Calvin

Just hit up our local water park here, Wild Water Adventures, yesterday. It's a pretty good park, defenitely better than the alternative, The Island, which is a hot little chunk of cement with a bunch of out-of-the-box slides. They've got a new bowl slide, "Ghostslider", but everyone referred to it as "Ghostrider" by a mix of muddled advertising and the fact that it's easier to say. Honestly, I wish I'd ridden one of these earlier. Probably the most fun I've had on a water slide, simply because it's so different. I kind of expected the transition to the bowl to hurt, but it was actually really smooth. I can see why they're so popular. Actually, I prefer it to the larger versions, although I've never done the halfpipe kind. It's a great little park, and after I get my photos developed I'll put the pictures I got up.

Haha, that claustrophobic bomber thing is an Eyerly Loop-O-Plane, and they're friggin' amazing. Unlike modern, larger rides similar to it, the counterweights don't weigh very much, so when you come down, you come down hard. There's a reason they call those things "The Hammer".

I always thought Dutch Wonderland was the best cute little park ever. They somehow managed to make a Chance Yo-Yo pretty. QUACK

I figure it's kind of dumb to recommend albums everyone knows, so here goes: Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump is a very good but unfortunately very unknown album. Think something like OK Computer plus Twin Peaks. The nine minute opening track is a favorite of mine. Caribou's Andorra is also good; think modern-day psychedalia. The Cardigans' First Band On The Moon, which features their hit song, Lovefool, is overlooked as a full album. It's one of those ones that leaps from track to track without a pause in between. On top of that, the mastering is incredibly good. Mad Pudding's Grand Hotel is an album I haven't stopped listening to since I saw them live in 1998. It's the most Canadian album ever, but it's practically impossible to find. Supergrass's Road to Rouen is one of my top five albums, even though it only has nine songs. It's melancholy British guitar pop, sort of hard to describe. Think cloudgazing on a rainy day. Jon Brion's Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack, another top five. I could listen to this all day long and not get tired of it. Ugly Casanova's Sharpen Your Teeth, an offshoot of Modest Mouse, is a dusty, smoky album, with lots of weird stuff in it. If you like Modest Mouse, chances are you'll like this. The Dandy Warhols' Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. It's difficult to describe this one. The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka is the most experimental album ever: there are four CDs, each one with the same songs on it, only each corresponding track has something different on it. You have to get four CD players to play it, and it's worth it.

The Black Hole at Fresno's Wild Water Adventures is a black enclosed tube slide. There are two slides, a lower one and a higher one. The higher one starts off with a small drop and a turn; I fell off my tube on the first turn, and had to push myself all the way down. Thankfully, the paint is chipping off the tube so there was light, but I kept thinking, "Boy, I hope they don't send anyone down."

Oh, great, and I'm moving to Seattle next year. Stupid Fresno. Why couldn't they have built this twelve years ago?

The world is...not surprised.

I've got the first soundtrack, and was considering getting the second one but I've heard it wasn't as good. na naaa na na na naa naa na na na naa naa na na naaaa

That's a really cool Space Shot but god, what a depressing place.

Best sequel ever: Godfather Part II Worst sequel ever: Godfather Part III

The bunny hops are way awesome. *slam! slam! slam!* I never understood why people crabbed about the "boring" layout of Dragster. The whole point of the ride is A, you go really fast and B, you go really high. Anything else and you would have gotten something like Kingda Ka.

Ratatouille, of course, what else?

Looks like you had a "fun time" at "Thorpe park", Mr. Poster. Stealth is taller than I thought it was.

My cousin and I were riding X-Scream on the Stratosphere tower. We'd been riding in the front seat with him on the inside and me on the outside edge. I told him we should switch seats and when we went over again he screamed the loudest I have ever heard a person scream, it was hilarious. I looked down the side and got an interesting "compressed" view of the tower.

Here is how Space Shots work.

There's a theme song?

I have no idea what either of those are. Christ, that's a dirty park. I like the image of the banana and the worker, very "LIFE Magazine".

Which is fine, I know it's fake. But you've got kids who are going to see this and try it. Our local mass transit system, Metra, is having all sorts of issues with kids playing on tracks. They've killed four or five kids in the last two years for stuff like this. It's a European commercial. European kids aren't dumb like American kids are. It's like from 5-15 years old Americans have no sense. And again from 30-60.

It passes the tunnel test.

Jesus, it's like Six Flags over Rashomon.

Saying there's no difference between hurtling around the turn and leaping down the first drop and crawling around the turn and sliding down the first drop is like saying there's no difference between The Godfather and The Godfather with the first fifteen minutes lopped off...sure, the rest of the ride is the same but the rush of being tossed down that first drop is gone.

35 downloads and two people talking? Reminds me of a discussion in a high school english classroom where only two students read the book. If you're going to download at least critique.

Jesus, these people are worse than the MPAA (well, not quite, at least the ESRB is transparent).

Assuming that the original speed was 15 mph and the new speed is 5 mph, that would mean that there's a loss of 10 mph throughout the whole ride. However, I've heard chatter about new wheels, so that may have something to do with it (better wheels=faster ride).

Well, let's see, there's that, or... REAL DIFFICULT DECISION THERE. By the way, that's Love, Ka, and Zumanity, respectively.