I received my copy of the hardbound omnibus of American Vampire last night. I’ve only read the first installment until now because the local shop stopped carrying the series for a while. I still find that I have a hard time reading graphic novels. I tend to gloss over the images. I know they’re all the rage, and I know a bunch of people who are involved in them at present, and I’d probably sign up to do one if anyone were crazy enough to ask, but I still don’t quite get it.
Got word today that my Kangaroo was shipped. Should have it by next week sometime. Unfortunately I’ll be spending most of next week in seminars, so I won’t get much of a chance to test it out until the following week.
Oh, yeah. I just remembered I have to write a Storytellers Unplugged essay for this Sunday. Wonder what I’ll write about. Any suggestions?
I’ve been listening to “The Union,” the new duet album with Elton John and Leon Russell. NPR is streaming the entire album until its release date next Tuesday. It’s definitely a change of pace for an EJ album, and every time I hear Russell I can’t help but think of Willie Nelson. Neil Young can be heard doing vocals on at least one track (Shiloh), and Brian Wilson’s in there somewhere, too. Produced by T-Bone Burnett and recorded “live” in the studio.
This has been an odd season of Survivor so far. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many physically strong characters get ousted so early in the season. They did a major retooling last night, with the tribes co-mingling and the Medallion of Power is history. I liked the waterwheel challenge. Jeff made fun of one team regarding how slow they were, but it turns out they had a pretty good strategy because it was all about delivering the water.
Criminal Minds blew the lid off the secret world of wife-swapping. Well, okay, not really, but it was really funny when Prentiss and Morgan were mistaken for Jehovah’s Witnesses and then were welcomed into the swingers’ pad as if they were role-playing swingers. I’m afraid I’m not in the Garcia camp—I find her character far less credible than Abby on NCIS—but I had to grin at Hotch’s comment at the end that he knew she was unique from the moment she sent in her job application on homemade pink paper.
So “Fin” Tutuola on Law & Order: SVU is really “Odefin.” Huh. Never knew that before. They really oversold Olivia’s drug trip in the preview for this week. I thought Eliot’s bit where he pretended to be high to get a continuance was better. Munch ended up in uniform for no apparent good reason, but he got off the zinger “By who? Smurfs?” when Huang said the victim had been poisoned with magic mushrooms. The new ADA ended up being as temporary as their new headquarters. And, boy, are they scraping the bottom of the heap when it comes to issues for their patented Public Service Announcements. Bent out of shape because a soda company sponsored something? There was a latent Chinatown vibe with the whole water rights thing, but that was mostly a red herring.
Law & Order: Los Angeles (the source of today’s subject line) was pretty good again. I knew the bald cop was going to roll the joint. (“Misspent youth and three years in vice.”) And the guy who plays Jacob Hale on Sons of Anarchy is a surfer dude working in a grow-op shop! Molina’s character was definitely wearing his lower-middle-class upbringing on his sleeve as he tackled the entitlement attitude of the rich folks. Day trips to the beach when he was a kid “made all the rest bearable,” he told the rich dude who wanted those damn kids off his sandy lawn!
