Objects Happen As Much As Anything

Hello, readers.

Things are happening. As they do. For example, a motorcycle just drove down the street. The rider wore a helmet both yellow and fluorescent. A little further away, I can see the towers of St. Pancras. They are happening in the way that buildings happen, with all of that time and hopefully not too many dead bodies buried in their stones and also they are cool. Objects happen as much as anything.

EG and I just finished 30 Rock. It was glorious. Full of heart, strip clubs, blimpie sandwiches and a brief discourse on the etymology of love. We cried a small bit, which is a wonderful thing to do, from time to time, especially when watching comedies. I remember reading something somewhere sometime that said something like all the great comedies are built within the framework of sorrow. This makes me think about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and how beginning with the end of the world is solidly sorrowful.

After finishing 30 Rock, I asked EG what she thought about me doing an entire video blog in the voice of Jack Donaghy (president of NBC on 30 Rock who speaks with the sort of gravely voice one associates with giant rock creatures from Neverending Story). She said she thought it would be weird when her mom watched because reasons. I asked EG if she knew what it meant that we had watched, together, the entire 30 Rock series from beginning to end.She said no. I said it meant we were married now. She said, So, how many times did you marry your Mom?

A new review by me has appeared at Strange Horizons. I reviewed Tigerman by Nick Harkaway. I loved it. My review, though, includes many more words than that.

Here’s an excerpt:

In his first two novels, The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway evinced a predilection, and skill, for the gleeful plunder and bashing together of, more or less, every genre ever invented. In The Gone-Away World, he rollicked through a post-apocalyptic-SF-horror-romance-fantasy-kung-fu epic, and in Angelmaker, he thoughtfully tromped through a steampunk adventure, with dashes of crime, romance, mechanical bee doom, and family drama. What Harkaway does well in all this bashing and smashing, is to combine his ecstatic world-building with an equally ecstatic empathy for his characters, whether they be larger-than-life superheroes, or middle-aged, somewhat stereotypically reserved British sergeants who, despite their best efforts, end up becoming something not unlike a superhero.

Also, here’s my new video blog in which I discuss irretrievable and unknowable things, and also thread and labyrinths.

Happy Saturday, readers. You’re a happening bunch of happening things.

ttfn.