The Babysitter Murders

I don’t like to do two movie review posts in a row, but since Halloween is over now, I might as well get this out as soon as I can. There are spoilers for the whole Halloween series, but hopefully not particularly major ones.

Halloween (2018) – This movie franchise is really confusing in terms of continuity. The second movie followed up directly on the first. Then it was supposed to turn into an anthology series, so Halloween III had nothing to do with the first two at all; but after it flopped they brought back Michael Myers for a few more sequels. Jamie Lee Curtis came back for H2O twenty years after the first one, and that one disregarded all but the first two, and had Laurie Strode cut off Michael’s head. Then that was retconned for Resurrection, and he killed her. Rob Zombie directed a remake of the first one that also had prequel elements, then did a sequel to it that made no sense at all, at least from what I remember. I’ve seen all of these, but couldn’t really tell you what happened in some of them, aside from “Michael Myers goes on a killing spree on Halloween night.”

Now, for the fortieth anniversary, there’s a new one that ignores everything but the original movie. That means that there’s no indication as to how Michael was recaptured, but he starts this one in the mental institution again. He’s under the care of a different British psychiatrist, the successor to Dr. Loomis, and this guy wants to get into Michael’s head and see how he operates. Meanwhile, Laurie has gotten pretty much as obsessed with Michael as he is with her, living in a compound in the woods, stockpiling weapons, and secretly hoping Michael will escape again so she can kill him. She gets her wish when he’s being transferred to a different facility and he goes on the typical rampage (which I guess isn’t quite so typical in this continuity). Laurie recruits her estranged daughter’s family to help fight the killer. This time, Michael kills a few people by bashing their heads against a wall or door, and steps on someone else’s head. It’s pretty brutal, perhaps partially inspired by the Rob Zombie movies. There’s a brief nod to the masks from Halloween III (hopefully these versions don’t have the dark magic included), and I liked the kid being babysat (is that grammatical?) who was sitting on the couch watching Repo Man and clipping his toenails.

Creature Features

It’s time for this October’s round-up of horror movies. There are some spoilers within, although most of them are for movies from the eighties.

The Dead Zone – Christopher Walken gets brain damage and gains psychic powers when he touches people, and apparently also things that belong to people; I have to wonder if it’s more clearly delineated in the novel. At first he’s annoyed at those who come to him for help and upset that his girlfriend found a new man while he was in a coma, but when he finds out that a popular Senate candidate could potentially start a nuclear war, he decides it’s his mission to assassinate the guy. The candidate’s career is ruined when he uses a baby as a human shield, although you know that, if Donald Trump tried that, his supporters would still defend him. The guy his old girlfriend married turns out to be part of the would-be Senator’s campaign staff, and she apparently has an affair with Walken’s character while staying married, which doesn’t say a whole lot for her integrity. It’s worthy of note that the accident that starts the whole thing is caused by a truck losing its trailer. I pointed out how much trouble trucks cause in Stephen King stories, and coincidentally, Kevin Maher released a video about that exact thing the following week.

Don’t Breathe – Three young thieves break into the home of a blind war veteran to burgle it, only to find out that he’s totally psychotic. At first you can sympathize with him, but later it turns out that he’s a psychopath who kidnapped and artificially inseminated the woman he held responsible for his daughter’s death. So there’s really nobody you can root for here.

Ghoulies – Gremlins led to a trend of movies about tiny monsters going on a rampage. This might not be a rip-off per se, as the two movies were apparently in production at the same time, but it does appear to have been trying to ride the other film’s success. The music at the beginning is even similar. The plot involves a young man inheriting an estate from his late father, who just happens to have been an evil wizard. He invites his obnoxious college friends over for a party, and performs a ritual he found in one of the books of magic in the house, which results in the Ghoulies showing up. There are two different types of Ghoulies, the furry kind and the more amphibian-like sort, but I don’t know that there’s any real indication of the difference between them other than looks.

Accompanying them are two dwarves, and unlike the Ghoulies, they talk. A Ghoulie does come out of the toilet, as shown on the video cover, but nobody is on it at the time. And after the wizard is defeated, the obnoxious friends who were mutilated by Ghoulies come back for some reason. What’s notable is how the Ghoulies don’t show up until a significant way through the movie, and even then they take a back seat to the wizard. I believe this was the first film role for Mariska Hargitay, whom I’d heard of although I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else. I looked her up, and found out she was Jayne Mansfield’s daughter. You probably already knew that, but I didn’t.

Ghoulies II – We didn’t seek out the sequel, but the DVD from Netflix was a double feature. While not great, it’s considerably better than the first. I think the creators realized what people wanted to see from a film about tiny, creepy monsters, which is to say, more of the tiny, creepy monsters themselves. They showed up much earlier in the movie, and without the two dwarves. And this time, someone is actually attacked while on the toilet. The main plot, such as it is, involves a failing haunted house at a traveling carnival. The washed-up, drunken magician who works there accidentally summons the Ghoulies with a spell he finds in a book. At first, business at the house picks up, as people love the Ghoulies’ antics without realizing that they’re really killing people. As the Ghoulies are essentially just a force for chaos, there’s a more human villain as well in an annoying eighties yuppie who wants to buy out the haunted house. On staff at the house is a character played by Phil Fondacaro, the little person who played the professor in Troll. His character is an actor who’s annoyed at having to play essentially a gimmick when he’s classically trained and has done Shakespeare, and I have to wonder how much that’s true of Fondacaro’s actual experience.

Critters – Another movie about tiny, ravenous monsters, the gimmicks this time including that they’re from outer space (apparently an early draft of Gremlins made them aliens as well, but this didn’t make it to the finished film) and can form into hedgehog-style balls and roll around. Oh, and they’re technically known as Krites. They don’t speak English, but some of their dialogue is subtitled. Not that it really needed to be, but I guess they couldn’t resist having one of them say “Fuck!” in Kritese. They invade a tiny town in Kansas, with most of the focus being on one family and their UFO-obsessed handyman friend. The son is obsessed with fireworks, the daughter apparently makes out with a lot of dudes, and the mother is Dee Wallace. The son has an E.T. toy, which I guess is an intentional reference to Wallace’s more famous role. The family also has a cat named Chewie, presumably a Star Wars reference. Then there are these two shape-shifting alien bounty hunters who are trying to capture the Krites, and cause a lot of confusion and severe property damage along the way. It’s kind of a weird combination of genres. And since toilets came up with the Ghoulies, one of the Krites rolls into a toilet and is killed while in it. There are four movies in both the Ghoulies and Critters series, and Beth has mentioned another movie from around the same time called Munchies (although she hasn’t seen it either), but I think I’ve had enough of tiny, deadly creatures for the time being.

Garfield’s Halloween Adventure – Just a television special, not a movie, but I thought it deserved a mention. I can’t recall having watched this one as a kid, although it’s possible I did and just don’t remember it. Then again, I remember a fair amount about Garfield in Paradise, which I haven’t seen in years. Garfield realizes that he can get more candy if he brings Odie trick-or-treating with him, so the two of them dress up as pirates and go around the neighborhood. I didn’t think cats were that keen on candy, but Garfield will eat pretty much anything besides raisins. He figures they can get more if they cross the river in a little rowboat, but they end up on a tiny island and hear a story about ghost pirates who are supposed to be returning for their treasure that night. And then, well, they do; but our protagonists find their boat and get away.

It’s really centered on pirates for a Halloween special, but Beth, Dewey, and I did dress up as pirates one year. The final joke involves an all-night pirate movie marathon, and I commented that, nowadays, they could just show the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Heck, ONE of them would take up a few hours. Interspersed throughout are a few songs by Lou Rawls, who somehow got the gig of Official Garfield Cartoon Special Music Guy.

Toilet Terrors

There was a link on Twitter to this article on ghosts that haunt Japanese bathrooms, and I thought that might be a topic worth addressing myself. Bathrooms can be pretty scary places anyway, but usually the fear is more that someone else will want to use it when you’re not finished. But there’s a definite sense of vulnerability when sitting with your pants down. The article also mentions how drains can be seen as a portal to another world, and likely not one as bright and colorful as the one Mario and Luigi found. I recently watched the movie Ghoulies, and while I’ll probably say a bit more about that in a future post, I’ll point out that the iconic image from it is of a Ghoulie coming out of the toilet. This does happen, but very briefly and not while anyone is using it. Anyway, kappa are sometimes said to dwell in bathrooms, but they’re not the only kind of Japanese monster to hang out there. The Akaname, literally “filth licker,” is a mostly benign but still creepy creature that shows up in dirty bathrooms to, well, lick up the filth.

Older pictures of the monster don’t show any context for what they do, but that’s generally how they were interpreted. They all have long tongues but otherwise vary quite a bit, some being red in color and others a moldy green, and some with only one eye. They’re used as a warning to keep the bathroom clean, even though this would presumably be depriving them of food. They are sometimes said to spread disease, however, so that’s a good reason to keep them away.

I guess it’s sort of like a dog drinking out of the toilet; it likely won’t harm them, but nobody wants to see that.

Another older myth is that of the Kawaya no-Kami, a god born from the excrement of Izanami. If you keep your toilet clean, he’ll protect you in less reputable bathrooms, and you’ll have better-looking children. He’s also associated with fertility, as fecal matter was traditionally used as fertilizer. But there are tales that say he’ll stab you with a spear when you sit on the toilet if you don’t announce your presence first. Gods are fickle like that.

Other bathroom ghosts mentioned in the article seem to be of more recent origin, fitting more into the category of urban legends than traditional mythology.

The Aki-Manto, or “red cape,” dates back to the 1930s. This supposedly handsome ghost who wears a mask asks people on the toilet if they prefer red or blue paper. Choosing the former results in their being stabbed to death, while the latter has them strangled or their blood sucked out. Some say you can avoid them simply by not answering, but they’re often thought to kill you anyway. There are variations that say that, if you answer “yellow paper,” you’ll be drowned in the toilet bowl. Then there’s Hanako, a young girl with a bobbed haircut and a red skirt, who lives in the third stall of third floor restrooms, and will show up if you knock three times and call her name.

It’s basically a variation on the Bloody Mary or Candyman legend, except usually Hanako doesn’t do anything except show up and look scary. Not surprisingly, though, there are variations where she’ll kill the summoner by dragging them into the toilet, and even one where Hanako is actually a ravenous three-headed lizard pretending to be a little girl. Origin stories for Hanako include that she died in the bathroom during a World War II bombing raid, or that she committed suicide or was murdered by an abusive parent. More recently, there have been rumors of another female toilet ghost called Kashima Reiko, who has no legs due to their having been torn off by a train after she collapsed on the tracks, and she’ll tear your legs off if you don’t correctly answer her question about where hers are. The correct answer is that they’re on the Meishin Expressway.

Other cultures have their own bathroom gods, demons, and ghosts. The Romans had Cloacina, Crepitus, and Stercutius, respectively gods of the sewer, flatulence, and excrement.

The Chinese have Zi-Gu, the Violet Lady, a concubine who was murdered by a jealous wife, and was later elevated to a goddess by the Tang Empress Wu Zetian. She’s worshipped in the form of a homemade doll. In Korea, there’s Cheuksin, the grouchy goddess of the outhouse, who is said to have originally been a thief named Noiljadae. After robbing and blinding a foolish man named Namseonbi, she went after his family, presumably so none of them would find out what she did and seek vengeance. She killed Namseombi’s wife Yeosan Buin and then took her place, but one of her sons realized that something was up, and he and his brothers ambushed her in the bathroom. She hanged herself there, and was forced to dwell in outhouses from then on. She has long hair that causes sickness, and spends much of her time counting it, like the much less creepy Watch-Dog of Merryland. Unless rituals were done to appease her, Cheuksin would knock children into the latrine and generally make a nuisance of herself, particularly on days of the month with the number six in them. Babylonian legend has Sulak, a demon who lurks in bathrooms and makes people sick.

Arabian lore that was incorporated in Islamic belief reports that jinn can sometimes infect or possess people while they’re on the crapper. And Belphegor, a demon associated with laziness and invention (so much for ninety-nine percent perspiration), is said to accept human waste as offerings, and is shown in the Dictionnaire Infernal sitting on a toilet.

His name derives from Baal-Peor, a god worshipped in Moab about whom little is known. It was presumably the inspiration for the name of Belfaygor in Ruth Plumly Thompson’s Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, although he isn’t associated with toilets. I would imagine a beard that never stops growing would be a real problem in the bathroom, though.

Don’t Get Soros at Me

One of the mail bombs found in the last few days was sent to George Soros, someone I think I’ve only heard of from right-wing conspiracy theories. Conservatives blame this guy for EVERYTHING they don’t like, from funding protests to controlling the entire world economy. He’s even been accused of selling out others to the Nazis, despite the fact that his family was in hiding at the time, and he was a kid. I guess being Jewish, rich, and a supporter of progressive causes is enough to set off the Rothschild alarm. I remember one speech Donald Trump gave, I think before he was elected, where he lumped Soros together with a few other rich Jewish progressives. It’s the latest iteration of the idea that a secret cabal of Jews controls the whole world, although the way Jews have actually been treated in many parts of the world in recent history suggests they’re either doing a terrible job or don’t mind sacrificing their own people. But modern antisemitism is bizarrely contradictory anyway, as some of Trump’s chief advisors, including his daughter, are Jewish. So was Andrew Breitbart, whose right-wing conspiracy blog was highly influential on Trump’s thinking (such as it is). Knowing his general way of thinking, he probably believes the Elders of Zion crap and wants to be part of it. He did say something about wanting a Jew to keep track of his money, which is one of those offensive stereotypes disguised as a compliment, like saying all black people are good at basketball.

Soros was born in Hungary to a non-observant Jewish family, who changed their name from Schwartz to Soros and bought documents claiming they were Christian in order to survive the Nazi occupation. He’s known as a major contributor to the fall of communism in Europe, but also as the man who broke the Bank of England. During the Black Wednesday crisis in 1992, when the rate of the pound sterling dropped so much that the British government was forced to withdraw it from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, Soros made a huge profit through the short sale of pounds. At least, that’s what I’ve read. I’ve never been entirely clear on how the fluctuating value of money really works. Currency speculation kind of sounds like a rich person’s alternative to playing slot machines or betting on horses, except with much more potentially severe consequences. Of course, most of the people accusing Soros of being some radical fringe element set on world domination are themselves rich through the manipulation of money rather than making contributions to society, and they probably haven’t given as much of theirs to worthy causes. So, yeah, it’s pretty hypocritical. I think a large part of the belief that Soros is just giving checks to protesters, and more recently funding the migrant caravan, is one of projection. If Trump paid people to appear at his campaign rallies, then the same thing must be happening on the other side, right? Never mind that a lot of the issues being protested are ones that would be beneficial to a lot of people, so there’s already a personal motive for those participating, just a long-term one. I’m not sure how it would benefit Soros to fund, say, Occupy Wall Street when speculation in the market was how he made his money. And I know of no indication that he’s doing it for fame either, as, like I said, the only ones who talk that much about him are the conspiracy-mongers. Personally, I think there’s something romantic-sounding about the term “caravan,” which makes me wonder why opponents would use that term. But then, that’s entirely based on word sound; I doubt the experience is at all romantic. And these are the same people who use “progressive,” “bleeding heart,” and “Social Justice Warrior” as insults.

Pi’illo Talk

It’s that time again. No, not Waluigi Time, although that’s close. It’s time to give my early impressions on a video game, and this time it’s Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. There’s a lot to like about these Mario role-playing games. They tend to have good characterization, they’re amusingly corny, and they generally have coherent stories. From what I’ve heard, Shigeru Miyamoto, who’s mostly focused on gameplay, has actually pushed for LESS story and character, which is kind of weird. I mean, nobody expects an epic plot from Super Mario, but most of them bring some extra depth to the Mushroom World. The original Super Mario RPG centered around a threat so significant that Mario and Bowser had to team up to defeat it. It’s an old trope, but it’s effective.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga had Cackletta and Princess Peach coming up with their own complex plans, with the Brothers and Bowser caught in the middle, and exploration of a new setting in the Beanbean Kingdom.

In Dream Team, Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toadsworth are invited to a sleep-themed place called Pi’illo Island.

They’re welcomed by Broque Monsieur from Bowser’s Inside Story, a man made of blocks who speaks in a silly French accent.

If the back story of the original Super Mario Bros. has it that Bowser turned the Toads into blocks, are the Brock people transformed Toads? Okay, probably not. The Marios find out that the former inhabitants of the island, who had their own kingdom, were transformed into actual pillows by the Bat King Antasma. Luigi’s sudden onset of narcolepsy (Toadsworth, with his old-fashioned vocabulary, calls him a slugabed at one point) makes him able to use the pillows to create portals to the Dream World.

The control in the game is basically the same as in the other Mario & Luigi games. Combat is turn-based, but you can use well-timed button presses to add oomph to an attack, and to dodge or counterattack. In the waking world, you control Mario and Luigi separately, and there are special moves that use both of them. In the Dream World, Mario is accompanied by Dreamy Luigi, who is more confident than his normal self. He can interact with various scenery, and doesn’t directly participate in battle. He can, however, sometimes help out if you make the correct moves. There are also Luiginary Attacks, in which tiny versions of Dreamy Luigi form into a shape to help out Mario. The only one I’ve been able to access so far is the Luiginary Ball.

Forming the ball requires tilting the 3DS itself, something I’m still not really used to. The farthest I’ve gotten in the game is to the point where Antasma teams up with Bowser, leading to a difficult battle. At least, it’s difficult for me.

Antasma forms a group of bats around the Koopa King, and if they hit Mario, they’ll transfer the hit points they take from him to Bowser. And if you kill any of the bats, they’ll return in the next round. Bowser himself both charges at Mario and breathes fire. There’s a lot going on, and while I can sometimes get the timing right to dodge, I mess up often enough as to keep dying. It gives me the option to try again in easy mode, and while I might eventually resort to that, it kind of seems like cheating. Then again, there have been plenty of games I’ve played where there’s one part that’s really hard, followed by most of the rest being doable. I had much the same problem fighting the first boss in Inside Story, the Stone Blooper, who could only be harmed by counterattacks. Bosses are supposed to be harder than the rank-and-file enemies, but in both these games it just seems like there’s TOO much of a difficulty spike too early on. I guess all I can do is keep trying, but I’ve currently set Dream Team aside at least for the time being.

I’m on Top of the World

I saw a link on Twitter to this article on Ancient Origins, a site that presumably isn’t always reliable. What it says here seems to have all been verified elsewhere, however, with nothing about aliens building the pyramids or anything. Indeed, if aliens HAD visited Earth back in the days described, they could have just told people, “Hey, the world isn’t flat, and there are other worlds as well.” The general conception for the world in most ancient civilizations seems to be that of a flat disc, or occasionally a square or rectangle, made up of land surrounded by water, or sometimes floating on the water. The heavens are located above it, shaped like a dome because that’s what we see when we look at the sky; and the underworld is below. I’m not entirely sure why the idea of the gods living up in the air and the spirits of the dead underground is so universal, but it could just be because of appearances. Obviously the gods would choose the more impressive-looking place to live, right? Mentioned in the article is one of the earliest known world maps, dated to around the sixth century BC in Babylonia. It’s known as the Imago Mundi, although that’s obviously not what the Babylonians would have called it.

It shows a circle of land with the River Euphrates running through the center, the ocean surrounding the land, then eight triangular regions past that, shown like the rays of the Sun in cartoonish depictions. Several significant locations to Babylonian culture of the time are labeled on the map, but there are other places people of that time and place would have known about that aren’t represented. The surviving descriptions of the triangular regions include one where the Sun can’t be seen, one that even birds couldn’t reach, and another inhabited by a fierce bull. Strange monsters lying in the unexplored parts of the world is a regular feature of old maps and legends, and somewhat persists even in the present day. People hear rumors of weird animals, sometimes botched descriptions of real ones and other times totally made up, and since none of them live nearby, they figure they must be somewhere in remote areas. Indeed, another feature of such ancient maps and views of the world in general include the culture that came up with them living in or near the center, with this also being the center of civilization, lands becoming wilder as you get closer to the edges.

The ancient Greeks were much the same way, and while I’ve heard they considered a few different places in their land to the be the center of the world, the best-known one is Delphi. There’s a story that Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the Earth, and, both flying at the same speed, they met in Delphi. I’m not sure who was watching to make sure neither of the eagles ever took a break. I mean, I guess Zeus was, but mythology doesn’t paint him as a particularly trustworthy guy. He might well have stopped watching the eagles when he noticed a hot nymph. The idea of Delphi being in the middle of things might come from the fact that it’s equidistant from several other holy sites, at least from what I’ve read. Around the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the Greeks seem to have accepted the idea that India is as far east as you can possibly go. I’m not sure what people in India thought of that, as we really don’t have many extant maps from there in that time period. The division into Europe, Asia, and Africa as places about the same size is likely why, at least in Europe and America, we still regard Europe as a continent despite the lack of any physical reason for that identification. Hellenistic habits die hard, I suppose.

It’s quite literal ethnocentrism to identify the place where you happen to live, or at least somewhere close by, to be the center of the world and of civilization. Even after the Earth being spherical became widely accepted, certain places were still considered to be the spiritual center, and as such given central locations on maps. Jerusalem had this association for Jews, and later Christians as well.

Early Muslims regarded the Kaaba in Mecca as being the center of the world.

There was an attempt in the nineteenth century, still accepted by some today, that the Great Pyramid was built in the geometric center of all land on Earth, which sounds rather too convenient to me. And the international Prime Meridian makes London central to the longitudinal system not for scientific reasons, even made-up ones, but just because it was the main center of production for star charts at the time. This actually makes the Gulf of Guinea the zero point of both latitude and longitude, but you don’t hear too much about that. I have to wonder if there are any civilizations that figured they lived closer to the edges. Even ancient thinkers would have realized that odds were against their just happening to be in the middle of everything, wouldn’t they? I don’t know. While I guess we can’t really identify a certain of the universe until we find out how far it extends (assuming it isn’t endless), we know quite well that the Earth is nowhere near the center of the Galaxy, instead being located on one of its spiral arms.

Of course, being in the physical middle doesn’t necessarily have any particular relation to someone or something’s importance. We haven’t so far seen clear indications of life on any other planets, but we also can’t reasonably pretend to have seen even a minute fraction of the worlds in the universe. The idea of Earth being insignificant in the grand scheme of things is a popular subject for satire, as with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy starting out by calling Earth “an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” But then, while the inhabitants of other planets are more technologically advanced and knowledgeable about the Galaxy as a whole, they’re ultimately just as insignificant, and often just as stupid and self-centered as humans, because of the whole satire thing. Both the idiotic Golgafrinchans who were tricked into crash-landing on Earth and apparently became the ancestors of humanity and the hyper-intelligent mice who designed the Earth supercomputer want basically the same things (to get rich and appear on television). But then, one of the great paradoxes of human thought is we frequently try to identify ourselves as both exceptional AND terrible. We’re the morons who ate the forbidden fruit and are naturally sinful, but also made in the image of God. I guess I tend more toward the pessimistic interpretation, without the mystical explanations; we’re selfish and easily deluded, and I don’t exclude myself from that. But we’re also capable of amazing things at times.

Blood on My Internet Page

This post is mostly about music, but there’s a bit of non-musical listening featured as well.

She Makes War, Brace for Impact – I wrote about Laura Kidd’s last album, Direction of Travel, two years ago. Her latest release, largely funded through online pledges, continues to showcase her rather melancholy and very English vocals. She actually says this album mostly comes from a happy place, and I know she just got married recently, but there’s still a definite sadness and anger to her singing voice. The album starts with “Devastate Me,” a loud, heavy, and catchy song about oversharing on the Internet. The second track, “London Bites,” is also a good listen, and seems to be a favorite of reviewers. “Weary Bird” has a raw, crunchy sound. “Love This Body,” with its driving guitar riff, addresses standards of female beauty. There are softer songs as well, however, like “When the Quiet Came” with its piano and cello, and the dreamy electronic “Fortify.” “Dear Heart” features ukulele, while the closer “Miles Away” is enhanced with a synthesized string orchestra (although the cello is real, according to the credits).

Zoe Boekbinder, Shadow – Back in 2008, I saw Zoe and her sister Kim open for Amanda Palmer as the duo Vermillion Lies. Now they’re both doing their own things, and I’ve tried to follow their work as closely as I can. Zoe’s voice has more of a deep, smoky quality. According to her press biography, her “voice sounds like its being played off a vinyl record,”
which is pretty accurate. Zoe has said this album came out of a dark time in her life, and there’s a clear sadness to many of the tracks. It’s largely acoustic, sort of folky and bluesy, with some electronic loops in the background. The songs make good use of backing vocals, as with the wobbly-sounding ones on “Possibilities.” “Not What I Need” deals with priorities: “Who cares about my failed romance when we have rights and bodies to defend?”.

Speaking of Boekbinders, Kim recently released a video for “Fractal,” one of the songs from the album she released last year.

I’ve now listened to every episode of the Mike and Tom Eat Snacks podcast, starring Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanaugh, no relation to the Brett of the same name (I hope). It started in 2011 and was updated sporadically until June 2016, with the hundredth episode being the last. I’ve never been much of a podcast listener. It’s too difficult to listen while you’re doing something else at the same time. But Beth started listening to these when they were still current, although she set them aside from a while, and started back from the beginning a few months ago. The basic premise is that the two of them eat and rate a snack, but it goes off-topic a lot. There are a lot of jokes and running gags, some related to the snacks and some not. A few of their ratings aren’t really fair, like when they ate expired Tastykakes (I’m from the part of the country where those are made, so maybe I’m biased), but it’s not like it matters that much. So I recommend it, even though I know Black has been making himself unpopular on Twitter recently.

And just yesterday, I started listening to The Chronicles of Oz, audio plays of the original Oz books with a lot of additional asides, jokes, and intrigue. I once half-jokingly mentioned that they should make a new movie of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that’s padded out like Peter Jackson’s trilogy of The Hobbit, showing what other characters are doing while the main plot is going on; and it seems like that’s partially what they’re doing here, at least based on the first episode. Also, I like the middle name Louise for Dorothy. Has anyone tried to give her one before? I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this series once I’ve caught up on it.

Zugzwang Got Me in a Way

Dragon Quest V is sort of a sequel to Dragon Quest IV, which sounds painfully obvious, but really isn’t. The numbers simply refer to release order, not the order in which the games take place; and many of them aren’t related at all. DQ5 apparently had no real relation to 4 at first other than the existence of Zenithia and Nadiria, but I understand some other references were worked in for later releases, like the DS version I played. All three women the protagonist can marry are of Zenithian descent, and hence are presumably descended from the hero of DQ4, the only known person to have a human and a Zenithian as parents. This hero can be either male or female, and if the former, the suggestion seems to be that his partner is his friend Eliza, who herself might be at least part elvish.

If the hero is female, then…well, Eliza can change her shape, so maybe she still could be a parent of the hero’s children. (From what I understand, this was the original intention for Nightcrawler from the X-Men; Mystique was actually his father, due to her shape-shifting ability.) While Bianca’s father is an innkeeper called Whitey and Nera and Debora’s the wealthy Rodrigo Briscoletti, it’s revealed that all three were actually foundlings, and might all be biological siblings. The protagonist’s parents were known in Japanese as Papas and Martha, almost certainly intended as plays on “papa” and “mama.” The English translation calls them Pankraz and Madalena, or Mada for short, keeping the same general idea while making it a little less obvious. “Madalena” is derived from “Magdalene,” as in Jesus’ follower Mary. Although it’s not clear in the Bible itself, Mary Magdalene is traditionally seen as the same as the Mary who has a sister named Martha, who would hence presumably also be from Magdala. And I suppose I should also mention that Superman and Batman both have mothers named Martha, at least in some continuities. Pankraz is the King of Gotha, and Mada one of the keepers of the entrance to Nadiria on Lofty Peak. The Loftinians are also known for taming monsters, a skill the protagonist inherits.

At the beginning of the game, Pankraz suggests Madason as the hero’s name, as he’s literally Mada’s son. The default names for the protagonist’s kids, regardless of which wife he chooses, are Parry and Madchen, keeping the same initial letters as his parents’ names. “Madchen” (well, with an umlaut on the A) is German for “girl,” and “parry” is what the Defend command was called in earlier English DQ translations.

While the Japanese called Papas’ kingdom Granvania, in English it’s Gotha, and there’s another kingdom called Coburg (Reinhart in the Japanese). Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was a German duchy, and also the name of the current British royal family before they changed it to Windsor when being German was no longer cool. In the game, Gotha has a Prince Albert and Coburg a Prince (later King) Harry, the latter starting out as the irresponsible sort the current Prince Harry was often portrayed as in his younger days. That might be a coincidence, as the character was called Henry back in the Japanese Super Famicom release, when the real Prince was only eight years old.

At the time of DQ4, the Zenith Dragon, ruler of Zenithia, is generally beneficent but also aloof, only helping humanity when he deems it absolutely necessary. He seems to have become more interested in humans over the years, perhaps due to boredom, and takes human form (as Dr. Agon in the pun-filled translation) about twenty years prior to the events of 5. He also takes on a much less formal personality, talking a lot like Ned Flanders.

During his time on Earth, monsters remove and throw out the Golden Orb that keeps Zenithia Castle in the air, and crashes into a lake. In the course of the game, you restore it and the Dragon, although he takes human form again after you beat the main boss.

The tower to Zenithia still looks basically the same as it does in 4, and is again located near the center of the map (which shouldn’t really mean anything on a spherical world, but that’s a different topic), but is no longer operational. Otherwise, there aren’t too many similarities between the maps in 4 and 5, although they’re closer to each other than either one is to that of 6.

It’s said that Helmunaptra, the Egyptian-themed desert kingdom where the Zenithian Helm is kept, was founded by one of the hero’s companions from DQ4. Which one isn’t clear, but fans have guessed Meena or Hank Hoffman Jr., the latter of whom founds a town in the desert in the DS remake of 4. I’m not sure whether the reference appears in the original release of 5, but if it does, it’s likely not Hank.

The main villain this time was originally known as Mirudraas, called Mildrath in some fan translations. The official translation changed the name entirely, calling him Grandmaster Nimzo after Aron Nimzowitsch, a Russian-born chess grandmaster. This fits with how many of his minions are named after chess pieces and speak with pseudo-Russian accents. Nimzo’s own dialogue is in a Cyrillic font with Russian letters, although they’re used in the traditional jokey way of, for instance, the letter that looks like a backwards R used in place of the English R, when it’s actually pronounced more like “ya.” His followers make up the Order of Zugzwang, also a chess term, meaning you have to make a bad move. It’s officially led by King Korol, although he turns out to mostly be a figurehead.

I’ve seen it pointed out a few times how similar his name is to King K. Krool, who’s also a crocodile; but this is presumably a coincidence. “Korol” is the Russian name for a chess king, and Queen Ferz and Kon the Knight were also named this way. The two remaining leaders in the cult, Bishop Ladja and Slon the Rook, actually have their names reversed (“ladya” is a rook and “slon” a bishop), my guess for the reason being that Ladja is a more sinister villain, and the name sounds more sinister in English. I think it really just means “boat” in Russian. “Slon” literally means “elephant,” an alternate name for a chess bishop; but none of the Zugzwang members resemble elephants, even though the game does have elephant monsters. Kon the Knight, however, does look like a horse.

In the remake, Nimzo is said to be an inhabitant of Lofty Peak who became its ruler, but still sought more power, and so turned himself into a demon with the Secret of Evolution that Estark and Psaro had used.

A character in Coburg Castle called Darwin the Psarologist (apparently Psaro lent his name to a science) is also studying this secret. There’s a building south of Nimzo’s hideout in Mount Zugzwang that a skeleton says used to be the great dungeon of Nadiria, although it’s since been converted into a gameboard. Is this what remains of Psaro’s castle, or some other place?

A Foray Into Animated Enchantresses

A few days ago, Tavie brought up how both Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons have witches named Witch Hazel, both voiced by June Foray, and said I should write a post about that. From the brief research I did, it turns out the name has also been used by other cartoon studios, Wikipedia mentioning MGM, Famous Studios, and Rembrandt Films’ Hazel Witch, as well as the recurring character in Little Lulu comics.

There’s a mention here of a young character called Witch Hazel showing up in a Casper cartoon as well. It’s an obvious play on words, and apparently no one was able to copyright it because it’s the name of an actual product. The name of the shrub and the astringent made from it apparently have nothing to do with witches, even though herbs and potions are their stock-in-trade. Rather, it means “pliable,” in reference to the leaves. Disney’s Witch Hazel appeared in the 1952 Donald Duck cartoon Trick or Treat, which was also adapted into a comic by Carl Barks. She helps Huey, Dewey, and Louie when Donald refuses to give them any treats.

Unless I’m mishearing the line, I believe she tells Donald her first name is Edith, but that doesn’t seem to be used anywhere else. Chuck Jones was inspired by the Disney cartoon in creating his own Witch Hazel, and Foray says she pitched the character to him. For some reason, the first Looney Tunes short to feature Hazel, Bewitched Bunny, doesn’t have Foray doing the voice; it’s Bea Benaderet, a regular voice actress for Warner Bros. who was later the voice of Wilma Flintstone. Foray does voice the character in her other main appearances, starting with Broom-Stick Bunny. There are clearly some influences from the Disney character in addition to the voice, like how both Witch Hazels (Witches Hazel?) have brooms that act like animals and separate their bristles into legs to walk around on the ground. And they both parody Shakespeare’s Macbeth when cooking up magic brews, although I’m sure that was standard well before cartoons. But while Disney’s Hazel is mostly good, if perhaps a little overly vindictive, WB’s is mean, always wanting to cook Bugs Bunny or use him in a spell. She’s drawn as fat and green-skinned, with an enormous chin that touches her long nose when she’s not talking, and hairpins that fly out of her hair when she’s excited. She also has a habit of laughing at her own jokes.

Foray has voiced witches in other cartoons as well, albeit not with the name Hazel. She was a witch in a Tom & Jerry short before Broom-Stick Bunny was released. And in the original DuckTales, she was the voice of Magica de Spell, a nemesis of Scrooge McDuck introduced by Barks in 1961.

Fantagraphics hasn’t yet reached her stories in their Barks collections, so I haven’t read any of the original Barks ones.

She lives on Mount Vesuvius, and her main thing is that she wants to create a magic amulet from the first coin earned by the richest person (well, duck) in the world. Not wanting her to be the typical old hag, Barks modeled her on Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, as well as Morticia Addams. Oddly, in DuckTales, Foray gives her an Eastern European accent similar to the one she used for Natasha Fatale in Rocky and Bullwinkle instead of an Italian one. Apparently some comics have paired Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone with both Magica and Witch Hazel (the Disney one), but I don’t think there’s any Foray connection with her. Mim was voiced by Martha Wentworth, and while she’s made cameo appearances more recently, I don’t think she’s had another speaking role.

Men Are Pigs

Circe, by Madeline Miller – When I heard about this book, I knew I should probably read it, but it took me a while to get a digital copy from the library. It’s a reinterpretation of the story of the witch from Greek mythology, daughter of Helios and the nymph Perse, and one of Odysseus‘ lovers. In truth, she’s not really even presented as a totally evil character in the myths; she turns Odysseus’ men to pigs, but she later changes them back and grants them hospitality on her island. And we know that Odysseus’ crew are a bunch of reckless dumbasses anyway, opening the bag of winds and killing Helios’ cattle. Perhaps they’re more in need of reformation than Circe, as it seems pretty classist to make the commander a tactical genius and all his subordinates idiots. And Odysseus himself is the one who had affairs with two women while his wife remained faithful to him. But revisiting witches has been in vogue for a while, and Miller is able to incorporate a feminist attitude. Circe is given a rather modern attitude in a society of largely indifferent gods, with deeper emotions than her compatriots. She shows sympathy to Prometheus, is spurned by Glaucos after making him into a god with her witchcraft, bonds with Daedalus, and has an affair with Hermes without ever really trusting him. She’s involved in the birth of the Minotaur to her sister Pasiphae, and her transformation of Odysseus’ crew is due to her having been harassed in the past. While some versions of the story give Circe a few children with Odysseus, the book simplifies it by giving her only one, Telegonus, who inherits his father’s passion for storytelling. When Telegonus sets out in search of his father and accidentally kills him, he takes Penelope and Telemachus back to Aiaia, where they all bond somewhat. Penelope turns out to not be especially mad with Circe, as it was really Athena who took him away; and she gains an interest in witchcraft herself. Telemachus bemoans his inability to live up to his father’s legacy, and how Odysseus was a distant and sometimes cruel father anyway. A widow bonding with the woman who’d had an affair with her late husband reminds me of Wicked, which is also an attempt to rehabilitate a wicked witch. Miller hews more closely to the source material than Gregory Maguire does, though. The account of Odysseus’ death by a spear made from the tail of a stingray (I guess he and the Crocodile Hunter had similar deaths) is said to appear in a lost poem known as the Telegony.