Movies in November

What did I see in November? Well, in the category of things you've probably seen too: Land of the Lost with Will Ferrell. Too be honest, I never really got Will when he was on SNL, but with every movie he's done since I've grown to love him a little bit more. This movie bares almost no resemblence to the old TV show, but then that show was never very good. The movie I found funny, and the boys certainly enjoyed it.

I finally got to see Up. The boys saw it at the theater one day when I was working and very studiously avoided spoiling it for me until I could finally see it on DVD. Pixar is really the Studio Ghibli of America; even their minor films are far superior to the rest of the dreck out there, and this is not one of their minor films. I've heard some complaint of the lack of female characters in this, which I think is ridiculous. His wife may die in the opening of the movie, but her presence is felt all over it. I know because she made me cry at least three times. Which is a good thing.

Leatherheads I got just for George Clooney. It didn't disappoint. The Proposal I got just for Sandra Bullock. It did. (Although Ryan Reynolds was funny, and Betty White. It had some good scenes, but they didn't for me add up to a satisfying movie).

Finally saw Star Trek. Yep, it was all kinds of awesome. My boys have watched it a couple of times now.

Girlfight is a bit older, the first movie from Michelle Rodriguez as a girl who wants to learn to box. I loved the real quality of it, and her character is wonderfully complex and matures in a believable way. I would recommend this one if you like me missed it before.

Even older still is Shane. To be honest, we picked this one up from the library after hearing an old Bill Hicks number about something Jack Palance's character does in this movie. Something that he, in fact, doesn't actually do. A quick search of the internet shows I'm not the only one confused. It's an interesting movie, although the main character is way too pretty to be believable as a cowboy.

We've been working our way through the Alfred Hitchcock catalogue, and in November this meant Strangers on a Train and The Trouble with Harry. The boys like thrillers so they were engrossed by Strangers on a Train, but it was The Trouble with Harry that had them talking for days. We also caught the last Marx Brothers' movie, Love Happy. This can more properly be called a Harpo Marx movie. Which suits me fine (have I mentioned that I'm crushing on Harpo? Yeah, even here when he's just past 60, he's still a little cutie).

We've also been watching all the Buster Keaton movies we can find. The Cameraman was our first, and it's very cool. I knew before that Keaton was a master of physical comedy and in particular taking hard falls. And he does a lot of that here, hopping onto moving fire trucks and diving into pools. But what I didn't know going in was how much of an engineer's mind he had. He set up really elaborate gags and camera shots that are incredibly impressive. Although for my money the funniest scene in this movie is when he and a big galoot are both changing into swimsuits in the same tiny, tiny closet, getting in each other's way and getting their suits mixed up.

The Spite Marriage had some wonderful moments as well, particularly a hapless Keaton trying to put his new passed-out-drunk wife to bed. But even better is The General. In this movie Keaton is a train engineer that is turned down by the Confederate army because they need him as a trainman, but when his paramour is kidnapped by Union soldiers hijacking a train he gives chase all the way past the Mason-Dixon line, and then runs south again after rescuing her, Union soldiers in hot pursuit. So essentially the movie is all one long train chase, and everything they do to try to throw off the train behind them, and everything Keaton does to thwart them. And the girl trying to help but always making things more complicated. The General came with two of his short films, Cops, which is a Keystone cops thing, and The Playhouse, which opens with multiple Buster Keatons. Five of him are on the stage, dancing. Four more are in the orchestra pit, playing instruments. The audience seems at a glance to be men, women and children, but on closer look they are all Buster Keaton as well. Don't let the silent movie thing turn you off; these movies are awesome.

Free and Easy, by comparison, is a Buster Keaton talkie. He has a marvelous speaking voice, and he even did his own Spanish, German and French versions for the overseas markets. Alas, the movie is not all that great. It has what we around these parts call a Bollywood ending; the character we've grown to love puts his own feelings aside and lets the girl go off into the sunset with his rival. This ending is incredibly moving when done correctly. Alas, this movie isn't an example of done correctly.

I've been intending to see Pedro Almodovar's films since pretty much high school. (And yes, the movies people were recommending to me in high school do seem strange when I finally get around to seeing them. I'm not sure how I was coming across to people.) At any rate, this month I finally saw Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It was an interesting movie filled with complicated women. Of course the real highlight is Antonio Banderas. He must be 20 or 21 here, but already has amazing screen presence.

I watched four Bollywood movies, all starring Aamir Khan. Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikhandar with schools competing in a sports thing was fun. Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. I kind of wish it had been a closer retelling as Omkara was of Othello. Awwal Number was about terrorism and cricket. It could've used more cricket. Sarfarosh was also about terrorism, but was much more interesting and watchable, largely due to Naseeruddin Shah as the bad guy.

Still, none of these had a really mindblowing musical number, so this month's video clip is from The Big Store. It's not one of the better Marx Brothers movies, but I do love this bit. You can really tell here that they are brothers (and you can really tell which one is the little brother). The Marx Brothers really existed just to amuse each other; the fact that the audience was also enjoying it was quite incidental.

Did I mention I have another story up?

I have another story available to read online. It's the little taste of the December 2009 issue of Aoife's Kiss that they're offering on their website as an enticement (click the magazine cover to order print copies; it's a good mag). It's called "Full Circle" and is my first sci-fi sale, although depending how you interpret events you might consider it to have an element of fantasy. It's deliberately amibiguous. (Hint: it's sci-fi). I've updated the Stories page on my website with my usual blurbage.

(For some reason Blogger is resisting my efforts to copy/paste anything in here just now. Weird.)

Books in November

I hate daylight savings time. My body is a strict timekeeper, apparently. The nudge of one hour either direction makes my inner pendulum start swinging wildly and I find myself waking at all hours of the night feeling like I'm all done sleeping, then fighting to stay awake when I'm meant to be working. This year was particularly bad. Not being one to waste time, I can't just lie there and wait to fall back to sleep. But you know, watching the sunrise while reading Harpo Marx, it's not all bad.

So I did a colossal amount of reading in November, falling into two categories: Larry Niven and the Marx Brothers. (And one of the other side effects of being off my schedule sleepwise is I have particularly vivid dreams. Ever see the Marx Brothers perform in the microgravity of The Smoke Ring? I have. It's quite a sight).

I will be dealing more extensively with the Marx Brothers later (I'm holding onto that post until I finish this gorram novel), so here I will merely note that the autobiographies Groucho and Me and especially Harpo Speaks are wonderful, wonderful books. Short childhoods in late nineteenth century New York, working the vaudeville circuit then Broadway and Hollywood; the two of them were full of stories and knew how to tell them. I wish Chico had written something; he ran with a whole different crowd than his little brothers. What stories he must have had. I also read The Groucho Letters and The Essential Groucho. I can see why Woody Allen adores him.

I plowed through the Niven. The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring I liked the worldbuilding in them, but the stories themselves didn't really do it for me. Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn was fun.

The rest were short story collections, and there was a lot of repetition so in some cases to say I "read" a particular book only really involved reading the one new story it contained. But just for the sake of completeness, by name they were The Flight of the Horse (loved it), A Hole in Space (for a woman to be 20 pounds overweight when she's 145 pounds, she would have to be five feet tall. I'm just sayin'. And yes, Bridget Jones irritates me as well), Convergent Series, Limits, N-Space, Playgrounds of the Mind (these latter two really having a cool format with fun bits thrown in like special features on a DVD), Crashlander, Rainbow Mars, Scatterbrain, and The Draco Tavern (another highlight for me). I like Niven the best when he's writing a series of short stories exploring every possible angle of a problem, like transfer booths. I also like the vignette quality of his Draco Tavern stories. The lack of characters I can bond with doesn't bother me as much in those cases, and the ideas really are interesting.

OK, back to work on my own book. I'm hoping to have to finished before 2010. I now have two seasons of Lost still in the plastic because I haven't earned watching them yet. Man, I hope they're worth it.

Movies in October

Oh dear, with the lateness. It's time to post my November wrapups, and I still have this October one left.

OK, first off we watched more Marx Brothers: A Day at the Races, Go West, The Big Store, Room Service and At the Circus. I've got too much to say about the Marx Brothers to possibly cover it here; I'll have to do a whole other post just on them. (Watch for it!). In the meantime, I dug up this clip on YouTube of Harpo's one "speaking" role... in a silent film. It's the comments here that amuse me. I'm not the only one who thinks Harpo is a little hottie.


I saw two films I can put in the category of irreverance: Bill Maher's Religulous and Year One. Religulous was entertaining. Bill Maher talks to a wide range of people from different religious backgrounds. I was afraid I would find this too mocking, but Bill pretty much stepped back and let them make fools of themselves. Year One was funny in a more family friendly way; the boys sure enjoyed it. I was impressed with the look of the film; the costumes and sets were fantastic. I'm hoping for a Year Two, but only if it's as funny.

I watched a slew of Bollywood films, namely Sangdil Sanam, Jaagruti, Bandhan, Baaghi, Sanam Bewafa and Paheli. Some I enjoyed more than others, but they all sort of blend in my head now.

Inkheart I enjoyed, particularly Andy Serkis. I have this book; I'm totally going to read it someday.


We saw Where the Wild Things Are in the theater. It was well worth it. Most films for children that deal with empathy oversimplify it horribly. I particularly appreciated how the wild things are not 1:1 correspondences with the main character's mother, sister, etc. They share some characteristics with them (and with him), and some of the situations are similar, but nothing is a direct metaphor. The boy learns from interacting with all these different personalities and watching them interact with each other. Getting along with others is a messy business, and often hard work. Outside of that, the special effects are wonderful. There is no "uncanny valley" between the boy and the monsters; they both look real from every angle.

TV on DVD: I caught up with How I Met Your Mother season 4 and Two and a Half Men season 6. How I Met Your Mother is still going strong, I think, but Two and a Half Men is getting repetitious. But the jokes are still funny; I'll probably be back again for season 7.


Lastly is the miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth. With the team down to just Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto I was expecting lots of naked hide and seek highjinks. So the darker tone caught me off guard, but this was an excellent finish to a show I've enjoyed. The characters had to make some hideously hard choices that had consequences. I'm sorry this is the end of Torchwood, but at least it ended with a bang.

Books in October

My suspicion that I'm really a Steven Barnes fan deepens. This month I read The California VooDoo Game, The Descent of Anansi, Achille's Choice and Saturn's Race, all collaborations between Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. They mesh cool ideas from science combined with compelling, believable characters. Together they make some of my favorite books since I started this Niven kick. I've already added Steven Barnes' name to my list of writers to check out next; I suspect he writes some good women characters.

I also read A World Out of Time by Larry Niven alone. I like a lot of the ideas in here (the cat tails are particularly cool), but the idea where without sex the world would devolve into a nation of girls and a nation of boys who never have contact with each other gave me the terrors. The very idea, living my whole life only with other girls for companionship, and me with nonfunctioning reproductive organs, so why should it matter anyway... Outside of my personal prejudices; I find it a bit unbelievable. My own childhood experience was of mixed genders that only really formed distinct gender-specific groups around the onset of puberty (and I never did the distinct group thing myself). But then I've been told I'm a bit odd.

And the first novel I bought and read entirely on my Kindle (until this point I've been using it to convert and read my critique group's work on the treadmill): Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter. I read this on the way to and from Rapid City, South Dakota. By a weird coincidence, on my last anniversary that involved a trip out of town (to Duluth two years ago) I was reading Ally's last book, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy. These are great books; a terrific premise well-executed. Hopefully book four will be out by next October.

I read three nonfiction books in October as well: a memoir, a pop science, and a foreign language grammar book. Cause that's just how I roll. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali was thoroughly engrossing, a tale of her childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya and her escape from an arranged marriage into Holland, leading up to her election to parliament there, the murder of her partner in filmmaking Theo Van Gogh by an Muslim extremist, and her removal from parliament on petty bureaucratic grounds and relocation to the US. I hope we've been treating her well; she's a sharp one with plenty to say. I highly recommend this book, and hope to hear more from her.

Having seen him speak a bit in Bill Maher's Religulous, I picked up Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg MD. Dr. Newberg performed functional MRIs of Buddhists monks, Catholic nuns, Pentecostals and even an aetheist while they prayed, meditated, or spoke in tongues. The results are intriguing, but it left me wanting more data. I'd like to see him keep on with more "normal" people. There is something to be learned from the people at the extremes, certainly, but I'm more interested in the rest of us normal folks. What's going on in our brains?

The last book for Ocober was Introduction to Hindi Grammar by Usha R. Jain. This is another textbook with no answer key (so no true friend to the self-learner) but a good resource. The grammar is broken down in an easy to understand manner, I just wish I had some way of checking if I'm on track, or if I only think I'm on track.

Movies in September

Where does the month go? You'd think with a week off I would have had time to catch up, but no. More swamped than ever. Well, let's wrap this up before October ends.

Our family favorite: the Marx Brothers. We watched four of these in September. Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts had all four Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera and A Night in Casablanca just three. If only Zeppo had had a schtick. A Night at the Opera is justly revered. I think Oliver in particular liked the bit where Groucho moved through the audience during the performance, heckling the opera. But then he would.

Other things we watched all together: Wolverine, which was more fun than I was expecting (but then my expectations were low).

Gundam Wing I found horrible to slog through. The episodes were an endless series of infodumps and the plot was convoluted, and not in a good way. There was no real story, but the look of the show was top notch. The boys of course like the Gundams but I thought even the character design was well done. Alas for the writing. I wonder if the dialogue sounds more natural in Japanese? In the end I took to heckling this show myself, which the boys found amusing, and Quin took to taking long Gundam naps.

Wallace and Grommit: Loaf or Death was clever and charming, natch. I can always rely on Wallace and Grommit to give me a warm glow.

Watched with Quin: Heroes Season 3. The show is starting to irk me. There are two main problems here. Half the time the characters are acting in ways that make no sense for who they are, like Matt Parkman suddenly deciding he's going to kill innocent people to get back at the guy who let his girlfriend die. I never quite bought that he felt as strongly for the speedy girl as we were meant to believe he did, and the little bit of faith I was giving that in the name of playing along was destroyed when he promptly forget her and went back to his wife. Quite a bit like Peter totally forgetting the girlfriend he left behind in some alternate future. Sure he can't get back to her now, but he doesn't ever even seem to think about her. The other problem is pretty much the opposite, the endless circularity of what I'm sure the writers have decided are the characters' primary motivations. Claire is the worst offender here: every conversation she has with anybody sounds just like the last ten conversations she had with them; why is she still tearing up as if these emotions were fresh? Ugh. If the actors weren't so likeable I wouldn't bother anymore.

We also watched to foreign films: Run Lola Run in German and Sin Nombre in Spanish. I'm late to the Run Lola Run party, but it is a seriously cool flick. Sin Nombre is about how much life sucks when you're poor in the slums of Central America, to the point where risking your life to ride on the top of a train in the hopes of reaching the US is worth it. Well done, but very depressing.

And on my own: Bollywood. I watched another sort of Heroes, this time a movie about the families of soldiers in the Indian army who had died in Kashmir. There were some nice bits (particularly Salman Khan in a beard and Panjab accent), but it took too long to get started and I don't think ever really made its point.

A better movie about Kashmir is Mission Kashmir. This was one of the first movies from Hrithik Roshan and he is amazing in it as an adult survivor of a horribly traumatic childhood. He is so convincingly traumatized, though, that the happy ending felt false to me. I was expecting his character to die, which would have been a horrible downer but, I think, more honest. Jackie Shroff is also very good here, wonderfully creepy (I thought his character was always hunched the way he was because it made his gaze so intense, but there's a real piece of back story there). A good film despite the ending.

I had more mixed feelings about Aamir Khan's Ghajini. It is similar to, and was certainly inspired by, Memento, but unlike many Bollywood takeoffs of American films the stories themselves are very different. Khan's character (who is very, very buff) also can't remember more than 20 minutes at a time and takes pictures and leaves notes for himself in his quest to find his fiancee's murderer, but it's clear early on that unlike Memento he isn't to blame, and the actual story is very uniquely Mumbai, with gangsters and girls from villages enslaved in brothels (after having their kidneys stolen; this isn't a happy story). The darkness of that story is offset by the lightness of the back story, of how Khan's character met and wooed his fiancee. Personally, I liked the back story better; the actress playing the fiancee had a great energy and their romance was very believable (a film rarity in any language, I find). Alas, the present time story was too violent for me, and I had to cover my face in two places because I didn't want to risk seeing what I was afraid I was going to see (having watched Salman Khan have his skull crushed twice I no longer take any chances when villains approach with blunt instruments). And the ending was very drawn out. It felt like a video game, and as it's since been made into one I guess that's not a coincidence.

The last film was one Aamir Khan produced, starring his nephew Imran Khan, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. This was written and directed by Abbas Tyrewala, a guy who's got a writing credit in a ton of other films I've enjoyed. The characters feel like real people (even the two guys wearing Western gear and riding on horses to all the clubs of Mumbai, and that's saying something). Tyrewala also wrote the lyrics to the songs in the film, which was a nice touch. Here the music feels more a part of the story, less a pop music intrusion. Of course having AR Rahman do the music is always a nice touch. I linked before to "Pappu Can't Dance" back when Rahman won his Oscar, so here I'll put "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi", the song Imran's character sings to cheer up Aditi, who has just suffered a major loss: her cat has died (hence the kitty in the basket):

Mount Rushmore (with pictures!)

Back from our whirlwind two-day trip to South Dakota and Wyoming. I'm going to have to spread these pictures out over a few blog posts here. (And I'm not sure when I'll figure out how to upload the video I shot).

It rained nearly the entire way to Rapid City, so we didn't get to see much fall color, and it was dark by the time we got to our hotel. It was in the low 30s when we woke up in the morning, but we had come prepared with parkas, hats and mittens.

When we got to Mount Rushmore it was foggy and covered with frost and patches of snow: very pretty.


We spent the morning around Mount Rushmore. They have a walking trail made from that plastic lumber, all steps and patios with lots of benches. The snow melted as we walked, and we saw a few mountain goats skipping through the rubble or eating the lichen.

In the afternoon we went to Jewel Cave. We took the hour and a half tour through the cave plus hiked some trails near there. The boys did a series of activities with the park rangers and earned ranger patches and badges both. After that we headed to Custer Park, but got there too late to see much. We just drove through and saw tons of deer, but alas couldn't find the bison.


After nearly two hours underground:

I was still learning all the features of the camera, so most of my shots of the cave didn't turn out, but I got a few:

The cave tour follows these metal walkways up and down and around; it's quite dizzying. The cave didn't get much narrower than this; good thing, as we weren't supposed to touch any of the rocks.

More Mount Rushmore (with pictures!)

Watching the mountain goat eat:


Pushing snow off the bannisters while walking (you think they'd never seen snow before):

What pictures can't convey: the smell. Particularly on the trails around the Jewel Cave where they had just done a controlled fire; it was a smokey, piney smell that was just lovely.

This is still at Mount Rushmore before the snow melted:

By the time we left to go to Jewel Cave the snow was gone, but when we arrived in the bust of Borgeum had a nice snow toupee.

Devil's Tower (with pictures!)

On the day we were going to come back home we decided to head west to Wyoming first and see Devil's Tower. Which took quite a bit longer than I thought it would; we didn't get home until 1 in the morning. That was a long, long day. But the trail winds around the base of Devil's Tower was cool, and it was nice to get a good hike in before spending 12ish hours in a car.

This is from an overlook on the way to Devil's Tower (see it there, in the back?). Waiting for someone to click a picture while staring straight into the sun, but trying not to stare straight into the sun:


Climbing the rocks around Devil's Tower:

A nice overlook at the valley below. We could hear the cows bellowing. Quin and the boys:

Me and the boys:

More Devil's Tower (with pictures!)

Someone is always looking for a pose that just has to be a picture:


Pretending to stack rocks (they were like that when we got there):

The one picture where you can kind of see that we are in fact at the foot of Devil's Tower:

The three of us standing at the bottom of Devil's Tower:

Books in September

Still working my way through the Niven catalog. First was the Niven/Pournelle/Barnes sequel to The Legacy of Heorot, Beowulf's Children. Not quite as "this should be a movie" as the first book, but the fact that this felt more novel-like is a good thing. My only quibble: I wasn't buying the evolved, more intelligent grendel conceiving of a grendel god. Deities are such social constructs, I don't see how or why a solitary animal would create one, or feel the need to create one. That aside, it was a killer story.

In the Niven and Barnes sans Pournelle category, I read Dream Park and its sequel The Barsoom Project. These were both awesome too. In these books and the two above, the women characters feel so much more real and complete in a way I don't find them in books just by Niven or Niven and Pournelle that I'm beginning to suspect I might be a bit of a Steven Barnes fan. I'll have to add his name to the list of writers I plan to read up on.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. What can I say? I just found one of the spines for my high school biology curriculum. This book is amazing. Part of my reason for homeschooling my boys was the way public schools tiptoe around evolution. They mention it (which is enough to piss off certain people), but they never actually teach it, what it is, how it works, and most of all the wealth of evidence we have for it. This book does all those things, and Dawkins with his wit is such a pleasure to read. My own understanding of evolution is mainly from the medical end, genetics and comparative anatomy, so the chapters on geology and fossils I found particularly informative. I've never really read up on all that before, and it is dead interesting. I highly, highly recommend this one. I don't know how anyone could look at life this way and not be overwhelmed with awe and wonder at how it all works. We live in an amazing world.

Lastly, A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi by Michael J. Shapiro. I've actually been working on this one for a while. It starts assuming no knowledge of Hindi and then builds to a level I found to be just about where Teach Yourself Hindi ends, so it was perfect for me. It contains a selection of snippets from actual readers used in schools in India, little stories about the gardens of Kashmir, or folk tales, even the opening of Alice in Wonderland all in Hindi. There was also a thorough discussion of the grammar. I'm such a grammar geek sentences like "It is possible to arrange a number of the most common Hindi adverbial forms into a highly systematic paradigm" actually make me swoon a little.

.

But I suppose that's just me.

Movies In August

I went to an actual movie theater in August! The whole family went to see Ponyo. I would say it was completely enchanting, animated with such a loving attention to detail, with warm-hearted characters and beautiful storytelling. But I could just say "it's the new Miyazaki film" and if you know Miyazaki, the rest is redundant. It's not my favorite of his, but that still makes it superior to most of the rest of what's out there. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again.

TV on DVD this month: two more seasons of Two and a Half Men. Still funny, still no real character growth here. Comfort TV, I guess. It's not really a show to watch all the episodes back to back. But it is just amusing enough to have running in the background while you balance the checkbook or make dinner.

Battlestar Galactica 4.5 I found disappointing. On the one hand, each individual character finished off their arc nicely. but it never resolved any of the issues that were the themes of the show. Instead of learning to live together, they basically hit the big REBOOT button and started all over again. Lame. Plus I hate Adam and Eve stories, even if they are mitochondrial Eve. (And I'm totally not buying that all the survivors who couldn't agree on anything for five years all agreed to forgo civilization in favor of the short life spans and high infant mortality and lack of higher culture that goes with deciding to blend with the neanderthals).

Of course Dollhouse was better. I'm not sure about that last episode; postapocalyptic stories are nearly as over done as Adam and Eve. But it's Joss Whedon, I'm willing to withhold judgement until I see what he does with it.

Cinematic Titanic: The Blood of the Vampires. Filipinos pretending to be 19th century Mexican hacienda owners? Other Filipinos in blackface pretending to be the servants? How could that ever be cheesy?

In brief, movies I didn't like at all: Revolution Road. I kept hearing Spike's voice in my head: "And by the way, I would be insanely happy if I heard bugger all about sodding France." Boondock Saints. Because life would be so much better if we got rid of the police and court system and just killed all the bad guys ourselves. There's never any mystery who they are, and innocent bystanders would never get hurt. Sounds like a plan. Fast & Furious (Reloaded) has none of the cheesy goodness of the second F&F movie, and is not fresh and new like the third. It's not exactly a rehashing of the first one either, though. The characters have evolved. It wasn't bad, just completely superfluous. Expelled, where Ben Stein insists that teaching evolution will make us all Nazis. Quin wanted to watch this one. I found it silly and depressing.

The Wrong Guy was nice low-key comedy from Dave Foley. He plays a fellow who thinks he's been mistaken for his boss's murderer and goes on the lam, when in fact no one actually thinks he did it. He falls in with Jennifer Tilly, a narcoleptic, and her father Joe Flaherty, who owns an S&L in a farm town where he's bullied by the local farmer who runs the town, buying up businesses so he can turn them into more fields. Not hardhitting comedy by any means, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

An even bigger surprise was how much the whole family is loving the Marx Brothers movies. In August we watched Duck Soup, Animal Crackers and Horse Feathers, three of the early films from when there were still a foursome. I'm actually crushing on Harpo Marx a bit.

OK, finishing off as always with Bollywood. I saw two Salman Khan films, one old and one new. The new was Yuvvraaj, which had elements of Rain Man, Shine, etc. with Anil Kapoor from Slumdog Millionaire playing a man with some sort of autism-type thing who inherits all of his father's money. The other two brothers, Salman and Zayed Khan, at first attempt to find a way to get the money from him but of course grow to love him as a brother in the end. But music is what eventually brings them together, particularly Salman and Anil with Katerina Kaif as the cello player that is the bridge between them. I've never been particularly impressed with Kaif; she's a model turned actress who started out having her dialogue dubbed over by better actresses. She does her own lines now and she's not sounding too bad here. But in particular I was impressed with her ability to pretend to play the cello. In most Bollywood movies, the instrument playing makes Robert Palmer's backup band look like masters of the craft. But Katerina Kaif manages to look like she's seen a cello before, and knows where the high and low notes are and how to move between them. Of course I don't actually play the cello, but she looked pretty good to me. And she is gorgeous.

Chal Mere Bhai was an older Salman Khan movie, and it's a total bromance with Sanjay Dutt. Sure, the story is about two brothers in a love triangle with Karishma Kapoor, who is cute as a button as always. But really, this movie is all about Khan and Dutt being affectionate with each other. It was one of the first cultural differences Quin and I found when we started watching Bollywood movies with Andaz Apna Apna and Sholay. Are these two guys supposed to be gay? I later found that gay characters in Bollywood films are done so broadly there is never any question. Think Hollywood Montrose in the movie Mannequin. The men in Bollywood movies are just much more comfortable being physical with each other than Hollywood men are (hobbits aside).

Sometimes it's not just a matter of tickle fights in bed or getting up on each other's shoulders, though. Point in fact: Zayed Khan's beret and neckerchief:

Honestly, I love this song. All of the music in Yuvvraaj is fantastic (by Oscar winner AR Rahman), which in a movie about the power of music to connect people is a good thing.

Books in August

Is September the month from hell much? Or is it just me who's crazy busy?

At any rate - books. In August it was three nonfic and four fic books read. The nonfic books were all in the aetheist/freethinker vein.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Well. I largely agreed with him in content, but not in tone. Those reading this on Blogspot are familiar with the quote that I've put in my banner:

Every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things—connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. I try to make a connection with someone every time I talk to them, because a connection can be made. People can be treated with respect. I'm shocked that there are so many people that live to divide. - Joss Whedon

Even more to the point, or at least my point is this clip of Joss talking about cultural humanism, which really gets to the core of what I feel, that the enemy of humanism isn't faith:



I fared better with Raising Freethinkers by Dale McGowan. I enjoyed his earlier collection of essays from various people, Parenting Beyond Belief. This is sort of a practical guide on that subject, with lots of books and weblinks for further exploration. And he gets a huge thank you from me for putting secular homeschooling in the spotlight for a moment. We're in the minority, but we do exist!

Your Religion is False by Joel Grus is perhaps even more divisive than Sam Harris, but it's just so damn funny. Grus is an equal opportunity offender. Richard Dawkins often point out that atheists only don't believe in one more god than most folks; Grus runs with that premise, with chapters on all of the religions we don't believe in and why, including the flying spaghetti monster.

And then it was back at the Niven. I read an omnibus of The Magic Goes Away, The Magic Returns, and More Magic. A novella and two short story collections from various writers all set in the same world where magic is going out of the world and it's resetting itself to become the world as we now know it. It's a cool premise. I don't often like fantasy written by sci-fi writers, but these stories I enjoyed. My favorites were "Manaspell" by Dean Ing and "Talisman" by Larry Niven and Dian Girand.

Burning City and Burning Tower by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are set in the same world. Burning City I liked up until I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered it's meant to be an allegory about LA riots. Gah, I hate allegory. But I didn't catch the allegorical elements until after the fact, so it can be safely ignored. It's not like LA is the only place where people went batshit crazy and went after their neighbors under indefensible pretexts (I'm looking at you, Partition). Read in that universal sense, I like it. Read as a commentary on just one event, not so much.

Also some of the fantasy elements weren't thought through. If you're going to set a story in ancient CA, make it feel like CA, not like Europe. I was happier when I was wondering what the redwoods were doing in the Mediterranean. Also, there's a moment when a character wonders when someone is going to "turn off" the ocean. Where did he form this concept? And elsewhere someone's drawing is described as "cartoonish". They have cartoons in this world?

Back in the world of sci-fi: The Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle and Steven Barnes is all kinds of awesome. How has no one ever made this into a movie? Plus there were women here who felt real and complicated and genuine, particularly Carolyn whom no one likes and is sent off on a suicide mission with a bunch of horses and to everyone's shock survives. I liked her immensely. Perhaps just because she was unpopular.

Movies in July

Well, as it's nearly September my memory is already rusting on some of these...

Started out the month by borrowing a few movies: Aparajito (The Unvanquished) is Satyajit Ray's sequel to Pather Panchali. I love this story; poor Apu is having a very tough life indeed. Sadly this is a trilogy and I can't find the third movie anywhere.

The Golden Fortress is apparently meant to be a children's movie, or so we were told and we watched it with the boys, who were bored out of their minds. Well, it is in Bengali with subtitles with lots and lots of talking. There was a character who turns up near the middle who is a writer of adventure stories (and speaks Hindi; it was exciting for me to all of the sudden understand what someone was saying). He was amusing.

Rang Birangi is another farce where a wife thinks her husband is cheating on her, only he isn't. I've seen this plot done a couple of times in Bollywood and this isn't the best, although there were some jokes specifically about the movie industry and its relative morality which were pretty funny.

Oliver read The Man in the Iron Mask (well, a children's version of it) for history, so I picked up the movie from the library to see how it compared. This one stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Gérard Depardieu, John Malkovich, Gabriel Byrne and Jeremy Irons among others. It is not very much like the book at all. Not a great film, but the aging musketeers are fun, particularly Depardieu's Porthos.

Sticking with the Dumas vein, we also watched The Count of Monte Cristo with James Caviezel and Guy Pearce. This was quite good, beautifully shot with gorgeous costumes and some well executed sword play.

Quin wanted to see The Searchers, the John Ford epic starring John Wayne. Again, gorgeously shot and you can totally see why filmmakers like George Lucas reference it. A bit problematical in the story department, though. While it was nice that in the end John Wayne didn't kill her niece to put her out of her misery or for the sake of their family's honor or whyever exactly he felt that she had to die after living among the Comanches, there was nothing leading up to this complete turnabout in his motivation. It's a rather major change of heart; it would be nice to see what caused it.

One more gorgeously shot movie this month: Jean Renoir's The River, a story about an English family living on the banks of the Ganges. The colors are dreamy. The scene where everyone is napping, the younger children entwined together, is wonderful. Most interesting was the interview with Martin Scorsese that was a bonus feature on the DVD, talking about what it was like to see this movie as a young boy. That man has an infectious enthusiasm, and I love to hear him talk about movies.

I'm a voracious reader of blogs about books and movies, and a lot of what I read and watch I heard first from someone else's blog. The problem is I don't always remember afterwards where I first heard of something. Such is the case with Once, an independent film about a young singer/songwriter in Ireland who befriends a piano-playing woman from Eastern Europe. It's awkward and genuine, and the music in it is amazing. He reminds me a bit of Cat Stevens, perhaps more like a stripped-down Coldplay. This was a cool little nugget of goodness to find, I just wish I remembered who recommended it in the first place.

I watched two more seasons of Two and a Half Men. The writing and acting are sharp. My love of it is only hampered by my deep need for a sense of progression. This is very much comfort TV, where no one really changes no matter how often they seem to get close to it. I guess some folks like that. Me, I'm looking forward to season 4 of How I Met Your Mother.

While Aidan was at camp, Oliver was home alone with me. I had made the decision not to try to get any writing done that week even though we weren't doing school. Oliver was having a tough enough time not having a brother around; Mom couldn't abandon him for the world inside her head too. So it's perhaps ironic that in the middle of that week we watched Coraline, a movie about an only child whose parents are both writers hard at work on separate computers and tuning her out. I didn't like this as well as the book, but it is a visual treat and Oliver enjoyed it (and later Aidan as well).

Do you know what deeply disappointed me? Knowing. I love Alex Proyas, but I think the time has come to admit that he just doesn't have another Dark City in him. Knowing is wonderfully directed; visually cool and the suspenseful scenes had me squirming (he knows when to hold a shot, as opposed to most "more fast cuts the better" directors). But the story sucked ass. It made absolutely no sense. Why didn't the aliens just take the kids they liked and run, why bother with all the math clues? Are there really so many parents still around who don't like having honest conversations with their children? So much could have been simpled up with a single dialogue between Nick Cage and his son. And the movie presents this dichotomy: everything is predetermined or everything is totally, inexplicably random. And Nick Cage's character is supposed to be a foremost thinker in cosmology, but he still believes in this false dichotomy. He speaks of "random" the way creationists do, not the way a scientist does.

Which should have tipped me off, but when the movie ends and the two kids are Adam and Eve I was still deeply pissed off. Lame.

And yeah, that was a spoiler. But you know what? You don't want to see this movie. Trust me. See Dark City instead; now there's a fine bit of filmmaking.

Another Warrior Wisewoman 2 review

I'm sure I'll have that July movie post up before September. Won't be done revising by then, but on the upside what revising I've done feels really good to me. Of course there's the old caveat from Neil Gaiman which is never far from my mind:

"Feb 13th -- wrote some stuff. It was crap...”

"Feb 14th -- wrote some brilliant stuff. This is going to be such a good novel. Honest it is...”

"Feb 15th -- No, it's crap...”

or alternatively:

“(Writing American Gods) was a bit like wrestling a bear. Some days I was on top. Most days, the bear was on top.”

And I'm on top of the bear at the moment, even if things are going oh so slowly.

At any rate, a new review for WARRIOR WISEWOMAN 2 is up at The Fix. Here's what Ziv Wities has to say about my contribution:

Kate MacLeod give us “Gardens of Wind,” which this reviewer considers one of the standouts of the anthology. Our protagonist Akeli is being pressured to choose a new mate, to a background of war, scarce resources, and life aboard enormous airships. Though the pressure is cruel, there is harsh necessity behind it, starting off the story with immediate tension. As the story flows its course, Akeli finds her solution, which is as sudden and surprising as it is satisfying. Very well done.

Which is where having a critique group really pays off. Because my first ending? Nowhere near as good as my post-critique ending.

Books in July

Well, I started the month with Niven and Pournelle's Footfall. Like Lucifer's Hammer, I found it overlong with characters I didn't much care about. The aliens, however, were seriously cool. Still, after that I had to take a Niven break.

So I plunged into some nonfic I've had lying around for a while now. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber was a very engaging read. It's about the history of textiles from the advent of string to the Industrial Revolusion, but it also has a lot to say about archaeology and how it's done. I found it interesting on both levels.

A Stranger to History by Aatish Taseer is a memoir by the son of a Pakistani father and an Indian mother who was raised in India by his mother. It's about his journey through Islamic lands starting in Turkey and ending finally in Pakistan, trying to discover what it means to be a "cultural Muslim". It's wonderfully written, explores countries I would love to visit someday but probably never will, and brings to life the people who live there and what they think and feel about their own countries. I got my copy from the UK, though; I'm not sure if this had a US release or not.

How To Win a Cosmic War by Reza Aslan is also about Islam, and about how democracy and personal freedom are good things. Between these two books, I got to thinking about cargo cults, and about how any theocracy can only ever be a large scale cargo cult. You can't know what goes on in someone else's mind, you can't force them to have faith. But you can force them to show outward signs of faith. Which is as effective as making a radio out of coconuts. But then I've always thought secular, pluralist societies were the way to go. Still, these are both books well worth reading.

Back to fiction and YA at that: Unwound by Neal Shusterman had a completely unbelievable premise: that pro-life and pro-choice people would agree to a middle ground of carrying every pregnancy to term, but having the option of scrapping them for parts when they become teenagers (unwinding). Everything that follows on that is well thought out, and the story is fast paced and engaging. I might have liked it more, but I just never bought the premise.

Back to Niven and Pournelle, but in a good way. The Mote in God's Eye I really liked. Niven always does cool aliens, and the moties are top notch. This is worldbuilding at its best, I think, an entire society where all the parts fit so perfectly. The sequel, The Gripping Hand, I liked less well. In terms of plot it followed well from the other, but in The Mote in God's Eye I had quite liked the character of Kevin Renner. He reminded me of Hughes in Full Metal Alchemist; the man content to stay in the background and make sure the right people were in the right places and did the jobs they were meant to do. Plus he was sarcastic/funny. Unfortunately in The Gripping Hand he became just any other Niven main character and I missed my Hughes.

OK, back to writing my own terrible, terrible book. I have it on good authority that when you hate the sound of your own words, it means you're nearly done. Ye gods I hope that's true!

"Oil Fire" is up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

You can read it here. I love this magazine; there are a lot of fantastic stories - adventure fantasy but with all sorts of settings. So far I've particularly enjoyed Marie Brennan's "Kingspeaker", K.C. Shaw's "Sand-Skin Man" and Saladin Ahmed's "Where Virtue Lives". My story is in some very fine company.

Here is what I had to say about this story on my website:

"Oil Fire" is a nice example of how ideas mutate over time. After reading Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories I was inspired to write something old school sword and sorcery, something similarly buddy-flick (dare I say bromance?) but with two women roaming the world and getting in and out of trouble. It would be nice to write something light and fun, I thought, pulpy but smart. But first I needed back stories...

This was intended to be the origin story for one of my two women, but things began to change in the writing. First of all, she refused to be the POV character, shifting that job to her close friend instead. More than that, the story itself kept taking turns I wasn't expecting but were so much the right ones I had to go with it. I think it's easier to buy two itinerant men wandering the world, but I feel a woman in this time period wandering the world would need a really compelling reason. The one I found for Enanatuma turned out to be quite dark. I've since written her companion Prithvi's origin story, and her reason for being out on her own is if anything darker still.

So my goal of being light and fun got lost along the way (I'm hoping it still reads as pulpy but smart). But I have since had a third character begin whispering her own tale to me, something that plays well off the other two. There's hope yet.

On the Importance of Naming: I actually don't know the meanings of the names in this story. They are all Sumerian, mostly names of kings and queens. I try to avoid using deity names since they come with a lot of baggage (when Prithvi's story gets published you'll hear me gripe about how that wasn't possible in her case - stay tuned).

Fantasist Enterprises: Specials 10 for $100.00 Deal

One of my first sales was to Fantasist Enterprises, for the FANTASTICAL VISIONS V anthology. Volume IV just came out so I'm up next. In the meantime, they're having a sale on all their books. Check it out!

Fantasist Enterprises: Specials 10 for $100.00 Deal

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Movies in June

Kind of a lot this month. When the public library is your movie source, it's feast or famine, I guess. Most notably, a lot of these movies are things I've been meaning to see for a long, long time.

First up, the movie version of The Fountainhead. Quin just recently finished reading the novel and wanted to see this. I warned him I'd heard that it sucked. I had heard correctly. Which is strange, as Ayn Rand did the adaptation herself. Apparently she's in love with her character's long speeches to the expense of storytelling. That isn't true of the novel, but when cutting her story down to a Hollywood runtime, that seems to be what she did. Pity. There's got to be a watchable movie that could be made from this source material; I'm surprised no one's tried again.

A movie based on something I haven't read by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I liked it at the time, but a month later it hasn't really stayed with me the way most David Fincher movies do. In fact, I also saw Zodiac for the first time this month and enjoyed that more. Fincher is the master of making you think you've seen some horrible thing you haven't seen. (Like Gwyneth's head in the box in Seven, you have a visceral response to something he didn't even show on film). Zodiac left me with the impression that computers in general and networked ones in particular are a great boon to police work.

I also saw 12 Angry Men for the first time ever, although I've seen so many other references to it I pretty much knew the whole story already. I found it completely engrossing despite that.

I wouldn't say I was dying to see Wild Wild West, but after watching Kevin Smith lay into it in one of his life shows, how could I resist? Yes, there's a giant spider at the end and the whole thing is summer tent pole movie cheesy, but I found it surprisingly fun. Perhaps it's just me being overly generous; there are so few remotely steam punky films out there. Coming in with low expectations helps as well.

Speaking of Kevin Smith, we finished off the DVDs of his live shows with Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith, which he did in New Jersey. Lots of fun stories from his childhood.

The boys saw the Adam Sandler movie Bedtime Stories some time ago and have been insisting that I watch it. It was OK. Lucy Lawless and Guy Pierce looked like they were having fun. They also saw the Peter Jackson King Kong without me when we first got it on DVD and I never got around to watching it until now. I loved it, gorgeously shot with compelling characters and the giant ape was so wonderfully emotive (thanks to Andy Serkis). This might be another one where it helps to come in with lower expectations, or at least not post-LOTR, Peter Jackson is the king of the world expectations.

Quin and I caught Superbad on cable. I'm a Michael Cera fan, and Seth Rogan had the most perfect cop mustache. Still, glad I didn't pay for this one either.

The Pink Panther 2 was a letdown. We had enjoyed the first one, but this one had replaced Kevin Kline with John Cleese. Not that I don't like John Cleese, but swapping out parts of the cast is never a good sign. Strangely, the mystery story line I thought was very well done and was genuinely interesting, it was the jokes that fell flat. And since this was meant to be a comedy, that's a problem. (If you've seen Aishwarya Rai Bacchan in Doom 2 you'll immediately suspect how the plot is going to turn out, but it's still well-played).

One last item in the "should have seen it years ago" category: Roots, the miniseries. Aidan has been studying the Civil War for history, so this seemed like a nice supplement to that. It's fun to watch now; it's a little encapsulation of which TV stars were hot in the late 70s. The boys both liked it as well; I think Oliver felt a particular kinship to Kunta Kinte. They share a fierce rebellious streak.

The library let me down when I went searching for Satyajit Ray films. They only had Pather Panchali and The Chess Players. I liked them both, although they are very different films. Pather Panchali is the first of three films about a boy in Calcutta named Apu, although this one really focuses on his older sister, a free spirit trapped in poverty. The parents were interesting as well; the father is incapable of worrying about anything, leaving the poor mother to struggle in all sorts of ways to keep her children fed. She was also a bit socially isolated; her body language whenever a neighbor woman would come by to talk to her was fantastic (as someone who also finds friendly chitchat a bit aggressive, I really felt for her). It's a beautifully shot film as well. So is The Chess Players, with an equally engaging cast of characters. The story centers on two men who are always playing chess, to the dismay of one ignored wife and the pleasure of another, elsewhere-occupied wife. While they are busy playing chess, their king is losing his kingdom to the British. I think that's my favorite scene, when the king refuses to sign the documents, but instead takes the crown from his head and hands it over. He's so overwhelmed with emotion, and the gesture is such a symbolic one, and yet the British officers are practically squirming in their discomfort (I'm not saying they're emotionally repressed, but...)

The last film to turn up under Satyajit Ray's name was one where he only provided the music, a Merchant-Ivory film called Shakespeare Wallah. Like Bombay Talkie it's a train wreck of selfish people in relationships. If that's your sort of thing, this is a nice example of it. But I don't care much for films where I want to slap all the characters.

Last of all, a TV on DVD, season 1 of Two and a Half Men, a show my brother has been recommending to me since it first aired. I could tell you how much I liked it, but the real proof is in the fact that my husband, who despises sit coms, keeps finding ways to be doing things in the room when I'm watching this. If you ask him what he thinks he'll just disparage the use of laugh track, but even so he's always there. I'm just saying.

"On Desperate Seas" is up at A Fly in Amber

...and they've made it their featured piece of fiction for the July issue. Woot! I'm very pleased. If you've never poked around my website, I have a page with little bits of info about the stories I've published: where I got the ideas, or what the names mean, that sort of thing. For instance, here's what I have to say on this piece:

This was a story I had originally intended to submit to Fantasist Enterprises for their Sails and Sorcery anthology. Sadly I missed the deadline (by a couple of months, no less), but that is the reason for the nautical setting. I've always been interested in Arctic and Antarctic explorations, I had just finished Tao of Troth and wasn't done writing about the Inuit, and I had a hankering to try something that invoked a little Poe. Hence the title, although I was specifically thinking of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; the careful reader will spot what I borrowed in most respectful homage (or, if you will, outright stole). I had a kernel of an idea that involved a sailor's wife with half a heart, but the story didn't really pull together until a random clicking through Wikipedia turned up this little phrase: "Eventually, more ships and men were lost looking for Franklin than in the expedition itself." and it all pulled together. In an almost unsellable way; this was liked by a lot of places where it just didn't quite fit.

This story is also famous for giving me nightmares while writing it. Some months after I had finished it I saw the NOVA special about the Franklin Expedition; it didn't come close to matching the horror that was going on when I "lived" through it.

On the Importance of Naming: Edgar should be obvious, Penelope is a simple mythological reference, and Jane's name is meant to be the most unassuming name possible, and yet a strong-sounding one. Teddy's Inuit name Tetqataq means "flying before the wind", a lovely name for an Inuit sailor, but also the name of one of the men who came across some of the last of the Franklin men pulling a boat across the ice, trying to walk south to the Back River.

And the title, of course, is a line from Poe's "To Helen". Which in my head will always be read by Tom Hanks.

Books in June

So it seems like my pattern with Niven is an alterating one between like it/hate it. This month Lucifer's Hammer fell in the "hate it" category. For me, the character I found the most interesting and sympathetic was the comet that smashed into the Earth. Poor comet. The people I mostly didn't care about one way or the other. Tim Hamner and Eileen had an interesting dyamic between them, but there wasn't enough of them to carry me through this too-long novel. (And I could gripe about the women, or the assertion that women's lib ended five minutes after the comet hit, but given that the majority of the black people who survived formed a pseudo-religious cannabilistic group leads me to believe the women got off easy).

Oath of Fealty I really liked, though. The idea of a self-contained city as one giant building is an interesting one, although I wished it had been explored more. I can see the appeal of living in a community where every one is carefully chosen and there is no riff-raff, but what happens in a few generations when some of the descendants become the riff-raff themselves? Will they be booted over the objections of their relatives? Perhaps someday we'll have a sequel to this one; that could be a good read.

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I read a few books for research (not even for a novel, just a short story; I've yet to sell enough short stories to earn back what I've spent researching them). Both are books by Pandit Rajmani Tugunait, who has a very readable style and an east-meets-west mentality that suits my purposes exactly. Sakti: The Power In Tantra is really a scholarly look at other texts; texts which I haven't read, as it happens, so I imagine a second, more informed read later in life will be more fruitful for me. More helpful was Tantra Unveiled, a nice overview of a topic much misunderstood in the west.

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Rounding off with one more work of fiction: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins grabbed me at word one and didn't let me go (even at the very cliffhangery end; luckily there's a sequel). This is set in future US where teenagers are chosen by lottery to compete in a Survivor-type game. I don't generally like first person, or present tense. The present tense didn't bother me much here, although I still find it too quirky for the most part. I do wonder if the suspense could have been upped with a multiple POV. When the book is in the first person, and the plot centers on a game where only the victor is still living at the end, you pretty much know who's going to win, present tense or not. Still, it's not the ending so much as how she reaches it that provides the suspense, and this novel had suspense in spades. Highly recommend this one.

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And now I'm off to storm the Bastille...

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson

I don't have much to say about Michael Jackson that hasn't already been said a thousand times over today; my experience of him is pretty typical of a late-30s middle class American. "Thriller" was one of the first things I saw on MTV, and frankly "Scream" was one of the last (not being a REAL WORLD/ROAD RULES, etc. fan).

But as my husband will tell you I'm a blog-aholic, I read blogs from all over the world, and this morning I've been reading about how people in China are mourning Michael Jackson, people in Japan and Africa. Michael Jackson belonged to the world.

Read Amitabh Bachchan's blog about what it meant to be a Michael Jackson fan back in the day before the internet and You Tube, when the world was not so small as it is today, and music and videos from other parts of the world were harder to come by.

But in particular I like this collection of clips. Michael Jackson was a huge influence to kids all over the world - who didn't want to dance like Michael Jackson? Personally, I like the lawyer-trainee that does a dead-on Michael Jackson dance sequence, and then makes it Bhangra. That's taking a thing and making it your own.

For me the clip that best sums my feelings up is not available on You Tube. It's that sketch from Robot Chicken, when the strange Michael Jackson we've come to know is confronted by the Michael Jackson we all fell in love with back from the "Beat It" days, the original nose, original pigment Michael Jackson. And the strange one turns out to be an alien in space who kidnapped the real Michael so he could take his place. Then the two have a dance-off and the real Michael wins. If only that were true, and we could have our real Michael Jackson back.

Well, enough with the maudlin; I have fictional characters that need torturing now. Back to work.

EDITED TO ADD: The clip is available on the Adult Swim website here. Not the ending I remembered...

This and That

So I'm on Day 3 of my week off from work and school, pushing as hard as I can to finish the revisions on MITWA. I don't think I'll be done by the end of the week; having revisited my outline before starting my week off, I'm planning to completely rewrite a few chapters and add in six (SIX!) new ones to fill in some gaps or just delve deeper into things that got short shrift in the first draft. Still, progress is progress. My ultimate goal is to finish by the end of July, to prove to myself I can write and revise a novel in a year. That's the usual expection for novelists these days, a book a year, and if I can't do it I don't feel prepared for the next step, getting an agent and pursuing publication. I might give myself a little fudge factor, though. Oliver starts fourth grade math in October and compared to the earlier grades this frees up so much of my time I can expect my productivity to get back to my pre-Oliver in first grade level, or nearly so. I'm looking forward to it; these last three years have been really hard to soldier through.

On the topic of things already published: another review for Warrior Wisewoman 2 has turned up, this one from Nerinedorman. About my story she says:

Although Gardens of Wind by Kate McLeod is a delightful, love story in the face of adversity, I struggled to suspend my disbelief with regards to the science behind the floating cities. This is still a keeper, however. A thumbs up for Kate. She gave me the warm fuzzies with this tale.

It's a fair cop; the airships are believable but the floating villages are a bit harder to buy, I'll admit. I was assuming lots of hot air balloons and pretty much being at the mercy of the winds.

OK, one last thing before I get to work. File this one under awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!

Look, there's my name!

The Library Journal just reviewed Warrior Wisewoman 2 (it's here, a little more than halfway down the page). This one mentions me! Sure, as one of the "other contributors", but still - that's cool!

In which I state my lack of objection

All the cool kids are lambasting the casting of the Avatar movie these days. (For my part I'm irked at James Cameron for hogging the name "Avatar", so the movie will just be going by The Last Airbender). What I find most puzzling are the folks that expected Sokka and Katara to be played by Inuit actors. As drawn on the cartoon they both have blue eyes, and they don't have Inuit names (they both sound Japanese to me). I never thought the water benders were meant to be Inuit just because they live in snowy places. Why assume they are Inuit and not, say, Laplanders? I assumed they were meant to be Ainu. But with blue eyes.

To be honest, the idea that the different nations in the world of Avatar are supposed to represent different ethnic groups doesn't make any sense to me. We're talking about a world so small that Gran Gran can leave the Northern Water Tribe to live with the Southern Water Tribe to avoid an arranged marriage. That's moving from pole to pole, and it's not portrayed as any sort of epic journey (actually, they never explain how she did it. Did she have help, or did she paddle her own canoe to the other side of the world all on her lonesome?). How could distinct groups emerge in a world so small, so tightly connected and easily traveled through? The different regions have different clothing and lifestyles, but they all speak the same language. And I think if you stripped them down and removed any culture-specific hairstyling or tattooing you wouldn't be able to tell a Water Tribe person from an Earth Kingdom person.

They do all look Asian, though. I'll admit the casting of Aang gives me pause. But if I were M. Night casting any of these parts I would be looking for 1) someone who can act and 2) someone who can pull off the martial arts. You think it'd be just as easy to find an Asian boy who can do both as a white boy. But I'm not the type to scream "epic fail!"; I'll wait and see the film and judge.

What I am super-geeked about:

Dev Patel as Prince Zuko. Zuko was hands-down my favorite character on the show. He had the complicated arc, and boy did the writers make him suffer and fail before he finally succeeded. (And how sweet is the costuming? I'm already dying to see this movie and it's another year away!).

I'm also pleased with this piece of casting:

Shaun Toub as Uncle Iroh. My second favorite character (and apparently the Avatar character I am). I've liked Toub in everything else I've ever seen him in: Crash and Iron Man most prominently but also Lost, and apparently even Sliders (OK, I don't remember him in that one).

The relationship between Uncle Iroh and Zuko is just so wonderfully nuanced. Particularly in the third season, when Zuko desperately wants someone to just tell him what the right thing to do is, and Iroh says nothing, because Zuko needs to find those answers for himself. After Mako died they used the power of silence in a couple of scenes in really moving ways, even though the guy who took over the voice did it well. Just another cool layer to the show.

It's going to be tough to scale each season of this show to movie-length; I hope these two characters and their relationship doesn't suffer. They have some of my favorite scenes. Like this one:

Uncle Iroh: You're looking at the rare white dragon bush. Its leaves make a tea so delicious it's *heartbreaking!* That, or it's the white jade bush, which is poisonous.

Prince Zuko: We need food, not tea. I'm going fishing.

Uncle Iroh: Hmm... Delectable tea, or deadly poison?

(later)

Uncle Iroh: Zuko, remember that plant that I thought might be tea?

Prince Zuko: You didn't.

Uncle Iroh: I did... and it wasn't. When the rash spreads to my throat I will stop breathing. But look what I found! These are pakui berries, known to cure the poison of the white jade plant. That, or makaola berries that cause blindness.