Day 5, the final day of my vacation, was all about energy. Specifically the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and its associated bus tour.

Coop had found the Department of Energy's Public Bus Tour of Oak Ridge National Laboratories online and became determined that we should partake. A 3-hour tour of the Manhattan Project sites for the bargain price of only $5. How could I refuse?

The AMSE itself isn't very entertaining. Its displays are text-heavy, so the experience is more like walking through a textbook than visiting bits of history. The bus tour picks up the pieces. The tour visits the Oak Ridge "Secret City" sites Y-12 National Security Complex, the X-10 graphite reactor, the abandoned Bethel Valley Church, and the site of the former K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. If that sounds kind of cool, it's because it is.

The highlight of the tour is X-10, the world's first nuclear reactor designed for continuous operation. The reactor was added to the National Registrar of Historic Landmarks in 1966, only three years after it was decommissioned. Hard to believe that a giant pile of inert carbon was instrumental in ending World War II.

It was purely by accident that Coop and I later in the day passed the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant south of Knoxville. It turns out that Watts Bar contains the most recent nuclear power generator to come online in the United States. From the country's oldest to newest reactors in one afternoon? What a vacation!

Find more info on the American Museum of Science and Energy at amse.org.

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Mom won 4 tickets to visit Cedar Point during the 2013 season in a Coca-Cola sweepstakes. She gave the tickets to me, and I gave the tickets to a friend as a wedding present on the condition that he take me along. He decided not to use them. His loss. My friend Coop and I decided that we weren't going to let good tickets go to waste, so we jumped in the car and made a week long road trip of it.

My last two Cedar Point trips were in 2012 and 2010. My first was in 2000, before I had a blog. This trip lasted 2 days longer than that one, but because of the free tickets, I think I spent about the same. I'm not getting older. I'm getting wiser!

This sign in Cartersville, Georgia, looked terrible. (But effective. We immediately stopped for a 6-pack of Coke.)

Dublin, Ohio, is serious about public art and water fountains. Ballantrae Park has both. (Better pics and details here).

This polar bear reflects on global warming as he spends a 90° day at the Columbus Zoo. Not an iceberg in sight!

Why a 2-hour detour to the Hard Rock Cafe in Cleveland, Ohio? Because we didn't have anything better to do.

The T-Rex at the front gate of Cedar Point is another year older and another year shittier.

Gatekeeper is the new ride at Cedar Point for 2013. It gets its name because the track goes over the ticket booth.

Gatekeeper steals the headlines, but the important change in 2013 is that you can now get a Coke at Cedar Point! Whoo-hoo!

That's just the first 3 days. More to come.

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Yesterday I attended James' birthday at Medieval Times. I look so happy to be there.

While I'm showing pictures, the wedding pictures from last week came in. I look so happy to be there.

Walter only has two expressions: scowling and this, my all purpose face which I call "not scowling."

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In the days before the Internet, it was a rare event to find someone who carried a mental inventory of the same childhood television experiences that you did. For years I tested potential friends by their remembered knowledge of 80s cartoons like the Bionic Six or M.A.S.K.. Like going to war together, the shared cherished memory of obscure cartoons could create an instant bond that was easily built into a friendship opportunity.

For example, while working at Chili's in the mid-1990s, my relationship with one of the other waiters was based entirely on our shared appreciation for Thundarr the Barbarian, a Saturday morning cartoon that ran for only 2 seasons starting in 1980. In addition to being twice my height and weight, he was a homosexual who really enjoyed recreational cocaine and alcohol use. It was so uncommon to find other people who remembered Thundarr (and his Chewbacca-inspired pal, Ookla the Mok), that the memory of the series alone was enough to create a kinship despite our differences.

Of course, these days, Wikipedia and YouTube can provide a quick primer for these sort of things so it's no longer so rare to find someone who remembers short-lived cartoons like Rubik, the Amazing Cube or Turbo Teen. Still, such a mention in pop culture is always sure to get me to pay attention.

Last week, I was playing pinball at a friend's house. (We used to go to video arcades to play those games, but now that arcades have gone the way of automats, we buy the machines and keep them in our houses.) Between the electronic screeches, I overheard an argument between my friend and his woman over the piece of music was played by a children's toy they had found. My friend claimed it was classical music; she insisted that it was playing the theme song from the mid-80s Inspector Gadget cartoon.

Naturally, I remembered the Inspector Gadget theme and was pretty sure that it was not the music played by the toy. Twenty years ago, I probably would have jumped into that conversation with both feet, but instead I waited until I was home alone to ask Wikipedia and YouTube to settle the issue. Oh, how the times have changed! Thank you, Internet?

For the record, the piece of music played by the toy was In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg. That music inspired Inspector Gadget Theme by Shuki Levy (who also wrote the theme to M.A.S.K.!), but they aren't quite the same piece.

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After leaving Sandusky, Trey, Leslie, and I headed south to Columbus. With some time to kill before the soccer game would start, we decided to follow a lead provided by our party planner, Brian. We headed directly towards the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, or as Brian described it, "Jack Hanna's zoo." This nickname is a little misleading; as I was disappointed to learn, you won't find Jack Hanna in any of the cages.

It was well over 90° in the midday sun, and most of the animals were smart enough to be lounging in whatever shade they could find. Naturally, our first objective was the polar bear enclosure.

Surprisingly, the polar bear was one of the only animals in the zoo that seemed completely indifferent to the heat. Perhaps that's because they had their own water park, fully stocked with toys and snacks. The other bears at the park, including the sun bear (seen below), had to settle for water misters. Personally, I'd take a swimming pool over a Willy Water Bug any day.

The zoo was full of exotic animals I'd never seen before, but from the pictures I took, you'd think it only had bears. There are red pandas, Asian lions, West Indian manatees, and Komodo dragons, to name just a few. But really, the highlight of the zoo was the great apes, the gibbons, gorillas, and bonobos. Many of the zoo's primates are very human, some making a sincere attempt to communicate with the visitors, while others just pointed and laughed. Generally, I'm no fan of the ape, but I have to say that the Columbus Zoo's apes acted more human than some of the visitors.

Even with every creature great and small napping, the visit was still very much worth the time and expense ($15 per person, plus $7 parking). In hindsight, I wish we had more time to spend.

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This weekend I broke my 5-year boycott of movie theaters. The last movie I saw in theaters was Iron Man. It's not that I have been going out of my way to avoid theaters (though I hate crowds of obnoxious people, which is to say all crowds). More so, it has been a combination of a lack of excitement about new films and a need to conserve money on luxuries such as movie tickets. Both of those barriers were overcome with the release of The Avengers.

You are naturally expecting me to excoriate the film, so let me go ahead and tell you that I really hated Captain America's costume. If Captain America is a symbol of everything that's right with American philosophy and a natural leader of men, why doesn't he have stars and stripes on the back of his costume? In the film, his back and ass are just a solid wall of blue. Are the troops he's leading into battle less deserving of inspiration than the foes that Cap is fighting? Sure, it's a minor point, but it's my biggest quibble. That should tell you how much I enjoyed the movie.

My second and even more minor complaint is that the Hulk's only line of dialogue was poorly timed, coming as it did so quickly after the villain's comeuppance. An excited audience trampled all over it as writer/director/king-of-fan-service Joss Whedon should have known it would. That won't be a problem when I watch the movie on DVD at my house, but it is a fine example of why I don't spend money to go to theaters.

The biggest side effect of my aversion to theaters has resulted in few opportunities to wait in line with the people I like to wait in line with. We haven't done that in years, and I enjoyed it. I hope they enjoyed it, too. Which of course I'm sure they did. (Except maybe for poor Brian, who had to listen to my constant gripes about Captain America's costume. Brian, I'm sorry the producers couldn't get Cap's costume right. Better luck next time.)

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February movies continued:

28. Rubber (2010)
Seinfeld used to brag that it was a television show about nothing. Wrong. This movie was about nothing. I really didn't know that anyone was still working in the Theater of the Absurd, but there it is. It's not bad for experimental theater, but then making it better would also have made it less experimental, I suppose.

29. Kiss Me Kill Me (1973)
A little sex, a little super-natural conspiracy, a little art-house: this movie was made for drive-ins. Satisfying in oh so many ways. This film was also released as Baba Yaga, Devil Witch, so maybe I should count it as two movies?

30. I Killed That Man (1941)
This is a b-movie detective story that would have run as a movie-house undercard back in the day. Really, it's not too different than modern television police procedurals.

31. The Wasp Woman (1959)
In a sentence: trying to recapture her lost youth, the head of a cosmetics company takes an experimental drug that turns her into a giant wasp. It is what you think it is.

32. Marty (1955)
Another Best Picture winner, and the film that made Ernest Borgnine. It watches like a 1950s television drama because it was adapted from a television drama. If you like that sort of thing, you'll love this; as good as 1950s television drama gets.

33. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
I like Dustin Hoffman, but I avoided watching this for years because I figured that it wasn't the type of movie I like to watch. It's very, very good. But it isn't the type of movie I like to watch. This was the fourth Best Picture Oscar winner that I watched this month, and it wasn't the last.

34. Religulous (2008)
Bill Maher's assault on religion would have been more entertaining if it wasn't so damn belligerent. Bill, if your argument is so strong, you shouldn't have to try so hard to make it.

35. The Protector (2005)
Friend Brian recommended this movie years ago, and he was totally right. (That will be the first and only time I say that, Coop, so enjoy it.) The kung-fu action is simply top-notch.

36. 8½ (1963)
This is the first film I watched in 2012 that had me thinking about it for days after watching it. I'm still not sure whether I like it, but I think that very aspect of it is why so many critics call it such a great film.

37. Planet Terror (2007)
This was the second movie I watched this month that made me actively angry after it was over. I knew going in that I hate zombie movies, and this film contains every reason why with excessive gore and violence, impossible fantasy presented as science, stupid characters, and everyone losing in the end as civilization collapses. Ugh. Take note, Trey: this is the second movie this month that kills a dog. Unlike Paul, which killed a dog in order to motivate the characters, this movie kills a dog just to kill a dog. That's unforgivable, even in a film that pretends not to be taking itself seriously. The movie kills a child -- self-inflicted gunshot wound -- for the same reason. There is no message in this movie, so is this non-stop meaningless death is supposed to be entertainment? Zookeeper was better than this. I swear, I will never watch another zombie movie ever. EVER.

38. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
They really, really don't make films like this anymore. It's a good film with an entertaining mix of adventure and romance, but these days there would have to be some foolish sidekick, a chase scene, and far more violence -- this film has none to speak of. This film has been remade several times, and I look forward to seeing if the more recent versions aren't more of what I expected from Hollywood.

39. The Help (2011)
Mom voted that we watch this film rather than watch the Academy Awards. I'm glad we did. (I love you, Emma Stone.)

40. Kisses for My President (1964)
The last time I saw Fred MacMurry, he was an adulterer in The Apartment. In this film, he is the devoted husband of the first female U.S. President. If you are familiar with My Three Sons of The Shaggy D.A., you know what this film is. The best part of this light comedy is the archaic attitude towards women in power. Unless, of course, you are a Rush Limbaugh supporter.

If you've been counting, you'll note that, yes, there are two more films I watched in February that aren't on this list. I'll get to them in a later post.

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A cleric, a monk, and a druid stood together against the malicious, knife-wielding creeper. The clank of sword on steel echoed down the hall, the sounds of battle from the adventuring party's lone fighter.

Pausing just long enough to cast a quick spell against the creeper, the cleric hustled away to tend to the fighter. The druid was worried. The departing cleric gave an encouraging wink to the druid, "Don't worry; you've got this."

As fluid as water, the monk struck the creeper and sprinted away towards the fighter's opponent. The druid still had doubt. The darting monk gravely reassured to the druid, "He said you've got this."

With the violence of a snake, the creeper hurled a knife that struck the druid's chest. The druid was visibly upset. The creeper said to the druid with a giggle, "You've got this!"

Like the proverbial sack of potatoes, the wounded druid crumpled to the ground. The druid sighed. Said the druid to himself, "Were they talking to me?"

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Three things of note today:

1: May 25 is International Towel Day, a day of celebrating the life and works of Douglas Adams by carrying around a towel. If you don't know why carrying a towel is a relevant way to celebrate or even who Douglas Adams was (hint: he's a brilliant, deceased British author), you can probably skip this event.

2: May 25 is International Lilac Day, a day of support for the life and works of Alzheimer's Disease patient Terry Pratchett by wearing a lilac. If you don't know who Terry Pratchet is (hint: he's a brilliant, diseased British author), you may still want to wear a lilac in support of Alzheimer's sufferers everywhere.

3: Remember my friend Brian? (Refresh your memory here.) Well, I haven't heard if he's survived his trip, but someone is posting images of his trip on his Facebook account. And I am sooo jealous of him now:

That's Brian with Penn Jilette. If you don't know who Penn Jilette is (hint: he's a brilliant, living American entertainer. Bonus hint: he's the one in the middle above.), then I have to say that I'm beginning to wonder what you're doing reading this blog.

Kudos, Brian. Whether you are now dead or married, I'm sure it was totally worth it to meet Penn Jilette.

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In Memoriam: Brian Cooper (b. 1980-something, d? 2010)

Today my friend Brian is going to board an airplane to meet a girl who thought his Facebook profile pic was cute enough that she contacted him out the blue and offered to fly him to Las Vegas to "see some shows." Since the only two possible outcomes of this encounter are that by the end of the week Brian ends up either married or dead, I'm going to go ahead and offer my condolences. On the upside, there's a better than 50% chance that Brian ends up in an episode of CSI.

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