More Junk Movies...The Emporer Has No Clothes

I'm a movie fan. I used to go to at least 2 movies every month in the theater.

Until this week, I think the last movie I'd seen in a theater was Batman Returns, which I liked more than I expected to. But nothing since then has interested me. During this year, in general, I've probably only been to about a movie a month in the theater. Netflix and buying videos has picked up the slack. This summer's movies have done nothing for me at all.

Now, I do expect that to be a little different this fall, as, suddenly, I'm seeing trailers and reading about movies that sound either like fun (Just Like Heaven, Prime and In Her Shoes) or that they could be really good movies (Little Fish, Elizabethtown, Serenity, The Fountain, Match Point, and King Kong). But this spring and summer have been a joke. Yeah, sure, I looked forward to Revenge of the Sith, after waiting for 28 years to see the first Darth Vader-Obi Wan showdown, but still! While the fight itself was pretty good, so much of the rest of the movie was an over-long video game that I wanted to scream!

This week, I made the serious mistake of seeing not one, but two movies in the theater. The first one, Must Love Dogs, I saw only because I've always liked John Cusak, Diane Lane and Elizabeth Perkins.

Big, big, big mistake.

It was hard to empathize with any of the characters. Oh, sure, with Diane Lane a little. But hearing Lloyd Dobler's (Cusak's memorably lovable slacker from Say Anything) dialogue come from a 40ish man was disconcerting in the extreme. The characters were all over the place, but so were the reviews for this movie. So while this chick flick disappointed me, I wasn't really all that surprised.

On the other hand...

Many reviewers from Cannes talked about how wonderful Bill Murray's latest, Broken Flowers was. It's still (as of 8/28/05) ranking an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes from 130 reviewers, and a comparable 8 at IMDB from 1,748 voters.

How???

After a year of mostly disappointing movies, this movie is just another of a pretty bad lot.

Don't get me wrong - I love quiet, well-observed movies. I love movies where there's no real violence. I love movies where weird characters wander in and out. I love Robert Altman-style flicks. I don't even mind movies without a real conclusion. I should have adored this movie.

I came close to hating this movie, but I stayed with it until the end (which is an odd reflection of the vastly better Tom Hanks film Castaway).

At least one person in the small audience watching walked out of this movie after 20 minutes, never to return. A number of people at the end kind of went "What happened?" Makes you wonder how the critics universally loved this movie, because there's nothing (and I mean nothing) there, beyond some cryptic performances by some of our better actresses.

I'm not the biggest Bill Murray fan, but I liked him in Groundhog Day and in Lost in Translation. With the right material, he's an interesting actor. This was categorically the wrong material. The problem is much more with the writing and directing than with the acting. But the acting just doesn't make the material any more interesting.

Here's the problem - the movie is, from start to finish, absolutely and completely illogical. There isn't a true moment anywhere in the movie.

Maybe it's a movie about a man who never really had a life and has a long nightmare about "what might have been." What if a woman I'd been involved with came back and told me I had a child I never expected to have?

First problem - Don Johnston (Bill Murray). People keep talking about him as a "Don Juan," and that point is further driven home by the fact that Johnston is watching a movie about Don Juan. But he completely fails to relate to people (men OR women) on any level. Granted, he is shown to be financially well-off. Money certainly can make many people attractive. But he was apparently involved with these women earlier in his life when he wasn't wealthy.

Second problem - Winston (Jeffrey Wright). At first, I thought Winston was Don's paid assistant. Turns out, he says he works three jobs, has aspirations to be a writer, is married and has five children. How in the world would he have the time to help Don to the extent he does? I liked their friendship, and the way Winston was trying to get Don to get involved in his own life rather than be a passive observer. But does Winston simply never sleep?

Third problem - Lolita (Alexis Dziena). Like Jeffrey Wright, my problem is not with the performer, but with the way s/he is written. The kid is named Lolita. So how does she behave? Exactly like Lolita. It was like she walked out of the book/movie of that name. And, at one point, she just walks naked in front of Don. In real life, have you ever heard of a 15-year-old girl walking naked in front of a 55-year-old male stranger? (In front of a hunky, 18-year-old male stranger, maybe, but in front of someone old enough to be her father or even grandfather? I don't think so!)

Now, there's a point later in the movie where Johnston dreams of that moment. It might have made a little more sense for him to have dreamed of her naked then - that he was never "Don Juan" but might have wanted to be. True, a moment like that would have looked like it dropped out of American Beauty, but I think it would have made more sense.

Fourth problem - Dora (Frances Conroy). Dora is so repressed that she makes Ruth from Six Feet Under look like a wild woman. So how can Dora, who seems even more repressed and internal than Don, have had a relationship with Don? You can kind of understand the "opposites attract" relationship that Don and Laura or Don and Penny must have had. But Don and Dora? A photograph Don seems to have taken of a younger Dora implies that they were rather different people in the mid '80s (even if Dora looked more like a '60s flower child than an '80s woman). But what happened to them?

No matter how much you enjoy Frances Conroy or Jessica Lange or Sharon Stone or Tilda Swinton (who's only very briefly in the movie and is completely unrecognizable), it isn't worth going to this movie to see them.

Eleven years ago, many of us found Four Weddings and a Funeral very enjoyable. That said, many of us were wildly frustrated by the character of Carrie (Andi MacDowell), who behaved quite illogically. Imagine a movie where none of the characters are quite so colorful and all of them act completely illogically. And there you have the problem with Broken Flowers.

Another problem is with the "road trip" itself. You see Bill Murray getting on planes and "flying around the country." At one point, his rental car seems to have a Colorado license plate. It's obvious from the scenery that he never really leaves the Northeast. It turns out to have been completely filmed in upstate New York and New Jersey. No surprise there.

So maybe the whole movie is just one man's "fantasy trip." If that's the case, the movie was just impossibly dull, dull, dull. And maybe that's why so many Cannes reviewers loved this movie - they're mostly 40-something white guys who can relate to Bill Murray. Sorry folks, this 40-something white woman was totally and completely bored by the exercise.

Will anyone ever make an interesting and/or enjoyable movie ever again? I've been thiking about going to see Constant Gardener as I do like both Ralph Feinnes and Rachel Weiz. But is seems to be marketed as a "thriller," though many of the reviews make it sound like an interesting chracter study. I'm not prepared to go to the movies only to be pissed off again. I might just wait until I can see the final version of Serenity in about a month (I saw the prelminary version in June and it was extremely promising). I might even wind up going to Cronenberg's A History of Violence only because I really like Viggo Mortensen and feel Maria Bello is one of our most underrated actresses.

I should add - I'd never paid directly to see a Jim Jarmuch movie until today, and I'm unlikely to ever do so again. I've never paid directly to see a David Cronenberg movie before, though I saw Dead Zone on cable and adored it and generally liked The Fly as well. I don't like violence (in movies or IRL), and it apparently spills out of A History of Violence. On the other hand, this flick is apparently one of the few to "dare" to depict sex between a married couple, something that's not even inferred in many movies these days! So, maybe I will see it in the theater. Consensual sex ought to be much more common than violence in movies, and it is either rarely seen or poorly depicted! At least History of Violence is unlikely to bore me to tears the way Broken Flowers and Must Love Dogs did.

How Well Travelled Are You?

OK, this one is Charlie Stross's fault...

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (100%)

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (86%)

You Are Very Well Traveled in Canada (80%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Western United States (58%)

You Are Well Traveled in the Southern United States (54%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (38%)

You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Western Europe (21%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Eastern Europe (20%)

You Are Mostly Untraveled in Southern Europe (7%)

You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Asia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%)

You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%)

You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%)

You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

My Armadillocon Photo Report

We had a great time at Armadillocon in Austin, TX over the weekend.

Report from Texas

I'm DONE with My Novel!

Well, almost!

Before I went to Scotland for Worldcon in late July, I was looking over my novel and realized that while I was doing a good job of "showing, not telling" through the first 20 chapters or so, much of the last 20,000 words was "telling, not showing." That's a problem. In non-fiction writing, you want to explain things directly. In fiction writing, you want the reader to pick up the clues and figure things out for him/herself. But I was compressing the text because I didn't want the book to go on for too long.

So, after thinking it over, I've decided Unexpectedly is either two short novels or one long one. The first short novel had a very natural ending at the end of Chapter 19. The themes came together very well there, and while there are a few loose ends, it stands on its own.

8-17-05 - I sent out a query letter to an agent saying I had finished my first novel.

By saying "I'm done" with the first 19 chapters means I can focus better on the second related novel (or "the rest of the novel").

I don't think this is going to go on and be one of those "never-ending projects." I think it'll top out in the 150,000 - 170,000 word range. Unexpectedly wound up running 83,000 words (384 double-spaced pages, which I think means it would be about a 190 page novel). The second novel (Even More Unexpectedly? - need to come up with a similar title that evokes a connection without sounding too silly) is probably also in the 80,000 word range. Or, who knows, maybe I will be able to publish this as one longish novel (is 400 pages too long for a first novel that isn't heroic fantasy?).

Some Novel Progress

I've felt pretty crappy since coming home from Scotland, but, gradually, I've been doing some work on my novel. Probably not the bunch of work I need to be doing late in the novel, but a little work on the beginning. I updated my Novel Experiment site this morning with some updated old material and a little new material. I think today will turn out to be more of a writing day. And, it has been. After a few weeks of "treading water" between being on vacation and being sick, I broke 100,000 words today.

Jim and I will be fan GoHs at Armadillocon this weekend, so I asked for a reading and got one. It'll be at 10:30 on Saturday morning, and I expect to be reading some of Chapter 3 and maybe a scene from Chapter 5. While the book definitely has some speculative stuff happening late in the novel, the portions I'll be reading are pretty much contemporary novelish. We're on a bunch of good program items over the con, and it's starting to sound like my voice will be in better shape than it was at Worldcon.

While I spent an awful lot of Worldcon being sick, I came back with my feet, legs and back in much better shape than usual, despite a huge amount of walking on Wednesday and Thursday. This was probably due to the fact that I've been walking more this summer, and I invested in a pair of Hush Puppies "Bounce" shoes. (Photo of me and my shoes - the BBC's Simon Willis is on my right - thanks to Keith Stokes for taking the photo.) Yes, they look like your mother's or grandmother's shoes. But I'm really glad I got them, and will probably always have something similar in the future for times when I'll be doing a lot of walking.

Photos from Interaction

Slowly, I'm starting to add photos from Scotland to my site.

I have some up at: http://www.dpsinfo.com/sf/inter05. I tend to be very chronological in my photography. These photos are of the con between Tuesday and Saturday. However, I took most of my photos on Sunday.

If you're a fan from TheOneRing.Net, I have Alan Lee and TORNsib photos up too.

I've made almost no progress on the novel since returning home. I just haven't felt very well. I'm sleeping a little better, but that could be because I take Nyquil at night to help me with my cold/laryngitis/et.c. I hope I'll have my voice back before Armadillocon!

Scotland was COOOL!

If you wonder why none of my Web sites have been updated, it's because we were in Scotland working on the World Science Fiction Convention AKA Interaction. Courtesy of USAirways, we lost a day of our vacation (GROAN!). But, we finally got off to Glasgow (via three different airlines), then took a bus to Edinburgh.

We LOVED Edinburgh, a very historic city some 40 miles east of Glasgow. I took an obscene number of photos, and will try to put a few up tomorrow.

Worldcon went surprisingly smoothly and most people seemed to enjoy themselves. This is a good thing. I got to liase with the press (I appeared on a BBC news program last Thursday night, talking about Worldcon), with Alan Lee (who was Interaction's special guest and was just a great guy) and got to meet Susanna Clarke (who won the Hugo for her giant magical novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell) and Ian McDonald (who didn't win a Hugo for River of Gods, but who looks great in a kilt). And Charlie Stross, who won a Hugo himself, also looked great in a kilt!

More soon, but, first, some sleep...

(Yes, my throat is better - thanks!!)

Results for the "What Kind of Novel Should I Write?" Quiz

HISTORICALS! - Adventurous and somewhat dark, but
that's true adventure. From the heart of Olde England, or the Caribbean isles, adventures in the past, are a fire that burn in your soul to be written. History books, Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Alexander Dumas are your inspirations!


What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
brought to you by Quizilla

This quiz is probably pretty accurate (even though most of my first unpublished novel is set in 2003). My second novel, however, will all be set in the past, with quite a lot of it set in medieval Edinburgh.

The True Story of How I Did Not Meet Billy Boyd

This is a true story. Swear to Ghu, even though we have no photos to back it up.

I bought a ticket to see the Pittsburgh Symphony perform "The Lord of the Rings Symphony" a few weeks back, after having been on the fence for a while. I bought a ticket the night Billy was announced as a performer, and went for the left box seats. The really neat box seats near the stage. His "Mist and Shadows" solo was a particularly lovely part of the music for Return of the King, and I wanted to hear it live.

A few days later, Sue (who goes by the name Eomer's Woman on The One Ring.net) and I started talking about getting together at the Pittsburgh concert. We met with her traveling companion Chris for lunch on Friday at Joe's Crab Shack which was fun.

On Friday night, we met up in the lobby of the concert, and found we were sitting in the same box! Wow, talk about a weird coincidence in a hall that seats about 2,000 people.

We went to the pre-concert Q&A: Billy Boyd, Conductor John Mauceri and local classical music commentator Ken Meltzer:



Just before the concert started, a Heinz Hall employee stopped up in our box. "Back up during the fifth movement of the symphony" she warned the two people in the front of the box. "Billy Boyd is performing his solo from this box."

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!

So Billy was performing the world premiere of his live version of "Mist and Shadows" two seats in front of me, and three seats in front of Sue.

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!

It was a major thrill, and he was great. But we couldn't take a picture or record it, for obvious reasons. So you'll just have to take our word for it.

I went to last year's LOTR Symphony in Pittsburgh, conducted by Howard Shore, and I was somewhat disappointed. The symphony wasn't as together as usual, and the "first" seat players were not to be seen. This year, John Mauceri, conducted a better performance. While the "first" seat players were still missing, the orchestra was much more together (after the first five minutes or so, which was kind of mushy). The Two Towers/Isengard part was stupendous - even better than the London Symphony version.

If you're in the area, this is definitely worth seeing. The first show was very close to being sold out (the hall was probably about 90% full).

Since I had bought the expensive tickets, it included a ticket to the post-show reception. I wanted to meet Billy, partially because I admired his LOTR work, but also because I wanted to get him an invitation to attend the upcoming Worldcon, which is in his hometown of Glasgow in less than two weeks.

During the reception, I spent time talking to other fans from The One Ring.Net, and talking a little to John Mauceri (the conductor) rather than standing in line to meet Billy. When it occured to me that I should stand in line, I started getting really, really tired (I have insomnia and have been averaging under 4 hours of sleep a night lately).

Now, it turned out that Sue and her friend Chris had gone to the pre-concert dinner. And they had wound up sitting at the same table for dinner as Billy Boyd and his sister from Glasgow. So I asked if she could show me who Billy's sister was. She could. I asked her to introduce us, and she did. Billy's sister has the most charming Scottish accent I've ever heard, and I handed her a letter from Interaction, and a small gift for Billy (a snapbook of some of my Return of The One Party photos).

(Note - this in no way means that Billy will be at Interaction, it just means he's been informed that the Interaction committee would like him to drop by.)

After I left the stuff with Billy's sister, I felt really tired so I walked back to my car and started it up, blasting the air conditioner. And then I got my second wind, so I went back and managed to get a fairly close-up picture of Billy:



Unfortunately, the autograph line was closed, so I had to be content with the photo.
Then, I found Sue, and partied with some fans after the reception. And here's our party, after the dinner, after the Q&A, after the concert, after the reception and before too much of the drinking got started. On The One Ring.Net, these folks are commonly known as DJDeathkiss, her husband, Wednesday Addams and Eomer's Woman (seated)



One of our partiers shared an elevator with Billy and his sister in the hotel. However, he was so flummoxed he forgot to invite Billy and his sister over for a drink... But we had a good time anyway! Most of us are going to try to be at the IndyMoot in October, to visit the LOTR museum exhibition.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Review of The Lord of the Rings Symphony performance for 7/22.

Astronomy Delivers a Real SensaWonder Sighting....

space.com's report of the discovery of a planet in a triple sun system is one of the most wonerful things I've seen in a long time.

Triple sun planet.

Leave it to scientists to find the really interesting things!

And a possible sunset on this planet.

Awesome!

Fire Karl Rove

Teagan Goddard's Political Wire had a link to Fire Karl Rove, a petition urging Bush to fire Rove since it looks like (to almost no one's surprise) that Rove is the one who disclosed a CIA agent's identity. While it's a waste of electrons, I signed it to go on record. Here's what I said:

President Bush, please show us, at least once, that you can be a man to keep your word. Firing Rove for outing a CIA agent would be a very small step for you to acquire an iota of credibility, because you have none with most of us.

Projects/Projects/Projects

Last week, I was working very hard on getting the Interaction schedule ready for the Web. Unfortunately, various things have conspired to hold it up, but I hope do have one up in the next few days.

I am merely Interaction staff, so it's not up to me when the schedule is posted. When I am in charge of something, I always want to publicize as much information about it as soon as I can. I've found that people would like to see a draft of a schedule earlier, rather than "the final" schedule later. And while you always get a few people who can't comprehend the difference between a "draft" version and "the final," it's always a good idea to get the draft up early anyway.

I've also been working on the Pocket Program and Restaurant Guide for Confluence. They'll be printed tonight.

I've been tinkering with the novel a little. Lately, I've been editing and changing a major character's last name about four times. After doing that, I went back to his original last name, even though it was "phony." Somehow, it sounded better than any "real" last name I could give him. I was "trapped" in Chapter 17 for a while, and am now quite happy by how it turned out. I am sort of trapped by Chapter 19 currently, but think I may have just figured a way through it. I'm no longer sure I'll have it done by Worldcon (yuck), but I still have almost two weeks, so who knows...

We're Not Afraid!

I saw a neat Web site today:

We're Not Afraid

It encourages people to thumb their noses at fear. A splendid idea:



We're still traveling this summer, and, if I was working, I'd still take the subway.

I don't believe in letting the idiot terrorists and fearmongers win this one. I never have.

I haven't been doing too much work on my novel, as I've been doing fanac (for Interaction and Confluence). I did do some editing over the weekend, and the novel is now back to 86,000 words.

Was anyone else out there as unsurprised as I was that Karl Rove has a direct connection to the whole Plame outing? This is news?

Yes! Even I Can Canoe Ten Miles and Live to Tell the Tale!

No, I'm not quite one with my laptop and recliner. Having heard how great the weather was going to be, Jim and I decided to drive up to Cook State Forest and canoe yesterday. There's a very gentle river in the forest (the Cook River, one imagines) and lots of places to rent canoes. We did the four mile canoe trip two years ago, survived it, and decided to try the ten mile trip yesterday.

Cook State Forest is a little over two hours northeast of Pittsburgh (79N-80E-66N-36S). We got up there a little before 10am, and were suprised to see no line for canoes. This was a little confusing to us, given the phenomenal weather and the holiday weekend. The last time we'd gone on a Saturday, there was about a half hour wait in line just to rent the canoe.

After enough canoers arrived, they loaded us in a van and drove a few miles up the river. Then we got in the canoes, and, with a little help, took off down the river. The first mile or so, the four canoes stayed pretty close together - there was almost no one else in that part of the river. It was a brilliant blue day and I wish my digital camera had been working!!

After a bit, however, the river got very shallow, so we kept having to get out of the canoe and carry it through the shallower water. As Jim and I had never done that before, it really slowed down our trip. So that could exaplain why there were relatively few canoers on that part of the river - they knew canoing in shallow water wasn't much fun.

Eventually, we got back into deeper water, and wound up making fairly decent time. It took us under 3 1/2 hours to paddle 10 miles downstream.

Jim got a wretched sunburn on his knees, but I managed to apply the sunscreen as needed and emerged reasonably unburned.

We didn't see any interesting animals - no deer or bears or anything bigger than vacationers' dogs. We saw lots of birds, particularly woodpeckers, and the occassional butterfly.


I had plans to go to one of Jim's cousins picnics today, but woke up with a bad sinus headache. While I didn't feel like going out to be sociable, I actually made very good progress on the novel today. Last night, I'd finally finished the infamous Chapter 17, a chapter that's been taking me ages to write and has changed more dramatically than any other part of the book. I also updated my Word story submission template, based on the Writers Market suggested format, and integrated all the novel chapters into one long Word master document. So the novel is currently 94,800 words or 442 double-spaced pages (I think that corresponds to about a 220-page book). I think it'll top out at about 110,000 words.

MIT Blog Survey and What I've Been Up to

Yes, I read about this on Leslie Turek's blog:



It was pretty painless - give it a shot.

I've been pretty quiet here, partially because the insomnia is pretty wretched just now, but, despite that, I've been making some progress on the novel. I'm around 90,000 words, and have been pounding away at a chapter that's been causing me grief for nearly a month.

We did go to Midwestcon last week, which was quiet and fun. We threw ourselves a "30 Years in Fandom" party on Friday night, and went to a very long fondue dinner on Sautrday night.

So Tired and Latest Novel News

Over the last 2 weeks or so, my insomnia has gone from bad to worse, and I'm averaging under 4 hours of sleep a night. Sleeping pills stopped working months ago, so I don't take them. So, since I'm usually up by 4:30 or so anyway. I decided to get dressed, leave the house by 5:30 and walk for at least an hour every morning. Since I live near a high school, I walk on the track. And I am not alone. There's usually at least 5 people, even first thing in the morning. One woman says she's often there by 3:30!
So my daily walking average is now up from about 1-2 miles per day, to 3-4 miles per day. And, when it was warmer, I swam for six days in a row. I've made an appointment to see my doctor and will try to have a sleep study done. While I've battled insomnia my whole life, usually it was more obviously stress-related. I'd have trouble going to sleep, but once I was asleep I tended to stay asleep until 5:30 or 6. Now, I tend to fall alseep pretty quickly, but once I wake up, and it's any later than 3am, I stay awake.

My novel-writing has suffered, but that was probably more due to visiting my folks for a few days and doing a lot of Interaction scheduling. Three weeks ago, I'd hit 71,000 words and was optmisitically predicting I'd be done soon. Now, I'm at about 79,000. I did some pruning, restructured the first chapter a little and, sadly, put some material I thought I was writing for the novel into a backstory file.

Yesterday, Michael Burstein was talking about readability software in his blog. I ran the Word tool buried under Spelling and Grammar. Results of my novel analysis.

I was particularly happy to find that the grade level for the pseudo-AP story very closely matched the grade level for business paper writing discovered by a recent study!

If you're interested in reading a little of the novel, please check novelexperiment.com.

You Can't Go Home Again, But You Can Visit

I'm currently visiting the town I grew up in. I moved there when I was 4, and moved away to go to college when I was 18. I haven't lived in the town in 30 years. West Boylston is a small Massachusetts town due north of Worcester. It's small and easy-to-miss, but if you've ever driven Route 12 north out of Worcester, you might have noticed it because of the Old Stone Church and the Wachusett Reservoir.

With a growing family, my parents moved four times during those 14 years. First, we lived in a ranch house on Pierce St., in a neighborhood where people' yards backed up against yours. Next, we lived in a Cape with a larger, more private back yard on Goodale St. Then, in '69, during my last week of sixth grade, we moved to a brand new Colonial with a small yard on the other side of town, on Shady Lane (beside the old Mixter School). Finally, we moved to one of the many split levels on Yorktown Road (less than a half mile from our house on Pierce St.). My folks and younger siblings lived there until the early '80s.

Pierce St. has changed shockingly little over the last 40 years. Our old house has been expanded some and has a garage. "Goodale St. has really changed," Dad said. "They're building a lot of new houses up that way." The Cape Code I lived in for most of the '60s had long ago morphed into a Colonial. I'd always approved of that change (not that anyone asked me, but I did!). However, as I drove down Goodale St. today, I was shocked to find that my woods were being torn down.

The first few years we lived on Goodale St., we had the run of the neighborhood. While we sometimes were warned about "strangers," people didn't overprogram and overwatch their kids they way so many parents do now. We were allowed to explore the woods (with a babysitter or parent at first, but, then, later, on our own). There was a dirt road, a picnic area and winding paths. The woods were quiet and green, with a variety of trees, ferns, and flowers. A brook babbled about a 1/4 mile down the dirt road, and a small wooden bridge made the crossing easy. The most dangerous thing in the woods was poison ivy, something I wasn't even allergic to during my childhood (something I more than made up for in my 20s).

I spent many, many hours in the woods, often alone about sometimes with others. We looked for animals, lightning bugs, space aliens, anything a bunch of active, imaginative kids would look for. We had adventures, we ate picnic lunches. I loved the woods. Towards the late '60s, a family built a house in the woods. I guess they owned some amount of the property further back, because, there were times when we just didn't feel welcome there anymore. We still went back that way anyway, but it wasn't quite the same.

And, today, an awful lot of the woods had been clearcut for housing. Part of me almost cried (and I'm really not all that sentimental), but part of me wanted to see if any of that old brook still existed. Maybe we could buy that piece of land and build a house over it. Though, at Massachusetts prices, we don't have enough to build much more than a shed these days...

After driving down Goodale St., I dropped my car back at my folks' apartment house and walked all over the center of town. They live near the reservoir, and I've down that part of the walk dozens of times when I've come back to visit. The water was amazingly glassy this morning, so I took many pictures of the Old Stone Church, the trees, the surrounding hills and their reflections in the water.

Then I headed up lower Goodale St. to Central St. Goodale St. School, where I went to third grade, had been torn down years before and replaced by a ballfield. The metal jungle gym where I'd gotten a concussion in fourth grade was gone ("How many fingers?" asked Mr. Duffy, helping me back to the nurse's office). The huge swings on the playground edge were still there. Right nere the end, on the school side, that's where we talked about the shooting of Robert Kennedy at the end of fifth grade.

Major Edwards Elementary School was at the other end of the playground, and I was there from 4-7 grade. It looks pretty much the same as it did 40 years ago, with really minor additions to the end of one wing and a huge sattelite dish.

The high school was just up the street from the elementary school. I hadn't realized how much the front had changed, or that the lion had been moved. The plaster lion was in bad shape (I took a photo of it, but brought the wrong USB cable so I can't upload it until I get home).

I walked back down Central Street all the way to the Congregational Church. It's still a shady, pleasant walk. The MeatMaster has been replaced by some other butcher shop, and there's an extraordinarly good-smelling bakery in that little plaza. The old Post Office moved out to Route 12 a number of years ago - a kitchen design center is in the old Post Office, surrounded by some surprisingly large trees.

When you visit your old home town, you have a tendency to drive through on quick visits. Take a few minutes and walk around. I was suprised to find some buildings had been added 15 years ago, but I never noticed them until I got out of the car and walked!

The Archangel Book Meme: Four Questions for Book Geeks

Origin point of this: http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2005/05/meme-tag.html

Total Number of Books Owned

Somewhere around 17,000, probably another 3,000 magazines. We're a long married couple, both of whom have been collecting books since the early '60s and we keep almost everything.

The collection is probably about 9,000 science fiction and fantasy (about 200 of which are autographed), 1,500 history, 4,000 general fiction, 1,000 biographies, 1,000 general non-fiction, 200 antique (including a first edition of Adventures of Baron von Munchausen and an early edition of Poe's short stories I inherited from my grandparents), 150 cookbooks.

We're actually getting rid of books - duplicates, stuff that's just old and not interesting - as we're running out of space and hope to be moving by the end of the year.

Last Book Bought

1776 by David McCullough (OK, actuallly Jim bought it, but I almost bought it...).

Last Book Read

Still reading Warriors of God, which is more interesting than Kingdom of Heaven (the movie that cribbed from it without giving credit).

Five Books That Mean a Lot to You

To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it when I was about 8 and have read it every few years since then. The amazing thing about this book is how you grow with it - things that sail over year head when you're little much so much more sense when you're older.

The Left Hand of Darkness. Wow. I read this when I was about 16 or 17 and was completely floored by it. A completely brilliant book.

Lord of the Rings. Ditto. I read this just after my 18th birthday, while I was taking a bus from Massachusetts to Ohio and back again visiting colleges. I remember reading about Mordor while I was on the bus going by oil tanks in New Jersey and that image has always stayed with me.

The Sparrow and Children of God. I read these books at a point when I wasn't reading much SF that was interesting me. These really interested me. Some of the most intelligent SF of the last 10 years.

American Gods. What an incredible combination of genres and ideas in the same book!

Mark Felt, American Hero

Even in the early '70s, when I was still something of a Nixon supporter, I couldn't hate Deep Throat. I have way too much respect for the truth to attack the truth-teller. Listening to the televised Watergate hearings in 1973 convinced me of Nixon's guilt. So I've always thought that Mark Felt was a hero. Now, look at the way Republican apologists are already complaining about his behavior. And it's sad that a few rather noisy, twisted individuals think Felt was more of a lawbreaker than Nixon, Haldeman and all their friends were!!

So, focusing on the Republican apologists rather than Felt and his family is fairly disgusting. And I think that NBC's Today Show went over the line with its "reporting" on Felt this morning, and here's what I wrote them:

Today Show Comment

I've been a loyal viewer of The Today Show for over 40 years, and I'm making the switch to Good Morning America. I was tired of the lack of real news stories on the Today Show, but the final straw for me was letting Republican apologists dominate the show the day after his identity as Deep Throat was revealed. By contrast, Good Morning America got Felt's lawyer. Sorry, that's more interesting news to me than a convicted criminal like Coulson, or a conservative propoagandist like Buchanan. Shame!

Laurie Mann
No Longer the World's Slowest Blog
http://www.dpsinfo.com/blog

Bush and Cheney Partying Like It's 1984...

Did you ever imagine there would come a time when the executive branch of our government would say things like this about Amnesty International?

President Bush called a human rights report "absurd" for criticizing the United States' detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said Tuesday the allegations were made by "people who hate America.

CNN, 5/31/2005.

War Is Peace. Ignorance Is Strength. Freedom Is Slavery.

Slogans from George Orwell's 1984, that, unfortunately, seem to symbolize our government today.

Hey, does anyone remember the late '90s, when the Republicans constantly attacked Clinton who was accused of having a consensual affair? While many of us supported Clinton through this misadventure, I don't remember that any of us ever accused the Republicans for "hating America," even though the Republicans were busily trying to oust a popularly-elected president.

I don't hate America, it's the current administration I loathe. And I sure believe reports from Amnesty International before I'd believe anything the Bush administration would say about its gross mistreatment of its POWs. Whenever a country is looking to get around the Geneva Convention, something is seriously rotten about its government.