Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Food and Flies and Opera Torsos

Warning: If you find yourself here via a google search for such things as TV shows or films, recipes or cities, this blog has some facts. However, this blog is one author’s very twisted musing on many weird things. It is sometimes graphic in content. If you read on, don’t write to yell at me.


It’s been an odd week. Part of the oddness is my own distraction from film related things that have come up recently. Anything related to film has a ‘you must act now or the opportunity will be lost.’ Typically, I’d drop everything to follow-up on whatever request was being made. This time, I didn’t. The projects are unrelated to the Gunsligner, so they aren’t that urgent. Besides, the e-book for A Soldier’s Fate has to go online this week and there are some pipeline issues that have cropped up with the latest Demonspawn novel. Thus, I must wear the writer/publisher hats. Still the urgent and tense phone and e-mail messages keep coming. Oy!

Month of Fun

It continues at a fine clip. Surprisingly (or maybe not), most of the fun I seek involves food. I made a lovely mushroom soup from the Anthony Bourdain cookbook. Today, I’ll make an insanely decadent chocolate cake a la Ina Garten and a pasta dish that involves lobster. And the fun will be in the making – and in the eating. Aside from wanting to make these dishes, it would be folly to try to go to dinner on Mother’s Day. And I can still get proofing done while various dishes are doing their things. And Jon made sure I have my favorite champagne to help things along. I’m holding off on that until the blog is finished. During the week, I’ve enjoyed re-connecting with friends from past shoots and finding a cooking class in Paris that I can afford during my trip. I was so excited to find that the company we’re renting the apartment from is linked to a cooking school in the neighborhood and with a discount. This was exciting and helped a little the intense longing that dozens of Cannes Market screening invites I’ve been getting in my e-mail. It only helps a little. However, the Month of Fun is a lot of fun. And thanks for all the lovely birthday wishes.


Lording over Flies

I don’t have a lot to do for The Gunslinger until we formally start pre-production in a week or so. Jon is compressing the trailer or oppressing the trailer. I have no clue. He’s making it fit in the myspace.com format. However, I did find a solution to the biting flies this week which makes me very pleased with myself. I don’t like the notion of ‘that’s just the way it is.’ I can’t have my lovely actors eaten alive. Or lovely me, for that matter. Insect bites can’t be good for concentration on a role. I won’t know what can be done about the heat until we’ve visited the location. I’ve got some plans forming though. We saw a portable rig that worked well in the very hot and humid New Jersey warehouse where Oz was shot. It made the building very comfortable while outside was like a horrible swamp. Next up are sunscreens. All that lovely skin must be protected. Meanwhile, I have to find out exactly what Travis has been shaving. Don’t ask.

Mamma Mia

To all of those who qualify, Happy Mother’s Day. I admire Moms a great deal. I just couldn’t believe how they can handle kids, a husband, and often, a job. My Mother worked full time with only a two week vacation each year (France has six weeks vacation. And we call ourselves civilized hear). And the vacation had to be spent either in the heat of a Georgia summer with her in-laws or in Atlantic City in a rental apartment where she still had to cook. In either case, she was spending it with the two lunatic children who couldn’t stand to be in the backseat of a car together for more than ten minutes. Once I started working full time after college, I took my Mom on real vacations that involved a lot of room service. On a side note, after spending an hour with my darling little nephew in my car at age five, I took my Dad to dinner and thanked him for not leaving my brother and I along I-95 during those trips to Georgia. His very dry reply was that he was a cop and we knew his name. But back to Moms. They are all to be commended. I have trouble getting my act together with just Jon and me. I don’t think I can fit in our chores, the proofing and a movie today. Pathetic. I marvel at how My Mother held it together. And my Ma-in Law had five kids, God bless her. I salute her for never leaving the lot of them in the woods during the family camping vacations. And she still likes her kids. Amazing!

High Culture and Low

This week, CSI: Vegas was delightful. It was written by some of the staff writers from the comedy Two and a Half Men while CSI writers wrote that show’s episode this week. They weren’t inter-related, but they were highly amusing. CSI managed to skewer how sitcoms are made and the people who make them while Two and a Half Men lovingly but thoroughly spoofed everything about CSI. It was brilliant as well as keenly accurate. Meanwhile, CSI: Miami drifts further into melodramatic goofiness. One of their regulars has called it quits. I can’t say I blame her. Khandi Alexander is a critically who was given very little to do on the show. I just wish her departure had been less dopey. The upcoming episode with Garett Maggart looks even more annoying. It seems that even if you’re being held at gunpoint while managing to get the bad guys busted, Internal Affairs can still bust a cop who tampers with evidence. The justice system in CSI: Miami doesn’t seem to like it’s own police officers. It allows murder suspects to sue cops or CSIs for doing their jobs and win said suits. They almost never back their own cops if something gets remotely sticky. I don’t see why this system is worth upholding. But I’ll save the rest of the rant for next week. On the high culture side, there was Nathan Gunn’s appearance on The Colbert Report. He was there to promote opera performances that are being shown in certain movie theaters. I’m not sure what else he said, I was fixated on this photo. I’m not an opera fan, but I think I can support watching Mr. Gunn’s performances.

Gotta go bake and proofread and imbibe vast amounts of champagne.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Soldiers Fate online this week you say!!!!! THAT is a great Mother's Day Present to us.

I will be checking everywhere to be sure to snag a copy,

Congratulations.
Yvonne