I submitted a short story this morning to the Elmore Leonard tribute anthology. I had a good draft finished for a while but had some feedback from a first reader that I needed to consider. I ended up making some fairly drastic revisions and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out. This is a non-paying market (royalties-only anthology, which is pretty much the same thing), but I’m willing to make an exception in this case because I’m a big fan of Mr. Leonard’s work. Fingers crossed that I at least make the short list.
My review of the French King e-short “Sale Gosse” went up on FEARnet yesterday. I called it “Pardon my French.”
Last night’s NCIS was the first part of a two-part franchise spin-off for the New Orleans incarnation starring Scott Bakula. I’m not a huge fan of spin-off episodes. They try to hard, as a rule. There’s too much for them to do in too short a time. And this being New Orleans, they also tried to cram in everything associated with the city, which made it feel almost like a cliche or a parody. I’m not sure I’ll add the spin-off to my weekly viewing. I gave the L.A. version a shot and it didn’t work for me.
It’s hard to believe that, after nine years, there’s only one episode of How I Met Your Mother left. I can count on the fingers of half a hand the number of sitcoms I watch, and losing HIMYM is going to reduce the number by half. The show is sort of Friends crossed with Seinfeld. Not exactly about nothing, but neither was Seinfeld, really. Great, memorable, funny characters, improbable, implausible situations, but a good, good heart. I still think Ted should have ended up with Robin, but that’s my only quibble. This final season has been erratic, but each episode always had at least one exceptional moment, and many of them had more than that.
So, Stephen King is going to get an invite to Castle & Beckett’s wedding. What does one get another author and his cop fiancee for a wedding gift? Kill them off in your next book?
Last week’s preview for Justified robbed the shooting scene in this week’s show of much of its tension. It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t Allison who was shot. There’s no way that could have happened given the geometry of the situation. Still, it was a good cheat, having Art not realize where the bullet went, as cheats go. I learned that the actress who plays Art’s wife is Nick Searcy’s wife. Keeping it in the family.
The big gag of the show, though, was Boyd’s cigarette, which I thought up until the Face Off moment was a bug. Famous last words: Shit’ll kill you. I think they’re going to have to pay that non-smoking room violation fine after all. “I may not know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know how to blow shit up.” Picker doesn’t need to worry about Tim getting on his case any more.
I loved the scene between Mary Steenburgen’s Katherine Hale and Vasquez. There’s a lot of history there, as evidenced by her description of him as a “smug little hobbit-looking beaner shitbird.”
Ever notice how people in prison on TV and in movies seem to be able to move around a lot and get up to stuff? The scene where Judith’s old gang dubbed Ava the Empress of Ice Cream was pretty cool. Hope she doesn’t let all the power go to her head. But she solved her problem and was richly rewarded for it. Except, can a person really eat all that ice cream in one sitting?
It was pretty obvious Kendel was lying. After all, his story didn’t match up with the way things happened at all. Raylan knows that intuitively but if Art recovers the lie will be exposed, too. Now it’s all down to Raylan vs. Darryl, which should make for an interesting final two episodes. Rachel’s in charge, and Raylan is doing his best to not be too Raylan-esque (he turned down Tim’s offer to go all Raylan on Darryl before he turned himself in). He promises not to kill Darryl but destroy everything around him. Which amounts to…what, exactly?
I’m binge-watching the third season of Homeland. Halfway through. I was aware of some grumbling about the season as it aired, but didn’t look too closely at what people were complaining about. Granted, after six episodes not a whole lot has happened. The kind of plot developments that Breaking Bad would probably have covered in two episodes at the most. I did like Esme, though. She reminded me of Nova from Planet of the Apes.
