Well, drat. The bottles I bought, tiny test tubes and little handblown amphorae, turn out to not have working stoppers or screwtops, and are moreover unfinished at the ends, which means sharp glass rims. I had hoped to make perfume bottle pendants, but no joy with these.

Hmpf.

Well, all right: steampunk reliquaries it is, then.

Lynn Redgrave, alone on a stage, telling the story of her mother's mother woven in with scenes from her own remarkable life, with meditations on mortality and family and sex and love. She's a very smart woman, a very good writer, an excellent and subtle reader, with a fine grasp of the differences between a rural Devon accent and an upper-class Home Counties one from the early 20th Century. She's a real professional, and it was a pleasure to hear her work and I'm very glad we went.

But.

I don't adore one-person shows.

We've seen a bunch of them--mostly autobiographical, mostly written by the actor, mostly at least clever if not as polished and accomplished as Miss Redgrave, mostly by women with interesting lives and family histories. I was uniformly interested in the subjects and the women, and uniformly slightly disappointed by the performances. I always thought it was because the pacing was off (a problem endemic to one-person shows, even the excellent A Boy and His Soul), or the actor wasn't quite up to the challenge of holding our interest for 80 minutes. But Thursday night, I pretty much decided that one-person shows don't deliver, for me, on what I go to the theatre for, which is dramatic interaction. Dramatic things happen in a monologue, sure, but there's less of a sense of conflict, less of a sense of drama when there's only one actor physically present, one voice in my ear. For me, anyway.

That said, Miss Redgrave's grandmother sounds like an unpleasant enough piece of work, a snobbish, disappointed, bitter woman who endured her husband, resented her children, loved no-one but her youngest son, who was killed in WWII. It is very much to Miss Redgrave's credit that she made this prickly and difficult character human and bearable for 80 minutes. And I'm very glad to have been able to watch her do it, with that strong, mobile face and that warm, flexible voice. But I can't say that I was stirred to the roots or moved enough not to notice that the ac was blowing down the back of my neck and the points where the pacing dragged.

MTV's new show Jersey Shore is...I'm fascinated in a horrible stereotype train wreck way. Is anyone else watching this mess?

( Cut to spare the uninterested )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Been a busy day here, wherein I checked off the last of my Christmas list and shipped everything back east. Wow. All that fit into one sentence. Funny, it felt pretty epic at the time.

The only true point of hilarity came when I was inside [:: store redacted ::] purchasing [:: item redacted ::] from a clerk who had clearly been a bit bored for awhile — because he had a copy of The Stranger sitting open beside the cash register. I interrupted his reading, handed him my debit card and my ID, and he did an honest-to-God doubletake. He said, “That’s you, isn’t it?” and he pointed down at the paper … where in fact, the magazine was open to a notice regarding my event on Tuesday (7:00 p.m.) at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Sometimes it’s funny having such a distinctive name.

So let this holiday miracle of synchronicity serve as your reminder. Come on out Tuesday night! I’d love to see you there.

(And in other news, just one more hasty heads up for the Steampunk Exhibition Ball tomorrow night, then I swear to God I’ll shut up about it.)

Anyway, while we’re on the subject of stuff I did and places I’ll go, click here for the Culture Wars podcast — for I digitally stopped by yesterday morning and we talked steampunk, science fiction, apocalyptic prescriptions and more. And yes, of course we talked about Boneshaker too.

So that’s pretty much everything that’s new and shiny for now. I’ll probably be offline most of the weekend as I officially have editorial instructions in hand for two projects, and looming editorial instructions on a third. Never mind how I’m cleaning up Bloodshot (which has to go down by the 12th) in order to send it off to agent and editor. Ah, well. Happy holidays, all! Whichever ones you celebrate.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/flight297.asp

Last night's treat was Superior Donuts, a new play by Tracy Letts, who wrote last year's run-away hit, August: Osage County--which I loved, loved, loved.

Letts is an old-fashioned playwright. His plays (these two, anyway) have the stately inevitability of Greek tragedy. Once the situation's been set up, the denouement is more or less expected. The wonder and suspense is in how it unfolds.

The cast list pretty much implies the plot. There's Arthur, a middle-aged guy (who looks extremely familiar to anyone who hangs around, as we do, with old folkies and SF fans and artisans) who runs the uptown Chicago donut shop his immigrant Polish father founded 60 years back. As far as the play is concerned, his only customers are a crazy lady who divides her time between AA meetings and the local bar, two cops, and the owner of the Russian DVD store next door, who wants to buy his donut shop and expand. The other characters are Franco, a young black guy who has dropped out of school to earn money to pay the gambling debt he owes to the local tough bookie, the bookie, his enforcer, and the Russian's laconic cousin Kiril.

So, yeah. Franco talks Arthur into hiring him, mops floors, learns to make donuts, points out that the lady cop has a thing for him, brings him out of the self-imposed isolation begun when he fled the draft in 1968 and smoked pot in Vancouver while his friends fought and were killed in Vietnam. And yeah, he runs afoul of the bookie and Arthur bails him out and there's a heartwarming scene at the end where it's clear that they've actually saved each other.

But it's a lot more complicated than that. This is a play about generations, about how weird the 2000's are for children of the 60's, how your past can color your present even when you don't think you even have anything to get over, how art can keep you sane--whether it's writing novels or going to Star Trek conventions. It's about class and race and being an immigrant and being a native. And this production is extremely well acted.

So I guess I loved, loved, loved this one, too.

Anyone have a recommended place in the Minneapolis (or immediate suburbs) to buy a natural Christmas tree?

I've taken le plunge. The round French oven, 7.25 qt, in Kiwi. I like the pale green--it reminds me of young herbs or fresh celery.

Merry Christmas to me.

It's a cold evening. I've built the first fire of the winter, and am waiting for the Blackhawks game to start.

Just to share, there's a very interesting article here. I have no real comment to add--the article speaks for itself--except to say that I've only read the first book and haven't seen any of the movies. I enjoyed the first three hundred pages and was bored after that, and I think my boredom had a lot to do with my age (which is too old to buy this stuff). I did take Meyer's humor to be intentional, not unintential as the article says, which does give the writing a little more respect in my mind, as hackneyed as it is.

(I do think the guy who plays Edward Cullen in the movie looks like he's about to throw up in most of the clips I've seen. I guess I'm too old for his stuff too.)

I've made the jump to Virtual Reality! Our very own Ray Vukcevich (author of "The Two of Me") has set up a very cool reading for Interfictions 2 in Second Life . Five authors (including F. Brett Cox, whose "Nylon Seam" can be found at the Interfictions Annex) will be reading, and I'll be answering questions and trying not to walk into walls.

Here's the salient information

Interfictions 2 Second Life Salon: Dec. 7th, 6pm PDT

Please join us for this special event devoted to interstitial writing and socializing with the Interfictions 2 authors. The Interfictions 2 Second Life Salon will be held in the Lacamas Reading Hall on Monday, December 7, 2009, starting at 6:00 pm Pacific (9:00 pm Eastern).

Second Life is the perfect location for the IAF to bring together boundary-crossing artists, writers, musicians, and creators of interstitial art.

The event kicks off with an introduction by IAF co-founder & Interfictions series editor Delia Sherman, followed by micro readings by our five authors, a Q&A session with the audience, and an hour of mixing and mingling for the audience and the panelists.

Our panelists will include:

* Delia Sherman (co-editor) with IF2 short story authors:
* F. Brett Cox (Nylon Seam: Read it Online at IAF Annex)
* Cecil Castellucci (The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory)
* Carlos Hernandez (The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria)
* Will Ludwigsen (Remembrance is Something Like a House)
* Ray Vukcevich (The Two of Me)
* Tammy Domike (host, Jackson Street Books)

To join us at the IF2 Second Life Salon, just sign up for an avatar at www.secondlife.com (if you don’t already have one) and then click on the teleportation URL listed below. We look forward to seeing you there!

I'm trying to convince p_dilla that we need to take a family photo with everyone wearing this hoodie. He is resisting my plans for ghoulish Xmas pictures because he is a big meanie. In other news I went shopping today for new interview slacks and realized midway through the process that I didn't have the emotional fortitude for the process. This year's slacks are not cut for curves bb. It didn't help that none of them even looked good on the hanger, never mind on my ass. Tonight's dinner is Harold's Chicken and strawberry soda because it's cold, I'm lazy, and we're living up to a stereotype. Or you know, it tastes good. Separately, can someone explain what the hell is going on with conservatives holding office and saying incredibly stupid shit? Is there a common sense destroying substance being slipped in their food?

ETA: Blame fightingwords for sharing.

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

This LJ community, frankly, makes me uncomfortable: bookfails.

Look, I get it. Sometimes books suck. But although I've read my share of bad books myself, and I find the idea of the community somewhat fascinating, I won't be friending it.

I've written books. I've poured everything I had into writing them, and I agonized over them, and I cried while writing them, and yes, I've heard praise for them, but I've also gotten, through back channels, that there are at least one or two people out there that think that one or the other of my books is nothing but a piece of shit.

I just can't enjoy a community that involves dumping all over the book that someone spent sweat, blood, and a signicant chunk of his or her life to write. Not when I know all the work that's involved. Call me a coward, I guess. I point it out, if anyone's interested. But I won't be signing up myself.

After weeks of behaving as though breast milk is the infant analogue for cashew chicken, suddenly, today, Hotspur is only contented when at the breast.

Did our date with other babies convince her that this is what the cool kids do? Is this an unsuspected effect of her two-month shots? Has her little brain been warped by our excursion to Whole Foods such that she's gone food snob on me? Did I hold her too close to that copy of Saveur? Has she secretly been reading Mothering?!?

I really don't like the Twilight series, mostly on feminist principles. Still, this article has a valid point. Interestingly, Rowling's case is examined in comparison. Reminds me of the post I wrote about Rowling's detractors, called "And Now Let the Sneering Begin."

Thoughts?

Tea today: linden chamomile
Teacup today: quityerbitchinandwrite

Just finally settling down to get some work done on "The Unicorn Evils," after yoga, weights, grocery shopping, eating something before I fell over, putting the groceries away, and putting all the bones in the freezer into stock pots to become stock so I had room to put away the frozen veggies.

Also, the bread is in the loaf pan. I hope it rises sufficiently to be baked tonight or tomorrow, because I want to eat it. With butter and harissa and sardines, because--god knows why--I am craving sardines lately. And other fish. And fresh orange-carrot juice. And harissa. Maybe I need vitamins and fish oil, to counteract the looming lockdown of winter.

I'm surprisingly pleased with the way TUE is shaping up so far. It's giving me lots of good, juicy ideas and character stuff, and it's only going to be better once Emma gets her teeth into it.

Yay for work we love!

The Complaint Department seems to be adapting to her new pill regimen pretty well so far. At least, no obvious personality change, but she does seem calmer when something mildly stressful happens, like being picked up by her monkey or a Kjitten! Attack! (Which we have with appalling regularity around here.)

(One diazepam for the cat; one for me... nah, they'd catch on to that.)

To-do list shrinking slowly.

What is your favorite big monster movie?

Mine is easy, the original King Kong. Some of the acting is questionable (Kong, an animated character, may be a better actor than Bruce Cabot) but the story holds up, and there has never been a sexier female lead in a monster movie than Fay Wray.

As more and more broads crawl out of the woodwork to announce a history (however brief) of being one of Tiger Wood's walking masturbatory devices I find myself trying to figure out why they're proud of it. I mean, some dude with no morals used you with your full consent. Okay. This is usually one of those stupid relationships you shake your head at later, not something you brag about to coworkers. Maybe this is just my gold digger relatives talking, but if he wasn't paying your bills and you were still going to work everyday? You weren't even a mistress, you were just a bust down. That's not a good look. In other news I'm pondering the nature of demons for this other story idea (not that I'm going to give into my muse and add it to the writing rotation or anything) and I'm leaning toward the demons having a range of moral structures since they're left with the world after God leaves. There'd be good demons (well sort of) and bad demons. Is this a good idea, bad idea, or utter fucking insanity?

Driving in Lebanon is now at the printer's and will be ready by mid-January! The finished products is 21x13 cm and 112 pages printed in 2 Pantone colors. It is in 3 languages with a language feature that, as far as I know, is an all-time first: to read it in Arabic, simply turn it upside-down. The images read exactly the same way in a right-to left reading :)

The book will be $8 and shipping for one copy is also $8, so to pre-order yours please paypal $16 (USD) to the following address: . For 2 copies please send $28.

The advantage or pre-ordering is that in case I find out, when the book is out, that it's heavier than I expected, you'll have gotten a good shipping deal XD Lebanon residents obviously don't need to pre-order, I will post the date and place of the official launch soon!