Even vultures can fly south for the winter

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Bev Vincent

Yesterday, I spent a little over an hour at the front of a classroom. My buddy Danel Olson invited me to speak to his Gothic class at a local college, something I’ve done once previously. It was a relatively small group, perhaps 16 students, but they seemed interested and engaged and asked good questions. Several of them admitted to being aspiring writers, and one was a musician. The latter asked if I ever got story ideas from dreams (answer: rarely, although I do sometimes work on story problems while I’m first going to sleep), because he sometimes came up with song fragments that way. Another asked how I went about researching weird story details without having people think I was weird or plotting a homicide.

I got up early on Sunday morning to watch Canada’s gold medal-winning hockey match. Well, I time-shifted it and stayed off social media, so it was almost like watching it live. Man, they played well. Hard to believe they’d only been a team for a couple of weeks. They played like they’d been together for years.

The PLRC check arrived yesterday, and the exchange rate wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I’ve made more money from When the Night Comes Down via the PLRC than I have from direct sales! And I only get fractional credit for that book since it has three other authors. PLRC is gearing up to handle eBooks in the future, which should be interesting.

I put up a couple of reviews: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris and The Chase by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. I liked the Ferris book well enough except it sort of fell apart at the end. The Evanovich book is the first by her that I’ve read (she writes the Stephanie Plum novels). It’s a check-your-brain-at-the-door frolic, which was a lot of fun.

A lot of crap went down on Justified this week. Most dramatically, Raylan issued a put-up-or-shut-up ultimatum to Art (treat me the way you always did or transfer me). I wonder what mayhem Raylan will get up to during his vacation to Florida. Boyd and Cousin Johnny finally had their reckoning. I loved their little tete-a-tete scene, sitting side by side revisiting the past. The Crows blew everything out of the water with their trigger fingers, though. What was up with that? And Wendy Crow getting all flirty with Raylan.

Then Ava made a risky move with the heroin traders in her prison, one that could come back to bite her given Boyd’s sudden problems south of the border. The bit with the one-legged hacker was pretty funny. Raylan half-liked the guy, wanted to be the one to catch him and bring him in. “What if I teach you how to be caller #7?” He was so proud of the fact that he cleaned out Raylan’s bank account, but I was wondering: how much could that be?

The Amazing Race is off and running. Really glad the annoying “twinnies” got eliminated. They were so determined not to repeat their former mistakes and then set about repeating them time and time again. And Survivor, too. I can’t believe J’tia survived not just one but two tribals after her dismal performances and then her outrageous behavior at camp. Both votes were something of a surprise, but the latter caught me flatfooted. Did not see that coming at all. I have a suspicion this is going to be a rainy season.

Rizzoli & Isles is back. It’s more than a little weird to still see Lee Thompson Young all these months later. And season two of The Americans got off to a good start, from the disastrous encounter with the Afghans at the beginning to the cataclysmic discovery in the hotel room at the end, which will no doubt have a far-reaching impact on the season. And poor old Stan. It’s hard to know which side Nina is really on, or if she’s on a side at all. Is there a degree beyond double agent? Triple agent?

And, finally, we get down to episode 6 of True Detective, which, according to Nic Pizolatto, is the end of the second act. All the cards are on the table and, in 1995, Marty and Rust have hit rock bottom in their relationship (that was one heck of a running tackle), while in the modern day it is just being rekindled. Now we know the reason for their falling out, and it’s sort of what we expected, but not quite. I love how Marty’s wife sat there lying to the cops and you could tell she wasn’t as good a liar as Rust and Marty, but she still got through it. It was sort of sad to learn that they didn’t really save that little girl from the meth farm, that she was mostly catatonic years later. One amusing set piece was the positioning of the little angel and demon figurines on the counter while Marty was indulging himself with Proctor’s niece from Banshee. Meanwhile, over on Banshee, the last guy she slept with got turned into hamburger…

Posted in Castle, Justified, NCIS, Rizzoli and Isles, Survivor, SVU, The Amazing Race | Comments Off on Even vultures can fly south for the winter

A curling stone gathers no moss

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Bev Vincent

Chilling Tales: In Words, Alas, Drown I received a very nice review from Publishers Weekly. It says, in part, “the prose itself is of a solidly consistent level, the work of professionals experienced at their chosen genre. Collectively, the authors prove expert at reinterpreting anxieties old and modern in ways carefully designed to entertain and horrify.”

Issue 14 of Dead Reckonings, the review journal to which I have been contributing for a number of years, is out now. Hank Wagner and I started doing conversational reviews in an earlier issue, discussing the book in question by email and then converting our dialog into something approaching a review. In Issue 14, we do this with Dan Simmons’ The Abominable. It’s fun having someone to bounce thoughts off, and Hank and I could talk about books all day long, and well into the night.

I’m really getting a kick out of  To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris. If forced to describe it briefly, I would say it’s like Dave Barry crossed with Umberto Eco, with maybe some Douglas Adams thrown in for good measure. How many people have to believe something happened before it is generally considered to be real? That’s one question the narrative poses.

The Public Lending Rights Commission cheques are starting to roll out from Ottawa. Canadian citizens get paid for having their books in Canadian libraries each year. It’s a nice little lagniappe. This year, the exchange rate is so dismal that I might hold onto the cheque for a while. Of course, it could get worse.

I don’t really pay much attention to the Olympic games, but when I do I have a favorite sport: curling. I know that sounds weird, but I really do enjoy watching the sport. Women’s curling, more specifically. I was able to find the gold medal contest between Canada and Sweden online this morning. By then it was into the 7th end and it was tied, so I listened to and watched the rest of it. Good game, and I was pleased, of course, by the way it came out. I do like hockey, too, but I haven’t managed to turn on the TV at the right time to see any of the games. Alas, the women seem to be trailing the US in the gold medal game this afternoon. Of course, since I’m a dual citizen I shouldn’t play favorites, but I can’t help myself. [Update: never write off the Canadians!]

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This is a world where nothing is solved

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Bev Vincent

On Friday, we went to see Gordon Lightfoot at the Cullen Performance Hall at the University of Houston. I’ve never seen him live before, but growing up in Canada, he was as omnipresent as snow and moose. The hall was pretty much full (about 1500 people), and there were a couple of people who probably haven’t received letters from AARP in the audience, but they were definitely in the minority. Lightfoot came out exactly on time with his four-piece band (bass, lead guitar, drums, keyboards) and launched into songs without any preamble. He did all the familiar ones plus a number I didn’t know. The guy is 75 years old, so he can be forgiven if his voice is a little reedy in the higher registers. A couple of people in the audience shouted at him between tunes (“We love you, Gordon”) to which he gave his standard response, “I love the work.” They took a 15 minute intermission but played for the better part of two hours. Then they got on a plane and headed back to Toronto. It was a nice way to spend Valentine’s Day.

I finished The Year of the Storm by John Mantooth and started To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris. The latter is a horror novel set in Alabama. Given the number of twisters in the story (and not all in the same year), it might have been called The Book of Storms. It is an excellent novel that I highly recommend. I’ve never read anything else by Mantooth, but I certainly hope to in the future. The Ferris novel just showed up on the doorstep last week. I don’t recall requesting it, though I suppose I might have gotten it via Goodreads. I knew nothing about the author, but I decided to give it a shot and I’m glad I did. It’s been a long time since a book has made me laugh out loud, and this one has several times, and I’m only a hundred pages in. The main character is a dentist, and he should by all rights be unlikable because he’s so self-absorbed, but his observations are amusing and his situation is getting interesting.

Last night’s Castle was a riff on Carrie, perhaps inspired by that viral video that was set in a coffee shop where everything went flying. King is name checked in the episode (Castle couldn’t wait to tell Stephen about the situation) and a copy of Carrie is found among the suspected telekinetic’s things.

There’s a trope in action movies that I despise. The hero (or anti-hero) meets up with his nemesis. The fight to end all fights is looming. To even the playing field, the hero sets down his weapons and they go at it mano-a-mano. He what? Why would anyone want to level the playing field in a fight to the death? I noticed (and objected to) this in Reacher and it happened again in last week’s Banshee. I was wondering why Hood didn’t shoot his adversary when the guy turned around to look at the car trunk, where he had a guy locked up. Instead, no, they had to go at it like macho men. With all the transports zipping past, I figured someone was going to end up in front of one. I was right, but not exactly in the way I thought it would happen. They conveniently didn’t mention how the transport driver felt about that.

People in Banshee seem to have anger management issues. Hood got into two melees this week. “That’s starting to be a thing,” Sugar observed. The young Hood should have listened to Sugar when he said that Lili was all kinds of trouble. Not the good kind, as young Hood claimed.  She and Procter have a disconcerting relationship, to say the least. And that Burton character (Proctor’s cleaner) is one weird dude. I wonder who’s at the other end of that whip. I can’t see how he possibly missed the watch, though. And the kicker of the episode: the diamonds Hood went to prison for were glass.

Only three True Detective episodes left and we now have some idea of what it’s all about. The interrogation room scenes have all been leading up to the fact that there’s a new murder in Lake Charles that looks like the old one from ’95, and the cops think Rust was behind it. Rust has been sly like a wolf: he knows about the murder and he’s been trying to see what the cops can tell him about it rather than the other way around. The fact that he’s been drinking beer the whole time makes anything he says inadmissible. Not that he’s learned much. Given that about 20 years have passed since the murder that got this ball rolling, the killer must be getting along in years.

Listening to Marty and Rust describe the scene at the meth lab as it played out was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. They made up a story to cover the fact that Marty popped a cap on the cook after finding the locked up kids. Rust covered for him, so their bond became tighter than ever. Remains to be seen what happened in the future to bust them up. Rust even had a girlfriend for a while, imagine that, and Marty’s wife let him go back home. For a second, when Marty’s kids were playing with that tiara that ended up in the tree, I was worried they were going to go after it and fall, given what Marty was talking about at the time. One of my favorite lines from the episode: Death created time to grow the things that it would kill. Rust thinks that we’re caught in an endless loop of repetition. Now where have I heard that idea before?

For anyone interested in delving deeper into the show’s mythology, The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is free for Kindle. This is a cobbled-together eBook that apparently has formatting issues, so caveat emptor.

Posted in books, Castle | Comments Off on This is a world where nothing is solved

Ice Cold — anthology release

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Bev Vincent

On April 29th, the MWA will launch its newest anthology, Ice Cold, edited by Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson. The launch party will be held at The Mysterious Bookshop in New York, starting at 6:00 p.m. Many of the contributors (alas, not me) are scheduled to appear, as well as many of the 2014 Edgar® Award nominees. Ice Cold, a collection of Cold War-themed short stories, will be available on April 1, and it contains stories from Joseph Finder, John Lescroart, Laura Lippman, J. A. Jance, T. Jefferson Parker, Sara Paretsky, Katherine Neville, Gayle Lynds with John Sheldon—and me. My contribution is called “The Honey Trap.”

We watched another couple of episodes of Michael Palin’s Full Circle last night. Watching him trying to wrangle a camel in northern Australia was pretty funny, but I was especially intrigued by the journey up the coast of Chile. I hadn’t realized the extent of the desert there. According to Palin, in some spots it has never, ever rained.

It’s funny how Art and Raylan “resolved” their issue on Justified. Sort of like a dysfunctional father and son. Raylan showed up at a bar where Art was drowning his sorrows, and the next day Art has a bandaged hand and Raylan has a black eye. Plus Raylan is feeling penitent, taking on drudge work like a kid who agrees to mow the lawn after getting in trouble. Speaking of trouble, Raylan and Rachel probably thought the Crowes and the Crowders were going to take care of each other—instead they’ve joined forces, and that won’t be good for the peaceful people in Harlan County. The unpeaceable ones, either. Darryl, at least, is pretty smart as well as fearsome. Danny is, as Raylan puts it, a “world class dumbass” who looks and acts like a reject from Duck Dynasty, even when he’s having “a good hair day.” Not smart enough to know that poking Raylan is not a good idea, but at least swift enough to play along with Carl’s explanation for why he was duct-taped to a chair in a remote cabin. Safe word, indeed.

And the hapless Dewey’s luck continues to be bad. Trying to sell off his dream (his above ground swimming pool that Raylan ventilated a few weeks ago) so he can get away. Then he ends up on the wrong end of the worst ransom phone call ever and skitters off into the woods when the law arrives. “I went to get help, but I got lost in the woods.” Again. And how much worse luck can Ava have than when the woman who was supposed to be looking out for her in the penitentiary is the one who kicks her ass and cuts her hair? Hopefully that lawyer can pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Speaking of Rabbits, this weeks Banshee was their trippiest episode ever. Also unusual in that Sheriff Hood got through the whole thing without getting beaten up once. True, he did get shot at in the midst of an awesome scene in a wheat field. Filmed from above, you could see the sniper’s trail through the grain and then Hood and Carrie converging on him. There were several fantasy sequences, especially the ones when Hood picked Carrie up and they both thought about how they wanted to behave toward the other and then the rather cool greeting they ended up with. Lots of quick time shifts and locations shifts that were somewhat disorienting. Just when Hood was planning his exit strategy from Banshee, things get complicated. Again.

In preparation for the second season, I re-watched Orphan Black. If you haven’t seen this series, you should. It’s as original as they come. A woman sees another woman jump in front of a train. Thing is, the woman looks exactly like her, so she decides to steal the woman’s identity to evade some personal trouble. Problem is, the other woman is a cop under investigation for a civilian-involved shooting. And then she finds out that there are other people who look exactly like her, more than just a few of them. And someone is trying to kill them. And someone else is monitoring and performing experiments on them. And Matt Frewer is in it. Can’t wait to see where they go next with the concept.

Posted in Justified | Comments Off on Ice Cold — anthology release

Six minutes in a stash house

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Bev Vincent

I posted two new book reviews this weekend:  Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto and Murder in the Ball Park by Robert Goldsborough. I really liked Galveston and intend to read Pizolatto’s recent short story collection soon. I’m currently reading The Troop by Nick Cutter, which is the pseudonym of Canadian author Craig Davidson. The book has been compared to Lord of the Flies, but it reminds me more of Dreamcatcher. Five 14-year-old Boy Scouts and their troopmaster are on uninhabited island off the coast of PEI when a man stumbles ashore and he’s infected with something ghastly and contagious. This isn’t a book for the queasy.

This week on The Walking Dead: Michonne walks through the woods and kills zombies. Carl is a spoiled brat. Rick is an ineffective leader. Original air date: every effing week. I did like the Michonne “flashback” and the closing line (“It’s for you”) was the funniest thing on the show in a long time.

I enjoyed the Grammy tribute to The Beatles last night. There were some excellent performances. I especially liked Jeff Lynne and Joe Walsh, with Dhani Harrison covering “Something.” The Eurythmics rebanded to do “Fool on the Hill,” which was not terrible. I thought Katy Perry was brave to take on “Yesterday,” and don’t quite get the flack over the fact that she changed the narrator’s gender to match hers. Dave Grohl was impressive, too, and his cute little daughter melted many hearts as she made a heart with her hands during his performance. The pièce de résistance, of course, was Ringo and then Paul and then Ringo and Paul at the end. I wasn’t old enough to remember the Ed Sullivan episode they first appeared on, but my sister bought all the singles and my father grumbled about John Lennon, who he pigeon-holed as a communist, so I was certainly aware of them from an early age.

That was an impressive piece of cinematography on last night’s True Detective. From the moment Cohle entered the stash house until he got into Marty’s back seat, there wasn’t a single cut. One continuous shot that lasted over six minutes. The director has a history of doing long shots (as in Jane Eyre), but this one covered a lot of territory and involved a lot of characters. It wouldn’t have taken much to mess it up. The camera even had to go over a wrought-iron fence at one point. It was breathtaking.

One of the more interesting aspects of this show is the fact that these two partners really don’t like each other. That’s been done before, of course, but never so effectively. I thought it was funny when Marty said to the guy in the lockup, referring to the prisoner’s former cellmate, “Gotta be tough living with someone spouting insane shit in your ear all day long,” looking at Cohle the whole time. Marty, the one who I formerly thought of as the saner partner, is now giving Cohle a run for his money. Not that he’s getting much sympathy from Cohle, which is understandable since Marty always cut Cohle off when he was talking before. Sons of Anarchy used to set the bar for gritty thuggery, but the bikers in this show would eat SAMCRO for lunch. They certainly made for a mangy looking bunch of cops. Cohle’s observation that the evidence locker “should have a better system than this” seemed a little self-serving. I did like Marty’s accusation that Cohle was “the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch.”

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Snowpocalypse 2014

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Bev Vincent

It’s a good thing they didn’t have a good handle on this morning’s weather or else everything in Houston might have been canceled again. As it turns out, we saw more winter precipitation at our house today than during the previous two events. My wife (and several others) referred to the precip as “dippin’ dots,” something with which I wasn’t familiar but apparently it’s some kind of ice cream treat. What fell was a combination of hail, sleet and snow that pebbled on top of things like our patio table. I heard it pinging against the windows a little after 7 a.m. and reports came in on Twitter from all around the Houston metro area. It didn’t last long, didn’t accumulate and appeared to cause few problems on the roads.

I finished Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto. Review forthcoming, even though it’s not a new book. I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading his recent short story collection. The novel has a bit of a Pelecanos vibe. Now I’m reading Murder in the Ball Park by Robert Goldsborough, his latest Nero Wolfe novel. I also posted my review of Killer by Jonathan Kellerman, the best Alex Delaware novel in a while.

The one-hour pilot of Bosch, the Amazon Studios adaptation of the Michael Connelly novels featuring LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch, is now streaming for free on Amazon. The plot is based on his novel City of Bones and the biggest shame of this is that the story isn’t wrapped up in the pilot. There are two main storylines. In one, Harry (Titus Welliver) is being sued in civil court over an alley shooting two years earlier. The LAPD could have settled, but Harry being the stubborn S.O.B. that he is, refused. By the end of the pilot, the jury has been selected and opening arguments presented. Because he’s bored to tears by the whole thing, Harry ends up getting involved in what could be a cold case. A doctor (Hershel from The Walking Dead) finds the humerus of a child in the woods behind his place. The forensic pathologist (an excellent Alan Rosenberg from L. A. Law) figures it was a little boy who was terribly abused. Bosch also has time to get involved with a “new” beat cop played by Annie Wersching from 24.

I never had a preconceived notion of what Harry Bosch looked like, or if I did I thought he looked like Michael Connelly (who has a subtle cameo in the pilot), so I’m rolling along with Welliver (the Man in Black from Lost), who seems to have the character down cold, including a jaw muscle tremor thing. It’s all shot in L.A. and the scenes at the homicide division were actually filmed in Hollywood Station, with real officers and real perps in the background. It all looks really good, including the rainy scene at the beginning. Bosch’s house is something I’d envisioned before and the location they got for it is perfect, as is the ambiance of the jazz music when he’s at home. The show is off to a good, strong start and I hope it gets picked up as a series. Since this is streaming, you’ll find more than your fair share of the word which you’ll never hear on Sons of Anarchy, even, so it’s TV-MA. Check it out at the link above.

There were a lot of developments on this week’s Justified. First off we got Alan Tudyk from Firefly playing Theo Tonin’s guy. He’s out to figure out who knows what about Sammy’s murder, so he shoots a Canadian (after tossing a toonie his way) and, later, shows up with a shotgun / submachine gun combo which is one of the most awesome weapons I’ve ever seen. He gets into a verbal joust with Art (“I got a friend in Jesus and I support youth baseball. Whatever you’re selling, not buying.”) and a standoff in a diner during which Wynn Duffy tries to defuse tensions by asking if anyone minds if he orders his meal. Showdown ensues with Raylan saving the day and advising Art to spend some time on the firing range. I did not think the episode was going to end well for Art. Any cop who is fixin’ to retire generally has a bad day coming. I guess Raylan’s subtle confession at the end qualifies.

Then there’s Boyd’s way of settling his problems, which includes faking Paxton’s suicide and hiring a terminally ill coal miner to take care of the hinky sheriff. All’s for naught, though, because the midget stormtrooper at Ava’s jail throws a major monkey wrench into the works. And then there’s the Haitian, who challenged the Crowe brother who looks like an outcast from Duck Dynasty. Everyone thought he was going to be more of a player this season but I guess no one could figure out to do with him, so they did to him what you do to characters you can’t figure out anything to do with. And then there’s Boyd and Hot Rod and Johnny and Hot Rod and Hot Rod’s guys vs. Johnny and Hot Rod’s guys vs. Hot Rod. Lots of switch-ups to keep things interesting there. And finally there was Dewey’s existential angst. An oddly filmed scene that took a while to reveal its composition completely. Dewey giving away his most prized possessions (they weren’t exactly appreciated by their recipients) does not bode well for his mental state. Another good season so far.

One of the frustrating things about plots like last night’s Criminal Minds is that if someone is kidnapped so the thugs can extract their passwords from them, and people know why they’ve been kidnapped, why not just change the codes. I know they tried to hand-wave it way with mumbo-jumbo, but I didn’t buy it.

Posted in Criminal Minds, Justified | Comments Off on Snowpocalypse 2014

Superb Owl

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Bev Vincent

I did a little bit of writing this weekend, but mostly I read. I finished Nemesis by Jo Nesbø, the fourth of the Harry Hole books, and Killer by Jonathan Kellerman, the upcoming Alex Delaware book, one of the better ones in a while. Then, after watching the first few episodes of True Detective, I decided to check out the novel Galveston by the series creator, Nic Pizzolatto. The book was nominated for an Edgar and has recently been optioned for a movie. When I went to the book’s Kindle page, I discovered two things: One, that it’s on sale for $2.99 and two, that I’d purchased it in July 2010 but had never read it. I’m reading it now.

Pizzolatto counts among his influences Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron, John Langan, Simon Strantzas and Karl Edward Wagner. The book starts with the protagonist, a bag man living in New Orleans, being diagnosed with lung cancer. His day gets worse after that and he finds himself on the run with a woman young enough to be his daughter. Running toward Texas, as it happens. Both he and the young woman are from East Texas, but neither ever aspired to return there. I came across this passage: “An army of empty High Life cans covered the floor around the chair–an actual army, because I’d used a knife to cut little strips out of the can sides so that they folded down, like arms, and I’d pulled the tops upright to resemble heads.” That should ring a bell with anyone who’s been keeping up with True Detective. (see image)

I watched a couple of games yesterday while I was reading. The first was the hockey game between Detroit and Washington, which ended up being a high-scoring contest that ended in overtime. Then I watched the Big Game, as people who aren’t licensed to use the words “Super Bowl” call it. I didn’t watch any of the lead up to the game, though. As Dave Barry said, “Looking back, I believe the biggest problem with the Super Bowl was not enough pregame analysis.” Some of the commercials were good (I liked the Radio Shack one about the 1980s calling with cameos from many of the decade’s “icons”) but the game was a rout. When I saw Peyton Manning on the phone about 10 minutes in, I figured he was calling for a pizza, which would have been a really bad idea seeing as how there was a big game on at the moment, something he didn’t seem aware of. Either that or he was calling for a taxi or, according to one meme, his mother.

I ordered my pizza online at noon to be delivered at 5:00, which worked out well. The guy showed up at the door right on time.

The half-time show was good. We first saw Bruno Mars on an episode of Graham Norton and were impressed. I was hoping, though, that they stress tested that stage before everyone started hopping around on it. Having it collapse would have have been a bad scene.

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Winter Isn’t coming

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Bev Vincent

Call it the snow-flop-aclypse.

On the weekend, they were predicting we’d get 2-4″ of snow yesterday. The closer we got to the appointed hour, the less sure the forecasters were about what would happen. I woke up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and looked out the kitchen window, hoping to see flurries or, even better, a light coating of snow on the lawn. Alas, no.

That didn’t stop the city of Houston from canceling everything—the day before, just as they had at the end of last week. Schools, city services, courts, everything shut before there was the hint of a drop of precipitation. Friday had been a mess. Tuesday, not so much. True, after I drove into work, the temperature did fall below freezing and there was some sleet that people tried to tell themselves was snow. I don’t know if there’s a word for what they created out of the frozen rain. Sleetmen? Can’t blame people for trying. Still, there was nothing near the traffic problems that we saw on Friday and, alas, no snow.

I started watching The Americans, the FX series starring Keri Russell (Felicity), Noah Emmerich, Richard “John Boy” Thomas and Margo (“Mags Bennett”) Martindale. It’s about a couple of embedded KGB agents living near Washington in the early 1980s. They’re living as a married couple, have two kids. It’s interesting to be re-immersed in the Cold War. One episode takes place around the Reagan shooting. The FBI is trying to figure out if the Russians were somehow involved and the Russians are trying to figure out if the Americans think they were involved. Tense times. There are two other complications: the two spies are starting to fall in love with each other, and an FBI agent (Emmerich) and his family move in across the street. Also, the spies have to sleep with a lot of people as part of their espionage, so that complicates their relationship. It’s quite good. I should be up to speed by the time the second season starts at the end of February.

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Winter Re-mix

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Bev Vincent

Apparently last Friday’s “winter storm” was nothing compared to what we’re supposed to get tomorrow. It was over 70° yesterday, in the sixties today and tomorrow we’re supposed to get 2-4″ of snow. Friday’s storm shut down a lot of Houston because of ice on the overpasses and bridges, but there was no accumulation on the ground elsewhere, which meant I was able to drive around the community without problem. Tomorrow might be a different story. We have had snow a couple of times during my 25 years in Texas, but it is a rare thing. School districts are already cancelling classes for tomorrow. And it’s still 60° out.

I read Megan Abbott’s next book, The Fever, this weekend. It was inspired by a real story about a bunch of teenagers who all came down with a mysterious set of ailments. It’s a fairly brief novel, one that I might almost describe as a mystery. The main characters are the father, son and daughter from one family: the father is a teacher at the school where his kids are students. Another fine book, her follow up to Dare Me. I have a full review written, but the book isn’t out until June, so I’ll hold it back for a while.

I finished the first draft of the new short story. Came in at 4000 words. Sent it off to a friend to peruse while I revise it. Surprisingly, the second draft is also 4000 words. I changed a few things around and tightened up the language some, but I didn’t cut my usual 10%, and I’m not sure why that is.

We watched Captain Phillips this weekend. I already knew quite a bit about the movie, but I was still surprised by how much of it takes place in the escape pod. It’s an adrenaline rush, very chaotic at times. I thought that it would inspire more sympathy for Muse, the Somali pirate, but other than an introductory scene where we see how he and his people are gang-pressed into action, and a few bits of commentary, I didn’t really feel all that bad to him. It takes more than a character saying he had few choices for me to believe that to be the case. Maybe it’s true, but I didn’t get that necessarily from the film.

Having finished Pole to Pole, we’re now going Full Circle with Michael Palin as he embarks on a year-long trip to the countries the border the Pacific. Quite an undertaking.

Episode 3 of True Detective continues a strong story. Just when I had assigned Woody Harrelson’s character the role of the better adjusted of the duo, he goes off the deep end with his girlfriend, so he has his dark side, too. The juxtaposition of him threatening her date while in the present he talked about how having a family gave his life balance was well done. And then there was the bit about “don’t you mow my lawn. I enjoy mowing my lawn.” Okay, so maybe that was a little bit of a euphemism? And we enter Twin Peaks territory at the end with the guy in the gas mask. What? At least he wasn’t carrying a log.

Okay, so I’m a bit out of it when it comes to the latest in music. I know who Lorde is, and Robin Thicke, and even Pharrell Williams, up to a point. I’ve heard of Daft Punk but I had no idea they were Boba Fett’s long lost cousins. Why is it that Lady Gaga gets grief for her weird get-ups and these guys, not so much. Hardly anyone blinked an eye. I think we writers are missing out on a good gig: wearing eccentric getups. Imagine the street cred John Grisham would get if he wore a Darth Vader helmet to book signings. Ringo’s performance was fun. I hadn’t heard the new Paul McCartney song, which sounds a lot like other recent McCartney songs. Hadn’t heard of Kacey Musgraves before, even though she’s from the neck of the woods, but I couldn’t help but think that, boy, the themes allowed in country music sure have changed (and for the better). I think someone slipped quaaludes into the Highwaymen’s drinks, but there were some good performances. Watching the Grammy’s is like a refresher course in what’s going on in music these days that I’m somewhat oblivious to.

So how many times did Sheriff Hood take a beating this week in Banshee? At least two, maybe three. The trouble with taking on someone else’s identity is that someone from the other person’s past might show up. And the problem with assuming the identity of a sheriff is that occasionally you have to try to solve crimes, which puts you up against some bad people, the kind that tasers don’t knock down. It’s such a ridiculously over-the-top show, but I like it.

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Winter mix

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Bev Vincent

I know it doesn’t sound like much to people from northern climes, but we are under a “winter storm” warning (or a “winter mix,” as they’re describing it) for the next day or so. They’ve already started spraying the bridges with MgCl2 and the bad weather hasn’t even started yet. Some places not too far north of here might get 2″ of snow and Houston itself could see ½” of freezing rain, sleet or snow. Cool.

I’m near the end of the first draft of the new short story. I know how it’s all going to play out, more or less. Just need to write it. This is one of those cases where I dream/think my way through the next scene early each morning before I start my writing session.

Yesterday, I went to a community association presentation by two representatives of Homeland Security Investigations, which is the investigative branch of the Department of Homeland Security under the auspices of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE). The community has organized a bunch of these crime-related presentations. Last year I saw a couple of U.S. Marshals and next month it will be someone from the DEA. Always useful information for some future writing project. HSI has a lot of programs that deal with any number of different legal fronts, so it was interesting to hear what all they do, which is much more than most people might think. The most entertaining part of the presentation, though, was watching the two presenters patiently deal with the guy in the back row, a middle-aged man who queried them about several conspiracy theory topics. “I read in an article that…” kind of things that were vaguely out there. RFID implants, mass seizures of phones and tablets at border crossings, things like that.

If I was from New Jersey, especially if I worked in law enforcement in that state, I don’t think I’d be very happy about this week’s episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Boyd sure is juggling a lot of plates in Justified this season. He has to get Ava out of trouble, deal with Paxton, deal with Mooney, deal with Darryl and Dewey, deal with his Johnny, deal with his drug sellers. Have I left anything out? Raylan has it fairly easy going so far, other than the baseball-bat wielding guy with a grudge. Looks like he’s going to get to stay in the big house with the bowling alley for a while longer. The one-on-ones in the series are so good. Boyd and Raylan, Raylan and Art, Raylan and Wynn Duffey. Verbal sparring matches that are so much fun.

True Detective looks like a winner. Who would have guessed that the crazy one in a pair of cops played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson would be the former and not the latter. Harrelson’s cop is fairly straight-up, although I wouldn’t mind if someone told him to stop acting as if he had a mouth full of chewing tobacco all the time. The show takes place in two time periods: the mid-1990s, when Harrelson and McConaughey first team up in homicide to investigate a murder that looks ritualistic, and many years later, when a couple of agents are grilling them individually to rebuild the case files about the murder (murders?) lost in Hurricane Rita. This isn’t a standard Q&A—McConaughey and Harrelson are free to reminisce at length, and they do. It’s a slow burn, but it’s fascinating story telling and impressive characterization. Apparently this season will tell their story completely. If the series returns in the future it will feature different characters. (What was with the owl in the rafters of the burned-out church, anyway?)

Banshee is back for a second season. I don’t hear many people talking about this one. It’s more of a guilty pleasure. Not nearly as thoughtfully constructed as other, higher-profile series. It is uber-violent and there is a lot (a lot) of sex. Some call it soft porn. The first episode of the first season started with a guy getting a big gaping hole shot through the palm of his hand. It’s over the top, and the continuity folks must go crazy trying to keep track of what cuts, bruises and other injuries Sheriff Hood needs to be sporting at any given moment. Hood (not his real name) is an ex-con who served 15 years for his part in a jewel heist. He ends up replacing the recently deceased guy who just arrived in Banshee, PA to be the new sheriff. No one knew what Hood looked like, so the identity theft went off without a hitch. Banshee, with its Amish component, should be a quiet little burg, but it’s far from that. You don’t have to think too deeply when watching the show. The plot stumbles along from one violent confrontation to the next. Last week, one of the town cops beats her ex-husband to within an inch of his life with a Gideon Bible, and that was just the fourth or fifth set-to in the episode. The investigation into the massive confrontation at the end of season 1 serves as a brilliant recap, I thought. A good way to refresh the memory about what happened.

Posted in Justified, SVU | Comments Off on Winter mix