Saturday was an unexpectedly nice day. We had a 9 a.m. meeting at the town center and afterward decided to go see The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at a matinee. The old folks are still denizens of this outsourced elder-care hotel in Jaipur, India and life goes on. The owner is getting married and is looking to expand, so he and Maggie Smith go to L.A. to get investors, which means an undercover agent is going to stay with them to evaluate the existing property. These are quaint films that probably grossly underplay what it must really be like to live in India, but charming all the same. The subplots were all pretty good, except for one that was rather silly. It’s always good to see Judi Densch and Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy chewing up the screen with a batch of other good actors, including Doctor Who’s Penelope Wilton and some Bollywood stars who put on some energetic and entertaining dance routines. Richard Gere is along for the ride this time, too. Afterward, it was nice enough to sit on the patio at our favorite local pub for a late lunch. I think the pub was taken by surprise by the weather, though, because they were severely understaffed. We didn’t mind waiting for our food and drinks, but several groups either left or complained about the slow service.
A new review for The Dark Tower Companion went up late last week, along with an interview I did with the reviewer. I seem to be on a run of interviews. I did one for an Italian site last week, this one and then next weekend I’m doing a podcast with a guy from Australia. It’ll be 5 a.m. where he is, so that should be interesting! I’m trying to get ahead on a batch of essays for Stephen King Revisited so I can go back and take another run through my novella to see how it looks after a couple of weeks distance. I also have a CD column due at the end of the month, together with a review for a book that I’m hoping to receive this week. Never a dull moment.
I don’t take on new TV series readily these days, but I thought I’d give American Crime a shot. Good cast tempted me. However, I quit partway through the second episode. I didn’t like any of the characters. I generally like Felicity Huffman, but her character is abhorrent. She’s supposed to be, but that didn’t make her any easier to take. And Timothy Hutton’s character, who I guess is supposed to be the audience avatar, is simply dreary.
Battle Creek, on the other hand, is continuing to entertain me. It’s a less serious crime show than many that I watch, and I fear that it’s destined to be cancelled before long, but I’m enjoying the ride.
I’ve been hanging in with The Walking Dead, but I only watch with one eye while I’m doing other things. I’m not even sure I know the name of the character who died this week, but boy was that ever gruesome. It’s almost like they’re trying to outdo themselves with the gore. My prediction is that the young woman exhibiting PTSD symptoms is going to go Charles Whitman next week, which is going to give “our guys” the excuse they need to take over Alexandria. It’s clear they want to, but they can’t just go ahead and do it without looking like villains.
It’s interesting to see how the stress of the race for $1 million is starting to get to some of the “blind date” couples on The Amazing Race. The gloves are starting to come off and they’re sniping at each other. There’s one woman in particular who is nagging her partner’s ears off. “I don’t want to rehash the problems we had yesterday, but…” I’ve always wanted to write a short story that takes place during a reality show. I’d been favoring Big Brother as the template, but I think it would be cool if one of the teammates murdered the other one while on “a race around the world.” Just totally lost it and pushed the other person off a bridge or a cliff or a tall building. But that’s just me…
