The Princess Bride (The Book): A Short Review

Here's my LibraryThing review of The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, by William Goldman.

I've seen the movie version probably fifty times (It's on my list of Top Ten Friday Night Films) but had never before read the book. I really enjoyed it; it's fast paced, funny, and exciting. I admit that I wasn't able to experience the story without the movie's influence, but that didn't bother me at all. Many times throughout the book I found myself hearing lines and picturing scenes as they were in the film, and often laughing out loud. The story follows the same arc as the movie (or rather vice versa, I suppose), with few minor differences. Goldman also wrote the screenplay, so it's not a huge surprise that the material was so expertly handled for the film adaptation. In the book, you get a little bit more back story on the characters, and the meta story of the grandfather reading to his sick grandson is different; it's a bit more fully developed. It is, as advertised, a classic tale of true love and high adventure - all the good parts, and with all the boring stuff excised.

Linkheap Volume XVIII

Links! Now with 20% more balls.

• The Internet Lurker rails against those stupid truck balls. I have to agree with him here. People have always done dumb shit to their cars and trucks, but truck balls are one of the stupider things I have ever seen.


• Roger Ebert on the so-called 'death panels' and health care reform.


• Via the Bad Astronomer, here is a wonderful video on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field images in 3D.
  
  


• And another video, this one a bit less serious, but still nerdy. Check out the comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, where it originated.
  
  

Over and out.

Log 2009.08.18

• My vacation really just cannot get here soon enough.


• I've finally started going through my SD cards again and editing photos. Here are pictures of my cats, Selma and Patty, just after their lion cuts this Spring. They're fuzzy again now, but they were really unhappy after this was done. I don't think we'll be able to do this again. Still, these pictures do make me smile.
  
  
  

Linkheap Volume XVII

Here's some good stuff I read on the webbertoobs this week.

• Stephen Hough on not being so regimented when approaching your instrument. Sometimes you need to deviate from the norm.


• Umm, oops.


• Bryan Lambert of You Are Dumb infamy has a food blog. In this post, he reminds us that Alton Brown is one of the only truly good things about the Food Network.


• Speaking of food, Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and other damn good books) has written a damn good article about Julia Child, food TV, and the fate of actual cooking among the citizenry in these United States.

More next week.

Log 2009.08.13

I've been in quite a colossal funk lately. I'm off-kilter and feeling lethargic, anti-social, and unmotivated. It's a shitty way to feel and I hope my soon-to-arrive vacation will help. I know: boo hoo; poor me; get over it. Yeah, I've been trying. Running helps a little. The really craptacular thing has been that I haven't had any interest in practicing. Playing is generally a way for me to keep myself and my life balanced. I (usually) like my job and all, but it's not who I am; I am not defined by it. Sometimes it can even be a drag. Playing music serves as a creative outlet, an intellectual stimulus, a chance to focus and engage in something that I love--not to mention something that isn't work. To not have a desire to play is strange and disconcerting. Maybe I need to work on new repertoire; maybe I need to find a group or even someone to play duets with so I am not only playing solo stuff.

Things That Irk Me: Vol. 1

I am a cranky bastard quite a large percentage of the time. Things irk me. This is a blog; a place where it is common practice and perfectly acceptable to yell and scream all manner of things. I thought: why not get some of these things off my chest? So without further ado, I present to you, dear reader, Things That Irk Me: Vol. 1.

• During televised baseball games, the idiots who wave to the camera while, out of focus, they yammer to their boob friends on the phone, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm on TV!"


• The now common use of invite instead of invitation (e.g., "I'm going to ask you to go ahead and, um, send me an invite to that meeting, m-kay?" I'm guessing this is the fault of Outlook.


• People - especially people with big, stupid pickup trucks - who park on the street in front of my house


• Broken air conditioning on the Red Line subway on horribly hot and humid days


• Grocery stores that don't have enough cashiers manning the checkout lines during busy times - this is exponentially more irksome when you clearly observe what appear to be perfectly capable employees milling around like doofuses

I do feel slightly better now. There's plenty of stuff in the world that irks me. We'll see if this becomes a regular feature.

Log 2009.08.10

We did a bunch of work in the yard this weekend. It's clear that at some point in the past someone took a great deal of care with this property. Sadly, it was neglected for many years. Nature always does its thing, and now there are areas that sport thick jungles of overgrown bushes, plants, weeds, and, most painfully, wild and very thorny rosebushes. We've been tackling things slowly. We've put in a couple of new planting beds to spruce up some less attractive areas of the front yard, I've trimmed the coniferous shrubs in front of the house to keep them in check (my bride hates 90% of the shrubbery, so I see some back breaking labor in my not-too-distant future), I continue my struggle to improve the lawn, which continues to resist my efforts to improve upon it, and we are slowly making my way around perimeter of the yard pruning and clearing the result of so many years of neglect. We're finding interesting flowers and plants all over the place: this weekend's discoveries included another hydrangea (we have found three), what we think is some variety of holly, and a patch of delicious smelling Cicely, not to mention the three or four species we've yet to identify -- I need to get a field guide. In general it's been hard and dirty work but altogether very (almost surprisingly) satisfying.

Memorizing

Guitarists, like pianists (and other soloists), are expected to memorize music for recitals. I, however, have never been terribly disciplined when it comes to memorizing music. Besides, I'm not playing recitals; the kind of gigs I'm playing generally involve performing one to three hours of music in often less than ideal circumstances, and it's much easier to have a big binder full of material that's ready to read through for something like a two set cocktail hour. I practice it all diligently. I mark up my scores and write performance notes. For the most part, I like the pieces I play. And yes, naturally, I do even have a handful of the pieces in my repertoire memorized. What I really need to start doing, however, is putting in the mental effort to memorize the more challenging pieces. Some of Bach's more difficult music can be a bitch for me to completely internalize. Memorization needs to be more than rote hand and finger memory. It should be a multi-faceted (intellectual, physical, emotional) and deep 'knowing' of the piece - as Valentine Michael Smith would say: you need to grok the piece. It's hard work, and the just the thought makes me tired. But, in my experience, once the effort is expended even the those really hard and complicated pieces can seem much simpler.

Log 2009.08.03

• I finally had my wisdom teeth pulled a few days ago. Yeah, it was three quarters of a year ago that I mentioned it in this space. I broke down and went for the consultation in March but I didn't muster up the courage to actually go through with it until the end of July. Well it's done. Fucking ouch! Actually, it went pretty smoothly until day three when I developed a minor infection. I'm now on a course of antibiotics and resting and am expected to pull through.


• On the home front, I've been doing a lot of work in our yard. I made a new planting bed next to the driveway that turned out quite nicely. I put in some bleeding heart and carex, and made a border out of old bricks. In the process, I discovered that the leaves from last fall have already, to some extent, developed into usable compost. Now I think I'd like to build a two bin compost structure in the back. Our current pile is unsightly and in the wrong spot.


• In other plant related news, I planted a very small hibiscus that my dad gave me. I checked on it today and it was gone. I suspect the woodchuck that's been hanging around our back yard lately is responsible.

Year of the Cock - LibraryThing Book Review

One of the neat perks about being a LibraryThing member is that you have the chance to get free books to review. This is my first. First and foremost let me say that I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a real book critic. I do hope to keep doing this and get better at writing this sort of criticism, but remember that this is just one reader's opinion. Comments and suggestions are wanted and welcome. (LibraryThing page)

Year of the Cock - LibraryThing Book Review

I have to admit that I couldn't put this book down; It was like reading a car accident.

Alan Wieder, a shallow-as-a-puddle reality show producer, leaves his wife because he wants to live the sort of "wild and crazy guy" bachelor life that he feels he missed out on and always dreamed of - complete with fancy sports car, tricked out bachelor pad, and as many notches as possible in his bed post.

So, he leaves his wife, ultimately ignoring her for weeks, and sets out to sow his wild oats. He does well at first. He buys a Porsche, a fancy stereo system, gets his bachelor pad, easily gets dates and phone numbers with the hot chicks, and seems to be living his dream. But he quickly develops a problem. He has a crisis of confidence after seeing an online sex tape, and becomes obsessed with the size of his penis. He thinks it's too small. He measures it. Daily. Several times a a day. Constantly. With an impressive array of measuring devices that he carries around with him wherever he goes. This is where the story turns a dark corner into a strange mashup of Jerry Springer, everything that's bad about reality TV, and the Learning Channel's lineup of medical freakshow programs. Things continue in a downward spiral of self-obsessed despair over the protagonist's incredible shrinking johnson. He's got some serious problems.

In all, the book was highly readable, entertaining, often quite funny, and had some sharp, Swingers-esque dialogue. My problem with the book is that the protagonist is selfish and shallow from beginning to end. The story seems to be driving toward a redemption, but the redemption that does come is weak. The main character doesn't seem to really change, learn anything important, or grow (ha!) as a person. Maybe the author has, but he failed to show me how. It doesn't surprise me that this book was written by a reality show producer. It plays out like one of those behind-the-scenes tearful confessionals where contestants bitch and whine about the other contestants or cry about their own problems. (**)