Thursday, October 21, 2010

Labels

On our recent excursion to the wine country, we visited this small winery in the Russian River Valley appellation. Its name is Christopher Creek. It was a surprise to find one of the wine makers actually graduated from Texas A&M! Texas and California are not really all that dissimilar when it gets to the country side. But the point of this post is not about the wine or the winemaker but about the labels in the wine bottles.

See, I know nothing about typography or labeling. Bu Didi will be the best judge of those, she is one helluva an amazing designer. Anyway, the labels on the Christopher Creek wine bottles are very catchy, at least to me. It has this Russian icon art feeling to it. It was an eye pleasing change to their old labels I found as our wine guy showed one of their old bottles. Labels are getting too generic these days.

Evidence A, on the left is the internet picture of 2006 Petite Syrah label Trish (Bibi's sister) gifted us. On the right, the old label I found randomly from internet.




















See what I'm saying?

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Eat This, Bibi!

My flightless avian spousal unit/sidekick and I love thriller political drama movie. All hell breaks loose when we watched The Ghost Writer the first time this past Saturday. We just could not help to watch it again two more times within the next 24 hours. Note: those two more times watching were with caption turned on for greater clarity.

In between times of the day we were not concentrating on the movie, we both turned to IMDB for its user forum using our respective laptops. Hubbostrich kept yelling stuff at some of the posts, while I kept my cool and reading. The next morning, he even started his day perusing more postings on the movie. Yes, he was totally fixated. Everything about the movie fascinates him but the story line, the parallel to real world politics, the characters, and the ending got his most attention.

The highest point to me about this movie was this dialogue between Hubbostrich and yours truly. I was laying down in the sofa with my laptop munching on some chocolate while Hubbostrich was getting all worked up by his passion for the movie. If we were to connect an EEG machine to him, we could probably see his brain operating at its fullest capacity.

Hubbostrich: "See, they needed to hire a smart ghost writer. They are not going to hire you [pointing at me], they are going to hire me [pointing at himself]."

I: "What? Are you saying you're smarter than me? [Proceeding to choke him.]"

Hubbostrich: "Ouch, stop, you're hurting me."

All I am going to comment is that a smart person should never proclaims his/her smartness because you know there is somebody who is smarter than you and you will be left feeling foolish about yourself. Furthermore, the nature of our relationship as man and wife is best left to the character of Maria Portokalos, "The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants."

All in all, we both really love the movie and that is all that matter.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Sing with Me

We were driving on Highway 101 back from Los Angeles to Santa Clara Sunday night. As we cruised along the coast, moon light was reflected in the Pacific ocean. Together with the dark they cascaded an undescribable feeling.

The thing about being on a road trip is you get to think about anything and everything to the point that it is therapeutic. A big plus if in the background you have songs that further enable that kind of cerebral yet sentimental moment. One of these songs for me is Aerosmith's Dream On. Sing with me...


Every time I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It goes by, like dusk to dawn
Isn't that the way
Everybody's got their dues in life to pay

Yeah, I know nobody knows
where it comes and where it goes
I know it's everybody's sin
You got to lose to know how to win

Half my life
is in books' written pages
Lived and learned from fools
and from sages
You know it's true
All the things come back to you

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Yeah, sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away

Dream on Dream on Dream on
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream on Dream on Dream on
Dream until your dream comes through
Dream on Dream on Dream on
Dream on Dream on
Dream on Dream on

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away
Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away...