==pla|\|ing lakes==

Saturday, August 23, 2003

"Mark Haddon pulls a seemingly impossible stunt: He's written a wrenching, ebullient, and wonderfully funny novel narrated by a character who can't express, or comprehend, emotion."

Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is getting lustrous reviews

I'm 13th in line at my library for it, and it looks to be one of the books of the year.

You can read an excerpt here.

8:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, August 22, 2003

New film Thirteen looks real

When Tracy meets the beautiful and popular Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed, co-writer of the screenplay with Hardwicke), her world explodes in a rush towards premature adulthood that almost ruins her life. Both girls become victims of the media-fueled expectations of what it is to be cool, sexy and grown up: Body piercing, self-mutilation, petty crimes, casual sex and drug abuse are these girls' rights of passage as they careen towards the goal of being ultra-popular and totally hip.

Parent figures played by Holly Hunter and Jeremy Sisto.

8:55 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, August 21, 2003

You can win a copy of Trying Neaira (see post below) by recommending it to a friend

11:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Outlasting doctor's expectations, Warren Zevon completes a last album and a VH-1 doc

Zevon, who titled one best-of compilation "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and put a picture of a skeleton smoking a pipe on another, talks on VH1 about how he's always been interested in writing about death and dying. Circumstances gave him a perspective few, if any, active artists have shared.

His new music is poignant and emotionally direct. "Keep Me in Your Heart," the first song written after his diagnosis, is the one to address Zevon's condition most directly, beginning the lyric: "Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath."

After playing on the song, veteran session drummer Jim Keltner told Calderon it was only the second time he'd been moved to tears in a recording session. The first one was on Dylan's original version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."

Which -- natch -- Zevon covers as well.

11:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, August 18, 2003

I think we're back up, though my other site isn't working (it's accesssible now at least)

Blackout knocked out Blog Studio and my blogs are on the same server, in North Jersey.

Hopefully we're back up here anyway.

12:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()