This post has nothing to do with basketball. I have no interest in the sport, either at the pro or the college level. I think I’ve attended two games in my life, a Texas A&M game when I lived in College Station briefly and a Rockets game many years ago. I find the sport monotonous and lacking in suspense. I caught the final minute or two of about three different contests last night while waiting for 60 Minutes to come on. My opinion wasn’t swayed.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Carol Burnett show up on Law & Order: SVU last week. Haven’t seen her in years. Her variety show was a staple of my childhood. Her performance reminded me of a toned-down version of one of the vampish characters she used to do so well during one of their sketches.
I’m a week behind on Breaking Bad. Yesterday I saw the one about Tuco and the guy in the wheelchair with the bell. Poor Walt keeps getting himself into a deeper mess all the time. It stands to reason that the series can only have a finite lifetime given Walt’s illness, so I wonder if they have an escape strategy.
I read the first hundred pages of Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day on Saturday. It’s set in 1918 Boston. The end of WWI is in sight, or so everyone thinks. Unions are starting to gain a foothold in unexpected places, like Major League Baseball (the two teams strike during the World Series over management’s decision to alter the payment agreement) and the Boston Police Force. The Spanish Influenza has just arrived with soldiers returning from Europe and is wreaking havoc on the nation. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can write historical fiction like this. It’s more than just doing the research, which is daunting in and of itself. It’s about living and breathing the era so that every day when you go to the computer you have 1918 oozing from your pores. Good book so far, even though I’m barely into it.
I polished off a number of items on my to-do list this weekend. I finished an essay for the 2010 Stephen King Library desk calendar that was due at the end of March, completed a brief interview for Richard Dansky, wrote a 1000-word piece for Steve Spignesi’s class, and worked on identifying photos for the photo researcher from the book packager, a process that took me far longer than I expected. I now have all of my March obligations in hand and the next deadline I face is April 15th. No, not taxes, those are already done and we have our refund. A couple of book reviews for Dead Reckonings.
