Can’t complain about the rainy cool weather too much since it’s been so hot and dry for months. It’s actually a good, solid rain, but it’s causing some street flooding in the city. Nothing like in other parts of the country, however.
I finally received a contributor copy of a magazine that subscribers and newsstands had available back in June. It’s a nice looking magazine, but I’ll never submit to it again. Took repeated requests to get paid, to get a copy, and whoever did the layout dropped about 10 words off the end of one of the first sentences in the story, rendering it unintelligible. Three strikes.
I had a big package awaiting me when I got home last night and I thought at first it might be my contributor copies of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. However, they turned out to be the signature pages for The Crane House, the round-robin novella we did for Cemetery Dance. I spent the entire evening signing my name over 600 times and got them finished and shipped to the next contributor. I don’t like things like that hanging over my head. I won’t be the holdup of any project if I can help it.
Eureka ended its summer season on Friday night with a fun little episode. I wonder how many people recognized the homage to Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The scene where the magnetic anomaly causes traffic signs and stop lights to rock back and forth while Jo is in her police car is a fairly close rendition of a similar scene from the Spielberg movie. I’ll be interested to see what happens next — is Carter’s daughter gone for good? And Tess?
I watched most of Mad Men last night, but had to stop with a couple of minutes left on my recording to do something else. I did get to see the scene that I’m sure everyone who watches is talking about. The lawnmower scene. Boy. Who saw that coming? That’s one way to stir up the pot and then let it return to its natural state again.
The two-hour return of House could be viewed as another homage, to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, though if there were any direct references they were muted enough for me to miss them. It was basically a standalone movie that didn’t feature any of the support cast except for a brief phone call to Wilson. Every time I see Hugh Laurie out of character, speaking in his natural voice, it drives home the stellar job he does each week of creating a completely convincing and self-consistent character who most definitely isn’t Hugh Laurie. The show had a nice arc, though of course they had to go the easy and predictable route with catatonic lady and her voice box. Other than that little quibble, I thought it was a fine piece of work. Andre Braugher is always solid and makes a perfect foil for House. It makes one wonder how “happy face” House is going to re-integrate with his old buddies and environment.
Continued to work on remodeling the first chapter of my novel this morning. It’s slow going, but it’s going.
