our whole life. For instance, most people are willing to pay more for things with utility, or usefulness, and convenience. Products that are less useful or convenient must be sold at a lower price or else consumers will substitute in the better…

I’m sorry, how much does that record player cost?

That’s, like, just a regular record player, right? The kind we were all too eager to move on from in the 1980s when snazzy new cassette technology came out?

It must be able to skip songs like CDs. Or flip the record over by itself? Oh, I’m sure it’s one of those faux items, made to look like it plays vinyl while in reality, you plug in a flash drive with MP3s.

No? it just plays vinyl records?

Sorry, where was I? Oh right, how intuitive economics is.

When most people hear “social science,” they think history, but when you actually think about the wording, it’s the study (“science”) of human interaction (“social”). And there is no more basic human interaction than “You make a product I want. This is how much I’m willing to pay for it.”

Like, for instance, you produce a record player. If this were 1970.

You see, the law of demand says that people want to pay as little as possible for a product. Unless it’s got the hipster badge of honor, evidently. And the law of supply says… well, I guess the law of supply is in full force here, because if dumbasses are willing to pay more for decades-old technology that’s been replaced by at least three generations of improved products, then sure, I’ll make as many of those damn things as you want.

Actually, there is one economic concept that helps explain the price of record players, which is a decrease in supply. As most companies move on to produce newer, better technology, there are only a few record players being produced. The small number of customers remaining are willing to pay more for the few remaining relics of the past. Maybe there are some warmed over hippies who want to play the vinyl collecting dust on the shelf for the entirety of this millennium.

I can commiserate. I’ve got a crap-ton of VHS tapes that I’ll never get to watch again. Sure, I’ve repurchased the movies, but dammit, Daughter needs to understand that it wasn’t Hayden fucking Christensen under Darth Vader’s fucking helmet. In fact, when I showed her Star Wars the few scenes she tuned out to were the digital scenes added in the 1990s re-releases, which look so phony now.

Star Wars aside, most of my VHS tapes are recordings of community theater shows and a couple high school projects I made with Rian Johnson that I could probably sell for a premium. Actually, scratch that, they’re terrible. The only person willing to pay me for them would be hush money from Rian himself.

Pretty sure I own “WarGames” in at least three formats. Even though I swap most of the movies I show in class in and out of the rotation every few years when I get tired of watching them, “WarGames” has never fallen by the wayside. It’s still, in my mind, the definitive Cold War movie that is still approachable to students today. If anything, it’s become even more relevantthe last couple years with the debates over AI. As such, I know I at least have it on VHS and DVD, and probably BluRay (which I always seem to forget is different than DVD). I’ve also purchased it digitally on Amazon one year when my DVD player wasn’t working, because now that DVD players only cost $20, the planned obsolescence on them is about two weeks.

Yes, I understand the irony of discussing planned obsolescence in the same post as $300 record players.

A decade or so ago, I hoped the, with digital, we could get beyond repurchasing the same title multiple times, but now we’re getting into the “must purchase on different platforms.” I thought I was being proactive when I burned all the good songs off my CDs back in the mid 2000s. Except I burned them via iTunes and now have an android. And now my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive to reburn them.

To say nothing of streaming companies pulling content they already own off their own platforms. At first, I was annoyed I’d bought all those early MCU titles on DVD when they were all now available on Disney+. But at some point, they’ll pull a Mysterious Benedict Society on the MCU and I’ll be happy I have those DVDs.

Assuming I can find a DVD player when that happens.

So yeah, I get the idea of producing a few bits of obsolete technology for those still stuck in yesteryear.

But vinyl records are still being produced. By new bands. And they cost TWICE AS MUCH as a goddamn CD.

I discovered all this after Daughter discovered Taylor Swift. She’s ten years old, which is the proper age for a Swifite. Unfortunately, there seem to be a handful of people over the age of twelve who are ruining the situation for the rest of us, meaning Taylor Swift concert tickets are a wee bit more expensive than Kidz Bop.

Following Taylor Swift is the ultimate form of purchasing the same item in multiple formats. In addition to the CDs and, yes, the vinyl, you have to buy the Taylor’s version of all the albums she’s redone, even if you bought the original album before she re-recorded them. And you’re expected to buy the albums she hasn’t re-recorded yet, preferably in multiple formats, with the knowledge that you will be buying them again when she re-records her own versions in another year or two. But only if she stays with Travis Kelce, because if they break up, she’ll write new music and not need to release another “Taylor’s version.”

Oh, and send some Spotify fees her way, too.

So Daughter saved up her allowance for a few months to purchase a record player. Then she wanted to buy some vinyl.

I was sorta game, because, call me old, but sometimes I miss listening to albums as they were intended. I get tired of telling Alexa or Pandora to play some Beatles only to find they don’t know that the second half of Abbey Road is supposed to be played continuously. Nothing’s more jarring than “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” being in between “Please, Please Me” and “Here, There, and Everywhere.”

Daughter started with three Taylor Swift albums and I threw a couple Lake Street Dive albums because the whole family likes them, even though we mostly listen to them on Alexa. Haven’t been able to find Abbey Road yet, which is probably a good thing. It’s one thing to buy an album you already have on newer, better technology. It’s quite another to intentionally retrograde your version.

The pricing of these records was where my belief in supply and demand totally shit the fan. There is no earthly reason they should cost twice, even three times, as much as CDs. At Barnes & Noble, the CD version of Taylor Swift’s Red was $18 or $19 and the vinyl was $45! And that’s Taylor’s version, where she’s getting 100% of the proceeds.

Back in the early 1990s, when they were brand new, CDs cost $15-20, while cassettes ran about $10 and vinyl was maybe a little less, because nobody was buying them.

I remember being at a concert where the artist said CDs and cassettes cost the same amount to produce. The audience gasped. That artist, and others, were hoping to bring the price of CDs down. Instead, the industry responded by increasing the price of cassettes. That pretty much killed off cassettes, because, back before social media, people weren’t willing to pay more for worse technology.

They should’ve quadrupled the price. Then called cassettes “niche.”

Or waited a decade and used the term “vintage.”

Somehow CDs still cost about $15. Evidently they’ve never heard of inflation. Neither have video games. When I was buying piece-of-shit 8-bit games for my Intellivision or original NES, they set me back about $50. With a few exceptions, video games for a PS4 or PS5 stay mostly in that $40-50 range. The difference is that I only made $3.35 an hour back in the NES days, so I’d have to pretty much work a whole week to afford a video game. Now it’ll take me an hour. The same hour I just spent writing this blog while my students watched WarGames.

By that rationale, I could get four or five CDs an hour. But I don’t. I think I’ve purchased maybe ten CDs in the last ten years. Because even when I buy them, I just listen to their contents online, which doesn’t necessitate having the physical CD in my possession, not to mention finding something to play it on. My new car doesn’t even have a CD player anymore.

As a result there are fewer CD shops. And fewer CD player shops. Seriously, how the hell is Best Buy still in business?

That’s called a decrease in demand. Fewer people purchase a product, fewer of the product are produced, and the price drops. Or, in this case, the price stays the same despite thirty years of inflation.

That memo that hasn’t hit vinyl. Oh, the quantity available has certainly dropped, which makes it annoying to look for anything other than Taylor Swift, a couple of country stars, and maybe Led Zeppelin. Seriously, the Barnes and Noble had about ten copies of various Zeppelin records. Of all the questions I have about today’s vinyl customers, I really, really, really want to know who is just now, in 2024, desiring to purchase Zeppelin IV on vinyl.

For $30.

I know, I know. I sound like a broken record here.

But hey, at least Millennials and Gen Zs will finally know what it means to sound like a broken record. My students always thought it was a good thing, referring to broken records in sports. But it’s a Michael Jackson reference, not a Michael Jordan reference. Not that they know who either of those people are. Sorry, I sound like a Taylor Swift broken record, not a Travis Kelce broken record.

Since we purchased the record player and records, wanna know Daughter’s preferred way to listen to Taylor Swift? On Alexa. Or YouTube. They’re so much more convenient.

And what is the record player doing? Sitting there on the shelf gathering dust, just like it was 1986 up in this bitch.

So sure, people, convince yourself that those cracks and hisses are “essential to the music” and pay a premium for it.

Then go listen to it digitally.

Because you know what I’ve never heard anybody say when leaving a concert?

Damn! Why no crackles?

Wherein I Fix All of Marvel’s Problems

A.B. Kelly · May 16, 2024 · Musings · Comic Books, Disney, Marvel, marvel movies, mcu, Movie Review, Pop Culture · No Comments

As the foremost expert on all matters Marvel, I figured I should pipe in on this new/old/revamped/softly-rebooted MCU thingamagig.

(*Disclaimer: “Foremost Expert” is an unofficial title more or less determined by comparing my knowledge of comic books to a) my family members, and b) some of my coworkers. Plus I once blogged about why female superheroes have large breasts

So the MCU has been in a bit of a funk lately. And by “bit of a funk,” I mean it’s been a heap of hot garbage that’s hemorrhaging millions of dollars on each failed attempt to regain relevance. Kevin Feige, the guy in charge of the whole shebang, who as of five years ago was seen as a wunderkind who could film a fart and turn it into a billion-dollar franchise, is licking his wounds and going to that time-honored Hollywood tradition of retreading the same old shit they’ve been shilling out for decades.

The reasons for the recent failures in the MCU can be attributed to a ton of reasons. Some people, evidently including Kevin Feige, think it’s because they’ve used up all their “a-list” heroes and actors. Others think it’s the result of Disney “going woke” and “going broke.” Add to that the effects of Covid and HDTVs on the theater-going experience, plus the desire for Disney+ to have premium content, plus the glut of entertainment options, plus Jonathan Majors’s assault trial, plus the confusing storylines because do I really have to watch Loki, season two before I see Deadpool and Wolverine?

I’m here to confidently assert that each of those explanations is wrong.

Because, in many ways, they’re all right.

And if Kevin Feige thinks he’s going to solve the problem by giving Robert Downey, Jr. a shit-ton of money, he’s in for a rude awakening. Okay, maybe not the first time he tries that trick, but it ain’t gonna have staying power.

What everybody can agree on is the origin of the MCU’s problems, which started roughly the time between when the Avengers: Endgame afterglow left our hearts and the Covid virus entered our psyches.

Boy, Endgame only beat out Covid by the skin of its teeth. Remember how painful that year was between Infinity War and Endgame? Imagine if Infinity War had come out in 2019 instead of 2018. Then all the movie theaters would’ve shut down before we got the resolution. And there’s no way Disney would’ve tried that “just release it on Disney+” bullshit they did with Black Widow if it was the pinnacle of a decade of storytelling. Dare I say it, that would’ve made 2020 even worse than it already was.

But I digress. Let me start with the least, or maybe most, obvious problem the MCU is facing: Endgame hangover.

Don’t get me wrong. Endgame is one of the greatest cinematic accomplishments of all time. So much fan service, so many callbacks, wrapped up in a prefect send-off of characters we’d come to know for a decade or more.

Can I be honest? When I was in the theater, I didn’t even hear the dialogue when Dr. Strange’s teleportation circley things (told you I was a Marvel expert) all appeared on the air, because I was in one of those theaters where everyone was cheering at the top of their lungs.

Of course, the line, spoken by Falcon to Captain America, is “On your left,” which was what Captain America kept saying to Falcon when they were running around Capitol Mall and Cap kept lapping him in Falcon’s first appearance.

It’s details like this that set it apart. James Bond movies (pre-Daniel Craig) were always standalones. The Star Wars trilogies are mostly independent, and when they try to self-refer, it’s ham-handed and pisses off half the audience. Endgame was catharsis.

Unfortunately, with Endgame being such an accomplishment, Disney kinda forgot what brought us to the MCU in the first place. Endgame wouldn’t have worked in place of Iron Man in 2008. Just ask DCU, which continues to try (and fail) to reboot their own comic universe with deep gut-punches of movies. The MCU, by contrast, was light-hearted and fun. But now they think all of reality has to hang in the balance for every damn movie. Endgame worked because we were vested in the characters. We knew “On your left” and “I could do this all day” and “I am Iron Man,” so we were rooting for them as much as we were rooting for Earth or half of humanity.

In The Eternals, do we really give a shit about Ikarus or Sersei or Crystal?

(That was a test: Crystal is in the Inhumans, not the Eternals, and if you don’t know the difference, that’s the point.)

Now, Kevin Feige and the rest of the Disney brass would look at my last statement as proof that they need to bring back Iron Man and Captain America, but I call bullshit. Nobody knew who the hell the Guardians of the Galaxy were before 2014, but I guarantee that if I’d thrown Groot in my fake Eternals lineup instead of Crystal, everyone would have caught it immediately.

Before they follow this new “only big names” path, maybe they should find a single human who prefered Thor: Love and Thunder over Shang-Chi. Then put that huan in prison, because they are clearly a sociopath.

It’s not about the star power, either. Sure, Robert Downey, Jr. was always a star (albeit one who was known more for his off-screen misdeeds than any particular role), but Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth were hardly household names before they hit gold. It’s hilarious to look back on critics haranguing Disney for putting the original Thor movie in the hands of a couple of unknown lightweights named Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston.

Never forget that Shang-Chi begat Barbie, not the other way around.

This whole “just use the major characters” approach isn’t only a movie problem. For sixty years now, the Marvel Comics mantra has been, “If a comic isn’t selling, make Spider-Man and Wolverine guest star.” The only entity more egregious is DC Comics, who seem contractually obligated to put Batman in fifty percent of their printed comics each month.

It’s why I fear Wolverine being part of the MCU now. I really, really hope Hugh Jackman retires the character after the next Deadpool movie. Not because I dislike Hugh Jackman or Wolverine, but because if the MCU gets their way, he’ll replace Stan Lee in the cameo department.

Thank God Marvel can’t use Spider-Man with impunity. If Sony ever sells the rights back, assume the next seven MCU titles will be Spider-Man and Wolverine.

Where I started to lose interest in the MCU was when they transitioned from the (allegedly) minor characters of Vision and Scarlet Witch to the (again, allegedly) major characters of Falcon and Winter Soldier. Of all the decisions they’ve made over the past five years, moving WandaVision into the pole position of the Disney+ shows, was probably their worst. It showed how groundbreaking the new format could be. Wow, we can have a time-bending, reality-bending show steeped in pop-culture with painstaking attention to detail encompassing seventy years of pop culture? Cool!

Then they followed it up with stretching a two-hour movie into six episodes.

One thing everyone can agree on is that the glut needed to stop. I understand why Disney felt they needed a shit-ton of TV series right away. It’s hard to compete with Netflix if you’ve only got two or three properties. But, honestly, they could’ve waited more than a couple weeks in between each of those initial series. I watched almost every series, but if you put a gun to my head and asked if a particular scene happened in Hawkeye, Moon Knight, or She-Hulk, I might not be able to tell you. Unless it was in Egypt, in which case my answer it Moon Knight.

Speaking of the glut of Disney+ offerings, stop calling the cartoons part of the MCU. I’m sick of headlines saying “Iron Man returning to MCU” or “Tom Holland replaced as Spider-Man” only to find out it’s about Zombie Iron Man or Spidey and his Amazing Friends. Hell, I’m not even sure how I feeel about Deadpool and Wolverine being the only MCU movie coming out this year. Sure, Deadpool is a Disney property now, but does anyone actually feel, after seeing the first two movies, that this is a natural connector between The Marvels and Captain America: Brave New World? Even in the comics, Deadpool barely works in continuity. I worry the character will lose a lot of his appeal once he has to fit into MCU’s multiple convolusions.

I’m kinda bummed that The Marvels bombed. It was actually a good movie. So was Fall Guy, which also bombed, because somehow Hollywood still hasn’t figured out what gets people to the theaters. A lot of people blame it on Covid hangover, but theater attendance was down int he decade leading up to 2020, as well. For all properties except Marvel.

I think The Marvels is what the MCU needs more of. But not for the reasons that Disney thinks. And not for the reasons Fox News thinks.

It has nothing to do with the movie having three female superheroes. It’s because at least two of those three superheroes are interesting, played by actors who aren’t phoning it in. It also has Brie Larsen.

Considering that all three characters have gone by either Ms. Marvel or Captain Marvel in the comics, combining them in a movie called The Marvels makes total sense. Those of us in the know realized where it was going as soon as the last name Rambeau showed up in the original Captain Marvel.

If you haven’t seen WandaVision (or Ms. Marvel), it might feel like this was a woke shoe-horning in of three female characters of different ethnicities, but considering the MCUs bread and butter has always been characters showing up in each others’ movies, it would’ve seemd odd had Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan NOT appeared in the next Captain Marvel movie. But yeah, one of those valid complaints of the MCU is that you shouldn’t have to watch every damn property to know what’s going on.

But if the reason you didn’t watch Ms. Marvel is because she’s Muslim, suck it up. You lost that worthless argument a couple generations ago.

Monica Rambeau’s been in the comics since the early 1980s, she’s hardly a woke “tick the box” representation character. Was Kamala Khan? Maybe at first, although I find it interesting that she showed up around the same time as Miles Morales. The complaint about Miles Morales was “if there’s going to be a minority character, make a new one. There’s already a white Spider-man.” Then those same people complained when the Muslim Ms. Marvel was completely different than the white one. Or the blue one, which was the original Mar-Vell.

With all that being said, Marvel Comics, and by extension the MCU, needs to stop putting “tick the boxes” ahead of character development. While I watched and enjoyed The Marvels, the entity I have no interest in whatsoever was Echo. The character of Echo is, allegedly, interesting because she is a) deaf, and b) Native American. Back story? Nah. Specific powers? Not really. Compelling backstory? Did I mention she was both Native American and deaf?

Two of the most boring Marvel characters are Hulkling and Wiccan. Hulking already has one strike against him because he is not in any way related to the Hulk. Hulk has a son, but that is not Hulkling. Instead, Hulkling is part Skrull, so he is green and can shape-shift into something strong, like Hulk. Wiccan is one of Vision and Wanda’s kids. He’ll show up in the MCU soon, I suppose.

Hulkling and Wiccan are gay and they are married to each other. So every time they’re shown, it’s some sort of date night or some other premise to show nonstop adoration between the two. They never fight, as married couples are wont to do. They never have their own agendas. They are simply in love with each other, at all times, because dammit, that’s good story-telling. Meanwhile, Invisible Woman is banging Namor every time Mr. Fantastic leaves the room for more than five minutes.

Hulking is literally the emperor of the combined Kree & Skrull empires, but somehow the only story of his that’s worth telling is that he’s married to a man and they are perfect together. Hey Marvel, it would feel a lot less like tokenism if you allowed the characters to be more than just a token.

This whole “minority characters can’t have flaws” is going to come back to bite Marvel in the ass before long. Exhibit #1: The Phoenix Force. Historically, it takes over a character, causes them to kick-ass for a period of time, then turns them insurmountably evil before burning out. The plot of X-Men vs Avengers, one of their most-hyped (and least-payoffed) crossovers of the last twenty years, is that infects six X-Men and runs them through the whole gamut in seven issues. They solve world hunger by issue #2 and are trying to end existence by Issue #6.

Now Echo has the Phoenix Force. Let me remind you, however, that she is Native American. And deaf. If Hulkling can’t have any flaws, that applies doubly to Echo. She can’t ever succumb to baser instincts because the Woke Bible says no Native American has ever had an impure thought in their entire history. Nor have the deaf. The way you humanize someone is by removing their humanity.

And sure enough, Echo has had the Phoenix Force since 2021 and… still has it. Hasn’t saved a planet, hasn’t destroyed one. In fact, she doesn’t really do anything. She’s the same character she’s always been and the Phoenix force is just kinda there. Can’t really flare up and do its Phoenix thing as that might detract from Echo’s primary role of being a) Native American, and b) deaf.

I assume they’ll finally fix it by having the Phoenix Force leave her voluntarily to find someone who is corruptable.

But Echo being a terrible character wasn’t the reason I avoided the TV show. The MCU entities are separate from the comic counterparts. The Thor in the comics has none of the humor of Chris Hemsworth. Tony Stark isn’t nearly as charismatic as Robert Downey, Jr. And Shang-Chi? Find me a Marvel fan who knew who that character was before 2018 and I’ll find you a liar.

But I did watch Hawkeye. It was mostly a good show. Kate Bishop has huge potential to carry the character forward, probably even better than the morose-as-hell Barton (which totally doesn’t match the way the character is in the comics). And Yelena is the single best character to be introduced post-Rocket Raccoon. And again, Yelena ain’t that big of a deal in the comics.

Most of the time, Hawkeye’s pace popped. The times it didn’t? When Echo was there. It was all Kate investigating her stepfather and Clint stuck in New York and Yelena quipping about what’s in the refrigerator. Then it’s, oh by the way, here’s Echo, dropping in like a “Very Special Episode” of a 1980s sitcom. The pace slowed down, the subject matter got serious, because Echo is not a character we are allowed to approach like every other character. We must understand that she MATTERS.

And they decided to give her an entire series not based on feedback, not based on an objective review of how the character played out, but on a “Fuck you, racist and ableist fucks!” Seriously, Kate, who was supposed to be taking over the main character, has only shown up one more time, in a cameo at the end of The Marvels, while Echo has received an entire series and is also going to be in the next Daredevil series. So who was the main purpose of Hawkeye?

Charlie Cox got thrown in the last Spider-Man movie because he was hugely popular and finally able to be in the MCU. Ditto with Hugh Jackman in the upcoming Deadpool flick. Loki wasn’t my cup of tea, but I get that it was quirky and had a following, so it made sense that season two was greenlit. Echo, meanwhile, was the opposite. Almost a dare. We’re gonna make a boring character and you’re all gonna watch it or else we’ll call you racist and ableist.

So I guess I can see why people thought The Marvels was going to go that route. But it didn’t.

Sure, The Marvels was little more than a torch-passing, but the torch was being passed from a stick in the mud who never really brought much to her roll, Brie Larsen, to someone who could not be a better embodiment of what the MCU should be, Iman Vellani. She steals every scene she’s in with her exuberance. She’s every bit what Tom Holland exuded in his early movies, but replace the “striving to impress” with a buttload of “OMG, this is so cool.” I know the MCU keeps looking for its next Robert Downey, Jr, and I’m not saying Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t the correct call on that, but what they really ought to be focusing on is the next Star Lord. The next Kat Dennings.

There’s a scene in The Marvels on a planet where everyone sings. It’s hilarious. At one point, Monica Rambeau asks Kamala Khan how many fanfic chapters she’s going to get out of this. But to me, the funniest line was when plot started happening, requiring the king to speak some lines instead of sing them. Kamala looks confused, but Carol Danvers explains that he’s bilingual.

Oh, and there’s a scene where a whole bunch of Flerkins (those cat aliens that scratched out Nick Fury’s eye) are eating up people in order to expedite the evacuation of a ship. Once on the ground, they’ll cough them all up like hairballs. Daughter couldn’t get over the announcements going over the loudspeakers (“Let the Flerkins eat you.” “Do not run from the Flerkins”) while I kept trying to place the background music.

It was “Memory.” From Cats.

You won’t find that level of tongue-in-cheek in Echo.

What separates The Marvels from half of the MCU’s drivel in the past half-decade is that it’s fun. Remember fun? It used to be the number one purpose of a Marvel movie. But they ended up convincing themselves that kick-ass was the adjective they were going for. Some of their movies are both, but when you’re shooting for kick-ass and you miss, you just get bloated drivel. They learned that lesson with Thor: Dark World, but seemed to forget it by the time Falcon and Winter Soldier came around.

Iron Man was fun. Avengers was fun. Guardians of the Galaxy was fun. Even Endgame was fun, in its own way. Eternals wasn’t fun. Multiverse of Madness wasn’t fun. Wakanda Forever, ugh, don’t even get me started.

And I can only assume Echo wasn’t fun.

Unfortunately, The Marvels failed. Maybe they shouldn’t have released it during the actor’s strike, when the actors could actually promote it. Maybe they should’ve marketed Iman Vellani as a Tom Holland that they actually have the rights to. Maybe they could’ve marketed it as a movie with three female superheores, not a movie for the purpose of having three female superheroes.

Or maybe they set it up to fail so that they could look down their nose at all the misogynists.

Deadpool & Wolverine looks fun. I’m sure it will do well. But the next movie is Captain America: New World Order, which, if it’s anything like Falcon and Winter Soldier, will be crap. Maybe when a Captain America movie fails, they’ll realize it’s got nothing to do with the characters.

Or they’ll just blame it on racists.

Although if Thunderbolts*, a movie led by a female who plays a minor character, does better than Captain America 4, which I think it might, maybe they’ll finally try to figure out what makes a movie good. What the MCU needs.

Wolverine vs Spider-man!