Sold another short story today. Always a good feeling.
I’ve been catching up with book reviews these past couple of mornings. Wrote the first draft of my next contribution to Dead Reckonings and posted reviews of Tess Gerritsen’s The Silent Girl and Chelsea Cain’s Kill You Twice to Onyx Reviews. Started Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino this morning. A man tells his wife he’s going to divorce her because she can’t bear children. She goes away for the weekend. His young lover (his wife’s assistant) finds him dead the next day, his coffee presumably poisoned. A good start!
I finished Love Is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS by Elton John last night. It’s essentially a treatise on the current state of the AIDS crisis from someone who has been at the forefront of the battle for many years. The EJAF is essentially a fund-raising machine that then uses other existing organizations to make sure the money gets into the right hands, where it can do the most good. That way, the foundation’s overhead remains low and they don’t need to recreate infrastructures that already exist. He pulls no punches in singling out people who he believes could have done much more, and frankly accuses politicians in several countries of being personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. He also castigates himself for failing to do more in the early years. On the other hand, he has kind words for some of his political opposites. He found a supporter in Orrin Hatch, a man with whom he has otherwise virtually nothing in common, and expresses his gratitude to George W. Bush for a surprising speech that re-emphasized the need for increased funding AIDS research, education and prevention. The same speech in which he justified the decision to invade Iraq, ironically. Elton met Bush once, and they had a productive discussion on what each other could do to further the cause. Again, the two have nothing else in common philosophically, and some of the former president’s other stands repel him, but they were able to work together to do good. In fact, that’s pretty much the book’s theme: though money, science, medicine and social work go a long way, the AIDS crisis won’t be ended unless people have more compassion for the victims. Some countries have a long way to go on that front, including the Ukraine, India and South Africa, just a few places that he cites. Very little of the book is about his life or career, except insofar as it relates to the AIDS crisis.
Burn Notice was a little unusual in context last night. Though Michael is clearly targeting the people who were responsible for the death at the end of last week’s episode, he seemed mostly unaffected by it. With his main suspect cleared, though, it’s hard to figure where the search goes next.
I’ve been sticking with The L.A. Complex and still liking it. It’s a bit soap-opera-y, but the characters and situations are interesting. Where else but in L.A. would an actor get “hired” to play an actress’s boyfriend and his real girlfriend is okay with it. Sort of. At first, at least, until the reality of it kicks in. The tug of war between the two stand-up comics is interesting, as is the trajectory of the closeted gay rapper, which ended on a surprising note this week after the rapper showdown. I like the new kid and his sister, too. Innocents abroad.
Though I mostly enjoy Rizzoli & Isles, my biggest problem with the show is its uneven tone. It tries way too hard to have funny bits, but they aren’t all that funny or are absurd. The whole subplot with the pregnant woman who is either carrying Jane’s father’s baby or Jane’s brother’s baby was agonizing. And what happened with Maura’s birth mother? They aren’t even talking about her any more. Injecting humor in drama is a delicate act, and they haven’t quite figured out how to do it well yet. Or to my liking, at least.
Things sure ended on a downer on Covert Affairs this week. Auggie gets dumped, gets in a bar fight and is lead away in cuffs. Annie’s sister is moving away and she’s being transferred back to Joan. Unlike with some shows where the team is split up at the end or beginning of a season (NCIS, for example), I actually didn’t mind that Annie was reassigned and got a new boss. I liked the new boss. But I expect the actress playing Joan might have had other thoughts on the matter. The assumption that Annie’s cover was blown is still somewhat in play, even though she’s still seeing her target. If they hadn’t shown the scene of him doing the hand-off, I would still be open to the possibility that he’s not a bad buy after all.
