Okay so it’s been a while since I last posted and a lot has happened to me since then.. but why hear about that when you could just see my puzzles.
It all started with some good old horse betting. This puzzle took a night or so, in which I analyzed the social hierarchy at the Kentucky Derby in 1924. While puzzling I think I listened to Lana Del Ray’s Off to the Races 1000 times and can tell you that the races Lana goes to are much sluttier than this one.
Then I went home for Christmas break and did this little gem:
All of these were the simple compared to this horrid creature:
That puzzle was only 500 pieces and entitled “Very Berry Nice”. I would like to rename the puzzle “Enough Berries That You Throw Up”
If you are sick of all these puzzle posts.. that makes sense. But I probably won’t stop.
I buy my puzzles at yard sales, flea markets, and Salvation Armies, so I start every puzzle knowing that the person who originally bought it is most likely dead. I have never thought that more than with the puzzle above. When I opened it up it smelled like rotting red wine. That didn’t stop me from finishing it, but I did use half a bottle of perfume to disguise the dreadful scent.
In better news the puzzle I just opened up smells like cardboard!
How would I define a perfect day? Lying in bed reading all day and finishing a great book as the sun is setting. That was today and I couldn’t be more happy with the book which was my company, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.
It’s a funny title, for a fun, historical, interesting, and captivating book written by Mary Ann Shaffer and completed by her niece Annie Barrows after Shaffer faced health issues. The novel follows letters to and from Juliet Ashton, a writer from London, who becomes enchanted with the Island of Guernsey in the English Channel after it’s occupation by Germany in World War II.
Anyway, my mother was the one to recommend this book to me, so here is the letter (okay, well.. email) I wrote to her about the book:
“I just finished reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I called to tell you I finished it, but there was no answer and I am happy there wasn’t. It forces me to write a letter. Keep in mind I may be in a sort of mania, since I am slightly sick and spent the whole day in bed blowing my nose and reading.
this is the bed i read in all day. really, i just like to show off my canopy whenever i have an excuse.
“Oh reading! This book rekindled my love of it. Lately as I have been reading I’ve fallen flat. I finished On the Road yesterday and I loved it. It was brilliant. It was a book about being transient, but I looked at the time he was writing of as unattainable to me. I read it while I rode the subway stopping mid-sentence to look up and remind myself of my location. My location within the same America Kerouac explored, but he experienced America in a way I will never be able to (although I doubt I will stop trying anytime soon.)
“The Guernsey Literary Society was less about location, less about going. It was about finding people you love and care about and learning about them and with them. Their location on a beautiful island constantly smelling fresh salty air was merely a happy coincidence. What brought them together was books and a desire to communicate, which is a thing our society never let’s go.
this isn’t from guernsey, but it’s a house on an island. i took it on a trip to canada this summer and while i was reading i thought back to it.
“One unrelated point: Isn’t it interesting that On the Road and The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society are discussing a time only five or six years apart. I could not imagine two more opposite perspectives on the world. Anyway, I thought the book was tons of fun. I love you and every book you recommend very much.”
After editing that ‘letter’ and putting pictures in I realize how lazy it is to simply reuse a letter and plop it into a blog post, but the world is full of lazier things, I suppose. In conclusion, read this book, or read any book, or just spend a whole day reading. It’s very restorative. Tomorrow I have to return to the real world and find another book to read on the subway.
Last weekend I went to Brooklyn for an amazing Mountain Goats concert. It was super good.
Here is the setlist from the concert. It was an amazing collection and between all the songs John Darnielle explained where he was coming from. It gave me a whole new appreciation for his new album Transcendental Youth, which you can stream for free from Rolling Stone.
In other NYC news: I ate a falafel (and dropped a lot of it on myself) right outside of the Comedy Cellar. I imagined Louis CK coming by with a slice of pizza. We would stare into each other eyes and eat together forever. But that didn’t happen.
I am back. And this is an honest, “I’m back” not an absent father’s “I’m here right now, so enjoy it cause you might not see me for three months.”
Well I know I never ended up posting my photos from Berlin, so sorry for the cliffhanger (remember that neopets game cliffhanger?) Here they are with bonus commentary because these are more than a month overdue:
A beautiful canal with restaurants that double as clubs on the side.
Gorlitzer Park, which was right near the amazing hostel I stayed at, JetPak Berlin.
A pretty canal near Berlin Cathedral.
Bode Museum, which was joked to be the Boredom Museum. They apparently have a very extensive coin collection. Before I went I had seen this beautiful photo on pinterest of it.
This is just a playground, but they made it super cool by just adding paint and immense amounts of talent.
Ada and I spent a lot of time rocking the Flea Markets. We got these delicious tarts at one and then sat on a river and ate them.
We were in search of a beach and saw a ferry running, so we hopped on. We ended up on Pfaueninsel, translating to Peacock Island. We saw a lot of peacocks, but sadly didn’t find a beach there. Also, turns out I am sort terrified of gigantic colorful birds. Now we know.
This is the beach we ended up at. This was the only day of my two weeks in Berlin that it was remotely cloudy.
This is 4am in Berlin, with some nice street art in view.
One of my favorite panels of the East Side Gallery.
Tacheles the super cool artist gallery/ squat spot which was full of amazing art.
Ada and I popped by a cultural fair thing. We ended up walking by this super fun band, Orchestre Miniature in the Park, for short OMP. They only sing songs that have to do with the sun. Check out OMP’s soundcloud, my favorite is ‘All Summer Long’ closely followed by ‘Komm Raus Zum Spielen’.
My last day, Ada and I met up at this restaurant Nest. The sandwiches were delicious, but the waitress thought we were idiots.
After yummy food, I rented a bike and we biked to this cool abandoned amusement park, Spreepark. We had to climb through a wire fence (I felt like a badass and have a scar to prove it) Here is a strange Charlie Chaplin-esque bumper car thing. Those things were all over the place in a creepy The Great Dictator way.
There was a full waterpark, filling all East-Berliners needs for Log Flumes.
This was a railroad that went all around the entire park, as well as over this very unclean pond and into a very scary looking tunnel. Wish we could have stayed there longer, but we were found by a guard and he walked us out. In walking us out he ended up showing us most of the park, so there were some positives.
So there it is, my trip to Berlin. If you are considering going to Berlin, do it. I think it is one of the most amazing cities. I also found the blog She Thought Outside the Box very helpful for knowing what flea markets and parks to get at while you’re there.
There is tons of stuff I am forgetting to mention so feel free to comment and say, “Hey Kendra, what about the Ping Pong club?” and I will respond saying, “Yeah it was really cool.” and probably add some more details.
So the last month has been total hell. Apparently doing one thousand things and heading towards the end of a semester is dreadful.
One of the things that filled my time, at least for a week, was Campus Movie Fest. Campus Movie Fest is a film festival that comes to colleges all over the United States and supplies students with everything they need to make a five minute movie in exactly a week. I have participated every year so far, which is super fun… and stressful. This year I made a comedy about a bland relationship… here it is:
Last year I made Washed Up a movie about a sad lonely guy who finds a dead mermaid and then the year before that I made The Man Who Hears Cell Phones, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
Goodness, I am finding this post to be super self promotional. I leave this blog stagnant for a month and then come back knowing it will take me back and touting all the things I have done in my absence.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who helped in making John and Jane: A Love Story happen. You’re all great.
So my friend Katie, who is living in Paris for the year, posted this video on a friends wall, and I absolutely love it. It takes place in the bookstore Shakespeare and Company.
When I saw this, I thought about That Summer in Paris by Morley Callaghan, a memoir about Morley’s friendships with Hemingway and Fitzgerald in the summer of 1929.. in Paris. I was thinking that Shakespeare and Company was the bookstore that is refers to multiple times. So instead of looking in the book that was right next to me, I googled it.
And I found a blog which cited a bunch of sources on the topic of Paris in the 1920’s. The Phd that has the blog even does presentations on the topic.
So I was pretty sad when I read her annotation of That Summer in Paris, “Morley Callaghan. That Summer in Paris. New York: Coward-McCann, 1963. Callaghan was the timekeeper for the famous Hemingway-Fitzgerald boxing match, and he’s dined out on that story for years. A lovely memoir of a memorable summer.”
I underlined all the things that are wrong in that paragraph. Callaghan and Hemingway were the ones boxing together and they did so quiet often. Fitzgerald only accompanied them once as a timekeeper (and not a really good one.) I do have to agree that it is a lovely memoir on a memorable summer.
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