My old message board seems to be toast. I moved it to a different server and it works there, so I can recover the data from it, but I can’t coax it into working on the existing server. I’m going to try one or two different things before I give up on it completely. In the meantime, I’m migrating to a new message board program that is supported by my hosting service, so I shouldn’t have problems in the future.
I had my birthday over the weekend. My running joke has been that I’m now just one card shy of a full deck. Not counting the jokers, of course.
I started and finished Graham Joyce’s next novel, Some Kind of Fairy Tale, over the weekend. He’s been one of my favorite authors for many years now, and this one is right up there. It’s about a girl who vanishes without a trace when she’s fifteen or sixteen. Twenty-one years later, she shows up at her parents’ house on Christmas Day. She’s reluctant to explain where she’s been because no one will believe her, she says. Turns out, she was spirited away by a fairy (not the Tinkerbell kind) to a different realm and, for her, only nine months have passed. Hard to believe, of course, except she looks almost exactly the same as when she left. Most stories about putative encounters with fairies don’t delve into the aftermath. What would it be like for those around Peter Pan, for example. Would he be taken to see a therapist? This girl is, and she goes willingly. There’s also the matter of her boyfriend at the time, who was strongly suspected of doing away with her and hiding the body. The book explores the importance of being believed, and what happens to people who are systematically and categorically disbelieved. The boyfriend, for example, was almost ready to confess under duress because it would have ended the stress. The therapist is the voice of scientific reason, trying to come up with rational explanations for her absence and confabulated (he thinks) memories of where she was. There’s also a subplot involving a pellet gun that seems unrelated but has a metaphorical bearing, ultimately. Joyce is very fond of the nuclear British family, and this shows through in his stories. The Martins are wonderful people—imperfect but charming—and it’s a delight to spend time with them as they try to figure out what to believe and what it’s necessary to believe to move forward. Highly recommended.
We got further into Season 6 of The Sopranos. The episode with Ben Kingsley was simultaneously funny and cringe-worthy as Chris tried to navigate the complexities of Hollywood. Lauren Bacall’s cameo was hilarious. It was a bit shocking hearing her swear as vigorously as she did.
I loved the scene in The Killing where Linden waved the card key at the security camera. It was an audacious thing to do, and probably caused more trouble than it was worth, but it was as good as giving them the finger, especially after they claimed the security cameras in the elevators weren’t working. They say there’s only one episode next, but it’s in two parts, so isn’t that the same thing as two episodes? I guess the difference is that each episode covers a single day so the final two must be another day.
One of the best Mad Men episodes of the season last night. Don is getting the old fire back—so much so that when Roger offers to buy him a drink after the meeting with Dow he jokes, “But you’ll have to wipe the blood off your mouth first.” No mention of Peggy at all, but there were other significant matters to deal with. Lane’s embezzlement, primarily. Bert Cooper discovers his malfeasance (who knew he actually paid attention to anything) without realizing the truth behind it, and brings it to Don’s attention because Lane forged Don’s signature. Don offers Lane a face-saving option: resignation versus prosecution, and he keeps the matter to himself. However, Lane doesn’t think he has the option of recreating himself like Don did, so he decides to take matters into his own hands. The blackest humor of the episode was his failed attempt with the notoriously unreliable Jaguar. And then, when he finally does the deed, he leaves behind his boilerplate resignation…from the human race, I guess. The secondary story with Don’s daughter was interesting. Her relationship with Betty has been difficult of late, but when faced with a difficult life event, she needed her mother’s comfort. And Meghan, to her credit, didn’t take it as a put-down when Betty told her this, whether it was intended that way or not.
