The Egyptian connection

I received the marked-up manuscript from the editor yesterday, so I have until a week from today to turn in my revised version. It shouldn’t be that big of a job, but it doesn’t help that I will be traveling on Saturday and Monday. I should be able to get some work done tomorrow night and in Chicago on Saturday after I get in. The changes aren’t that major, mostly clarifications and enhancements, but it’s going to take a little while to make sure I get it all right.

It’s also putting a bit of a crimp on the time I have available to finish the short story I’m working on. I got tangled up in other business this morning, so all I had time for was an editing pass through yesterday’s work. I need more hours, and we’re going to lose one this weekend.

I posted my review of P.D. James’ The Private Patient a couple of days ago. Just remembered to mention it. For a woman who is on the verge of turning 90, she’s a modern thinker. This isn’t her best work, but I hope I can do something half that good forty years from now.

I’m reading David Foster’s autobiography Hit Man while doing other things. He’s the kind of guy you might never have heard of, but you definitely know the music that he has co-written and produced over the years. Everything from Earth, Wind and Fire to Chicago to Celine Dion to Andrea Bocelli to Josh Grobin and Kathryn McPhee. Movie music for Urban Cowboy, St. Elmo’s Fire, The Bodyguard and numerous others.

They did an interesting adaptation of the bombing episode of Life on Mars. In the UK version, the first bomb is discovered before it goes off, with a claim that it’s IRA. Sam knows that the IRA aren’t active in London, so he believes the bomb is a fake and goads Ray into investigating, at which point the bomb goes off and Ray narrowly avoids death. There’s a connection to a construction company that hires a lot of Irish workers and a disgruntled pub owner whose building is about to be razed. Very little of that survived in the US version, and yet it had the same overall feel. The little girl’s eyes looked really weird, though. I know people with two different eye colors and they don’t glow like that! (While looking something up, I found an article that says that Life on Mars has been cancelled. It will complete its 17 episode run, including an episode that was written as a finale. About the same number of episodes as the UK version ran.)

And now, onto LOST. Not a bad episode this week. I liked the scene between Sawyer and Alpert. For so long we’ve seen Alpert as this sage, eternal guy who knows everything, but in his last two encounters with the Losties, he’s been at a disadvantage. The story of how the Losties ended up working for Dharma was interesting, as was the revelation that whatever caused the problems with pregnant women on the island is a fairly recent phenomenon, at least post 1977. The shot of the statue was a trip, and close scrutiny by people more obsessive than I am show that it is possibly Anubis holding an ankh in each hand. That would tie in with the ankh that Paul was wearing when he died. Sawyer’s evolution as a character is quite convincing, too. He’s become domesticated and sensitive. Speculation on who the new baby becomes?