Will hands off the news that author Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a type of Alzheimers. He encourages fans to remain optimistic and plans to keep all current commitments.
Writers Union to Deal Directly with Studios
“Faced with the indefinite suspension of negotiations, the union representing striking Hollywood writers told its members Saturday it would try to deal directly with Hollywood studios and production companies, bypassing the umbrella organization that has been representing them,” reports John Rogers of the Associated Press. Specifically, David Letterman’s show plans to make a deal that will put new shows back on the air.
Chronicle of the plague week
Yeah, I’m feeling a little better. Compared to the last couple days. Compared to waterboarding. Compared to sitting through a re-run of Family Affair. I put in another full day at work, but I have all the energy and zest for life of… well, of a middle-aged, depressive Norwegian. Normal, in other words. Normal with a deep desire for sleep, a bad cough, and a voice south of James Earl Jones’.
I like the deep voice. One of the many dreams life has denied me, like the dream of being six feet tall, was the dream of singing bass. I got as far down as baritone, but people usually assume I’m a tenor. I don’t want to be thought of as a tenor. I want to be thought of as a bass—a sea-bottom bass with an extra Y chromosome.
The pleasure is reduced by the fact that only about half of my words actually get out. I alternate between no voice of all and a bass rumble: “(Croak) name is (croak) Walker.”
Now I shall crawl away to the sofa.
A Christmas Tradition
Hugh Duncan has a good podcast on A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Book drawing
Our friend Roy Jacobson, at Writing, Clear and Simple, is offering a copy of the soon-to-be-released book, Elements of Internet Style in a drawing. Roy is a contributor to the book, and it looks like just the thing for you young folks who understand all this interwebs stuff. Go over and take a chance.
Book review: Hot Springs, by Stephen Hunter
Sorry about my silence last night. Wednesday is the day one of my assistants comes in to work at noon, so I took that opportunity to drag myself home and lie down in bed. Later on, for a change of pace, I lay down on the sofa. It seemed such a good program that I chose not to mess it up with blogging or Christmas card writing.
I think I’m a little better today, sort of. Perhaps. I seemed to have more steam to get me through the afternoon, but I think I’ve been spewing toxic aerosol more today than yesterday. Still, I think I’m making my way toward the end of Kubler-Ross’s Seven Stages of the Cold:
1. Tickle.
2. A little sore, but it was probably that hot soup I ate.
3. Oh man, this is serious. What’s in the medicine cabinet?
4. I really feel like staying home from work. Am I sick enough to take a day off?
5. I’m not well enough to go to work, but I’m well enough to drive to the drug store for Sudafed and Ibuprofen. And chocolate, of course (got to keep my strength up).
6. I could go back to work, but I’d be spreading germs to all my co-workers.
7. How come there’s nothing in the fridge?
I read another Swagger book from Stephen Hunter—Hot Springs. It’s a doozy. This is another Earl Swagger story (I think there are actually more Earl books than Bob Lee books, though I’m too lazy to tally them up). It begins in the aftermath of World War II, with Earl getting the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Truman, and then heading home with his new wife. In spite of his hero status, all that awaits him is a job in a sawmill (where, we are informed, everybody loses a hand or an arm eventually). He can’t understand why he’s so miserable, hitting the bottle so hard, but it becomes clear that in his deepest heart he misses the war. The war was his drug. He never expected, or intended, to come home at all.
Then he’s approached by two men. One is an ambitious politician, the newly elected District Attorney in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The other is a legendary former FBI agent, generally considered the greatest pistol shot in the country. They have a job offer for Earl, one more interesting than saw mill work.
The district attorney wants to clean up Hot Springs, which (we learn) is in that time what Las Vegas will be later on. In fact Bugsy Siegel, who will later establish the casino industry in Vegas, is in Hot Springs just at this time, checking out the possibilities.
The plan is to form a flying squad of young men, kind of like Eliot Ness’ Untouchables, but trained the Marine way by Earl Swagger. They will be turned into hard, keen fighting men, experts in all kinds of firearms. Using military tactics, they will shut down vice in the city.
In spite of his wife’s fears, Earl takes the job. What follows is a story of courage and betrayal, and a trip into Earl’s darkest heart.
Because he knows Hot Springs, though he won’t admit it to anyone. He knows Hot Springs because his father, a feared lawman, respected Baptist churchman and brutal, child-beating hypocrite (fortunately, Hunter provides a couple decent Christian characters for balance, so I wasn’t offended), had business in Hot Springs of his own, on a regular basis, before his death.
I hardly need say that in the end Earl Swagger does what has to be done, by thunder, and does it so nobly you just want to build a statue to him.
One of Hunter’s best, I think.
Gifts for Writers
Gifts for writers and would-be writers from the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. Anyone want to contend that The Writer magazine is better than Writer’s Digest or vice versa?
The Word for 2007
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is w00t. You can celebrate with by styling your bod in this.
Great Beethoven Fest
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s five-program Beethoven Festival, which took place over five weekends, was a hit. Two programs sold out.
Lost Mark Twain play heading to Broadway
Lost Mark Twain play is heading to Broadway. A researcher “was not thrilled to find the drawer crammed with Twain plays she had not yet read and didn’t care to.” But when she did read through that drawer, she found Is He Dead?She said:
“He had even managed, and this was not necessarily his strong suit, a plot, with memorable characters and hilarious scenes. I thought it held great promise.” She wasn’t the only one. In a letter dated Feb. 5, 1898, Twain wrote that his wife found the new comedy “very bully.”
The play had never been performed. Why?
The explanation left politely unspoken in rejections he received was that the play as it stood was lumpy and only intermittently funny.
“It has a great idea,” [playwright David Ives] allowed. “In movie terms, La Boheme meets Tootsie. But even at first reading I thought it really does need help. The construction is like a shack that is not very well buttressed; at the slightest touch, pieces of it would fall off.”