BFFs

I wrote a series of vignettes on best friends I've had over the years. Here is one of them:


Jennifer
Jennifer’s mom married my uncle when I was still in preschool. She was two years older than me and we’d always play when our families came together. Because we were about the same height, my grandma would always buy us matching outfits and we’d go out in public and be mistaken for twins. For a long time her family lived across the street from my grandparents, so whenever I was there we’d play. She liked to boss me around, but she was older and therefore allowed to.

When I was in high school she lived with me until she graduated. Her mom and my uncle had long ago divorced. We still referred to each other as cousins. Even today we like to confuse people by saying we’re ex-step cousins. Because my house wasn’t that big, Jennifer lived in my room. We even had to sleep in the same bed. The upside, though, was that we got to share clothes. It wasn’t until Jennifer got her first car that our escapades really began. We’d speed to school, go to shows, and even make drives up to Seattle just to get cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. One time we drove out to the Warped Tour at the Gorge. I got so hot and dehydrated that I ended up getting sick. Like a true best friend, Jennifer was there to take pictures of me while I puked in a trashcan. “You’ll want to remember this,” she had told me.

There’s a picture of us before we went into the Gorge. We’re standing in the grassy parking lot after just sharing a warm Zima. My hair is frizzy from heat and you can see my adolescent pimples that wouldn’t stay covered up by foundation. I’m wearing the balled necklace I always seemed to have on and the frog necklace Jennifer had given me. They were my favorite animals. Jennifer is grinning widely per usual.

This was before I got sick and before we saw the Casualties, Pennywise, and the Ataris – the band responsible for the anthem of our friendship. One of their songs has a lyric we loved to shout out:

“I’d rob a Kwik-E-Mart for you.
 I’d go to the pound and let all the cats go free,
Just as long as you’d be with me.”

We also took an after photo where we tried our best to look like we were dying. I didn’t have to try very hard.

Even though the Warped Tour wasn’t as epic as we had hoped, I still look at all our pictures and smile and laugh inside. There’s so many stories – like how the singer of the Ataris got into a fight with someone from the crowd and ended up dropping his pants. I still wonder how we drove home in one piece.

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The Ataris, "I Won't Spend Another Night Alone"


Our jam

Clockwork Angel

Thank goodness for spring break. I had a list of books growing and it was driving me mad. Out of three books I really wanted to read, I decided on Clockwork Angel. I've never really been a fan of fantasy, but then again, I've never actually read fantasy, either. Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare is set in Victorian times, and reading historical novels is something that I do love. And something about this book just sparked my interest.

  

I know this book -- part of The Infernal Devices -- is a prequel to The Mortal Instruments, but I really just wanted to start here and see what I thought. You don't have to read or know about the Mortal Instruments trilogy to get into this book. Though I thought it was rather interesting that a lot of reviewers thought that the characters in this book were clones of characters from other books. I've never read any of Clare's books, so that really didn't bother me much.

Meet 16-year-old Tessa Gray. She travels from New York to London in search for her brother. When she gets there, though, things are not what she expected. And without wanting it, she's thrust into a world she never knew existed, one where demons, warlocks, vampires, and Shadowhunterss -- part-angel demon-fighters -- are real. The more involved she gets, the more she realizes that her brother's disappearance and and the things happening in London are because of her and what she is. But no one's quite sure what she is. But she's not alone. She's found an ally among the Shadowhunters, and possibly even love.

So, what did I think? Well, I thought it was good. I really liked Clare's writing style -- er, well most of the time. It's hard to explain what bugged me, but what I did like was how she describes things, though it did become excessive at times. In fact, I couldn't help but skip over a lot of long descriptions. I did find it odd how she stayed mostly in Tessa's point of view, but still switched to other character's points of view. I wish it would have been more consistent with the switching. When it came to how women of the Victorian ages were portrayed -- the expectations of proper ladies, the struggles they faced to be taken seriously -- I appreciated the accuracy. At the same time, I also felt like that point was overdone. As for the main character, I liked Tessa. For the most part. She just asked so many damn questions that it came off as manufactured, like it was just a way for information to get out. As characters go, I really liked Will, too. He was fantastically hilarious. But he's also dark and can be a bit of a jerk, mostly because he has a secret past he doesn't want to discuss. So obviously Tessa is drawn to him. Ugh. That sounds typical, right? I thought so.

The other boy, Jem, (ahem, love triangle), was like Will's opposite. Of course. The one to balance him. My main problem with Jem was his name, Jem. If you know me at all, you'll know what a huge Jem and the Holograms fan I am -- that fabulous cartoon from the 80s about a girl rock band. So whenever I saw the name Jem, it made me think of huge, pink 80s hair and makeup. Not a pale boy with silver hair and eyes. But alas, he's a sweet, deep guy. I couldn't hold his name against him.

I thought the plot was cleverly executed, though it seemed to drag out in parts. Overall, I would recommend it to people who love the Victorian era, fantasy mixed with a little steampunk, and creepy villains. Though if you've read Clare's other books and fanfiction, you might not enjoy it. Now, I'm off to read book 2, Clockwork Prince. Unfortunately, I won't get to read Clockwork Princess until 2013 (this is where I'd curse a lot).

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Who's Jem and the Holograms? Well, I'm glad you asked.


Truly truly truly outrageous.

I Must Get it From My Mom

I've always loved hearing about my mom's adventures growing up and of the concerts she went to. I've already written a fictional story based off some of her adventures. For my writing class, though, I decided to bring one of those real adventures to life. So no, this isn't fiction, but it's still fun. In the early 80s, my mom and a group of friends went and saw the Rolling Stones. And this is a snippet of what happened (PG 13).

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My mom grew up in the seventies. She was always going to concerts and has probably been to hundreds of them. The goal was always to get as close as possible so she could take pictures with my dad’s 35mm that had the giant zoom lens. She likes to tell me that for her, going to concerts really was like that movie, “Almost Famous” – it was about the music and loving the band so much that it hurt. Her favorite band of all time was and still is Led Zeppelin. She never got the chance to see them live before John Bonham died. She’s already told me that if they ever go on a reunion tour, I get to camp out a week in advance to get tickets.

In 1981 – before she was married and had kids – she went and saw the Rolling Stones at Candelstick Park in San Francisco. My dad and their friend, Mike, camped out overnight in order to score tickets before they went on sale. There were seven people altogether who made the trip from Sacramento to the concert – my mom, her little brother Rod, her best friend Jennine, my dad, his little sister Cindi, Mike, and a seventh person no one seems to remember. My mom thinks it was some dude who was a friend of a friend and my aunt says it was a girl they picked up along the way as someone’s date.

(I found this picture online of the same concert. My mom and I are pretty sure that woman in the black is her)


The group drove over the night before in a Winnebago and camped out in the parking lot. There were so many people there that it was like a giant party with free drugs and alcohol. My aunt Cindi actually didn’t have a ticket. My dad made her buy one from someone as soon as they arrived and she ended up spending all her money. She had to trade the t-shirt guy some shrooms for a concert shirt. An hour later, he had quit the business and had no more magic mushrooms. People kept coming up to the Winnie and asking to use the bathroom like it was no big deal. Bathroom privileges were given in return for money, pot, or beer.

My dad’s favorite song was “Sympathy for the Devil.” The Stones rarely played it during concerts because fights always seemed to break out during it. Because of that, my mom and some of the group made a giant banner that said “Sympathy for the Devil.” She bought four white king-sized sheets and sewed them together in the front yard. She spent so much money on red glitter just to fill in the word devil and a pitchfork. It was so huge that when they hung it from the balcony, it blocked the box seats and they had to keep moving it. Security threatened to kick them out. Mick Jagger acknowledged them by pointing and saying, “Thanks Sympathy.” My mom wasn’t up in the balcony when it happened. She was down in the crowd on my dad’s shoulders, cheering and bragging. The band didn’t play the song that day.

My mom said that one of the good things about my dad was that she could sit on his shoulders all night. Sometimes he would need a break. Then she’d pout because she couldn’t see. He would always let her back up, though. If she didn’t go to a concert with a guy, she’d always find a tall one and ask if she could sit on his. They would always say yes.

Mick went out over the audience in a cherry picker. He had a bucket of water and carnations with him. When he dumped it into the crowd, it went all over my mom because she was the closest to him. Later, her and my dad got so close to the stage that there was no one in front of them. She said it was like she was eye level with Mick and there was no one else around. He even blew her a kiss. It was one of those moments that seemed too good to be true. She had captured it with her camera. Those pictures became a source of argument between my parents when they split up. My dad wanted them. My mom didn’t care what he said. In the end, neither one of them got them. They were lost when their storage locker was sold. My dad forgot to, or just didn’t, pay the bill.

That wasn’t the only thing from my mom’s music collection that was lost to her. The giant picture frame with all the ticket stubs from the hundreds of concerts she’d gone to, along with the banner from the Stones concert, was also in the storage locker when it was sold. When my grandparents moved up to Washington, all her posters and the 8X10s that she had bought outside of Tower Records were thrown out. Her enormous collection of vinyl, which included rare albums like one of Lynyrd Skynyrd before half the band died was lost or sold. On the album cover, the band had been standing in front of flames. After the plane accident, the records were pulled from retail stores. All my mom’s records had been stashed in a friend’s basement while my mom moved. When she came to collect them, they weren’t there. Her friend still denies she had anything to do with it. I like to rub it in my mom’s face that my Led Zeppelin’s vinyl collection is almost complete.

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Going on road trips to concerts reminds me of this movie. It's one of my favorites.

Bourne: The River of Time

I've been waiting to read this novella ever since I found out Lisa Bergren was writing more. One of the things I love so much about this series is how Bergren listens to her readers. She knows how readers hate waiting for the next book in a series to come out (er, like me). Bourne was published just weeks after being finished and edited. I guess that's the perk of publishing via ebook, but still, I highly appreciate it.

Because this is a novella, it's not very long. Still, there's a lot of action crammed into it. In ways, I was kind of expecting more. I understand that Bergren was tying up loose ends. I guess, since the whole series up until this point has been told through only Gabi's eyes (this installment is told by both Gabi and little sis, Lia), I wanted more Gabi. She didn't really do anything other than fret over Marcello and Lia. Which is fine, but if all the action is involving Lia, then I think there should have been more Lia and less Gabi. I read an Amazon review that said all Gabi did was obsess over Marcello, but I don't agree with that. She had legitimate reasons for having him occupy all her thoughts. Also, I noticed that Lia mentioned how she nocked an arrow quiet a few times, to the point where I began to take note. I don't like being distracted by minor details like that.

Other than those small things, I loved Bourne. And right now, it's only 99 cents. Can't get much better than that. I'm really glad I got to see things from someone else's perspective. I'm a big fan of switching up point of views, and Lia is just as tough and likable as her older sister.

If you haven't read the previous books in the series (Waterfall, Cascade, and Torrent, which I wrote about here and here), you really should. They have a way of transporting you to a different time that's both romantic and horrifying. Gotta love those medieval fight scenes. I did, and I didn't think they were too gory. But then again, I do love horror and action movies.

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Speaking of action, this movie was on tv the other day. Oh, Mel. You just wanted freedom.