And...Another One?

On the Joss/NPH Glee episode

Joss Whedon. Neil Patrick Harris. My favorite entirely unrealistic show choir fantasy. I have been waiting for this episode for two months.

The verdict: yes and no.

Things I loved: Every moment NPH was on. That man is a god. Some unusually good lines. Idina Menzel and Lea Michel's (or as I like to call her, Little Idina's) show-stopping rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream"--seriously, are they going to do the entire Les Mis soundtrack? I sure hope so. Also, Jesse's back! Hoorah and double-hooray!

Things I didn't love: Arty's treatment of Tina, the weirdly contrived and sped-up plot point about his dreams of dancing--and the crushing of those dreams, ignoring the fact that there actualy are wheelchair dance troupes. Seriously. Professional ones. Also, the bit about Idina being Little Idina's mom--of course it was inevitable, but my quarrel is with the way they did it--what the hell? Contrived and nonsensical. And, most importantly--"Dream On" is NOT a Les Mis audition song. Some kid is going to be very, very disappointed when this show inspires them to try out for Phantom with "Tik Tok" or something.

So in general: I love Joss. I love NPH. I love Glee. I love the music. The plot continues to be completely ridiculous, but isn't that why we watch it?

Eagerly awaiting next week's...Lady Gaga episode?
Yours &c,
E. A. Weatherfield

Forced writing is rarely good writing

Summer is a strange bubble. It feels terminal--the warmth, the quiet, but mostly the strange freedom. Oh, it's summer, I don't have to get up in the morning, I don't have homework I should be doing. I must be dying. All this reading time--can't be real. I have sideslipped into an alternate reality. I am living in the matrix. This is faerie-land, and if I poke my head out into the real world, I will discover that a million years have passed and everyone I love has died, while I was curled in my papasaun catching up on FABLES.

Too easy to loose ties in summer, too easy to dip into a story, too easy to spend five days under figurative water, lose yourself in the figurative woods. Too easy to overexert or to atrophy. Green season, mean season. Mind-slag.

Time is an illusion. Summer-time?

Some radioactive brain juice to infect you.
Yours &c,
E. A. Weatherfield

On meeting authors

Last night the fantastic YA author buddies Holly Black and Cassandra Clare came to our area for a reading-signing thing. Holly writes books about faeries and Cassandra writes books about demon hunters. I went with my best friend, because she and I plan to BE these two when we grow up.

The presentation was enjoyable. Holly read from her new book and Cassandra from her upcoming (about which there were proportionally more squeals and whispers than I had altogether expected). Then they taught us the octopus-in-a-coffee-shop con, which is a "family-friendly" version of the dog-in-a-bar con, which is the same as the violin con, which any Neil Gaiman fan should know.

They took questions. I did not ask one. One person asked where they got their shoes, because their shoes were fantastic. One fan raised her hand twice, but mostly told completely pointless stories without questions in them. I learned that, in order to be a moderately bestselling author with a medium-sized but devoted fanbase, I'll have to learn more tact and handle things gracefully. Shame.

There was a long line to get books signed. My friend and I passed the time by headbanging to MUCC. I believe I deeply injured the sensibilities of the small child staring at us shamelessly when my cell phone died and I said "fuck" quite loudly, because what if a life-or-death text message came my way within the next hour?

Our books were signed. We had pleasant conversation with the authors. On our way out we had pleasant conversation with a librarian and the wonderful folk of Pudd'n Head Books, the even more wonderful book store hosting the event.

All in all, a success.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Slanders?
I'll take 'em all.

Yours &c,
E. A. Weatherfield.

Review

Just read the graphic novel BEAST by Marian Churchland. It was fabulous. The art was fresh, beautiful, dynamic, the story an interesting new version of "Beauty and the Beast." In it, a sculptor called Colette is offered a dream commission to sculpt a marble portrait of her benefactor. She arrives at the derelict mansion where she is to do the job and discovers that the subject is to be a strange but (in my opinion) beautiful shadow-creature known as Beast.

Things I liked: extremely appealing aesthetic, well-written, not as maudlin or explicitly laid out as your average Beast update.
Things I didn't like: rather unsatisfying ending, in my opinion.
Verdict: Read it now.

Blurbs

This is no haiku
That statement is both untrue
And logic'ly sound.

100 Words

Sir Bedevere knocked on yet another door, hoping it was the last.
“Hello?” a young girl answered, strangely dressed even for this strange decade.
“Good morrow, madam,” said Sir Bedevere, “May I speak with the man of the house?”
“There’s only one man in this house,” she said with amusement, “and he’s not exactly the kind you seek.”
“I would speak with him anon, an’ it please you.”
“Alright then,” she said, grinning snidely. She called, “Bedevere!” and a little mopsy dog came bounding to her side.
“We named him after the Monty Python character,” the girl explained.
“I see.”