Decided to wait another day before submitting the essay. I made some more changes to it this morning and want to do at least one more complete readthrough before sending it off.
I received an encouraging e-mail from an editor of an anthology that has one of my longer stories in submission. It wasn’t an acceptance letter, but it was the kind of question that one would only be asked if the story was under serious consideration. Fingers crossed. I think the decisions will be made sometime within the next two weeks.
Why did no one tell me how good Styx’s 2003 album Cyclorama is? The band has been one of my favorites since the 1970s, but they sort of fell off my radar after Edge Of The Century, which was okay but not overwhelming. I stumbled upon Cyclorama last weekend and I think it’s great. Right up there with the best of their albums. Probably heresy, but I tended to favor Tommy Shaw over Dennis DeYoung, and Shaw’s vocals are fantastic here.
The new Chelsea Cain novel, The Night Season, was delivered to my Kindle overnight. Looking forward to finding time to tear into it. I liked her first few books.
I understand why they chose to end this week’s How I Met Your Mother the way they did (though I could have done without the fake-out). Barney has to remain Barney for the show to continue the way it is, just like Ted can’t meet his kids’ mother until they’re ready to end the show. Still, it would have been nice if the brief fantasy had been his reality.
I’m still on the fence about the whole House/Cuddy thing. The relationship has helped him grow (the mariachi band was inspired, and even fooled Wilson), but now he’s getting soft. Drinking away his sorrows (not a good thing for a drug addict, one would think) and proclaiming his undying love. Cuddy didn’t look terribly happy, but maybe that was a combination of him skipping out on her award banquet and showing up drunk at the door. Or maybe it was Cuddy the hospital administrator realizing that her relationship means that her top doc is putting business (big business) seconds. I take it that Masters isn’t going to be around long. She never really seemed to fit into the equation. What are the odds that Olivia Wilde will ever return to the show? Nice opening scene, though, where it seemed like the patient of the week was cleaning up the evidence of a crime.
Poor Castle. He and Beckett share near-death experiences twice in one day, and Josh shows up both times to take the wind out of Castle’s sails. It did seem, though, that Beckett had a lot running through her head during that last clinch with her wandering boyfriend. Was it just me, or did anyone else think: Dead guy’s wearing clothes. I mean, sure, that’s icky, but if you’re freezing to death, wouldn’t you try anything to stay warm? That plastic sheet they covered the corpse with might have helped a bit, too. Favorite line resulting from that sequence: “I’m glad my stupidity is so predictable,” he tells Ryan and Esposito (I’m starting to remember their names and know which one is which!) after they come to the rescue. Second favorite: “If someone tries to sell you on cryogenics, say no.”
The scene where Beckett e-mails photos of the bomb to Fallon (why does that guy look so familiar? The only show I know of that he used to be on is Judging Amy, and that was a long time ago) reminded me a lot of that new cell phone commercial where a bunch of people in a carpool all get the same multimedia message at the same time and one guy laughs long before the others get the thing downloaded. Manhattan’s at risk and the DHS doesn’t have 4G? As the clock got close to zero, I thought it was going to misfire or something, which wouldn’t have been a satisfying resolution to the situation. Castle’s solution, grabbing all the wires and just yanking, was inspired. What did it matter if he was wrong? They were dead either way. “I figured one of them had to be the right one,” he says later. When talk of commendations and congratulations comes up, Beckett says: “I was just doing my job. I don’t know what the hell he was doing.”
