Beaming For Bunnies: Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs. Mercy.

Well, there are months where nothing happens, and then there's months where A LOT happens.

August was the latter.

I started the month seeing the new Fantastic 4 movie! Ben Grimm didn't say "Thing Ring, do your thing" ONCE! 8/10.

But in all seriousness, it was pretty good. It was nice to see a Fantastic 4 project that actually LIKED these characters and knew what to do with them. Johnny wasn't a womanizing idiot! They remembered Ben was a nice Jewish boy that grew up on Yancy Street. Sue was the politician and the people person of the group. (And Reed was, as always, NOT.) There's a great irony that MCU Tony Stark was introduced boasting about wanting to privatize world peace, and this movie showed a world where the Fantastic 4 actually pulled off World Peace. Worldwide optimism and cooperation seems like science fiction these days, but I'll take what I can get.

I absolutely loved the world of 828. There was a color pallette! And it was shiny! But that was probably because nobody smoked in Alternate 1960s.

Seriously, if there was one movie that deserved to show Reed Richards smoking his pipe, or Ben Grimm chomping on a stogie, it was this one. Ted Gilbert should've been holding a cigarette every time we saw him! But that's a nitpick.

The next day I went back to the Flea Market!

And what I ultimately went home with:

A vintage G1 Drag Strip figure for two bucks. One of the Stunticons! Just needed some TLC and it was good as new. Tinier than I imagined it to be.

And then came the big Seattle trip!

These are but a few of the highlights. We were only there for three days, so my family crunched in as much touristy stuff as possible.

Like the Museum of Pop Culture.

Again, highlights. They had Darth Vader's costume from Empire Strikes Back! The model of the Death Star II! A Dalek! A Cyberman! And various stuff belonging to Kurt Kobain and Jimi Hendrix. And lots of guitars.

Then the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. A real cool glass art gallery.

I had zero expectations going into this one, the pictures don't really do it justice. It was all real cool to see in person.

And then because it was there, we went to the top of the Space Needle.

It was a lot more beige than I expected it to be. You see all the pictures and think it's white. It's not!

By pure luck, the sun showed up the moment we got to the top. You see, Seattle is famous for being muggy, and the first two days we were there it was cloudy and kinda rainy in the morning.

It was real cool to see Seattle from so high up. Then I went down one floor to the rotating restaurant they had. I took one step on the floor and wanted off. Going down was a bit more harrowing than going up.

Ahh, that's much better. But then I came across this beauty:

A working Mold-A-Matic machine?! In 2025?!

Yup, Seattle was the site of the 1962 World's Fair, with the Space Needle as its centerpiece, much like how the Unisphere was the symbol of the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York (to put a very long story short, the NY Fair was an unofficial one, while Seattle's was). These Mold-A-Matic machines dotted the NY fair, mostly making the Sinclair dinosaurs out of pure molten plastic for a small fee (five bucks in today's money). Or they were in Disneyland and made Disney figures, and the working models you see today still make those. They're quite rare these days. I know at least two are in the Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas.

I had no idea Seattle had one! Making mini Space Needles, to boot!

And me, like an idiot, didn't get one.

"Where would I put it?" I said. Like a dumbass.

I think it's because we went to eat a late lunch then head to the Seattle Aquarium before it closed.

And then the next day was spent catching up with family I haven't seen in thirty-some odd years on Bainbridge Island.

The Madison Diner, as seen on Diner's, Drive-In's and Dives.

There's me, my parents, my uncle Tim, his ex-wife Gloria, my cousin Shiloh, her husband Endo, my other cousin Candace, her daughter Mabel, and my half-cousin Amanda (who works here). Turns out it was a goddamn miracle they all got together for this. Just for us!

Then we visited Poulsbo, Seattle's Little Norway.

Very charming.

And then the last day was crammed with more touristy stuff.

The famous Fremont Troll! A giant sculpture of a troll that's under the big bridge in the city. That's a car it's holding, and its eye is a headlight.

And then my cousin took us out to brunch.

"Oh, do you guys watch Twin Peaks?" I wish I did, because I would've gotten more out of this. It's where they filmed the Great Northern Hotel.

The Salish Lodge & Spa is a REAL fancy "treat yourself" spot, as it turns out.

A biscuit covered in their Honey From Heaven. My god was that good. And I do NOT have a sweet tooth but I knew I'd regret not trying it when presented with the opportunity.

And hey look, tossed salad and scrambled eggs!

I didn't have a bad meal the entire trip, but these au gratin potatoes were probably the best thing I had, and that whole brunch was fantastic. It was enough for four people, but I ate more than my share because they were that good. It was "every future version of this I have will be compared on this" good.

Then we were off to Pike Place Market!

It's the most touristy area in all of Seattle, and hoo boy, did we pick the big time to be there.

You see, unlike in New York, Seattle tends to close early. Nightlife is essentially anything that's open after 7pm. And Pike Place Market, being an actual market, starts closing around 5pm, and becomes a ghost town around 6pm. We only had four chances to make it while we were there, and we managed to hit it while it was open on the last day. This was around 2:30pm on Friday on a gorgeous summer day, it was packed to the gills.

"Come when there's nobody around!" My uncle said.

"We WERE here when nobody was around!" I told him. And even then we didn't get to see everything, because it was so crowded.

Yes, this is the famous place where they toss the fish. It's hard to tell, but there's a fish flying in that picture.

A real awesome comic shop. I had a ten minute limit before I got dragged out.

And of course the first Starbucks was there.

But the line to get in was enormous, so I just took pics of the signs.

And behold:

The famous Gum Wall of Pike Place Market!

Yes, it's a big wall that's covered in wads of gum.

The whole thing reeked of chewing gum. It was cool, one of the grossest things I've ever seen, but cool.

Then guess who was able to sweet talk their cousin into driving them to the Funko HQ store in Everett?

I mean, it was just a big photogenic Funko store, but since there's only two of them (there, and in LA), it was worth the pilgrimage.

And just as soon as we got there and started adjusting to the time change, it was time to head home.

Didn't get to ride the monorail (it only went back and forth a few blocks anyway), but I did ride the neat light rail to and from the airport.

I loved all the little salmon on the floor of the terminal.

Ha, these are little planes.

And this one's got a little suitcase!

I'm just glad to be back in my own time zone. Seattle was loads of fun, but getting back from that airport was no joke. It made me really appreciate JFK. If you think THAT one's bad, all of SeaTac could fit inside JFK's Delta terminal. And it's servicing the same volume of people.

Could be why I only fly on planes once a decade these days.

Something else they don't tell you about Seattle: it's very hilly. We stayed a block away from Pike Place Market and there's a giant slope you go down before you can get to it.

And to get to the waterfront where the aquarium and the ferries and that neat ferris wheel is, you gotta go down ANOTHER steep slope.

And I've got bad ankles and my parents are retired and we were all on jet lag. We were NOT walking any more than we had to.

This was all I could find of Frasier merch the entire time I was there! Turns out Grey's Anatomy is the big Seattle show these days, most of the souvenir shops had at least a wall dedicated to it. I had no idea it was even set in Seattle! Even Sleepless in Seattle got one rack of shirts in a shop I went to. Frasier just had this in a tiny chotchke shop in Pike Place.

And speaking of swag:

Magnets and pins, because I am predictable. And a few stickers because I started collecting those, too.

Shirts!

The Krusty Doll and Bigfoot Funko pops I bought at the big store. Space Ghost I bought at the comic shop, thinking I'd never find it again. Turns out the Funko store had it, too.