Weather Report

It was cool and cloudy here today, with a nice north wind that swept all the pollution out.  All in all, about as nice a day as you'll find in North Texas at this time of year.  I even turned off the air-conditioner and opened the windows in my studio.  I don't know if that had anything to do with the fact that I got 21 pages written, but I'll take 'em however I can get 'em.

During a spare few minutes this afternoon I read Lemuel De Bra's short story "Slaves of the Silver Serpent" in the collection of the same name published last year by Black Dog Books.  This story originally appeared in a 1922 issue of BLUE BOOK, one of the all-time great pulps.  And "Slaves of the Silver Serpent" is one of the best pulp stories I've read in years, with an ending I didn't see coming at all.  This is the first thing I've read by De Bra, but I'll be reading more.  I'm also still reading J.L. Bouma's Western novel, THE AVENGING GUN.

I haven't talked much about movies on here, because we haven't seen many lately.  Tonight we watched the DVD of STARSKY AND HUTCH.  I have fond memories of the TV series, but as Livia points out, that's probably because we were dating at the time and watched it a lot at her parents' house.  As I counterpointed, I bought -- and read -- the novelizations by Max Franklin (really Richard Deming), so I must have liked the show at least a little on its own merits.  At first I thought the movie was going to be absolutely awful, but it improved as it went along to the point that I considered it merely bad, with a good moment here and there.  I usually like Owen Wilson, am less fond of Ben Stiller (though he's great in MYSTERY MEN, a mostly unseen and underappreciated film), and I enjoyed seeing the original Starsky and Hutch, David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser, in a cameo.  The movie looked good and the music was okay if you like Seventies music.  For the most part, though, the script just wasn't funny.  I don't have a problem with them doing a parody instead of a straight remake, but if that's what you're going to do, it had better be funny.  Oh, well, at least the John Travolta version of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL never got made, so there's something to be thankful for.