Wedding in Yosemite
Whew - back from a loooooong drive to and from Yosemite, as well as to and from the chapel from the hotel. All in all a good weekend. Recap:Left for Yosemite on Friday noon, picking up Matt and Helen in LA on the way. Stopped for gas once and stopped for Sonic food. Increased overall mass in the car by 600%. Gas mileage suffered.
Hung out in Matt and Helen's room that night with Steph, TJ, a 6 pack of Mike's hard alcohol, a bottle of raven wood red wine and 2 bottles of cheap wine (read: booooooones!). Mental note: Mixing that crap wine with Mike's isn't half bad.
Hung out with Steph and Helen's old roommate along with her 3 kids at another greasy restaurant. Good, but grease is starting to get old at this point. Met TJ's S.O. as well. I should probably mention that we managed to stuff the trunk of my car with TJ in it. He makes such a good trunk pet. Need to remember to do that again (come 'ere TJ! Let's go for a drive!). He he he he.
Quickly drove back to the hotel, we all got changed very fast, and then the 1.5 drive to Yosemite on wet roads. Go All wheel drive! (wet curvy road test: check!)
Chapel was nice. Although the view of big walls was a little distracting - nearly missed the entire wedding b/c I was so distracted. With it being in the Valley, it was a beautiful drive out there. Fortunately, the wedding was not interrupted by mauling Yosemite bears. Always a good sign when the bride and groom don't end up dead before they leave the chapel doors.
1.5 hour drive to reception where we all proceeded to get drunk. again.
next day: 6:30 am wake up call so we could all head into the Park and enjoy a hike or two. We didn't get mauled by bears either so that was cool. Saw midnight lightning. That is haaaarrrrdddddd. Matt and I posed infront of it for the memories... Drove back in good time - managed to watch snow fall in yosemite too. That was raaad.
posted by Obi at 7:08 AM
1 Comments:
"Wedding in Yosemite"
A magnificent post marred by atrocious spelling
3.5 out of 4 stars
Well, it's late April, and we all know what that means, a blog entry from beloved Japanese-American-mongrel blogger James "Jimmy Fingerpads" Obayashi. His latest blog features a review of a recent wedding James attended.
It begins simply enough with an exhalation designed to draw the readers in. We can relate because we often exhale. This is followed by an unexpected but delightful flashback to a weekend which we are led to believe is "good." Fans of Obayashi will recognize the irony.
Is this a comedy? Many critics have lamented Obayashi's low brow, toilet humor style, in which cheap wine becomes "crap wine". I find these everyman terms to be refreshing in an industry where, let's face it, too many bloggers pretend to be better than non-bloggers. I'm not naming names (stephaniemaryhoffman.blogspot.com).
Perhaps the most poignant moment in Obayashi's blog occurs the second time he eats fast food. He writes, "Good, but grease is starting to get old at this point." I sensed his need to improve his diet, which I felt was symbolic of man's desire to grow. In classic Obayashi style, the conclusion to his gastronomical needs was left open-ended. The kind of Lady or the Tiger ambiguity that has one scratching his/her chin long after the reading is complete.
And notice how he skips over the details of the wedding. He doesn't bore us with endless description. In fact, he uses the absence of bears to create a sense of tension. I for one wondered whether this was foreshadowing a bear encounter several paragraphs later. I was not disappointed.
"We didn't get mauled by bears either so that was cool." Would this line have worked so well without Obayashi's previous absence-of-bears reference? I doubt it. And notice how he reverses a popular cliche. He takes the ferocious animal, the bear, and draws out sympathy for it. Where are all the bears I asked myself. And then I realized it--Obayashi is making a commentary on man's domination over nature. Why else would he set the wedding in Yosemite? Notice, too, how the characters are constantly trying to drown themselves in alcohol in an attempt to lessen the pain they experience over the lack of bears.
If there's anything that really detracted from this blog, I feel it was the constant spelling mistakes. I'm not sure who edited this, but let me provide some examples:
long does not have 6 o's.
bones does not have 7 o's, unless he's trying to say boons, in which case it also does not have an e.
haaaarrrrdddddd?! This was just an absurdly terrible rendition of hard. 4 a's? 4 r's? 6 d's?!
rad has just 1 a.
This kind of sloppyness lessened an otherwise brilliant masterpiece.
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