I've heard what a great show this is for a few years now. I even tried to watch an episode or two, but as seems to be common with the better TV dramas, it is very hard to start mid-season. You need to start at the beginning and watch the characters and storylines develop. Right now Pat and I are watching it via the Roku box (the gift that keeps on giving!) which channels programs via Netflix download. We're close to the end of season one and have season 2 queued up to watch next.

The show is set in a small Texas town called Dillon, which is large enough to field a competitive football team. Football is right next to religion in towns all across Texas. (Both my husband and his brother were raised and educated in Texas and experienced this first hand.) Coach Taylor and his wife come to Dillon where they experience culture shock, ethical and moral dilemmas, unexpected developments and their daughter's budding adolescent issues. The show could be a soap opera but it is not. Each character is fully developed and confronted with choices--and they don't always make the right one. Even the head cheerleader does not behave as a stereotype, although she meets the criteria.

Granted, the show is not as gritty as watching THE WIRE or DEADWOOD This is network television after all, but they don't shy away from teenagers drinking routinely and having sex, not to mention the effects of hero worship on both the players as gods among boys and the other "lesser" kids who struggle to get attention. I could easily have hated the young turk football players, but the show makes it so keenly obvious that their exhalted position is a very fleeting thing. The coaches, assistants, and myriad others involved in the team (which is handled like a big university team as far as expenses) are obviously reliving their past glory days through these boys, not to mention any number of washed up men in their twenties who were experiencing the same heady fame just a few years past. Most of the boys recognize they have but a couple short football seasons to make an opportunity for a better life later, and the stress they are under is heart-wretching. At the same time, their casual acceptance of favors from "rally girls", parents, patrons, teachers, etc has the opposite effect and makes me want to slap them silly.

Fortunately, Coach Taylor and his wife are there to provide a moral compass. Not that the Coach is perfect. More than once, he has allowed himself to be persuaded into actions that were ethically dubious, because he did not ask the right questions, but then had to deal with the consequences. So far, I have only been disappointed by one show conclusion, that wrapped up an episode involving racial tension on the team. I thought the ending was a bit pat, given the depth of the issue.

I'm not a football fan and barely grasp the game, but I still enjoy this show immensely. The football sequences are exciting to watch, even for a non-fan, and the story lines are engaging. Nearly every episode ends on a hook that makes Pat and me want to watch another one right away. If you haven't seen this show yet--start with season one. i heartily recommend it.

Yesterday we received our 3rd box of vegetables from a local farm, as part of the CSA program. We received the biggest head of leaf lettuce I've ever seen, an equally huge batch of green onions, some kale, chard, tiny bit of spinach, fresh peas in the pod, a red cabbage, radishes, and 2 kohlrabi. I'm still behind on consuming kohlrabi, so those got passed to my sister-in-law, along with half the lettuce and the radishes.

I like kohlrabi but I haven't discovered a preparation that makes me love it. It is good to eat raw, but only in small quantities.  It also requires more intense preparation, where as the other vege's are pretty much just wash and toss in a salad bowl or saute pan.

Besides my struggle with kohlrabi though, taking on a CSA share represents a huge commitment on my part, to prepare and consume a large quantity of fresh produce each week. Which is why I did it, figuring this was one way of forcing me and my family to eat healthier. I think I feel better already for it. I do long for a bit more variety as I read friends' blogs who describe their CSA box content. Some are getting strawberries! So I might change to a different farm next year, but I definitely want to do it again.  (Which is why I'm not naming the farm. They're nice folks and I don't want to sound like I'm giving negative feedback about them.)

So last night, I made potato salad (store bought potatoes, but radishes and green onions from the box) and turkey burgers (fresh sage and thyme from my garden) and it was quite good. I plan on a seven layer salad today or tomorrow. I plan an easy supper this week making a Korean Scallion Pancake, which I discovered via the LJ poster formerly known as Pantless Johnny (slowtrain ). I'm glad I'd bookmarked the recipe since I've got more green onions than I know what to do with and this sounds good and easy.

I'll have to figure out something for the Saturday after next, since I'll be gone for a week and I don't see my husband and son preparing fresh vegetables. We'll probably give that box away altogether, splitting it among volunteer friends and relatives.

I sure wish Minnesota had a long growing season. I can sign up for root vegetables in the fall, but after that, it's a good six months before fresh is available again.

Soon we will all be too tired of Michael Jackson articles, videos, programs, etc. to be able to stomach yet another. If you’re already to that point skip past this one.

I don’t really care to speculate about MJ’s impact on pop music for better or worse. Pop music has done nothing but get worse for many decades now, so I don’t consider it a huge compliment to crown anyone as its King. Besides talent, money, and lots of drugs, Michael Jackson managed to have children without a mother. In fact, I read today that the court granting temporary guardianship to MJ’s mother has listed his third child’s maternity as “none”.

Not unknown but NONE. As in, there was no mother.

Now MJ is fascinating to fans and writers of SF and Horror, just because of his self-mutating appearance alone. Add to that his self-amusement park built to ensnare little boys and you’ve got a story stranger than fiction that gives most people the heebie-jeebies. Finish it off with the fact that the man remained untouchable from legal consequences and that makes it a monster story for all time.
So when does the law interfere when someone decides to create children as personal play things? We know children are born to be organ donors--an act of love on the part of desperate parents and yet...does that make it right? Do I want the law to be able to decide if anyone’s reasons for having children is good enough, valid enough? Ugh no, I don’t want that.

Back to Michael Jackson and the anonymous egg though. A woman can sign away her rights as a parent, which Debbie Rowe apparently did with the two older children. I accept that and I don’t think she should come forward now and claim custody of the children, which she may or may not do, according to whichever tabloid site you look at. Nor am I anxious to find and condemn the mother of Blanket, the third child. What I do want is that the women be acknowledged as human beings responsible for their decisions to enable a pedophile to have easy access to children.

What surprises me is how far behind the law remains when it comes to these issues. Just because we are capable of producing designer babies doesn’t mean we should be. We have legions dedicated to protecting unborn fetuses, but what about the children who are born for selfish exploitive reasons? Take Octo-mom...please. We all wring our hands about the insanity of having eight babies as a single mother of six challenged children, and we condemn the doctor who helped her do it. But she’s still got all the kids and lots of goodies to along with them, including her own television show.

As usual, I’m just posing the questions. The answers aren’t easy and won’t come quickly. But while we’re all quick to condemn, there seem to be no tools to seek solutions for the ultimate victims: the children.

This is a mystery set in 1975 Laos, one year past the communist take-over. I always feel a pang of guilt over events that took place during my life, but which I ignored due to self-absorption. So I know little about Laos other than hearing its name go across the news, usually in the same sentence as Vietnam, which I couldn't ignore.

This is the sort of novel that achieves everything (I think) a novel should: it immerses the reader in a foreign culture while making it immediately familiar; it presents a neat mystery or question that explores complex issues--without feeling complicated; it engages the reader with characters unique, flawed, and believable; it takes the reader on a spiritual journey.

When I finished this book, just last night, I thought about a struggle I'm having with my own novel (one among several, that is.) My main character has angst in her past, as any protagonist typically does, but I stumble over how much to include and when. Her past influences her decisions but is not necessarily part of the immediate plot. I personally don't care for characters who spend long periods of time reflecting over personal sorrow.

In Cotteril's book, his protagonist is a 72 year old doctor who is pressed into being the nation's only official coroner. His past is quite rich and we only learn a fraction about his fascinating life. Little by little, we do learn that he is widowed and loved his wife very much. Only towards the end of the novel do we learn that the last few years of his marriage were very bitter, even though he still loved her.

This was an effective revelation for me. My protag is divorced and that information comes up fairly quickly. However, her acute loneliness and anger towards her ex is only sparing. I've been putting myself "under the gun" to get it all out there, believing the reader needs to know the details in order to understand her. But now I feel like I can relax and take my time with it, so it won't feel forced.

As for the title of "The Coroner's Lunch", it refers to the doctor's daily ritual of sitting outside with his best friend, having a baguette sandwich from his favorite bakery vendor. The ridiculous aspects of communist bureacracy are a large part of the frame-work, but at the same time, the author makes it very obvious that many aspects of life improved. Americans play a sinister role in the background of one of the mysteries but other than that, are not part of the events. One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is its open embrace of spirituality, particularly ghosts, shamanism, and reincarnation. Yet the novel is not classified as a supernatural story and I don't think any reader would expect it to be either.

That is the aspect that I am still mulling over for my novel. I had a magical element involved and then removed it. The story lacks spirituality though and needs it back. I'll just have to keep thinking on this.

I've been quiet but there's no single compelling reason. I'm spending a lot of "head" time so I can stay on track with the novel, which is going slower than I'd like. But it is going forward and I am more sure about what I'm doing, so that's a happy place to be.

A couple weeks ago, I read a fascinating book that was published in the late nineties called LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS by Kirsten Bakis. The premise fascinated me because animals, particularly dogs and apes, with human abilities fascinate me. The book is flawed, but in a way that stimulates discussion, not in a fatal I-want-to-toss-it sort of way. The narrator is human, a young woman who becomes a liaison between the monster dogs and the public.

The monster dogs came from a tiny town in a remote part of Canada that had been settled by a mad scientist and his followers. Their goal had been to create an intelligent soldier breed of dogs, with human intelligence but the devotion, strength, and tenacity of dogs, believing such an army would enable them to take over the world. The scientist died generations ago, but his dream lived long enough to create about 150 dogs surgically altered to be intelligent, walk on their hind legs, use prosthetic hands, and voice boxes for speaking. Treated like slaves by their human masters, the dogs finally upped and killed the humans, took all the gems and valuables, and went to New York.

Bakis unfolds the story in a very plausible manner. The story of the dogs past is told through journals and an opera that the dogs write themselves, after they settle into life in New York as rich and mysterious celebrities. The story starts and ends with tragic overtones, as the dogs remain the ultimate victims of human ambition, greed, and control. It's really a beautiful book and I hope Bakis publishes another novel in the near future.

In the cinema department, I saw "The Reader" and was rather disappointed. Yes, Kate Winslet played her part brilliantly. She is such a good actress that it is too easy for me to take her for granted. But the story itself was frustrating and left me uncertain of how to feel. The movie was long and drawn out after the emotional angst of the middle part.

I'm almost embarassed at how much television I've been watching. January through March is my heaviest viewing, especially now that Jack Is Back with 24. I'm eating up the usual terrible dialogue and totally implausible plot events. Most glaring so far: The president manages to get safely into a lockdown room (with Jack's help, but that goes without saying) but is unable to communicate with federal agents. The agents are in contact with Juma (the bad guy) who claims he has captured the president and will kill her if they don't accede to his demands and leave (or whatever his demand was, I've already forgotten.) The agent balks, saying "Let me speak to the President!" But Juma refuses and the Feds back down anyway, with no proof that the president is alive, much less in Juma's custody. Pretty weak, even for 24.

At least there is some great quality television, but that's on cable. "Big Love" is having another wonderful season where the characters continue to spiral into greater tension and conflict that builds on previous season events. I love this show more with each episode. And "Breaking Bad" started a second season with a whiz-bang opening episode. Last season, it started out brilliantly but did have a period where it slowed down. I expect that has to happen with serial dramas, but the better ones seem to salt the angsty episodes in between more action-packed ones.

On the current events front, my attention has been riveted by the Bernie Madoff spectacle, and I can hardly wait until its made into a stage musical, skipping past the novel and movie version. Seriously, there is so much to be mined from the Madoff scandal and I believe it will be years before we learn the majority of it. Which pisses me off, because he and his minions should not have the power to keep it so wrapped up. I'm sure there's too many powerful people implicated who will keep the truth hidden as long as possible.

My new personal hero is Jon Stewart, after watching him shred Jim Cramer and CNBC. I've seen Stewart angry before (when he took down CROSSFIRE) and I envy his unflinching righteousness. It is painful for me to watch him in action. I felt sorry for Cramer but I was impressed that Stewart said everything that needed to be said. I'd love to have his backbone.

So this wraps up my winter so far. The sun is shining and the snow is melting, but all that could change next week. Oh, and Patsy is still the best dog in the world, although needs a winter bath. She's a bit ripe.

Today's meme is to list 15 albums that profoundly influenced your life or changed the way that you looked at it. These are albums that shaped your life no matter what they were thought of musically. No shame, no gain, right?

After working on this for a half hour, I decided to stop at number 10, a nice round number. I could scratch out 5 more albums that I loved, but as far as profound influence or life-changing, they'd all be albums I listened to when I was younger than 25. Which is rather bothersome, but there you have it.

1. I started this list with earliest best loved albums and realized that was off the mark. So I have to start over with an album that I didn't just love, but it changed me. And the first album that I can say did that must have been "The Peppermint Twist" by Joey Dee. Man, that crazy twist music! I must have been about ten years old and whenever that record would start to play (which was all the time because I had two teenage sisters) I had to drop what I was doing and start TWISTING!

2. My mother played lots of classical music, my father played Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, and they both loved musicals. I generally knew the lyrics to whatever score was popular, but the one with staying power has to be "West Side Story". I just love that music so much and can't not sing along.

3. The musical album that profoundly impacted my world view was "Hair". Again, I pity my parents for having to listen to it over and over again (since all albums had to be played on the single stereo player in our house.) My friends got sick of me belting out "Let the Sunshine" at odd moments. It wasn't just the music though, "Hair" was a rebellion. The young were going to take over the world and do Great Things.

4. Speaking of young and revolutionary, I guess I need to pick a Beatles album. Instead of their earliest music (which I love, love, love to sing along with), I've narrowed it down to two. So slot 4 is taken with "Rubber Soul" because that is the album that proved the Beatles were not a pop rock phenom, but they were serious musician.

5. And the album that really lifted the me up by the Beatles would be "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" which came out in the summer of love, 1967. I pity those of you who weren't there.

6. "In My Life" by Judy Collins is a little known album that she made before becoming ill and putting her career on hold a few years. My best friend (you know who you are!) and I would spent hours laying on my living room floor listening to this record. We knew it by heart (okay, we played and sang to Beatle records too) and Collins' smokey folksy ballads were edgy for the time.

7. Almost halfway through this list and I'm still in high school. But music ceased to have as much impact on me later in life, as early as the 70s really. "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme" was Simon and Garfunkles breakout album. It can still move me to tears (or at least wanting to cry) to the extent that I will sometimes avoid listening to it. I don't think any other record can affect my mood as profoundly as this one.

8. During my brief first marriage, two albums came along that touched me to the soul. Melissa Manchester's first album "Home to Myself" helped me save my sanity. I loved her voice and her songs, and her second album too. After that, her style changed and I lost interest.

9. Second album during above-mentioned marriage: "Court and Spark" by Joni Mitchell, which is my favorite Mitchell album of all time. I loved her lyrics at the time, to the point where I went through the liner notes and underlined relevant passages. I can't say Joni Mitchell saved my sanity, she might have pushed me closer to going over the edge. But this is one album that remains etched in my heart.

10. Okay before the Pointer Sisters went commercial, they put out some really funky harmonies. One of them "Steppin' " I'll put on the list for opening up my musical taste from current to standards. In other words, I started discovering other music besides current rock n' roll. They did a Duke Ellington medley that I would die to hear again (my album disappeared long ago and I can't find it in DVD.) So this was a pivotal moment for me, when I realized my parents listened to some pretty decent music.

I'm not really going to examine the question of who sets the rules of writing and literature. I've just finished reading "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz (Pulitzer Prize winner) and before that, I read "The Winter Queen" by Boris Arkunin, a very different cup of tea yet with similar effects on me.

I'll start with "The Winter Queen", which didn't so much break a rule, but rather broke an assumed contract with the reader. The story is a set in Russia in the 1870's, when the Bolsheviks are becoming a headache, but Russisn society seems to mirror 19th century Europeon culture. The narrating voice is light, witty, wry, and leaves the reader with the impression that this is a light-hearted Russian version of a Victorian cozy mystery. The main character, Erast Fandorin, is young, ambitious, and terribly naive. His innocence leads him into trusting the wrong people and he is betrayed time and again. His high idealism leads him to make a choice that is ethically correct, yet will result in harming many innocents. In the end, Fandorin suffers consequences so awful that I almost threw the book across the room. I was angry that the author had written such a light (i thought) nearly comedic story and then ended it so tragically. Then I had to settle down and think about it, reassess my presumptions. I came to the conclusion that I do want to read more about Erast Fandorin (for this is the first in a series featuring him), because he is so irrevocably changed by the events of this book. Sure, it's typical for the women in hard-boiled crime fiction to "wind up in a body bag", but how often is the protagonist truly changed by the story. I'm really interested to see where this character goes next.

The rule that Arukin broke, which ultimately worked for me, was that you can write a story using one tone, and still conclude it with a very different one. I've seen it done before, but seldom liked it. Usually, it feels like the author couldn't make up their mind what sort of story they were telling. But in Arukin's case, I feel like he deliberately led me down a hallway and then hit me on the head with a brick. It hurt, but I wound up seeing something I wouldn't have otherwise, including something about myself. (That I would just as soon remain oblivious to reality behind facades.)

"Brief Life" (I have to shorten the title, I'm lazy like that) is also set in a culture foreign to me, that of Santa Domingo as well as Domincans living in New York. Oscar Wao was born in New York, to a single mother who had to flee from a criminal boyfriend back in Santa Domingo, just at the time that the dictator "El Jefe" was shot down.  Diaz challenges the reader by using Spanish without translation, usually understood in context but still not making it easy for us insulated Midwestern types who never bothered to learn another language. Oscar is a loser, a softer version of "Comic Book" guy from the Simpsons, who's only salvation from complete loneliness is his love for fantasy, SF, and Dungeons & Dragons. But even at the start of the story, Diaz uses a device that seemed annoying at first, which is long and frequent footnotes. In other words, Diaz freely tells instead of shows, lengthy passages about the horrible atrocities committed by El Jefe during his 30 year reign over the Dominican Republic.

The story moves from Oscar to his sister, Lola, who has a rocky relationship with their bitchy and exhausted mother. Eventually we learn the mother's story as well, until we are taken back to the tragic events surrounding her parents when they ran afoul of El Jefe in the forties. But the narrator of the story is a contemporary character, a lover and friend of Lola, and an unwilling friend of Oscar. For the first part of the book, there is no real clue as to who the narrator is, but it is clearly a story told by someone who is contemporary and aquainted with Oscar and Lola. This is another device that I can imagine being hollered down in a critique group and it is extremely confusing. But all the footnotes, language, and narration succeeded in forcing me to consider a culture and political horror show that I'd been oblivious to (that's two books in a row. I should be getting sharper by now.)

The title of "Brief Life" makes it obvious that a happy ending is not in store in this book. Yet Oscar's final journey is sweet and inspiring, ending the book on a far less depressing note than "The Winter Queen".

I'm glad I read these books because they are both excellent, but I also appreciated how the authors made deliberate choices on how they told the story, finding the right voices and devices to make the stories unforgettable. I am awed and amazed.

As usual, I started the morning by opening my gmail. Nothing there to reply to, so I moved on to LJ. First friend post that I come across is by ccfinlay who posted a link to www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php. That killed a half-hour quickly, although I still had enough discipline to leave it alone, even after discovering an endangered language in Campobasso, Italy, right near my grandfather's hometown. Next up was a post by lizhand who linked to Jennifer Weiner's blog. From there, I discovered a Television Review blogsite www.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php that I have linked to but not allowed myself to peruse.

I then proceeded to iworkatborders  for a dose of depression regarding my job and Borders in general. The site has too few posters who stay out of the closet, so the tone of conversation always deteriorates. While I understand the need for some to remain anonymous, it also lowers inhibitions. Still, there is useful information to be gleaned there although I'm not sure there's that much value in knowning massive layoffs are coming ahead of the rest of the peeps in my store.

I barely scratched the surface of Huffington Post before finding a photo of a previously believed extinct bird that was sold for food moments after the picture was taken. One wonders why the photographer couldn't shell out a few bucks for it. That led to my discovery of the photo of another endangered-close-to-extinct species, the smiling bird pictured in my new icon. I rather like the smile because I am often accused of smiling when I am completely unaware that I am doing it. This caused me deeply embarrassing moments in grade school.

Now I am left with an hour an a half before my son's musician friends appear and they begin their weekly jam session. Last week, I went to the library. This week, I'll try wax ear plugs and see if I can make up for this lost morning, seduced again by the internet.

Seeing this movie made me realize that I hadn't seen a really good movie in a long time. Unless I count "Slumdog Millionaire" but for some reason, that movie was good and gritty, but the feel-good ending detracting from the authenticity. I mean, I like happy endings, but I need to believe it. Can't say that  I believed "Slumdog" but it was a terrific journey along the way.

I'm so tempted to say that "The Wrestler" pulls no punches, since that's a boxing metaphor for a rasslin' movie. There are violent scenes that I had to turn away from several times, disturbing for the close up gore that men--contemporary gladiators--inflict on themselves willingly in the name of entertainment. I will never diss wrestlers again. They may be rehearsed but damn if they don't work hard and give it their all.

The protagonist, Ricky aka The Ram is played by Mickey Rourke who has the perfect wrecked face for it, all craters and ridges, testifying to trauma and hard living (especially the chemical kind). Ram is 20 years past his glory days and works part-time at a supermarket to supplement his weekend gigs, but still doesn't earn enough to keep the lock off his trailer.  After he suffers a spectacluar heart attack after an even more spectacular wrestling round, he decides to make an effort to turn his life around. But after nearly mending fences with his daughter and almost finding love with his female counterpart, an aging exotic dancer/hostess, he fucks up big time. Which you know is going to happen, but what made it so real is that it is so gloriously his own doing. The movie doesn't try to excuse his major lapse, there is no doubt that Ram is a royal fuck-up, will always be a fuck-up, and that is why his life has sunk to what it is. If there is a moral to the story, it is "Don't be a fuck-up."

My single quibble with the movie is that I find shaky camera work to be sickening at times. If it is shaky to the point that I think about it, then it's overdone. Fortunately, that only happened in a few scenes. Otherwise, all the sets were real locations so that the film was always gritty and remained in an almost insulated world of basements, bars, and low rent streets.

Not for the faint-hearted but see it anyway.

I am merely a partial slacker. I've been busy in my brain even if the physical part has remained slumped in a computer chair for weeks on end. In fact, the hydraulic apparatus decided it had had quite enough and so my chair began to sink regularly. I traded it off to my husband's desk until I drag myself in to buy a new fancy model.

But I am not posting about my posture woes, no sir. I see a crack of light at the end of the tunnel and am moving slowly, slowly towards it.  For the past month or so, I have become addicted to True Crime stories, particularly serial killers. Not just any serial killers though, mostly women who kill. This started with a mild fascination I have for Aileen Wuornos, even since seeing "Monster" a few years back. A great movie btw, whether or not you agree with the sympathetic treatment of Wuornos. I didn't realize how sympathetic the treatment was until I saw parts of documentary about her during her final days. A scary amazing woman who was so psychotic and drugged out that her eyes looked like they were going to pop from her sockets, she alternated screaming obsenities with lucid calm.

( Stuff about Aileen Wuornos )

( Belle Gunness )
( Mrs. McCann and the Bloody Benders )

So after all this reading and internet surfing, as well as putzing around on Ancestry.com, I have finally found my story angle. Mrs. McCann, spiritualist detective. ( Yes, I have to finish Rare Breeds before I get involved in writing this one.) Whether it will be "based on a true story" or a fictionalized account, I haven't decided.  It would be rather cool to set Mrs. McCann on the trail of Belle Gunness. And she could always come back via a medium to testify against Aileen Wuornos.

2008 Movie Blog

 

I noticed that I missed including a few books in my 2008 Books post:

“Stiff” by Mary Roach - Nonfiction about how human corpses are used in various fields of research. Interesting, informative but could have been covered in a series of magazine articles rather than an entire book. But I nearly always say that about nonfiction books.

“Outlander” by Dianne Gabaldon - Popular, hugely popular, novel that is the first of a series about a time-traveling nurse who falls in love with a Scottish noble/warrior. I’ve actually read this book twice now, having forgotten I’d read it when it was first released. All I can say is that I still don’t get it, even the second time around. Gabaldon does write excellent sex scenes but other than that, this novel is twice as long, make that three times, as it needs to be.

“The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wrobeski - This is also a very long novel, but never boring. Absorbing story of a mute boy who starts out with a near idyllic family and life in spite of his disability, until major tragedy strikes. The boy and his family raise a special breed of dogs, which is what makes the story and setting so extraordinary, as well as a light touch of supernatural.

 

2008 Movies:

Yes, many movies on my “new” list are actually from 2007. But that’s when I saw them, so they were new to me.

 

Favorite New Movies:

Most of these films are extremely intense, with the exception of a two comedies.  I’d say my favorite was hands-down “In Bruges”, but “Before the Devil” comes in a close second.

 

“There Will Be Blood”

“Before the Devil Knows Your Dead”

“Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day”

“In Bruges”

“Mongol”

“Pineapple Express”

“Slumdog Millionaire”

 

Pretty Good:

There’s a lot more variance in my feelings towards these. I’m trying to list them from best-liked to least:

“The Changeling”

“The Dark Knight”

“Superbad”

“Tropic Thunder”

“Ironman”

“Eastern Promises”

“The Forbidden Kingdom”

“Be Kind Rewind”

“Atonement”

“Gone Baby Gone”

“Four Christmases”

 

Recommended DVD/Netflix:

“The Lookout”

“Moby Dick”

“Capote”

“Across the Universe”

“Infamous”

“On The Waterfront”

“Pom Poko”

 

Terrible (both theater and DVDs):

 

“This Film Not Yet Rated”

“Romance and Cigarettes”

“The Other Boleyn Girl”

“Leatherheads”

“Smart People”

“Hellboy 2”

“Australia”

 

 

 

This morning I found an email in my inbox that announced Borders Closing...40% off clearance. For a moment, I thought that referred to all Borders stores. But it is regarding only a single store in Sacremento. Still, what would possess the people in Border's marketing to send an email with that subject line, knowing that most of their employees will receive it and think the same thing. It was like a terrible, prophetic April Fool's Day joke.

Meanwhile, they are having an excellent Bargain book sale although stock is disappearing rapidly. If you happen to be in the vicinity of a Border's, check out some of the bargains. I saw unabridged audio books, fairly current titles, priced at $3.99. That's on CD, not cassette.

Here's a link to a NYT article pointing out another reason for the rapid decline of brick and mortar bookstores (and paper publishing as well):
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/weekinreview/28streitfeld.html

I don't think *all* bookstores will disappear but by the end of 2010, there will be only a handful in each major city. We might see some independent specialty stores thrive as a result, especially those that concentrate on a particular genre. If Borders will be the name over the door of the remaining "super' stores, I couldn't predict.  If I had any say in the matter, I'd concentrate on urban stores but instead, Borders is abandoning downtown stores in favor of outer suburb locations. That makes business sense except that they continue to butt up against Barnes and Noble in nearly all of the mall-type of venues. But "shrink" and "cultural climate" make downtown locations more costly to maintain, so those are the first to go.

I'm not pondering what all this means to me as a writer. To be honest, I've not worked enough at being published to feel a pinch. Yet. I'm more interested in whether or not I'll have a job in the next two months, three months, six months, a year. It may not be much of a job but it's been ideal for me.

I am not a critic, nor have I played one on TV. These are my highly subjective opinions and nothing more. Read at your own peril or skip past and enjoy the rest of your day.

( Books I loved, liked, and hated behind the cut... )</div>( Books I loved, liked, and hated behind the cut. )

 

I am trying hard to place this long post behind a cut, my apologies if I don't succeed. Next up will be my 2008 movies in review.

They don't make 'em like this anymore...and there's good reasons.




I plan to write a series of posts on what I've read and watched this past year, having kept track of titles for the first time ever. Now all I have to do is remember what they were about and whether or not I liked them. Other than that, I shall be very lazy from now until my next workday, which is Saturday. I hope all of my friends stay warm, safe, and lazy as well!

Tonight after their supper, Patsy Cline chased the kitty all across the house. She literally ran atop the cat, almost like a volleyball player with a ball between their feet, all the way to the bedroom, where the cat retreated out of reach beneath our bed. Order has been restored to our universe.

We've had our kitty for almost three years now--yes, we always call her "kitty". Her name is Tina but the name never stuck. Anyway, in this past three years, she has exhibited no more personality than a doorknob. She will sit in my lap on some evenings, if my husband is absent. If he's around, she perches on his knees for about a half-hour. But not every night, she seems to go in streaks. She sleeps in our bed at night but has never adopted a routine with it. She comes and goes all night, sometimes bursting with loud purrs and affection and cuddliness, then will go days without coming near the bed.

In short, she is the sort of cat who gives the impression that they are aloof pets. Her one consistent trait comes out at meal time. Kitty loves her chow--she scarfs it up nearly as fast as the dog. In fact, that might be the crux of yesterday's event. Patsy and the kitty have shared the same household for nearly two years. They are comfortably distant from one another. The cat likes to nap in the dog's kennel on occasion and they will sleep side by side in the morning on my bed. Occasionally, Patsy will trounce the kitty just for fun, usually when she's burning off some energy, and the cat generally takes it in stride, retreating under some furniture until the mood has passed.

No one saw how it started. I had my back turned to the kitchen, concentrating over something (wish I could say I was writing but I think I was "researching"). I was dimly aware of my son coming up from the basement and the usual sounds of footsteps in the kitchen and dining room, when I heard the cat yowl, the loud screechy kind indicating she'd been stepped on. But it didn't stop, the sound continued and I turned around to see if something had fallen on her, because I thought the sound came from pain.

Typical mother reaction, I asked my son, "What are you doing to her?" Because all I saw was him, the dog, and then the cat, who had turned into a giant gleaming black furball. "Nothing!" according to my son, who suddenly picked up all sixty pounds of our bully mix as the cat lunged an attack.  As he hoisted up the dog (who was curled into near fetal position), the cat launched herself like a black furry missile, but my son stepped back. He turned around--dog still in his arms--and the cat continued her attacks, even clawing and biting at my son's calves as he walked away holding the dog.

By this time I was out of my chair, and both of us were half-laughing, half-terrified. The cat was clearly out of her mind with rage, her tail was as fat as her back. Jake set the dog down and the cat came at her again--yowling the entire time. I think Patsy was willing to go game on but was also influenced by our human reactions. So she continued to let the cat intimidate her rather than be aggressive in return. Jake finally picked her up and closed her in his bedroom so we could calm the cat down. This was accomplished by putting a few pieces of kitty chow on her plate, although I had to pick her up and carry her to the plate. I didn't dare touch her until her tail went down to normal size though.

I still don't know what started it. Jake said they were already at it when I heard him come up the stairs, so my guess is that it started as a play session. Patsy wound up with a head wound, a slight scratch over one eye. Jake got scratches up his legs--did I mention the cat is declawed? Those were back-claw scratches in both cases.

They are both sleeping on my bed this morning, apparently no grudge on either side. We suspect the tiff started with the dog polishing off the cat's food from under her.  Or maybe the dog initiated some friendly play and the cat decided she'd had enough. We shall see what happens next.

Big thanks to Jay Ridler (jsridler )  for pointing this LJ post by Richard Horton (</a></b></a>: http://ecbatan.livejournal.com/ He has reviewed the past year's issues of ASIM and listed my story as a one of the fine ones. Nice remarks about ASIM overall.

Makes me a happy writer.