I turned in my review of Ghost Brothers of Darkland County to FEARnet this weekend so you should see it in a day or two. I also posted reviews of Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh and The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King. I have a longer review of the latter in the forthcoming issue of CD magazine.
Got back on the elliptical trainer for the first time in several weeks this morning. When I was facing my book deadline, that extra half hour every morning seemed crucial. Probably was. The funny thing is that I fell back into the exact same cadence. I seem to have a natural 78-80 rpm thing going on. Probably dates back to my days when I used to cycle long distances. One bit of advice I received early on was to get a comfortable rhythm and adjust the gears to maintain it regardless of the conditions. It worked out quite well. I did a few century rides back in the day.
Quite a shift on Fringe this week, jumping forward 20 years. It was an interesting attempt to imagine what the world might look like that far in the future, but there were a couple of oddities. Broyles’ telephone still had a cord, and the Fringe team actually had to show papers of transit, instead of QR codes or smart phone displays. How retro. I knew from the moment she came on the screen who the young Fringe agent was supposed to be. Never doubted it for a minute. I like it that Walter became a bit of a jerk when the excised bits of his brain were restored—the very reason why those particular segments were taken out in the first place. I wonder if Leonard Nimoy gets paid for the show when he shows up trapped in amber?
We reached the episode on Season 4 of The Sopranos where Tony and Ralphie Cifaretto finally resolve their ongoing hate/hate relationship once and for all. The one about the horse stables. I never thought Ralphie would make it out of the first season he appeared in alive and all of a sudden he became a captain and a protected guy. Funny how these things work out.
A pleasant surprise at the end of this week’s Amazing Race. If there ever was a good example of a reason not to give up, that was it. The final place team has a lot of ground to make up, but airports can often be great equalizers. I wonder what the penalty would have been if a team had chosen to give up right from the beginning. Imagine getting a two hour penalty instead of spending four hours trying to get a dance routine right. It also looks like the cricket contest was easier than the taxi course, based on how the two teams that did it came in second and third.
I finally watched Ghoul this weekend, the Chiller TV movie based on Brian Keene’s novel. It wasn’t bad. I’ve quit a lot of low-budget horror movies in the past, but I stuck this one through to the end. Campy in places, and the acting was all over the map, but it was sort of okay. Most of the kids held their ground, especially the lead.
There’s a new show on the CW called L.A. Complex that is an import from CTV. I’ve been hearing good things about it so I checked out the pilot via OnDemand. It has sort of a Melrose Place vibe, but with a Canadian sensibility. It’s about a bunch of aspiring actors, singers, musicians and stand up comics who all live in a place called the Deluxe Suites. Hotel California it ain’t, but it’s cheap and they have great parties. The recognizable star is Jewel Staite from Firefly as the actress who was in a short-lived show called Teenage Wasteland that was canceled and is sort of a cult hit. Sound familiar? When anyone asks about it, her canned answer is “We had a bad time slot.” She’s reached an age when she has to insist she’s there for the younger parts, not the mother roles. Mary Lynn Rajskub has a funny guest appearance as herself, tormenting an aspiring comic who is about to bomb. When he mentions one of her famous sketches, she says with the straightest of faces that that was Mary Lynn Rajskub and that she is, in fact, Sarah Silverman. Later she and another comedian are at the bar and they give him career advice: play smaller rooms, like your apartment, or the bathroom, or a zero dimensional vortex. Another aspiring actress has a great audition and then ruins her chance by puking because she just took the morning after pill. She tries to salvage it but the director stops her with these words of wisdom: When there’s vomit on the piano, it’s time to stop the audition. They aren’t all failures. One guy has just gotten the lead in a new drama, but he’s plagued by insecurity. And another dancer almost makes the final cut as a dancer for a musician’s tour. The reality, though, is that so many things have to come together at the right time. They can be really good but just not what the director is looking for, as when Staite’s character tries to go for a part that is written to be a black woman. I’ll probably check this out again. It’s filmed and produced in Canada, with enough L.A. exteriors to make it seem credible, but more than a few “ehs” slip in.
