Elvis has left the building

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Bev Vincent

I’m a news junkie under normal circumstances. I can easily get lost for hours reading online newspapers or watching CNN, though more of the former than the latter. I’m still a big fan of the print media, even if that print is digital.

When I got up this morning, the first thing I heard about was, of course, the major earthquake and tsunamis in Japan. I didn’t see this on the news, though. I heard about it via my work e-mail, which I always check before I start writing. The company I work for is owned by a Japanese firm, and we have lots of colleagues in various factories and offices scattered across the country. I’ve been over there four or five times on business. The very first time I was there, a small earthquake off the northern island triggered a tsunami warning. Nothing materialized, but since I was on the 25th floor of a hotel in Shinjuku, I didn’t give it much thought at the time.

We had messages from different employees in Japan telling us that everything was okay at two main offices. In one, they had some dishes tumble off the shelves and shatter. In another, there were major aftershocks, but again, no damage. The worst of it was the fact that transportation was shut down. Since most Japanese take public transit (in Tokyo, at least), that meant people were stuck at work. Some of them walked home (the commutes can be very long indeed, so these were probably not just short treks) while others stayed at the office overnight. Some of our colleagues were still trying to get in touch with family members. There’s one branch office in Sendai city, which is in the worst hit area. No reports of injury or casualty, but the condition of the office is unclear.

I was conflicted. I immediately went to the various news sites for updates, but I absolutely had to finish a short story I’m working on. If I don’t get it in the mail tomorrow, it won’t reach the market by the deadline. So I pulled myself away from the browser and forced myself to write 1500 words that put the wraps on the first draft. Tomorrow morning, I’ll revise and polish it as much as possible in the short time available to me and get it in the mail.

Had a brief chat with my agent first thing this morning. He’s sending a proposal in to a publisher on my behalf today so fingers crossed!

It’s been a while since I got an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in her annual Year’s Best. This year, three of my stories made her long list: “A Murder of Vampires” from eVolVe, “Purgatory Noir” from When the Night Comes Down and “Zombies on a Plane” from Dead Set. I’m very pleased.

I know a lot of people were upset by the outcome of the battle on Survivor: Redemption Island this week, but I wasn’t at all surprised. Based on the way Jeff Probst was hyping the episode as legendary, I figured that Russell was going to be sent packing. I didn’t expect him to break down the way he did, nor did I expect him to call out Ralph and dupe him into admitting he had an idol. I was impressed by the way Ralph was keeping his discovery secret and then in one day he blabs about it to everyone on his own tribe, pretty much, as well as to two representatives of the opposing tribe. Not very smart, in my opinion. Rob, on the other hand, showed why he’s a Survivor pro. What an elaborate ruse he set up to give him a chance to search the camp. I can’t believe his teammates all fell for it. Now we get to see what he can make one of those puppies do.

We finished the first season of Deadwood last night. I was struck by how affected Swearingen was by the plight of Reverend Smith. It seemed to eat at him. For a character who has proven to be cold and ruthless, it was a revelation, as was his rant while he was being serviced after he kicked Trixie to the curb because she was “unfaithful” to him with Sol Star. We continue to be impressed by the Doc Cochrane, and the bit with him dancing with Jewel at the end of the final season one episode is terrific. The ending in general reminded me of a curtain call for a stage play, with everyone in sequence getting a moment. I knew that Bullock was going to end up sheriff, but I like how that came about. Looking forward to tearing into season two this weekend.

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You can go home again, but maybe you shouldn’t

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Rolling right along with the new work in progress. Wrote 1700 words this morning, which is a very decent output given the small chunk of time I have. I love scenes with a lot of dialog. They move along at a fast clip. Remains to be seen how much of it will survive the final edit.

Finished up my review of La’s Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith and posted it to Onyx Reviews last night. A charming novel that has very little to do with the title.

While I was working on the review and the website’s multiple indexes, I watched the Sam Rockwell movie Moon, about the lone caretaker of the Sarang lunar base that is mining He-3 as an energy source for the earth. He’s nearing the end of his three-year stint and looking forward to getting back home to his wife and young daughter. He’s in charge of four mostly self-running lunar harvesters named Matthew, Mark, Luke and (presumably) John, and his every need is catered to by a HAL-9000 clone called GERTY, whose voice is courtesy of Kevin Spacey. It’s hard to talk about the film without giving away its main secret, which is revealed slowly starting about halfway in. Rockwell is very, very good in this film, and is called upon to portray a rich array of emotions, sometimes conflicting, sometimes at the same time. Plus he’s on the screen for the entire film, often alone, more or less. Excellent science fiction, even for people who wouldn’t care much for science fiction.

The funny thing, though, was when I clicked off the OnDemand system, the channel that started playing was showing 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Last night I read Every Shallow Cut, Tom Piccirilli’s new noir novella, due out from ChiZine Publications next week. You’d think that grappling to hold onto the unenviable position of being a midlist writer whose every book has sold worse than the one before (and the first one was no great shakes) who has recently lost his wife to another man and his house to the bank would be rock bottom, but that’s just where Piccirilli starts out with his protagonist in this grim story.

What worse things could possibly happen? Well, three thugs could try to rob him of the few possessions he has left, things he plans to hock to fund his cross-country trek from Colorado back to his home town in Long Island, where he will have to throw himself on the mercy of his brother, with whom he’s never gotten along. For starters. There’s famine of sorts and a real-life flood. The only thing missing is pestilence.

If there’s one profession that isn’t recession proof, it’s being a writer. Though his books have won numerous literary awards (the trophies and statues were pawned long ago), he’s never hit the bestseller list, much to his mother’s dismay. Before she died she used to remind him regularly that she always checked the list and he was never there. His most recent royalty check was for $12 and change.

He (the protagonist is never named) is writing again, though it’s something like trance writing. He has no idea what he’s putting down on the legal pads and he can’t read his own handwriting. Maybe it’s the most brilliant thing he’s ever done, or maybe it’s just another version of the rage fantasies that are filling his head. He acts these out a couple of times: a poverty diet has left him in decent fighting shape. Everything is crashing down on him, and only his dog Church remains loyal, though the narrator thinks the dog would have been much better off in the shelter than with him. Nobody in his home town wants to see him, including his brother.

Every Shallow Cut is a relentless look at a nervous breakdown in progress. One person who skims his new manuscript tells him, “You can die from a paper cut if it becomes infected. That’s what I feel in your words now.” Some of the protagonist’s cuts aren’t shallow—they’re cuts to the very bone. By the end of this work, readers will probably be short of breath because of the driving pace and the brutality Piccirilli heaps upon his anti-hero, and which his anti-hero heaps upon everyone else. It’s a slow motion train wreck, and you can’t—don’t want to—look away.

If you’ve never read any of Tom Piccirilli’s stuff before, this would be a terrific introduction. It feels like he’s cutting very close to home with this nameless guy. Hopefully he never runs out of gas.

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Lucky I brought my axe-cane

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Bev Vincent

I’m making decent headway on the story that I need to get in the mail by Friday to meet the deadline. I wrote 1200 words yesterday morning, deleted 100 of them this morning upon revision and added another 1000 or so. I figure I’m better than halfway through the first draft, and I have a pretty good idea of where it’s headed, though that idea changed after I scrawled some bullet points about where I believed it was heading.

I also received an invitation to submit a story to a loosely themed anthology, which is always nice. I have until July to come up with something for that one. Hopefully I don’t wait until the last minute again, though I’m very happy with how I’m working under pressure on this one.

I posted a review of The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths on Onyx Reviews today. I’m currently reading Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman. I used to buy his books the minute they came out, but I think I may have missed a few over the past couple of years. This one starts with an intriguing coincidence. Alex and Robin stop off at a favorite watering hole when they see a sign announcing that it will close after that evening. The place is pretty much gutted already, and there are only a few people taking advantage of the wake. One of the other drinkers is found murdered the next morning far from the bar. I hope that there will be something connected to Alex beyond this chance near-meeting or else it’s pretty far fetched. I haven’t read the dust jacket copy (actually, the galley doesn’t have a dust jacket!) so I have no idea where the story is going. I like that.

The oh-so-dramatic accident involving team redheads on The Amazing Race turned out to be a fizzle. Unused to driving on the opposite side, Jaime strayed too far to the left and knocked off a guy’s side mirror. However, the guy insisted on calling the cops, which put them well at the back of the pack. They were convinced they were out of the race when they finally arrived at the pit stop, but Mike and Mel had worse luck in the find-the-frog-in-the-freezing-mud challenge. Though this wasn’t shown on the broadcast, they were medically disqualified from the race due to hypothermia. It wasn’t simply a matter of them giving up—the producers took them out.

Zombies are everywhere these days. Even on House. No, it wasn’t the patient of the week, but there were a number of dream sequences meant to represent Cuddy and House’s respective anxieties over the possibility that Cuddy had terminal cancer. Cuddy dreamt of a Leave it to Beaver happy family (with Wilson as the milkman), and a scenario that resembled Two and a Half Men (including House in a Charlie Harper shirt) and also had a dream with a Bob Fosse-like showtune where House, in top hat, danced and sang “Get Happy.” The best dream, though, was the one where House was in the basement of the hospital and was attacked by zombies: his team. Fortunately, he had remembered to bring his axe-cane and his shotgun cane, so he dispatched them all with prejudice. The other dream looked good, too, with Cuddy and House loading up their six shooters as if they were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I was open to the possibility that they were actually going to kill Cuddy off. After all, this is the show that dispatched a couple of other regulars without much warning. Instead, they went a different route, using Cuddy’s illness to expose House’s shortcomings, effectively driving a wedge between them. Though he appeared to step up to the plate toward the end, the circumstances under which he did so revealed his true nature. Is he headed for another spiral? We’ll see.

Was there a patient of the week stuck in there somewhere? Oh, yeah, the nice young kid who turned out to be a drug-dealing possible terrorist. He survived, I guess.

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Domesticity

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Winter hasn’t loosed its hold on us yet. It was down to 38° last night, though it’s a pleasant 65° today. Down into the forties tonight, with highs in the sixties and seventies for the next several days. I can live with that.

I got almost everything done that I wanted to do this weekend. I got three short stories back into submission and also sent off my essay for the 2012 SK Library calendar. Updated my Public Lending Right Commission documentation, too. Now if only I could get inspired to tackle a new short story, my checklist would be complete. Not sure that’s going to happen, though. I don’t feel ready.

I’m not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t shy away from the kitchen, either. Anticipating last night’s cool weather, I decided to smell up the house with cooking. I had a turkey carcass in the freezer that was turned into a yummy turkey soup. I also made bread, but with the machine that’s pretty much a no-brainer. I love homemade bread, though. Especially with molasses. The thought of molasses also got me thinking about molasses cookies, which I haven’t had in forever, so I made a batch of them, too. I wouldn’t call them a complete success. They’re a little uneven in thickness and consistency. Cookies definitely aren’t my forte. They’ll do in a pinch, though. Did you know about the great molasses flood of 1919 in Boston? Click on the image for more. I first heard about it in Dennis Lehane’s excellent historical novel The Given Day.

We watched several more episodes of Deadwood on Friday and Saturday night. Only two more to go in the first season. We agree that the most intriguing character is Doc Cochrane, who we now know has been charged with grave robbing not once or twice but seven times. He seems above the fray. He lives at the edge of town and his position allows him to speak his mind when he thinks it’s called for. He is smart and insightful, and just a little bit creepy, with his hunched stance and beady eyes (reminding us that he was, after all Grima Wormtongue). Good to see Titus Welliver strolling into the series, and the episode with Mister Wu had the funniest bits yet. Calamity Jane strolls off into the sunset. I hope we haven’t seen the last of her.

Did some reading up on Wild Bill and Calamity Jane to see what the real story was. Apparently it’s not altogether clear. In her diary, Calamity Jane claimed that she and Bill were married before they came to Deadwood and that she agreed to divorce him so he could marry another woman. There is little documentary evidence to back up her claim, but a woman named Jean McCormick claimed to be their daughter and produced a diary as proof. There are contradictions in all the stories, so who knows what the truth is? This brief account of Jean McCormick’s story makes interesting reading, though.

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Are you wearing pants?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Took the morning off from writing work to do paperwork instead. Every now and then I have to do that. This weekend I have a story to start, an essay to write and two stories to get back into submission. If I can manage those things, I’ll be happy.

Everything on TV that I normally watch was a rerun last night, so I got caught up on Wednesday night shows, read for a while and made headway on the jigsaw puzzle that’s always going on the library table.

I read Nick Kaufmann’s Chasing the Dragon, from ChiZine Publications. There’s enough material for a novel, but Nick has pared it down to a fast, bloody and furious novella. The protagonist is a descendant of Saint George, the famous dragon slayer, the last of a long line of people who have fought the dragon over the millennia.  There’s always been only one dragon, and each time it is defeated another rises again at some point in the future. As with any hero’s journey, this one has a period where the heroine rejected the call, running away from her inherited duty to fight the dragon. Instead, she ends up chasing a different sort of dragon: the metaphorical kind. Heroin. Ultimately, though, she accepts the call and pursues the dragon, which appears randomly and causes mayhem, a kind of entropy. It kills people who get in its way and reanimates them to fight Georgia. They’re a kind of zombie, though Nick gives them the unlovely name “meat puppets.” Georgia has confronted the dragon several times and always managed to escape, though not unmaimed. It all comes down to one final battle in a tiny western town. As I said, a fast, furious read and pleasingly original. I really do think this one could be fleshed out into a novel.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior had one of the most cringe-worthy scenes in recent memory: the one where the perp put the ice pick into her second victim’s ear. Yikes! I’m not sure why they went to such lengths to hide the identity of the killer from the audience for so long. Put Justine Bateman’s name in the opening credits and don’t show her as the cop of the week and, well, you don’t have to be an FBI agent to figure that one out. Forest Whitaker talks way to fast to mumble the way he does. I almost needed subtitles to figure out some of his dialog.

Justified introduced a lot of new characters the other night. First, there was Kyle’s friends, the ones who want Boyd to help them out with some sort of scheme. Kyle, as you may recall, was last seen hanging out the window of Boyd’s car after Boyd took none to kindly to having his quiet after-work drink interrupted. Then there’s Orlando, the halfway house program manager and one of its residents, Clinton, a guy with anger management issues who wants to get away for a day so he can give a present to his 12 year old son for his birthday. Clinton just happens to be Rachel’s brother-in-law and, oh yeah, responsible for Rachel’s sister’s death, which is why he’s in the halfway house. Clinton reaches out to his old buddy Flex, who aspires to be the “first big bad-ass magician,” gleefully announcing that he learned all the basics on YouTube. That’s before he and Clinton get in an argument over whether Flex will drive Clinton to his son’s house and Flex ends up with a bullet in his hand for his troubles, which may put a serious crimp in his plan to be the next Criss Angel. Flex is a hoot, though I’m not sure he survived the episode. Would love to see him again.

To keep the Bennetts in the mix, lest we forget them, Raylan palavered with them to let them know that he knows that Dickie was involved in the robbery of the Oxy bus operated by the Frankfurt branch of the Dixie mafia. The last thing he wants to deal with is a full-out drug war in Harlan. Mags doesn’t take too kindly to his intervention, though she does offer him a piece of pie (I wouldn’t take anything that women offered me to eat or drink!)  and upbraided her offspring for straying from her program. Dickie is a bit of a loose canon and his brother the sheriff warns him against taking any action before consulting “someone who can think.” Another allusion to the “history” between the Bennetts and the Givenses, without explanation, except that it somehow led to an incident 21 years ago that meant that Dickie “hasn’t walked right since.”

We got to learn a lot more about Rachel, who said that until her father got cancer she always thought they were the Cosbys. Raylan says he never had similar illusions about his family, to which his boss responded: You’re family wasn’t funny.” Sharpshooter Tim said that at least Raylan got to shoot his father. “Mine died before I got back from basic training with some skills and a loaded weapon.” Raylan laughed. “I thought it was going to be way more fun than it was.”

Rachel’s nephew, Nick, had a funny scene where he’s playing on a computer at HQ. He’s supposed to be playing solitaire but he’s gotten into the database. “I found you a husband,” he tells his aunt. “I know, he’s old and he’s white, but he gets out in three years.”

Most of the episode dealt with getting Clinton back under wraps. The furbie (a cheap knock-off furby that only spoke Chinese) got wounded in the shootout, and also got a bit of blood, presumably Flex’s, on it, but his son seemed happy with the gift. Other incidents: Gary asked Winona for a divorce, though Raylan perceived some double-dealing. Raylan met with a guy who used to represent the Dixie mafia to try to head off any possible violence. The guy was sitting at his desk, wearing a suit coat and dress shirt but no pants. “Well, I suppose there’s no reason for you to get up,” Raylan says.

Looks like Boyd is going to give in to temptation next episode. Should be fun. Nice scene between Boyd and Ava on the porch. Boyd, who’s reading Of Human Bondage, says that if he had long hair, he might be the lead singer in a rock band, even though he can’t sing a lick.

Posted in Criminal Minds, Justified | Comments Off on Are you wearing pants?

History in the making?

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Last night, I proofed the essay I’ve been working on and made only a handful of minor changes. This morning, after I keyed them in, I went through it one last time on-screen and deleted things that didn’t seem necessary, reducing it to 5400 words. Then I submitted it to the editor and now I await his feedback, though he told me I could write whatever I wanted and he wouldn’t change anything.

Now it’s on to the piece for next year’s SK calendar and a short story for an anthology that has a submission deadline in a little over a week. Yikes! I haven’t even started on that one yet. For this particular annual market, I seem to always leave it until just at the wire, and I always manage to get something in on time.

I started watching Mr. Sunshine last night, figuring I’d give it one last chance. It’s got Jorge Garcia, after all, and he was actually on it this week. It was going along okay until Roman put the cue cards in front of the fan. I could see how cringeworthy that was going to become, so I switched off, which meant I didn’t get to see this week’s double date, to see how cringeworthy that would become.

A tense episode of Criminal Minds, but I felt like slapping Prentiss for endangering her friends and complicating the task force’s job by keeping all of her information to herself. Sure, the guy threatened her team if she told them, but he was already threatening them when the guys with the machine guns fired at her and Morgan. How much worse could it get than that? Plus the bodies were starting to pile up. I thought for a moment she would at last redeem herself at the end, during the briefing, when it was clear she was on the verge of taking action. Instead, she bolted. Not her finest hour. Even if she survives the next episode, I think Hotch should fire her.

Okay, so maybe Jeff Probst went a little overboard by comparing last night’s history-making episode of Survivor to the first man landing on the moon, among other moments in recent memory. However, it was high time that Russell learned what it was like to be the target and not have any way to save himself. Ralph got a great chuckle out of the fact that Russell was still looking for the idol, but I’m not sure Russell would have found it anyway. His interpretation of the clue was a little generous. Rob understood the clue’s limitation much more clearly. “It might as well have said, ‘The idol is somewhere.'” I guess Ralph must have known that Julie wasn’t going to vote with Russell, which is why he retained his idol. What’s the record for the number of days someone has one and doesn’t tell anyone else about it? (Yes, Jeff Strand, I’m looking at you.)

Throwing a challenge: not always the best idea, but if there was ever a time to strike against Russell, this was probably it, before he managed to swing a couple of more people over to his side. I would argue that being sent to Redemption Island might play in Russell’s favor. While he’s there, the only people he can annoy are the ones he might defeat in battle. That means there’s less of a chance of him alienating potential jurors, as he’s done in the past. I’m really looking forward to the face-off between him and Matt. Francesca put up a good fight, but it turned out that taking a little extra time with the construction paid off. It was funny but ultimately pointless that his other tribe members lied to him about who won the first rumble in the jungle. How long is that going to throw him off balance?

Posted in Criminal Minds, Survivor | Comments Off on History in the making?

How to defuse a dirty bomb

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Decided to wait another day before submitting the essay. I made some more changes to it this morning and want to do at least one more complete readthrough before sending it off.

I received an encouraging e-mail from an editor of an anthology that has one of my longer stories in submission. It wasn’t an acceptance letter, but it was the kind of question that one would only be asked if the story was under serious consideration. Fingers crossed. I think the decisions will be made sometime within the next two weeks.

Why did no one tell me how good Styx’s 2003 album Cyclorama is? The band has been one of my favorites since the 1970s, but they sort of fell off my radar after Edge Of The Century, which was okay but not overwhelming. I stumbled upon Cyclorama last weekend and I think it’s great. Right up there with the best of their albums. Probably heresy, but I tended to favor Tommy Shaw over Dennis DeYoung, and Shaw’s vocals are fantastic here.

The new Chelsea Cain novel, The Night Season, was delivered to my Kindle overnight. Looking forward to finding time to tear into it. I liked her first few books.

I understand why they chose to end this week’s How I Met Your Mother the way they did (though I could have done without the fake-out). Barney has to remain Barney for the show to continue the way it is, just like Ted can’t meet his kids’ mother until they’re ready to end the show. Still, it would have been nice if the brief fantasy had been his reality.

I’m still on the fence about the whole House/Cuddy thing. The relationship has helped him grow (the mariachi band was inspired, and even fooled Wilson), but now he’s getting soft. Drinking away his sorrows (not a good thing for a drug addict, one would think) and proclaiming his undying love. Cuddy didn’t look terribly happy, but maybe that was a combination of him skipping out on her award banquet and showing up drunk at the door. Or maybe it was Cuddy the hospital administrator realizing that her relationship means that her top doc is putting business (big business) seconds. I take it that Masters isn’t going to be around long. She never really seemed to fit into the equation. What are the odds that Olivia Wilde will ever return to the show? Nice opening scene, though, where it seemed like the patient of the week was cleaning up the evidence of a crime.

Poor Castle. He and Beckett share near-death experiences twice in one day, and Josh shows up both times to take the wind out of Castle’s sails. It did seem, though, that Beckett  had a lot running through her head during that last clinch with her wandering boyfriend. Was it just me, or did anyone else think: Dead guy’s wearing clothes. I mean, sure, that’s icky, but if you’re freezing to death, wouldn’t you try anything to stay warm? That plastic sheet they covered the corpse with might have helped a bit, too. Favorite line resulting from that sequence: “I’m glad my stupidity is so predictable,” he tells Ryan and Esposito (I’m starting to remember their names and know which one is which!) after they come to the rescue. Second favorite: “If someone tries to sell you on cryogenics, say no.”

The scene where Beckett e-mails photos of the bomb to Fallon (why does that guy look so familiar? The only show I know of that he used to be on is Judging Amy, and that was a long time ago) reminded me a lot of that new cell phone commercial where a bunch of people in a carpool all get the same multimedia message at the same time and one guy laughs long before the others get the thing downloaded. Manhattan’s at risk and the DHS doesn’t have 4G? As the clock got close to zero, I thought it was going to misfire or something, which wouldn’t have been a satisfying resolution to the situation. Castle’s solution, grabbing all the wires and just yanking, was inspired. What did it matter if he was wrong? They were dead either way. “I figured one of them had to be the right one,” he says later. When talk of commendations and congratulations comes up, Beckett says: “I was just doing my job. I don’t know what the hell he was doing.”

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Bow ring

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Bev Vincent

One more editing pass on the new essay and it will be ready to send in to the editor. It ended up somewhere in the vicinity of 5500 words. That’s two 5000-word documents I’ve completed in the past couple of weeks. For a change of pace, my next one will be comparatively short, something on the order of 600 words.

I finished my read-through of all things Sherlock Holmes. Over the course of the past several weeks I’ve reread, or read for the first time, every Holmes novel and short story Conan Doyle wrote. I got the order of the last two collections reversed, which meant that I finished up with the story His Last Bow, which was as good a place as any to end.

The Bram Stoker nominees have been revealed. Ellen Datlow has the list on her LJ. Quite a few friends appear on the list. Congratulations, one and all.

Sometimes the Amazing Race‘s schedule is an equalizer. The cowboys were way, way behind at the midpoint of the first leg, but since the next leg involved a flight and the departures weren’t until the next morning, it was all moot. I’m not sure that 70-year-old Mel is going to make it to the end, given by how wiped out he was after just one or two days. And it looks like the redheads might be in some trouble next week. I couldn’t tell from the preview whether they hit another car or a pedestrian. Definitely not good either way.

I only watched an hour of the Oscars, but that was enough. My favorite line of the evening came from 73-year-old screenwriter David Seidler (The King’s Speech), who started with “My father always told me I’d be a late bloomer.” My overall assessment of what I saw: Mila Kunis looked terrific, and Anne Hatheway tried her best to keep things chugging along, but her best wasn’t good enough. I was bored.

I remembered that I had an episode of Law & Order: SVU recorded from last week that I hadn’t watched yet. Much to my surprise, it was actually quite good. Low on the preaching content and a real whodunit. They managed to shoe-horn in an ultimately irrelevant subplot about a businessman who was boosting his Google rankings by harassing clients into giving him negative reviews. Don’t know exactly where he found the time to do this, given that he was spending hours outside the house of one client. And then there was the boss from hell, the Queen of Mean, who surprisingly wasn’t the murder victim. The SVU folks had to do some real detecting and a nifty but yucky clue came from the manner in which the victim ended up with such a high blood alcohol content.

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No bucks, no Buck Rogers

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Bev Vincent

Finished the first draft of the essay that’s due in a few weeks. 5000 words, though who’s counting? I wasn’t given an upper limit. I suspect it’s going to grow a bit on my first round of revisions, then perhaps shrink on subsequent rewrites, so it could end up pretty much where it is right now in terms of length.

I missed the first few episodes of Blue Bloods, since it airs on Friday nights, but it’s not a bad program. Tom Selleck is solid as always, and I like Bridget Moynahan, who I wasn’t familiar with before. Donnie Wahlberg is very good, though I’m still not sold on his character’s partner, played by Jennifer Esposito. Good to see Nick Turturro (NYPD Blue) again. I never made the connection between him and his brother John before.

A neat episode of Fringe this week, flashing back to the aftermath of Peter’s abduction from the other side. I loved the 80’s pop version of the opening credits. It’s funny that one of the most reliable throwbacks people use to invoke the 1980s is the failed Betamax. The whole bit made me think of the Dharma years on Lost. I found it interesting to learn that Peter met Olivia when they were kids. He doesn’t seem to have any memory of that now, does he? “The beguiling Olivia Dunham beguiles.” She trusted him immediately, telling him a secret she wouldn’t even tell Walter, though she does later and Walter comes through to her defense. The scene where she gets caught between the two Walters was a little disorienting at first. Looks like there’s a break next week: two weeks until the next new episode.

We watched The Right Stuff last night. I’d never seen it before. For a 25+ year old film, it holds up well. Interesting to see all these well established actors all those years ago: Ed Harris, Randy Quaid, Sam Shephard, Barbara Hershey, Jeff Goldblum, Kathy Baker. Donald Moffat made an excellent Lyndon B. Johnson, having a hissy fit in the back of his limo when John Glenn’s wife, who suffered from a debilitating stammer, refused to let him into the house with the network camera’s during Glenn’s flight. Saw Levon Helm’s name in the credits, too. He was the narrator. The scenes during the culling of the 100+ candidates down to the seven with the right stuff were the most interesting parts of the film, but the whole thing was good and the 3+ hours flew by.

Posted in Fringe, movies | Comments Off on No bucks, no Buck Rogers

I won all of them

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Bev Vincent

More work on the essay this morning. I hope to have it whipped into shape after another day or two. It has a lot going on, discussing a novel and three movies, and I want to keep it under 4-5000 words. The issue of the magazine it will be in should be a popular one.

The third episode of Justified started off a little lack-luster, primarily because it involved Raylan so little. That dumb-ass Dewey Crowe was never my favorite character, but I did like his scene in the store where he was looking to buy a ski mask. “Who’re you? The ski mask police?” he asks, when the owner gives him grief. His idea to try to impersonate Raylan was about as creative as his little mind could possibly get. He probably thought it was the smartest thing ever. Doyle seemed more of a hick this episode then when we first met him, but he left no doubt in our minds as to what lengths he’s willing to go to for the family. And Dickie seemed less bright, too, then in his first appearance. I guess it’s going to take some time to get a handle on these characters. But the star of the episode was Walton Goggins. “What does a guy have to do to drink in peace and quiet?” he mutters after the umpteenth interruption at his favorite watering hole. This time, when the guy from the mine (Kyle) tried to get him fired up about some big deal, Boyd got bigger. He’s not a big guy, but when he stood up, it was perfectly obvious who the more dangerous man was. A smart Kyle would have turned and walked away. Boyd seemed to suck all the light out of the room. Wow, what a performance. It really does seem like he just wants to be left alone, but people (including Raylan) won’t.

Fun little zombie episode of CSI. Catherine came up with a new description for the guys who were supposed to be dead but got up and walked away when no one was looking: D.O.AWOL. Howard Hessman was a blast as the discredited researcher who wanted to reanimate dead people. Gave some insight into what would have happened if Dr. Johnny Fever had gotten a real Ph. D. In a way, his character reminded me a bit of Walter from Fringe, and there was even a passing reference to fringe science.

The Mentalist was excellent this week. There was a murder (unsolved) and a surprising turn of events (unresolved), and it was a thrill a minute, from the obligatory cold opening followed by the “36 hours earlier” catch up. When we see Hightower with a gun to Patrick’s head, everything suddenly makes sense, though the way they tried to prolong the suspense by referring to her as “the suspect” and “the target” was a little irritating. We all saw the previews.

What a brilliant way to resolve the incineration of the cop killer without involving any of the regular CBI agents, I thought. But at the back of my mind I had to think: this reeks of a Patrick Jane con to smoke out the real culprit. Turns out I was half right: the evidence starts to mount on Hightower, but she convinces Patrick that she’s not guilty. Duct taping the gun to her hand and his neck was a stroke of utter brilliance. It amped up the threat to Patrick (Hightower recognized Cho as the one most likely to try something) but it also let Patrick bluff the security guard into thinking she was still in the vehicle.

We also got to see a lot more of La Roche. I loved Patrick’s description of him: “We’re all just pots in his kitchen and he’s the sous chef waiting for one of us to boil over.” He’s a bulldog on the job (“Nice project board,” Hightower says. “Bet you won a few science fairs.” He grunts and leans in, doing his best Robert Goran imitation. “I won all of them.”) but at the home he dresses in oversized yellow shirts (like Nero Wolfe), collects Hummel figures and has a “fluffy white dog.” The exchange between Patrick and La Roche here was great: “I didn’t picture you living in an actual house.” La Roche frowns. “Where did you think I lived?” And, the inspiration for today’s image: “In a burrow on a riverbank, something like that.” For the briefest of moments, I thought we were being led to believe that La Roche was the culprit, but that makes no sense. He wasn’t at CBI at the time. But what does one make of the William Blake-quoting chief? That was weird.

The scene I enjoyed the most, though, was the one where Patrick visited the fingerprint guy in the basement. The way he described his job, that’s exactly what the local CSI people told us a few weeks ago. “I’m not David Caruso,” he says, which is also pretty much what the local CSI people told us. Another great exchange was the one where Rigsby and Cho caught the guys in the van behind the warehouse. Rigsby said something in what sounded to me like passable Spanish. The men don’t respond. “Maybe they don’t speak Spanish,” Rigsby says. “Maybe you don’t,” Cho deadpans. The gag with Rigsby and the guy with the thick accent at the beginning didn’t work quite so well.

New vocabulary words arising from this week’s lesson: Mentalized: Describes the process whereby Patrick scrutinizes you like Sherlock Holmes and arrives at certain conclusions. LaRoched: Describes the feeling of guilt someone has after being interrogated by the bulldog, even if the person isn’t guilty.

Posted in Criminal Minds, CSI, Justified, Mentalist | Comments Off on I won all of them