Severe Jam Damage

In 3-D!
Next year!

This is the youtube video, but if you’ve got divx, Neil has a high-res version on his site.

I was going to title this entry ‘Northern Lights’ in defiance of the renaming of the book for the Yanks - but having seen the movie I’m leaving it as ‘The Golden Compass’ so that it cannot be mistaken for the book.
Which may give you an idea of what I thought of the movie…

Not that I completely hated it - exactly. It was more of a sense of ‘Ohmygawdthatscoolwaitwhataretheydoingandwhyisthathappeningandstopitstopit!’

But I get ahead of myself.

Firstly the cast is excellent - a more A-list bunch of (mainly) British thesps you could hardly hope to see outside of LoTR or the Harry Potter franchise. Unfortunately the cast is wasted. The plot, the script, the EXPOSITION - oh my GOD the exposition.
‘Now Lyra, as you very well know we all live in parallel universes and in THIS one we wear our souls outside our bodies and we call them daemons.’
Not an exact quote from Derek Jacobi, but close bloody enough.
There were bits I loved. London from the airship - the perpetual motion machines on the carriages - the steampunkness of it all - Nicole Kidman perfectly cast as the cold Mrs Coulter - Lyra’s grubby face and defiant fear-nothing attitude, a pretty damn good heroine for young girls to aspire to - The Gyptians ships - and the exhilaration of seeing the plot points in the book right up there on the screen.
Trouble was, it was all so rushed. The movie comes in at just under 2 hours. It should be at least three. Lyra bounced from Oxford to London to Svarbald and her encounters with other characters - which in the books slowly opened her universe to the reader - became laughably coincidental in the movie. She gets chased through the streets of London and the Gyptians just happen to jump out and save her. Oh, have I mentioned the constant exposition? The Goth - who deigned to join our outing - opined that there was probably too much for someone who had read the books but not quite enough for him (who hadn’t) to make any sense of it. In addition the ending SUCKED - if they do get the funding for the next two books I have no idea how they are going to clean up the mess they’ve left. The Gin Lady wholly approved of the knitwear - but that was about the only nice thing she had to say that evening.
Overall one thumb down and one somewhere in the middle for the sake of the sterling cast - wholly underused and wasted in a film that could have been just as amazing as the book - if Chris Weitz - who I have just found out was responsible for the script of ‘Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps’ - had given the scriptwriting duties to someone else.

Those of you who know me are aware I have an interest in fairy tales. Old ones, new ones, the original versions, etc. I’ve got an entire shelf of books dedicated to fairy tales. So, while this is a rather modern tale it is by one of my favourite authors and I can’t wait for it to finally be released:
Stardust - the trailer

So with nothing better to write about here are a few of the books I’ve read lately.
First up is The Ledge by Blanaid McKinney. I picked this one up on holidays on one of the bargain tables. It sounded pretty interesting according to the blurb which reads:

At the time of his kidnapping, John was a successful film critic, with his own late night TV slot and something of a cult following. Crazed fans were an occupational hazard. One night, during a break in the show, John stepped outside to have a smoke. When he didn’t come back, nobody worried too much.

Which sounds kind of interesting right? Except that all of this happens in the first chapter of the book. The rest of the book follows 3 other main characters and their association (however tenuous) with the main character John. It’s worth the five quid I paid for it although the conclusion may be less than satisfying to a number of readers.

Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire - My continued fascination with revamped fairy tales (and the excellent Gregory Maguire) led me to this version of ‘Snow White’ which places our Snow (in this version named Bianca de Nevada) in the middle of the Italian alps. Our Witch Queen in this case is the depraved Lucrezia Borgia who becomes jealous of her brother Cesare’s infatuation with a young Bianca. Throw in a quest for the Tree of Knowledge, eight decidedly non-Disneyesque dwarves and a touch of hentai (the old cook claims to have taken an octopus for a lover) and the result is a refreshing new take on the tale of Snow White.

Green Man Anthology: Tales from the Mythic forest edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. Datlow and Windling have edited a number of anthologies together based on old fairy and folk tales. I have most of them and this is the latest one received in an amazon envelope. For this anthology they have focused on stories based around the theme of the Green Man, the (male) personification of nature, although some writers have focused on the Green Lady. Featuring stories from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, Charles deLint, Gregory Maguire and others it’s got some interesting ideas, although I found it easier to read piecemeal rather than all in one sitting.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. I had been looking for a copy of this for ages and eventually trolling around Eason’s last Saturday morning spotted a copy for €2.95. ‘Bargain!’ sez I. Despite being written in 1889 the jokes are still as funny as if it had been written yesterday. J, (Jerome Klapka Jerome) and his two mates George and Harris (to say nothing of Montmorency the dog) decide to take a leisurely trip down the Thames to cure themselves of perceived illness and disease. There is very little plot to the book, but it is the asides that make it so amusing. Harris getting lost in the Maze, J’s belief that he has every disease known to man, (barring Housemaids Knee) observations on holidaying that would not go amiss on an episode of ‘Holidays From Hell’ all told with a vaguely cynical edge that seems unusual for something written in the Victorian era. At just under 200 pages long its the perfect size to throw in your handbag for reading on the bus or train. Although you may well recieve some strange looks as you snigger your way home.

Well obviously I was busy with other things but here is a quick list of the books, music and other stuff that absorbed me on holiday.

Books:
War Reporting for Cowards - Chris Ayres: I picked this one up at the airport and pretty much finished it by the time I landed in Toronto. It’s pretty standard travel writing stuff. Chris Ayres was an embed in Afghanistan in 2003 and writes about his ‘Nine Day War.’ Witty in parts he doesn’t dwell on the reasons for the war, but rather how he got there and how soon he can get out.

Sideways - Rex Pickett: One muggy evening when we were too exhausted to even speak to each other we sat on the porch drinking cold beer. Mrs H was reading ‘The Quiet American’ and I picked up Sideways. I haven’t seen the movie but I knew the general gist, the basic American Road Trip story. To me the book seemed oddly uneven. The first part seemed manic, almost ‘Fear and Loathing’ with Cab Sauv. Driving, swigging wine and lots of shouting. I didn’t like either of the characters, Miles was an alcoholic and in denial about it and Jack was - not to put to fine a point on it - a prick. I couldn’t understand why either of these men were friends and it was not explained in the book. All they did was fight about wine, women and everything in between. There didn’t seem to be any reason for either of these men to hang out together and that quite frankly grated on me.

Someone comes to town, someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow: Yep, that bloke from Boingboing. Okay I also bought it cos the cover art is by Dave McKean. (Holy crapola I’ve definitely become a geek. I’m buying books for the cover artist now!) I read this one on the way home and it read like a Nano novel. The plots were thrown around like dirty clothes on the spin cycle. All it was missing was a few Ninja Pirates (Nanowrimo joke.) But it did have monsters, angels and murders. The one driving (and pointless) plotline was about getting Wifi into Toronto’s Kensington Market, and pretty much the whole book hung around that. Considering that Doctorow is an uber-geek and the King of Boingboing the technical shit was pretty poor, and rather outdated. (Think Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon - okay you can stop now before your head explodes.) It really should have been tighter. The ending tied up absolutely nothing, or at least there were still a few strands left hanging.

Music:
The Sadies: Saw these guys in the afternoon at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and they were really cool. On stage one brother looks like Nick Cave and the other has a sort of scruffy Bob Dylan thing going on. You can listen to some of their stuff here

Food:
A&W: Okay, forget McPuke’s and Bluergher King. If you are gonna go fast food A&W is the only way to go. I had a couple of TeenBurgers (or three) while I was there. SO MUCH BETTER than the rest. Question: They have a Teen, Momma, Poppa and Grandpa burger but what happened to Grandma eh?

Mrs H’s Grilled Salmon: She bought a half a wild salmon for under a tenner. (We’re on an island famous for salmon and it’s not that cheap!) Stuffed with dill, lemon and garlic butter then grilled on the barbecue for an hour. Absolutely delicious. Also, her homemade guacomole kicks ass.

Bison Burgers: Tastes like beef. Apparently they are now farming Bison for meat. The burgers were DAMN good.

Slate.com commissioned artists to create ‘pulp’ covers for 6 classic novels. See the results here.

Link courtesy boingboing.

I’ve been sorting out my books since I moved. Trying to arrange them in some sort of order… not alphabetical or anything like that because that would just be far too complicated. At the moment they are arranged sort of by topic and \ or genre and \ or author.

Which I guess sounds complicated enough itself, but it makes absolute sense for me. Also there’s a size issue… Big books have to go on tall shelves, while paperbacks and the like can be stacked double thick and 7 high for space saving measures.
Damn, I should’ve taken a photo.

Anyway, I just found another load of books that I’d thought lost forever, but it turned out the Father had stuffed them into a load of old drawers out in the garage to ‘get them out of the way of his golf clubs.’
Hmmm, yes.
This meant a lot of shuffling and sorting and making space on my already filled bookcases during which time I found that I am the owner of TWO copies of Stephen Fry’s ‘The Stars Tennis Balls’ and TWO copies of Transmet 5: Lonely City.

It sort of says something when you find that you have two copies of the same book. When you have two copies of multiple books it’s probably more of a scream along the lines of ‘STOP BUYING BOOKS BITCH!’.

Anyway, I digress.

If anyone wants the spare copy of either of these let me know. This offer only applies to citizens of Dublin who I can meet in a pub cos I’m too cheap to spend money on things like postage etc.

In college I was, what I suppose could be called a goth. I wore black, black and more black. I hung crosses, crucifixes and daggers from my neck and earlobes. Silver glimmered on my fingers. I stomped the streets in my docs, perfecting my ‘fuck off and die’ grimace. I hid in my bedroom listening to dour, strangulated music: The Cure, The Mission and all the Beggars Banquet artists. At night I listened to Dannie Ellwell’s Alternative Bedtime and This Mortal Coil was kept on repeat on my stereo. The only bit of goth-dom I didn’t have down was the make-up. I’m still not a fan of slapping a load of grease onto my face, although with my advancing years I understand the point of it.
And, as with all goths who thought themselves worthy of the name I read ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ by Anne Rice.
Now 15 years later, I look back at that time with a certain fondness. I still wear a lot of black, my right hand is weighed down with silver, and from time to time I throw on an old Dead Can Dance CD. I have however, been unable to re-read the Vampire Chronicles. I tried once, but found the prose suffocating. The tortured teenage angst of an immortal made me hurl the book across the room.
‘Grow Up Lestat.’
I had become used to the cynicism of Buffy and Angel. Teenage Angst was out, Post Modern Irony was in.

Spike: I’m surrounded by idiots. What’s new with you?
Angel: Everything.
Spike: Yeah. Come up against this Slayer yet?
Angel: She’s cute. Not too bright, though. Gave the puppy dog ‘I’m all tortured’ act. Keeps her off my back when I feed!
Spike: People still fall for that Anne Rice routine. What a world!

‘School Hard’ season 2

So when ‘Interview with a Vampire was released in the cinema I went to it grudgingly.
‘Tom Cruise can’t do blonde’ I whined. However, he did. And more surprisingly the Grand Dame herself praised the movie. At the time I thought this was a GOOD THING. That the author should praise a movie meant that they had not bastardised her original tale.
‘It must be ok.’ I thought.
Then I heard about Her Highness’ diatribe on amazon.com to reviewers of her book ‘Blood Canticle’. Which made me wonder why the author of a best selling series of books would get involved in a flame war and I began to question her judgement. (Although in a sort of vague, ‘this is kinda an interesting but possibly not very clever response to her fans’ way.)
Most recently Elton John has written ‘Lestat, The Musical‘ and Queen High Muck is delighted with it. For me, it sounds like something akin to the theatrical conflagration that was LOTR: the Musical. But AR is in all the papers and on the telly gushing about the production. Which, given her previous actions leads me to believe that she’s nothing more than what is known on the internetweb as an ‘Attention Whore.’

I originally set up a blog as an attempt to get myself writing on a semi-regular basis. I thought it would help with completing any one of the three novels I’ve been working on. And to a point it did. I sweated and slaved and currently I’m now in the (unenviable) position of having 2 completed first drafts and a third that’s about half way finished. My next task is to kick myself into gear and start doing some editing work so that they are clean enough to send to publishers \ agents, etc. (Something I am at the moment trying not to think about.)

So my summer project is going to be trying to get these stories into some sort of shape. The first novel is currently standing at about 100k, and the second has about 90k words.

Right about now you are probably wondering what the hell the title of this post has to do with my half finished novels.

Well, knowing what it’s like to have written a book, knowing that the first draft is only about a third of the battle I know it’s going to be a struggle, but it’s one I’m kind of looking forward to. And then I read about people like this idiot and it really pisses me off.

I think I’ve said it before, but it’s always worth saying again.

‘THE INTERNET IS EVIL’

Especially the internet places where I can click a button and a week later a package magically appears in my mailbox. At the moment I’m reading ‘Wicked: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West’ by Gregory Maguire, and it’s absolutely brilliant. So much so that I limit myself to reading 20 pages a day to make it last longer. This morning I was mooching about in amazon having a look at what other books Mr. Maguire has written and before I knew it I’d ordered ‘Son of a Witch’ and ‘Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister’. In addition I also threw in Roman Dirge’s ‘The Cat with the Really Big head’ and two Edward Gorey books: ‘Gashlycrumb Tinies’ and ‘Amphigorey Also’.
I’m not even going to bore you with the length of my wishlist.

Oh My.