I should be checking the eTree live music archive (original) more often. Cowboy Junkies, 94 shows. Drive-By Truckers, 138 shows. Hayseed Dixie, 13. Mike Doughty, 42. Three Decemberists shows. Warren Zevon, 53 shows. Mmm, tasty.
For my birthday, I got the amazing Kino Buster Keaton boxed set. 11 DVDs, 11 movies, 20 short features, and a ton of archival material. Much of yesterday was spent in front of the television basking in it. And lemme tell you, Keaton was one ironic fellow. The Playhouse has him playing every single role in a stage company, plus the audience, with as many as nine Keatons on screen at once. Being Buster Keaton, indeed.
The ways in which this is not perfect are very few, very few indeed. P’raps my favorite thing is the comment back in the original post. “When I was really into Buffy I remember thinking everything in The Waste Land secretly applied — it’s good to know it can shift fandoms so well.” “Well, I was thinking that, more to the point, the poem doesn’t apply — the essence of the parody is in mapping possibly the most influential poem of the 20th century, with its World War themes and excessive literary references and multiple phrases in foreign languages, onto a children’s book series written by a woman who can’t even conjugate her pseudo-Latin…” ...
TiVo will be providing video on demand (original) soon. That’s cool; it’s another step in the process that leads to the question, “Why do we care about scheduled TV programs at all?” Doesn’t look like it’ll cost more than the usual subscription. That probably won’t last, though; the free stuff is from IFC, which needs to promote its programs. Someone like (say) HBO doesn’t need the same publicity — we already all know about The Sopranos. ...
And the Hugo envelope please… (original) Best Novel: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Best Novella: “The Concrete Jungle” by Charles Stross Best Novelette: “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link Best Short Story: “Travels with My Cats” by Mike Resnick Best Related Book: The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: The Incredibles, written & directed by Brad Bird ...
If you happened to read Global Frequency this week, you might be interested to hear that Le Parkour is not something Warren Ellis made up — it’s a real little urban subculture, originating in France but spreading to England, Russia (original), and no doubt other places. If you didn’t read Global Frequency, Le Parkour is a sort of extreme athletic activity that involves doing incredibly foolhardy things on rooftops without a net. If you’ve seen those Nike commercials (original), that’s Le Parkour. And of course Luc Besson’s gotten his hands into it. Cool looking stuff.
Charlie Stross’ new novel slash collection of short stories is about to be out in stores in the US. It’s also available as a free download (original). Why wait? But do buy as well if you like it.
Mark Cuban isn’t the only guy experimenting with releasing DVDs on the day the movie hits theaters (original). I betcha none of the exhibitors are going to threaten not to show this movie, though.
Hey, look, A Feast for Crows is done (original). By which we mean that the massively huge tome Martin was writing has been split into two parts, geographically, due to the physical limits of book side. The first part is complete and going into production. Well, hey, I’ll take that.
Announcement: C. E. Murphy Fans (original) is now open for business. C. E. Murphy is a dear, dear friend of mine who has just broken into publishing in a fairly big way, with six books sold over the course of the last year or so. Her first book, Urban Shaman, just hit the shelves. I’m running her unofficial forums.