I got up at 5 a.m. UK time yesterday and caught the 6 a.m. bus from Brighton to Heathrow. Foggy, rainy morning, but it was cool to see all the sheep and lambs along the side of the road en route. Got to Heathrow before 9:00, waited through a long line to check in but had no issues. Had a nice British breakfast, bought a copy of The Daily Sun, paid £2 for 20 minutes of internet service and boarded at 11:00 a.m. Routine ten-hour flight with plenteous and decent food. No complaints.
Watched The Invention of Lying (Gervais is great, and the story went in a direction I didn’t expect from the trailers) and Everybody’s Fine (not bad but fairly routine and predictable), along with the classic Steve McQueen movie Bullitt. I know this is supposed to be an influential and groundbreaking film, but I don’t think it has aged well. It looks like a made-for-TV crime of the week show and boy does it ever drag. The entire movie could be easily condensed into a one-hour TV episode. The car chase was okay but overlong, and the foot chase through the airport was tedious. Best thing about the movie: Jacqueline Bisset, who I could watch all day, but she was underutilized.
When I got home, I found my Black Quill award certificate among the mail that arrived while I was in Brighton. Something else for the vanity wall! It’s a handsome document in a very smart cardboard folder.
To stave off jetlag, I forced myself to stay up. Caught up on Survivor (I can’t believe Russell gave away his immunity idol — that was a ballsy move) and Amazing Race (how hard can it be to fill a cart with coconuts and not drop any?). Castle did a good job of wrapping up a twisty, interesting case without falling into the predictable trap of having Beckett and Castle fall into each other’s arms after he saves her life — twice. They also managed to not go all serious during those precarious situations. The show isn’t meant to simulate how real people would act under such circumstances — it’s meant to follow the rules of who Castle is, and they stuck to their guns, so to speak.
I’m still catching up on correspondence — that may take a while — and organizing my expenses from the trip, but this is a short work week so I hope to be back at my routine schedule by the weekend.
The Innsmouth Free Press has a very nice review of Evolve.
