Got back to my prep work on the novel in progress this morning after a 1-day hiatus. I’m thinking about charting the whole thing out on a big sheet of paper on my wall. Only problem is–my office doesn’t have any walls that aren’t occupied by my desk, a window or bookshelves. Do I really need that window?
While playing around with my iPod Touch last night, I noticed how many high-profile web sites are enabled for mobile browsing. Wikipedia, The NY Times, etc. I found a WordPress plugin (from Crowd Favorite) that does the same thing, so now if you visit this blog via www.bevvincent.com on a mobile device it automatically detects that and serves up content for handhelds. It’s very cool and was a cinch to install. There’s a link at the bottom of the mobile page that lets you revert to the normal content if want to see it in original layout.
Chris Conlon just announced the table of contents for A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock. I’m pleased that my “24 Hour Psycho” will appear with the likes of Steve Resnic Tem, Gary Braunbeck, Norman Prentiss, Marie Alexander, Martel Sardinia, Lucy Snyder, Lisa Morton and others. It’s my first-ever published poem.
I started reading Tell All by Chuck Palahniuk last night. It’s a very strange book, supposedly inspired by the life of Lillian Hellman. It is chock full of name-dropping, and just in case any reader might miss a newly dropped name, all of them are in bold text. I have no idea where the book is going, but it seems odd, to say the least, and strikes me as the kind of book that an unknown author would never get published.
There had been talk of a US version of Torchwood, but I read somewhere today that it won’t happen because of the huge budget it would require. I’m not disappointed–the UK version is good enough for me. Apparently a fourth season is in the works.
This Heroes vs. Villains season of Survivor has been filled with one surprise after another. This week takes the cake. Rupert came out of the evening looking like a genius, because he had the villains’ strategy completely figured out, but no one would believe him. JT swallowed Russell’s Kool-Aid hook line and sinker, and paid the price. Parvati made one of the gutsiest moves in the show’s history, shocking not only JT but Russell. I loved Jeff Probst’s zinger, though, when she was whining about how people ignored her all day. “Is that just because you’re just so used to getting attention all the time in life?” he quipped. Point! The three players at Ponderosa are having a blast together — they formed a band and are writing and recording songs.
CSI‘s plot last night brought to mind King’s “Apt Pupil.” A teenager befriends a man and discovers that he’s actually a war criminal. Different war, in this case: Rwanda, and far different outcome.
The Mentalist was one of those episodes that could never happen in real life. Despite assessing $16 K in contempt charges, no judge would ever have allowed anyone to get away with Jane’s outrageous behavior. The opening teaser was fun, and I’m glad they paid it off early in the episode instead of making us wait to the end to confirm what we already knew about the situation–that it was a sting. The bit about the old lady running the show while pretending to suffer from dementia is almost exactly the same device that was used in this week’s episode of Law & Order: SVU.
And Fringe — well, Peter finally knows the truth. It looks like they’re going to make us wait to find out how that plays out by airing a whimsical episode next week that appears to be some sort of bizarre holodeck noir mashup. “Leave it to the big boys,” Broyles utters in the preview.
