I wrote a 600-word short story this morning for NPR’s three-minute stories competition. I only found out about it a few days ago, thanks to someone’s link on Facebook, and it took me until today to come up with an idea that fit the guidelines. Woke up with the story in my head and it was then mostly just a matter of writing it down and then tweaking it to death. Six hundred words is only two pages, so there wasn’t a lot of room to play around. Word choice becomes important.
Played around with the proposal I plan to send to my agent tomorrow morning. We’ll go back and forth with it a few times, no doubt, before he’s ready to take action on it.
We watched The Man Who Wasn’t There on Friday night. I picked up the DVD on Amazon to bump my order up to the level required for free shipping. I hadn’t even known there was a movie—I read the book in school, probably grade nine. It’s about Operation Mincemeat, a real operation during WWII designed to mislead the Germans into thinking the Allied invasion from the south was going to be via Greece instead of the real target, Sicily. The movie was made in 1955, only 13 years after the incident it was depicting. The war would be fresh in the minds of the audience. It’s an interesting story, how they created a fake officer, gave him a full history, and then dumped his body (a corpse donated by a grieving father) into the Mediterranean from a submarine so it would drift to a Spanish city known to have active and intelligent German spies, who would get their hands on the “secret papers” in his dispatch case.
Because it’s been on Friday nights, I’ve been ignorant of the new series Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck. It moved to Wednesdays, so I watched the newest episode. It’s okay. I’ve always liked Selleck, who has grown from the smarmy, roguish Thomas Magnum into depicting characters with gravitas. Here, he’s the police commissioner. To me, the show’s only weak link is Jennifer Esposito, who played Christina Applegate’s friend on Samantha Who? I just can’t take her seriously as a cop.
Great to have Fringe back, and what a treat to have Christopher Lloyd show up as a guest star. He played a former musician (Violet Sedan Chair was his group), a particular favorite of Walter’s. Their paths crossed in a very unexpected way 25 years ago. A different rendition of the butterfly effect. Of course, given Christopher Lloyd’s past, there was time traveling involved in this plot. (Aside: has there ever been a more appropriate soundtrack for Walter than the one that opened the show—Ma na ma na? Walter is, of course, “a bit” high at the time, waiting for a 2 a.m. delivery of pizza to deal with his munchies. Perhaps “If I Only Had a Brain,” which ran later in the episode.) The minute Walter put the bottle of experiment-laced milk in the fridge, I knew it would end up in the wrong hands stomach, but I thought it would go to Roscoe (Lloyd) instead of where it did. I wonder if that will have long-term repercussions.
Maybe Peter and Olivia will work their way back together again before too much time passes. The delivery of a book purchased for Faux-livia was an “ouch” moment. After having so much time in the spotlight, Olivia was definitely in the back seat in this episode. Had to grin at Peter reassuring the nurse that he “had experience with crankies” when she gave him Roscoe’s medications. This week’s misnomer for Astrid: Ashram. And Kelly (thanks to Roscoe). Okay, so the show was moved to Friday night, but was it necessary to rub it in by titling the episode Firefly? That seems to be tempting fate.
Question regarding The Mentalist: how many consultants does the CBI need? One seems too much some of the time, and this week they were burdened with yet another? And where was the guy who’s investigating the murder of a suspect in CBI custody? I knew Patrick wasn’t going to be able to throw away that report without at least considering that it might contain some new insight. And good to see that Cho doesn’t hold a grudge…for long.
