I first encountered H.R. Giger when I was in university. As my musical world and tastes broadened, I stumbled upon Emerson, Lake and Palmer, probably at a used record store called Days of Wine and Vinyl. As I worked my way through their discography, I naturally ended up at Brain Salad Surgery, which featured his artwork on the cover. That same year, of course, Alien took the movie-going world by storm, with its simultaneously horrifying and hilarious shot of a creature bursting out of John Hurt’s chest after an ill-advised visit to a planet designed by Giger. I didn’t know much about him, alas, or I might have gone to his museum during the years I lived in Zurich. An opportunity missed.
I’m about halfway through The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon. Alas, my digitial ARC is fixing to expire, so I might have to buy a copy of the book to finish it, which has never happened to me before. It’s an interesting concept: an Apple-like company is taking over the English language, and there’s a word flu causing a kind of aphasia among users of an iPhone-like gadget called the Meme that responds to your emotions. The next generation forms a chemical / neurological bond with you in a creepy, Invasion of the Body Snatchers sense.
Issue 71 of Cemetery Dance magazine is shipping this month. It’s an all-fiction issue, so there won’t be a News from the Dead Zone column in it, but I do have the feature book review, which is King’s forthcoming Mr. Mercedes.
We had a free preview of Showtime last weekend, so I recorded Penny Dreadful and watched it last night. It was okay. Lavish in look. Timothy Dalton is chewing up the scenery. Has moments. Not enough to make me want to see any more of it, though. And after only three hours, my finger is creeping toward the delete button on 24. How quickly it descends into melodrama. I was bummed to discover that Castle decided to end the season with a cliffhanger. I liked the way the universe was conspiring to wreck their wedding day and, ultimately, it did. I loved Don Draper’s reaction to the threesome with his wife and her friend on Mad Men. He wasn’t all “goody, let’s do this.” He was more like WTF? A little bit of Van Gogh action going on, too. What a weird show.
And then there was the season finale of The Blacklist, which answered some questions, raised some others and maybe answered the big one: Who is Liz’s father? Though he has denied it, Red still remains the prime candidate, especially in light of those burn scars on his back. For a while I thought they were going to go housecleaning or, rather, cast cleaning. First, Meera goes down and then Howard looked like he was out for the count, too. The pseudo-Berlin takes one to the head and Tom takes a few to the gut, but is he dead? There was no body. Maybe Red disappeared it to save the awkward questions that would raise for Liz, although that leaves her marital status up in the air. Sort of like Kate’s on Castle.
