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Straw Men and Others
Sep. 15th, 2005 10:55 amI think I’m maybe working myself too hard, mainly because I keep getting into a state of exhaustion/tension so intense I become vaguely nauseous. Yeah…that really doesn’t sound good, does it? Oh well.;)
Finished the one-sheet for our Vancouver Year Zero pitch, and it really clarifies a lot of plot/characterization issues; this could be a great new script I see recombining in front of my tired, tired eyes. ‘Mail from my webmistress informs me that the new site may be coming together at last (yay!), which means I’ll have to start thinking about how best to present myself pretty soon (ugh); the semester is nearing its end as well, which is pretty much fine with me. Not sure if I already mentioned that I finally got my new contract and schedule—they’d sent it to my place and had it returned as "unknown at this address", which crazy, because it was addressed right. Anyhow, it has me working all day Monday and all day Friday: Fine in itself, but not when your day starts at 8:00 AM and doesn’t include a lunch-hour. I’ve spoken to John about getting it adjusted.
In other news, Melissa O’Neill is officially Canadian Idol #3 (whoo hoo!), and The Jacket, which so many of my former peers shit on from such a great height, turns out to be (surprise!) really, really good: Smart and human, entropic and circular, yet eventually uplifting. I can see why Caitlin R. Kiernan liked it so much, too—all the characters are damaged in ways I can see her as having generated, let alone being fascinated by. Was the main problem here really the all-too-predictable fact that it had style as well as substance, as though the one must always necessarily preclude the other? If so, Maybury’s right: North America is getting amazingly Puritanical and conservative on a cultural scale (as well as every other), following a rapidly ever-more indefensible bell-curve. Still, whatever, I guess.
Other stuff: Read Michael Marshall’s finale to the Straw Men trilogy, Blood of Angels, and was well-satisfied even though little ended up "resolved". I like the fact that with each new book, he’s managed to shoehorn steadily crazier conspiracy theories about the Straw Men/their origins/their goals, etc., yet never make me lose faith in the essential veracity of his premise: A secret separate race of people born without the genetic component for identification with others, rich and strange and shameless, whose blood-magick rituals have infected society in a shadowy way that explains serial killer behavior as just a degraded reflection of Straw Men "culture". It’s a bit like The Descent, in that one of the basic questions is whether alienness equals evil…you could argue convincingly that the Straw Men are as horrified/repulsed by us as we are by them, albeit in a far lower-key way, which certainly reminds me of H. Hadalis vs. H. Sapiens. And now I want to go back and read the first two again, which should always be an organic biproduct of the trilogy-end experience: Good work, Michael.;))
Steve taped The Grid last night, so there’s that to look forward to. Meanwhile, Prison Break continues to rock, and Wentworth Miller—who also pops up in the ads for Ghost Whisperer, uccch—continues to be hot like burning. And Lost starts ip again next week! A bumper TV year, though aren’t they all (when you’re a hopeless couch potato like me)?
So in conclusion, there’s a meme going ‘round re "Five Fandoms I Would Like to Write In", "Five Fandoms I Would Like to Write More In," "Five Pairings I Would Like to Write More of", "Five Stories I Would Like Other People to Write", etc…and I can’t invest all too much in that, frankly, for fear of severe disappointment. But will say that the final category, "Stories I haven't started that are still rattling around in my head", reminds me of that post-Something story I never even got around to making notes for, in which Holly Beecher photographs Jewel Schillinger for the Contact Visits Crew, and Jewel starts sort of stalking her. Like:
"We should be friends."
"You know how inappropriate that would be, right?"
"How? I don’t even know you; you don’t know me, either. You don’t know anything about me."
"Well…I know your family."
"Uh huh. (Pause) That’s what Grossvater said you’d say."
And then Holly goes home and discusses it with Beecher, and Beecher is like: "I understand you want to trust her; Gary probably would, too. Which should tell you something." And she’s like: "Man, you really are such a fucking ASSHOLE." Just all that, you know, regular Beecher Karmic fallout shit; all the Greatest Hits. (Which may well explain why I haven’t written it yet, and probably never will.)
Oh yeah, and also, it finally turns out Vern has Alzheimer’s. Just ‘cause.
Finished the one-sheet for our Vancouver Year Zero pitch, and it really clarifies a lot of plot/characterization issues; this could be a great new script I see recombining in front of my tired, tired eyes. ‘Mail from my webmistress informs me that the new site may be coming together at last (yay!), which means I’ll have to start thinking about how best to present myself pretty soon (ugh); the semester is nearing its end as well, which is pretty much fine with me. Not sure if I already mentioned that I finally got my new contract and schedule—they’d sent it to my place and had it returned as "unknown at this address", which crazy, because it was addressed right. Anyhow, it has me working all day Monday and all day Friday: Fine in itself, but not when your day starts at 8:00 AM and doesn’t include a lunch-hour. I’ve spoken to John about getting it adjusted.
In other news, Melissa O’Neill is officially Canadian Idol #3 (whoo hoo!), and The Jacket, which so many of my former peers shit on from such a great height, turns out to be (surprise!) really, really good: Smart and human, entropic and circular, yet eventually uplifting. I can see why Caitlin R. Kiernan liked it so much, too—all the characters are damaged in ways I can see her as having generated, let alone being fascinated by. Was the main problem here really the all-too-predictable fact that it had style as well as substance, as though the one must always necessarily preclude the other? If so, Maybury’s right: North America is getting amazingly Puritanical and conservative on a cultural scale (as well as every other), following a rapidly ever-more indefensible bell-curve. Still, whatever, I guess.
Other stuff: Read Michael Marshall’s finale to the Straw Men trilogy, Blood of Angels, and was well-satisfied even though little ended up "resolved". I like the fact that with each new book, he’s managed to shoehorn steadily crazier conspiracy theories about the Straw Men/their origins/their goals, etc., yet never make me lose faith in the essential veracity of his premise: A secret separate race of people born without the genetic component for identification with others, rich and strange and shameless, whose blood-magick rituals have infected society in a shadowy way that explains serial killer behavior as just a degraded reflection of Straw Men "culture". It’s a bit like The Descent, in that one of the basic questions is whether alienness equals evil…you could argue convincingly that the Straw Men are as horrified/repulsed by us as we are by them, albeit in a far lower-key way, which certainly reminds me of H. Hadalis vs. H. Sapiens. And now I want to go back and read the first two again, which should always be an organic biproduct of the trilogy-end experience: Good work, Michael.;))
Steve taped The Grid last night, so there’s that to look forward to. Meanwhile, Prison Break continues to rock, and Wentworth Miller—who also pops up in the ads for Ghost Whisperer, uccch—continues to be hot like burning. And Lost starts ip again next week! A bumper TV year, though aren’t they all (when you’re a hopeless couch potato like me)?
So in conclusion, there’s a meme going ‘round re "Five Fandoms I Would Like to Write In", "Five Fandoms I Would Like to Write More In," "Five Pairings I Would Like to Write More of", "Five Stories I Would Like Other People to Write", etc…and I can’t invest all too much in that, frankly, for fear of severe disappointment. But will say that the final category, "Stories I haven't started that are still rattling around in my head", reminds me of that post-Something story I never even got around to making notes for, in which Holly Beecher photographs Jewel Schillinger for the Contact Visits Crew, and Jewel starts sort of stalking her. Like:
"We should be friends."
"You know how inappropriate that would be, right?"
"How? I don’t even know you; you don’t know me, either. You don’t know anything about me."
"Well…I know your family."
"Uh huh. (Pause) That’s what Grossvater said you’d say."
And then Holly goes home and discusses it with Beecher, and Beecher is like: "I understand you want to trust her; Gary probably would, too. Which should tell you something." And she’s like: "Man, you really are such a fucking ASSHOLE." Just all that, you know, regular Beecher Karmic fallout shit; all the Greatest Hits. (Which may well explain why I haven’t written it yet, and probably never will.)
Oh yeah, and also, it finally turns out Vern has Alzheimer’s. Just ‘cause.
