Three-headed grandchild

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Bev Vincent

Today is our 15th wedding anniversary. Online research tells me that it is our crystal anniversary, which is appropriate enough for a crystallographer. Just a few days after the anniversary of the discovery of X-ray, too. Appropriate enough for an X-ray crystallographer. And, yes, I’m a geek.

I guess NCIS decided it was time to revisit the team’s families. This week it was Tony’s father. Always good to see Robert Wagner. Next week it looks like Ziva’s father is back in town. Can Ralph Waite be far behind? We know (as of last night) that Abby’s father is dead. Have we ever seen McGee’s father? I know his sister was involved in one case a while back. Last night’s storyline was kind of meh, though. Muddled.

The Event has been canceled. Well, no, not really, but I’m done with it. Not even the scary aged children at the end could stir any interest. Nothing’s getting resolved and they keep trotting out new mysteries. I know, I know—people are going to say that sounds like Lost, but in this case we already know what “the island” is, and it’s simply not that interesting.

I received my contributor copy of Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture last night. A nice looking volume, to which I contributed essays on Dan Simmons, Carrion Comfort, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula : The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count and R. Chetwynd-Hayes.

It was an explosive episode of Sons of Anarchy. Very helpful of Liam to pick a solvent warehouse to hide out in, I thought. He was in a bad spot, with both SAMCRO and Jimmy O after him, but it was Jax who brought him down from his ride with a flying tackle. What followed was hard to watch. As Bobby said, “This is some medieval shit.” No waterboarding for Liam. Instead he got a little open gut surgery. Ugh. Of course Jimmy O managed to escape once again, that dastardly villain. And McGee got the Godfather kiss from Clay, and a warm send-off to the sidewalk below. Forty years of friendship, down the tubes.

When the going gets tough, everyone reacts differently. “I need a smoke,” Gemma says. “I need whiskey,” Maureen says (though in truth she’d already had a nose full). “I need a new life,” says Cherry, who’s had a bad run of boyfriends lately, starting with Halfsack, who I could swear Gemma called “Half Stack.” Gemma’s nicotine craving came just in the nick of time to ward off a little consensual incest. It was inevitable that Jax would put the moves on Trinity (both mothers called their offspring sluts), leading to Gemma’s delivery of the quote of the night. “Unless we want a three-headed grandchild, looks like we’re going to have to share some family history.” Trinity’s reaction to the news: “I almost shagged my brother, ma.” Jax’s reaction: “Two minutes later and I’d’ve been dancing in Tig territory.” I didn’t get the reference, but it was funny anyway.

Meanwhile, back in Charming, Tig, his punch buddy Kozlik, and the latest prospect, along with Piney, have to figure out how to rescue Tara and her boss (“That’s a serious amount of ink,” Tara says of Margaret’s tattoo, which she got back in another lifetime: 1989), which involves trespassing on Alvarez’s property and convincing him to play dead for 24 hours. That’s the easy part. They also have to come up with $¼ million when the club has been scrimping for chump change. I was struck by a reversal: Tara, tied up and duct taped in an attic not so long after she discovered the Guatemalan hottie tied up and duct taped in a basement. That didn’t work out so well for Amelia.

Damn Father Ashby for making sense. Sure, he’s got wheels within wheels and you can’t believe a tenth of what he says, but his rationale for what he’s doing with Abel has a twisted kind of logic. There’s not really any other reason for him to continue to keep the boy away from Jax. He’s gotten everything he wanted out of SAMCRO. However, I’m going to be seriously pissed if Jax gives in and just walks away. Everything about this season will have been for nothing if he does.

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Bad things happen in darkness

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Bev Vincent

Elton John no longer feels the need to make hit records. He’s had his long run, so now he can be self indulgent and do what he wants. So what happens with The Union? It’s his biggest hit in decades. It entered Billboard at #3, his highest position on that chart since Blue Moves in 1976. It’s his 17th top ten album, and Leon Russell’s third, though Russell’s most recent top ten was in 1973 and EJ’s was a compilation album a few years ago. I remember buying Blue Moves when it first came out, at a record store in Campbellton, New Brunswick. I’ve always thought someone should license “Theme from a Non-existent TV Series” as the theme for a TV series.

I posted my review of Bad Boy by Peter Robinson last night.

When Ted mentioned on How I Met Your Mother the phenomenon at the museum where a person can stand in one spot and whisper and have the sound transmitted to another person on the other side of the room, I thought it was going to work out differently. I was sure that Marshall was going to say something to diss his boss or his job and get canned as a result. Instead they waited until we had almost forgotten about it (despite Ted’s repeated juvenile pranking) to bring it up again in a way that had some oomph. I have no idea where this relationship with Zoe (Jennifer Morrison from House) is going. She’s married, after all, even if her husband (Kyle McLaughlin) is something of a pompous buffoon.

Somewhat related, Chekhov wrote about the gun shown in the first act that must be fired in the third. They did that on Castle like that this week, but it wasn’t a gun—it was a gizmo for turning off the lights in the subway. I thought that bringing that in at the end was a bit of a stretch. The murder victim, shot in Central Park, worked in the subway and the criminals happened to choose the subway as the place to keep their hostage. It would have made more sense if the light bulb replacer had been killed because he saw something in the subway while at work. Otherwise, it was all just a big coincidence.

The other question I had (and I admit my knowledge of NY geography and traditions is a little rusty): if the boy was now living with his mother in Westchester, would he still be playing on a soccer team that practiced in Central Park? Best repartee of the episode: Castle: What’s the strangest pet you’ve ever had? Beckett, without even a beat: You. I liked Castle’s trick with the cell phone camera (even if the picture was perfectly framed on one blind shot). I didn’t like the obligatory scene where the father asks where his son is and everyone pulls long faces and there’s a cut to another scene, a tired fake-out meant to make us think that something went wrong. Way overused.

“If bad ideas were an Olympic event, this would take the gold,” Glenn says on episode 2 of The Walking Dead. The idea was to cover themselves in zombie guts and walk among the “geeks” as Glenn calls them to escape their predicament in Atlanta. Though Rick admonished them to not get any on their skin, they didn’t exactly pay attention to that during the scene, with Rick digging into his pocket to get the key, for example. I really liked the scene where Rick let Glenn run the show while planning the excursion into the sewers. Glenn knew the layout, he knew the dangers, and Rick stepped back and let him take charge. Poor Laurie Holden, trapped in a supermarket in Maine while creatures in the mist try to break in and now trapped in a department store in Atlanta while zombies try to break in. I’m never going shopping with her.

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Adventures in Modern Recording

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I got my new iPod rebuilt this weekend. Took a while to restore over 6000 songs and make sure the album graphics were there, too. I know I could have skipped that step but I figured if I was going to do it, I should do it right. Along the way, I rediscovered some groups and albums that I haven’t listened to in a long time, including The Buggles, who were favorites of mine back in the eighties, including their lesser-known second album, shown here.

I finished Bad Boy by Peter Robinson this weekend (review almost finished) and decided to dig into the old Travis McGee novels again. I’m going to be traveling later on this week (more on this after the fact!) so they seemed like good airplane fare. I’m going to read them in chronological order, so first up is The Deep Blue Good-by. I’m amazed at how well I remember these books, though I probably haven’t read them in 20 years or more.

Our local contenders on The Amazing Race were eliminated last night, Michael and Kevin, the Korean father and son from Sugar Land. Their ouster came from a combination of Michael’s inability to master the last challenge and two penalties they received for not following the directions. Without one or the other, they might have squeaked through. Brooke and Claire realized their error with the directions (taking a taxi when they weren’t allowed to do so) and went back to fix their mistake.

We went to see Red this weekend. This isn’t the apple dumpling gang. We had a blast watching this flick. Not deep or profound by any stretch of the imagination, just good fun with a great cast. It’s based on a graphic novel, so there is a little over-the-top violence (shredding Bruce Willis’s house with machine gun fire, the street carpeted with empty casings, for example) but the actors play it straight. Even John Malkovich, who plays the loony tunes paranoid who was secretly fed LSD for over a decade. The funny thing about his character is that, though he’s paranoid, most of the stuff he’s worried about he has good reason to be worried about. Mary-Louise Parker plays the audience avatar, the person from outside the CIA world who is confronted with all this wacky stuff and has to keep up. She’s utterly charming. Morgan Freeman (who doesn’t play Red) is his usual reliable, stalwart self, though he does get a good scene where he’s dressed up like Papa Doc Duvalier. And who would have guessed that Ernest Borgnine is 93? He doesn’t look like a day over eighty. Helen Mirren looks like she’s having fun, and Karl Urban (Bones from the new Star Trek) plays the by-the-book “heavy” who doesn’t understand the machinations behind his orders but grows to appreciate them. The only downside to the movie was that we had a cackling hyena behind us. I hate it when that happens.

I wonder how close Dexter and Lumen are going to get. They progressed this week to an awkward handshake (“just like my senior prom,” Dexter notes) and then to a happy hug from Lumen when she thinks things are going her way. And, finally, Dexter decides to bridge the gap between his two worlds and bring Harrison along to meet her. I speculated early on that since she knows the truth about him and since they’re bound to be become close because of circumstances, there’s a chance that they could become an item. Either that or she’s doomed, I figure. Good to see Johnny Lee Miller (Eli Stone) again. He looks like he’s lost weight. That stakeout sure did go south in a hurry, though LaGuerta figures she didn’t do a thing wrong. Deb got to take the shot she missed out on the last time she faced down this bad  hombre. LOL at Lumen thinking Masuka was the twisted killer in the photo. Quotable quote of the episode: That’s either a saint or the most boring action figure I’ve ever seen.

Posted in Dexter, movies | Comments Off on Adventures in Modern Recording

Very well groomed for a crazy person

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Bev Vincent

Knopf is releasing the Millennium Trilogy Deluxe Boxed Set just in time for Christmas. Nice looking unjacketed, clothbound boxed set of Stieg Larsson’s bestsellers. Accompanying the set is a fourth book, On Stieg Larsson, which the publisher was kind enough to send me for review. It contains an essay by one of his former coworkers and another by his editor at Norstedts who discusses how the books came across her desk and her interactions with Larsson as they worked on the first manuscript and prepared it for publication. It’s an interesting insight into the editorial process, supplemented by a reproduction of her e-mail exchanges with Larsson during the editorial process. They continue until the last message from Larsson, written less than two weeks before he died at work.

Larsson was a cooperative and congenial author who encouraged editorial input into his work and only dug in his heels on occasion (he insisted that his original title, Men Who Hate Women, be kept for the Swedish edition). He was well read in the crime genre and was gratified when an early reader noticed that he was attempting different subgenres in each of the three books.

We aren’t often afforded this level of access into the editing process, so I found it fascinating reading. He wanted to know about the mechanics of the process. Would it be done on printouts or electronically. He wondered “how many book pages are a million key strokes” and said he wanted to set up a Millennium website and should he consult the publicists before doing this? His day job is very similar to his protagonists, with issues of his magazine Expo often demanding his immediate attention. “As you know we produce books within four to eight weeks here at Expo; Norstedts ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

The editor’s responses are equally fascinating. “Generally speaking, we start by working on printed-out texts, and then we edit the electronic documents accordingly (but only if the author is prepared to let us have them – some authors insist on making all changes, major and minor, themselves, right through until the final version.)” She also asked all her short, slim acquaintances how much they weighed to arrive at a final statistic for Salander’s weight!

The book ends with two more essays, a biographical piece by one of his long-time friends (they met at a Swedish science fiction convention when Larsson was seventeen), which also provides an interesting overview of Swedish crime fiction and the influence of Sweden’s culture and welfare state mentality on Larsson, an unabashed Trotskyite; and a brief look at the Larsson phenomenon by the publishing editor of Norstedts at the time the books were acquired, including some of the controversy surrounding the disposition of Larsson’s estate. The booklet is only 96 pages long, but fascinating reading.

Currie Graham made a triumphant return to The Mentalist this week. Walter Mashburn was a former murder suspect, a man with too much money and just enough flair to be simultaneously arrogant, charming and cloying. The kind of guy who would call his Lear Jet “Walter’s Jalopy.” You didn’t need to have Patrick Jane’s powers of observation to deduce that Mashburn was hiding something when Patrick visited his hotel room in the final scene. Guess that opens the door for him to show up again, although they gave him something to do for at least the next month. Someone on the show was a Star Trek fan, giving one of the characters the last name “Bajoran.” I liked Mashburn’s suggestion that he hated the murder victim enough that he wanted him alive, rather than dead. Alive and suffering from his crushing defeat. I thought it was a little rash on Lisbon’s part to shoot blindly at a sniper on the grounds of a posh country club. Sure, they were under fire, but she didn’t have a target in sight. Today’s subject line comes from Patrick’s assessment of the whacked out supermodel ex-girlfriend. Cho didn’t get many wisecracks this week. His best effort was in response to the widow, who asked who Patrick was after his quirky questioning. “It’s a long story.” The best parting shot of the episode came from Mashburn. “I can’t believe I was a one-night stand for Dirty Harry.”

Can you imagine what it would be like to be faced with that mountain of shredded evidence on this week’s CSI? It ain’t all glamor, that job, although the expediency of television allowed them to make short work of what would really be a mind-numbingly tedious task. I suspected the mousy secretary from the moment she first appeared, though. She was just too much of a stereotype not to be the culprit. I liked the idea of an ID theft protection company being ID thieves themselves. Poor G-man, trying to get things straightened out. “I’ve never even been to Uzbekistan!”

An interesting twist on Fringe this week. Call it “Amber Alert.” The people encased in amber in the alt universe are still alive and aware, stuck in the last thought that went through their minds before they were trapped. There weren’t many changed details from the alt universe this week. There’s a Nixon Parkway, and Cary Grant starred in The Maltese Falcon, that was all I noticed. I can’t wait to find out what happens once Olivia gets back on the right side of reality. Will she and Faux-livia come face to face?

Posted in CSI, Fringe, Mentalist | Comments Off on Very well groomed for a crazy person

As the SVU turns

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I’ve been using my Kangaroo for two weeks. Time is zipping by so fast I thought it was only one week, but when I checked back on my earlier blogs I set myself straight. The Kangaroo is a desktop adjustable height platform that lets me easily and quickly switch between sitting and standing at my computer. This morning was the first time I didn’t sit at all between arrival and gym break. Typically I stand for a couple of hours and sit for a while, switching back and forth throughout the day. Apparently standing burns between 15 and 50 more calories per hour than sitting, but that’s not my goal. It’s to keep from sitting so much because of a bad lower disk. So far it’s working out exactly the way I hoped. My legs do get a little tired after a while, but my back is perfect when I’m standing, and it doesn’t get as sore while sitting in the evening because it hasn’t been stressed so much during the daytime, when I would typically sit at my desk all day long. Money well spent.

I was sure Marty was going home on Survivor this week after he started spouting off during tribal council. Don’t they ever learn? That’s not the place to have a meltdown, especially when you’re already on the verge of being eliminated. (Probst said on his blog that Marty’s main problem is that he’s always hollering.) And NaOnka got a free pass after stealing food and supplies and getting busted for it? (Probst said he realized at this point in the game that if you treat NaOnka like a seven year old, you’d have her figured out.) I have no idea whatsoever why everyone was down on Alina. Did she really pose that great a threat? I hardly remembered her from one week to the next.

I realized that I’d forgotten to watch The Event this week. That happens to me a lot. I never watch the show live, but pick it up via OnDemand the next evening. But I forget about the show. Sometimes it’s two days after or, as this week, three days after. That’s how little impression it makes on me. Then I found out I hadn’t missed it after all because it wasn’t on this week. Ah, well.

I think Criminal Minds is going through its weakest season since I started watching it. They’re getting lazy. The cop of the week was a right bastard this week so of course it had to turn out that his ill temper was somewhat responsible for one of the perpetrators becoming a killer. And then there’s Law & Order: SVU, which this week almost turned into a soap opera. Olivia and Elliot are shot at, so they have to go see the psychiatrist and be cleared to return to active duty. I was wondering why Cragen was making such a big deal about it, but it turned out that the reason was to give Olivia a reason for jumping to a lame-brained conclusion. She meets the daughter of a rape victim from 40 years ago (Maria Bello) and immediately assumes that the same man responsible for this crime raped her own mother. So that would make the woman her half sister. Even Wong knows that’s a pretty wild stretch, a conclusion she arrived at only because she failed to go for counseling after being shot at! Yeah, right. But the soap opera similarity doesn’t end there: instead of finding a sister, she ended up with a foster child when the woman signed over her legal rights to her son to Olivia after killing the rapist and fleeing the jurisdiction. I can see it now: Olivia’s going to turn into Sanchez from The Closer, who spent a huge chunk of last season looking after a young boy, except Olivia will do it legally.

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Another fun-filled day in the six counties

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Bev Vincent

When it remembers how to rain around here, it does it up in style. We had heavy rains overnight on Sunday, and more again through the night last night. Badly needed. Maybe now I can stop watering the lawn.

I watched part 1 of The Walking Dead on Monday evening via OnDemand. I’m not a huge fan of zombies (though since I watched two zombie movies in two day, to an outsider that statement must look strange), but I think this one is a winner. Frank Darabont’s direction is excellent. After the opening prologue, and a blistering shootout scene, the story built up gradually as things were revealed a bit at a time to the protagonist. I was a little confused about how much time had elapsed. When he meets up with Morgan Jones (Lennie James from Jericho, who seems to end up in the post-apocalypse fairly often), he’s told that the outbreak has been underway for a month. Was he in a coma that long unattended? If so, how did he survive, both physically and from the zombies? That wound of his didn’t seem to bother him all that much after the first few minutes of the episode.

It’s always fun to see some of Darabont’s stable of players, like Jeffrey DeMunn and Laurie Holden, show up. I had lunch with Ms Holden during the filming of The Mist, along with a number of the other cast members, which was a memorable experience. I also watched one of the “making-of” clips via OnDemand and saw another familiar face: Greg Nicotero, special effects expert. David Schow took Rich Chizmar, Johnathon Schaech and me upstairs to the special effects workshop in Shreveport so we could see some of the creatures he was creating for The Mist, which was an incredible adventure.

The human dramas that are playing out in The Walking Dead are what will bring me back a second week. I certainly didn’t expect Rick’s wife and son to show up so soon, and in those circumstances. And the scenes in the streets of Atlanta were great—especially the swarming scene at the end. And whose voice was that over the radio in the tank?

Jerry Brown is the governor of California? Again? Governor Moonbeam! That’s a real blast from the past. And speaking of blasts, if you haven’t seen the George Takei video where he calls Clint McCance a douchebag, and not just once, you have to google it up.

Castle wasn’t as stunning as last week’s episode, but it featured a lot of good detective work and a pleasingly convoluted scenario. And didn’t Beckett look good when they went to the strip club? I see Wendy from CSI and Cameron from House were back on Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother respectively, though I think Charlie’s new girlfriend has run her course after meeting his personal stalker.

After Jacob Hale accuses Salazar of blackmailing him by recording their conversation on his iPhone, Salazar quips, “I got an app for that.” Apparently Sons of Anarchy also has a new app that allows people to access “appisodes” that explain some of SAMCRO’s backstory. It costs 99¢ and there are a number of complaints that it crashes on some configurations, so I have tried it out yet, but I may.

A lot has happened since SAMCRO got to Ireland, and yet not much has happened. They’re still looking for Abel. Everything else is just drama, a lot more than the gang expected when they got on the plane to fly overseas. I was surprised when nothing happened at the border crossing, as I was expecting more of the same, but Jimmie O had a different plan up his sleeve. Two of them, in fact. I hope that Laim O’Neill gets his comeuppance before this is all over. And Trinity springs into action to help defuse the situation when Jimmy O shows up in Belfast. As predicted, she and Jax are getting closer than they should, but at least Gemma is now aware of this potential problem. Question is, what will she do about it?

Back in Charming, Unser is starting to put two and two together to arrive at Jacob Hale as the source of his new problems, and he might have to start doing some real “coop shit,” as Tig so eloquently put it. So, Salazar has Jacob Hale in a bind, and now he’s got Tara and her boss Margaret, too. Surprise, surprise, Margaret has a gang tattoo on her back! Who saw that coming?

Posted in Castle, Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead | Comments Off on Another fun-filled day in the six counties

Is this your monster?

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Bev Vincent

For a while last night I wondered if we had goofed and that the trick-or-treaters had been out the night before. When I was young, living in eastern Canada, if Halloween was on a Sunday, trick-or-treating was done on Saturday instead. But the first little ghouls and goblins started showing up by about 6:30. It was a light turnout, maybe 10 or 12 sets of visitors in total. We saw no one after 8:30 and I turned the light off at 9:00.

We’re supposed to get rain over the next few days. The first we’ve seen in over a month. It’s also back up to the high eighties today after a fairly crisp weekend.

My first-ever iPod died on Saturday. I was in the midst of transferring a few songs to it when iTunes generated a “failed to sync” message. I can’t remember how long I’ve had it, but it has definitely lived a useful and productive life. It’s an older model, “only” 30 GB, and it had it full to the brim with almost every CD I own. After the error message, the disc drive started clicking and seeking, and my computer failed to recognize it as an iPod any more. I think even the iPod was no longer recognizing itself as an iPod (which is the same fate that befell the travelers at the beginning of Mostly Harmless, which I started reading to my wife last night). I suppose I could send it off for repair, but I figure I might as well upgrade to a new model, so a 160 GB 7th gen is on its way to me. I can’t see myself ever filling that up, but then again I never thought I’d use more than half of my 30 GB model.

There are two tracks from Elton John and Leon Russell’s new album, The Union, that are only available via iTunes or the Deluxe Edition. One of them, Mandalay Again, is quickly becoming my favorite. I can’t figure why it wasn’t included on the general album. Great tune, nice lyrics, and the best example of Elton and Leon singing together (instead of alternating, which they also do).

We watched The Affair of the Necklace on Friday night. French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, Hilary Swank, Jonathan Pryce, Adrian Brody, Christopher Walken as a mystic, a very young Hayden Panettiere, and, to my surprise Simon Baker as…the Mentalist. Well, no, not really, but he was playing a roguish character who wasn’t a huge leap from Patrick Jane. Okay, he was a gigolo, but he was also a scoundrel who took part in a pretty serious con.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched Dead Set, the BBC series that aired last week on IFC. It’s a zombie movie that takes place mostly in and around the set (the dead set, get it?) of the UK version of Big Brother (logo above). It’s standard zombie fare: zombies suddenly start appearing, no explanation, and they overrun humanity. These are particularly fast zombies, running down their victims, but they’re just as stupid as any other reanimated dead creatures. The spin here is that the main survivors are contestants who were locked in Big Brother House when the outbreak happened. I’ve never seen the British version before, but it seems raunchier and less controlled than the US edition. Among the other characters are the show’s executive producer, a right bastard of a twerp, one of the show’s assistants, and a recently evicted contestant named Pippa who would drive just about anyone to drink. Most of her dialog consisted of “I don’t like that,” which was used to describe just about every nasty situation she encountered, including being trapped in the green room with the bastard pig of a producer. As visceral as the zombie chowing down scenes were, I think the scenes in that room were worse. Regular BBC viewers would know that the real Big Brother host played herself, as did some former contestants. The show was funny at times, part social commentary (one contestant wanted to know if the zombie outbreak meant that no one was watching her on the live feeds any more) and part extreme horror. It had nowhere to go at the end, but the trip was fun.

I think the situation Dexter ended up in this week was among the closest calls ever. Definitely the tensest situation this season. He’s got too many bodies on his hands. Well, potential bodies: the two men are both alive at the point of his crisis. Lumen took matters into her own hands and tracked down one of her alleged attackers. For a while, I thought it was going to be like that Twilight Zone episode where a wife points out her attacker to her husband, who kills the guy only to have the wife point out someone else. She botches the killing, though, and calls Dexter to clean up her mess. Only problem is, Dexter was in the midst of killing someone else, so he dumps the trussed up, drugged guy in the back of his SUV and heads off to the warehouse, where Lumen’s intended victim has gotten away. To make matters worse, someone reported the shooting, so Deb and the homicide department are on their way. And, to make matters even worse, Dexter’s captive escapes. So here’s Dex, in an alley chasing down his prey while Lumen tries to clean up the mess in the warehouse while Deb and Masuka converge on the scene. High points to Dex for his very creative solution to the problem. And LOL at Masuka’s immediate interpretation of the situation (two words: autoerotic mummification) and the way he acted it out for Deb and the others.

Lumen is a terrific addition to the Dexter universe. (Lumen — luminol. Coincidence? I don’t think so). They understand each other. They might even be starting to like each other. Dexter’s back in his old apartment, everything is back in its rightful place, including his little box of slides in the A/C unit, but there’s this new stuff, too, including a son who has started talking (first words: Die! Die! or Bye Bye, depending on your point of view), and this fragile but determined young woman. Some experiences are so big they change your DNA, Dexter observes.

Question: has someone like this ever survived a season of Dexter? Will she ultimately be sacrificed? Or will she just go home at the end of their reign of terror? Or, perhaps, a love interest?

The Angel/La Guerta plot took a funny turn, with Angel presenting his new wife with the gift of a witness instead of flowers or a puppy dog. When asked what happened to the honeymoon phase of his marriage, he responded, “I blinked.”

Posted in Dexter, movies, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Is this your monster?

These are not taxi doors

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I finished my review of Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and posted it on Onxy Reviews. I’m still reading Bad Boy by Peter Robinson. Next up is Against All Things Ending, the third of four volumes in the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which the publisher kindly sent me. I also finished reading So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams to my wife. We’re going on to “Young Zaphod Plays it Safe” before jumping into Mostly Harmless. And I’m also rereading Full Dark, No Stars as I put together my Cemetery Dance review of it. So I’m doing a lot of reading, it seems. As usual.

I also plan to make a major stab at a set-in-the-future vampire story this weekend. My buddy Brian Keene tweeted a link recently that filled in a gap in my concept of the story, so now I think I’m armed and ready to go.

As I watched Marty on Survivor the other night, I thought to myself: Self, what’s the dumbest thing you can do in this game? There are some contenders, like James who got sent home with two immunity idols in his possession, but most long-time watchers would agree that giving away an immunity idol is even worse. Witness Erik in Fans vs. Favorites, who handed his over and was summarily voted out. As Jeff Strand, Survivor Guru, wrote: “the editors didn’t even try to hide the results of the vote, they just showed all of the other players laughing at him while they wrote his name down.”

What does Marty do? Hands over his immunity idol. Those who don’t remember Survivor history are doomed to repeat it, I tweeted at that moment. If I were a bookmaker, I would have put very long odds on Marty surviving that move. But, lo and behold, he skated by. Again! Quelle suprise! His logic: either he was going to hand the idol over to Jeff Probst or to one of his fellow players, and by doing the latter he might garner some good will. On the other hand, if he’d played it, it might have gone right back into circulation and he could conceivably have found it again, which is something he didn’t consider, I think. Next week is the merge, so he may have some life left in him after all. I think Dan’s days are numbered.

This week’s CSI was odd. It blended two storylines that were complete opposites in tone. The dinosaur caper was the type that would have made for a good lab-rats outing full episode. The girlfriend’s tone was so pedantic as to be unbelievable, unless it was an over-the-top episode. Paired with that was a story of young girls who were murdered five years ago and someone was trying to ransom off the location of their bodies. Grim and serious. The two didn’t belong in the same episode, in my opinion. Lacked balance.

This week’s The Mentalist was quirky, too. I liked the way Patrick screwed with the head of security, tossing coins in this pockets when he wasn’t looking so he’d trigger the metal detector. Pure fun. The bit he did waving his hands in front of the guy’s face didn’t convince me, though. It seemed like a bit of light hypnotism, but it shouldn’t be that easy. He did something similar to the missing girl’s sister. Gives him too much power, to be able to just wave his hands like that and get information someone doesn’t want to give or isn’t sure they possess. One loophole that I wondered about: they had a full list of the comings and goings of everyone, so they knew the missing girl was still on the compound, but no one bothered to ask when the boyfriend had arrived on the scene. Seemed like a valuable piece of information to me. I liked his call to Hightower (“There’s going to be hijinx”) and his challenge to Lisbon and Hightower is the source of today’s subject line: “These are not taxi doors; they’re ears,” he said—a more dramatic statement than “I’m all ears,” I guess. The little peck on the cheek at the end was pushing it, I thought. He has no boundaries (except for shaking hands).

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Drive by. Nearly deported. This is just Day 1.

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Bev Vincent

One of my Canadian cousins contacted me via Facebook today to say that he was watching the Biography Channel’s Stephen King episode that I was interviewed for earlier this year. It’s an update to the previous biography, which was about a decade old, and only produced for the international market, which means it won’t air in the US. However, you might find it cropping up from time to time on the Canadian Biography Channel and elsewhere.

I know people aren’t big fans of embedded YouTube videos, so I won’t do that. But here’s a link to Woodland Press’s book trailer for Specters in Coal Dust. It’s very effective, with lots of mood music and live action video clips.

I saw a news headline announcing MySpace’s change in direction so I did something I’ve been tempted to do for several months: I deleted my MySpace account. That means I’ll never be put in the situation of having to utter the clumsy words “my MySpace” again.

Last night’s NCIS was an episode that seemed like it was trying hard to be a profound character episode for Abby, but she just came off as nuttier than usual, I’m afraid. Usually likable but over the top this time. I did like Michael Weatherly’s Saturday Night Fever schtick. As goofy and unlikely as his Tony DiNozzo is, I think Weatherly’s underappreciated as an actor. He’s a very good mimic.

The Event had moments of pure melodrama (the scenes at Leila’s house) and dramatic special effects. If the Others, for lack of a better word, can move an airplane and all of its passengers thousands of miles, wasn’t imploding a building a bit of overkill. A deliberate display of power? To what end? Simon’s maneuver with the radioactive material was much more subtle, even though it left him exposed. I noticed a commonality between this show and Fringe: both have interlopers who get emotionally attached to the innocent people forming their cover stories and resist change. And that nutty reporter that came in at the end spouting all kinds of crap about aliens…oh, wait, she’s absolutely right. But who’s going to believe her?

I also caught up on Law & Order: UK. Episode four was very creepy, dealing with a sociopath who was also a brilliant businessman. Mr. Slade vs. Mr. Steele. Everything was a game to Slade, and he played with skill and panache. He was charismatic and menacing, sometimes simultaneously. Seemingly unstoppable. But then when Steele refused to play his game any more he was undone. Lots of tense scenes when Slade showed up where he wasn’t wanted.

SAMCRO finally made it to Ireland on Sons of Anarchy. Going on a cargo plane meant that they got to take their motorcycles along with them, which I didn’t expect, not to mention their guns. I like the re-imagined theme song, which had an Irish lilt to it. They weren’t exactly met by the Irish Tourism Board, but we all knew that was coming. Gemma saves the day, once again. Good thing she came along instead of Tig. Bobby gets off the first zinger of the episode, looking at the beaten Garda: “We gotta do something about all this cuz I don’t think we’re going to get them through duty free.” And then there’s a Godfather-like near hit on the way to the rectory. Typical vacation, Bobby says in response to Gemma’s comment that forms today’s subject line.

Gemma and Maureen Ashby approached each other like two people about to duel. It wouldn’t have been a far stretch to see them duking it out in the parking lot instead of Jax and Liam. I do think that Gemma needs to consider bringing Jax up to speed about Trinity. Otherwise I see a Greek tragedy coming down the pipeline. And poor Triny already has her hands full taking care of drunk adults. And people kept offering Gemma tea, and she finally capitulated for Bobby.

Though Father Ashby is telling Jax the superficial truth, every word he says is a lie. Poor Abel keeps getting farther and farther away.

Back in the USA, Tig’s lost his license for two years for leading three arms of law enforcement on a 100 mph wild goose chase. Looks like he’s going to be riding bitch with someone for a while—but not, I guess, for the prospect left behind to look after the boxing club. Raise your hand if you thought leaving him alone for the night with a gun was a bad idea. Looks like Jacob Hale will do business with anyone, even though Darby wasn’t willing to lower himself to Hale’s level. Looks like he’s developing something of a conscience. “How dirty do I need to get to be as clean as you,” he asks.

And we finally get a little more insight into Tig’s issue with the guy from Tacoma. As Chucky so succinctly put it: There’s got to be at least one vagina involved. Too bad they didn’t have time to show us the gory details of their Fight Club rendition. And LOL at Opie’s girlfriend for checking in at the abortion clinic as Sarah Palin.

Posted in NCIS, Sons of Anarchy, The Event | Comments Off on Drive by. Nearly deported. This is just Day 1.

Acting your age

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Bev Vincent

To celebrate the publication of Tuttu su Stephen King, today’s entry will be written entirely in Italian. However, because I have cleverly embedded a babelfish in the post, you won’t notice the difference. I’m told that dvd.it has this translation of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion on sale for 15% off.

In rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (We’re up to So Long and Thanks for all the Fish), I’m struck by Adams’ powers of prognostication. Sub-etha net is a pretty close analog of “ethernet” that behaves like a cross between WiFi and Amazon’s WhisperNet. And the Guide itself is really a Kindle or a Nook, or maybe an iPad. One of those companies should have been clever enough to license the rights to put “Don’t Worry” on the front of their device.

I downloaded and installed Beta 1.0 of the Windows version of Scrivener this morning. I plan to use it while I work on the second draft of my latest novel. It installed without a hitch. I spent the morning going through the online tutorial that comprehensively introduces the project management package and all its features. A few of the options that are available in the Mac version haven’t been ported yet, but nothing too crucial, so far as I can tell. Looks cool. My plan is to start on the novel on November 1. Not doing NaNoWriMo, per se, but it helps to have a fixed starting date in mind for a project of this magnitude.

I was amused to see Liz Vassey on Two and a Half Men last night, playing a 47-year-old woman. Vassey was Wendy the lab rat on CSI for several years, and is actually 38, much younger than Charlie Sheen, who is 45. (She was on Two and a Half Men once before, back in 2003, according to IMDB.) It reminded me of another actress I looked up recently whose publicity page gave her age as 32 but she claimed she could play “26-31.” In other words, she didn’t acknowledge that she could play her own age! (Aside: Today, Charlie Sheen was found drunk and naked in a trashed Manhattan hotel room. Life imitates art?)

Last night’s Castle was one of the strongest episodes to date, I thought. The case was a good puzzle, and they used solid police work and detecting to arrive at the perp’s identity. The fact that they got it wrong was just the cherry on top. They were plagued a bit by the hands of the clock, by which I mean the guy confessed with fifteen minutes left in the episode, so I was expecting some sort of reversal. However, what I anticipated was that Mr. Sweaty was going to turn out to be the real killer. They projected a bit by having Castle accompany Ryan to the motel at the end (we’ve never seen him do anything like that before), but it was still a good reversal. I liked the way the perp turned Castle’s pop psychology around on him. “How close to death do you want to get?” And the bit with him and Beckett holding hands by the pool at the end was nice. My favorite line: “Just for that, I’m going to base my next book on Esposito,” after Beckett said his job was “menial and unimportant” during the profile.

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