Lost weekend

I spent much of the weekend watching Lost on DVD. I first turned to the extras disk, which had lots of cool background information about the series as it evolved from the germ of an idea (Castaway — the series) into what we know from last year. Then I started at the beginning and have worked my way through the first eight or nine episodes. The next one I have to watch is All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues. I’m still noticing a few things as I go along that I missed previously.

I also watched the final six episodes of The Dead Zone TV series, season four. I think the series is starting to wear on me a little. I think they should start addressing the Armageddon issue before little JJ is old enough to go to university. It’s still entertaining, but I think it’s getting close to wearing out its premise.

It wasn’t a bad weekend for getting things done, the above notwithstanding. I got my next CD column in shape to be submitted on Thursday, wrote a review of To Charles Fort, With Love for CD #54, wrote a 1000-word essay for a writing book, did two rounds of revisions on a short story that was tentatively accepted a month ago for an anthology. The editor’s requested changes were fairly mild, so it didn’t take long to address them. I hadn’t read the story in a couple of months, and I was pleased with what I read to the extent that I made very few unsolicited changes to the manuscript. I still have some work to do on the writing essay and will probably have some last-minute additions to the CD column, but I’m pleased with what I accomplished. I’m really pushing to clear my desk for a couple of weeks so I can make some more progress on Missing Persons revisions.

Stephen King’s Gotham Café won awards for Best Director, Best Actor (Chaney Kley), Best Special Effects and Best Cinematography at the 2005 Festival of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural in Las Vegas. I’m pretty impressed and pleased, because short films and features competed head to head instead of being in separate categories.