BitchBuzz: Women Beware Women

My latest column for BitchBuzz is another theatre review:

"Men buy their slaves, but women buy their masters." – Isabella

Shakespeare gets all the love when it comes to Elizabethan theatre, but that's because people tend to forget that the stage was the television of its time, cheap and plentiful, aiming only to get bums on benches and crowds in the yard. They were up against bear baiting and the groundlings cried for more jokes and more violence. One of the crowd pleasers getting revived of late is Thomas Middleton.

Women Beware Women is a great example of Middleton's work. Like last years' The Revenger's Tragedy, the National Theatre gives Middleton an enthusiastic outing that makes the most of his brutal phantasmagoria. Marianne Elliott directs the production with a kind of gleeful decadence (why is it that there are more women directors at the NT than on the whole of Broadway?).

Loosely based on some of the Medici family goings-on, the plot is a bit complicated: trying to summarize it to a friend, I quickly saw his eyes glaze over...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ. I ought to have an additional piece up very soon as I attended another launch for BB yesterday with celebrities both planned and unexpected. All to be revealed soon, but now I need some more tea.

Review: After the Dance + NT backstage tour

I love the NT! What could it be? Their wide variety of programming? Plays old and new? More female directors in this single building than on the whole of Broadway? So many reasons!

I found yet another reason when I took their backstage tour. Yes, I am so enamoured of theatre life that it was bound to be fun. Plus I got previews of the two productions I was going to see this week. Although it was the dinner break for most of the crew, there were a few people around including some of the actors warming up.

First stop was the Olivier, their largest theatre. The set for Women Beware Women was on stage and they were doing the sound check for the evening's performance. Our guide explained how in addition to turning the set around, the giant cylinder can also bring up an entire set from below while taking another down in a sort of corkscrew movement. There are over a thousand lights, some fixed, some programmable, and sight lines are fixed at 118° which matches the sight lines of the human eye, the slope of the seats making sure no one ever blocks your view (though I find it does make me knees a little wobbly looking down).

The Lyttleton is a more traditional theatre, but the proscenium can rise and lower and the sides as well, so it can be widescreen or not.  The set for After the Dance was up and a few tech people were testing things out, as it's still in previews. We went back stage and there were still sets for The Habit of Art, Alan Bennett's latest play, which I'd seen via simulcast just before I left for London. Everything was modular so it could be moved in and out easily. There are up to three plays rotating on all three stages at any given time -- amazing! We went around directly behind the stage where the set for The White Guard sits, wonderfully evoking turn of the century Russia in the winter -- there's even a real spruce for the Christmas tree.  The entire set rolls forward and then gets lowered onto the stage. Quite ingenious.

In the tiny Cottesloe, actors were warming up on stage, but our guide said they were all right with our trooping in to take a peek. I haven't been to a production in this little black box theatre, so I'm looking forward to doing so soon. Not only can the stage be reconfigured, but the seats as well. Behind the scenes, we saw the boxes of the horses from War Horse packed to be shipped to Broadway, and a giant portrait of Olivier hangs in the narrow but very long corridor between all the workshops. Among the props were things like a bloodied head and a few turtles. In the huge paintshop the floor for Moira Buffini's new play, Welcome to Thebes, were newly painted and partially assembled. The huge backdrop painted like a grey sky hung across the walls. Amazing that there's that much space.

After the tour, it was time for After the Dance and its decadence between the wars, when the sparkle of the Bright Young Things has lost most of its lustre. Thea Sharrock directs a stellar cast in Rattigan's play which allow individuals to emerge from the types and shifts our sympathies as layers are gradually revealed, even in people steadfastly determined to have only a shiny surface. Hildegard Bechtler's set effortlessly reproduces sumptuous but tasteful wealth.

We're introduced to the Scott-Fowler home by the absence of its central figure, David (Benedict Cumberbatch), who's sleeping off the effects of yet another of the endless parties. His cousin, Peter (John Heffernan), a poor relation who's paid to be a secretary for the history he's supposedly writing. His disapproval of his cousin's life comes out in conversation with John Reid, a sort of professional hanger-on played by the always wonderful Adrian Scarborough. David's wife Joan (Nancy Carroll), tries to dismiss Peter's concerns, but when Peter's fiancée, Helen (Faye Castelow) arrives with her doctor brother, it soon becomes clear that David is far worse off than a mere hangover -- and that Helen is completely smitten with him.

It's wonderful to see the ways that various characters figure it out. David is nearly the last, but finds himself drawn to the very different version of himself that Helen is briskly determined to make. Peter is of course the very last, in his youthful assumptions of clear cut answers, it simply doesn't fit. The most moving performance comes from Carroll's embodiment of Joan, who works so hard to be the superficial party girl that she finds it too difficult -- until it's too late -- to show how much she really feels. The most affecting character ends up being Scarborough's Reid, who spends most of the play being a terrible sort of scrounger and lout, yet digs out some of the most heartfelt lines by the end.

The tense final scene would have played a lot better if there were not a veritable chorus of coughing during it. Why do people save up their hacking and harrumphing for the theatre?!

Publications: "Touched by an Angel" & 21st Century Gothic

I just received a copy of the cover of the new collection 21st Century Gothic which features my essay on Graham Joyce's [AKA William Heaney's] Memoirs of a Master Forger. It was one of those projects that comes out of the blue and then -- typical for me anyway -- I forget all about it and am pleasantly surprised to be reminded again. I had actually overlooked the deadline in the midst of all the tenure folderol and was tempted to beg off the project, but Danel convinced me to give it a go and I have to say I'm very glad I did. I look forward to reading the rest of the collection.

Speaking of forgetting: most of you know how I hate to let anything go to waste, writing-wise. Ages ago (yes, years) I wrote a gruesomely funny little short story called "Touched by an Angel" that I had accepted for publication and then promptly forgot. Yes, the vintage is clear from the title; I'm hoping somewhere the show is still living on in syndication. Anyhoo, eventually I realised that it had not appeared, so I looked into it and found that the magazine had folded, so off it went elsewhere.

Lather, rinse, repeat. That's the nature of publishing. Almost everything can find a home eventually, I suppose. You just have to find the editor who wants it. It's always a tricky thing for me as I have an annoying habit of mixing together things that don't belong together according to conventional wisdom. So at last "Touched by an Angel" appears in Kalkion, an on-line publication. Do drop by and read it or at least tweet or Facebook it (even if you don't read it, it helps). If you like funny and gruesome, you'll enjoy it.

I need to write up the WONDERFUL backstage tour I had of the National Theatre and the production of Terence Rattigan's After the Dance I saw there afterward, but I have a matinée of Women Beware Women there this afternoon, so it will probably have to wait. I did finally get to the British Library to renew my card and do a little work, so more of that likely to happen as well -- it's not all idleness!

Review: The Real Thing

Wednesday I caught The Old Vic production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, as I mentioned in a recent post.  Most of you know how I am enamoured of Stoppard's work and I had heard good things about this production. The bar was set high by the most recent production of his Arcadia, which was one of the most compelling productions I have seen despite an unbelievably hot theatre.

The cast included the wonderful Toby Stephens, Hattie Morahan, Fenella Woolgar and Barnaby Kay.  It's a surprisingly affectionate look at love, something I suppose most people don't associate with Stoppard. It does begin with a little bit of a trick that you do associate with him: the opening scene -- you begin to realise during the one that follows it -- is part of a play within a play, written by Henry (Stephens) and acted by his wife (Woolgar) and friend (Kay), whose girlfriend, we come to find, has begun falling for Henry.

Much of the play circles around Henry and Annie as they deal with happiness and their own insecurities. Henry wants to write a play for Annie, but finds that happiness is not very inspiring for good writing, that love and lust lead only to banalities and clichés.  Annie gets upset because Henry fails to be jealous of a love scene she has with an attractive co-star. Like all couples, they had divergent tastes that can't necessarily be reconciled. Annie tries to get Henry to appreciate classical music, but he's stuck on vintage pop songs (which punctuate many of the scene changes) which he finds the best way to express those 'banal' feelings of love.

The excellent cast inhabit their roles with real verve. Stephens manages to give Henry a down-to-earth friendliness that balances the sometimes knowing speeches about writing and the power of words that often infuriate Annie when she's trying to convince him of the importance of her cause celébre 'political prisoner's' play.  The famous 'cricket bat' speech -- where Henry compares good writing to the crafting of a bat in contrast to a similarly shaped bit of wood -- can easily sound pedantic, but Stephens gives it a kind of eager enthusiasm that makes it seem entirely inspired by a spur of the moment thought.

Morahan's Annie has a harder job because she has to be a bit histrionic at times, very much an actor, and occasionally her gestures seemed a bit too controlled for effect, but then again, it fits the role. With the slight hoarseness in her voice and some of the mannerism, I couldn't help seeing her as Felicity Kendal which was likely just my knowing the history of the playwright.  The wonderful Woolgar did so much with the largely thankless task of the discarded spouse, infusing   with such wit and intelligence that you couldn't help but wonder why Henry would have left her for the more emotional Annie, but the heart is an unpredictable little muscle.

Stoppard seems almost apologetic dealing with 'the real thing' here; it gives Henry and the play a kind of charming awkwardness, but it also offers a compelling meditation on the ways we learn to deal with the ebb and flow of love and the hunger to find it that makes us step out into the darkness time and again with a leap of faith -- and the hope that the next time it will be real.  As the strains of "Daydream Believer" ring out, you can't help but smile and wish the best for Henry and Annie.

Some wandering today along the Thames and back to the Tate Modern: on Waterloo Bridge I happened to run into Nigel Planer, who looked very good. I had just missed my bus and it began to rain.  A cooler day than the last couple -- hurrah!

Pelzmantel: Cover Complete

Interviewed at UnBound / BitchBuzz

The wonderful Adele over at the fabulous book review (and more) blog, UnBound has interviewed me and wormed many secrets out of me :-) and that's me laughing at the noodle restaurant the week before. It was such a pleasure getting to know in real life someone I had got to know over the 'net. I love the internet! So many friends and opportunities I would not have had but for it.

Yesterday I dawdled along the Thames near Millbank mudlarking. There was the usual assortment of glass and pottery shards, but I also found odd things like the front part of a telelvision set (no screen of course), a camera, a set of rusty keys with a Galapagos diving fob, which amused me (surviving all that diving and then losing your keys in the river? Then again maybe it was all a pose anyway). I went to the Tate Britain afterward. I'm still amazed at how much I love the new Turner section, mostly for his unfinished paintings which seem like precursors of the Impressionists. There's a new room of early Bacon works that include a painted screen and three rugs (!) from his interior design business in the 30s.

And my latest column is up, too, at BitchBuzz: a mad mash-up of the Stoppard matineé, the guy behind me on the bus, random musings about the Middle Ages and the usual weird stuff in my head. Enjoy!

Publication: Lachrymae Draconis

I have a new publication out in the latest issue of Realms. It's a kind of medieval mystery with a dragon called "Lachrymae Draconis" which you'll quickly figure out is Latin for "dragon tears" -- an entirely fake commodity that young Colburga has been dealing in with the help of the dragon she's got hidden away in a cave. No, the dragon doesn't cry. Colburga knows that's not possible -- but the dragon has other skills that help sell what they label "tears" and Colburga's knowledge of healthful herbs makes the concoctions effective. She's become quite a business woman because she doesn't do anything without making a profit. Her life may be lonely, but that's okay -- things are safer that way. Or so she thinks until the day a crying child appears at her gate with an intriguing problem...

I hope you enjoy the story. I had thought to include this among the stories added to Pelzmantel, but it got snapped up too quickly. I have seen the page proofs and the final cover and oh! does it look gorgeous. I'll see if I can make a reduced version so you can see. I'm still just gaga over Ruby's stunning artwork. Amazing!

I saw Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Old Vic yesterday. Wonderful! Review coming soon: yes, it's a play about love, but also the love of words, including this hopeful line every writer dreams of making real:

I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.

Magus: The Alan Moore Conference (Day Two)

Here's another one of Adele's photos: just out of shot to Alan's left is me holding Melinda's glass. One of these days, I'm going to remember to take a picture with them. But don't they look sweet together? More on thee two later. I left London on the same train as I had the day before, but bank holiday weekend engineering works made sure that I was late. The cab dropped me off just after the time slated for panels to begin; fortunately, things were running slightly late, so Andrés was just introducing Gary Lloyd when I arrived, waving a belated hello to Adele.

Gary had worked with Alan on Brought to Light—not one of my favourites among the CDs, but an important work nonetheless. I was interested to see what he would talk about as his title "Moore and Music" could cover a lot of ground. It was fascinating to hear him talk about working together and how Alan has 'perfect pitch' but a voice so deep his falsetto doesn't sound like a falsetto. He was amusing, too, illustrating his talk with imaginary charts (all of which worked in an off-hand reference to SKIZZ), Homer Simpson eating a donut, and his six year old nephew's drawing of Watchmen, a drawing that showed superheroes like Spider-man, Batman and Hulk at the bottom of a cliff crying for help and Rorschak simply saying, "No."

Cyril Camus of the University of Toulouse traced the many ways in which Neil Gaiman had been inspired by Moore's work, often quite directly and how the friendship and influence of Moore helped shape Gaiman's career.  U Northampton's Jasmine Shadrack presented a lively discussion "V Versus Hollywood: A Discourse on Polemic Thievery" with a V mask hanging from the podium.  She traced her unexpected reaction to the movie version of V for Vendetta, which had been a singularly affecting novel for her on first reading it.  While the film changed much, there was still a great deal to celebrate.

I chose to go to the film panel after the break, perhaps perversely, because most of the films made from Moore's material have been so exquisitely bad. Stephen Keane, also from Northampton, covered "Watching the Watchmen: From Panels to Frames in Watchmen" which he warned us would be a loose presentation, more preliminary than final and it was, but he had a few interesting points to make from film studies approach.  Aine Young from Queen's University Belfast, examined "From Hell: The Adverse Journey from Page to Screen" and how Moore's carefully constructed Victorian landscape (among other details) was flattened and homogenized by the filmmakers.  The Hughes Brothers may have wanted to capture the grit and the slums, but in the end could not escape the Disneyfication of the project.  Ian Dawe of Selkirk College spoke about "The Moore Film Adaptations and the Erotic-Grotesque" as a way of measuring the success of the film versions, as he found those that removed that quality from Moore's texts were sure to render a bland product.  While it seemed an intriguing concept, I couldn't really agree with his declaration of From Hell as the best adaptation.

Then it was lunch and more chat with Adele and with Marc, whose paper I had missed (but it went well, he said). As I was getting yet another cup of tea, I suddenly found myself handing a tea bag to Alan. I wasn't sure he'd remember me, but he did and we chatted a bit as we made our teas, mostly about what a strange thing it was to have a conference all about one's work.  But then as he said, "I've had a weird life, so this is just one more bit."  Since I hadn't met Melinda before, he made a point of taking me over to introduce us and she's just as delightful in person as she had been on the phone (and gave me a nice compliment too, "We love your writing!"). Yes, I made sure to introduce Adele, who snapped that lovely photo. We all went in for the Q&A, which Paul Gravett was hosting. I brought my new Flip camera and managed to video most of the session, while Paul talked with Alan and then Melinda and then they both responded to audience questions. But the session went long (no one complained!) and my camera ran out of memory, so I'm missing the last bit.

I hope to put up the video on line, so let me just mention a few things that came up at the end, including Alan's comment that "art is a kind of possession" and that "I'm a very possessive person!"  Most people in Northampton seem to know him (and judging by folks at the conference, have stories to tell about him), except for some employee at Sainsbury's who threatened the "scruffy guy" with calling the police if he came in again. I loved how Melinda described how we should all realise we're mushrooms who seem to be separate, but under the ground we all share roots. Referring to some of the people who claim him as an influence, Alan suggested that all they had picked up was the idea that "more sex, more violence, be incomprehensible" was what created "that Alan Moore feeling." Subjects ranged form Lost Girls, Jerusalem, Dodgem Logic and Melinda's autobiographical project to upcoming appearances by Alan on Radio 4 with scientist Brian Cox and in the newly opened catacombs under Waterloo (with musicians in July – argh!)  They were both generous enough to stick around for a good while chatting with people and signing things, though Alan said it was really just an excuse to mow through the buffet table. I shared a cab back to the train station and the trip to London with some colleagues chatting about the conference. Everyone seemed delighted.

While Saturday had been rainy and grey, Sunday was gorgeous though blustery, perfect for cycling over to Battersea Park to check out the boating. Baby coots, ducklings and goslings abounded and an entourage of ducks followed the boat quacking loudly for the apple bits I tossed behind me. Pub lunch was a nice roast dinner—yum!  Monday coming back from shopping I got caught in the midst of the pro-Palestinian protestors who gathered at the entrance to Downing Street and lay down in front of the bus I was on. Good thing I didn't have any ice cream in my bag of groceries.

Today I'm off to see a matinee of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at the Old Vic with Toby Stephens. Can't wait!

Magus: The Alan Moore Conference (Day One)

Here's a lovely photo of me and Marc Singer snapped by the wonderful Adele, who already has her write-up of the Magus conference up over at her book blog, UnBound, and has pictures up as well. I was looking forward to this conference despite not quite having my paper done before I headed off to the UK. So many weird things happened while I was working on the paper that I decided to make that journey part of the paper, too.  I think I'll put the Powerpoint presentation on line with the paper as narration, so I won't detail everything here, but I had a lot of interesting coincidences arise from listening to Moore's performance CDs while sauntering through various museums in London and while lunching with my friend Roger Sabin in Red Lion Square (the site of the original performance of Snakes and Ladders.

I ran into Paul Gravett on the train coming into Northampton: I hadn't seen him in a few years, so it was great to have a chance to catch up on the cab ride to the campus, because he was busy right away as the keynote speaker. Adele was in the lobby with everyone else, so we had a chance to chat and meet other folks. I was pleased to see someone else I knew, Marc Singer, who was giving a paper on the Pog issue of Swamp Thing. I was a bit surprised to find that I had been moved from a later afternoon slot to the one immediately following the keynote, but it's just as well to have the paper done, so I didn't mind.

Nathan Wiseman-Trowse welcomed us all to the conference and talked a little bit about its genesis from a half-joking proposal to a serious academic undertaking (but fun, how could it not be?). He then introduced Paul who gave a lively presentation, "Something from Nothing -- Small Killing, Big Numbers: Comics Beyond Referentiality and Reinvention" which tied together some wonderful art exhibits of Moore's work (I especially yearned to see the Belgian one) and these less well known stories by Moore. I was glad Paul introduced the theme of the magic of art, creating something out of nothing, because I was going to be running with that topic, too. In a rather amusing moment as Paul talked about the giant diagram Moore created for Big Numbers, Gary Lloyd ran down with a facsimile so we could all see just how insanely detailed it was (four large sheets of paper with miniscule writing in tiny boxes representing each character and their storyline in all the issues. Wonderful!

I was on a panel with Rikke Cortsen from the University of Copenhagen. Antonio Venezia was supposed to be on the panel, too, but wasn't able to make it to our re-scheduled time and presented later in the day. Rikke's presentation, "Building Fictional Worlds: On the Construction of Place in Alan Moore's Top 10", examined how the variety of chronotopes employed helped map the complexity of not only the interwoven stories, but also the distinctly different time lines that overlaid the story lines.

My paper was a bit less formal and really became a performance about Moore's performances and the weird coincidences that dogged me as I wrote it. Most of you know that I enjoy a little theatricality in my performances and it seemed to go well. There didn't seem to be enough audible laughs at the right places (EL Wisty! Did people not recognize EL Wisty?), but afterward many people complimented me, so I was satisfied that it went well enough. The panel finished with a lively discussion, which soon proved to be the norm. So many people all interested in Moore's work gathering together, it was inevitable that people were bursting to discuss their ideas with folks who knew the score.

Lunch included a screening of Don't Let Me Die in Black and White, but most folks were too busy talking and eating to really take it in. After lunch, I headed to the panel "Chaotic Criminality: The Villains of Alan Moore".  First up was Geoff Klock, who appeared via Skype, which has a great potential for interconnectivity, but I can't help thinking he might have had a better presentation had he actually traveled to Northampton, for it was a bit rambling and had a few factual errors that irked. Mervi Miettinen from the University of Tempere presented "Past as Multiple Choice? Textual Anarchy in The Killing Joke" which explored the carefully controlled 'anarchy' of a dogged structuralist like Moore. Laura Hilton from the University of Birmingham presented "Reincarnating Mina Murray: Subverting the Gothic Heroine?" which compared the very different approaches between the film and the comics versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to the traditional passive Gothic heroine and both Moore's and Stoker's use of Mina as the powerful prototype of the New Woman. Yes, the excrementally bad film version destroys everything subversive about her.

The final panel of the day had Tony Venezia (Birbeck College) giving his presentation, "'A Sense of History's Patterns...': Mapping Northampton in Voice of the Fire and Big Numbers" which once again returned us to Moore's obsession with his hometown and its geography (and chorography). Our co-host Nathan gave us "Marvel or Miracle: (Re)Placing the Original in Alan Moore's Marvelman" which traced patterns within the history of that much troubled superhero. Deneb Kozikoski Valereto (Leiden University) offered a thoughtful study "Philosophy in the Fairground: The Killing Joke and Thoughts on Madness" which again focused on the deliberate interplay between insanity and Moore's careful and complex organisation.

We had a brief stop at the reception, but then Adele and I went to a pub toward the rail station so she could interview me :-D I'll let you know when it's up. I headed back to London and got ready to do it all again the next day.

BitchBuzz: Relax!

My latest column features something I know a bit about these days: relaxing!

The other night I joined my intrepid editor for the launch of Starbucks's new Discoveries drinks, who partnered with  Mills & Boon for the evening. 

The publishing giant apparently conducted a study that demonstrated that most women found it difficult to carve out time for themselves on a daily basis. I'm sure this comes as a surprise to few of us over-achieving, workaholic, multi-taskers. 

The importance of this for women cannot be overstated. Just look at the statistics about how heart attacks are climbing for women due to stress. I know all the excuses, but I don't want to hear that you are indispensable, can't stop now, there are just too many things to be done. Women don't just hold up half the sky, we hold up at least half the stress in the world, too.

Read the rest at BBHQ.

I have a new publication, too. More on that shortly. I've been busy writing my paper to give in Northampton Friday. Looking forward to the fun.Had a lovely lunch yesterday with my pal, Roger Sabin in Red Lion Square: yes, everything seems to lead back to Alan Moore.

Happy Birthday to the Joey Zone

I croak a belated happy birthday! Apologies. :-(

London on Video

Here's some quick videos (courtesy of my new Flip camera) just to give a flavour of my day Thursday, a quite wonderful day. I had lunch with Adele and Mark from UnBound, then Adele and I made our way from Victoria toward Soho, stopping at a couple of pubs that looked interesting and saying hello to squirrels in St. James Park. We met up with some of the book bloggers that Adele knows who were gathering for a big signing at Forbidden Planet.

I headed off to see Four Lions, Chris Morris' new film at the Curzon which was followed by a Q&A with Morris, one of his co-writers and a couple of cast members. The film treads an uneasy line between comedy and terrorism with a good bit of success. There's a normalising influence from the comedy of the story, yet there's no shrinking from dealing with the lethal nature of the bombing plans. Because I was hanging out with Hamilton and Hind, who seem to know just about everybody, we also chatted with Morris after the Q&A. In contrast to his edgy image, he's a real sweetie.

Afterward we (H&H and friends) went to the pub (of course) and had the usual post-film discussions and wandering of to all kinds of topics that nights like this generally involve. After the pub closed, we headed to Leicester Square and a late coffee. A fun day, but also long, so Friday has had to be a work day (writing, writing). Hoping to catch a matinee on Saturday. More news as I live it :-)

BitchBuzz: Poetry and Protest

In a rush, but here's a link to my column at BitchBuzz. Video to post later!

While it's faded a bit from the news, the Twitter joke trial (#twitterjoketrial) will have a lingering impact, not only for its outrageous assault on reason and human rights, but for its less immediate effects on humour. 

In case you missed it, the brief story is young man in love (or lust -- does it really matter?) is ready to fly off to see the woman he'd formed an attachment to via the net. If you're still snickering at internet match-ups, I'm sure you must be one of those folks lucky enough to meet fabulously interesting folks in drunken pub crawls or on blind dates set up by your friends (yes, that weird guy they thought was "perfect for you" is an indication of what they think you will settle for).

However, when Paul Chambers set off to fly from Nottingham to Ireland, only to be met by delays (anxiously watching the ash reports myself this past week, I can relate). Among the frustrated tweets he sent was the mocking, "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your sh*t together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!"
Yes, it is stupid to make jokes about bombing airports. But is it really worth giving a criminal record (apparently killing his career) and a £1000 fine over that kind of stupid remark?

Read more: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/poetry-satire-the-twitterjoketrial.html#ixzz0oZ2AuoDi

Bike

What I'm doing in London:




I do feel a bit intimidated by riding in so much traffic, but it's certainly cheaper in the long run and sometimes, faster and more direct. And yes, good exercise. Yesterday cycled to the Tate Modern. Two new shows setting up, so a wander through the regular exhibits -- miss the Rothkos so much! -- and a pub lunch at the Founders Arms, Thameside. Never noticed before that their menu, which features the skyline along the river with buildings identified, points out that the BT Tower was destroyed by Twinkle 1972. :-D

Today lunch with Adele and then Q & A with Chris Morris after Four Lions. Yes, I am going to remember to take my new Flip camera along and take some video to post. No, not biking it today.

London

:-)


Jet lagged but here! More to follow.

Anxiously Waiting

At present, it looks like the flight is on. We shall see things develop as the day rolls on. I realise that I never got a new camera after breaking the viewing screen on mine last summer. Hmmm. In the meantime, here's my theme song for the flight.




Wish me luck.

At Elena's

My company in the bedroom at Elena's this weekend: the orange mannequin and the gorilla in the wheelchair. Never walked into the room once without starting at the mannequin, thinking it was someone sitting at the computer. We had fun last night, drinking Bubbly Bisons (prosecco + Zubrowka) and watching The Women, yakking and yukking. Miss Wendy is moving away to Mississippi and it's the last chance we would all have to share such a night for a while, so it was a bittersweet. But we had some fantastic pizza and lots of fun. Plenty of puppytime, too, with the Steier pack.

Happy Anniversary, Elena and Rod! Good luck apartment hunting next week, Miss Wendy.  Now let's see if that volcano will let me depart Monday (grrrr).

BitchBuzz: Hate Facebook?

My latest column at BitchBuzz.com:

It's the end of the world as we know it! Where's Buffy?! She's averted several apocalypses (apocalypseé? apocalypso?) already. Cameron's behind this somehow, or Goldman-Sachs, I bet. Oh, wait -- it's only Zuckerberg?

For a minute there, I was worried.

Yes, as the guys at Wired have warned us, Facebook has you in its sights on the path toward world domination:

"Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed."

Yes, it's true: the forced public option is a bit of a bastard. Settle down, tea-baggers, we're not talking about that public option. But to hear some tech folk talk about it, you'd think we were. And yes, something "open and distributed" would be wonderful. Hop right on that, will you? On your own time, with your own funds and support, too, okay? Because I'm not paying for it. There's the rub, as someone once said. And until we do actually get some socialists in charge, we're stuck with the evils of capitalism...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ. I managed to work in a reference to both Buffy and EL Wisty, so I am pleased with myself. Loads of things to do and I am making my way through the (cough) hundreds of emails in my campus inbox and there are a few things that MUST be done before I go (like laundry, sob!). Yeesh -- back to it now.

As long as you're idling your time on the internet, go check out the video I made for The Women's League of Ale Drinkers: talking robots!

By the by: thanks Todd, for inadvertently setting me off on this column's idea by emailing me the Wired link just after I was watching an old Buffy episode and -- the rest is history as they say. This is what happens when you know a writer; we use everything! The world is our buffalo.

Jane Quiet Returns!

Elena's got a new comic up at our Jane Quiet web jam page. Whoo hoo!

This is the start of the second issue or arc, I suppose we ought to say as it's on-line. Where did this start? I believe it was me combining Elena's love of drawing dancing babes, my fondness for Johnny Vegas, and a peculiar haunting.

And um, a little John Donne -- but you don't need to know that.

Check it out and leave a comment at the site.

Byron by Way of East Cheam

Ah, Hancock! Not to mention Sid James and John Le Mesurier -- and of course, script by Galton and Simpson.

Busy busy busy -- so much to get done this week before I run away. Somehow it will all get done, right? Wait -- wasn't the end of the semester supposed to be the end of stress? Well, I have a paper to write and a lot of tasks to finish; yet I'm thinking about a book trailer for Pelzmantel and what it should include...

It's not until things are broken...

...that you realise what they mean to you. The wonky window just blew out and smashed off one ear and one foot of my wombat.

I could blame the landlord for never getting around to fixing the wonky window.

I can blame myself for putting the wombat there on the window sill next to Ganesha (who, being more wise, escaped harm). All things considered, it was a stupid place.

I could blame my attachment to material things that the Buddha would tell me is the source of all misery.

I am sweeping up the pieces.

Pelzmantel: Cover with Lettering

Very happy! Doesn't it just look wonderful? Even the lettering seems to capture the magical feeling of the story -- I love the way it swirls.

I'm So Very Sorry (Maybe)

My latest column for BitchBuzz examines the gendering of apology, based on a couple of events you may or may not have heard about unless, like me, you monitor all media like a Bond villain (yes, Kipper helps):

Here's a study in contrasts: As our own Rebecca Thomson reported, there was a brouhaha about laddish mag Zoo's agony aunt/actor/footballer-wannabe Danny Dyer's 'advice' to a reader, advising him to cut his ex's face so no one else will want to date her.

After the Twitter flurry, the mag posted a corporate 'apology':

Due to an extremely regrettable production error, an inappropriate and indefensible response to a letter has appeared in this week's issue.


ZOO editor, Tom Etherington, apologises unreservedly for any offence the response may have caused and has launched an internal enquiry to ensure lessons are learnt.


Zoo and Danny Dyer condemn any violence against women. A donation will be made to Women's Aid.

Production error, eh? Yeah, no one really believes that, but that's their story and they're sticking to it. A little grudging admission of error and token donation and DONE. You can almost hearing them washing their hands of this little annoyance...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ and see how Ellen Degeneres and clubbing baby seals fits into the story. I will finally be able to turn in all my grades today, I think, and be truly free of the semester's duties (so I can turn to all the things I've had to ignore in the last few weeks, sigh). Right now, I'm just waiting around for UPS who have irked me more than necessary this week. Grrr. I was hoping to catch a matinee this afternoon, but I guess it will depend on when the driver gets here.

My Students: Full of Awesome

Two grad students who are doing independent studies with me also made music videos to go with their projects. I don't think I can link to Kira's video on Facebook (a mash-up of Tipping the Velvet and the Brandi Carlile song "I Was Made for You"), but I can link to Caitlin's video for Lady Gaga's "Teeth" that encapsulates the argument for her paper on the appeal of much-maligned series like Twilight and Flowers in the Attic for young female readers.



They inspired another student to make a fan vid (go, Annie!). Now I'm itching to make a book trailer for me! I've made some for a friend, but haven't got around to my own yet.

Branding Redux

One outcome of this weekend that was mostly frittered away in drinking and laughing with friends (fair enough, eh?) and eating bacon (mmmmm, bacon) was that I had a brain storm of an idea for the elusive branding concept. As I have mentioned before here, the concept of branding your work to establish a clear identity for what you do (no one has any doubt what Nora Roberts' name on a book means, or Stephen King's) has proved challenging for me. So, my latest idea for the apparently 'essential' brand? As the author of Pelzmantel and Unikirja (not to mention stories like "Kerttu," "Wordgeryne" and "Palakainen") my brilliant slogan for my writing is:

Hard to spell; easy to read.

What do you think? Have a lassoed a winner?

Final presentations for the last class tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 8. Then it's all over but the grading and final grading requires no comments. Hurrah. With luck I can send off the essay on medieval magic for Pelz, too. It's been tough trying to balance obscure fascinating facts and an entertaining tone accessible to any reader. Here's hoping.

Road Trip

After my students give their final presentations this morning, I'll be heading off to Connecticut to see the gang. Bittersweet because Miss Wendy has a new job in Mississippi and soon she won't be just a short drive away -- waah! I'm sure it will be a fun time -- after all we have Bernie's birthday to celebrate at the Aloha Alcohula tomorrow night, so it should be an action-packed weekend. Just picture this:

BitchBuzz: Tubes

I had tried to call my latest column for BitchBuzz "Strong Men Also Cry" because it's always good to make a Lebowski reference, but from the start, it was really all about the tubes:

What is it with men and tubes? Particularly when they're men who hold powerful offices and feel the need to wield that power in a grandstanding gesture so everyone knows just what they have in their hands—it can be an embarrassing display.

It's Mad Men in a kind of perverse wish fulfillment for a time that never really existed except of course on television. But if they can send women back a few decades, it will be a first step in creating that paradise apparently.

The oppressive abortion laws passed in Oklahoma have apparently already give rise to copycat legislation in Texas. Never mind that regular access to birth control has made the abortion rates fall; it's the idea that women can just willy nilly start or stop a pregnancy that has these types in an uproar. Good god, what if women could just have sex whenever they wanted without having life-threatening consequences?! It would change everything…

As always, read the remainder over at BBHQ; and why not share it with your friends on Twitter or Facebook?

As you might guess, I am more than a little fed up with politicians of late. Okay, let's admit it: I am always fed up with politicians. I'm tired of opportunistic miscreants feeding on pig-ignorant fear. Yes, maybe it's always been that way. But it's particularly dispiriting to see this country trying so hard to go backwards. Let's just say it clearly: Leave it to Beaver was a television show and that world never existed except on television. Health care is a good thing for all people to have. Rich people and the banks they run are not there to help you (um, unless you are also a rich person who runs a bank).

At least in Britain they have the Lib Dems as a third party with some effect. If you've not been following the news there, you're missing a fun show that demonstrates the influence of social media. The Tory attempt to spin things their way with slick advertising resulted in hilarious mash-ups instead. Brown's inadvertent mic insult spawned a host of unexpected responses that filled Twitter.

It gives me a little hope, I guess, that the voice of the people (at least those with internet access and sufficient time on their hands) is being heard a bit more and a bit more quickly, but the madness of crowds is no assurance of "democracy" any more than the smoke-filled room.

At least teaching is over (as those on Facebook heard me WHOOHOO loudly) and there's just finals to get through, the first one tomorrow morning. Right after it, I head off to Connecticut to see Miss Wendy before she moves to Mississippi (sob!), Marko, the QoE, Johnny 10X and the rest of the gang (i.e. whoever's going to be around). Will be fun -- always is.

Pelzmantel: Cover Art

Oh my!

Is this gorgeous or what?! I am so pleased with the cover art for my book -- squee! When Storm told me they were going to be putting out this new edition of Pelzmantel, she asked if I had any preference for the cover artist. I immediately said Ruby, please!

Ruby does the covers for most of Storm's own books and has a real love for fairytales. I knew she would be perfect.

Am I right?

First, I love the colors. Somehow the orange tones of the fox match so well with the midnight purple sky. The image captures the sense of magic and I love how she's worked the spinning tokens in, the spindle and bobbin. It captures the sense of mystery as well -- the hidden princess who must mask her identity and of course, the clever fox, too.

Wow -- just wow!! (wait, isn't that what you said, Mildred?). Thank you, Ruby -- thank you so very much!

Pelzmantel: A Medieval Tale coming from Immanion Press this June. It looks like we will have posters of Ruby's illustration and maybe some other items, too, at the Immanion Press store.

Reviewed (Two Years Later)

Okay, so the Google search doesn't necessarily catch everything. In looking for something else, I ran across a reference to a review in The Lion and the Unicorn 32.3 by David Russell of Tove Jansson Rediscovered, for which I wrote the essay, "Roses, Beads and Bones: Gender, Borders and Slippage in Tove Jansson's Moomin Comic-Strips":

K. A. Laity’s exploration of Jansson’s cartoon series executed for the London Evening News in 1957 is likewise fairly narrowly focused, but Laity offers insightful commentary on the way Jansson’s personal life affected her art. Specifically, Laity points to Jansson’s lesbianism and how her personal feelings seem to be manifested through the portrayal of the Moomin characters in the comic strip—-her use of unstable borders and the use of sexual ambiguity in her portraitures, for example. Laity’s essay helps lay the groundwork for the theme of the final essays of the collection, which explore Jansson’s writings for adults—-particularly focusing on the impact of Jansson’s lesbianism on her work.

If you have access to Project Muse, you can read the entire review or if you're interested in children's books, check out The Lion and the Unicorn.

Trying to find a cover image to use for this post, I found this other review, that didn't turn up on my standard search for obvious reasons:

Several of the essays address gender issues, homosexuality in particular. Drawing on Judith Butler's and Eve Kosofsky's gender theories, E.A. Laity examines the panel borders in Jansson's Moomin comic strips. In this unique study, Laity shows how Jansson's comic-art narrative technique illustrates that the borders between genders and social status are highly porous, and that Jansson, albeit in a subtle way, questions the very existence of the binary system.

You can read the rest of Virpi Zuck's review at the Free Library. Well, it was a nice surprise to come across some positive reviews that I don't think I'd seen before. Even better yesterday an editor forwarded to me some kind words from an author on the essay I'd written about his book. Yay!

In less interesting 'news' I've been updating my Amazon page and my page at Goodreads as well. Both are set up to get this blog feed, but I have to manually add a lot of the books and now events, too. Promotion is an endless slog.

Review: Lucky Him

Oh, Mr Amis...

This picture shows up in both Lucky Him and in the Letters of Philip Larkin. It just makes me laugh. The goofy expression of someone caught by surprise and making a funny face to cover it up. The two of them, Amis and Larkin, were close friends and correspondents, as I've mentioned before. A wonderful CD of Robin Hardy and Alan Bennett reading some of the letters remains criminally out of print.

I got Lucky Him: The Biography of Kingsley Amis
as a gift recently because I have been muttering about a story idea inspired by Amis and Angela Carter (yeah, Angela Carter: A Literary Life will probably be next); it was a nice surprise.

The book is a bit different as a biography, because Bradford mixes together fact and Amis' fiction to show how his novels were often more truthful -- and illuminating -- than his memoirs. While it may seem counterintuitive at first, it does make sense to me. Fiction has to fit together, whereas memoir rests on the very poor faculty of memory. And when it comes to our lives, metaphor will tell truly what we wish to disguise, particularly when it comes to protecting the feelings of others. Not only to we tend to shape our memories (consciously and unconsciously) but we may not even be aware of the effects events are having on us as they unfold. Bradford shows how even when Amis sought deliberately non-representative narratives, he gave telling clues about the real events of his life that seem clear in retrospect.

Having finished the book, I find I miss Amis. The latter part of the book was sad, watching his descent not only into a physical frailty enhanced by his drinking, but also into a rigid dismissal of many of the things he once celebrated. But for so much of his life Amis was a funny and shrewd observer of human behavior. Long after his politics veered into reactionary territory, he still maintained the ability to make readers laugh at his blackly humorous observations. Lucky Jim remains a book that will make me laugh out loud and Ending Up, while cruel in its ruthlessness (as only one can be to one's peers), is also impeccable in its timing.

I envy his wit -- and I'm not alone in envying Amis. And I miss him. He's not known for his poetry, but here's one that will amuse (as opposed to the late one, never published, that might make you weep) and features that double-edged view of both writing and women.

SOMETHING NASTY IN THE BOOKSHOP 
by Kingsley Amis

Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.

Critical, and with nothing else to do,
I scan the Contents page,
Relieved to find the names are mostly new;
No one my age.

Like all strangers, they divide by sex:
Landscape Near Parma
Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex,
So does Rilke and Buddha.

"I travel, you see", "I think" and "I can read"
These titles seem to say;
But I Remember You, Love is my Creed,
Poem for J.,

The ladies' choice, discountenance my patter
For several seconds;
From somewhere in this (as in any) matter
A moral beckons.

Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
Or squash it flat?
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
Girls aren't like that.

We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
Can get by without it.
Women don't seem to think that's good enough;
They write about it.

And the awful way their poems lay them open
Just doesn't strike them.
Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.

Deciding this, we can forget those times
We stay up half the night
Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
And couldn't write.

[I'm not sure if this qualifies as a "Forgotten Book" but stop by Patti Abbott's blog for a wide range of recommendations of books that you may have forgotten, or never known at all, but will like!]

BitchBuzz: Little Earthquakes

My latest column for BitchBuzz touches on the laughable comment by an Islamic cleric that women's provocative dressing and sexual desire causes earthquakes. Ridiculous because even small children who look for logical answers to natural phenomena know about fault lines, but just another depressing indication of the scapegoating of women that goes on. Until my friend Byron turned my head around:

Dust kicked up across the net this week when a Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, claimed that women dressing provocatively and "spreading adultery" were responsible for earthquakes. Kind of makes you wonder if some woman's solo pleasure caused the eruption of the Icelandic volcano (since apparently [she says arching a disbelieving eyebrow] masturbation is the last sexual taboo remaining).

The responses across the globe were predictably a mix of amused and angered: amused that someone in the 21st century could so ignore so much accumulated scientific fact, angered that it's still possible for so many people to blame women for a wide variety of evils...

Read on to see the insight my pal gave me (and gratuitous Tori Amos lyrics :-)

Nearly the end of the semester so everything is busy madness. Yesterday was a non-stop day from when I awoke far too early from a bad dream, teaching, office hours, teaching, faculty meeting (where I had to present the Women's and Gender Studies Certificate for approval, which it received despite some cranky emails before the day), a reception for our first volume of the undergraduate research journal, back to write my column, off to meet up with friends and then back home again in time to finish writing the column and off to bed. 

Wow -- even makes me tired just typing it.

Happy Earth Day, folks. Do something nice for the planet -- and not just today, either.

Serially Yours

Have you checked out The Mangrove Legacy recently? I only ask because I am thinking about the end of it. It will take some weeks yet, of course, but I can see the resolution now and I am also contemplating polishing it up to send off to one or two places. Like everything I do (apparently) it doesn't quite fit into a neat marketing niche. But who knows? The lazy way of novel writing -- for those of you who say you want to write but just can't find the time -- this story is up over 90,000 words now.

All it takes is patience and 500 words or so a week. It's really not so much: just persistence and commitment.

So many things require the same; we worry about the big issues and agonize over decisions, but much of our life results from the simple steps -- and continuing to make them. I am always reminding myself of this. It's worth doing.

A Wet Weekend

Too many late nights; too little sleep. Far too much rain driving back from Massachusetts.

Last night it was Neil Innes at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA. Here he is wearing his moustache in order to sing in French (okay, mostly in a French accent). Yeah, phone pic so the quality isn't good. But we had a good time. I went with my pal Peg and we had a nice Thai dinner before the show and then laughed and sang a lot. Innes had the crowd in the palm of his hand from the start, getting folks to sing along on the chorus of the first song (well, second if you count the two line of "Urban Spaceman" he sang), which was "Alone, alone, alone." Yes, it was like that all night as he switched between guitars and a uke and a Steinway. He stopped in the middle of the first song on the piano because the pedal made the piano move. "I should be a professional and just go on," he told us, "But it frightened me!"

We were of course all sworn in as Ego Warriors (second time for me). Well worth the drive and a whole lot of fun. He expressed amazement that the Rutles have been around for 30 years now and that there are Rutles tribute bands around the world. "It should be a verb." He talked about the Bonzo days and got the crowd enthusiastically providing the "band shouts" for some of the old 78s songs that Band loved to resurrect. While most of the songs veered toward amusement, everything from his work with the Pythons to a clever song about the web 2.0 life, he also took time to sing a more thoughtful song about losing friends. 65! Hard to believe. He finished up with a song in praise of his age and left us all with a lot of smiles.

Saturday was a little more sombre as we said good-bye to Kathy Clegg. Funerals, like weddings, can bring out family tensions, but the event brought out a lot of wonderful memories of Kathy's warmth and hospitality -- she did love to have a houseful of people. There was a big crowd of people gathered to remember her fondly.

BitchBuzz: Women Filming Women

My latest column for BitchBuzz incorporates some of my review of The Runaways. The Queen and I had an interesting discussion on Facebook about it -- I was a bit more critical of it, mostly because I found it choppy and too often given to clichés, but on the whole I liked it and would recommend it. Among the reasons:

The recently released Runaways movie, directed by Floria Sigismondi, gives an inside view of the ways women are exploited and manufactured for display in the glitzy world of rock-n-roll.

We've long ago grown accustomed to the star story so compelling laid out in countless reiterations of A Star is Born and could recite the arc by heart: talented kid with gumption struggles with obscurity for a few minutes before being discovered and almost immediately resenting the terrible toll that stardom takes, finally crashing and burning in glorious Technicolor [tm]. Lives that don't quite fit the mold get remolded; after all, the audience knows what it wants.

The Runaways both ascribes to this genre and complicates it...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ. Already had a nice comment from Cecilia Tan, who noted the disparity between the way the Sex Pistols have been mythologized but the Runaways merely dismissed as a novelty act. A gender issue? You bet. Will this film get the attention other rock-n-roll movies get in the music press or will it be dismissed as a chick flick? We shall see.

Insanely Busy

So, here's some music to entertain you: BB column coming soon!

Revisiting the Past

I'm not generally someone who looks back, but sometimes it's unavoidable. At present the impetus to revisit the past comes from the need to make revisions to Pelzmantel that my editor has suggested. I must admit I winced a bit at the thought of having to look at something I wrote so long ago; would it be too painful?

Fortunately, it's not. My editor has pointed to a number of useful improvements which will definitely strengthen the story, but it remains something of which I can be proud. I know it will be a frustrating process because I am impatient with things that I consider "done" but it's also true that this will be a much better and more engaging story. Not that it was bad before -- I am still proud of this tale penned while I was writing my dissertation (and got done first, too!). However, I am a much better writer now that I was then.

Kind of give you hope, right? It's good to know that improvement happens.

Hectic times: not only is the semester drawing to a close (not quite counting the hours, but definitely the days) but there are a number of administrative things I have to attend to while juggling all the writing, grading and revisions needed before the end of the month. Somehow it will all get done, my ever present mantra. Let us repeat it together.

Between Work and Wit

That it is National Poetry Month has not escaped me, but I will not bother to mention it as 1) I am not a poet and 2) poets get far too much attention as it is and 3) there are far too many bad poets who would only find this encouragement to go on. They make me think of the incredibly overwrought poet O'Bannion from Auntie Mame. Bad poetry can be found around most any corner, even in an economic downturn. It multiplies like cockroaches. Cockroaches, however, don't get open mic nights.

Oh, sure -- there are good poets, and I've quoted from many of them. In fact I've had Philip Larkin on my mind today [er, yesterday, as I wrote this ahead of time, shhhh]. I blame Lucky Him, which I've gone back to reading since I had to return The Talented Miss Highsmith to the library yesterday, lamentably unfinished. Its 700+ pages daunted, especially as I went gallivanting off on a trip and decided not to lug the doorstop-sized hardcover along with me, accustomed as I am to traveling light. Larkin, who often served as an audience and confidante for his friend Kingsley Amis, seemed to feel the weight of the disparity between their experiences, which he wrote about in "Letter to a Friend about Girls" with some tartness and not a little envy.

The magic of good poetry is that it is precise. Every word needed, no word extraneous. No wonder I prefer prose -- there's wiggle room there. While every word should have its job and no other in prose, too, it seems that there are on occasion a few layabouts who serve no earthly purpose in a sentence, but hang tightly around the ones that are doing the work, so the careless supervisor assumes they're all busy and passes on by. When I unpack the taut efficiency of Donne's "Flea" I know I have a lot of calisthenics ahead of me before I could run in that kind of race.

Fictionaut, Beckett, Sinclair & O'Brien

My pal Meg Pokrass invited me to join Fictionaut, where I've begun to post stories. Another new venue, another potential way to reach an audience. What should I put there? Any stories/pieces you wish were more accessible? Spending breakfast with Beckett today; but much to do. Found this program by linking to this short that also appeared on the DVD of Ian Sinclair's The Cardinal and The Corpse which my pal Pádraig obtained for me (ta!).

The title of this post strikes me as a bad name for a law firm. Somehow I expect they'd get little accomplished.

Conceit: Ashes

Since Blogger has put the kibosh on FTP-fed blogs [no, don't worry if you don't know what that means] I had to kill Radio Wombat, home of my podcasts (though old posts remain because it's on my webspace). But it made me realise I didn't really need a separate place anyway. I can put podcasts here! So here's my latest conceit:



As you can see, it's actually a video. This came about because sometimes an idea just hijacks my brain. Advice to a friend became a status update on Facebook, which was then refined by the input of my fabulous friends, then somehow hearing about the death of Malcolm McLaren made me hear the words in a kind of Grace Jones monotone.

So, what could I do? I hastily recorded a version on GarageBand, adding weird loops of sound, then made a video with iMovie by splicing together pictures of Mt. Auburn Cemetery and Canterbury, and of course, capping it off with an official Cult of Kaity logo as designed by the fabulous QoE.

If only my MacBook didn't make it all so easy, I might have gotten some work done instead...

BitchBuzz: Girl Band Movies

My latest column for BitchBuzz gathers up some suggestions for girl group films. They were on my mind because I'm eagerly awaiting the seemingly endlessly delayed opening of The Runaways tomorrow:

If you're still waiting for The Runaways to come along to your neighbourhood and rock your world, there are a few other films you can see in the meantime to keep those girl group jones at bay.

ROCK-N-ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, 1979

It's got the Ramones! P. J. Soles! A best friend named Kate (okay, that may only matter to some of us), one Van Patten, CLINT, and of course the amazing underground film stars Mary Woronov and Paul Bartell. Oh sure, it's a Roger Corman cheapie and sure, the Ramones can't act or read lines, but come on! P.J. is Riff Randall, rock-n-roller, a budding songwriter who knows she can be a success if she can just get her songs to the Ramones -- and as long as she can circumvent the evil principal Miss Togar and her Hall Monitor goons.

Her pal is in love with the dishy but dull football captain and the soundtrack kicks out all the jams. It's a hoot and holler and a half and hey, who didn't dream of blowing up their high school (um, back in the days when that was just an innocent daydream, I mean -- sigh)...

As always, read the rest at BBHQ to see what other films you might enjoy.

Sad to hear today that Malcolm McLaren died. While always a controversial figure and something of a Svengali for sure, he was a visionary who left his mark on the world of punk along with Vivenne Westwood. Fittingly I was listening to the Punk Rock Jukebox on WCNI at the time and gave Marko a call to pass along the news.

I'm keeping busy trying to catch up with all the emails etc. that piled up while I was gone, filling out an application for a residency, sending off my bib-bio for Readercon and of course, writing, writing, writing.

Prose at the Rose: Jackie Morse Kessler

My interview with Jackie Morse Kessler is up at last! Give it a listen and learn about her fascinating new YA series and hear her read from the compelling novel Hunger. You may also know Jackie as the author of racier books like the Hell's Belles series or the superhero series co-created with Caitlin Kittredge, the Icarus Project. Oh, and she works for some guy named Joss Whedon, too.

Jackie is very funny and sharp, and her characters reflect that. She's got a real knack for natural dialogue -- well, "natural" in the sense of this is how we all like to think of ourselves talking. The section she reads from Hunger is effective and affecting. Jackie can move from humorous to touching without skipping a beat. I think you'll enjoy meeting her!

Into the West

There will be a wrap up of my trip to PCA and the visit to my folks in New Mexico soon. In the meantime, enjoy the quiet.