The Two Georges

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I finished The Reversal by Michael Connelly yesterday. Full review to come. Connelly makes some interesting decisions about how to resolve—or not resolve—certain vital aspects of the novel that lead me to believe he has a sequel planned.

Did a little yard work yesterday. Last winter we lost our hibiscus plants due to several consecutive freezes. They’d weathered over a dozen winters before that, so I didn’t take any precautions, but they all croaked. I tried replacing them with azaleas this summer, but we had such a hot dry summer and the bed is relatively shaded that they didn’t thrive, either. This time I’m trying some euonymus plants that are supposedly hardy through both cold and sunny weather. I like the fact that the leaves are colored. Planting in the fall is apparently a good idea in Texas because the plants have a chance to take root out of the blistering summer sun. We’ll see. We tend to be laissez faire about our plants, so we look for low-maintenance foliage.

We watched Inspector Bellamy, starring Gerard Depardieu, this weekend. It was the last movie directed by Claude Chabrol and the first time Chabrol and Depardieu worked together. The title character is inspired by Inspector Maigret, the stoic hero of Simenon’s novels. Simenon is one of the few authors I can read in French, since his style and vocabulary tend to be straightforward. I still need my Larousse when reading a Maigret book, but I can usually get by without referring to it more than once or twice a page.

Bellamy is a famous police chief, with a stellar career and a bestselling memoir. He and his wife are at her family home in Nimes on vacation. She’d rather be on a cruise to Egypt, but simply getting him out of the city to the summer home is a feat, so she’s not complaining. Much. They are a charming couple, clearly still deeply in love with each other, passionate and tender. He’s trying to relax, but work finds him all the same. A fugitive who is suspected of killing someone to perpetuate life insurance fraud has been loitering around the summer home, working up the nerve to talk to Bellamy. For reasons I never quite figured out, Bellamy takes an interest in the man, who planned to leave the life insurance money to his wife while taking off with his mistress. The plan didn’t work, so now the guy is holed up in a cheap motel with a new face and a new name and national media attention. Bellamy should have turned the guy in—especially since his plan called for disposing of a homeless man in his stead—but instead he seems to sympathize.

The other plotline involve’s Bellamy’s younger half-brother, Jacques, who drops in for an unannounced, open-ended visit. He’s a drunk, a gambler and a thief who resents Bellamy for stealing all the luck and leaving none for him. Though Bellamy apparently sees some parallels between his brother’s situation and the fugitive’s, I thought a better parallel was to the hapless homeless man who once had a respectable life and a long-term relationship before turning to drink.

There’s a lot of talking—this isn’t a fast paced mystery—and very little is at stake, so some people might find this movie lethargic. I found it interesting (in large part due to Depardieu’s comfort with the role and the relationship between Bellamy and his wife) and somewhat confounding, as I was never quite sure why people acted the way they did. I tried to imagine the scene (not shown) where Bellamy’s wife returns the 2000 euros his brother stole from some friends, for example. How did that play out? And I wondered why Bellamy’s wife stuck up for his brother to the extent she did, and also whether there really was something going on between them.

And then there was the singing defense attorney. That was just plain bizarre! I didn’t agree with the resolution to the case. Even though it turned out that the fugitive didn’t actively kill anyone, he set the scene in motion and he really did commit fraud.

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Tie me kangaroo down, sport

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I ordered a kangaroo yesterday. Yes, indeed. No, it’s not some sort of exotic drink like a Wallaby Darned, although ordering a wallaby was an option.

I’ve been on a quest to find a reasonably affordable sit-stand desk adapter. Something that allows me to work at my computer sitting or standing. Most of the solutions I found previously involved a swivel arm for the monitor that either had to be bolted into the desktop or clamped to the back end. They didn’t address the keyboard/mouse issue at all, which meant getting a separate product to lift them, probably a fixed amount.

Then I stumbled upon Ergo Desktop, which looks to be just what the doctor ordered—the doctor being me. Their low end product, the wallaby, allows you to raise the keyboard platform and the monitor at the same time. The kangaroo lets you lift the monitor another several inches independently of the keyboard. The whole thing just sits on the desktop—no installation required. There’s another level up that lets you mount the monitor via the VESA clamp, but I didn’t think I needed that. I should have it in a couple of weeks, at which point I intend to spend most of my workday standing, with the option of sitting whenever I want. They have a nice video on YouTube that shows it in action. I was sold. It’s affordable (many other swivel arm solutions cost upwards of twice that amount) and exactly what I imagined when I set out on this quest. I’ll let everyone know what I think of it after I get it.

I took the morning off from writing to strategize. I have four short stories that I want to tackle. Their deadlines are November, December, January and July. So which one do I have the best idea for? The last one, of course. I’m going to have to put that idea aside for the time being, though and focus on the deadlines in order if I’m going to meet them all.

I’m surprised they ran the vampire/werewolf episode of CSI so early. It would have been a natural for the week before Halloween. I got a kick out of Dr. Robbins trying to get the head off the spike. “It’s like trying to get meat off a shish kabob,” he said. Reminded me of my cameo in a Michael Slade novel, where my head is impaled on a spike outside Ted Bundy’s house.

Episode 3 of Fringe was in the alternate world. Reminds me a bit of Lost, with the flash sideways: the same actors playing slightly different versions of themselves. We learned that in that universe ink pens are rare relics, avocados are an expensive delicacy, small pox hasn’t been eradicated, the US Mail has a different logo (though I couldn’t make out what it was supposed to depict), and the US was involved in a war in, of all places, Aruba. The oxygen level in the air is unreliable. They also apparently had Star Trek. The plot was cool, with the guy working out all the possible outcomes from a sequence of events, like a Rube Goldberg machine. When Olivia and her partner were debating over the iterations of what the guy might have anticipated and counter anticipated, I thought they should have just tossed a coin, which would have added a level of randomness to the equation. Even if the killer could have guessed that they’d do that, he couldn’t guess the outcome. Still, I liked that Olivia defeated him because she didn’t behave like a person from that world.

It’s always fun watching Malcolm McDowell chew up the scenery. The unanswered question from this week’s The Mentalist is how Stiles knows so much about Red John (“a perfectly unpleasant sort of fellow”). It’s a tantalizing mystery, but almost something of a cheat. Patrick should have called him on it: the guy is withholding information pertaining to a number of homicides. I laughed at Patrick’s jibe to the undercover FBI (“Don’t freak out, Serpico”). Amazing that Rigsby and Grace walked away from that accident without so much as a stiff neck. And the guy at the end set a world record for the number of bullets he could take to the chest before falling down (excluding villains in horror movies). The “séance with a living person” was a nifty idea. My favorite exchange of the episode: Grace: “They all seemed so happy. Truly happy.” Cho: “Yeah, it’s creepy.” Interesting the way they all seemed to glide around in that last shot. MAYBE THEY’RE ALL REALLY DEAD!

Posted in CSI, Fringe, Mentalist | Comments Off on Tie me kangaroo down, sport

My former self

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I finally pulled the trigger on the short story in progress this morning. I read it through aloud last night, made a few minor touch-up changes, keyed them in this morning and shipped it off to the market. I was starting to think that I would never stop tinkering with it. Now, on to a few other stories that I want to get under control this month.

I realized this morning that I can’t remember when I weighed as little as I do at the moment. I’m clocking in regularly at 165. The most I ever weighed was 200, when I was a grad student. I was around 190 when I moved to Texas, I think, back in the late 80s. Then I joined a competition at work and dropped 17 lbs, and for the most part since then I’ve been in the 172-180 range. Any time I close in on 180, I start to take action. I hit that early this year when an injury kept me away from the gym for a few months. Once I started back to the gym, I was soon back down to my fighting weight. However, 170 was a threshold I rarely crossed. Like I said, I can’t remember the last time I did. Not in two decades. I’m certainly not looking to lose any more, but it feels good to see those digits on the scales.

Another Survivor castaway talked himself into eviction. It’s okay, apparently, to sit on your butt and do nothing in competitions, but being a talk-a-matic is unforgivable. Granted, even in small doses the guy was getting on my nerves, but was that really all he ever talked about or were we the victims of selective editing? Still, the old folks might be happier campers with him gone, even though their numbers are dwindling. The preview for next week hints that maybe the age experiment will come to an end. It was an interesting idea. I really thought the older team was going to put up a better show of it, though.

I wasn’t terribly convinced by the logic behind this week’s Criminal Mind. A former serial killer called the Butcher, one of Rossi’s old cases, gets Alzheimer’s and because he can’t remember his most recent kills he decides to start up again after a lengthy hiatus to repeat those final murders with the help of his adult son. It all seemed a little too convoluted to be credible. At the end, the Butcher tells Rossi that he quit killing mostly because of Rossi, without elaborating. Yet, Rossi met the man while investigating the sixth killing, and he went on killing for a long time after that. And, sure, the son was traumatized because of repressed memories, but he was going above and beyond the call of duty by hunting down new victims for his father to torture. Didn’t really buy it.

After a few moderately good episodes of Law & Order: SVU they were back to preaching, lecturing and moralizing this week. I think even the characters were upset by this, based on the way they were all so snarky with each other. When Olivia questioned Warner’s reasons for calling them in the coroner said, “Because I know how to do my job. I was shot in the lung, not in the head.” Oh, snap! And then Warner complained up the chain when her decision to call it a homicide didn’t sit well with Stabler and Benson, so their boss gave them the smackdown. And then when Huang decided he was going to report his findings to his bosses at the FBI, Stabler and he got into a “mine is bigger than yours” match about their contacts in the Agency. It was all pretty hilarious, except when the characters were info dumping horrifying statistics about white slavery. Maybe they won’t take themselves so seriously next week when Olivia apparently gets a whiff of some psychedelic ‘shrooms!

The L. A. version of Law & Order hasn’t really done much to draw attention to itself. A call-back to the Manson murders was an easy device. A little ambiguity thrown in about whether or not the retired cop coerced the woman into confessing. It’s okay, but not ground-breaking.

Posted in Criminal Minds, Law and Order: LA, Survivor, SVU | Comments Off on My former self

Currying favor

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Bev Vincent

Another round of revisions on the story in progress. Still not quite ready to send it off. Maybe tomorrow, if I get a chance to read it through completely this evening.

The relationship between Gibbs and FBI agent Tobias Fornell is one of my favorites. They are antagonistic at times, because of the nature of their professions, but they are sort-of friends, tied together by the fact that Fornell (despite being warned about the possible dire consequences) married one of Gibbs’s ex-wives. This week, a potential witness asked the two men, in all innocence, if they’d ever been married, leading to the most priceless hangdog look on the two men’s faces I’ve ever seen. Worthy of a screen cap. In some ways they behave like a bickering couple. Fornell shows up with supper, except it’s from an Indian restaurant they’d previously decided they didn’t like. The reason: he had a two-for-one coupon. They both ended up eating cereal for supper. And, later, Fornell atones by making an Italian dinner from scratch. “Currying favor,” he called it, with barely an acknowledgement of the hideous pun.

How much sugar do you put in your coffee? I don’t drink coffee, but I always figured it was one lump or two. I recorded Sons of Anarchy last night, so I was able to review the scene where Jax is pouring a cup while waiting to see Gemma. He pours sugar for eight solid seconds. Not just a little dribble, either. A gusher of a stream of sugar. Made my teeth ache to watch him. Surely that must have been some sort of sight gag.

Did we know that Tara was pregnant? Seems like news to me. And I still believe that Trinny (Maureen’s daughter in the store in Belfast) is going to turn out to be Jax’s half sister. “Jax goes to Belfast, stones get unturned,” Clay said. It’s pretty clear that Jax’s father had an affair with Maureen. Chucky is another regular sight gag. “I accept that,” he said, repeating his blanket excuse for people disgusted by the affliction that led to his digital deficiency. The way Tigg jammed that clipboard into his hands in the warehouse made me wonder a) how he held onto it and b) what he was supposed to pretend to be doing with it.

I was sure Jax was going to eviscerate Stahl, but instead he brought her a present, all wrapped up with a bow: The Real IRA in northern California. He’s even on a first-name basis with her. I wonder how that’s going to work out.

Posted in NCIS, Sons of Anarchy | Comments Off on Currying favor

Any questions

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Bev Vincent

Didn’t get the short story out the door like I planned. I started working my way through it one more time and made quite a few changes. Then when I was doing my morning calisthenics I came up with a couple of those little nuance details that I thought I should work in. So at least one more day’s work on it. Maybe even two. We’ll see.

Fall has arrived in Texas, no doubt. It was chilly this morning, about 48° when I checked the WeatherBug at 7:30 a.m. I like it. The one time of the year when we don’t have to condition the air, neither cool nor heat.

Specters in Coal Dust, which contains my story “Centralia is Still Burning,” launches this Saturday at the Huntington Mall Borders in Barboursville, WV from 4:00 to 6:30 p.m. Two other Woodland Press books launch at the same time. Editor Michael Knost and a bunch of local writers will be present for the event. If you’re in that neck of the woods, check it out!

House had its strongest episode of the season this week. Amy Irving was the guest patient, starring as an author of young adult mystery novels (with touches of Harry Potter and Twilight fandom thrown in) who happened to be one of House’s favorite writers. There’s a great “chase scene” (no, not involving Chase) at the go kart track.

I think I’m suffering from obvious culprit syndrome. It’s gotten so that I can spot someone who’s probably going to end up being involved in the crime simply from their appearance or who is playing the part. I knew that Beckett’s former training officer on Castle was up to no good the moment I saw him. I also figured the photograph Castle would play into solving the case, but not quite the way it turned out. Still, I like a case with a good puzzle, inspired by the back page of Mad magazine, even if we were robbed of the payoff by having Castle and Beckett find the treasure off screen.

I checked out Law & Order: UK via OnDemand/BBC America last night. Some of the accents were almost incomprehensible, though I find the types of crimes people can be charged with in the UK fascinating. They are different in nature and vocabulary in many ways. Don’t quite have a handle on the major characters yet (except for Freema Agyeman, aka Martha Jones from Doctor Who).

Animal symbolism came to mind more than once during Mad Men this weekend. First there were the rats abandoning the sinking ship, as clients started pulling out when news of the Lucky Strike switch got out. And then there were the vultures who went to the ad man’s funeral to try to pick up some of his clients. Exchange of the episode: Megan: How was the funeral? Don Draper: We’ll see. Roger’s getting his comeuppance for dereliction of duty. It’s almost like we’re being set up for his departure. There was a funny shot of the new, short creative guy raising his hand to ask a question during the company meeting and being lost in the crowd. I just realized that the actress who plays Faye was Sheriff Bannerman’s replacement on The Dead Zone TV series. She wasn’t terribly impressive on that show, but she’s quite striking and magnetic here. Maybe scripts and direction can make a lackluster actor into a good one. Megan ups her game, becoming aggressive and assertive, going after what she wants. “I can’t afford to make any mistakes right now,” Don says as he embarks on what will probably be another mistake. But, at the end, Faye comes up with what might be the game saving play: Heinz.

They did a nice leap forward at the beginning of The Event this week. When last we saw Sean, he was in FBI custody being transported to Yuma. In the opening scene, he’s free, driving a cop car, and tending to the injuries of the female FBI agent in a shabby motel. That’s one gutsy agent—she had a serious piece of metal in her shoulder and the injury didn’t bother her one bit for the rest of the episode. No stiffness or impairment, no tenderness, nothing. And the Yuma FBI office leaks like a sieve. You couldn’t walk into our fairly low-tech office and gain access to the computer closet like that! The cue with the cop’s badge that turned into a weapon was nicely done. I anticipated what would happen in the final scene as soon as rookie guard started wandering alone through a warehouse filled with dead bodies, but I think it might have been more effective if a bunch of them had gotten up at once instead of the slow tease we got.

Posted in Castle, House, Mad Men, The Event | Comments Off on Any questions

The new hot profession: Cleaner

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I think I have the short ( now shorter) story ready to submit in the morning. It ended up at 5300 words. I think I might add a few back in and give it one last read-through. Then it’s on to the next story. I have three that I want to write during October and then in November I’m going to get back to serious work on the novel. It’s NaNoWriMo, but I’m not going to enter that contest since I’m not writing a book, only extensively revising one.

I finished Moonlight Mile this weekend and posted my review to Onyx last night. Next up: The Reversal by Michael Connelly, which sounds a bit like a John Grisham. Mickey Haller is convinced to switch sides and become a special prosecutor in a 24-year-old murder case where the convicted party has just been set free on DNA evidence. His half brother, Harry Bosch, and his ex-wife make up his team in this politically charged trial.

We watched Just Wright this weekend, starring Queen Latifah and a guy who goes as simply Common. Latifah plays a physical therapist who is hired to get the NJ Nets star basketball player back for the playoffs after a knee injury. Her gold-digging god-sister (who lives with her) already had her sights set on the wealthy player. Terrible title for a movie, but it was light and fun. The guy who plays Richard Webber on Grey’s Anatomy was her supportive father who was always doing fix-up jobs around the house…poorly. The film had an odd structure, though. It seemed to be all about getting him back in the game, but that happened about 2/3 of the way through, which left me wondering what was going to happen for the last 30 minutes. Predictable drama ensued.

For a while, it was trendy to write about the legitimate profession of crime scene cleanup. Lately, the hot thing seems to be cleaners of the more clandestine type. Stephen King played one on Sons of Anarchy a couple of weeks ago, and another one was called in on last night’s Rubicon. The conspiracy show is getting down to business. Will finally verbalized my theory: that there’s a group of men who are profiting from insider trading based on the intelligence generated by the API. He went a step farther and implied that these men are also influencing global catastrophes, which is why some of the men have committed suicide. I decided last night that the actor playing Truxton Spangler is using Richard Nixon as his inspiration. He’s getting creepier and creepier. The way he shook hands with Will and essentially delivered a eulogy to him should have been a tip-off. And you’d think he’d wait for the body to be cold before appointing Grant as the heir apparent! I felt bad for Andy, though. I think she’s as innocent as she appears to be and thinks this is all fun and games (until someone gets their brains blown out). If she turns out to be in on the conspiracy I will be very surprised. Only two episodes left.

None of the teams on Amazing Race have annoyed me to the point that I wish they would get eliminated, but I was sad to see this team go. They have such an interesting story. A mother reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption two decades ago—just for the race. They live in different states and both have other families (mom has ten more kids!) so they won’t likely have much time together after this. Now they get to cool their heels in Elimination Station in Mexico for the rest of the race, which might actually give them more time to get to know each other. I think I’m still rooting for the home shopping network team. Brook is (to use her own words) a hoot and a half. Apparently she took a lot of heat over her (extensively edited) reaction to her partner’s unfortunate encounter with a watermelon.

Another common theme emerges: solitary men taking up swimming. Don Draper did it on Mad Men and now Dexter is swimming out his anxieties. Those were pretty weird, Star Trek-y special effects with the blood stain in the back of the rental van. Masuka’s reaction to having to do Dexter’s job was funny, as was Deb telling Batista that Masuka wanted to do more. Those weren’t Arzt’s brains that landed on his shoulder. I got a kick out of the dead animal handler “going CSI” on Dexter. Clearly a guy with self esteem issues. “Take it.” Looks like Dexter’s going to get a pass on raising the kids, which takes on complication off his plate.

Posted in Dexter, movies, Rubicon | Comments Off on The new hot profession: Cleaner

Meep! Meep!

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I got down within striking distance of my target word count for the work in progress. Somewhere just north of 5500 words. I have nearly a hundred words of purple prose marked for possible deletion, too. Literally purple. I colored the text so I could find it again later. Maybe lavender, I don’t know. My color vocabulary is limited.

I’ve been watching the sales ranking for The Stephen King Illustrated Companion drop from over 20,000 this morning to about 759. How low will it go?

I’m about 2/3 of the way through Moonlight Mile. Excellent book, one of the best I’ve read in a while.

I heard today that the comic strip My Cage has been canceled effective the end of October. Not sure of the reason why it was dropped from syndication. I like it. The characters started addressing the King of Syndication in today’s strip.

The coyote’s Q rating seems to be on the rise. Leonard made reference to the character in The Big Bang Theory last night when Sheldon came up with a hair-brained (or hare-brained, depending on your druthers) idea to transfer his consciousness to a robot. That’s two weeks in a row the show has featured fun with robots, by the way. Time to move on, guys. Then a clip of the coyote scheming and plotting is seen on a screen in Walter’s lab on Fringe an hour later. Coincidence?

Another member of the Lost cast makes an appearance this week. Tom (a.k.a. Mr. Happy) was a guest on The Mentalist. The scene where the little old lady tried to con Van Pelt was patently obvious. I knew it was a con. But I wondered how I would have reacted in real life if confronted with a little old lady in distress. Looks like we’re going to find out more about the missing psychic next week, and more Malcolm McDowell.

This week’s Fringe reminded me a bit of The Whisperers by John Connelly, with its magic box. Faux-livia is doing a good job of tricking the others and also acting just enough differently from the real Olivia that we can appreciate the difference. There’s a whole other air about her. Breezier, looser. Dancing with Peter (with a gun on her hip and no one noticed!). Coming on to him in her apartment as blood pooled under the door to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure she was actually going to pull the trigger on the poor guy, and the knock on the door a moment later, as she’s dragging the body (to where?) was pure Hitchcock. Peter: “Did I come at a bad time?”

And yet the show is all Walter. Wouldn’t be a tenth as interesting without him. He’s conducting experiments with cacao to try to make his cow deliver chocolate milk. When Peter says nothing should surprise them any more, Walter says, “Bacon flavored pudding. That would surprise me.” He also gets to deliver some of the longest one-liners in history. First it was: “I frequented massage parlor across the corner. I used to get off right here,” referring to the subway station that was the scene of a crime. And then there’s this mouthful: “Nostradamus is said to have died standing up but I highly doubt that someone who predicted his own death wouldn’t have lay down.”

It’s interesting that Walter is confiding in Astrid rather than in his son. Bell’s final gift to him opens up some interesting possibilities.

Posted in Big Bang Theory, Fringe, Mentalist | Comments Off on Meep! Meep!

That sounds like a profile

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I trimmed another 200 words from the story I’m working on this morning. This thing is going to be a lean, mean fighting machine when I’m done with it. Anorexic, even.

So, another Survivor contestant opened his mouth at tribal and got sent home. Maybe he was on his way anyway, but I don’t think it’s smart game play to publicly identify yourself as one of the weakest players on the team. The other players are looking for excuses to vote people out without repercussions, and he basically gave them permission to dump him. I also question the wisdom behind the way the older team performed in the challenge. I could swear I heard them say that they were going to take turns and if a player looked like he or she was struggling they would sub in someone else. Instead, they let one player cling to the brass ring for far too long. A shame—it really looked like they had their act together before the contest started. It was organized like a well staged football play, only the execution failed to live up to the plan.

Tom Monteleone’s column in the latest issue of Cemetery Dance magazine is about the dumb things people in Hollywood do, using the blanket excuse “No one will notice.” I have to wonder what the hell the executives in charge of decision making for Criminal Minds were thinking when they decided to fire AJ Cook, who plays JJ. They certainly got the fans in a tizzy, and I suspect that a lot of the dialog in the episode was actually aimed at those execs, reflecting the thoughts of the fans and the cast. Sure, it’s an ensemble show, other characters have come and gone over the years, but this decision seemed so arbitrary as to baffle.

This week’s episode of SVU had the usual strident, preachy script, but it had an intriguing premise that was seriously creepy. At first it seemed to be incredible that a man would persecute a woman over such a long period of time, but so sporadically, but when it turned out he was doing it to at least a dozen other women it made a little more sense. Next week’s episode looks interesting, with Stabler and Benson getting new badges, at least temporarily.

Poking fun at Los Angeles culture is like shooting proverbial fish in proverbial barrels. The new Law & Order: Los Angeles seems to be resisting the temptation to make fun and simply point the camera at the culture and let the audience decide how to react. It’s a brighter, glitzier show than the grunge of the belated mother ship, but they’ll have no shortage of material in a city where even the cops attract paparazzi. I wonder what it feels like as an actor to play a part that will probably repeatedly and regularly mock the acting profession. I’ve never been a huge Alfred Molina fan, but he was bearable in the first episode. Another Lost alum makes an appearance in the post-Lost era: Rousseau as the celebrity photographer. And it makes me feel a little old to see Shawnee Smith playing the mother of a twenty-something. (“Mom shoots a burglar, daughter holds a press conference. I love L.A.”) I have to wonder what happens to a girl who has been raised in a bubble when that bubble is suddenly punctured. She looked like Little Girl Lost at the end.

Posted in Criminal Minds, Law and Order: LA, SVU | Comments Off on That sounds like a profile

Is that “old lady” enough for you?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I reached the 6000 word mark on the story in progress, but it’s a downward mark. I started at 9600 words and am aiming at 5000-5500. Got rid of 700 words on the current pass, and I still have a few pages of manuscript left to go. Shouldn’t have any trouble hitting the goal with a little leeway to build back up again.

I found out from Sperling and Kupfer via their account on Facebook that Tutto su Stephen King, the Italian translation of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, will be released on October 26. When I made that announcement, I amassed a bunch of new Italian friends. I’m usually quite obsessive about numbers, but I’m fairly oblivious to my total number of Facebook friends—except now that I see that I have 993 I can’t help but observe that I’m close to 1000. Does that matter? Not really, but it is a threshold to cross.

I’ve had the Season 6 Lost DVD box set for a while but I just got around to taking the shrink wrap off it last night. Of course I went straight to the special features disk and played around to find the Easter Eggs. I’ve gotten quite good at it. It’s interesting to see how the trajectory toward the end of the series affected the cast and crew.

Then I went on to watch NCIS and who should I see in the first scene but Bernard? And, later, on an NCIS rerun, in the same episode, Locke and Charles Widmore. Always good to see William Devane, who’s been showing up in the Jesse Stone TV movies of late. I wonder if the interns are going to be around for a while. Gibbs seems to be mellowing.

I started Moonlight Mile, the new Kenzie-Gennaro novel by Dennis Lehane last night and made it through the first hundred pages. One theme that is brought up a few times is how a person can do the right thing and still end up being wrong. The resolution of Gone, Baby Gone is morally and ethically complex, and the implications of Kenzie’s choice at the end of that book keep cropping up. The novel takes place about a dozen years later (corresponding to the number of years since the previous books in the series were published), and there have been some dramatic changes in the lives of Patrick and Angie. Still, certain things about their characters are unchanged, and those facets want to come to the surface despite their best intentions. At times the novel feels a bit like a meatier, pagier Robert B. Parker.

Episode 4 of Sons of Anarchy had a lot to do with lies and the truth. Jimmy’s lying, the priest is lying, only Maureen seems to be telling the truth…and did she just say “dick-fueled” to the priest? Even Gemma’s new ID is lying…about her age, which pisses her off. (“Bitch aged me two years”)

Jax is finally telling Tara the truth about everything, whereas Tara has decided to start lying to Jax and making faces at Jax when he doesn’t clean with Gemma. I’m not sure I understand her reasons for not wanting to tell Jax about the dead caretaker—the decision seemed both impetuous and arbitrary and, in the final analysis, her resolve didn’t last very long (hence today’s subject line).

I was interested to see that the episode was cowritten by Liz Sagal (do you remember Double Trouble, the short-lived sitcom that featured her and her twin sister?), who also happens to be Katey Sagal’s sister. And Hal Holbrook is fantastic, especially during the scenes at the end when he has to be agitated at the senior home.

Posted in books, NCIS, Sons of Anarchy | Comments Off on Is that “old lady” enough for you?

Fifties flashback

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Bev Vincent

I can’t remember the last time the temperature was in the fifties, but that’s where it was overnight. I wish there was a pause button that would let me capture the current climate conditions and replay them day in and day out. This is the nicest time of the year in Texas, and I’m so enjoying coming out of the gym at noon into sub-eighty degree weather.

I finished The Masuda Affair and will be working on a review in the coming days. Next up: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane. Though this will be billed as a sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone by many, because of the movie adaptation, technically it’s a sequel to Prayers for Rain, the most recent of the Kenzie-Gennaro novels (1999). The storyline, though, supposedly relies heavily on Gone, Baby, Gone.

There’s a saying that a lot of acting is reacting. I find myself watching Stana Katic on Castle because of the way she reacts. There’s a lot going on with that pretty face of hers. Sometimes it’s subtle—the quiver of a lip—and sometimes it’s funny and unexpected, like the way she wrinkled up her nose and squinted after Castle debunked her theory about who wrote the letter. It was a very honest reaction, and almost of out shot when it happened.

Imagine my disappointment when it turns out that The Event was simply a blue light special at K-Mart. Well, no, not really, but it turned out to be just about the only thing it could possibly be after the events of the final few minutes of the first episode. At some point I suppose (read: hope) they’ll abandon the Lost-like flashbacks, though I expect that some of them will prove important in helping us figure out who among the cast are actually sleepers. Very definitely a case of wolves in sheep’s clothing, and I’m reminded somewhat of V, though less overt and maybe a little bit less cluttered than that show (is it still on? I gave up on the reboot after a handful of episodes). I see the ratings dropped almost 20%, which can’t be a good sign, although the DVR stats are taken into account yet.

A lot of people were fearing the worst with the House/Cuddy developments at the end of last season, and I have to say their fears are being played out. The show isn’t terribly impressive this season and, to make matters worse, Olivia Wilde (Thirteen, aka Remy Hadley) is on sabbatical for a good chunk of the season. If there were anything else on at the same time, I’d probably ditch the show.

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