July 1, 2025 7:57 PM
Pigeon and Elephant and Piggie, oh my!
I remember when one of my little cousins was very young and just learning to read, that he had the book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. I was probably in high school at the time, and after reading the book, I enjoyed it so much that I looked for every other Mo Willems book in the library and read them as well. I just love the art style and how much emotion that pigeon has. Even today, when I go into a bookstore or a library, I like to see if there are more pigeon books that I haven't read yet.
__ .' `. / .--. \ _' / (@\ : <._| \ __ / ! <.\ / `-.__,-' |___| |___| | | | | | |____________________ ' / ` \ `-_ / ' `. .' / `. `~~----~~' .' `-.___________.' | | | | | | /|\ /|\
Many years later, I was sitting in one of the rooms in my aunt's house and my 5 year old niece came in because she wanted to play. There happened to be a copy of There Is a Bird on Your Head! sitting on the dresser. I have no idea whose book this was, but I picked it up and started reading it to her. She spends a lot of time staring at her Kindle or a phone, but that night, somehow, I got her attention with a book. And mine as well! It's a pretty great book.
.-. ( * )=> `-' I thought about drawing an elephant, .--'' \ but that was way too hard. So here is `-..____) a tiny bird instead. LL
To this day, it's still my most cherished memory with her.
January 30, 2025 5:52 PM
Orion and the Dark
Last year while I was visiting my family and we were flipping through different movies on Netflix, my six year old niece chimed in and said "I like this movie!" It was Orion and the Dark, and the rest of us had never seen it before so we decided to watch it.
The movie started off really strong, with Orion talking about his anxiety and his fears in a really creative way. He illustrates his fears in a journal and the movie does a great job animating his drawings. His biggest fear is the dark, and Orion meets a character that represents the dark itself.
.---. .====. .' '. / 00 \ : ; |`~~~~'| O '. .' _,.' '.\|/ `---` .' // `. / \ , . | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (() ()) ; ; .___________________.
Dark is actually a pretty cool character. The movie gives him a real personality, and he just wants to be understood. Later we also meet the "night entities", which kind of felt like Inside Out-lite to me. It turns into your typical adventure of overcoming fear and gaining a new friendship, but then at the end the movie gets kind of zany and there's a flying turtle and even time travel?!
We paused the movie at one point and saw that it was written by Charlie Kaufman, and we were like "of course".
Overall, I liked the movie. I thought that it spent way too much time on the night entities (I'm also not really a fan of Inside Out), and I got a little bored in the middle, but I thought the wackiness at the end was great.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After I watched the movie, I googled it, and I stumbled upon a copy of Kaufman's first draft of the script. I was curious how this compared to the final movie, so I read the whole thing.
I definitely laughed a lot more while reading this than when I watched the movie. Here, Orion is a huge movie buff and there are a lot of movie references. (I can totally see why that was mostly cut out of the final script though)
The night entities have a completely different vibe too. They're kind of weird, and they're a lot more interesting than how the movie portrays them. It felt like Kaufman's original vision for the entities was lost in the final script, which is a little disappointing.
The endings were also very different, but in this case, I actually prefer the way the movie ended. They are both a little zany, but the movie really honed in on Orion and Dark's friendship, while the original script was much more focused just on Orion at the end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But this wasn't an original story by Kaufman. His script is actually based on a picture book with the same name. And I love picture books, so I had to read it.
__ _ / \ |/_) *** __ | )| \ /| / \ |/\ \__/ | \/ :,\__/ | V _ _ s '*~., AND THE ,.~*' s ### ## ### # # # # # # # # #_# # # #==# ### # # ### # # # # # #
And it is such a well crafted picture book. There really isn't much to the story itself (no night entities, just the dark!) But the book absolutely shines with its illustrations and the way that the words are laid out. There is so much detail, and I made sure to pause and really look at all the parts of each page.
I also really like the way that color is used. Sometimes I just like looking at the pages with different shades of the night sky.
.-~--. .' `. . . . * * . . ) .., . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' .-*-. ' . ._.' .'.-~-.`.' ,. . : ^_^ ;(_,' . __ , '.___.'// | | | . /, \ | | | . //( *** / C___.' C___/ ^ lm lm
While the movie is enjoyable enough, if I'm going to recommend anything in this post, I'd say that you should read the book. I think it would make a great bedtime story.
January 23, 2025 1:56 PM
Sequence
I first played the game Sequence when I was in...high school maybe? I don't really remember when it was, but I remember that it was my aunt (on my dad's side) that introduced me to the game. We were having a little family board game night, and Sequence was nice because you could play it with a lot of people and it only took a few minutes to explain the rules.
Everyone is dealt a hand of cards, and on your turn you 1) put a card down, 2) place a chip on a spot on the board that corresponds to your card, and 3) pick up another card. You ultimately just have to get five chips in a row. If you have more than three players involved, it becomes a team game, but there's a twist. You don't know what cards your teammates have, and there is no table talk allowed.
.-~-. .' _ `. : )_( ; .-~-. '.___.' .' _ `. : )_( ; .-~-. '.___.' .' _ `. : )_( ; '.___.' The game comes with blue, green, and red chips
After we played it a few times, I was convinced that I wanted to buy myself a copy of the game, and I ended up bringing it with me to college. During my sophomore year, the school received a whole bunch of bomb threats and we were frequently evacuated from buildings. There was one night where I got evacuated from my dorm building, and I decided to bring my copy of Sequence to the other building that we had to go to. It was a good idea, because we were stuck there for at least an hour and my friends and I had a great time playing it.
I also have very fond memories of the night that I played round after round of Sequence with a boy that I had recently met. It was the night before I had a final math paper due, and I literally stayed up all night just playing Sequence with him! I ended up writing that paper the next morning and turning it in shortly before the 5pm deadline. I got a C+ in that class, and I had never felt so relieved just to pass a class.
,^. /\ _ _ _ / \ / \ _( )_ ( `V' ) (_, ._) \ / (_. ._) `. .' /_\ \/ /_\ " It also includes a double deck of playing cards
Along with introducing the game to friends, I also introduced it to my mom's family. And my mom was even more hooked than I was. We taught my grandma how to play, which was easy to do because it doesn't matter what language you speak. All you have to do is be able to identify playing cards on a board. My mom ended up buying several copies of the game, and she brought it with her on a trip to Germany to introduce it to even more relatives, and they all loved it too!
Sequence became my family's go-to game to play. We love to joke around and yell "No cahoot-ing!" at each other. We like it so much that we've bought different versions of the game, and we'll usually play with our set of Jumbo Sequence (which is honestly less jumbo than you'd think, compared to the size of the container it comes in). I think we've bought at least 10 copies of this game between all the different family members.
_______________________________ | ___________SEQUENCE__________ | ||@@|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|@@|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|()|__|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|()|()|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|()|__|__|()|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|| ||@@|__|__|__|__|__|__|()|()|@@|| |____________SEQUENCE___________| And a board! Each spot on the board has a card on it, but I can't really add all that in the ascii art
There was definitely a time in my life where I would have said that Sequence was my favorite board game. But as the years have gone by, that enjoyment has definitely waned. It's not really a game that has too much strategy involved. It really is mostly luck based. And after playing so much Sequence, I hit a point where I was just all Sequence'd out.
So every time I go home to visit family, there's a pretty good chance that we'll play Sequence at least once. At this point, it's something that the older family members enjoy a lot more. For us "kids", it's less about playing a fun game, and more about spending time with the rest of the family. So I'll still join for a few rounds, but I'm usually the one that has to tap out early.
I still have a copy of Sequence on my shelf. It mostly collects dust nowadays, but I don't think I could ever get rid of it. I don't think I'll ever be the one to suggest playing it, but it's good to have, just in case my mom is visiting and she really wants to play.
January 11, 2025 8:52 PM
The Day the Crayons Quit
Lately I've found that most books written for adults are just not that interesting to me. Picture books are where it's at. Because there are fewer words on each page, I feel like every word is so carefully crafted. Even the placement of the words is important. And the pictures matter. With a novel, you often have one place to potentially add an illustration and most of them have the most uninspired covers. So I wanted to make a blog post with a list of my favorite picture books, but I think that each book deserves its own post, so this will be the first of a new series of posts.
And because I quit my job yesterday, I thought it would be fitting to re-read one of my favorite books, The Day the Crayons Quit. I instantly loved this book when I first read it, and I love it every single time I re-read it. The words are hand written, and each crayon has a different personality.
\__/ __/ \__ \__/ / \ /\ /\ /\ /\ |==| |==| |==| |==| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | /\ | | | | | | | | |--| | | | | | | | | | | | | |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| |AA| '--' '--' '--' '--' '--' Blue is stubby because he gets used a lot
I think my favorite characters are the orange and yellow crayons. They both think they're the color of the sun, but I personally like to include both colors in my sun.
And don't worry, the colors do come back in the sequel. I highly recommend that as well!
January 5, 2025 3:07 PM
Baba Is You
I played Baba Is You for the first time a few years ago with Dan. He's really into The Witness and some people had recommended Baba Is You to him because it's also a fun puzzle game. I think I like puzzle games well enough. Unlike The Witness, I liked that the Baba Is You puzzles were just presented to you. I didn't have to go looking for them. The first several puzzles were easy enough and it was a nice, fun game, but it quickly got pretty hard. At some point, I think it was too much for Dan and he wanted to stop. But I didn't. I started a puzzle and I wanted to solve it.
I ended up buying Baba Is You for my own laptop, and then later I bought it again so I had something to play on my phone during plane rides.
_ _ | \ | \ __,....' \_' \_ .' _`. / _ (_) \ | (_) | ' ; \ / '. _ _____ _ .' / / | | | | \ \ ,,,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,'_',,'_',,,,,
Just a warning that this is incredibly long (well, not as long as the last entry) and there are potential spoilers ahead, but please continue if you want to read about my journey
Older >>