Cretaceous developments

Yeah that’s right, these developments are so monumental that they’re one step more advanced than the obvious ‘Jurassic’ developments joke I could have made to attract attention from Spielberg fans.

Unfortunately the dinosaur conceit is also just clickbait.

Sorry y’all, but the promise of this neat-o dinosaur ice cream waffle was too much of an enticing image not to use! I found the window graphic while wandering Del Amo Mall for lunch with Mom and Aly and fell in love.

Especially after my friend Mitchell suggested their potential ultimate marketing strategy of the Green Tea-Rex.

I have no idea if they actually capitalized on that idea because I never tried the Waffle-saurus Rex.

We were on a mission from Aly to instead eat boring old regular Taiyaki.

Even though dinosaurs > fish. Obviously.

In other words, no dinosaur ice cream waffle reviews. Arguably a worse travesty than my continuing to remind myself to talk about Shantae: Half-Genie Hero despite vehemently continuing to put it off.

Instead I’m going to talk about things on the horizon, most of which came to light while I was at the mall.

For instance, I’ve been invited to this year’s Comm Awards:

Cut off the RSVP email just in case. Sorry party crashers!

Last year’s ceremony was a lot of fun (even if I’m not cringing slightly at my unkempt beard) and I’m excited to see what I’ll be awarded this time!

So much so that I made a great Tweet.

I have an exam tomorrow that I should have spent Spring Break studying for but completely disregarded, so that should be fun.

On the bright side it looks like I’m going to the @commCSUF Awards again this year which means my bad habits are being rewarded! pic.twitter.com/a2qyiCYTLS

— Jason Rochlin (@jdrochlin) April 8, 2019

Gotta use one of the best gifs of all time to punctuate a self-deprecating joke.

Going further down the school-related rabbit hole, I also got an email today letting me know that CSUF Commencement tickets are officially available. As much as graduation-related stuff stresses me out, that is an important step in the process.

Or at least… It would be.

If the website worked.

For some reason the link to buy graduation tickets leads to an endless loop of security verification.

I wager the traffic of people going after tickets at once isn’t doing so great on the school’s website.

You’d think the network would be better prepared, but there must be too much energy going toward the development of more parking space. Another thing I got an email about.

The extra spaces are needed, even if it’s unfortunate that permit prices are hiking up $50 or so to facilitate the construction.

Luckily I’ll be a graduate who doesn’t need parking permits by then!

So hey, it’s not all intimidating and bad.

With those major Cal State Fullerton developments, the only other thing I can think to tease is a fairly big interview I scheduled for Gladeo Wednesday. Not sure I want to give it away because I’ve been pushed off once already, but let’s just say it’s a nice, recognizable name.

That’s about all I have for the night. My first day back to school tomorrow is going to be punctuated by a Cognitive Psychology exam, so I wanted to write-up something quick before I get back to studying.

Here’s hoping my lethargy in that department somehow pays off.

The hero Gotham deserves

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him… There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us — for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

— Abraham Miyamoto, 193 B.C.

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Feh — Legendary Owl

• Feh’s Talons (Might = 999+, Range = 9+)
  • Grants Health, Attack, Speed, Defense and Resistance +99. “I can’t let them counterattack! No, I’ll be the one counterattacking… If foe initiates combat, regardless of foe’s range!”
• Feh’s Mimicry (Range = 9+)
  • “I’ll do my best impression of any hero. Well, if they don’t mind.”
• Eavesdropping Owl (Cooldown = 100)
  • “How I gather all of the juiciest information on Fire Emblem Heroes.”
• Feh’s Mighty Flat (A Skill)
  • Use wings to send target paper flying off the notification board.
• ??? (B Skill)
  • Target can’t help but watch what happens!

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It’S tImE tO dUeL

Int. Syst. decided to bring us to the Beanbean Kingdom’s Joke’s End by introducing the ultimate end-all-be-all unit for Fiber Inglewood Heroes today.

Feh. Slayer of Gods. Destroyer of Worlds.

Truly whomever bequeathed such a auspicious avian ally upon us mere mortals hath decided that we no longer need to play this dumb mobile game anymore.

Once everyone summons this non-simian, sort-of slithering sociopath with the beyond generous chance of 0% (as the Associated Press now allows percent in symbolic form), there will no longer be any need to play.

All quests will be immediately completioneted.

Hero Catalogs will be more full than me when I am full of fine meals such as:

1. A hearty boigor.
2. Ninety-nine individual green beans mushed into one super bean.
3. That gunk underneath the sink except if that gunk was actually a chicken masala.
4. Bees?

We will be free.

Finally free.

…

Free to pick out which fashion style we want our Bratz-tastic bird to bolster when bombarding enemy bases!

Hit it, Madam Couture:

Available costumes for Feh:

• Scorge of Dreamland
• Mitre Cap
• ORB™
• Freddy’s Big Birthday Bonanza
• Tiara
• Golden Mini Feh
• Rubber Duckie, you’re the One
• Markiplier’s Crown
• Bunny Hood
• Summer Lovin’, had me a Blast
• Hagrid’s Loud Noise Warning

The end is nigh.

Kiss your wife and kids goodbye, it is time to ascend into the aether of purgatory.

God is dead. We have killed him.

Long live the King.

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Editor’s Note:

April Fools?

This is how April Fools jokes work, right? Piggybacking off of a company’s April Fools joke to make a different joke?

I’m assuming the pre-conceived notion that I enjoy writing about Fire Emblem Heroes might make people double take at this weirdly set-up post and have a nice chuckle.

However, at the bottom of this jokey joke I wanted to seriously address my recent absence from blogging.

Chalk that up to a combination of a party in Fullerton I went to Saturday that lasted until 4:00 a.m. Sunday, followed by most of that Sunday spent shopping with my parents while playing Shantae: Half-Genie Hero.

I’ve already blown through three campaigns in the span of a day or two, and if I were you I’d expect a review of sorts within the next couple days.

Hopefully I’ll be better with my writing in general this Spring Break. I have a bunch of extra time that I’ll mostly be using for homework, but I want to keep y’all in mind too.

All I have to do is figure out things to write.

So, if you have any ideas, let me know about them somewhere on the Internet!

In the meantime, I’m off to catch some Z’s. Because I didn’t expect to be up so late making this joke post.

Merry Aprilmas, my friends!

Perusing the RUHS Archives

Editor’s Note: On March 26, 2019 I made a few corrections to dates throughout this post after the RUHS Archivist, Therese Martinez, offered some notes.

Now the piece should hopefully be even more accurate.

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Sometimes work can take you to unexpectedly interesting places.

In my perpetual search for Gladeo interviewees (because internship hours), today I took my Mom’s advice and spent time with the Archivist at my alma mater, Redondo Union High School.

Apparently I’m just gravitating toward the school this weekend, be it for theatre or history.

About two years after I graduated in 2015, an old storage space for janitorial goods was converted into this fancy Alumni House.

The school has been around since ~1905, so there’s a whole lot of alum to keep track of.

But more importantly, the Alumni House became a space for memorabilia — old class photos, yearbooks, furniture, mascot costumes, etc.

Much less dilapidated now.

Since this wasn’t a place when I attended high school, I never got to check any of it out.

Now that I did, I’m pretty upset that everything wasn’t so open and available back when I was working on the High Tide. Would’ve loved to peruse for a story or two!

Some of the archived pieces go way back to the 1920’s.

Like this mirror, a senior present for the school from the class of 1925:

In that same vein, there were publications like yearbooks and newspapers from around the 20s, as the High Tide has been in business since 1920.

Old versions of the yearbook, called “The Pilot” (which had even earlier publications going back to 1915), were particularly cool because a lot of them had student signatures from all those years ago:

It’s pretty incredible to not just see pictures of folks long since entering the cradle of old age, but to see what and how they wrote to one another.

Gotta love an age where everyone wrote in clean, precise cursive.

And where nobody wrote “HAGS” because they weren’t enmeshed in a culture of shorthand acronyms and emoji that have cursed our modern, digital age into regressed diction.

… Sorry, did I say that out loud? My old man is showing.

A few other specific items on display were of note.

Like this class photo from 1921 — the oldest one we have available, apparently:

Or the old met version of our mascot, Sammy the Seahawk.

Apparently dubbed “Scary Sammy” because… Well…

Look at him.

That is a terrifying mascot costume.

Though alongside the old costume, I also found out that the first time RUHS received the “sea hawk” as its mascot was in the banner of a High Tide issues from 1926.

A lot of the other things around the Alumni House were just as cool, but in the interest of not having a 3,000 word post I think it’s safe to share the rest in a neat little slideshow:

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

However, don’t think this is the last time you’ll hear from me about the Alumni House.

I’ve already started the gears turning to get a video interview with the RUHS Archivist for Gladeo, alongside a Career Profile on being an archivist.

So whenever that’s coming together, assuming I’ll be on set as a producer of sorts, you know I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of it.

Stay tuned.

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The content of most photos here are courtesy of the RUHS Archives.

Gamers just want to have fun

With this showing up in the mail earlier today, I suppose it’s as good a time to talk about it as any.

I’ve spared no shortage of copy writing about my Gaming in American Culture class. From not knowing what to write for my semester-long project to what I wrote about for my semester-long project, from my re-absorption of Ender’s Game for our discussion on militarization of video games to my new absorption of a Barbie game from the early 1900s.

Given my general adoration for all things video games, it makes sense that I’ve been enamored with so many things which have been assigned in this class.

It was a good decision to follow my friend Mimi into a random American Studies class as my ‘fun’ activity for my last semester of undergraduate college education.

One of the most interesting aspects of the class has been the gradual shift of my understanding of U.S. history based on different elements of popular culture that, for the most part, I already knew about.

For instance, that aforementioned analytical reading of Ender’s Game. Or our in-class discussion today about the 1983 Matthew Broderick classic WarGames.

Part of our discussion hinged on the shift from a World War II mentality of game theory in that the best way to win is to make sure your opponents can never fight again to a Cold War mentality of anxious peace through the zero sum game of the nuclear arms race (“The only way to win is not to play”).

But then we also tied the movie into discussions of early hacker culture with the development of Spacewar! in 1962, really the first game that taught people computers could be used for something other than work.

As well as the game that got banned at Stanford for being too addicting and inhibiting work (which you can now play in all its antiquated glory here!).

However, another branch of our discussion was the change in concepts of masculinity that came from gaming culture and nerd-driven movies in the 80s.

A shift from the grizzled frontier-pushing heroes of John Wayne to the intellectual digital frontier exploring cowboys of Matthew Broderick’s David teaching a computer to play tic-tac-toe.

That’s where Carly Kocurek’s book, Coin-Operated Americans, is going to pick up the slack for next week.

According to the blurb on the back, it “explores the development and implications of the ‘video gamer’ as a cultural identity,” most notably in relation to the perception of games as a “boy’s world.” But also looking at the moral panic stemming from 1976’s Death Race and other culture examining video games like Tron and WarGames.

Hence us watching the latter movie before reading the book.

That’s essentially my big task for the next week, getting through this little tome while dealing with Comm Law homework and such.

Luckily, now that my big networking event and midterms are out-of-the-way, I have a little extra time to settle down and read.

So if I wind up coming back in the near future with an obscure book review, now you know why.

The magic of maps

A good, old-fashioned map can add a whole lot of character to a place.

Sure, the colorful country-accurate map of the Earth on a globe is an impressive sight especially fully animated online:

But that view of the planet is a bit too modernist and clinical for my tastes.

I’m more of a fan of classic, stylized pieces such as the 1643 depiction of Europe by Dutch mapmaker Cornelis Danckaerts that I used for my Featured Image. It’s just the sort of rugged, swarthy style you’d expect to see in some kind of fantasy novel.

Replace that boat off the port of Spain with some kind of serpentine sea creature and it may as well be the map of a fantasy world. Like something you’d expect to see from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

Speaking of, did you know that there’s an interactive Middle-Earth map available online? It is full of complex names and points of time for different important events.

That’s the kind of stuff I love.

As I’ve made more progress in my Senior Honors Project novel, I’ve found it necessary to start keeping track of all the locations I’m name dropping to give the world a little more history and life.

To remember places I might want to bring up later and also lay everything out on a more cohesive latitude and longitude for when I explain travel across the content — as my book will include plenty of travel.

During class yesterday, I started to draw out a rudimentary sketch of my world map on a sheet of paper:

Results not final.

I used to draw things like this all the time, inspired by the maps I’ve seen in the front of books like Lord of the Rings and Eragon.

But never before have I put one together that might actually be useful.

So it was serendipity that, while sitting in my Honors 400B class last night, my friend Mimi noticed my drawing and offered to point out some free campaign map making software she knew about for Dungeons and Dragons.

How was I supposed to say no to that?

Of the software I got pointed to, my favorite was a website called HexTML, which as the name implies lets you create a world of your own using hexagonal signifiers like the board game Settlers of Catan.

Many hours were spent last night screwing around to translate that hand-drawn map into something that could reasonably be shown off to the world.

It’s still open to adjustments down the line and I’d like to put names on all of the areas and towns through the site, but for now I’m really proud of where I’d gotten:

The left side.

While the continent proper does not yet have a name, but a lot of the structures within it do.

The town on the lower left is Fehrn, where my main characters live.

The singular structures around Fehrn are ruins of the old western empire that have been used as treasure hunting locales. To the north, that black cavern, is an underground chamber where my story begins — just below the Redbark Woods.

To the lower right is the Gnarled Forest, a large mesh of roots, branches and bark that was nigh impenetrable for eons. The old elven tribe was able to thrive there before being attacked.

Just above that in the mountain range hides a small structure signifying the capital of the Sparrine Empire. The Sparrine being the bird people who are basically France, taking over the region under bird Napoleon. Talked about that recently.

The right side.

Moving onto the other side of the map, a few new main areas stand out.

Hidden in another mountain to the right of the Sparrine empire is the Prophet’s Sanctuary, where my main characters must travel.

Below it is a yet unnamed lake with an equally unnamed port town to its right side where the player character of my story’s game world will have to take on bird Napoleon in a thinly veiled allegory to the Battle of Waterloo.

Spoilers, I guess. If you know historical stuff.

The walled city to the right of that lake is the capital of the Bresegon Empire, where the lordly prince character hails from. Just above it is the ruins of an older nation’s capital.

Essentially the ruins of Rome beside the now prospering Byzantine Empire.

All of those ruins to the leftmost side of the region being the desolate remains of the Holy Roman Empire’s holdings.

Those are some of my world’s major locations, as far as I’ve planned things out up to this point. With all of the plot beats generally worked out for my story, I’m especially excited to start using a bunch of them now that I have a spatial awareness of how everything fits together.

Hope you’re interested in seeing some more cool little behind-the-scenes details on my writing like this from here on out.

Now that I’m getting into the book, I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to share.

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Featured Image courtesy of Cornelis Danckerts via Wikimedia Commons

Stories by the fire

In the beginning, early hominids huddled in dark seclusion deep inside caverns on the fringes of the world, scared of beasts and inclement weather threatening their existence from the wilds outside.

Then everything changed in the year of our lord 2001, when the blessed Kubrick himself delivered our ancestors a gift of blazing fire: Bright enough to stave off the darkness and hot enough to cook most anything.

Since then we have gone through hundreds of years of evolution to become the kings of the proverbial and literal food chains, shaping the world and even external worlds to our whims.

Yet one thing has not changed in all those decades.

That same sparked flame which bolstered our growth was and continues to be the perfect backdrop for gathering around and exhibiting our social capabilities, doing what we humans are arguably known for best:

Talking.

After an especially windy day traveling around to do some chores, my family returned home and decided to whip up a fire for some extra help keeping warm.

Considering we’re positioned smack dab in the middle of Southern California, there’s not many chilly opportunities to necessitate a fire every year, so it’s a nice change of pace whenever we do light one.

Though my set-up might suggest there was a large storytelling element to this particular fire, I wouldn’t say there was in such a traditional sense.

The television is on right next to it, so that’s a pretty large story outlet right now.

Especially with someone like Alton Brown on. Can’t argue with re-runs of Good Eats.

However, something I’ll always link to a fire being set at the Rochlin household is the story that literally always gets told whenever we light one. Without fail.

It’s my parents’ story and I stake no real claim to it, but like I said it has become a significant part of the experience for me.

So I figure I’ll save it for posterity, if nothing else.

My parents moved to California not very long before I was born, having lived more or less their whole lives on the East Coast — New York in particular. My Dad had aspirations to be a famous actor and had long venerated the Golden State, though soon enough he had moved into more work behind the camera managing computer systems at companies like Disney.

Neither had ever owned a house with a fireplace before, so having one when they moved into this place was something special to try.

However, the first day they did try it out, the fire department showed up. Apparently they didn’t realize you needed to open up the flue, otherwise smoke would pour back into the house rather than out.

When they answered the door, somewhat confused by what had gone wrong, the official asked, “You guys just move in?”

Now that’s what I call a punchline.

Bit of a weirder post than usual tonight I know, but like I said I haven’t done too much besides chores and freeze to death in the windy tundra of SoCal.

Figured this small, fun subject would serve as a nice capstone for the end of Winter Break. Tomorrow I’m headed back to school for what looks to be my last semester of college.

Needless to say I’ll be looking to write as many fun, distraction-filled posts as possible over the next week or so to keep my mind occupied.

When did we start labeling ingredients?

A few weeks back I talked about the essay I was going to have to write for my Visual Communications class.

I’m sure if you follow my posts regularly you remember this one. My little laugh at the 1950s era advertising we could choose to analyze.

In that case I’m sure you also remember that I decided to go with this 7-Up ad.

Boy is it more and more beautiful every time I see it.

I bring up the subject again because I started to work on the actual paper itself yesterday evening and already the damn thing has taken me down a bizarre rabbit hole.

A rabbit hole that, in all honesty, is pretty interesting. If you ask me at least.

Here’s some more in-depth context before I get into that branch of my research. The content requirements for the essay are relatively straight forward. We simply have to examine the image we chose from the six perspectives that were elaborated in earlier in the semester:

1. Personal — Our gut reactions to the image.
2. Historical — How the context of the time shaped the image.
3. Technical — What techniques and elements went into creating the image.
4. Ethical — Would ethical philosophers find the creation or use of the image justified?
5. Cultural — What symbols can be found in the image that relate it to the culture of the time.
6. Critical — Taking a second, more objective look at the image now that all of the analysis isdone to see how thoughts and opinions might have changed.

My deep dive began as I broached into the historical aspects of the advertisement.

Most of the analysis was easy enough. The ad comes from the 1950s, so there was plenty to discuss as far as the post-war economic boom and opening stages of the Cold War went. Both contributed to the development of a middle class American ‘nuclear family’ that in many ways became dependent on purchasing power to show their status and connection to the mainstream culture.

What I looked into had nothing to do with that overall historical context. Instead it came from pinpointing a very specific part of the advertisement.

In the lower right-hand corner there’s a block of text which, among other things, tries to convince new parents to feed their babies a “wholesome” mix of 7-Up and milk.

More important to point out for my purposes is the section where the advertisers tell readers that they have all the ingredients in 7-Up listed on the bottle — despite the fact that it was not required.

When I read that I stared at the screen for a moment mulling things over. Were food labels not required in the 1950s? There was a Food and Drug Administration overlooking those matters at that point in time, wasn’t there?

It was a bit of a tangent, sure, but if I found the idea so interesting it seemed like a good research avenue to go down.

… Only in part because I needed a few more sources to fit the requirement and some U.S. government resources seemed official enough to justify using. I promise.

I found that, yes, the FDA did exist prior to the publication of this 7-Up advertisement. The FDA came into place alongside the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906 according to the horse’s mouth.

However, labels on food like you see required today, with their widely enumerated requirements that are stipulated upon in this most recent FDA Food Labeling Guide from 2013, were not required until the passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA). Prior to that, listing things like ingredients and nutritional information of food product labels were purely voluntary.

So it seems like the 7-Up people were right in congratulating themselves for posting that kind of information on their product in the 1950s.

But in that case, just when did it become a requirement for everyone?

Diving a little deeper into the subject I came across this discussion of the history behind nutritional labeling on the National Center for Biotechnical Information’s website. As a subset of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, I figure they’re a pretty reputable source.

According to this source, the NLEA wasn’t officially passed until November 1990.

That’s almost 90 years after the FDA first came into being. It’s astounding to me that it took that long to get this kind of legislation passed!

Perhaps that’s hindsight bias in some respect. Food labels are so ubiquitous in the 21st century, and they’re the butt of so many jokes about GMOs and fake ingredients, that it’s hard to imagine a time they weren’t in use.

To think that time was just a few short decades ago…

Humans are pretty crazy, huh?

Sharknado 6 Ruined Me

Today was a day where I felt pretty good about myself.

In the wake of a hangout that went past 1:00 a.m., I still got up and did some work editing for Boom. Then I went to the gym and got a nice hour’s worth of a workout before making myself a pretty sweet looking sandwich for lunch.

Good stuff all things considered.

But then. We decided to watch the sixth Sharknado movie that premiered earlier.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same after that. I might just be more broken by existential dread than I can truly convey through text. In spite of that concern, I shall try my best.

For those of you who are not aware of this bizarre little corner of pop culture history — Though I can’t imagine there are many people out there who haven’t heard of it considering the almost unexplainable popularity of the series — Sharknado was a movie released by the Syfy network in 2013 starring Ian Ziering and Tara Reid.

The best way I can think to describe the film is that it was one in a long line of shark-themed, low-budget disaster parody films put out by the network. Other classic examples included Ghost Shark and Sharktopus.

These are all super real. And surprisingly popular as Z-grade dumb parody fun for those of us who enjoy cheesy science fiction schlock.

But… Sharknado was different. Sharknado, by some combination of washed-up actors, a ridiculous premise and laughably horrible CGI, became a phenomenon. A phenomenon big enough to spawn five sequels.

Because my family happens to be a fan of dumb, awful movies like this, we’ve watched every single one over the last five or so years. I’m not going to say I’m proud of that, but it’s a thing we do. It’s dumb fun.

Admittedly, I don’t remember any significant detail past the third movie. Because they got increasingly ridiculous, complex and overblown with each entry. Dare I say… They jumped the shark.

The creators probably intended for that exact cliché to show up when discussing their work.

The first Sharknado was a somewhat contained story, where the hero Fin (fish joke ha ha) has to rescue his family after a Sharknado touches down in Santa Monica and starts to destroy the surrounding Los Angeles area.

The second was basically the same story but in New York. Cue hopping around on taxi cabs and other such predictable New York jokes, plus a half a billion cameos from famous people hoping to jump on the meme.

The third was more of a world-wide scale, saving the president of the U.S. and dealing with Universal Studios Florida and… Going into space I think?

Unless that was the fourth movie, which of course made a Force Awakens joke in the title. But like I said I don’t remember any of that movie, or the fifth one. Something happened in Niagara Falls, and there were robot clones and uhh… Yeah.

Then of course we come to the newest, presumably final entry in the series. Sharknado 6: The Last One.

The last one until someone decides we can bring the series back with a rebooted cast and do it all again, I guess.

Sharknado 6 took things above and beyond where we had already been by figuring if we’ve destroyed the entire planet with Sharknados, we might as well do the same thing throughout history. That’s right, it’s a time travel story. With everyone hoping to stop Sharknados in the past so they can save the future.

It’s about as contrived and derivative as it sounds, and it’s meant to be. Hell, the amount of times they reference Back to the Future is astounding.

The characters literally travel using a flux capacitor, which in at least one situation requires them to use a train to travel at 88 miles per hour.

Even though I’m 100 percent sure the conflict of BttF 3 was needing to speed up a steam train because it didn’t go fast enough, I’ll let it slide.

Most of the jokes you’d expect to appear to appear based on the periods of time they go through in the movie. First it’s pre-history, then the American Revolution, the Old West, the 1950s and eventually culminating in the early 2010s where they stop the Sharknado that started the whole mess in the first place.

Of course there’s all sorts of underlying plot with the main characters struggling to move beyond their past experiences and not use time travel to try to alter history (even though the whole plot is literally about altering history?). But that doesn’t really matter. The series has basically retconned everything at least four times so far, and characters constantly come back from the dead. The film even ends with everyone back at the beginning of the first movie but different, a circumstance where everyone is happy and alive and life is perfect for all.

If anything I’d argue it’s mostly a forgettable, lackluster romp compared to those early entries with just a sense that everything is going through the motions needed to finally end it all.

But there were at least two scenes that made me truly question my existence. So I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you’re interested in Sharknado 6 and don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read on.

The first is during a stop in ancient Europe, the 1400s or so. Whenever King Arthur lore happened because of course that’s the chief influence they’re using.

This scene of the movie has arguably the most recognizable modern-day cameos in it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson shows up playing the wizard Merlin. Which a first probably seems as strange to you as it did to me, why would you cast one of the most recognizable science communicators of all time to play one of the most famous magic-users of history?

Because time travel joke. That’s the whole reason. Merlin knows some things about time travel.

But that’s not all, folks. The drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 (also actual name, I’m not screwing with you I swear) plays an evil queen that fights with swords and shoots fireballs.

They have a moment of talking with one another in the film.

So we are in a universe where a drag queen named Thunderfuck and Neil deGrasse fucking Tyson are acting against one another in a movie about time travel being used to stop the world from ending because of tornados full of sharks.

Hallelujah, we truly are in the darkest timeline.

There’s also a scene toward the end of the movie where everyone goes to the year 20013 — because obviously someone accidentally added an extra 0 onto the flux capacitor.

That future, for being in an age where Earth would most definitely be dead and gone, looks okay. Everything’s just vaguely dilapidated.

But then. Tara Reid shows up.

Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for context she had died during a stop in the year 1997.

As it turns out, and bear with me on this one, the robotic clone of Tara Reid — who played a significant role in the fifth movie and then just became a severed head MacGuffin in the sixth movie who blew up Sharknados with laser eyes — survived past all other human beings and created an army of robot Tara Reids and robot sharks to ensure that she could live forever.

So the third act of the movie becomes Fin having to set the timeline right by completely fucking it up in order to stop evil robot queen Tara Reid from ending humanity so she could rule forever.

In an otherwise lackluster movie, these two moments blew my god damn mind. They’re such things that I never needed to see that I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

If you think I’m getting to some point with this whole post, I’m not.

I just wanted to share these things with you so that you don’t have to go shatter your concept of reality by watching Sharknado 6.

It’s not worth it guys.

Actually it’s very worth it It’s definitely not worth it.

Save yourself.

Be free from the Sharknado.

That’s my public service announcement for the day.

Old Fort MacArthur Days: A day of fun, sun and guns for the whole family

Who are these beauties you see above the title here? Why, that’s me and my little sister Alyson, dressed in 1940’s era attire. Both of us outside, at that. What could possibly bring us outside the comfort of our home on such a wonderful afternoon?

Plenty of things, actually. It was a really nice afternoon.

But in this case specifically, we were out and about with my good friend Sam at Old Fort MacArthur Days. Held at its namesake, Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, and spilling into the nearby Korean Friendship Bell, Old Fort MacArthur Days is an annual event where tons of people gather for a weekend to put on their finest displays of historically accurate military and era-specific gear so they can reenact events and educate the public.

Those are essentially the two major selling points of the experience. It’s huge in scale with tons of antiques and goods to sell, and each group has people manning the station that are veritable experts in the field they represent. You can stand around and ask the people in dress anything about the time period they’re dressed for and they’ll more than likely have the answer – and then some.

It’s a hard experience to explain for those who haven’t been, but my family has been going on and off for a long time now, as it’s definitely worth going as much as possible.

One thing the event suffered from this year was a blazing hot sun. For as entertaining as everything was, it was torture standing out in the open for the reenactments and listening to the representatives of the different eras. I can’t imagine what it must have been like standing around in heavy armor or old fashioned dresses and such.

Even without bulky clothing, I still managed to burn the hell out of myself out there. You can even tell in the featured image here, the back of my neck is red as it gets. As a result, I’ve been pretty exhausted and uncomfortable most of the afternoon, which is partially why it took until almost midnight to get something out about an event that ended at 4:00 p.m.

Because I’m still exhausted and also fairly lazy, I’m going to take the easy way out on this one and post a slideshow with all the cool pictures I got of all the booths so everyone can get something of an idea of what the event is like.

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If you like the kind of stuff you see here, I can assure you it’s an even better experience in person. Seriously, I wholeheartedly can’t recommend Old Fort MacArthur Days enough, and implore whoever can go to go next year.

If not for the scale and the educational value, at least for the glorious anachronisms.

Ben Franklin hanging out with Teddy Roosevelt? It’s there. Revolutionary soldiers calling for the death of a fallen gladiator? Got that. Roman children checking out World War II rifles as women in puffy colonial-era dress wander in the background? You know it.

Undoubtedly incredible.

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I wanted to add an aside here at the end saying that I also have some pretty great videos showcasing some of the weapon demonstrations, a gladiator fight, the Civil War battle and a cowboy skit.

However, I haven’t been able to get it in a format where I can upload the videos easily yet. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve taken so long to write this, as a matter of fact. Until I figure that out I’m going to leave this here as a reminder that I’ll be adding them in once I do.

January 23, 2017 Article Published

Today marks the beginning of the Spring 2017 semester for me here at Cal State Fullerton. Obviously, that means a few things.  It means the end of winter break, which is certainly unfortunate to an extent, but inevitable.  No break can last forever.  It also means brand new classes to adjust to, in this case a course on California government, a course on primate behavior, an honors-level history course and an investigative reporting class where we’ll be tackling the issue of homelessness with the school’s newspaper advisor.

Finally, a new semester means a new run of the Daily Titan.  Like I alluded to just the other day, I’d say it wound up being a good one.  We covered the Women’s Marches in Los Angeles and Santa Ana, the new interim city manager of Fullerton, art exhibits now on display on campus and, of course, Michael Dukakis coming to talk as a part of the Patrons of the Library 2016-2017 lecture series.

The former governor had a lot of interesting things to say about both U.S. foreign and domestic policies.  He also made his perspective on the new president, Donald Trump, pretty clear.  While I feel like I addressed all of these things in the story quite well, one thing I feel like I could’ve done better was talk about the personality of the man who was giving those opinions.

Michael Dukakis was not only a great orator, he was generally a great man as well.  He’s intelligent, experienced, funny and really knew how to read a crowd.  His extensive knowledge of U.S. political history was accentuated well by personal stories he was able to tell about his history in politics and life.  He also didn’t stick to one side of the political aisle, as he was able to pull stories and ideas from a wide variety of people.  On top of that, he had an opinion and something to say about everything, but not in a negative way by any means.

My only real regret covering this event was that I missed the chance to greet the man personally while I did extra interviews to finish my story.  If he ever comes back to talk at Fullerton, or anywhere nearby that I might be able to see him again, I’ll have to be sure to take the chance.

The whole issue of the paper can be seen up on issuu now if you want to take a look, since our Managing Editor puts them up after every production.

However, if you want to see my story in its entirety, you can see it here.  We have a new website design and it’s really quite nice, so I’d certainly recommend taking a look around at some of the other sections while you’re there.  You can also check out my whole archive of work for the Daily Titan through the link over on the right!