Gravity Falls

Hello and welcome to a sad second-anniversary-of-Russia's-invasion-of-Ukraine Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is February 24th.

Two years ago, I blogged about my Ukrainian friend's exodus. Here's what she posted on Facebook today: 

"Feb 24, 2022. I hid the children in the bathroom of Lviv apartment as the first rockets were hitting Ukraine. Predicting a war, I evacuated the family from a Kyiv suburb near Bucha to Lviv 2 weeks before the start of the war. An extra layer of protection during rocket attacks - I made children wear horse riding helmets, as though they would help. At that time, colleagues from Kyiv work started arriving to Lviv, looking for safety. All hotels were full, they had nowhere to go, so I hid them in the basement of our Lviv home. So many feelings, thoughts and deeds became our family’s new reality since then. I wish for the war to end and I wish no one to experience a war in his or her life. I thank everyone who has been helping our family since then."

Keep Ukraine in your hearts and minds and in your votes next week during Super Tuesday's primary elections. Ukraine and its people need USA support.

Now, on to another blog post with the Third Grader!

Hello, everybody. I'm back and according to the title of today's post, you might be wondering, "What's Gravity Falls?"

Gravity Falls is a great show. It's about a twin brother and a twin sister who are always on technology so their parents sent them to Gravity Falls, Oregon to visit their Grunkle Stan for the summer ("Grunkle" = Great + Uncle.) They see pretty unusual things there. So when they're there at first, they really don't like it there.

Episode 1 is called "Tourist Trapped." The main characters, Dipper and Mabel, went out into the forest for a walk. They see a random door and they open it. To their surprise, inside they find a strange journal. It has a handprint on it and the number 3. 

Mabel really wants to find a boyfriend. She's going on date after date after date...and then she finally meets this guy who always wears a black jacket. Dipper is really annoyed by him. Dipper found out that the guy never blinked. Then Dipper reads about zombies in the journal and it says that they try to be girls' boyfriends. Dipper was shocked by it so he tried to save Mabel. But it wasn't a zombie, it wasn't a vampire, it was ...gnomes?? Many gnomes disguised as a boy!

They wanted Mabel to be their new queen. Mabel refused. The gnomes all worked together to make a giant monster gnome and it was chasing after them as Mabel and Dipper were riding away in a golf cart.

Eventually, the twins defeated the gnomes. They grabbed a leaf blower and put it on "blow in" mode and sucked up the gnomes, then blew them out into the sky. 

Mom: Didn't they fall back down?

Yes! The gnomes went back into the forest. Then Mabel and Dipper were happy because they were safe and they defeated the gnomes. The gnomes were angry but they stayed in the forest.

Flash forward. The few last episodes of the whole show...

This triangle guy named Bill Cipher could go into minds (brain minds). He went into the mind of a time traveler guy. Bill needed a rift that separated Bill's dimension and the normal world's dimension. If he broke the rift, then the two worlds would collide and Gravity Falls would be destroyed. Bill turned Gravity Falls into a town called Weirdmageddon because he wanted global domination and he knew that Gravity Falls had the rift.

While Bill was breaking the rift, he put Mabel in a bubble that led to Mabelland. In Mabelland, everything you said came true. Dipper needed to get Mabel back in the real world so that together they could save Gravity Falls.

Dipper and Mabel went to the triangle guy's base to free their Uncle Ford because he knew Bill's weakness which was a circle that had symbols on it. They had to create a circle out of spray paint. The circle didn't work because Bill caught Dipper and Mabel before they could make the circle, so this is what they did: They saved their Uncle Ford (who had been turned a golden statue) and Grunkle Stan (who was still a normal person). They switched their uncles' clothing so it looked like Uncle Ford was Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Stan looked like Uncle Ford. 

Grunkle Stan let Bill into his mind so Uncle Ford could erase Bill from Stan's mind so Bill would be erased from reality.

It worked!

When they defeated Bill, everything was back to normal. All the weirdness was back to normal except for the wilderness creatures in the forest of Gravity Falls. But they were there originally.

But Grunkle Stan forgot everything, so Mabel grabbed her memory book and gave it to Grunkle Stan to read to him and then he remembered everything. He gave the shack - his shop called The Mystery (S)hack - to his employee Soos.

Grunkle Stan and his brother, Uncle Ford, went to another place that was wonky to learn about it so they could save it.

And everybody was happy.

The twins went home at the end of the summer.

It's genuinely a good show. It's funny and a little bit scary but not too scary. And my parents approve.