Bev Vincent

I was surprised to see a box of Alpha-Bits in the background during the opening scene of this week’s Covert Affairs. Used to be one of my favorite cereals. Then, all of a sudden, it disappeared off the shelves. Apparently it did a “New Coke” reformulation that was just as successful as that failed experiment. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find some. Hopefully they’re just as good as they were back in the day.

This was a good episode of Covert Affairs, as it had Annie realizing the consequences of what she did. There were loose ends that the agency tried to cover up with maximum prejudice, collateral damage and it served as a cautionary tale to all involved. Good to see Lauren Holly, who met a violent end in NCIS a few seasons back. I read that the series has been renewed for a second season.

Fun developments on Big Brother this week. Brendon got screwed over when he opened Pandora’s Box. True, he got a nice day to himself in a mansion with all the conveniences, but he thought he was going to be there with the love of his life. Instead, she was inflicted on the House for the same 24-hours, which led to fireworks between her and Ragan. Matt did a great job of ad-libbing when his diamond veto fell apart when he yanked it from his pocket. Dude can think on his feet. I wonder who Brittany will nominate–it’s getting to the point where there aren’t many candidates any more, and they’re all pretty chummy. If she were smart, she’d put up two of the brigade, except she doesn’t really know there is such a thing.

We watched The Last Station last night. Christopher Plummer plays Tolstoy during the last year of his wife, Helen Mirren is his long-suffering wife Sofia, Paul Giamatti is the weasely head of the Tolstoyan movement who wants the author to sign over the copyright of all his works to the Russian people, and James McAvoy is the new private secretary who is dropped into the midst of all this intrigue. Plummer is a great Tolstoy, striding around, pontificating but solidly aware that his followers think that he’s a much greater man than he really is. He doesn’t believe in the same things they’re using him to symbolize. He may preach abstinence, but he’s never practiced it. The private secretary starts out wanting to follow the Tolstoyan philosophy, but he meets a fetching young woman who seduces him (her name is Masha, which I heard as “Marsha” throughout the entire movie. She bears a passing resemblance to Marsha Brady, hence today’s title, and she’s the film’s sole fictional character) and opens his eyes to the reality–or rather the artifice–of what’s going on around Tolstoy. I kept thinking “Queen Elizabeth” every time I saw Mirren, but Sofia was a much less assured character, feigning illness and making feeble suicide attempts to keep Tolstoy’s attention. The title is a reference to the place where Tolstoy died, a southern Russian train station.

Today on Storytellers Unplugged: Why digital publishing didn’t catch on 10 years ago–and why it might now. My rambling thoughts on why I think eBooks…well, the title pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

I got to see Pink Floyd live once, during their Division Bell tour. Never saw them with Roger Waters, and I’ve never gone to see Waters solo even though the opportunity has presented itself a number of times. I liked the Live 8 gig they did a while back. Recently Gilmour joined Waters on stage for four songs during a charity concert, and Gilmour’s wife recorded the set from the audience. Sure, they’re showing their age (who isn’t?) but Wish You Were Here and Comfortably Numb stand the test of time as great songs.

I feel Tom Piccirilli’s frustration with Rubicon. He recently tweeted, “Rubicon, I have tried to love you, but you have left me cold, frustrated, and bored as if you were a $5 tranny whore. We’re through.” If there was anything else on in the same time slot, I might be tempted to agree. It’s burning so slowly there’s a threat it might snuff itself out. And yet I found this week’s installment intriguing because it demonstrated the real world importance of what these data analysts are doing. Most of the time it seems dull and dreary to them. At the end of the day, though, life and death decisions are being made based on their synopses and recommendations. Never more clearly to them than this week, when they were forced (on a rapidly shrinking deadline) to decide whether the data supported a strike on a known bad guy despite the fact that there would be collateral damage. Once that was all over, it was back to more tedious data crunching. The trip to Washington was entirely baffling, though. Will’s entire purpose for being there seemed to be to say as little as possible.

I thought I was getting a step ahead of the cops on The Closer last night. When they were interrogating the second guy from prison–the one who was acted as if he was sitting in front of a parole board, spouting all the right phrases to express remorse (at least, I hope he wasn’t just a bad actor. I assume he was a good actor playing a felon who was a bad actor…) When the lights started to go on and he asked Brenda to apologize to his victim’s wife, I thought that he and the wife were in on the killing together and that this was a way for him to pass a message. The garage door opener gimmick was pretty good, though Brenda was taking a huge chance that the perp hadn’t already changed the code back again.

It rained this morning, if by “rain” I mean a little bit of water fell from the sky and a few things got vaguely moist. After a soggy July, we’ve had effectively no rain thus far in August. The local paper claimed that we haven’t officially had a day over 100° yet, either, but the heat index has been over 110° a number of times, and my car thermometer has registered triple digits even after equilibrating.

Yesterday we moved our daughter into an second-floor, no elevator, outside access apartment. Man was it hot. Fortunately there wasn’t a ton of stuff to move, so it didn’t take us all that long, but I was drenched when we finished. I think I lost two pounds.

To the right is the cover for the forthcoming anthology I mentioned in my previous post. Click on it to get a larger version. The artist is a guy named Matt Mahurin, who does covers for Time as well as other magazines and has directed films, especially music videos where he has worked with artists such as U2, Queensrÿche, Metallica, Tracy Chapman, Alice In Chains and many others. 

Mad Men was interesting this week. Peggy let her hair down and joined the counter culture. She’s found a lot of confidence since we saw her in the first episodes. When the secretary called Peggy’s new friend “sort of pretentious,” Peggy responded by saying, “I know,” in an appreciative tone. Still, Peter’s news knocked her on her back, almost literally, and there is still a lot unsaid between the two. Joan gets the last laugh on Don by giving him the sort of secretary he’s unlikely to offend. What to make of the ending, where an elderly couple plays out a little scene in the hallway as Don goes home. The woman is carrying groceries and her husband steps out into the hall and asks her three times if she bought any pears. She ignores him until she’s close enough to whisper, “We’ll discuss this inside.” Interpersonal dramas are kept behind closed doors in that era. Don’s former secretary tries to find a sympathetic ear with Peggy…behind closed doors. Peggy spies on Don over the transom. Peggy smooches a guy she just met…in a closet. But things are changing, and even Don realizes that people can’t tell what they might think about in the future. (Line of the evening: “No, but he’s renting it,” uttered by Peggy after her new lesbian friend tells her that her boyfriend doesn’t own her vagina.)

We went to see Eat, Pray, Love on Saturday. Made the mistake of getting there only five minutes before showtime and ended up sitting in the second row staring up at a huge screen. I remember seeing Good Morning, Vietnam under similar circumstances when it first came out, except we were also on the far right side so everything was skewed. The jeeps seemed to lean over. The movie is essentially a well-off person’s self indulgence. Few people could just chuck everything and wander the world for a year. Javier Bardem is good in his nonchalant way, but the standout is Richard Jenkins, who is almost unrecognizable behind a grey, wooly beard. He’s Richard from Texas and he calls Julia Roberts’ character “groceries” because the first time he met her he heard her eating before he saw her. More than anyone else she encounters, he challenges her, and his rooftop scene where he explains how he lost his family is heart-wrenching, and a lot of it seems to be from a single take. Unusually, both actors spend a lot of time looking away from the camera during that scene. The settings are grand (you don’t get to see Naples very often, a place where people are even mugged in museums), and anyone wanting to chuck it all and live on Bali could be forgiven. Still, at the end of the day, I wasn’t sure what Roberts’ character actually learned. She has epiphanies in each city but seems back to ground zero in her next setting.

Eureka was light and frothy this week, without a whole bunch of substance. In a week moment, I queued up Haven from OnDemand and regretted it. The most recent episode was the most ludicrous to date. Stuffed animals coming back to life to hunt down and kill the people who shot them. Give me a break. And the episode wins the award for the character with the worst Quebecois accent ever. There wasn’t even any Duke to balance things out. And why does it seem to me that the two actors playing the newspapermen are actually younger actors made up to look old?

No better way to start the day than with a short story acceptance letter! My tale “Centralia is Still Burning” will appear in Specters in Coal Dust, edited by Michael Knost.  I asked Michael at World Horror this year if he had had any submissions featuring the town of Centralia. He hadn’t, but he warned me the book was filling up fast. I started the story a week after I got back from Brighton and finished it about a week later. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. The other authors in this anthology are: Gary A. Braunbeck, Christopher Golden, Tom Piccirilli, Steve Rasnic Tem, Elizabeth Massie, Lee Thomas, Ronald Kelly, William Meikle, Nate Southard, Joshua Reynolds, Barbara Jo Fleming, Brian J. Hatcher and Michael Bracken.To be published this fall. I imagine pre-orders will be accepted soon. Stay tuned!

It appears that the second printing of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion is now available from Barnes and Noble online. For the first time since December 2009, you can now order the book from their website. Though the book has been available in stores, it has not been available to anyone outside the U.S. This new printing means that anyone can order it, no matter where in the world you’re located. The best news of all: B&N’s international shipping rates are very, very reasonable. Much less than it would cost me to ship a copy abroad, that’s for sure.

Working on my Storytellers Unplugged essay today. Should have the first draft of about 1000 words finished by the time I call it quits today. It goes live on Tuesday.

I finished my revisions on the short story I’ve been rewriting for the past couple of weeks. Found a market for it, prepared the submission package and I’ll get it in the mail sometime this weekend. The last time I submitted to this particular market it took six months to hear back, so I don’t see any need to rush to the post office. I’ll have to go early next week anyway, assuming I sell my S/L of Under the Dome, which is up on eBay. The auction ends on Sunday. No bids yet, but lots of watchers, so there might be some last-minute action.

Glad to see Rachel go on Big Brother. She was both a threat and annoying, so the remaining players helped themselves two ways by voting her out. I was afraid the saboteur’s announcement would change things, but it didn’t, fortunately. However, Julie’s comment that this wasn’t the last time Rachel would see the Big Brother house was a little ominous. Good to see Jeff and Jordan during the veto competition. Some players surprised me by the way they stepped up to that challenge. Brandon just sucked and deserved to be benched. I just hope he doesn’t win HoH, though the diamond veto might counter any move he makes anyway.

A bit of a twist on Burn Notice last night, with Michael both having to break into a prison and plan to break out again. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on with Michael and Simon and Vaughn. Michael reported everything Simon revealed to Vaugh, which doesn’t seem in his best interests.

A friend sent me a copy of the Swedish film version of the second Steig Larsson novel, The Girl Who Played with Fire. The subtitles were a little iffy, but it’s a good adaptation. The writers wisely dispensed with the distracting and ultimately irrelevant beginning section of the novel–all that stuff in the Caribbean, and the overlong description of how Salander decorated her new apartment in Sweden–but after that, the movie is very faithful to the book. A lot of material had to be pared back or simplified, but it all seems to be there, and the visuals are an amazing recreation of the way the story ran in my mind as I read it. Zala wasn’t quite as evil as I imagined, nor as maimed, but the pain-free Neiderman was fantastic. The one thing that I can put my finger on that was lost was the relationship between Sonja Modig and Mikael. I think they barely met in the film.

When I was at World Horror in Brighton earlier this year, Derek Clendening interviewed me about the Evolve anthology. He also interviewed Nancy Kilpatrick and a passel of other contributors. The end result is The Evolution of the Modern Vampire: A Roundtable Discussion at Dark Scribe. There’s one misquote at the end. Where I say, “My story gave me the opportunity to write about a location I’ve never been in Eastern Canada” I really said “a location I’ve never written about in Eastern Canada.” I grew up in Eastern Canada! Even if I was jetlagged, I never would have said that, and the interview took place when the sun was up, so I wasn’t inebriated.

I saw the first comment about my introduction to Lilja’s Library today, at Talk Stephen King. He calls it “delightful.”

I received my contributor copy of Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads last night. Since it’s a fund-raiser for the ITW, I wasn’t sure I’d get one, so I ordered a couple of copies, which I received several weeks ago.

I had a chance to see “The New Man in Charge,” the 12-minute feature that will be on the Lost DVD release that answers a few questions about the series. Not big picture answers, but little things like: why was the food drop still happening, and what was the deal with the polar bears, and where did the Hurley bird come from, and why did Chang have a different name on every Dharma video. It mostly features Ben and a new Dharma video. Fun, but not really essential to the series.

Covert Affairs started out a little on the slow side this week, but picked up toward the end. Eriq La Salle was the guest star (haven’t seen him in ages) as a former CIA agent who retired after his girlfriend/fellow agent died during an op. Annie had her eyes opened a little about the real business of the agency. The bloom is off the rose for her, I think. And who is running her ex-boyfriend? Is he a loose canon, or is he doing someone else’s bidding?

“The Great Game” was the third installment of BBC’s Sherlock, and easily the best of the batch. I read this morning that the series will be renewed, though the details haven’t been worked out yet, including how many episodes there will be. They make some interesting connections to the original material (“five pips,” in this case, and Bohemian stationary, which calls to mind a certain scandal). What I assume will eventually turn out to be the Baker Street Irregulars is in this rendition an underground of homeless people who gather information for Holmes upon request. This episode gave Holmes not one or two cases to solve but a half dozen. I’m not entirely sure what the opening bit set in Belarus was supposed to be all about though. It seemed a long way for Holmes to go for what he would ordinarily deem a boring case and it didn’t seem to come up again.

The scenes with the pawns reciting their captor’s words were really creepy, especially the old blind woman, who was fantastic. I felt so bad for her. Turns out that this version of Sherlock is not quite the pugilist that Robert Downey, Jr. was in the recent movie–especially not when faced with a gigantic scarecrow of an opponent. The fight scene in the planetarium to the soundtrack of a skipping astronomy treatise was very well done. Maybe we’re meant to see the golem again some day. My favorite exchange between Watson and Holmes took place with Watson working on his widely read blog and Holmes shouting at the TV.

Watson: Knew it was dangerous
Holmes: What?
Watson: Getting you into crap telly

Until this episode, Moriarty was just a whisper, a hint, a rumor, which was effective. Even Holmes had no idea who it was. The way they chose to go with him when he finally showed up was a bit daring, and I can see where some people might have been turned off by his antics. He reminded me strongly of John Simm’s version of The Master in Doctor Who. A bit campy, very expressive, with some great delivery.

The ending wasn’t quite Reichenbach Falls, but it was the next best thing. Looking forward to them picking the story up again in the not-too-distant future.

My favorite bit of TV dialog in recent memory came from a scene near the end of last night’s The Closer. “Who gave you the right to play God?” Brenda asked a perp. “The position was vacant, so I took it,” he shot back. An interesting episode, with some good moral dilemmas featuring a Robin Hood of organ donation and extortion using a recently cultivated heart. Hopefully it also spelled the end of the Sanchez/Julio storyline, as I thought it wasn’t the least bit credible that the department would put up with Sanchez’s obvious dereliction of duty. It’s hard to judge exactly how much time elapsed since Fritz shot the boy’s father, but it’s been a while. Too long.

I’ve never watched Warehouse 13 and if last week’s crossover episode with Eureka is any indication I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Granted only one character crossed over but, boy, was she annoying. It’s also the first episode in a while where someone’s recent invention didn’t cause the havoc, though Henry’s dabbling with the thing in his garage did exacerbate the problem.

The funniest bit of Mad Men this week was the scene where Don Draper took pity on poor Lane and took him out for New Years, where they consumed copious booze and acted generally inappropriately. The two of them loaded for bear and watching Godzilla was a hoot, as was Lane’s “piece of meat” shtick at the classy restaurant. The mix-up with the flowers set the whole thing in motion. Did anyone else think that Joan cut herself accidentally on purpose because she was feeling neglected?

I’m hanging in with Rubicon, which has lit a slow-burning fuse that is tangled around a mystery…or several mysteries. I hope my patience is repaid with some rewarding solutions to these mysteries.

Rizzoli and Isles was pretty good this week, too, using the different backgrounds between the two characters as a mirror for the way Rizzoli interacted with the rich and privileged family of the victim. I still think Isles is a third wheel in most situations, getting involved in cases in a way that no one in her position ever should, but I guess the same thing could be said of the entire CSI team, so I’ll forgive them. She was given a chance to be less annoying this week and, for the most part, succeeded.

I’m hoping to get a chance to see the third Sherlock episode, perhaps this evening. At least one person claimed it was the best of the lot.

I signed a contract last night for a forthcoming anthology appearance, but I still can’t really talk about it until the fall. I’m very pleased that it all worked out in the long run.

I also got the green light to write a story based on a pitch I made for the Evolve 2 anthology. I have until December to flesh out the concept behind a story that I’m thinking of calling “Red Planet.”

Dread Central has a nice review of Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology.

I’ve been working on the rewrite of the short story I’ve been talking about recently. After ripping about four pages out of a 10-page manuscript, I ended up with a tight 1800 word story. I then pulled a very few bits out of those excised pages and wove them back in to end up with the current draft, which is about 2100 words. Whereas the first draft hit readers over the head with the theme, in this one I think it is much more subtly and, I hope, deftly handled.

I’m about 250 pages into The Whisperers, the new Charlie Parker novel by John Connolly. The entire book seems like one big metaphor for PTSD. It’s clear from one section that Parker himself has suffered post-traumatic stress, though his manner of handling it wouldn’t be found in any psychology manual. One of the book’s secondary secrets, the nature of what a group is smuggling across the Maine-New Brunswick border, is easily guessed, and I’m not entirely sure how they got the stuff to Canada in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there.

When Under the Dome came out, I bought a copy of the signed/limited edition from Scribner. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, almost nine months later, the book is still sitting in its shipping box, and I’ve never taken off the shrink wrap to look at it. It’s not doing me much good, and I already have a copy of the novel signed by King from his Atlanta appearance, so I decided to put the S/L up on eBay. If you’re interested in getting a reasonably priced book signed by King, here’s your chance. My starting bid is essentially the same as what I paid for the book. The auction ends on Sunday.

When I get busy, my blog gets ignored. Thus I find myself in the unusual position of not having written anything here for nearly a week. Gasp. However did the world survive? Quite well, I guess.

Last weekend we watched three movies. On Friday night it was Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer. Ewan McGregor is hired to rescue the “autobiography” of a recent British prime minister who received a $10 million advance for his memoirs. The previous ghost writer drowned after falling from a ferry between the mainland and the PM’s Martha’s Vineyard compound. The book he left behind is complete, but boring and not likely to garner the type of critical or popular review that might help the publisher recoup much of its investment. All the words are there, McGregor says, they’re just in the wrong order. His deadline is short: a month, and gets even shorter when controversy surrounding the PM increases pressure to get the book out.

PM Lang, you see, has just been accused of war crimes and a tribunal in The Hague would very much like him to appear before them. He’s accused of turning British citizens over to the CIA for rendition and torture. Lang is conveniently out of the country at the time the news breaks, and his compound turns into a media circus. Security around the manuscript is tightly maintained by Kim Cattrall, sporting a decent British accent, with whom the PM is probably having an affair. McGregor’s predecessor left behind some mysterious hints that there’s a bigger secret in Lang’s past. With the help of a cooperative GPS system, McGregor digs in. Along the way he has a delightful conversation with Eli Wallach.

Lang is Tony Blair played by Pierce Brosnan. When he travels to Washington for a damage-control public appearance, the dignitary who greets him could play Condi Rice in her biopic. So, Polanski is getting his digs in that Blair might have been a puppet of the American government, but he also produces a serviceable thriller, much influenced by Hitchcock, most notably during a scene where the camera tracks the progress of a note as it is passed hand-to-hand through a large crowd. A few good twists, a nice turn by Tom Wilkinson, and an ending that Hitchcock would never have dared.

On Saturday we watched The Bounty Hunter, starring Jennifer Anniston and Gerard Butler. I had modest hopes for this movie. I think Anniston is appealing and has done some good work as an actress. However, the trailer gives away most of the movie’s best parts and hides some of the worst–an annoying sub-plot involving Anniston’s puppy dog co-worker, for example. It has a few moments, but not nearly enough of them.

My wife hadn’t seen Shutter Island, so I watched it again with her on Sunday night. I maintain that the movie’s best scene is the one between DiCaprio and Ted Levine where Levine waxes philosophical on the nature of evil men. He’s playing it completely straight, and it’s a gripping moment in the middle of some otherwise surreal goings-on. The odd camera angle switches at the beginning, when they’re on the ferry, still annoyed me, as did the whip-pan left and right when the guard who greets them orients them to the buildings. All in all, I think my first impressions of the movie didn’t change much on repeat viewing.

Toronto, combined with some nice second unit photography, did a very serviceable job of passing for Zurich, Switzerland on this week’s episode of Covert Affairs. There were the requisite shots of the airport and of the churches along the lake, and a strategically placed street sign for Geigergasse, which is a real alley in the city. To the best of my knowledge (and Google’s) there is no Zurich Parc Hotel. I lived in Zurich for nearly two years back in the 1980s, so I’m somewhat familiar with the city, and I would have bought it. The Israeli agent’s comment about the unlikeliness of electricians working on Sunday especially rang true. When I lived there it was against the statutes to do your laundry on Sunday! They even managed to include a few shots featuring Zurich’s official bird: the construction crane.

This was a good episode, with Annie effectively cut free from her handlers after a routine bump-and-drop exchange went bad because someone anticipated the exchange and tried to make a grab. With Augie sent to take a lie detector test, she didn’t have anyone familiar to rely on, and her contact was of dubious trustworthiness at best. There were a few contrivances (convenient bondage rope in the closet for a rappelling escape), but nothing that other shows don’t do. My one subtle blooper for the episode took place at the very beginning. When Annie was going through immigration, the unseen agent opened her fake Canadian passport to the picture page and stamped the facing page. That’s the signature page, and is reserved for endorsements and limitations by the issuing country, and is never used for entry/visa stamps.

Should I hang my head in shame if I admit that I watched Wipeout last night? Tuesday nights are a TV wasteland this summer. I finished my review of Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross, though, so it wasn’t an entirely wasted evening.