11-hour long flight haikus

I am back to blogging after being out of the country for a few weeks. Here are some haiku poems that I wrote during my incredibly long flight to Japan.

Ultimate Challenge Show--
Men in white onesies
try to apply makeup on
a roller coaster.

Up In First Class--
There is a baby
crying in first class, so much
for paying extra.

In Flight Movies--
There are three Robert
Redford movies on this plane
and I watched them all.

Sealed In--
I hate the smells here.
People coughing and farting.
How am I not dead?

Window--
Water freezes on
the outside of the window.
Inside, I'm sweating. 

He's Going To Lose Me In Japan--
Nick thought an Asian
lady was me and we have
not left the plane yet. 

I Need More!--
Eleven hours
is too long for anything.
EXCEPT FOR REDFORD!




much love,
hedgie

the princess bride review

I finished reading The Princess Bride.

The Princess Bride intertwines two stories. That of bitter husband and father, William Goldman, who finds his humanity when he is reintroduced to the story his father once read to him when he was sick as a child, and the story of adventure and true love that occur during the history of Florin.

I read the 30th anniversary edition, which includes two introductions by William Goldman that confused me for an entire day. Goldman presents the story as an abridgement of S. Morgenstern's satirical take on the history of a real country. Goldman takes on the personality of a very unlikable man who spends most of the pages complaining about his cold wife and his fat son. I had a lot of trouble distinguishing was what real and what wasn't until reading some other online reviews. This gave the opening an interesting start since my faith in the narrator was strong enough to blur the lines of fact and fiction, but it was also difficult to read the narrator interruptions because he was such an unpleasant man until around the time his grandson is born.

This edition also contains "Buttercup's Baby", which is a disjointed chapter that gives brief images of the groups' future and moments of flashback for Inigo. It was a bit confusing as to why these scenes were added, but they did show what these characters gave up to save what they held most dear and to finish what they started. In this way, the book becomes a lot darker than the movie. Westley's line "life is pain" rings true here. Life is shown to be unfair. Everyone's personal ending is not the satisfying one we wish it would have.

When I told my best friend  I was reading this book, her first question was to ask me if Buttercup was portrayed differently in the book as opposed to the movie. She had heard rumors that her character was far more strong and interesting in one version. I really had a hard time answering that because I don't really know what to think of her. On one hand, book Buttercup is pretty passive and the majority of her role in the plot is to have men fight over her while she stands in the background looking shocked. But on the other hand, I did not see her as merely a manic pixie dream girl. She does have personality. When we first meet Buttercup, she is a bratty child who likes to torment the farm boy. She has a family, we know her hobbies, she misuses words, and has hopes and dreams. These give her a life outside of the men who want to marry her. She may not go swinging into battles, but she does verbally stand up against her kidnappers and Prince Humperdinck. And her lack of activity also gets more explained in the book. Everyone around her values her beauty until the point she is force-fed the idea that she has nothing to offer the world besides her beauty. Buttercup's tale begins with ranking the most beautiful women in the world and where Buttercup stood in it at various ages. Boys in her village fall in love with her instantly and all the girls hate her for that. The Prince wants to marry her just for her good looks. In her childhood, she has no interest in beauty, but then suddenly devotes her entire life to it in hopes that Westley will not leave her for another woman in America.

Everything that I loved from the movie is also in the book. This was both amazing and annoying at the same time. It was hard to read even scenes that I loved because I knew word for word what the next five pages worth of dialogue was going to be and I would get impatient because my mind would play out the scene faster than I could read it. But it's heartwarming to see a movie that remained that faithful to the book. There are a lot of amazing scenes and lines here.

Another great thing about the book was that there was just more of everything. There were more scenes for Inigo and Fezzik. There was more background for every character so that their actions had more context. We see Inigo with his beloved father, we watch his travels and training, we see everything he had to go through to become the greatest swordsman in the world. In the end, it makes his victory so much more rewarding. With Fezzik, we see his past in which he felt like an outcast and how that leads him to a life of crime despite his kind heart. Even though he is a giant, all I want to do is protect him. Even with Miracle Max, we see why he loses trust in his abilities and get a better view of his relationship with his wife.

In the end, I really enjoyed this book. It has great characters, action, sass, silly moments, and love. There are a lot of great elements present.

Go read it.





much love,
hedgie

drinking like an author: charlotte bronte edition

What else is summer for besides cold drinks on warm nights?

Gin Eyre--

Quote: "Raise a glass of English gin to a legendary lady, worthy of a sweeter finish than befell her."

Ingredients:
Gin
Lemon juice
Sprigs of mint
Sugar
Orange bitters

Steps:
Buy the book
Make the drink

Review:
This drink was tart and refreshing. It tasted like a mix between a margarita and a mojito, which I am so down for.





much love,
hedgie

july jinkies

This month, I drove home to visit ALL OF THE DOGS:

My family took a walk to Laguna Beach: 

We drove out to see the Cabazon dinosaurs:

Nick got eaten:

But he got better:

The T-Rex had a brain the size of a light fixture: 

We made a very humid pit stop at the Salton Sea:

The sand was made entirely of dead things: 

And we saw the smallest parade ever at Pioneertown. It was so small the announcer was able to name every person and donkey from memory: 

We saw pretty things:

And brought back new friends:

Then we made  a trip to Salvation Mountain:

Go tell it on the mountain:

It was so much better than I imagined: 

I still love wild sunflowers that grow on the side of the highway:

And Addie took a short break in between rounds of licking her butt and then trying to lick my face: 

Nick and I went out to Wine Country and visited Jack London's Beauty Ranch.

And tried a lot of wines:

I was amazed by the colors: 

Addie was amazed by bees: 

 

Addie tended the bar briefly: 

And got stuck:

I knew I shoulda taken that left at Albuquerque:

We love car rides:

Heading back to San Francisco:

We celebrated my 26th birthday!

And saw Star Trek combined with the symphony:

And got to see the Delorean used in Back to the Future: 

We went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival and ate garlic ice cream. Garlic. Ice. Cream.:

So much garlic: 

You cannot escape: 

 

And I'm still floored by these flowers: 

much love,
hedgie

jack london's beauty ranch

A few weekends ago, I got to visit Jack London's Beauty Ranch in Sonoma.

This is where his ashes are buried. He was laid to rest on the same hill that is the gravesite of the children of the Greenlaw family, who lived there in 1870. The giant stone comes from the Wolf House.

 His piece The Valley of the Moon was inspired by this land.

His beauty ranch consists of 1,400 acres that housed his cottage, the winery ruins, silos, barns, the pig palace, the smoke house, the Wolf House, and the house his wife lived in after his death.

According to the blueprints, the Wolf House was going to be 3 stories, with 26 rooms and 9 fireplaces. Among these rooms were a stag party room, a manuscript vault, a gun and trophy room, a music alcove, a reflection pool, refrigerating and vacuum cleaning plants, and a special sleeping tower just for him.

Worried about earthquakes, Jack London hired Albert Farr to design a structure that would last a thousand years. Unfortunately, one month before the Londons were about to move in, the Wolf House caught fire. London always meant to rebuild it, but never got around to it due to his poor health. He died three years later. All that remains are these stone ruins.

London built the first concrete silo in California. 

I bought a copy of The Sea-Wolf in the London house and learned about the time the Londons sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii. It turns out that neither London nor the navigator they hired had any navigational training. The navigator had never even been to deep sea before that voyage started. They decided the best course of action was to just read a lot and figure out how to do it all in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This caused their trip to run late and they were presumed to be lost at sea when The Snark failed to show up to Hawaii on schedule.

"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."

much love,
hedgie

26

Today is my birthday. I am now 26.

On a completely unrelated note, did you know you can just mail sombreros? Like directly to my apartment? Crazy.



much love,
hedgie

the cuckoo's calling review

I just finished reading The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling.

I would mostly describe this book as a genre piece, one of those books you would see people reading on vacation while lying under an umbrella at the beach. The book contains the aspects that readers expect in detective novels--red herrings, plot twists, greed, jealousy, an assortment of resentful suspects, a jaded protagonist, and a pretty woman who gets in the way of him doing what he needs to do. Though it does read like a standard take on the genre without doing anything exceptionally new, the book is a fun read due to the plot and attention to detail.
The story takes place after private eye Cormoran Strike has moved into his office after he is dumped by his long-time girlfriend. His business is failing, but his luck turns around when a temp agency sends him a competent secretary named Robin and he is offered a chance to discover the truth behind the suspicious death of a world famous model.
One of my criticisms of the book starts with the Robin character, who I really hoped would do more than she actually did. Her story begins when she is in giddy excitement after becoming engaged. After that, she does not go very far from meek, female stereotypes. Her most memorable moments include her being grabbed by her breast, gossiping, trying on dresses, and putting up with an asshole fiancé she really should have dumped. With all other main characters, we get glimpses of their history and see what made them the people they are today. Robin does not get that. We do not see her as a child, we don't get any word about her family, she doesn't seem to have any friends outside of her jealous and controlling significant other, and she doesn't seem to have any interests beyond what she sees Strike accomplish in the book.
There were also moments when I was taken out of Rowling's world by her strange choice in descriptions, most notably when she kept describing cameras as "long-snouted". A lot of her comparisons seemed more fitted for a children's book than a gritty crime novel and made it hard to take certain scenes seriously. 
A lot of people also seemed to have been swayed by the pseudonym aspect behind the making of this book. While discovering the author was actually J.K. Rowling didn't change my opinion of the writing itself, it did make me more interested in her as a person, the idea of typecasting, and the ways people attempt to escape it. But as a lot of people set up certain expectations for this book upon discovering who it was written by, I feel the need to warn others that there are no wizards and witches here. 
Overall, the writing was solid. Rowling did a great job switching between past and present to give rounder presentations of her characters. This was especially true with the deceased model, Lula. With most crime books I read, the dead remain impassive and do not have much to do with the story besides kicking off the plot. Here, through interviews, we get a chance to see Lula as an actual person and feel like she was more than just a broken body on the pavement.
If this book turns into a series, I would definitely give them a try and hope that Robin amps up her game.




much love,
hedgie