Supper Rock Park: The Jewel of Albuquerque

There I was, an innocent 7 year old growing up in Albuquerque who knew nothing of the world and the promise of disappointment it holds. I loved the house we lived in and the neighborhood we lived in.  I literally kissed every single wall goodbye when we finally moved out, I was so depressed. I made my friend Claire do it with me, which is way weirder in retrospect than it felt at the time.

Part of what made my neighborhood the place to be as a kid was Supper Rock Park, a 6 acre park right across the street from my house. What made the park so special? It had a mountain in the middle of it. A real. Fucking. Mountain. A climbable, amazing mountain that boasted incredible height and took a crazy amount of stamina to hike. If you made it all the way up to the top and back down, you were the thing that 2nd grade dreams were made of. A hero. A legend. Queen of the afternoon, princess of the playground. A google search of the mighty rock turned up this:

So... I remember it being way bigger. It looks so sad here, doesn't it? Standing behind the playground like a sad old weirdo at a school dance with a little bow tie and a wilted bouquet.

Maybe it's the angle?

Nope.

Obviously I was 7 at the time so everything seemed bigger, but perhaps more obviously- this is a small hill featuring rocky terrain. A mountain it is not.

The reason it was named Supper Rock Park is because one of the (what I now recognize as very small) rocks at the base of the hill had a round, flat carving in it. It looked like a little disc had been cut out of it with primitive tools. We were made to believe that Native Americans smashed their food in the cutout after carving the hollow and lit it on fire to cook it or something. I'm not really sure on the logistics of how they supposedly cooked their food in it, only that it definitely happened and the townsfolk were so stoked on it they named the park after it. I don't know if there is any fact to this, or if the neighborhood kids that were older than me told me a made up story so they could humiliate me later. In either case, supper of some kind was had, and rocks were involved.

I tried searching for a history of the park and came up with nothing but a bunch of listings giving me the address of the park and a weird neighborhood board website that hasn't been updated since 2008. Typical Albuquerque.

Speaking of typical Albuquerque, there was also the darker, seedier side of the park. Broken bottles everywhere, cigarette butts, people making out left and right. One day playing there with my sister and a friend of hers, we noticed a couple getting all sexy as we passed by. That's when I learned what French kissing was at the tender age of 6, and I was totally horrified. As my sister's friend explained in grave detail the mechanics behind such a kiss, my world spiraled more and more out of control.

Touch tongues? What are you insane? That's the worst thing I've ever heard!

All of this thanks to Supper Rock Park, a place where children play and drunken horny teens get their mack on before smoking some cigarettes, breaking some bottles, and not picking them up.

If you or someone you know has a status update on the park-- I'd love to hear it.

You better recognize this.

Mr. Wizard's World of sciency type thingys (aka oh shit it took me 3 years to write this)

Full Disclosure:  I'm a theatre major.  Sometimes I watch Cosmos and I feel very smart.  Most of the time I wander through life wondering how I got from A to B, not too concerned about the how and the why of shit.  But you have to have a little bit of science in your back pocket so as to not believe in creationism and ghosts and stuff, and I have Mr. Wizard to thank for my lil' pocket full of science.

 

Ohhhhh snap!  Let that top hat birth a magnet to pull a shopping cart full of science into your brain!  Mr. Wizard was like if Mr. Rogers knew how to do something useful with himself - he was all like "Hey, young children!  Come into my house and learn science things!" Which, due to the science, wasn't creepy at all.  It was totes educational. 

 

Mr. Wizard, aka Don Herbert, aka geek master D - first started his molding of young minds back in 1951.  The original show was so successful it won a Peabody award, and had 2 revivals after taking a few years off.  Then it was on nickelodeon FOREVER. 

 

Wanna make a rubber ball rocket? Do ya?

 

 

Well now you know how.

 

What the hell is osmosis anyway?

 

 

Ohhhhhhhhh snap!  I thought it was like hypnosis but way less fun.

 

My work computer hates blogger, so this is a short post to end another 3 year absence, but anywho...there it is.

 

SCIENCE, FOOLS.

 

 

 

 

 

CHALLENGE: Don't take 3 years this time.

Popples: Pillow Pets of the Past

For those of you who don't know or care, Popples were a stuffed animal Mattel produced and sold in the 80's.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of Troll Dolls, it was the age of Ninja Turtles, it was the epoch of neon mini skirts, it was the epoch of shoulder pads. Then, out of the magical brain that created the original prototypes for Care Bears and Strawberry Short cake came...

Popples were basically mutated Care Bears that folded up into balls.

 You can see how the horribly malformed Popple still bears trademarks of it's much less ridiculous predecessor. The heart stamped hands and feet, the little tongue, the puffy cheeks. Why, it's practically a care bear if you don't notice the pronounced hunch, unnatural ears, disgusting color scheme, and purposeless tail.

POPPLE: THE UNKNOWN SPECIES

To this very day, the exact genus of the illustrious Popple is unknown. Because of the Popple's infamous pouch, it is widely believed the Popple is a marsupial. Some have noted the similarities between Popples and baby porcupines.*

*we here at natalieandtaliaspeak.blogspot.com do NOT recommend attempting to fold a  porcupine.

POPPLE: THE IMAGE
On the surface, Popples appeared to be just your ordinary unidentifiable creature. But under their layers of excess back skin lurked an exciting secret.

You could turn them inside out! That's right! And if your mom got mad that you were playing with your Popple after hours, you could just grab its limbs and head and jam them into its crotch! Voila! A ball without a face. Silly ol' mom will never know this thing is really a marsupial porcupine rabbit and my new best friend.

POPPLE: THE LEGEND
As if the plush toy alone wasn't enough, it didn't stop there. A whole cast of colorful characters made up the original Popple crew. This way, even if you had one Popple, it still made sense for you to want/need more Popples. There was: PC (as in Pretty Cool), Party, Pancake, Prize, Puffball, Puzzle, Pretty Bit, Potato Chip, and Putter. While they varied in size and color, they didn't vary in awesomeness.

Though every child wanted a Popple, not every child was ready for the responsibility. As made example of here in the classic Popple cartoon series, a little girl named Bonnie gets more than she bargained for in:

POPPLES PANIC AT THE LIBRARY!

It only takes watching about a minute of this video to realize that Popples make terrible pets. What else are they keeping in those seemingly bottomless pouches? Why do they even have legs if they just bounce everywhere? And what library carries school math books? The plot holes are gaping and many. Although I did like the epic camera angle when Bonnie thought she was resigned to failing "nothing important, just the world's BIGGEST MATH TEST!" Not that the her numerous Popples are going to help her anyway. They thought a tennis racket was a math book. 

POPPLES: BUY YOURS TODAY!

Popples actually still have a website, popplespopp.com! Now that you're pumped to get your new Popple, you can't have one.  The whole website is a lie that directs you to some other website that doesn't even sell toys.

POPPLES: THE DOWNFALL:

Unfortunately for the Popple, the good people at Mattel overestimated the intelligence and motor skills of the average child. I could NEVER get my Popple to fold back into a ball. It's like when you go to Qdoba or Chipotle and they wrap your burrito, you eat half of it, and somehow can't get the wrapper cover the entire burrito again. You KNOW it's supposed to work, but you don't know how. A quick scan of the internet revealed I was not the only frail idiot aged 10 and under in the 80s.

 They really were JimVarneysGhost, they really were.

CHALLENGE: The most frustrating folding experience ever.

After a long, long, long absence - suddenly a new post appears...

So, turns out that this doesn't look anything like I remember it. Hm. What I do actually remember is the crushing sadness I felt when the real life kids fall and almost squish this little girl's pet pigeon to death. I remember being like, "yeah, right on, save that pigeon". In retrospect - fucking gross.

Oh hey...i'm disgusting.

But I digress. So, my whole childhood, I hated going to church. Except for the part about the doughnuts. But other than the doughnuts, church was like having to take a nap with your eyes open - a total waste of a perfectly good day off of school. In tights. I figured that I was probably going to hell for feeling that way, but growing up passively Catholic pretty much insures a base level of guilt no matter how you feel about actual church attendance. Anywho, I knew so little about the bible and the stories contained therein, when the Kingdom Chums series entered my world, I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was watching something religious.

mmmmm....strawberry....

Our story begins with Peter and his sister Mary Ann, their obnoxiously stereotypically Jewish pal, Sauli (yes, you read that right. Effing Sauli). Some bad kids are teasing Sauli for his yarmulke - you know, tossing it around like a frisbee, like you do - and while grasping for his tiny hat, he falls on the shoe boxed bird. Mary Ann (played by Jenna Van Oy- hilarious) flips her shit and the kids go to her and Peter's house to fix it. Presumably with Popsicle sticks and Elmer's Glue. They douche around with the computer, looking for information (this is pre-internet...so I'm not sure what kind of amazing bird doctor program they thought they had uploaded on there), and somehow this light-brite like constellation appears, Mary Ann connects the dots, spells the word "LOVE" and the kids are sucked into the computer. Or something.

Enter David, an Israeli Raccoon from biblical times. The kids ride the "love light" to a cartoon past, where everyone but them is some kind of talking animal.

(a totally shitty screen shot of Peter, Sauli and David)

Lucky for them, today is giant fighting day in the land of poorly animated biblical rodents. David is to fight this terrifying mofo...

(He's supposed to be a warthog)

...with only his trusty slingshot. Now, like I said, I'm not heavy into the bible, but I'm pretty sure that the David in that story wins too. Oh, sorry - spoiler alert. So the giant is defeated, the kids cheer, and are chased off by the warthogs pissed off brothers. A convenient rainbow appears and takes the kids home, where they realize that their nifty little journey has only taken a minute of real time. Mary Ann discovers that her gross bird pet thing is better, and proclaims that her faith saved the bird and brought them home. Sauli (still can;t even believe that's real) gets all pumped and on the way back to his apartment he stands up to the bullies that had picked on him at the beginning, and for some reason, they leave him alone. Probably because he was still foaming at the mouth from the wicked LSD trip he just took.

I really wanted to get a yarmulke on that hit...but I'm totes not smart enough.

Now, believe it or not, there is an IMDB page for this obscure little gem. The cast, for the most part, are probably still waiting tables in Monrovia waiting for their next big thing. Jenna Van Oy went on to play Six in "Blossom" and then promptly fell off the earth.
So many hats.


The kid that played Peter either went permanently into the love light, or went on to originate the role of Boq in "Wicked" on Broadway. The world may never know.

Is that you, Peter?? Did you make it?

The voice of Goliath is a pretty successful voice over actor:

And...drum roll please....THIS GUY!

The man, the myth, the legend - Sauli himself, Andrew Martin Cassese. He went on to do the Revenge of the Nerds movies and some Broadway, but I'm sure this is the highlight of his resume.

What we have learned: Before there was Veggie Tales, there was this. Wee Jesus.

CHALLENGE: The Easter Bunny, Jesus, and all the other beloved childhood characters

OKAY my work computer refuses to let me post a picture or video of Kingdom Chums so I will have to paint the picture with my words.

Half live action half cartoon combo that teaches the timeless story of David and Goliath.

GO!

Zork Nemesis: the ending that pistol whipped my soul

If you’ve read any of the other blogs on this particular blog, you’ll know that my sisters and I are huge dorks. We’ve already confessed to a love of all that is Nintendo. But did we mention computer games were also impaled deep inside our lazy hearts? We played a few: 7th Guest, Doom, Rollercoaster Tycoon, SimAnt, Carmen Sandiego, but the most frustrating and epic of them all? Zork: Nemesis.

When you’re a 12 year old, there are a lot of things you don’t understand. After reading the plot summary of this game on Wikipedia, I now realize I didn’t understand most of what was going on in Zork:Nemesis. Parts of it didn’t even sound remotely familiar to me, and this is a game Natalie and I devoted weeks if not months of our lives to. But luckily the middle part rang some bells, so I can still blog with the force of ten men.

So, the world is all messed up and out of balance because an ambiguous “Nemesis” murdered  4 alchemists. You—the unnamed hero-- are expected to restore order to the creepy stark world of the Forbidden Lands. Basically, as soon as the game starts you are listening to your footsteps echo through the halls of this abandoned temple(see above), and you find 4 coffins occupied with 4 fresh corpses. WTF? As if that’s not disturbing enough, the corpses start hologramming Obe Wan style at you and telling you how they were murdered, their children were murdered, and how now they’re being held captive in ETERNAL TORTURE! Again, when you’re 12—this is the kind of stuff that has you clammy and still under your sheets at night attempting to breathe through the material and hoping that your lack of movement will convince the shadow monsters not to chew your face off. Anyway-your job now is to scamper about this scary temple and purify elements so that each corpse will tell you how they got fucked over and eventually killed. It looks a little something like this:

Am I wrong, or is that disquieting in every way possible?

So as a treat for solving the first puzzle and enduring a bunch of troubling exposition, you get to magically fly to each alchemist’s respective home to be bombarded with more upsetting images.

Luckily for you each of these fine citizens live in the MOST HORRIFYING PLACES POSSIBLE. Traveling in this game was reminiscent of port keys in Harry Potter. You look through a telescope, and suddenly you’re zooming from the terrifying temple to an equally terrifying conservatory, the home of Madame Sophia Hamilton. She represents the water element in this game, which means basically nothing besides there are cool water signs all over the Frigid Branch Conservatory and some of the puzzles involve fountains. After that you are catapulted to a Monastery, which is pretty boring. I remember it being slightly similar to the Great Wall of China as far as aesthetics went. You feel like a little spy/warrior rifling through the scientists things and discovering how hardcore they all were. The creepiest part about the game is the fact that you appear to be the only person on earth, and you’re roaming through spacious industrialized architecture the whole time. Also you are subject to random cut scenes, instigated by you touching certain objects and entering certain rooms. It’s not really clear whether these are flashbacks, or if the corpses are just hologramming again.

Remember when I said the creepiest part of the game was the isolation and mechanized environment? I was totally forgetting the next destination on the Zork tour. After the Monastery you fly to the Asylum. Now, I’ve never been to an actual asylum, but I'm pretty sure real asylums aren't covered in blood. It looks as if a gang of preteen boys had water gun fight but instead of filling their supersoakers with water, they went with blood instead. Blood on the walls, the floors, the elevator buttons. I don’t know how this asylum was getting past health regulations. There’s even a room with 3 heads on stakes hooked up to little shock machines. They literally force you to shock these severed heads, which speak, order to get a combination to unlock a door. Also, the ambient noise in this place is Gregorian chant sprinkled with tortured screams. It goes well with the several instruments of pain strewn about for effect. They look a little like this:

Nothing says sanitary like a decayed skeleton in a cage, you know?

You could go through the patient files at this place and look at what the crazy people drew. There was a particular drawing done by"Patient X" that throttled my sense of inner joy and peace.

This is when we find out that Madam water sign’s daughter was in the asylum drawing fucked up crayon pictures herself (LACES OUT) and being electroshocked and lobotomized into sanity. Though whether she was actually insane to begin with is up for debate.

So after you manage to puzzle solve your way out of the asylum, (hopefully without throwing up on yourself) you get to go to a Castle!! Weee!! This is when the game went from super rad and scary to super lame and disappointing. When you get there it’s actually kind of nice—there’s a huge theatre, your clues are violins and ticket stubs rather than rusty scalpels and detached body parts. Plus the music is significantly less unnerving. So there you are, ready to wrap up the game that had you switching discs all over the place (I believe there were 3, and our computer tried to eat one a few times) when all of a sudden BLAM!

Love story.

Suddenly you find out that Earth Dude’s slightly flamboyant son was apparently in love with Madam Water’s crazy ass daughter. It’s a little late in the game to be introducing a love story, don’t you think? I’ve been ninja-ing my ass all over the Forbidden Fucking Lands only to find out I’m doing it in order to set right the burgeoning love of two angst ridden adolescents?

Way to blow it, Activision.


As if that wasn’t enough, after solving a series of ridiculously difficult puzzles that make you want to poke your sister's eyes out, you finally get the entire alchemist crew that you’ve been working to save around a table. They are giving you a toast and thanking you for all your hard work. You're feeling accomplished, at ease. They hand you a glass of wine, and because you are happy to have helped your new friends, you drink it. Of course you do. It would be rude not to.

Poison.

Those assholes POISON you! Thanks for saving our souls from damnation, NOW GO TAKE OUR PLACE IN HELL. Turns out the alchemists were playing you from the start. They only wanted to use you to help them do something evil! I forget exactly what it is you helped them do, but it wasn't good, and I didn't like it. Plus in a super weak plot twist it would seem the evil alchemists were actually the douchebags keeping their lovesick kids apart from eachother! Something really lame and topped with a big lame cherry melting really lame shit all over the table. So disappointing in fact, the rest of the game seems like a lie. I felt like I got dumped by the game and it told me it had in fact been a homosexual the entire time we were dating. Betrayed in a way.

The fact that I can't remember the ending speaks for itself, don't you think? Besides the vomit rising up in the back of my throat....

We should totally find it and play it again.

CHALLENGE: Late Night Rip Off.