Down the rabbit hole

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Bev Vincent

I sort of relaxed and got caught up on things over the long weekend. Does signing ~1000 signature sheets count as relaxing? I did them while watching recorded TV shows, so it wasn’t too taxing. They’re for the revised and expanded second edition of The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book. Got ’em all done over the course of about five hours and forwarded to Glenn Chadbourne. I also reviewed the editor’s comments and, subsequently, the page proofs for “Sitting up with the Dead,” my contribution to the Appalachian Undead anthology.

On the reading front, I finished Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (dark novel with a twisty ending) and got back to The Twelve by Justin Cronin. He’ll be appearing in Houston on October 30 for a “block party” event. He reads from the book at two nearby bookstores and then migrates across the street to a pub for a signing. Sounds cool. If I lived in Houston proper, I could probably go to a signing a week at Murder By the Book, but 35 miles is enough of a hurdle to keep me from going often. I’ll make an exception for this, I think.

Cool Lost reference of the week. On Grey’s Anatomy, Bailey says (while in the back of a cargo plane), “I keep thinking that we’re gonna crash on some tropical island and get attacked by a polar bear.” Webber doesn’t get what she means. “You should watch more TV.”

Watch TV I did. Two episodes of Castle. I like the way they’re handling the romance. First, they dealt with the death of the weather girl and everything about the case made some commentary on secret inter-office romances. (Loved the scene where Castle was playing around in front of the green screen.) Glad to see the other “romance” on the show, Ryan and Esposito, got back on track when they reached a detente. Then the development of the secret handshake as a replacement for kissing in public. You just know they’re still going to be laughing about that when they’re 85, assuming they’re still together. I knew the figurine was going to be the key in last night’s episode, but they pulled a fast one by bringing in the twin, too.

They’ve played around a bit with the formula of Major Crimes. When I saw Tao with a mustache in last week’s episode, I thought they were going too far! But re-investigating the old case after the accused was set free was interesting, as was the idea that the team went on a wild goose chase, solving the identity theft case from Las Vegas, only to discover that it had nothing to do with the homicide. Funny how they ditched the “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” case on LV and elsewhere so they wouldn’t have to spend time unraveling all the false identities. The angry kid, though—he’s gotta go.

I was wondering whether a motorcycle could actually withstand being struck by a vehicle going in the opposite direction without spilling, the way it happened on Sons of Anarchy last week. Gemma has been the instigator of her fair share of cat fights this season. I actually feel like Wendy’s getting a raw deal. At least the most recent cat fight will help Nero distance himself from Gemma, as agreed. Those guys send each other off like Vikings.

Speaking of cat fights, is there an equivalent term for when two different agencies (CBI and FBI) get into a public squabble? I figured out the lottery angle on last week’s episode early on. There were too many flashes of ads for it. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it would have to do with that big jackpot. Did I miss something or did Patrick somehow put that red marble in the FBI agent’s pocket? I liked this week’s episode, too, with the hallucinogenic daughter telling him to get over his obsession with Red John. Hopefully he won’t keep trying more belladonna to try to recreate that experience. It was a little bit like Alice through the looking glass for a while. The bit at the end where they faked out the killer by pretending she was hallucinating was a bit wonky. Lisbon speaking Swedish?

Biggest laugh on Haven recently: the two newspaper guys (Bartles and James, Duke called them) are sitting in their office when a naked guy runs past the window wearing a huge dog cone over his head. “Looks like we have our lead story for tomorrow,” one of them deadpans. The idea of dogs turning into people was funny (usually it’s the other way around), but the logic of how they were converted back to dogs was wonky.

I was wondering how they were going to keep up the intrigue on Once Upon a Time this season but they hit on some clever twists. Sending Emma and “her mother” back to fairy tale land and setting limits on the boundary of Storybrooke. Even Mr. Gold is thwarted by the latter unexpected side effect. Who was the guy in NY who got the carrier pigeon message?

Satisfying finality with the fall season finale of Doctor Who. The weeping angels have become the creepiest of all of the villains on the show, ever, though they sometimes get used so heavily that the internal logic of how they’re supposed to work is overlooked. How did Rory survive in the basement with all those baby angels, for instance? And the idea of having the Statue of Liberty be one of them was clever, but underutilized. (“I always wanted to visit the Statue of Liberty. I guess she got impatient,” Rory says.) Apparently the Melody Malone novel is now available as an eBook, though the story is different from the one in the episode. Liked the idea of ripping out the last page of a book. “That way it doesn’t have to end.” I never expected Amy & Rory would go out that way…twice. Final words of advice from River: Only one psychopath per TARDIS. I’ll be interested to see if they take the opportunity of a cast changeover to move in a new direction next year.

Posted in Big Bang Theory, Castle, Doctor Who, Fringe, Haven, Mentalist, Sons of Anarchy, The Closer, The Wire | Comments Off on Down the rabbit hole

Mini-vaca

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Bev Vincent

Haven’t made a post here in over a week because I’ve spent most of the last week in Halifax. Our daughter graduated from Dalhousie with a Master of Arts degree on Tuesday. We flew up on Saturday, went out to Peggy’s Cove in the rain on Sunday (it wasn’t raining when we started in that direction), did errands and visited with family on Monday, and returned on Wednesday. A busy few days, but I always enjoy going back to the city where I lived for most of the 1980s. It’s a place where I could see myself living again some day.

I don’t usually take the extra insurance when renting a vehicle. We reserved a normal, mid-sized four-door car, but all they had left when we got in late on Saturday night was a Chrysler Town & Country minivan, fully loaded. Backup cameras, GPS, motorized, remote-controlled sliding doors on both sides, etc. We made good use of the extra space, ultimately. However, the wind caught the passenger door one day and blew it against a concrete post, leaving a pretty decent ding and scrape. Turns out my brilliant wife had opted for the zero deductible insurance, so all we had to do was fill out an incident report.

I didn’t want to carry my big paperback copy of  The Twelve by Justin Cronin, so I took only e-Books. I enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl so much that I went back to her first two books. I read Sharp Objects first and am currently a little over halfway through Dark Places. Such excellent and compelling books. I also picked up a copy of Stuart McLean’s Revenge of the Vinyl Cafe in Toronto airport and started reading it to my wife. More great adventures of Dave and Morley and their kids and neighbours.

Slowly getting caught up on recorded TV shows. This week’s NCIS was great. The whodunit was well constructed and I never once suspected the real culprit, and the emotional after-effects of the bombing are being handled well. The psychologist was actually sufferable. Charming, really.

I don’t have any favorites yet on The Amazing Race. They sure put them through the ringer right out of the gate, testing their ability to withstand heights. Gross food competition. I liked the ping pong contest with the young champ besting them with clipboards and frying pans. There’s a lot of strength in the teams this time out, but they’re going to have to learn not to be so helpful. One team missed a major flight connection with “after you” and another got eliminated because they helped the team they needed to outrace.

I wonder how Survivor has had to adjust to having one of three teams getting slowly whittled away to nothing. Did they have to switch out immunity challenges, for example, because they needed to facilitate a team of four? Russell is a mystery. The guy looks like he has muscles on his muscles, but he’s not good for much in challenges. I shan’t make any comments on my opinion of the reason why Angie couldn’t make it down two feet to release the first puzzle piece. No one on the blue team seems the least bit interested in finding the hidden idol. That Abi girl seems like a borderline psycho. Geez. I’d give her a wide berth.

Good to see Bob Odenkirk (Saul from Breaking Bad) on How I Met Your Mother. Still playing a lawyer, but a slightly less sleazy one. I thought the gag with his cell phone going off with a Psycho-like ring tone was hilarious.

I’ve also finished Season 3 of The Wire. The “Hamsterdam” experiment was interesting. I liked Stringer, but at least we still have Omar and Bubbles. McNulty’s gotcha on Avon was about all he could salvage out of their investigation. Well, his investigation, at least. Got a kick out of seeing Dennis Lehane cameo-ing as the guy in charge of the electronic surveillance depot, barely raising his eyes from the nudie magazine. “McNulty, Major Case.” “Sullivan, minor irritations.”

Still have lots of other shows on the DVR. I also have a box of signature sheets to sign and a set of short story proofs to review by Sunday. No other deadlines pending, though, so it’s a good long weekend to get caught up on recordings.

 

Posted in NCIS, Survivor, The Wire | Comments Off on Mini-vaca

Goth class

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Bev Vincent

Even though he only lives a few miles from me, I had to go all the way to Austin to meet Danel Olson, at the World Horror Convention the year before last. We met by chance—he strolled by my table at the mass signing carrying a copy of Corpse Blossoms. I volunteered to sign it. He didn’t know I was in it. We started talking and found out we were from the same town. We’ve kept in touch since then, met socially once. Recently he invited me to talk to his Gothic Fiction class at Lone Star College. Sounded like fun.

The class was 80 minutes long. I wasn’t sure I would be able to talk for that long, so I brought along a short story to read in case of dead air. I also brought along a USB stick with a PowerPoint containing slides for a talk I’d given to a local writers’ guild a few years ago. As it turned out, I didn’t need the presentation, and I only had time to read the first few paragraphs of the short story. There were about 30 students present and they put up with my rambling for the whole time. Asked some good questions. Seemed to be entertained. At least none of them went to sleep or stared out the window. I signed a book, posed for some pictures. One student stayed after class and talked with Danel and me. After she left, we continued our conversation in his office over tea for the next two hours. A nice way to spend a Wednesday afternoon away from work.

I started a short story on Sunday morning. Wrote about 1600 words and then ran out of steam. Then I came up with a different approach to the story. Threw out everything I’d written and started fresh. I thought I had the whole story figured out, more or less. However, the deadline is close and this morning I got nothing done other than a rough edit of the 1200 or so new words. I had a rare headache, so I couldn’t concentrate. Maybe I’ll get something more done on it this evening. If not, tomorrow’s the last chance to make the deadline.

I liked the way they handled the new relationship on Castle. The morning after, interrupted. The usual sort of hide-in-the-closet games they like to play on TV shows, but then real life intervened. I was relieved to see that, despite all this, they resisted the temptation to have one or the other step away from the relationship. They seem determined to play this out—covertly, if that’s possible among a squad of detectives. And the recurring story line about Beckett’s mother has taken a step forward and can be set aside for a while.

It didn’t take them long to get the NCIS gang back together after last season’s explosive finale. I guess contract negotiations must have worked out.

I just read that the guy who played “Half sack” on Sons of Anarchy was killed in what appears to have been a drug-fueled attack on his 81-year-old landlady. An odd story, though one that sounds like life imitating art. Harold Perrineau is doing a great job playing the evil gangster Pope. This week’s episode was explosive, with Gemma’s wheeling-dealing over Tara and the kids, her reaction to Clay’s visit to Nero’s house of ill repute, and what went down in the prison. Nasty stuff. That prison guard should probably consider upping his life insurance.

Looks like the three-tribe configuration on Survivor is in jeopardy. I would have liked to have seen more of the discussions that led up to that vote. Did someone talk Russell out of breaking up the obvious couple? Or did he simply get outvoted by the therapist? Good on Penner for finding the idol, though surely someone will get curious about the missing handle on their rice container. And it looks like Calamity Jane is going to take a few more knocks next week. Was he bleeding from the eyes in that preview? Cookies do make everything better, though, don’t they?

A solid return for Criminal Minds with the addition of Jean Tripplehorn to the cast. It will be interesting to see how she is distinguished from Spencer. The idea of a guy driven to murder/silence people because his defective cochlear implant is driving him nuts was a good one. And it turns out that Paget Brewster (Prentiss) isn’t in Paris after all. She’s over on NBC playing a corrupt “integrity officer” on Law & Order: SVU. The two-hour season premiere of that show was surprisingly good, too. Lots of intrigue, light on the preachiness. I wonder what wag decided to run one of the AllState “mayhem” commercials during the episode in which Mayhem himself was a guest star.

Posted in Castle, Criminal Minds, CSI, NCIS, Sons of Anarchy, Survivor, SVU | Comments Off on Goth class

The McNulty driving academy

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Bev Vincent

While I was cleaning some papers off the sideboard on my desk this weekend, I found the submission guidelines for an anthology that I’d forgotten about. The deadline is next week, so I tossed the guidelines. Then, when I was mowing the lawn yesterday morning (possibly for the last time this year, fingers crossed), the opening section of a story sprang to mind. After I was done, I went back inside, plucked the guidelines from the trash, and wrote about 1100 words. For at least an hour before I woke up this morning, I kept thinking about the story. By the end of the writing session, I was up to 1600 words. But then I stalled. I have no idea what the story’s about or where it’s going or if I’m going to be able to finish it on time. If not, no big deal. I could always use it for something else.

Survivor is back, changing up the formula a little. Three tribes this time, with three returning players who were removed previously because they were injured. The guy who fell in the fire in Australia should be renamed Calamity Jane. Dude is seriously accident prone and his fellow players would be wise to remove all sharp objects from his vicinity. I thought the way the tribes reacted to these somewhat seasoned players was interesting. Two saw them as immediate threats. Plumb them for all the knowledge they could get early on and get rid of them. The third tribe saw the returning player as an ongoing asset. It would have been fun if they hadn’t told us who Lisa Welchel was and let us figure it out along with the contestants. Apparently her divorce just finalized a week or two before she left to go on this outing, so she might be in a rough spot. The 90-minute format gave me more of a chance to put names to faces, and I came away feeling like I had a sense of who many of them were. Russell was a laff riot. “I’m not going to make the same mistake I did last time, of being too bossy—hey, shut up. We’re going to do things my way.” That resolution lasted a long time. I figured he was a goner for sure until Zane threw himself on his sword. Worst strategic play in the first day or two, ever. Make allegiances with everyone, tell people you’re making allegiances with everyone, volunteer to take the hit and then still get blindsided.

Haven came back on Friday night, too. The first episode was called 301, which looks like an episode designation (season 3, episode 01) but is actually the plot in the potter’s field where a significant character was supposedly buried. I liked it better when the two geezers weren’t at each other’s throats. I have no idea who that guy was that kept shining his light in Audrey’s face (assumption: he thought she’d recognize him) or what it meant that the burned woman had been dead since before Audrey was talking to her. The season preview promises that everything will be answered. We’ll see.

Episode 4 of Doctor Who was a confused and confusing mess. I sort of liked the idea that the Doctor had to learn that life on earth went on without him. His astonishment that Rory had a real job. We also learn that Amy’s no longer a model but a travel writer. The cubes might have been intriguing but nothing about the alien storyline made any sense. I don’t really know why they were intent on killing people, nor do I have a clue what the Doctor did to thwart them. I’ll probably end up watching the episode again, so maybe it will get clarified. Color me confused at the moment, though.

I’m finished with the first two seasons of The Wire. The show is not at all what I envisioned it might be based on random comments from other people. It’s much slower paced and more procedural than I thought it would be. Who would have thought they could make an interesting story out of shipping containers? I like that it took them at least half of the second season to reunite the team, even though they were acting in unison already. The harbor patrol cop was a nice addition to the team, though I don’t know if she’ll be back in the future. The police politics is interesting, and the round-the-world trip made by the surveillance van was a funny idea sort of stolen from Amelie. I suspect the conflict between Stringer and Avon Barksdale will come to a head in the next season. Bubbles has to be the best C.I. ever (too bad he couldn’t keep his act together), and Omar is a fascinating character, too. The amount those guys drink, especially Banks and McNulty, is enough to put me in a coma.

Posted in Haven, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Survivor, The Wire | Comments Off on The McNulty driving academy

Nothing says endless love like capital murder

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Bev Vincent

I finished Archie Meets Nero Wolfe by Robert Goldsborough while waiting for my car to be serviced this weekend. Car is seven years old and has just over 35,000 miles. I joke (though it’s almost true) that I change my oil once a year whether it needs it or not. Since I hadn’t brought another book with me, I plowed through Bright Orange for the Shroud by John D. Macdonald on my iPad. I’ve been rereading the Travis McGee novels in sequence over the past couple of years. This is #6 out of 21, so I have a way to go. They’re fast reads, but I love those books. I can’t remember when I first read one (I do remember buying The Green Ripper when it was a new hardcover in 1979) but I must have read each of them at least three or four times over the years.

I finally received my contributor copy of The Spirit Of Poe last night. Haven’t had much of a chance to look through it yet, but the timing is good. My friend Danel Olson invited me to speak to his horror/gothic fiction class next week and my contribution to this anthology is a good one to read to this audience.

Survivor’s back tonight!

Another mid-season series break last night. This time it was Covert Affairs, which is on a four-week hiatus. I don’t know how good the show’s ratings are, but I think it’s really well done. It’s far more serious than Burn Notice, which is good but formulaic and over the top. The spy craft in Covert Affairs is credible, and the dangers realistic. I thought it was Rachmaninoff’s friend who alerted Lena, so that was a good twist. And the final five minutes were tense with a good pay off. It wasn’t cold blooded murder after all.

I’m liking this new Nero character on Sons of Anarchy. The scene where he played chicken with the people following Jax was great. “Sorry. I don’t get out much,” he said. We are being lead to believe that he’s a good guy. Former gang banger, got clean in prison, read stuff, treats his call girls and employees respectfully, pays them decently, and visits his handicapped son. Too good to be true? The lead up to the wedding (officiated by a john judge) in a brothel was nice character development. Gemma even got over her umbrage long enough to dig up her wedding rings. Good on Opie for adding himself to the mix at the end of the episode. Staying close. Unser and Clay really do look like they’re living on borrowed time. They couldn’t even muster up enough energy to slap each other around without running out of breath.

I’m almost halfway through the first season of The Wire. It’s more of a slow burn than The Shield. It reminds me a little of Rubicon (which I loved) and The Hours (which also starred Dominic West). There are lots of scenes in Baltimore’s projects, but there’s not the level of gang violence seen in The Shield. And while some of the cops may be lazy or prone to taking (legal) shortcuts, there’s not the rampant corruption seen in The Shield. There are rumors that one character has more money than he should, but that’s it. McNulty is driven, like Mackey, but he’s totally by the book. He has a couple of good members on his team and a couple of screw-ups. Then there’s Lester Freamon, sitting there, minding his own business, carving dollhouse furniture. Nobody’s paying much attention to him, but he’s listening and observing. He’s the only one who thinks to write down the phone number on the wall, and he goes out and finds the first known picture of Avon Barksdale. Finally McNulty realizes what he has. Then there’s Pryzbylewski, the guy who accidentally discharged his gun on his first day with the task force and who is later seen photocopying a telephone. He’s smart enough to crack the gang’s phone number code, though, so there may be hope for him yet. I think I expected the show to be grittier, so it took me a while to readjust my expectations. I like it well enough, but it doesn’t have the same sense of tension that permeated every minute of The Shield. Vic and the boys were always trying to stay out of serious trouble, which made the program compelling.

Posted in Covert Affairs, Sons of Anarchy, Survivor, The Wire | Comments Off on Nothing says endless love like capital murder

The Shield

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Bev Vincent

My September Storytellers Unplugged essay is online. It’s called What they do and what they say, and is about revisiting a familiar classic mystery series in the hands of a new author.

Appalachian Undead is almost here, so time is running out to take advantage of the pre-order contest Apex is running. Check out a sneak preview of Elizabeth Massie’s story “When Grannie Comes Marchin’ Home Again” here.

I haven’t seen this week’s Doctor Who yet. I did watch the new Wallander, with Kenneth Branaugh. I don’t like these as much as the Inspector Lewis stories. I appreciate the character’s taciturn nature, but the stories haven’t grabbed me.

It took me about three weeks, but I’m finished with The Shield and feeling a little sad that it’s over. Going into it, I had no idea what the series was about, so it was a complete revelation. It features a newly formed Strike Team consisting of 4±1 members who are tasked with drug and gang-related crime in the (fictional) Farmington area of L.A. The new division’s headquarters are in a converted church that becomes known as “the barn.” Farm, barn, get it? The head of the Strike Team is Vic Mackey, played by Michael Chiklis. He’s a wheeler-dealer who plays fast and loose with the rules. We never see much of him before he’s on the Strike Team, so we don’t know what he was like as a street cop, but under pressure to produce results fast, he starts cutting corners, framing suspects, and coercing his fellow team members into going along. He is a strongly corrupting influence, and this is the overarching story: what shit Vic is going to get the team into next, and how they’re going to get out of it a) alive and b) free from criminal prosecution.

Like Homicide: Life on the Street, there are many other characters, all with interesting stories. The various captains over the series run (four in total, including Glenn Close for one season). The detectives (Dutch was a great character), the street cops, the politicians, the rookies, the families, etc. There is always a non-Strike Team plot each episode, and some great interrogation scenes. Lots of location shooting, too. Violent, dark, gritty realism. This isn’t the same L.A. seen on The Closer by any stretch of the imagination.

Vic Mackey is there at the beginning and there at the end, though the same can’t be said of his fellow team members. Though one might be tempted to say the series is about him, he’s the one character who remains unchanged through it all. He’s Tony Soprano, a bull-headed thug who isn’t quite but is almost a sociopath. He is fiercely loyal to his family and defends his team, except when someone threatens him. Then the team member becomes disposable. However, if someone else takes independent action against a fellow team member, woe be him.

I would argue that the real star of the series is Walton Goggins as Shane Vendrell. He’s in the background of the first season for the most part, but as the years go by he emerges to become the most interesting and complex character on the show. Vic never changes, but Shane sure does. As he says in his poignant final missive, he was a follower where Vic was a leader, and he’s not sure which one was worse. He’s equally culpable, but stuff eats at him more. When he tries to go out on his own and replicate Vic’s style, he gets into major trouble. Back on vice, he thinks he can out-maneuver Antoine Mitchell, but he is out of his depth. His girlfriend (later, wife) steals money train cash and whacks a guy on the head with an iron, causing him more grief. The hand grenade incident at the end of season 5 is the beginning of the end for him. He immediately regrets what he did and it almost kills him that he can’t tell anyone about it. Interestingly, Mara supports him when he confesses to her, but not Vic. From that point on, it’s Vic vs. Shane, and the question is who will get who first.

The finale is devastating. I fully expected a Bonnie and Clyde ending, but instead it was more Romeo and Juliet. I did not see it coming, though the signs were all there—in particular in the scene with the teenage cashier studying chemistry who he overpaid. Man that stuff was tough.

I expected the 1-year-anniversary no-longer-a-rookie character to meet some terrible fate that day, too.

Then there was Vic’s comeuppance. Losing his job and his family. The astonishment on Laurie Holden’s face when he started his confession, after a minute-long pause while he braced himself to say out loud all the crimes he’d committed in the past several years. It was against his nature to take the blame for anything, but if he wanted to be free he had to come clean. But how free was he at the end, sentenced to Dilbert-ville for three years? I expected the lights to go out at 6 p.m. The HR woman had warned him. Not another Sopranos ending, surely. And it wasn’t. Vic Mackey with a gun doesn’t mean suicide. He’s too much of a survivor for that. Vic Mackey with a  gun means Vic Mackey with a plan. Always another plan. He’s a schemer par excellence and somehow he’ll survive.

Is it the greatest television series ever? If not, it’s right up there. It can’t believe it took me so long to get around to seeing it. Next up: The Wire.

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The Other Fat Man

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Bev Vincent

I have to write a Storytellers Unplugged essay this weekend, but I have absolutely no idea what to write about. Maybe something will come to me. I hope so.

I received a pdf review copy of Archie Meets Nero Wolfe: A Prequel to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe Mysteries by Robert Goldsborough from the publisher, so I put The Twelve aside for a couple of days, thinking correctly that it would be a quick read. Goldsborough has written a number of authorized Nero Wolfe novels, but it’s been nearly 20 years since the most recent. He hasn’t lost his touch for the series. The characters ring true. The secondary characters, like Saul Panzer and Fred Durkin, were always paper thin, anyway, so that’s easy. Wolfe is the ultimate formulaic character. You can describe him as the sum of a series of character attributes: he never leaves his house (unless it suits the plot). He never misses his two two-hour sessions tending the orchids in his green house (ditto). He drinks beer. He’s massive. He doesn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. When he’s thinking, he shuts out the world and purses his lips in and out. Et cetera. So it’s fairly easy to replicate him, too. It’s Archie Goodwin who is the heart of the series. He’s lively and three-dimensional. Goldsborough captures that. Even though he’s only 19 in this prequel, you can feel the man he will develop into in later life.

This book has a section that should appeal to the Downton Abbey crowd, too. One of the difficulties in writing a period novel is having characters do things that are true to the period, and it’s here the Godlsborough misfires every now and then. For example, a character explains to another that you couldn’t tell that a woman was a red-head from her photograph because it was, of course, black and white. Someone in the depression wouldn’t need to be told that, but a reader in 2012 needs to be reminded, However, there are more elegant ways of doing that without going the “As you know, Jim” route. There are only a few instances of that, but they stand out.

My wife’s out of town, so I’ve been on a The Shield binge. Season 4 was the season of Monica Rawling (Glenn Close). Season 5 was the season of Internal Affairs Lt. Jon Kavanaugh (Forest Whitaker) and his investigation into the strike team, which turns into an increasingly personal vendetta when he can’t get any traction. Vic taunts him, sleeps with his ex-wife to rub his nose in it, and the season ends with explosive developments. Walton Goggins shines, especially in the season finale. For some reason, there are only 11 episodes in Season 5 and 10 in Season 6. I was intrigued to see that the Kavanaugh story continued into Season 6, and glad to see it wrapped up fairly quickly. Now the tension is on Vic’s need to wrap up Lem’s murder off the books and keep himself from being forcibly retired with partial pension.

It would be fascinating to see how Vic became who he is. He’s not exactly a sociopath, but almost. He has intense feelings, but he’s also completely lacking a moral compass. The “Co-pilot” episode shows how he felt forced to produce results with the new strike team, so he strong-armed the others into taking shortcuts to close cases, but he didn’t agonize over that decision much. The same thing happened to Army when he was partnered with Shane. He was corrupted not so much by temptation but by the pressure applied by his partner. It’s a bit strange that Kavanaugh didn’t pursue Army once he spoke to Antwon Mitchell, but that may have been a simple expediency. This series is every bit as amazing as people suggested it was. I have no idea why I was oblivious to it when it aired, but I’m glad I knew nothing about it going into this marathon.

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56 and counting

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Bev Vincent

I finished Phantom by Jo Nesbø on Sunday. (How exactly do you pronounce “ø”?”) A complex, gritty, dark, violent Norwegian crime novel. From there I moved on to The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy) by Justin Cronin. Good to be back in that world again. I like the way he provided a synopsis of the first book. It’s positively biblical.

Yesterday I received my contributor copy of a coffee-table book called Graphic Horror: Movie Monster Memories, edited by John Edgar Browning. Here’s the description: Freddy, Jason, Frankenstein, and Dracula are just a few of the thrilling movie monsters in this illustrated, collectible reference guide. Monsters from major as well as minor horror films are brought back to life through domestic and international posters, movie stills, and publicity shots. Engaging commentary from leading horror fiction writers, editors, anthologists, and scholars accompany more than 400 movie posters and publicity stills from the early 20th century through to the present day. Not only will you revisit such iconic movies as The Shining, Child’s Play, Halloween, Godzilla, and Jaws, to name just a few, you will also learn about the cultural and technological developments that have played a role in the history of the indelible movie monster. Whether you’re a screenwriter, producer, director, actor, or just a fan, this reference guide is an invaluable resource about one of our greatest movie genres. Other commentators include Ramsey Campbell, Mort Castle, Nancy Kilpatrick, Robert Morrish, Kim Paffenroth, Tony Timpone, F Paul Wilson, and Dacre Stoker.

Last weekend we watched 56 Up, the most recent of Michael Apted’s documentary series. We first discovered the series fourteen years ago when we stumbled upon a 42 Up screening at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Apted selected a group of a little over a dozen seven-year-old kids representing the social spectrum in Britain at the time, and interviewed them extensively about their lives and their plans for the future. Since 1964, he’s returned to them at seven-year intervals to see how things have gone. Some of the subjects have dropped in and out over the years, but most are still participating and one returned this year after missing three installments. Only one dropped out permanently after 21 Up. It’s a fascinating exercise, though it’s hard to say exactly what it all means. One of the most exuberant and vivid boys ended up suffering from mental problems, was homeless for many years, moved off to the Shetland Islands at the far north of Scotland for a while, and now, at 56, seems to realize just how sad his life has been. Some have been quite successful. Others have struggled just to make ends meet. Of some interest is the longevity of some relationships. A few married young and divorced soon thereafter, but at least one couple has been together since she was 19. There are many, many kids and a goodly number of grandkids. This time, the update was presented in three 45-minute installments instead of a single documentary. Many of the participants claim that they hate taking part, at least in part because of the attention it brought to their lives, but feel compelled to see the experiment through.

I’ve been on a The Shield binge lately. I’m currently midway through the fourth season. Frank Darabont directed an episode in the sixth season and he brought most of the crew with him to the set of The Mist because he wanted to use the fast-and-furious production technique. Season Three was the A Simple Plan season. In this case the money was stolen instead of found, but the consequences were much the same. Ultimately it tore the team apart and they ended up without much to show for it. Season Four is the Glenn Close season, and the season where Shane (Walton Goggins) goes rogue. Compelling stuff. I like Close’s character. Aceveda, on the other hand, is becoming less likable all the time.

So, there were dinosaurs on the space ship on this week’s Doctor Who. It was also plummeting toward the earth about to be blown to smithereens. The Doctor accidentally snagged Rory’s dad when he picked them up, and he joined a gang that consisted of Queen Nefertiti and a big game hunter played by Rupert Graves, who humanized Inspector Lestrade on Sherlock. (What’s The Doctor doing hanging out with someone who kills creatures for sport, one might wonder?) It was a bit of a goofy outing, made even more ludicrous by a pair of whiny robots who sounded like slightly less depressed versions of Marvin the Paranoid Android. I’m always struck by how people The Doctor gathers up are able to adjust to being in circumstances beyond their comprehension. Nefertiti would have no idea what dinosaurs are, let alone being able to come to grips with space travel. Rory’s dad was the only one who expressed any shock and awe, but he quickly adjusted, too, and used his handy, dandy trowel when needed. Okay, so I have a soft spot for any episode that name-checks my native land (a space ship as big as Canada), and Amy had some great lines (better than usual of late). The dinosaurs looked impressive, and there was a giggle-inducing “balls” joke, which was as raunchy as they could get on an episode that pretty much begged a Samuel L. Jackson tirade. You get the feeling, though, that Amy and Rory just want to be left alone to lead their normal lives. There was some of that in “Pond Life” (how annoying is it to find an Ood in your bathroom?), and more of it here when they asked to be dropped off instead of going on an adventure to return the dinosaurs. Amy loves the adventures when she’s in the midst of them, and she now knows exactly what to do on a strange spaceship (push buttons), but there comes a time to put aside childish things, and it’s coming soon. Have to say, I wasn’t exactly enthralled by the teaser for next week’s episode.

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And then there were dinosaurs

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Bev Vincent

I’ve been getting stories back into submission after allowing a batch of them to lie fallow while I was busy with other things. I only forgot to attach one manuscript to an e-mail, so I guess that’s okay.

I posted my review for Live by Night to Onyx Reviews yesterday. It’s a compelling novel, sort of a sequel to The Given Day. A strong and likable viewpoint character and the growing sense of dread that something bad has to happen to him eventually.

I’m proofreading the page proofs of the revised edition of The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book. Mine will be the last set of eyes on it. No pressure. I’m finding a few things that have changed since the first edition. Questions about Blaze from when it could still be described as unpublished, for example, and the total number of Bachman books. I plan to be done by the weekend so the book can go into production.

This week’s episode of Covert Affairs ended with a huge surprise. I actually liked Lena, so it sorta sucks that it seems like she’s a rotten egg. I like it that Annie allowed herself to be swept away by the heady allure of romance but then took a few minutes to reflect and realize everything that she’d be giving up if she went with Simon. It would be as bad as being in witness protection. OK for Simon but not so much for her.

I’m 2/3 of the way through the second season of The Shield. It was fun seeing Danny Pino (Armadillo) as a heavy instead of as a cop. That scene where he got face-planted on a glowing burner was intense. I was surprised when his plot was wrapped up fairly early in the season, though the implications for Danny for supposedly missing the knife remain to be seen. Episode 8 was a real revelation. It was called “Co-pilot’ and it’s basically an origin story for the barn, set about a year and a half before Season 1 Episode 1. Vic and Shane are ordinary street cops at the beginning. The church that houses the substation is still being converted (presumably deconsecrated, too). It is fascinating to see the dynamics of the characters who we know so well by now, but who don’t know each other yet as they are plucked from wherever and placed in this new environment. It’s a well-written episode. They don’t hammer us over the head with things, but instead lay the foundation.

Doctor Who is back, with a wowser of a surprise. Somehow they managed to keep secret the fact that Jenna-Louise Coleman, the next companion, plays a major part in the episode. Her character as the (spoiler) was Oswin Oswald and her companion name is Clara Oswin. Make of that what you will. It will be interesting to see how they bring Clara into it and what her connection to Oswin Oswald will be. I wasn’t a big fan of the idea to split Amy and Rory up. I understand Amy’s rationale, but not the way she went about it. The continuity with the five-episode “Pond Life” series doesn’t work well, either.

The episode also played fast and loose with Dalek lore, introducing a whole bunch of new concepts that you’d think we would have heard about before, in the past, oh, fifty years. Oswin Oswald, languidly plucking away at her computer terminal, made the episode in my opinion and I’m am very much looking forward to her joining the show. She is very easy on the eyes and possesses the same casual captivating quality that Sally Sparrow (who I always thought should have been a companion) had.

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Golf in the Gulf

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Bev Vincent

We don’t have a beach house, but we have the next best thing: a rental house on the beach that we’ve been going to for the past several years. It feels a little like a time-share, but we don’t have any of the responsibilities. We just show up on Friday, enjoy our stay, clean up on Monday and head back home.

That’s how we spent our Labo(ur) Day weekend, which also corresponded with my wife’s birthday. We arrived on Friday afternoon, stocked up on groceries and had a fine few days on the beach. The weather was perfect. There was one brief squall on Saturday afternoon that sent some people on the beach home, but it was over in about 10 minutes. We saw the “blue moon” on Friday night in a clear sky over the Gulf of Mexico. We rented a golf cart and went tooling up and down the crowded beach. We frolicked in the warm waters one evening after most of the crowds were gone. We watched families playing on the beach from our balcony. Read, played cards, listened to music, cooked meals. Had a grand old time. Back to real life yesterday afternoon. I spent the evening signing > 750 signature pages for a project that will be announced soon.

I finished Live by Night by Dennis Lehane. It starts out as sort of a noir novel, while the protagonist considers himself a gangster, but the flippant language goes away once he becomes more of an outlaw—and not just any old outlaw. A Prince of outlaws. The main character is the younger brother of the protagonist of The Given Day, a young man who chooses a different path from his law-enforcement father and brother. The book reminded me a bit of a Jeffrey Archer tale: rising from obscurity to greatness, at the expense of others. You just know he’s going to be brought down a peg or two at the end, but you don’t know how. Full review to come.

From there I moved on to Phantom by Jo Nesbø. I missed the book that comes between this one and The Snowman, which was my introduction to the author. I’ll have to backtrack at some point. Harry Hole’s life has changed significantly. He’s no longer a cop. He’s living in Hong Kong intimidating people for a living. When his ex-wife’s son is accused of murder, he comes back to Oslo to get to the bottom of the truth, which pits him against a highly organized cartel responsible for a new drug called violin. Gritty Scandanavian noir.

I’m still not a big fan of the Raydor/Rusty storyline on Major Case. It’s a huge distraction, in my opinion. True, Brenda always had something going on in her personal life to deal with on top of the case of the week, but it usually felt more organic. In fact, one of The Closer’s charms was the way the show made you realize that everyone in every walk of life, including those doing important jobs, has personal issues that are nagging at them at the same time. Anyhow, I homed in on the culprit this week early on, for an odd reason: They drew attention to him when he coughed a couple of times. I thought that was going to be significant, but it wasn’t. Even his mother’s treatment of him didn’t have much to do with his motives.

I didn’t like the idea of having Tao forget something significant. He’s such a detail-oriented guy that it felt out of character. Also, that’s a vastly overused trope, in my opinion. In too many books, people think they saw something that’s important but they can’t figure out or remember what it is. I don’t think that happens in real life. It’s a way of artificially creating suspense. It was fun seeing Michael Weatherly from NCIS as a guest star. I’ve never seen him in anything else. His character wasn’t exactly a stretch from DiNozzo, though. I thought it was funny that they kept referring to him as “that prick” and they got around the censors by having his character name be “Thorn.” I wonder if his appearing on another show is part of a contract negotiation gambit. I also noted that Jon Tenney, who plays Fritz, was billed as a “Special Guest Star” this week instead of a regular cast member. Blooper alert: The FBI doesn’t have anything to do with Witness Protection — that’s the pervue of the U.S. Marshals.

I haven’t had a chance to watch Doctor Who yet. Tonight. I did get to see the mid-season finale of Breaking Bad, though. Walt’s nemesis, the fly, was back. I wonder if that’s an omen that his cancer is back. There were some hints of that in the episode. The MRI or CAT scan scene, of course. The smashed up paper towel dispenser. Even the lingering camera shot on the back of his head, all resonating with Skyler’s hope that it will come back. There were some clever stylistic shots. The transition where Walt bent over and came back up wearing the yellow lab suit. Some other montage elements (water pouring in one shot morphing into chemicals in another). Poor Saul had to make do with a mini-scene where he gets his stash of cash. How much is enough for him, I wonder?

Great scene in the storage locker. What a difference from the little stacks Walt had hidden beneath his floorboards. The episode had some of the most visceral violence the show has ever portrayed: the coordinated murder of nine guys in prison, facilitated by Todd’s grampa. The first killing was especially brutal. The sound of all those stabbings taking place so quickly. Ew. Lydia added “the lawyer” to the list of targets. Presumably Mike’s lawyer and not Saul. Was he hit, too?

What’s Jesse going to do with all that money? Was a time Walt wouldn’t give him his due because he was sure (with good reason) that Jesse would kill himself with drugs. Of all the characters, he’s the one who I’m unsure how he’s going to feature in the final 8.  He’s too crucial to the show to just fade away. It would be nice to see him be the last man standing. The guy who was pulled out of the trenches and became a better man for it. Creating good out of bad, like the protagonist of Live by Night. Marie has evolved, too, from the kooky kleptomaniac into the voice of reason.

Now that the scales are falling from Hank’s eyes, he’ll sympathize with his boss, who befriended Gus without ever suspecting anything. What does he do with his epiphany? What evidence will there be for him to find now that Walt is “out.” Will Walt be allowed to remain out, or will Lydia turn into his next nemesis, forcing him to keep supplying the eastern Europeans?

I sure could do without the long wait for the final eight, though.

Posted in Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, NCIS, The Closer | Comments Off on Golf in the Gulf