Monday, July 16, 2007

It Was One Year Ago... Last Week
Okay, so not only have I become very lax on actually posting to my blog, but I just discovered four days after the fact that I missed my beloved blog's first birthday (I can promise you that I didn't miss my daughter's, honest! -- by the way, I chose that image of a birthday cake because it was SO similar to my wedding cake... seriously, our mothers stopped speaking to us for a while when they realized we weren't going to go with lace and Victorian crap). My first post was awkward and difficult, but thankfully for all of you, since then it's been nothing but brilliant insights and remarkable prose. Right? Anyone? Is this thing on?

Or I've just been ranting about Rebecca Eckler. Which never gets old for me.

Thanks to everyone who continues to come and post and chat with me and make me feel like my little corner of the blogosphere isn't cold and lonely. I do have a good explanation for last week -- I was away on vacation without a computer for the first time in about three years. It was lovely. But then you come back to an avalanche of emails and you realize you forgot to set up your vacation message and the emails are increasingly hostile with a "WHERE ARE YOU?!" tone to them and you think, sigh, I guess I'll take my computer next time. Or, you know, figure out how to set up one of those vacation messages.

I should have my new and improved cover for Finding Lost — Season Three very soon. Also, someone posted a comment a while ago asking if I could give some tidbits from the new book, and I'm hoping to be able to post the full table of contents in the next week or so, so you'll see what you're in for. It turned out to be a lot longer than I'd anticipated, but hey, there was just too much to talk about in season 3!

I watched my first episode of So You Think You Can Dance last week, and was oddly sucked right in. I always swore I wouldn't watch another talent show after American Idol (which I watched religiously for the first two seasons) and now look at me. I really need to stop with the reality shows and start back with the HBO series that are sitting on my PVR.

I don't know if anyone else has checked out John From Cincinnati, but I watched the first episode and it was super-weird. Yet there was something about it I really liked, so I have the next 4 or so still sitting on the PVR that I need to watch. The thing is, I would say 80% of HBO shows just don't grab me in the first ep. I didn't like Entourage, or Six Feet Under (!), or The Sopranos (!!), or a lot of HBO shows in that first ep because they're always having to cover off so much territory to get you into it. Usually by the third ep, I'm loving it.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow! a year! that just zoomed by, didn't it!? :) congrats to you!

can you please sum up, in a sentence or two, what the heck john from cincinnati is about? i've heard absolutely nothing about it, but TWOP has summaries for the show on their home page, and i can't make head nor tail of them, and now my curiosity's piqued. :p

Chris in NF said...

Your wedding cake so rocked. Serendipitously enough, I happened to look at a picture of it about a week ago -- nostalgically going through my old photo albums, I came across the handful of pics I took at your wedding.

Doctor Seuss is god.

Anonymous said...

Vincent K (don't ask me to spell it) who played Connor's new series on AMC looks interesting. Mad Men, about advertising executives in the 1950's starts Thursday night, and Christina Hendricks (Saffron from Firefly) is in it too.

Congrats on a year in the blogosphere!

Crissy Calhoun said...

I need to see wedding pics! As if you had a crazy cake.

Congratulations on your 1st year in the blogosphere.

Also -- very glad that you've been suckered into So You Think You Can Dance. Those kids are talented, man.

And as one of the lucky few to have already read Finding Lost: Season 3, let me tell y'all that Nikki brought her A-game. :)

Anonymous said...

To FB,

John from Cincinnati is about a family of surfers, two of whom have been physically or psychically hurt by what was for them their best talent. (Surfing--keeping your balance amidst very rough and dangerous waters.)

The show has surreal elements and absurdist comedy elements, as well as some "straight" elements. One character can comprehend messages from his parrot. Said parrot dies and then is reborn in the first episode. He returns the favor to a major character who dies (a turn you do not see coming at all) in the second-third episodes. Indeed someone is mortally threatened in nearly every episode (six, so far, I think). John is something of a human parrot/Shakespearean fool/Christ figure. One of his main questions to each character is: what do you want?

The youngest generation in the surfer family is represented by Shawn. There is a sports agent figure, played by Luke Perry, who has profited from the Yosts (the family) in the past and hopes to continue to do so. Shawn has been raised by his grandmother (primarily) (Rebecca de Mornay) and, to a lesser extent, his grandfather (for reasons I'll let you learn).

Many characters find that they have gained unusual abilities (almost randomly, not in such a way that they can control), like levitation, precognition.

All the actors are superb. I think the show only really started to kick into high gear with this most recent episode (Day 5, episode 6), but I have found it thought-provoking all along. In this episode John has to astral project into several situations to contribute to the developments (saving one character from suicide, e.g., using a late-night tv advertisers type "pitch").

John himself has been mortally wounded and survived (by someone else's hand, someone who needed to know he could save people).

I hope Nikki decides to post on it. I cannot recall anything quite like it.

Bill

Nikki Stafford said...

Thanks for the explanation, Bill! I keep meaning to come on and post something brief in response to fb... fb, like I said, I've got the rest of the eps on my PVR, and once I've seen a couple more I'll post on it. Hoping to watch some this week. It is very very strange, which is why it intrigues me.

Chris: You got it! It was my Dr. Seuss cake. The one in the store was fuschia and purple and my husband and I LOVED it but after our mothers basically threatened to boycott the wedding, we softened the colours to light green and peach and yellow, and they were marginally happier. I LOVED the cake. Loved it.

Thanks for the suggestions, Colleen! :)

Crissy: Aw... you rock. I will definitely show you some wedding pics. ;)

Anonymous said...

wow, thanks bill (and nikki)! it sounds interesting. a little confusing, but interesting. :) though i did a double take when i read rebecca de mornay was playing a grandmother ... yikes! i feel old! :)