Giant Dwarf vs. Valentine's Day in the Age of SuperBowl

Ah, dear readers, I'm sure you've been waiting with bated breath for my return to the page...I have not been suffering from writer's block so much as I have been afflicted with absolute fucking laziness and inertia.  I'll be honest...this writing thing is hard because it demands that I stick to some kind of routine and, for some reason, I am hard-wired against routine.  Which is weird, because I lead probably one of the most boring lives outside of my job.

In any case, with Valentine’s Day nigh, I figured it was time to return to the blog and regale you with my musings on this funny little day of the year, smack dab in the middle of February.  For most people, the middle of February is a cold, sometimes grey, time of year and maybe that’s how Valentine’s Day ended up here.  In Los Angeles, however, it’s usually pleasant weather (when is it not, really?) so it doesn’t represent the need as much for warming your heart physically as it does spiritually.

Haha!  What am I saying?  It’s EIGHTY-SIX fucking degrees out here today!  What in the actual fuck?  That’s hotter than it gets in the summer (sometimes) by the beach.  And it’s in the fifties on the East Coast?  We’re all going to hell in a handbasket.

 

Already off topic.  Back to Valentine’s Day.

 

As I’ve said before, I’ve always kind of loved this holiday because, well, it celebrates love.  And while I’m known for my snark and liberal use of the F-word, I think that it’s a good thing when there’s at least one day out of the year that does not focus on a war victory, a memorial, or religion.  Before I was married, I’d spend the day with friends, watching a movie, going out to eat, drinking wine….celebrating friendship.  And don’t argue the history of this day…..there’s no definitive research out there about how it actually came about, so here’s a fun article that touches on some of the meshuggas surrounding it’s uncertain history.

When I was a kid, there was no requirement for every kid in the class to get a valentine.  In the world of grade-school hierarchies, I was not at the very bottom, but I was close to it.  This put me in a weird position because as much as I wanted the attention of those at the top tier, I worried about the emotional safety of  those at the bottom.  Thus, I remember agonizing over giving a valentine to class pariah Andy Blum, since any attention paid to him was social suicide.  While I didn't rack up that many valentines myself, I made the risky decision to give one to Andy...let's face it, not giving him one wasn't going to elevate my social status either.  I do remember feeling anxious on Valentine's Day at school,  not knowing if I would receive any of those cute little cards, but I do remember the joy of giving them out.

 

Fast forward to high school, and, by this time, I'm a full-fledged outcast, spending much of my day in the drama room, hanging out with the rest of the school rejects who loved a good musical and/or a Shakespearean soliloquy.  Valentine's Day at my high school was fraught with young, stupid love, and with ultimatums leveled by cheerleaders against their jock boyfriends.  I was keenly aware of this so I had no expectations that I would get a CandyGram, or whatever the fuck they called it then.  On Valentine's Day in my high school, each class period would start with the delivery of CandyGrams to lucky (and soon-to-be-pregnant) girls with big , permed hair and perfectly pink cheeks.  I believe there may have also been teddy bears involved.  Gag me with a spoon.

But while I suffered these minor indignities at school, home was much different.  Since we were little, my parents would greet us on Valentine’s Day mornings before school with small heart boxes of chocolate at our breakfast places at the table. 

 

(Okay, before you think this was all Norman Rockwell-perfect, our breakfasts – which we were required to eat before school – consisted of a bowl of cereal, a glass of orange juice, and, when I was in high school, a cup of instant coffee, so they were not particularly nutritious.  I didn’t even know eggs were a breakfast food until I was in college.  I ate them for dinner as my meat-alternative growing up.)

 

My parents always celebrated a family form of Valentine's Day and, to this day, my mother always sends me a card with 2-3 one dollar bills to buy my own Valentine's candy box.  Yes, that's how we roll.  Go small or go home.

So it was ingrained in me from an early age to celebrate a day of love as an inclusive day:  inclusive of children/family and inclusive of familial/platonic love.  I’ve actually never put a lot of stock in the romantic aspects of Valentine’s Day and personally can’t stand the commercialization in the form of expensive prix fixe dinners or upselling mediocre activities for the day.  But my husband and I used to celebrate by going out before or after the Big V-Day itself, taking an overnight trip and just enjoying time together.

 This weekend, we are spending Valentine’s Day with about 150,000 out-of-town visitors coming to see the athletic spectacle otherwise known as the SuperBowl.  The romance is strong for this one.

 

And just so we don’t leave on a note of snark, here’s my other reason for loving this holiday:  I leave you with some more fine examples of vintage Valentine’s Day cards.  Happy Valentine’s Day, my beautiful friends!  You all deserve love, and, as the great philosopher RuPaul says:  “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

Giant Dwarf vs. Holiday Movies

I'm not sure what made me do it this year.  Maybe quarantining?  Maybe my total inertia?  Maybe my promise in my last blog that I would watch and review more holiday movies?  These are good reasons.  But I think I'm going to give Lindy West the credit.  She published a critique of Love, Actually called Sh*t, Actually and now I feel validated.  

I saw that movie when it came out and I left the theatre with a sick feeling in my stomach.  I didn't like it then but it seemed that EVERYONE ELSE DID.  And so I've been living with that uneasy feeling for lo, all these years and then she published that essay and now I feel better about hating that movie.

Since that time, I've found other favorite holiday movies.  I mean, only a month before in that same year, Elf was released.  This one is my ALL-TIME favorite of the holiday movies because it is so charming and heartwarming and defines the season for me (and I don't even really celebrate Christmas).  And there are the other usual suspects:  It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Die Hard.  But this year I wanted to find some movies I hadn't seen before (and, as you'll see later in this story, take one Christmas story and watch it to death) and tell you a little bit about them.  (Caveat:  I am not claiming to be a film critic.  None of these will be erudite or worth even two cents, but I saw a ton of holiday movies this year and I want everyone to know about it.)

The classics:

Thanksgiving

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 

This is our Thanksgiving tradition and it is a classic and I don't care what you say or if it's dated, I'll watch it every year and love it.  We know most of the lines ("Those aren't pillows!", "May I see your rental agreement?...I threw it away.....Oh Boy.....Oh Boy WHAT?  You're fucked.") and it's a perfect holiday ending.  

Home for the Holidays 

Another T-day fave of mine, with Holly Hunter as one of the siblings in a charmingly dysfunctional family and issues that pre-date our current norm.  Also, I love that her job is being an art restorer.  I mean, can you name another movie that features at art restorer?

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving  

Charlie Brown.  Snoopy.  Franklin's first feature.  Need I say more?

And now for the Christmas season:

Christmas in Connecticut

Hunky Dunky!  I'd been hearing about this one for years and have seen parts of it, but never the whole thing.  So the Spazz and I finally watched it.  Light, fun fare, gorgeous country Christmas scenes, and delightful comedy of error hijinks.  As with most holiday movies, a certain suspension of disbelief is required, and as long as you can muster that up, it's an enjoyable frolic.  Best character:  Felix Bassenak, played by S.Z. Sakall who gives us such bon mots as "hunky dunky" and "catastroph."

Meet Me in St. Louis

Okay, here's where I back-pedal about suspending disbelief......I know this is a classic but it's hard for me believe this family is poor (as they refer to themselves) when they live in a multi-room Victorian home and have a maid and a big-time lawyer father.  Judy Garland is always superb, but even though she plays a character only a few years younger than she actually was at the time, she still comes off as a 35 year old street-wise divorcee.  I'd watch it again....in the background while I work on something else.

Gremlins

Yeah, I don't need this to be a traditional Christmas movie.  They're cute, then they're not. It's about stupid white people who don't respect ancient Asian culture and don't write down simple directions.  Also, never give a pet as a Christmas gift.  

The Family Stone

I've always liked this one.  It's in the holiday-time family genre, but the dysfunction comes from an ill-matched fiancee in the form of Sarah Jessica Parker.  There's a really strong cast with well-defined supporting characters.  Yeah, it's problematic and it solves all the problems (kind of) in a neatly-wrapped bundle at the end, but it's oddly satisfying.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

A classic.  Not so politically correct, so it may upset some folks, but we love this movie and even laugh when the cat gets electrocuted.  Cats should never be electrocuted, but it is a cautionary tale for kitties who like to mess with Christmas trees and wiring.

Elf

There is not one thing wrong with this movie.  I'm in love with Elf and I don't care who knows it!  This is my yearly Christmas Eve traditional viewing and it's perfect.

And now for the more recent offerings:

Tokyo Godfathers

This is one of my favorites in the "newly-discovered" batch.  I'm not a huge fan of anime but this story was fantastic.  It follows three homeless persons who find a baby and start a search to find her parents.  Along the way, they run into people and places who bring up memories from their pasts and the film ties it all together in a quite lovely story of redemption in an unexpected setting.  That's all I'm going to say.  Watch it and you'll see what I mean.

Last Christmas

Look, I'm the first to admit that I can be a terrible snob about films and literature and theatre but my inner snob left the building with this movie.  I watched this with the Spazz and we both really liked it.  I know it was critically panned, and I know it manipulates the viewer, but I'm okay with that for this story.  Was I in tears at the end?  Yes.  Was Emma Thompson chewing the scenery?  Yes.  Was it plausible?  No.  But it's a magical Christmas story so I'm okay with that.

The Night Before

So I read about this on a list of holiday movies and I kind of love Seth Rogen's schlubbiness (I feel related to him....he looks like most of my male relatives and maybe one or two female ones) so we took this one out from the library.  Review:  Meh.  A similar offering, Office Christmas Party, was more entertaining.  The pace waxes and wanes, some of the script is tight, most is not, and it was ultimately just uninteresting.  That's okay Cousin Seth....I'll still watch your stuff.  My fave Cousin Seth movie this year was An American Pickle.  Worth it if only for making fun of artisanal comfort foods.

8 Women

So this was another one recommended from a list of movies and it was intriguing.  This is a French dark comedy/musical/whodunnit from 2002 starring Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert.  It takes place in the 1950s in a snowbound home where 8 women gather to celebrate Christmas and there is one dead man in the bedroom.  Quirky, weird, delightful, fun.  Leave it to another country to twist up Christmas.

Happiest Season

Okay, I liked this one.  A lesbian couple go home to one of their parents' homes but it turns out that she isn't out at all to her family and so the girlfriend gets introduced as a "roommate" and all sorts of hijinks and shenanigans (both humorous and dramatic) ensue.  My only problem:  the sister's children do something that causes some serious consequences and the whole family just laughs it off when the dust settles.  Honestly, I watched it a few weeks ago and I can't remember what they did (and if I did, it would probably ruin the plot for you) but I do remember thinking that the parenting skills in this film were somewhat reprehensible.

Klaus

So this one was released last year and I remember the reviews were mixed.  Not so from the Spazz and I:  we loved it.  A very sweet origin story about Santa Claus that features a Scandinavian version of a Hatfield-and-McCoy-type feud in which the two sides no longer even know why they hate each other, just that they do.  The postmaster's spoiled son gets stationed there because he's such an ass at the postal workers' academy so he's been given a last chance to get his shit together.  He has to send a certain number of posts through this station and, of course, these warring factions have no use for the mail.  With the help of a stranded teacher-turned-fishmonger, an curmudgeonly old woodsman, and a freakin' adorable Sami girl, they create a little magic in this town that forgot how to be happy.  Worth it.  Great for the whole family.

Christmas Chronicles 2

First of all, we loved the first Christmas Chronicles.  It was charming, fun, and Kurt Russell is hands down the Sexiest Santa Ever.  So I was excited that this one would focus more on Mrs. Goldie Claus, but the whole story seemed forced as another vehicle for Kurt & Goldie, and it was only okay.  

Jingle Jangle

Um, what the hell is this?  I have a lot of good things to say about this movie:  the costume and sets are gorgeous, the choreography is well done and the music is very good.  There are some amazing actors in this, including the child actors.  Ricky Martin is a singing doll.  But WTF is this story?  The plot plodded and was a bit all over the place and was mostly uninteresting.  The story was so treacly that I needed a salt lick to recover from it.  The plot holes were so deep that I just sat at the bottom of them and just waited for the next song-and-dance number to be entertained....and I don't even like most musicals.  The Spazz gave up after the first half hour.  So, what can I say?  Worth the showtunes, but it's okay to do other things while watching.  

Godmothered

OMG we loved this movie.  Disney meta-criticizing itself.  Jillian Bell plays Eleanor, a young fairy godmother-in-training who is desperate to help a little girl who wrote to her for help.  Eleanor makes an Elf-like journey to the real world where she finds that the little girl is now 40 and a single mother.  Since her fairy godmothering education is based on Disney tropes from the 1950s, Eleanor is woefully unprepared for the modern gritty world of Boston.  Everybody learns valuable lessons while being very funny and engaging.  I'd watch this every year, double-feature with Elf, and that will make me happy every holiday season.

And then there was The Classic of all classics

A Christmas Carol

We watched SIX versions of this story with SIX different Scrooges:  Jefferson Mays, Patrick Stewart, Guy Pearce, George C. Scott, Bill Murray, and Scrooge McDuck.  They were all excellent Scrooges, though the version with Guy Pearce (FX's dark take on the story with way too many liberties taken) was my least favorite.  The Jefferson Mays version was him playing all of the parts, from his one-man show which I saw a few years ago at the Geffen Playhouse and which, at that time, blew me the fuck away.  The recorded version loses a bit by not being live onstage, but not much.  Pay for the ticket online, cast it to your TV and watch it with the lights down.  Worth every penny.

What are some of your favorite holiday movies?  Your least favorites?  Suggestions for next year's list?  I'd love to hear about them in the comments below.

Happy New Year!

Giant Dwarf vs. 2020

Here's the thing:  I grew up in a time when there was a semi-decent timeline for holiday marketing.  There was LATE August, when school supplies would go on sale.  (That's when school started the right way:  after Labor Day.)  In early October, Halloween decorations and costumes would show up in the stores; November - Thanksgiving.  Then there was AFTER-Thanksgiving:  Christmastime wonderlands all over town (with a few Chanukah items thrown in...if you were lucky). Late January, you'd start seeing stuff for Valentine's Day.  These are all normal timelines.  No one in their right minds would sell or buy (or decorate with) Christmas items until after Thanksgiving.

But all that has changed over the years and now the lines are blurred and stores start selling Halloween items BEFORE Labor Day and the whole world is subsequently going to hell in a handbasket.  So I had a hard and fast rule for years:  no Christmas music until Thanksgiving.  NO CHRISTMAS MUSIC UNTIL AFTER I'VE HEARD ALICE'S RESTAURANT.  I would get incensed if I walked into a store in early November and heard yuletide songs being piped in.  I know you're all thinking:  "Why do you care?  You don't even celebrate Christmas."  And to that I reply:  here in America, we're all forced to celebrate Christmas whether we like it or not, so at least stick to some rules of common decency.  Hold off on Decking the Halls until after I've eaten my obligatory turkey and stuffing.

Clearly, it was harder to control this in public areas, but once the Spazz and I got together, I felt a moral responsibility to control this meshuggas in my own home.  KOST plays Christmas music early in November and the first time the Spazz tuned into this station in my presence, prior to Thanksgiving, I put the kibosh on that behavior right then and there.  The Spazz has since followed my rule.  No Christmas music, no tree, no decorating until AFTER Thanksgiving.

But it's 2020 and all that has changed.  I need that holiday spirit as much as anyone else does right now and, at this point, there is no reason on earth why any of us should wait until Turkey Day.  I've already watched three Christmas movies, and the tree is already up.  Well, to be fair, we decided this year to have a driftwood tree from now on, and it was delivered in mid-October, so we first made it a Halloween tree and we've just left it up.  However, we fully plan to decorate it before November 26th.

And not only am I indulging in the holiday season early this year, I'm also watching movies I would normally never watch.  Cheesy romantic movies that are usually not my preferred entertainment fare.  2020 has made everything topsy-turvy, so here I am listening to Christmas music in November and pulling out the decorations, so why not start watching movies that are completely out of my wheelhouse.  So, since I've already watched three holiday-themed movies/series so far, I will now bestow upon you my short reviews of said three movies/series (whether or not you even care).

Christmas Unwrapped

This was a Lifetime movie, which I would normally never watch (or even know of) but my former coworker and person-I-know-with-the-best-smile-and-attitude-ever had a leading(ish) role in it so of course I watched it.  Cherion Drakes was excellent as Tisha, and, honestly, she wasn't the lead, BUT SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN.  Not a bad little movie, very sweet, and I love how these romance movies are embracing diversity and featuring more POC actors.  Worth seeing, especially for Cherion.  She deserves the recognition.

Dash & Lily

I had no idea this was going to be a series when I read the book earlier this year.  I didn't love the book, but I loved the idea behind it....basically a literary and romantic scavenger hunt.  However, the series was super-engaging.  I loved the way they filmed it...the cinematography was beautiful and it made me actually fall in love with New York City again (I fell out of love with NYC in June of 2011 during a particularly dreadful weather weekend).  This movie is a love letter to the Big Apple in it's own way, and it reminded me a lot of another book which I believe the authors of Dash & Lily based their book on:  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg.  Haven't read it?  Read the Konigsburg book, watch the Dash & Lily series.  It will make you so excited for the holidays.

Holidate

Meh.  I have a bona fide potty mouth and the plethora of "fucks" in this movie bothered even me.  I thought Emma Stone was wrong for the part and the Spazz even pointed out that she was trying too hard to channel Anna Kendrick.  It was fun, but I don't ever need to see it again.

Given that it's only November 17th, this is a pretty impressive number of holiday movies I've seen so far.  I do plan to watch my favorites (Elf, The Holiday, Auntie Mame, It's a Wonderful Life, etc.) this year as well as a list of others that I've never seen....I'll put those in my next blog.

Meanwhile, the Spazz has already bought a vat of peppermint bark at CostCo (I hope my officemates are prepared for the onslaught of sweets) and I won't mind hearing holiday tunes as I go grocery shopping this week or make a run for pre-lockdown toilet paper (you know it's coming, people.....no mask, no mall shopping).

And, before I go, here is my best recommendation for this holiday season (open the link):

A Christmas Carol

Worth every penny.

You're welcome.

Giant Dwarf vs Independent Bookstore Day 2020

Did you miss me?

 

Wouldn’t 2020 have been the best year to finally start blogging on a regular basis?  A good year to create a writing routine in the midst of a pandemic that caused so many people to hunker down and look inward?  2020, the year of quarantine and uncertainty….wouldn’t THIS be the year that I finally got my shit together?

 

Obviously, you haven’t met me.

 

So what does it take for me to finally open up this blog and put fingers to keyboard?  Why, an Independent Bookstore Day Crawl, of course!

 

Usually Independent Bookstore Day is in April, and Mad Shanny and I had started planning for it in February.  I wrote out a list of bookstores in the Long Beach area, thinking that this year we could explore closer to home and hit even more bookstores than last year.

And then the pandemic hit and the world was cancelled.  And so was Independent Bookstore Day.

 

Honestly, I didn’t expect it to happen this year.  Early on in the pandemic, I knew it would last longer than anyone expected.  I could already see how we, as a country, would fuck it all up and so we did and so I’m a cockeyed pessimist.

 

But they rescheduled it anyway for August 29^th and I still wasn’t sure if we would do our crawl.  I’d seen Mad Shanny once since the pandemic started, seated on a lawn across from my apartment with our other friend, all staying socially distanced while we ate fried chicken on July 4^th.  And then she went out of state to stay with family and I wasn’t sure when she was going to come back.

 

She sent me a text a few weeks ago, asking if we were still on for Independent Bookstore Day.  Well, hell yes, my friend!

 

I sent her the list I wrote out back in February, but we decided not to use that one at all and deemed a northbound trip up the coast the preferable route this year.

 

You know what?  It was the perfect day for a bookstore crawl.

 

Biggest lesson from last year:   Do not depend on peanut M&Ms for sustenance.  And so our first stop was an Italian deli where we got sandwiches bigger than our heads (this would prove beneficial later on).

 

Ventura, CA

Peirano’s Market

https://www.peiranosmarket.com/

 

Mad Shanny thinking it through:  let’s START the day with nourishment so we aren’t frantically looking for a mini-hummus cup in the middle of a suburban food desert while suffering from severely low blood sugar.  Mad Shanny was more familiar with Ventura than I was.  I hadn’t been there in 15 years and that main drag sure has changed…..what a lovely area!  They had closed off Main Street for pedestrian traffic and expanded outdoor dining.  We found free (!) parking and landed at Peirano’s just before a rush.  I ordered right after Mad Shanny, so my receipt clearly indicated to the server that Mad Shanny was on the patio and that Giant Dwarf was WITH Mad Shanny on the patio.  That gave us a chuckle.

(Okay, this is only half the sandwich)

The sandwiches (a Peirano’s Italian sandwich for me and a turkey and pancetta sandwich for her) were excellent!  And ginormous, so we wrapped up the second half of our sandwiches, threw them in my tote bag (I definitely thought ahead this time), and started our trek up Main Street to visit our first two bookshops.

 

Ventura, CA

The Calico Cat Bookshop

http://www.calicocatbooks.com/

 

This one was actually my favorite for reasonably-priced vintage and used books. The store was small but easy to navigate.  On the top of one pile was a children’s book called The First Thousand Words in French and I just had to get it.  I keep thinking I can learn to speak French one day (this is after several failed attempts at Turkish and Polish on DuoLingo, not to mention a disastrous college first year French 101 class).  I almost bought a copy of The Master and Margarita, since I have been obsessed with Behemoth since I first heard about the book and have yet to read it.  But the copy for sale there had pages literally falling out so it didn’t pass muster.

Ventura, CA

Very Ventura Gift Shop & Gallery

https://very-ventura.com/

 

Okay, we were easily distracted.  There were a bunch of cool places on Main Street that we didn’t explore, but we did hit up this very accessible and eclectic gift shop.  We did not leave empty-handed, making non-book purchases of home décor and a bracelet for Mad Shanny (for those of you who know my co-conspirator here, I was as surprised as you are).

 

Main Street does have a lot of thrift shops and I do remember that, when I was here 15 years ago, they were known for their straightforward, if politically incorrect names.  The Retarded Children’s Thrift Store has now been more appropriately updated to the ARC Foundation Thrift Store.  But the Child Abuse and Neglect Thrift Store remains so named:

 

 Ventura, CA

Bank of Books

https://www.facebook.com/bankofbooks/

 

Aptly named.  No argument there.  This is a GIANT bookstore with a full size basement, all full of books and records and magazines.  There are a ton (likely it may even be more accurate to say at least a ton) of vintage books here, and I was tickled to find an entire mini-wall of V.C. Andrews books (I had just finished reading, for the first time ever, Flowers in the Attic). 

Mad Shanny found an anachronistic section titled “Westerns/Men’s Adventure” which we found hilarious. 

Also, I’ve begun a new obsession in documenting romance titles and cover art featuring Highlanders.  It’s a new thing…..the Spazz and I started watching Outlander earlier this year (we made it through the first season, but the generous eye candy (read: Sam Heughan) wasn’t enough to keep me engaged into the second season) and last year’s book crawl introduced me to Soulless, which features Lord Connall Maccon, Alpha of the Woolsey werewolf pack, and where I learned to read Scottish dialect.  I think.

 

Anyway…..

 

 

There are quite a few highlander-featured romance novels.  Just looking at Sam Heughan makes me understand why.

 

So it was here that I found a local writer’s novel called Pier Rats (Bruce Greif) because apparently I can’t get enough of Spazz’s relentless search for the perfect wave.  But I also bought a copy of Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, a book I’ve been wanting to read since it won the Newberry Medal when I was in elementary school.  Mad Shanny took a leap of faith and bought a grab bag with the label “R” on it (for “Romance”). 

 

(It was a gamble and she lost, because the roster of books inside weren’t even campy enough for a fun read.  As she said on the ride home, “I should have picked ‘M’ for mystery.”)

 

Bank of Books is so enormous it would require a weekend sojourn in Ventura to truly explore the store.  Which I’d be more than willing to do.

 

We walked back down Main Street, painfully aware that time was escaping us.  It is ironic that, on Independent Bookstore Day, the bookstores don’t actually extend their hours (I get it for this year, when COVID is keeping folks away, but they didn’t do it last year either).  We honestly only had about 6 hours to get to 5 bookstores and you know that the Giant Dwarf and Mad Shanny have extreme difficulty limiting our time in bookstores to begin with.

So now it was time to leave Ventura and drive a bit more north.  We headed up to the Montecito area of Santa Barbara to check out one of the older bookstores in the mix, operating since 1925.

 

Santa Barbara, CA

Tecolote Book Shop

https://www.tecolotebookshop.com/about-tecolote

 

 

Turns out that the old, venerated bookstore on our list also has the most limited hours.  They are not open on the weekend, and obviously didn’t feel the need to be open on a day celebrating the independent bookstore.  This was a disappointment to us, but also a blessing……more time for the last two bookstores!

 

Back to the car and back on the road!

 

Santa Barbara, CA

Chaucer’s Books

https://www.chaucersbooks.com/

 

Here there was social distance line.  When we finally got in, Mad Shanny headed straight for the Fantasy/SciFi area and I just went straight up the middle aisle and landed in Mythology.  Bonus!  (Little known fact about Giant Dwarf:  during my senior year at Smith, I considered three different graduate programs:  Puppetry, Folklore, Clown College in Florida – the latter not technically being an academic graduate program but possibly being the most marketable option; of course, I did none of these and ended up a starving theatre artist for several years.)  I instantly found Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (OHMYGOD I LOVE Neil Gaiman and I have yet to read this one) but then, while scanning the shelves, found The Dictionary of Mythology.  It was a sheathed hardback book and there were two copies.  I opened it up to a random page and instantly fell in love.  But I don’t need this.  But I want it.  But it’s crazy to buy this!  But it’s so much cheaper than I expected it to be.  Okay, easy enough:  Mad Shanny knows I have a hoarding problem so I’ll just show this to her and she’ll tell me not to buy it.

 

I found Mad Shanny still in SciFi, showed her the book and said “talk me out of it.”  She took one look at it and said, “I want this book!”  THANK THE GODDESSES THAT THERE WERE TWO COPIES on the shelf, just waiting for the both of us.  Yep, we each bought a copy. 

 

Ask me anything about mythology:  I’ve got a sourcebook now.

 

We had less than an hour left.  We headed to the State Street area of Santa Barbara:

 

Santa Barbara, CA

The Book Den

https://www.bookden.com/about-the-book-den/

 

This bookstore, established in 1902, was Mad Shanny’s favorite.  I, too, loved the layout and the seemingly very curated collection of vintage books.  Unfortunately, their vintage books were not as low-priced as The Calico Cat  so I was heartbroken that I couldn’t afford Winnie the Pooh written in Esperanto (Winnie-La-Pu).  Here is another language I aspire to learn yet know I will never do so.

 

 

I did end up buying two vintage children’s books:  Farewell to Manzanar (by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston), another book I have been wanting to read for many years, as well as a Golden Book:  Richard Scarry’s Best Little Word Book Ever!  Because, as you can see from above, I love word books in any language.

 

Mad Shanny then showed me a book by a Polish author that she thought I would like.  I was on the fence, but then found an earlier title by the same author that won the Nobel Prize for Literature:  Flights by Olga Takarczuk.  So I bought that one too.

 

We stayed until they closed and then we explored State Street from the Book Den’s location on Anapamu Street all the way down to the beach.  Saturday night on State Street was hopping, maybe a bit too much in this time of pandemic.  Most people were masked, but social distancing was not a priority.  

Santa Barbara, CA

Lokum

https://lokumsb.com/

One place that hadn’t been there when I was last in SB was Lokum, a store actually primarily selling lokum, otherwise known as Turkish Delight.  Lokum is not an expensive dessert, but Lokum the store has taken it to new heights and is upselling various flavors as well as a variety of baklava, Turkish coffee and tea.  But it was such a novelty that I bought some lokum and baklava for the Spazz and his mother, who is currently staying with us, both born in Istanbul and very familiar with these foods.  Highlights:  the Narnia-named Turkish Delight selection (see photo) and the server who waited on me who had a hardcore ‘80s Nick Rhoades/John Taylor from Duran Duran hairstyle, complete with ‘80s-era frosted highlights.  (This guy could not have been born before the mid-‘90s.  Also, I regretfully did not get a photo.)

 

We couldn’t find a place we actually wanted to eat.  The restaurants were not honoring the six-feet apart rule and we really wanted something fast but not fast food.  After a very long walk to the beach and back, we ate the other halves of our Peirano’s sandwiches in the car and then headed back down the coast  with our newfound treasures.

 

And we didn’t eat a single peanut M&M on this trip.