Got a little behind schedule this month, so my Storytellers Unplugged essay is a revised rerun: The Day Job. Originally posted in 2005, it is still as true for me today as it was back then.
We’ve had enough rain of late, including some decent showers today, to move out of the “extreme drought” category. I guess we’re just in “normal drought.”
Alas, the Houston Texans ended their impressive season with a not-so-impressive game last weekend. It would have been nice to see them go farther, but they did indeed go farther than anyone would have guessed before the season started. So kudos.
We watched another episode of The Sopranos this weekend. I’ve been told to stick with it, that it gets better. It’s okay so far, but it’s not exactly bowling me over yet.
Justified returns tonight and, by some lucky coincidence, I guess, Elmore Leonard’s new book, Raylan, is out today. I snagged a review copy last fall but held my review back until today. It’s a fun book, but it might take viewers of the show by surprise since many of the details of what happens in Raylan’s life and work are different.
I watched the two-hour premiere of Alcatraz last night. Poor Hurley, back on the island again, although this time he’s a PhD who is also a big fan of comics. Perhaps even a comic artist? I’m a little foggy on that detail. The score is very Lost and it shares a little bit with that show. A time-travel mystery of sorts, and flashbacks to the prison before it closed and this batch of prisoners vanished, only to reappear fifty years later. Sam Neill is good as the mysterious sort-of-FBI guy, and I like Sarah Jones as Rebecca, the SFPD cop who gets co-opted into Neill’s task force. The fact that her grandfather is one of the mystical prisoners adds to her motivation and the intrigue. I’ll be back next week, for sure.
I love the way BBC reinvented the Holmes story with Sherlock. Episode 2 of Season 3, not as much, but the finale, The Reichenback Fall, was fantastic. Of course, anyone who knows the Holmes stories get the significance of the title. Hell, even people who saw Sherlock Holmes 2 last month will. It’s related, closely, to the original, and yet it’s totally different. No trips to Switzerland for these guys. I think a lot depends on how much you like the depiction of Moriarty, which is quite outrageous. (Someone said on twitter that they found he talked too much like Graham Norton.)The concept of a fall from grace rather than a literal fall was a stroke of brilliance. It’s pretty convoluted, when you stop to think about it, and there was some sort of legerdemain involved at the end, but I was impressed. I might have been a touch more impressed if they had avoided the “reveal” in the final seconds (as they couldn’t avoid it in the Robert Downey film, either). I’ll bet there was a wonk somewhere who decided that you have to show him alive. But in “real life,” Doyle left his readers hanging for three years. Remains to be seen when we’ll see Holmes and Watson again. Moffat promises a third series, but the two stars have become hot properties of late. Martin Freeman said (on Graham Norton) that it was a part he could see himself playing for a long time, if the circumstances allow.
Until last night, I’d never seen a single episode of The Sopranos. Last fall I bought the Season 1 DVD set and we just got around to sampling it now. We watched the first two episodes. Interesting. Tony’s mother is a real piece of work. “He was a saint,” she says about his deceased father, though the reality was that he was something less than that. The notion of having him suffer from anxiety attacks requiring counseling is an interesting one. Has Lorraine Bracco always been such a terrible actor? I’ve been peripherally aware of her for years. She plays Jane’s mother on Rizzoli and Isles and she’s dreadful. Fortunately, her part on The Sopranos doesn’t require a lot of range from her, so she manages to stumble through, but there was one point in the first episode where it almost seemed like she’d forgotten the end of her line. The delivery was wretched. I have no doubt that we’ll go through the first season, but whether we decide to go on from there remains to be seen.
Making good headway on the work in progress. I see I have roughly 80 days before my deadline. That’s ok. I wrote all of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion in half that time so I should be in good shape.
That’s my Christmas gift over there, a recliner. The fact that it reclines is the least important aspect. See the way the back is recessed? The lower ridge supports my lower back, which has been causing me problems for a couple of years. When we watched movies, I spent a lot of time wriggling around to find a new comfortable position because the sofa didn’t have good back support. I tested this one out at the show room and it was perfect. We watched a movie on Saturday night and I didn’t budge the entire time. Simple pleasures.
Devoted my attention to a single writing project this morning and got a substantial amount of work done. I’m pleased.
The decorations came down and were packed away a lot faster than they went up. Less than two hours from beginning to end.
This’ll probably be my last blog entry of 2011. The time when people might traditionally be expected to write about resolutions. Not me. I don’t make them. Never have. I’m not exactly an introspective person. Sure, I meet deadlines and I schedule and plan things and stuff like that, but I don’t do resolutions. One day at a time, for the most part. I have to turn in a manuscript on April 1 and I will meet that goal, but I don’t resolve to do it. I’ll simply do it! I also have a 25,000-word novella to write in the first quarter of the year and I plan to do that, too. Again, not resolutions—simply plans.
Back to the real world again after a 4-day weekend. The week between December 19th and yesterday was the rainiest we’ve seen in eighteen months. We went out to the family service on Christmas Eve in a drizzle and it poured rain the rest of the evening. If it had been snow, it would have been a blizzard. We, of course, badly need the rain, but snow wouldn’t have been unwelcome (though my wife disagrees with that sentiment).
I have today off from the day job. In addition to my usual writing duties, I’m doing some domestic chores: I prepared a batch of dough for the breadmaker and I’m making chicken soup from the carcass (love that word–it’s in the recipe!) of a chicken. The smell of things cooking–how much more festive can it get?