All-Star Fanfest 2018

Since the Baseball All-Star Game was held in Washington, D.C., this year, we thought about going. The tickets for the game were pretty expensive. In addition to the game, there's the Home Run Derby and the Fanfest. The Fanfest ran from Friday to Tuesday (the day of the big game). I bought tickets for Friday, the first day of the 'fest. We metroed down early and were among the first to get into the DC Convention Center where Fanfest was held.

Sidewalk decoration!

The Ryan Zimmerman bobble-head given to the first 3000 fans on Friday

The Fanfest was held in the lower level of the convention center, which has over half a million square feet of room for batting cages, playing fields, vendors, historical displays, tchotchkes, and lines to stand in while waiting to use the batting cages, playing fields, etc. The entranceway was lined with gigantic, lit-up posters of great players. My son got his picture with two of his favorites.

With Justin Verlander

Eclipsed by Jose Altuve

Bryce Harper was cropped out! Only his ER and his dirty knee are showing

The first activity we tried was batting practice, sponsored by Supercuts. It was fun but much like any other batting cage we've been in.

Ready for action

Ready to swing

Here comes the ball!

The most amazing activity we did was the VR Home Run Derby. We had to wait in a short line but it was well worth the wait. We took turns putting on the virtual reality helmet and holding the special bat. I wish I could show what it looked like inside the helmet, it was amazingly detailed. Hitting was also a lot easier than in the real batting cages. Afterward, they emailed us our stats.

The VR Home Run Derby venue

My son ready to bat

My stats

My son's stats

After that, we went to the Trading Cards section, sponsored by Topps (the company that makes trading cards). At first we thought this would be a quick run-through because we don't collect cards. This venue offered something much more awesome. The people asked us which team we rooted for and gave us jerseys to wear. Then we posed to be on our own cards!

Our very own baseball cards

You can see I chose the Orioles, for which I got a lot of sympathy. As of the All-Star Game, the Orioles were in last place in their division, 37.5 games behind! My son had a Red Sox jersey.

My son got to pose with a replica of the All-Star MVP bat, which was a lot of fun for him.

Ready to bat (from the pitcher's mound?)

I am the catcher (or second baseman)

We looked briefly at some of the vendors and saw another cool VR display.

Selling memorabilia 

Sit-down VR

On the other side of the convention center was the fielding practice area. It had a couple of stations that fans cycled through. First was scooping up a grounder to throw to second base. Then the fan got to be the second base player who caught the throw and threw to first for the double-play.

Catching a low toss to second

Drilling it to the first baseman

Then, fans got to practice catching fly balls and gunning them back to the infield. We loved it and even did fielding practice a second time.

Action shot of fly ball catch

The non-VR Home Run Derby was a lot tougher than the VR version. We did our best.

Ready to hit an incoming ball

Swinging away

One of the more humorous sponsors was Oxi Clean, who hosted a "Strike Out Stains" pitching area that featured both baseball and softball pitching. People who pitched the fastest won prizes at the end of the day. We didn't stick around because we were not on the top three display after we made our try.

Striking out stains!

We tried another video game version of baseball that wasn't as satisfying but at least was a break from running around.

The thinking part of the game

We heard an announcement that they were holding a trivia contest. By the time we got there, a dad and his son were answering questions up on stage. The first four or five were fairly easy but the last two or three were extra tough. We were glad we weren't in the hot seat!

Trivia contest

Another activity we saw a little bit of was the All-Mascots Game, where mascots from the National League faced off against mascots from the American League. We came late and didn't know who was winning (or, indeed, who won). They had surprisingly good sportsmanship considering how partisan they were.

Mascots in the field

High-fiving the other team at the end

One of the weirdest things we saw was at the MLB Shop. People were suspended over a large pile of boxes, eventually being lowered to grab one of the boxes. It was just like those arcade machines with a claw that never seems to pick up any of the stuffed animals inside the machine. The line for this was surprisingly long.

The human claw

Another fan looking for the best goodie in the pile

They did offer signatures from stars but we didn't recognize any of the names, so we did not get in line for autographs. We did get a picture with the world's largest baseball.

World's largest baseball

We watched most of the actual All-Star Game, going to bed at the end of the ninth when it was tied. Extra innings after 10:30 p.m. didn't seem like a good idea with vacation bible school in the morning. We had an awesome All-Star weekend anyway.

Book Review: The Comic Book Story of Baseball by A. Irvine et al.

The Comic Book Story of Baseball: The Heroes, Hustlers, and History-Making Swings (and Misses) of America's National Pastime written by Alex Irvine and art by Tomm Coker and C. P. Smith

The origin of American Baseball goes back at least to the mid-1800s. It become popular in the states during the American Civil War. Formal leagues didn't come till much later and codification of the rules was ongoing into the early 1900s. Gloves, balls, and uniforms evolved over the years too. Many players came and went, often with interesting and eccentric stories. This book is a wide-angle look at the history of this iconic American pastime.

The book is fairly comprehensive, getting into details about the players from the 1870s till now (often with one-page or half-page biographies). It also describes the rules shifts (the pitcher's mound went up and down; how many balls constituted a walk eventually dropped to four; etc.) and some of the larger historical context (the impact of the World Wars and the Civil Rights movement, radio and television broadcasting, among others). The survey is fascinating but a bit scattershot. Occasionally things are just touched upon or there are abrupt shifts into other topics. The biographies and asides about details (like new teams added to the leagues or the difference between "dead ball" and "live ball" eras) make the flow even more choppy. It's hard to compress all that information into 170 pages, especially in a comic-book format.

Recommended for baseball fans or those curious, but be warned it has a little bit of everything.

Over 400 Geocaches!

We found our 401st geocache in College Park, Maryland. We had to drop something off at an Amazon pickup location. University of Maryland has a location that's staffed by people (not just a block of lockers) probably because of renting text books through Amazon.

We drove to a nearby playground where My First Cache is located. The cache is an easy find near some shrubbery.

Cache location

My daughter was the first to find this particular cache. She was proud to be the first among equals.

The cache is just behind a community gardening area that looked interesting to my wife.

Community garden

The biggest draw for the kids was the playground. In addition to trying out the equipment, they played "the ground is lava." I wound up being a lava monster, which meant that I could grab them and force them into the lava. At least, I think that's what I was supposed to do. Other opinions are available.

Big playground

Preschooler playground

Avoiding the lava-ground

Ready to slide

Sliding!

#402 was on the way to Dice Tower Con 2018. We stopped at a Georgia rest area, did some resting, and found one of the four caches there. The find wasn't too hard except for the heat and a little bushwhacking.

Georgia Visitors Center

Sort of where the geocache is

The geocache had a game-themed travel bug in it! Wizards of the Coast are the creators of Magic: The Gathering. To celebrate one of the set releases, they also released a bunch of travel bugs. This particular one is some sort of armored vampire.

Magic: The Travel Bug

We dropped the travel bug on our way home from the convention at Blandford, a geocache near Petersburg, Virginia. The cache is located in a graveyard that dates back to the early 1700s.

Blandford Cemetery

The cache is in a wooded area on the edge of the cemetery. Everyone was in shorts except me, so I wound up going in by myself. The vegetation was high but I didn't get any ticks or poison ivy. The find was pretty easy.

The cache area

I almost ran into some deer who were taking an afternoon rest. I barely got them in a photo.

Deer in the woods

Movie Review: Incredibles 2 (2018)

Incredibles 2 (2018) written and directed by Brad Bird

Incredibles 2 picks up right where the last movie left off--the Parr family (Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig Nelson), Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), and their children Dash, Violet, and Jack-Jack) suits up and uses their superpowers to fight The Underminer. After an exciting battle, The Underminer escapes and the city takes a bunch of damage. The Parrs are sent packing. Frozone (Samuel Jackson), who helped in the fight and ducked out in time not to be caught by the police, is invited by a mysterious company to fight against the law forbidding supers to use their powers. Frozone approaches Bob and Helen to join the meeting. Everything seems legit: They are meeting a brother-sister team who run a major telecomm company and want to fight the anti-superhero law. The siblings have a plan to make the supers more relatable--install cameras in their costumes so that everyone can see what the heroes really go through to protect the public. Of the three heroes, they select Helen's Elasticgirl to be the first to make supers look good. Their reasoning--she's historically caused the least damage (i.e. the least expense) in her crime fighting. She reluctantly accepts and Bob becomes a stay-at-home dad dealing with the baby, the new way kids do math in school, and the social drama of his teenage daughter. A new villain called Screenslaver uses hypnosis to control others. Can Elastigirl find and defeat Screenslaver, thereby restoring the reputation of superheroes?

The movie is an exciting blend of action, comedy, and family drama. Pixar has a mixed record with sequels. The Toy Story sequels are great; the Cars sequels and Finding Dory are unimpressive. While this movie is not as great as the first Incredibles, or as great as the Toy Story sequels, it's still a solid movie and very entertaining. Some of the surprise twists are predictable and a key part of the final battle is so obvious that I wondered why they hadn't done it twenty minutes earlier. Even so, the movie is enjoyable.

Also, it was the first trip for our youngest to the movie theater. He loved it and was well behaved during the movie (he did do a lot of talking out loud during the trailers but quieted up for the feature).

Waiting patiently for the movie

The other kids came too!

Recommended.

Book Review: Hellboy Omnibus Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction by M. Mignola et al.

Hellboy Omnibus Volume 1: Seed of Destruction story and art by Mike Mignola, script by John Byrne, colors by Mark Ciarello and James Sinclair

In an attempt to squeeze some more money out of the Hellboy franchise, Dark Horse Comics is republishing the stories in internal chronological order (starting with Hellboy's birth in 1944 and going on to his afterlife in Hell) with a bunch of "Omnibus Editions." The plan is to have four volumes with two side volumes of "short stories," presumably the stories that aren't part of the main story arc of the character, where Hellboy is fated to cause the end of the world but he steadfastly refuses to. The publishing plan is a little ambiguous since one of the stories in this volume does not advance the main story arc. Still, it's fun to revisit the early stories and since I borrowed this from the library, I don't mind a chance to reread the early stuff. Here's the various stories in this volume...

Seed of Destruction--The first Hellboy story arc tells the origin of Hellboy in an attempt by the Nazi's occult branch to get a weapon to win World War II. Hellboy is brought up American paranormal investigator Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, who acts as a father figure. The story arc also tells of Bruttenholm's death when a weird frog-creature attacks him. Hellboy investigates, leading him to the Cavendish Hall, home of an exploring family that's been looking for weird stuff. Turns out they are in league with the unidentified man who summoned Hellboy back during WWII and he wants Hellboy to do his bidding. Not very likely, considering Hellboy's better nature. It's a good origin story though Mignola's style is a little rough compared with more recent work.

The Wolves of Saint August--Father Edward Kelley travels to the Balkans and is about to put an ancient chapel back into use. One local shows up and relates a legend about a royal family that was cursed to become werewolves. Then the local turns wolf and kills the priest. The priest is an old friend of Hellboy's. Hellboy comes to investigate along with Dr. Kate Corrigan, a B.P.R.D. researcher who wants more field experience. She gets plenty since the whole village is dead from savage animal attacks. Their investigation brings out what's left of the royal family, causing an exciting fight at the end. The book suffers a little bit from accepting the Edgar Allan Poe version of the Inquisition (i.e. ridiculous and sadistic witch/demon hunters with zero sympathy whatsoever); otherwise I enjoyed it very much.

The Chained Coffin--Hellboy stops off in England and revisits the church where he first appeared on earth. Spending the night there, he has a horrible dream about a priest and a nun who tried to save a repentant witch (who was their mother!) from the demon coming to claim her after the witch's death (she's in the chained coffin). The dream turns into a waking nightmare as Hellboy sees the offsprings' battle with Satan, who strongly implies that the witch might be Hellboy's mother. The story is spooky and fills in some holes for Hellboy and the reader.

Wake the Devil--A bunch of Nazis who were frozen at the end of World War II are awake again when an American corporate honcho comes to their isolated castle just north of the Arctic Circle. They are all in league with Rasputin, the mad Russian monk who survived his assassination at the dawn of the Russian Revolution. Rasputin thinks he's to usher in a new world and was part of the Nazi project that  brought Hellboy to Earth. He has a new scheme to bring about Ranga Rok, involving the resurrection of a Romanian vampire. Hellboy and the B. P. R. D. work to foil his plan. All sorts of characters come into play, like the Baba Yaga, Hecate, Roger the Homunculus, etc., who play larger roles in future stories. Having read just about everything, it's exciting to see them get their start.

Almost Collossus--Liz Sherman, firestarter, is dying since she transferred her power into Roger the Homunculus in the previous story. Hellboy and Corrigan hunt for Roger while everyone else frets over Liz at a local facility. Roger gets some backstory and a brother (of sorts) who generates conflict and reflection on bigger issues.

The book also has two short promotional stories that introduce Hellboy as a future action hero that are more interesting as an early showcase of the imaginativeness of Mignola. The book ends with the usual assortment of sketches, including early versions of Hellboy, Rasputin, and other characters.

Recommended, highly for Hellboy fans (who don't already have the material) or those who haven't tried his stories out yet.

Saint Michael the Archangel Church, Silver Spring, Maryland

On a recent trip to Silver Spring, we visited our old parish of Saint Michael the Archangel. We were married there and our first two children were baptized there. We have many happy memories, including being part of the Neocatechumenal Way. We happened to visit on a Saturday morning inbetween activities and had the place to ourselves.

The front of St. Michaels

The church is fairly simple inside, without ostentation or distraction. It's home to a large variety of communities.

Nave

Sanctuary

From our wedding album

The baptismal font is also simple and straightforward. It seems like ages ago that we had our son and daughter baptized.

Baptismal font

Our son's baptism during Christmas

Our daughter's baptism a year and a half later

The church has a few statues. The one of Jesus (that looks new to me, but we haven't been there in over seven years) looks quite glorious and was the favorite of our kids.

Jesus

The sanctuary is flanked by the typical statues--Our Lady and Saint Joseph.

The Madonna looking tenderly on her child

Saint Joseph

They also have a nice painting of Saint Michael in action.

Saint Michael the Archangel