Is True Blood really worth wading through four seasons to catch up?
Also, too, here is the ear worm I have been dealing with since 7 am this morning:
You’re welcome. Or, I’m sorry.
by John Cole| 92 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Is True Blood really worth wading through four seasons to catch up?
Also, too, here is the ear worm I have been dealing with since 7 am this morning:
You’re welcome. Or, I’m sorry.
by Sarah, Proud and Tall| 90 Comments
This post is in: Books, Getting The Band Back Together, Open Threads, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, DC Press Corpse
I saw quite a bit of Jacqueline Susann (take that how you will) during the war. Jack and I had been rewarded by our respective agencies with a cushy temporary assignment keeping an eye or two on a rather dishy German agent who was trying (and failing) to seduce Truman Capote.
Now, failing at seducing Truman is quite an achievement, given that young Fritz (for that was the German’s name) was available, adorable and Aryan, and that Truman would bang a duck if you slapped some Bay Rum on it and stuck a bottle of poppers under its wing.
The failure was none of our doing, I must add. Our bosses didn’t particularly mind if Fritz rogered Truman blind and legless and then extracted everything that Truman knew during the post-coital guilt. If Hitler wanted to know about the divine boy that Truman had sucked off at the Y last night and how yellow was Truman’s favorite color and how war was so, so sad, it was none of our concern.
Nevertheless, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances (including a dodgy curry, a spurned Sicilian-American dancer with a flick knife, an amusing misunderstanding about the meaning of the English word “submissive”, and three separate bouts of herpes), Fritz never quite got into Truman’s pants. Jack and I spent most of the time drinking gimlets and spiking Truman’s drinks with Pervitin when he wasn’t looking.
None of which is the story I originally set out to tell you, by the way. And yes, I will get to the book thread. I’m old and my mind wanders. Fuck off if you don’t like it.
Jack and I lost track of each other in the fifties because I was spending so much time in Cuba. I didn’t hear from her until 1969 when she wrote to invite me to dinner at her DC apartment – just (as Jack put it) a small dinner with close friends, a dinner with some meaning to it, a dinner that would be a celebration of something. She was, apparently, trying to get over her abortive affair with Ethel Merman, and had embarked on a rather less public dalliance with Pat Nixon.
Pat, of course, had become a lesbian the year before, more I suspect as a reaction to Dick’s chronic flatulence than any real desire for the love of a good woman. Or indeed a bad one.
Bitsy Trump and I cadged a lift from Gloria. She always served spectacular champagne, so by the time we arrived we were all several under the pump. Truman came in a little later with a brasileiro rent boy called João, who immediately began flirting with Pat, which caused Truman to retreat in tears to the bathroom, so we spent the afternoon drinking gimlets, getting baked on a pan of particularly fine double-fudge rum-n-raisin brownies that Pat had whipped up, and lying around drawing monster eyebrows and a lazy eye on all the pictures of Sally Quinn in the society pages while listening to Brahms and the gentle sounds of Truman whimpering.
Gloria, Pat, João and I played a lengthy game of Twister, and at one point I came out of a quick nap for long enough to see Pat poking Truman with a broom handle while shouting “Cry it up, Streckfus!”, but most of the rest of the evening is a blur.
I do remember that one of Pat’s security detail brought burgers and fries and shakes, and Jack turned the news on so we could throw our pickles at Nixon. Just as Bitsy got Dicky fair in the gob with an onion ring, Jack looked across at me, raised her glass and declaimed “Nixon. Capote. I hate both those fucks. I hate their beady eyes and their stupid noses and their lying fucking mouths. Those fucks will ruin us all.”
At which Pat laughed like a drain and had to be heimliched after her olive went down the wrong way.
I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m scared to think what Jack would have said about Mr Romney or the Twilight books.
Now, it’s been a while since we had a book thread, so here you go.
My reading has been all over the place this month. I’m halfway through David Wong’s John dies at the end, an odd and disconcerting little story about small town kids, sex, drugs and the malevolent forces that live beyond the bounds of our universe and watch our world with hungry eyes. Wong is very funny and ably handles a plot in which the peace can be broken at any time by the abrupt appearance of a cloud of flying flesh eating worms or a golem made of slaughtered deer parts.
Gareth Roberts’ novelisation of Douglas Adams’ Shada was particularly good, both as an evocation of the book that Adams might have written and of Tom Baker’s Doctor and Lalla Ward’s Romana. Getting those things right without veering into pastiche or, on the other hand, bland unrecognisability is hard – just ask Michael Moorcock. Roberts pokes happily at some Gallifrey Base obsessions, including the argued overuse of the sonic screwdriver, the gay agenda and this (which is just cruel):
As Skagra watched, he learnt of the Doctor’s early history, academic achievements, his family ties on Gallifrey and elsewhere, and the exact reasons for his first flight from his home world. But all of that was irrelevant.
There’s even a very fine Monty Python joke about halfway through.
I also read The Time Travellers by Simon Guerrier, which I thought was an exceptional book. The first Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara are stranded in London in a 2006 in which Great Britain is at endless war after being devastated by the evil computer WOTAN, who will later (or earlier, depending on your level of wibbliness) be defeated by the second Doctor in The War Machines. All four leads are beautifully drawn, and Guerrier’s description of a conversation between the Doctor and Barbara about changing history towards the end of the book is passionate and tender and quite masterful.
I love The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. The book is divided up by flavours, with each flavour cross referenced against most of the others to see what memories or recipes or random thoughts the combination brings to Segnit’s mind – from bacon and chicken (the proper number of bread slices in a club sandwich), to bacon and clove (a recipe for barbecue baked beans), clove and vanilla (which meet, along with coconut, in wine stored in French oak) and vanilla and cherry (Cherries Jubilee!). Fascinating enough to read from cover to cover, and perfect for dipping into for ideas if you happen to have a surfeit of oranges or cucumbers that you need to use up.*
The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer made me laugh, and the divine Phryne Fisher mysteries (this month, Murder in the Dark) make me wish that I had been born 20 years earlier so I could have hung around in Melbourne between the wars – although I do suspect there wasn’t quite as much cocaine and shagging as Ms Greenwood describes.
Well, kiddies, that’s me. What have you been reading?
* I’ve been making pickled oranges and a French orange wine aperitif and bread-and-butter cucumbers all week. I smell like vinegar and booze which, frankly, isn’t unusual. Let me know if you want recipes.
by John Cole| 71 Comments
This post is in: Garden Chats, Open Threads
I’m not sure if you all are experiencing the same thing, but so far this summer, I have noticed a real resurgence in two things that I have not seen in abundance since I was a kid- fireflies and monarch butterflies. I’ve seen more in the last couple weeks than I did in the last ten years combined. Not sure what is prompting that. Hopefully it means they are recovering and the bees will too.
On another note, remember this story from a little while back:
They were young males on the make, and they struck out not once, not twice, but a dozen times with a group of attractive females hovering nearby. So they did what so many men do after being repeatedly rejected: they got drunk, using alcohol as a balm for unfulfilled desire.
And not one flew off in search of a rotting banana.
Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like many humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons, scientists reported Thursday. Male flies subjected to what amounted to a long tease — in a glass tube, not a dance club — preferred food spiked with alcohol far more than male flies that were able to mate.
The study, posted online in the journal Science, suggests that some elements of the brain’s reward system have changed very little during evolution, and these include some of the mechanisms that support addiction. Levels of a brain chemical that is active in regulating appetite predicted the flies’ thirst for alcohol. A similar chemical is linked to drinking in humans.
I must have the fruit fly equivalent of the Big Bang Theory cast in my backyard, and apparently the horniest fruit flies on the planet live here. I set down a glass of wine for about 2 minutes to go turn off the sprinklers, and when I got back, there were easily a half dozen fruit flies in my beverage. I drank the remains anyway, thinking the booze and my goat like stomache could handle it. CLASSY!
Also, too, the godson in his Texas Rangers gear:
He’s seriously the cutest little thing. I’m so grateful Ryan and Sarah allowed me into his life, and every time I see pictures of that little pudgy fella with his ear to ear smile, I, for just a second, understand you breeders.
This post is in: Open Threads
Going back to my roots here.
__
I love Sargent’s portraits. He gives me plenty 0f sheer sensual pleasure: the texture of the paint, the color, his play of light — all that adds up to works that are very pleasing (to me) to look at. And I love his subtle knife: he’s not painting likenesses, simply so. There’s a sense of interpretation, of commentary. He knew wealth; he painted the wealthy; he made a fair sum doing so. But he was able, always to see something in the character…and let that out, however carefully, however it cracked the myths his sitters may have hoped he’d reveal. Hence, I was delighted for the excuse to use this one in the post below:
But even if you aren’t persuaded, even if you see JSS as just another guy who made his way by showing the 1% what they wanted to see, even if you think he’s merely a “pretty” painter — you have to account for this:
Gassed may be the greatest anti-war painting ever made.
(I know that some of you will toss Guernica at me. You could be right….but the debate’s an open one.)
What really gets me, though, is that the same man who could capture the cool reserve of some rich guy in Miami in 1917, (Deering was actually a friend of Sargent’s) could paint that next canvas just one year later.
Merely a society boy? I don’t think so.
And with that: open thread.
Images: John Singer Sargent, Charles Deering at Brickell Point, Miami, 1917.
John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1918.
by DougJ| 156 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
More of this, wingers. Here’s some crazy motherfucker from around the way, a Daily Caller “reporter”, getting all “you lie” on Obama.
Fucking TPM shit won’t embed anymore so here.
The economy sucks and we’ll get outspent by the Galtians. We need to make as much winger freakoutaid between now and November as we can.
This post is in: Gamer Dork, Open Threads, Television, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement
Poignant news for the Gamer Dorks among us:
“Civilization” mastermind Sid Meier says that he never fathomed someone would play the 1996 society simulator “Civilization II” for 10 years, or that it could result in melted polar ice caps and 90 percent of the virtual world’s population dead by the year 3991…
This is what happened with a user named Lycerius, who posted the details of his 10-year-long game on the social news site Reddit. The file and images of the game went viral this week, attracting Meier’s attention and drawing comparisons to George Orwell’s “1984.”…
In the Lycerius version, only three nations remain on the planet in 3991, and they’re locked in a 1,700-year-old war, fighting for resources left after dozens of nuclear battles turned most of the world into a wasteland.
In other popcult news, HBO has a show called Girls, described thusly by Gawker‘s John Cook:
Laurie Simmons’ daughter is a 24-year-old intern at a publishing house or literary agency or somesuch. She is writing a memoir but is also aware of the silliness of a 24-year-old writing a memoir, because she is just that self-aware. Her parents give her money. Over dinner on a visit to New York, where Laurie Simmons’ daughter lives, they tell her they are going to stop giving her money. A crisis is introduced.
What is Laurie Simmons’ daughter to do? People need money. Laurie Simmons’ daughter’s best friend is Brian Williams’ daughter. She is uptight, pretty, straight-laced, and has a boyfriend who’s just too nice and loving. She wears a retainer when she sleeps, symbolically. Laurie Simmons’ daughter says Brian Williams’ daughter’s boyfriend “has a vagina,” a notion that isn’t at all hackneyed and retrograde when it’s uttered by a self-aware 24-year-old girl who has tattoos of illustrations from children’s books all over her body…
Laurie Simmons’ daughter’s other best friend is The Drummer From Bad Company’s daughter. The Drummer From Bad Company’s daughter is a globe-trotting free spirit who got pregnant by some surfer and wears flowing dresses (batik?). She just blew into town from France.
The Drummer from Bad Company’s daughter is staying with David Mamet’s daughter, a comically overbroad character imported (knowingly? ironically?) from another sitcom. She loves Sex and the City (GET IT?) and wears pink Juicy Couture-style outfits. Is her father proud of her?…
So who, according to NYMag‘s Vulture blog, is watching this nepotism festival?
Girls is a show by and about urban women in their early twenties, so naturally it’s drawing its biggest ratings among white dudes over 50. Wait, what? It’s true: According to Nielsen data supplied to Vulture by HBO, a full 22 percent of Girls‘ audience has a penis and was born before the Beatles hit American shores, and no other single demographic group comes close in its love for Lena Dunham and her sexually curious Scooby gang…
So, maybe Brian Williams has a lot of friends, who of course would do their best to bump up the viewer stats. Or maybe old white guys with HBO subscriptions like to watch 20-something professional daughters talk dirty and show off their tats?
Brian Williams can console himself with the thought that at least his little girl isn’t appearing in Adam Sandler movies (yet). I made a personal vow to avoid any movies involving former Saturday Night Live cast members around the time the professional daughters of Girls were born, and the career of Adam Sandler is a perennial argument in favor of keeping that vow.
Late Night Open Thread: People, Doing What People DoPost + Comments (61)
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Garden Chats, Open Threads
Just finished the Suits season 2 premiere. Not sure if any of you are watching the show or watched it last season, but I really enjoy it.
No pet drama today- everyone seems to be behaving themselves. No escapes, no vomiting, not shitting on the carpet. I’m gearing up for an active day tomorrow.
On a gardening note, what do you all use as bondage for your green beans? Mine are coming in fast and furious.
On another note, I made sausage at home today, but was really unhappy with my mustard of choice. I want a stone ground mustard that does not have a sweet finish. Have any of you ever made your own mustard? How complicated is it? Could I make big batches once I get the taste I like and can it?