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Jan. 11th, 2007 @ 03:47 pm The Things that Ensorceled Me in 2006
Mood: buried in snow
Sound: David Bowie - "Life on Mars?"
I’ve been meaning to post a “Best of 2006” list, but I’ve been lazy. As far as LiveJournal goes, I’m at extreme low ebb. Posting is no longer a compulsion or obligation … it’s just there. And it can wait.

Maybe I’ll get my ass in gear in a month or two. Until then, you get these intermittent bursts of words.

Anyway, here are the things that kept me happy in 2006. I tried to limit my list to things released during the calendar year, but the line gets a little blurry; some were available in limited release before January first – in foreign markets, at festivals – but they didn’t really become accessible until later on. I’ve noted these with an asterisk. I still haven’t had a chance to see Pan’s Labrinth and any number of other likely contenders, so I might need to come back and revise this list once everything’s been seen and done.

Favorite Movies:
Children of Men
The Departed
The Prestige
An Inconvenient Truth
Brick (*)
The Devil Wears Prada
The Descent (*)
Little Miss Sunshine
Nochnoy Dozor (aka. Nightwatch) (*)
Ice Age: The Meltdown

Honorable Mentions (good films that should have been better):
Underworld: Evolution
The Fountain
A Scanner Darkly

Favorite Television:
“House, MD”
“Deadwood”
“Dexter”
“Veronica Mars”
“The Lost Room”
“Dr. Who”
“Life on Mars”

Favorite Books:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Alabaster by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Already Dead (*) by Charlie Huston
Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite
The Dead Letters by Tom Piccirilli
About this Entry
Husky
Oct. 8th, 2006 @ 11:03 pm Bring Me Drugs and Orange Juice
Mood: sick
Sound: silence
Tags: ,
I’m coming down with a cold. I’m at that head-spinning, brain-addled, scratchy-throat stage… No doubt, I’ll descend into full-blown misery by daybreak tomorrow.

Hopefully this cold passes fast. I’d hate for it to be a repeat of last year’s multi-month monstrosity.

In unrelated news, Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road, is quite good. It’s a wonderfully bleak, post-apocalyptic downer. It makes me want to start stockpiling food and weaponry … or, if not that, cyanide capsules.

I also enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
About this Entry
Husky
Aug. 14th, 2005 @ 11:07 pm Capsule Reviews
Mood: tired
Sound: Scary Movie 3 on TV
Tags: ,
As promised in my last post, here are some quick movie and book reviews … just a brief recap of the things I’ve been enjoying in between veterinary emergencies.

Kung Fu Hustle: I’m not sure if I should call this a Kung Fu movie, a comedy, or a spoof, because, frankly, it succeeds as all of these things … and more. It’s a genuinely enjoyable film that had me smiling and laughing from start to finish. Incredible, cartoon-style special effects, a great sense of humor, and some spectacular action sequences. I don’t think I’ve had so much fun watching a movie in a very long time.

Super Size Me: Frankly, watching this guy eat nothing but McDonalds for an entire month made me a little sick, but it also made me think about the roots of obesity in our grease-addicted world. I still don’t think we can blame fast-food corporations for what we choose to put in our bodies, but I can certainly see their roll as enablers. And perhaps we do need greater regulation in the amount of fat and sugar allowed in our foods (and, while we’re at it, we should probably come up with some ethical guidelines for the food concessions in our schools)… Plus, for a documentary, it was pretty damned entertaining.

Weeds: So far, there’s only been one episode of this original Showtime drama, but it’s really managed to capture my attention … and, frankly, I’m not sure why. It’s not as well written as some of the other shows I watch (such as The Sopranos, The West Wing, Deadwood, and House), but I still can’t get it out of my head. Perhaps it’s the concept that has me so excited – a soccer-mom/housewife, dealing drugs in suburbia – or the setting – a cookie-cutter housing development, much like the one in which I currently reside. Or perhaps it’s the positively magnetic Mary-Louise Parker… Whatever it is, I can’t wait for tomorrow night’s episode.

Circles: I started reading this gay, furry, slice-of-life comic way back with issue one, but I fell behind, and I only managed to catch up in the last couple weeks… It’s well-written and the art is great. The storyline is cute, endearing, and it’s hard not to get emotionally invested with these characters. (I just wish they could manage to produce more than two issues a year.)

Mnemovore: This is a brand new horror comic I stumbled across just last week. It’s a genuinely creepy story, with some great, Lovecraftian creature design. Of course, the actual plot has just now begun to take shape – they’ve only reached issue 4 – so it could still get stupid.
About this Entry
Husky
Jul. 26th, 2005 @ 10:30 pm Barely Conscious
Mood: tired
Sound: Terri Walker - "Whoopsie Daisy"
Tags:
I’m still feeling a bit under the weather. I never did get all that sick, but the last two nights have found me crashing hard and fast, just suddenly losing energy and brain function… Some type of low-grade virus, no doubt

While lying sick in bed, I managed to finish the new Harry Potter novel. J. K. Rowling seems to be doing a very good job maintaining the quality of this series (which is no easy task over the course of a 3,000+ page story). While The Half-Blood Prince isn’t my favorite (that would be The Goblet of Fire), it is still quite good, and still has all the charm of her previous books… I just hope she manages to end the series on a similar high note.

But, I must warn you, if you’re planning on reading these books you might just go to hell.
About this Entry
Husky
Jul. 6th, 2005 @ 11:28 pm Why I Hate Neil Gaiman and Caitlin R. Kiernan
Mood: tipsy
Sound: Nine Inch Nails - "All the Love in the World"
Tags:
The day after I finish a chapter is usually a big, mental waste. I have a tough time concentrating, a tough time thinking; I have a tough time getting involved in whatever’s supposed to come next (chapter 21, in this case). And this is why I prefer to finish chapters on a Friday. Today, I managed to create a new document – “21st Chapter - Additional Revisions 2.doc” – and that’s about it.

Instead of working, I picked up a copy of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s upcoming short story collection, To Charles Fort, With Love, and started reading. The book isn’t scheduled to come out until late September, but I managed to get my hands on an Advanced Uncorrected Proof… And, frankly, I’m beginning to hate Caitlin R. Kiernan ([info]greygirlbeast here on LiveJournal) in much the same way I hate Neil Gaiman.

I hate Neil Gaiman because he is far too successful. He has done everything I want to do, and he has done it so well it makes me sick. He wrote the best comic book serial ever in Sandman; he wrote an incredible noir horror/fantasy in American Gods; he wrote great young adult fiction in Coraline; and he even co-created an absolutely mind-blowing movie, Mirrormask. And everything he does is met with the type of success usually reserved for deities… I swear to God, the man gives me fits! I want to punch him really hard with one hand, while pleasuring him with the other.

Well, Caitlin R. Kiernan has begun to raise a similar type of ire. She’s just too good! I’ve read five stories in To Charles Fort, With Love, and they all seem absolutely perfect … beautiful, lyrical prose, fascinating characters, and wonderful Fortean phenomena.

Truthfully, I’m kinda hoping there’s an awful story somewhere in this book … some horrible misstep, something that falls absolutely flat. Otherwise, the envy might just kill me.
About this Entry
Husky
Jun. 3rd, 2005 @ 12:55 pm Phallos
Mood: contemplative
Sound: Daft Punk - "Da Funk"
Tags:
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been reading Samuel R. Delany’s Phallos. It’s an interesting book; I’d describe it as pornography two-times removed … a scholarly summary of a homoerotic novel that does not actually exist. This small, 95-page book moves back and forth between a detached, academic gloss of the mythical novel Phallos and sections from the actual text, segueing effortlessly between analysis and pornography. It’s an interesting form of storytelling … a way to lay out the overarching themes and story-arc of a novel-length book, while only delving into the nitty-gritty of narrative in the most important and interesting sections. And still, despite the – very – academic presentation, it is effective pornography.

What amazes me most about this experiment is the fact that Phallos – the non-existent book in question – would make for an excellent novel in its own right. The portions we see, and the plot described by the gloss’s fictional author, are not a hodge-podge of disparate story and elements, but instead portions of a complete, well-formed whole. In fact, I would hazard to say that this novel actually exists, completely plotted, in Delany’s mind … he just chose to give it life in this form (perhaps the time required to write a 400-page novel proved too daunting for the never-prolific Delany).

Considering the subject and form of this 95-page story, I can’t imagine there’s much of an audience for Phallos… I mean, how many gay semiotics-weenies can there be? (And, of course, the correct answer to that hypothetical question is: All of them.)
About this Entry
Husky
May. 18th, 2005 @ 08:45 pm Book Meme
Mood: thoughtful
Sound: Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
Tags:
I finished editing chapter 16 today, and I shall celebrate with a meme!

1. Total number of books owned?
Thousands.

2. The last book I bought?
Two arrived from Amazon just the other day: The Translator by John Crowley and Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie.

3. The last book I read?
Either Prime by Poppy Z. Brite or Colonel Rutherford’s Colt by Lucius Shepard (I can’t remember the order of those two). And I’m currently reading Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie (a fun little hardboiled novel).

4. Five books that mean a lot to me?
I gave this a lot of thought, first creating a shortlist of ten “meaningful” books, then narrowing those down to five.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
This is an absolutely astounding novel. Each time I read it, it fills my head with light and wonder … illustrating just what the English language can do.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
This is perhaps the perfect novel. Descriptions and characterizations so sharp, it breaks your heart.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
I wrote about this book shortly after HST’s death. You can read about it here.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
This book warped my mind. Philip K. Dick’s fiction derives its power from frantic questioning and exploration, and this novel cuts right to the heart of human experience.

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
This is where Freud first outlined his conception of the Id, Ego and Superego. If you want to know why your brain does what it does, you should look here.

(The other books on my shortlist were Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Stand by Stephen King, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Little, Big by John Crowley, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.)

5. Tag five people and have them fill this out on their LJ.
I don’t want to single anyone out, but I wouldn’t mind seeing [info]velocityb0y’s list.
About this Entry
Husky
Apr. 27th, 2005 @ 11:04 pm Screw Plot!
Mood: tired
Sound: J.C.A. - "Begin to Wonder"
Tags:
I finished reading Poppy Z. Brite’s Prime yesterday, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a story that seems a little strange to me; the richly drawn characters, and the day-to-day chores of running a restaurant so captured my attention that the actual plot – the criminal intrigues and mystery – seemed a distraction. Not that it’s a bad plot … it just didn’t seem necessary; it had very little to do with the affection I feel for this novel. A book of Rickey and G-Man attending basketball games, eating at restaurants, drinking Wild Turkey and arguing about menus would be an insanely difficult sell – I can’t imagine any major publisher taking a risk on that type of book – but it’s exactly what I want. No real plot … just character development over time.

I’d buy 5 copies of that book.

(I was surprised to find Poppy Z. Brite addressing this exact topic in one of her most recent posts… I get the feeling she knows exactly what she’s doing.)

Inspired by Prime, I decided to try a new recipe for dinner last night. I settled on Chicken and Mushroom Roulades, cribbed from the late, great Julia Child’s classic The Way to Cook. This was a bit more serious than my usual paint-by-numbers, tab-A-in-slot-B endeavors, involving a chicken and mushroom sauce infused with a rich béchamel, wrapped in freshly-made crepes and baked under a cheese-sauce glaze. It took me a couple hours, but I was pretty happy with the results … a heavy, rich and flavorful meal.

Definitely something I’ll try again.
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Sunglasses
Apr. 20th, 2005 @ 11:32 pm Prime
Mood: happy
Sound: The Seattle Mariners, on XM Radio
Tags:
I was in a pretty good mood today. No particular reason… Just felt good.

Perhaps it’s because I started reading Poppy Z. Brite’s latest novel, Prime. Her recent books – The Value of X, The Devil You Know, and Liquor – have been such comfortable reads for me. The likeable characters, the restaurant-centric plots and the clear, straight-forward prose draw me in and, invariably, I find myself grinning like a moron as I read… Maybe it’s because I see a lot of me in her characters (although, I’m not sure if I’m more Rickey or G-man). Or perhaps I’m just happy to find good characters who just happen to be gay, instead of being nothing but gay.

Maybe I’ll take my time reading this book … try to make this good mood last.
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Sunglasses
Mar. 29th, 2005 @ 11:25 pm Carrion Comfort
Mood: sore
Sound: StoneBridge - "Put Em High"
Tags:
(Fair warning: This is, without a doubt, a complete book-geek post. So, those of you who couldn’t care less about first edition hardbacks and small press printings should feel free to scroll on past.)

After years of searching and wistful longing, I finally managed to get a copy of the Dark Harvest, trade edition of Dan Simmon’s Carrion Comfort. This is a book I’ve wanted for a long time, and it’s a book that – thanks to last minute vulture-bidding on eBay – has managed to slip through my fingers at least a dozen times over the last couple years. But finally, after much persistence, I have it in my possession, ready to shelve alongside my Dark Harvest trade edition of Robert McCammon’s Swan Song.

It’s a huge book, both in length and dimension. It’s leather-bound, 636-pages of densely-packed small text… And just holding it in my hands is a vastly fulfilling experience.

I wonder what it is that’s warped me so, that drives me to posses these particular objects. Is it what they are, what they represent?… Mind-blowing fiction, presented in a limited, beautiful form? Is it some arcane drive to possess knowledge and entertainment that very few people even recognize, much less appreciate?

Whatever the reason, it’s driving me towards this edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big.
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R. Kirk - Tree
Feb. 28th, 2005 @ 11:54 pm Stephen King Redux
Mood: tipsy
Sound: the TV, blaring in the other room
Tags:
I got 11 Oscar picks right, 8 wrong. Considering that many of my “guesses” were mortal locks (such as Jamie Foxx for Best Actor), I’ve got to admit my picks sucked ass this year. I really thought Scorsese was going to win Best Director, as compensation for his consistently brilliant career, but I was wrong… And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

A couple days ago, I wrote about my disappointment with the later part of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Well, I might have been a little too harsh… Truthfully, I enjoyed Wolves of the Calla; and parts of the final book, The Dark Tower, were actually pretty good (unlike a lot of people, I found the ending quite profound). I guess it’s the inconsistency that really bothers me … and the painful boredom of characters moving back and forth, while essentially going nowhere. But that doesn’t really matter… The first book remains a gorgeous, haunting piece of prose, and the third book’s still an insanely-readable roller coaster ride. For that, I give Stephen King thanks.

And I’m really happy with his latest announcement: a hardboiled, pulp novel called The Colorado Kid… And – imagine my surprise – the cover couldn’t be any trashier!


The Colorado Kid


I’m a huge fan of hardboiled detective fiction, and this looks like fun.
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Puppy Eye
Feb. 21st, 2005 @ 02:52 pm The Wave, Rolling Back
Mood: sad
Sound: Machines of Loving Grace - Concentration
Tags:
There is a section in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that brings the chaotic excess of the entire text into focus. And with this cipher, we suddenly understand what Hunter S. Thompson is writing about… The lost dreams and dead idealism of an entire generation, set to burn beneath the Las Vegas sun.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning....

And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

When talking about Fear and Loathing, this is the passage that everyone focuses on, that everyone remembers (Terry Gilliam uses it, nearly verbatim, in his big-screen adaptation; it’s the passage Poppy Z. Brite quotes in her LiveJournal memorial). And there’s a reason for that. It does what the best writing does. It transcends and provides clarity … it gives wings to the hopes and despair of a lost generation. And it’s a revelation.

Good writing gives you shivers. Great writing kicks you in the head and scars you forever.

Rest in peace, Hunter S. Thompson.
About this Entry
Puppy Eye
Feb. 18th, 2005 @ 11:25 pm Low Red Alligator
Mood: geeky
Sound: Futurama on DVD
Tags:
Workwise, today was a complete waste. I spent most of the day fighting a painful, sleep-deprivation headache, thanks to a couple loose-boweled puppies keeping me awake in the early hours of the morning. I was out walking them at 6 am, 8 am, and again at 10, making sure they didn’t explode all over our carpets… I guess I’ll start editing chapter 7 on Monday. I’m hoping it’s the type of chapter I can blaze through in a matter of hours (or at least days).

I got a pleasant surprise in the mail today … a copy of the super-cool Subterranean Press edition of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s Low Red Moon (one of my favorite novels from recent years). Believe it or not, [info]velocityb0y pre-ordered this for me as a Christmas gift … Christmas 2003, that is. Countless setbacks and publishing delays pushed it back over a year and a half, and it only reached the light of day earlier this week. I won’t say it was worth the wait (a year and a half is an awfully long time), but it is one of the most beautiful books in my collection, with a stunning Ryan Obermeyer cover and gorgeous endsheets.

Needless to say, the book-geek in me is thrilled … and my love affair with Subterranean Press continues.

For dinner, we went to our favorite Thai restaurant and I ordered something I’ve been eyeing for a very long time now … a local Florida delicacy, alligator. They prepared it with green peppers, onions and eggplant, stewed in a tomato-basil sauce. It tasted quite good. I’ve heard people compare the taste of alligator meat to chicken, but I didn’t see it. It didn’t really have much of its own taste; instead, its charm came from its interesting texture … a poultry-type grain, with the give and feel of really firm crabmeat. As far as exotic food goes, it was a very tasty dish, but I still think I prefer the restaurant’s Thai venison.

After dinner, we went to see Constantine. It was a pretty good movie… I would have preferred something more faithful to the original source material, but it did have some good special effects. And most of John Constantine’s hardboiled charm remained (although Keanu Reeves still seems a really odd choice to me).
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R. Kirk - Tree
Feb. 5th, 2005 @ 11:38 pm The Dry Salvages
Mood: inspired
Sound: Peyton - "A Higher Place"
Tags:
I read Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Dry Salvages a couple weeks back, and it’s proving one of those rare stories that really captures my mind, staying with me long after I set the book aside. As far as plot goes, it shares much in common with Ridley Scott’s Alien; in both, we have deep-space voyagers – stranded light-years from earth – encountering alien horrors on distant worlds. But the horror in The Dry Salvages proves a much more abstract – and more durable – type of horror. In place of the inhuman monster in Alien, the crew of starship Montelius is stalked by sanity-destroying knowledge … knowledge so incredibly alien it haunts the main character – exopaleontologist Audrey Cather – even decades after her return.

The Dry Salvages is a very atmospheric tale. Kiernan relies on setting and mood to convey her indescribable terrors … and these things, glimpsed from the corner of the eye, prove more frightening than any well-lit cinema-monster. You get the sense that there’s something incredibly vast and incredibly momentous lurking just out of sight. And our only hope of survival is to look away.

But this looking away, this retreat, is a very depressing act; and, in the context of the story, it serves as a death sentence for the human race… The Dry Salvages consists of Audrey Cather’s first-person memoir, detailing the ill-fated voyage of the Montelius. But what Audrey Cather ultimately describes – sitting at her desk, in an environmentally ravaged Paris – is humanity’s failure, its inability to escape earth and face the mind-blowing vastness and strangeness of the universe.

So what’s left for humanity? Nothing but extinction … trapped on a dying world, and killed by short-sighted arrogance.

In short: The Dry Salvages is a very powerful novella. It’s one of the best Science Fiction stories of 2004, and one I plan to re-read as soon as possible.
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Puppy Eye