That’s pretty much what it looked like out my office window all weekend, starting Friday evening. Except it was mild enough—and my window is recessed enough— that I was able to have it open most of the time. Which was good. I love the sound of rain when I’m working. And I worked a lot this weekend. I finally feel like I have the manuscript under control. That’s not to say that I don’t have a ton of work left to do on it. But I feel like I have a handle on it, finally.
Several weeks ago I spent an hour with Lou Sytsma and Karen Lindsay discussing the Bag of Bones miniseries. The hour-long podcast of that discussion is now available. We had a blast recording it.
We reached the end of the third season of The Sopranos this weekend. Still enjoying it, but it seemed like they dropped some fairly big threads. Maybe they’ll come back to them. I don’t know—I haven’t done any web searches in case I stumble upon something I don’t want to know about the series. The most prominent one was the Russian guy that Paulie throttled with the barbell. They took his body out into the South Jersey woods in the snow only to discover he wasn’t dead. The guy conked him and Chris and took off, was apparently shot but his body was never found. And Paulie’s car was stolen. Bad news for Italian-Russian relationships if he gets back home. But he was never mentioned again in Season 3.
And then there was the nutsy girlfriend Gloria, played by Annabella Sciorra. I have to say, after watching her on Law & Order, she was a revelation. She had some demanding emotional scenes that could have been campy, but she nailed them. Crying almost to the point of hyperventilation and making it seem real. And then there’s the bit where she gets mad and throws things. That trope always seems artificial. Big wind-up. Dramatic smashes. Gloria turned into a little tornado for about five seconds and did a lot of damage in a small area, and it seemed totally credible. As did her full body shakes when the guy took her out on a test drive and then pulled a gun and warned her off. Then, at the end of that episode, the scene focuses on that same guy getting into his car later and driving off. I kept waiting for her to pop up in the back seat or something, but nothing happened. Odd.
Some surprising turns of event on Once Upon a Time this week. A very original reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood story. I had several theories about who the wolf would be, but none of them included the truth. Whoa. And then the fingerprints in the box Ruby found by the river. Double whoa.
I’m ready for Rachel to quit or get eliminated on The Amazing Race. She’s such a crybaby and a manipulative one at that. I’m not sure if Brandon deserves a medal for being with her, or if he needs his head examined.
