Tag Archives: 31ghosts

The culmination of a week of ghosts, dinosaurs and coral

Yesterday Husband and I had lunch at a place with a dinosaur decor, a coral reef themed bar, and a haunted ladies room.

IMG_3822

Yes, we ventured into the T-Rex Cafe at Downtown Disney.

This place is always packed and you have to make reservations for dinner. We’re usually only in the area when we’re foraging for dinner and drinks or headed to a movie so we’ve never even bothered to go inside. Yesterday, we happened to be killing a little time, looking for lunch before heading to the airport. The bar was empty when we walked in since the restaurant was just opening for the day. We were glad we did – it was awesomely tacky.

It was no Dinosaurland, though. You just can’t replicate that kind of roadside charm, but we enjoyed it anyway.

Whenever the “meteor shower” lightshow would start, the Pterodactyl, dinosaurs and mammoths (I know, I know) came to life and started roaring and pitching a fit. This was noisy. I’m betting even when the place is packed with children you can’t hear any of their fussing or screaming over the din, so that might be okay.

Husband and I are both certain that the dinosaur roars used on Land of the Lost for Big Alice and Grumpy’s vocalizations are part of the T-Rex Cafe soundscape, but I’m too lazy to look into it.

A giant octopus formed a canopy over the bar and it would periodically menace us with it’s tentacles. I never got any video of this, but it amused me every time.

IMG_0601

Oh yeah, about those ghosts – I was the only one in the ladies room and I was standing at the sink washing my hands when the door to an empty stall suddenly slammed shut. It was probably a problem with an air conditioning vent or maybe an animatronic effect gone horribly wrong, but let’s chalk it up to ghosts just because we can.

A sister establishment, the Rainforest Cafe, has a similarly elaborate concept design. I found a short article by the sound designers, Frattalone & Associations about the concept design and installation of Rainforest Cafe system.

Nightmare Before Christmas

Is it a Christmas movie? Is it a Halloween movie? Do I care? No.

I watched Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas this week for 3 reasons:

1) It’s really clever.
2) It’s got ghosts.
3) It rounds out the inadvertent 2010 subtheme, “a year(ish) of Tim Burton”
4) We’re off to Disney for Halloween adventures so it seemed appropriate.

That was more than 3 reasons.

I suppose I could keep going…

5) It’s my favorite Tim Burton movie, with Alice in Wonderland probably running a close second.
6) Alice might be first. It does have Alan Rickman, after all.
7) The Blu-ray release of Nightmare is really beautiful.
8) Zero is one of my favorite movie ghosts.
9) I always liked Nightmare, but I fell in love with it when they re-released it into the theaters in 3D in 2007.
10) The Blu-ray of Nightmare has cool bonus features, including Vincent and Frankenweenie.
11) Alan Rickman was in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, but I wasn’t crazy about that one.
12) Alan Rickman.
13) What?
14) Where was I?
15) Is it warm in here?

Oh, nevermind.

(I just want to note that I originally embedded the official Disney trailer for the Blu-ray of Nightmare, but it was a promo for the special edition disk and, while it looked really cool and the image quality was better than what I found on youtube, I liked the original trailer better to kick off this post).

Supernatural

I’ve seen every episode of Supernatural way too many times. It’s not healthy, but I can’t control myself. I can’t even claim I can stop anytime, because that would be a lie.

It seemed wrong not to re-watch at least one ghost-centric episode this month specifically in honor of Ghost Month. (Ghost Month? Is that what I’m calling it? I keep getting confused. I’m tagging everything for 2010 31ghosts, by the way, in case you need to catch up).

I was having trouble deciding which episode to choose, so I let my Tivo, Overlord II, choose for me. The first episode it selected was…the first episode. It’s not bad for a pilot episode. Sam and Dean solve a mystery involving a woman in white, which in the show’s lore is a variation on the Latin American myth of La Llorona.

I was going to embed the opening scene from the episode, which is chock full of Supernatural mythology, but embedding is blocked. Here’s a link, instead.

I’m sure I have more to say about Supernatural and I’m sure there were better ghost episodes than this one, but Husband just walked in and we got distracted obsessing over Escape from Dinosaur Kingdom and I lost my train of thought.

Knitting, moon-landing conspiracies, & how the internet ate my brain

How did I not know that The Shining is Stanley Kubrick’s absurdly elaborate confession that he was responsible for the moon landing hoax?

It’s so obvious.

I came upon this bit of information while trying to find a pattern for Danny’s Apollo 11 sweater. Husband wants me to make him one. It wouldn’t exactly be rocket science (sorry) to design one, but I’m lazy.