Let’s split the difference
Posted on | July 2, 2009 | No Comments
Huh — I typed “combination US Canada flag” into my search engine and darned if that isn’t exactly what I got–and what I was looking for. It’s gotten to the point where if you can think of it, you can find it.
Anyhow, this is right smack dab between the two national birthdays, so it seemed apropos. Being an expatriate, I get to celebrate both, but I only get a holiday for one.
I spent most of yesterday evening on a WebEx meeting with my colleagues in Japan. Darned time difference. There was a time when it worked to our advantage, though. I was working on a software project with my peer in Japan. I would work on the code all day long and upload it to the project management database at the end of the day. My colleague would extract it and pick up where I left off during his work day, which was completely out of sync with my own. So we had almost round-the-clock development.
I’m in the middle of too many books. I’m reading one novel for pleasure, one for review and another as research for an essay I have to write. The latter is Children of the Night by Dan Simmons, which I just started last night. I read the book when it was first published, but I’ve forgotten most of the details. Reading about the demise of Ceausescu reminds me of Iraq’s situation post-Saddam for some reason, though the parallels are slim at best.
It’s only 98° today. What a relief. No rain, of course. We’re 7″ behind annual average at this point. Of course, we’ll make that all up on one horrific day sometime soon, I fear.
Happy Canada Day
Posted on | July 1, 2009 | No Comments
I posted some new details about the Stephen King Illustrated Companion on its page on my web site, including the table of contents, ISBN and approximate dimensions. As I’ve mentioned before, this is going to be a large-format book, slightly larger than a standard sheet of paper. Another book from the same publisher in a similar format weighed over 3 lbs.
Last night’s episode of Raising the Bar was interesting, especially in the way it concluded. Or rather, in that it didn’t exactly, but it doesn’t seem to be a story that will continue. The trial ended with a hung jury and both sides committed to not backing down, which means a new trial in six or eight months, even though the defendant said that he couldn’t go through it again. The alternative was a difficult pill to swallow. Maybe the guy will show up again toward the end of the season.
I finally decided enough is enough with the essay I’ve been tinkering with off and on for several months. This morning, I shifted around paragraphs and sentences yet again, and everything sort of fell into place. I managed to read through it once without making a single change, which is the first time that’s happened. So I pulled the trigger and sent it off to the editor. Time to move on to the two remaining articles I have for the book, one at 500 words and the other at 2500.
I found out through passing correspondence yesterday that Chaney Kley, the guy who played Steve, the lead character in our short film Gotham Café, died two years ago, apparently from sleep apnea. He was only 34 years old. Man, that sucks. Here’s his obituary.
It looked for all the world like it was going to rain yesterday afternoon, and then again this morning, but nothing so far. Just that one downpour on Monday evening.
Here’s a funny op-ed piece in the NY Times written by famous expatriate Canadians about what they miss about the terre de nos aïeux, starting with Rick Moranis and including Kim Cattrall (bet you didn’t know she was one of us!) and a writer for The Simpsons, and includes someone waxing philosophical about the Coffee Crisp bar. Today marks 142 years since Canada became a country. Per Moranis, “We call our dollars loonies because the coin has an image of a loon. Another old bird, the Queen of England, is on the other side of the coin.” Long may she reign!
Apres moi, le deluge
Posted on | June 30, 2009 | No Comments
We received our first significant rainfall for the month of June yesterday evening. Of course, it started when my wife and I were halfway through our constitutional, at the point of no return. It started with a few sporadic drops, which I misattributed to a lawn sprinkler we’d just passed. By the time we rounded the last corner, it was coming down in sheets and we were soaked. We didn’t care–it felt good. I had almost started to believe that the sky had forgotten how to rain around here. Of course, when we got back into our air conditioned house, getting soaked to the skin no longer seemed like such a great idea. Brrrr.
Today we received notice that our voluntary water conservation measures have become mandatory. That means watering the lawn only twice a week and no more than an inch per week, with fines of up to $200/day for violations. Lawn irrigation is the single biggest drain on the pumping station, they say.
Good episode of The Closer last night, as Fritzie and Brenda both relied on their knowledge of the other’s behavior to further their individual causes. The whole “LAPD doesn’t care about X crime” has been done before, so I recognized it for the trick it was, but that didn’t make the moment when the dufus who fell for it realized his mistake any less rewarding. I had no idea what Brenda wanted the money for, though, which made for a nice payoff at the end, pun intended.
Because the book still isn’t available for pre-order, I haven’t been saying much about my new publication, The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, due out from Barnes and Noble in November, but I finally decided it was time to blow the wraps off this puppy. Those of you who played along with my jigsaw puzzles last week got a sneak preview, but for the rest of you, you can read the publisher’s copy and back-of-the-book text here. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the book, and I’ll be adding more details in the coming days and weeks. This is going to be a large book, what you might call a coffee table volume, and it will have all manner of neat little documents and surprises inside pockets that you’ll be able to take out and explore. I can’t wait to see the finished product myself.
I spent the morning revising a 1000-word essay that I’ve been toying with for months. I think I finally (finally) have it in the form that I’ve been trying to figure out all this time, so now it’s down to simply perfecting the wording. Soon I’m going to send it in, because if I don’t I’m going to start hating it.
Where did June go?
Posted on | June 29, 2009 | No Comments
I read Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain cover to cover yesterday and posted my review last night. A fast-paced serial killer novel, third in the series. It doesn’t come out until September but since I had to review it for Amazon’s Vine program I figured I might as well post the review on Onyx as well.
I definitely think that WordPress 2.8 is peppier than the previous version I had. I also like the fact that I was able to move the LiveJournal crossposting banner to the bottom of the messages on LJ. I might have been able to do that before, but I neglected to check the configuration until now.
I figured out the culprit on the first Law & Order: Criminal Intent last night the minute he lied to the police “on his friend’s behalf,” and everything else I saw during the show simply reinforced it. Whenever you see someone hovering at the back of a group photograph as if he doesn’t really belong to the group, it’s a dead giveaway on shows like this. However, I misread the Goran and Eames episode completely. I was sure that it was going to be the wife who’d been missing and presumed murdered for a decade who was the culprit. Of all the crime-solving duos on TV, Goran and Eames have the oddest relationship. They know a lot about each other, but they aren’t really friends, and there seems to be a constant level of discomfort between them. Maybe they know too much about each other.
I can’t believe that June is all but over. Wherever did it go? (The two suggestions I’ve had so far are: “Myrtle Beach” and “on the top of the fridge.”)
While I was working on other things yesterday afternoon, I watched The Three Kings on AMC, the George Clooney movie set in Iraq after the first Gulf War. It’s a fascinating film, both from an artistic point of view and a political one. The way these soldiers were able to move through the country as if they weren’t even there was an interesting concept. The story of the Iraqi soldier who took the Mark Wahlberg character prisoner was one of the most humanizing scenes in the film.
Squirrely behavior
Posted on | June 28, 2009 | No Comments
We have a patio table with umbrella on our back deck, the base which is supported by a large, tapered stone. Lately, one of the local squirrels, of which there are many, has taken to sprawling on this stone in the hot afternoons, spread out much like the critter in the accompanying photograph. The pose is strikingly possessive, as if he’s thinking, “mine, all mine.” I don’t know if he is enjoying radiated heat from the stone (though it’s certainly hot enough without it) or if there is some sort of cooling effect through the stone, which is somewhat shaded. It’s just funny to see him sprawled out like that.
I read Chelsea Cain’s new novel, Evil at Heart, yesterday. For readers of her novels, villainess Gretchen Lowell has grown large enough that she doesn’t even have to appear on the page very much to remain threatening and menacing. The novel is, in large part, an indictment of the cult of personality that has grown up around certain serial killers (Ted Bundy, for example, though no specific examples are cited–Gretchen stands in for all), where there are tours that will take “fans” past famous sites from the lives and crimes of these murderers. Cain’s “hero” isn’t exactly cut from whole cloth, either–in the last book he was a drug addict and in this one he starts out voluntarily committed to a mental ward. Some of Archie’s behavior is puzzling, but on the whole this is a solid entry in the series, and there is enough ambiguity toward the end to give you plenty to think about when it’s over.
There’s never any moral ambiguity in an episode of Eli Stone. The show was never quite as quirky as Boston Legal, but its moral compass isn’t that much different. Of course, quirky comes in different flavors, so if you can’t have a rampaging partner with incipient dementia and a predilection toward shooting people, you should at least have someone who receives somewhat ambiguous visions. There are only two episodes left, and I hope they manage to resolve the Eli/Maggie issue, which is all that really matters about the show, when you get right down to it. It’s a star-crossed love story with hallucinations.
Burn Notice episodes are particularly good when our heroes get to burn someone else, as they did this week. I thought the audit subplot started out good and then went a little screwy when Sam “suddenly” recognized the auditor, though. The game of chess with the local cop is an interesting twist, but she hasn’t really posed a serious threat to Michael yet. No new episode this week, however, probably because of tennis.
Had to go appliance shopping yesterday–our 14-year-old drier is in the process of giving up the ghost. It’s not dead yet, to toss in the obligatory Monty Python quote, but it’s painful to listen to it lumber through the cycle like a racehorse trying to make it to the finish line on three legs.
T-Mobile is so funny. Their solution to my customer complaint about the impossible situation I ended up in with their prepaid phone was to add $25 worth of minutes to the account, two weeks after I terminated the service and returned the phone to Target. They expressed their hope that I would continue to work with their customer service agents to resolve the problem. I’ll bet that somewhere in the heart of a computer, a program is still trying to activate the number.
And the letter wasn’t even signed by Catherine Zeta Jones, which would have made everything all right.
Another puzzle to while away the hours
Posted on | June 26, 2009 | 1 Comment
Or at least a few minutes. Click on the image to get to the puzzle.
Feedback
Posted on | June 26, 2009 | No Comments
I received a two-page e-mail from my agent yesterday with detailed feedback about my most recent novel. He’s a very perceptive reader, and picked out some thematic elements that I hadn’t planned but are obvious in retrospect. He also had some very useful suggestions about how to develop some of the characters so their presence has deeper significance and resonance. We’re going to talk sometime next week to map out a strategy for revising the manuscript, and then it’s off to the races. Looks like I have my summer’s work cut out for me. Something useful to do in the air conditioned office while it’s 104° outside.
Not a good day for celebrities yesterday. The King of Pop was all the rage when I was an undergrad in college, with Thriller dominating the TV waves more than the airwaves.
My daughter rented some movies for us to watch last night. First up was Penelope, the fable about the girl (Christina Ricci) born under a curse with a pig’s snout. A cute story with the predictable moral but some fun getting there. Funny appearance by Reece Witherspoon, and a bit part by the guy who plays Owen on Torchwood. Peter Dinklage is an interesting and under-rated actor, I think.
Next up was Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was goofy and silly. It took me a while to recognize the main character’s best friend until I realized she was the actress who played Jessie’s ill-fated girlfriend on Breaking Bad. Kristen Scott Thomas was hilarious, and John Goodman was funny (as was his hair), but the plot was simply absurd, and painfully awkward at times. Sort of like Bridget Jones’ Diary, but not as good.
Kellerman’s solution to the crazy judge problem on Raising the Bar was inspired. It seemed for a while like his client was getting the shaft in this duel, but it all worked out in the end, and Kellerman might actually have a judge who views him somewhat favorably now. The “hate crime” plot was interesting, especially since the camera kept panning past Charlie, the judge’s gay clerk, as if we were meant to understand where his sympathies lie, only to discover later that they weren’t that simple. The show is starting to find its legs. I wasn’t sure about it last season, but I’m sticking with it (especially since there’s damn all else on the tube during the summer).
Law & Order: Criminal Intent fans: set your DVRs for an extra hour on Sunday. Two new episodes, back to back, starting an hour earlier than normal.
Some Like it Hot
Posted on | June 25, 2009 | No Comments
I was one of the millions of people who had Farrah plastering their walls in the 1970s. Not just the famous poster, but pretty much every poster available. I’ve always been partial to the one at the right (left in some browsers!), from the set of a forgettable movie called Sunburn. My college friends and I made a trek to an outlying movie theater in Halifax to see Saturn 3, which offered as its raison d’être a brief glimpse of Farrah’s breast. Just one of them, mind you, but it was enough! I never considered her a terribly strong actress. Even her most acclaimed roles were simply okay in terms of performance. I think they garnered accolades because they were better than anyone expected them to be, or because Farrah’s presence drew attention to societal issues in a way that few other people could. And yet I would watch her in pretty much anything she chose to do. She was fascinating. Glamorous. Sexy. And brave—there’s no denying that the pose she struck in her famous poster was a gutsy one. We saw the recent documentary, also brave, and it was hard to watch at times because the disease and time had ravaged those familiar features, the ones that had adorned my bedroom walls for years. Still, when I saw the news on CNN when I got to the gym a short while ago, I felt all the wind go out of my lungs for a second. Her passing wasn’t as unexpected as, say that of Lady Di, but I felt it all the same.
I bit the bullet and upgraded my Wordpress installation from 2.6.3 to 2.8. Instructions that begin with multiple warnings to back up your files and your database and then say 1) Delete all files, followed shortly thereafter by “except…” I’m sure there were choruses of “oh, shit” from people who didn’t read to the end of that sentence in the instructions. The upgrade took about 30 minutes altogether, and went off without incident. I would say that the new version seems snappier than the previous one. Beyond that I haven’t had a chance to explore new features.
I received the ARC for Chelsea Cain’s third novel, Evil at Heart, from Amazon Vine yesterday. Looks like the publisher is going all out for this one. The ARC even contained a CD with an extract from the audio version. I enjoyed the first two novels in the series, Heartbreak and Sweatheart, and the latter is reviewed at Onyx. Looking forward to diving into this one.
A while back, Charlie Huston offered some of his early novels as free pdf downloads. I grabbed them at the time, but as I did I wondered when I would spend the time reading these books on my computer screen. Certainly I had no intention of printing them out. Then it dawned on me this morning: this is a perfect situation for my Kindle. So I e-mailed them to Amazon’s free conversion site and got the PDFs back as Kindle files, which are now on my reader and ready to go. Though pdf conversion is still considered an experimental feature, these seemed to go over pretty well.
I received a sample contract for the project I’ve mentioned the past couple of days. All looks to be in order. Now I just have to figure out what to send them.
My goal this week is to lose “a ton” of calories (i.e., 2000 calories). My workout goal when I go to the gym is to burn 400 calories and go at least 3 miles on the elliptical trainer. If I hit 400 calories but not 3 miles, I keep on going, and vice versa. Most weeks I go two or three times, but I’m trying to make it a daily thing during the week, and I’m four for four so far this week.
My car’s thermometer read 118° when I got into it after work yesterday afternoon. The real temperature was 104°. Ouch. Same deal today. The forecast is for a gradual trend toward sub-100 temps over the next few days. Even a 30% chance of rain today. No signs of any yet, though.
We watched New in Town, with Renée Zellwegger and Harry Connick, Jr., OnDemand last night. Cute and predictable, with a few logic gaps here and there. J.K. Simmons’ performance was worth the price of admission alone. Having just watched him in the most recent episode of The Closer, the transformation couldn’t have been greater. Some of the expressions that came out of his mouth were hilarious. Zellwegger’s charm is starting to wear off a little. Her Jessica Rabbit face isn’t drawn quite the same as it used to be.
Speaking of The Closer, three episodes, three interrogations, no interrogation rooms. This week, Brenda got the job done in a hospital room. It’s like she’s taking her show on the road. Mixes things up a little.
Coldplay is offering a nine-track live album for free download on their website. I’ve never owned any of their albums and am only slightly aware of some of their songs, but this is a neat gift and a veritable greatest hits album. Good workout music, I discovered at the gym today.
Advanced Math
Posted on | June 24, 2009 | No Comments
It’s another scorcher out there today. 101° by late afternoon. It’s not too bad so long as you stay in the air conditioning. It’s supposed to “cool off” by Sunday, when the forecast high is only 94°.
A little more progress with that neat project that I mentioned yesterday. I’m going to be looking at a sample contract next and, assuming everything is in order–or at least negotiable–it should be a done deal. Should be a fun gig, if all goes according to plan.
My daughter wanted to watch the Jon/Kate Plus 8 episode on TLC last night, so we checked it out. I know the show title is supposed to have an ampersand instead of a slash as I’ve shown it, but it seems like a division sign is more appropriate to their status. Last week they sat on the same couch but as far from each other as possible and visibly leaning away from each other. This week, they sat on the couch individually, but Jon sat on one end when it was his turn and Kate sat on the other end when it was hers, as if they still felt the presence of the other person and still needed the distance. Little wonder that the show is now going on hiatus for a few months.
The closer it gets to NECON date, the more I regret deciding not to go this year. It’ll probably turn out to be the best one yet. Besides, I’ll bet it won’t be 101° in Rhode Island.
Three little digits
Posted on | June 23, 2009 | No Comments
It was 100° according to my car thermometer when I left work yesterday afternoon, and the same is predicted for the rest of the week. The heat index adds about 8-10° to that. Chance of rain: an optimistic 15% each day through Friday, which is more than it’s been lately. And it’s still June, which is when summer is only supposed to start. What’s August going to be like at this rate? Phew. I tried to find a picture of a melting thermometer for this post, but this was the best I could do.
It’s always nice to be invited to do things. I received a very flattering invitation yesterday to participate in an upcoming project. Can’t say anything more about it than that at this point. Only that I was pleased as punch to be asked.
About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, due out in fall 2009.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.