Glad to see Castle back this week. Alyssa Milano was a pleasant surprise as Rick’s former flame. I wouldn’t have automatically placed Milano and Fillion together as contemporaries but they are only a year different in age. She’s wearing it well. I mouthed her character’s closing words to Beckett the moment before she said them (“He’s all yours”) but even if that all turned out predictably, it was still a fun episode.
So, we’ve met Gibbs’ father, and Ziva’s and now Tony’s. Is having father issues a prerequisite for joining NCIS? When will we find out that McGee’s father was a hippie or that Abby’s father was Charles Manson? It’s always interesting to see how an adult reverts in the presence of his or her parent. The closing scene with Gibbs and Tony (Jr.) was great.
I’m about 75 pages into Horns by Joe Hill. The first section details what befalls Ig on the day after his transformation. What a cool idea. In the second section we jump back in time to his childhood when Ig met the love of his life, the woman who was murdered. It’s a bit of a gambit, stepping away from this fascinating series of events. Blowing up a turkey with a cherry bomb sounds like fun, though.
My buddy Dave Hinchberger from the Overlook Connection sent me a copy of his new edition of David Morrell’s The Hundred-Year Christmas. What a gorgeous volume! The illustrations are by another NECON buddy, Courtney Skinner. The book has a new introduction by Morrell, describing how the book ended up as a Donald M. Grant limited edition. I’ve been looking for a reasonably priced copy of this book for years, ever since I sat with Morrell and his daughter at the Stoker banquet and they told me about it.
As you may know, I’m a Canadian, and one of the national icons of my home and native land is the beaver. He appears on the 5 cent coin (here a nickel, there a nickle) . (David Morrell is a Canadian, too, apropos of nothing). I’ve been aware of a magazine called The Beaver for some time now, though I’ve never submitted to it. Well, it turns out that all of a sudden the publishers have become aware that the title is a double entendre of sorts. It’s an issue primarily because SPAM blockers tend to bounce messages mentioning the magazine. So now, after 90 years, the second oldest magazine in the country has changed its name. It’s now called %&@#. No, not really: Canada’s History.
