Girl Detective

If you’re reading this on a feed, you might want to click through to see the new look. In honor of my 40th, I looked for a new Wordpress theme. I found two I liked–Coffee Chick, and Sakura with cherry blossoms. Coffee Chick seemed to suit the mood of the site more, but I was sad to forgo the cherry blossoms, since I like them even better than Coffee Chick’s yellow roses. And then, voila, my tech-monkey husband G. Grod combined them, so I get coffee chick, plaid, AND cherry blossoms. Hurrah! In many and various ways, I am a fortunate woman.

Sorry if the title offends; it’s a quote from the adorable Daniel V. of Season 2.

Christian and Tim have a walkoff on the roof. Why wasn’t this on the show? (Link from the fabuloso Tom and Lorenzo at Project RunGay.)

Build a library into your staircase. No good for those of us with small kids, but one can dream. (Staircase Library link from Boing Boing)

Wow. I’d forgotten how good this graphic novel was. I thought the first Whiteout was a good mystery, crime and spy thriller. Whiteout: Melt is excellent, one of those rare sequels that outdoes the original. US Marshal Carrie Stetko is called in to investigate a fire at a Soviet base. Danger and intrigue ensue:

Carrie Stetko, WHAT are you THINKING? You’re in an emergency shelter, in a storm, in the middle of Wilkes Lane in East Antartica…blackmailed by your government into finding three pocket nukes stole from Russians by Russians…working with a Russian agent who you’ve been ordered to betray if you get the opportunity…and who will probably do the same to you… you’ve nearly died twice today…and you’re thinking about THAT?

Bryan K. Vaughan has recently concluded his well-reviewed comic-book series Y the Last Man, so I’m re-reading the graphic novels from beginning to (I hope) the end. A mysterious plague has wiped out all animals on earth with a Y chromosome, excepting Yorick Brown and his pet monkey Ampersand. In Volume 2, cycles refers, at least, to the motorcycle Yorick trades for their passage, and as well as to the women’s monthly event. Yorick travels with Agent 355 of the mysterious Culper Ring and Dr. Alison Mann, a cloning specialist. They’re heading from the east coast to California, where Dr. Mann has a laboratory. They stop somewhat short of California, though:

Yorick: Where the f*** am I?
Sonia: Marrisville. In Ohio? Where did you come from, Yorick? I thought all the men were–
Y: Wait, how the hell do you know my name?
S: Oh, it was on the your membership card for the um… “International Brotherhood of Magicians.” Are you really a magician? Like David Blaine?
Y: No, I am NOTHING like David Blaine, thank you very much. I’m an escape artist.
S: Is that how you survived? You…You escaped death?
Y: That’s cute. But listen, I really have to get out of here.
S: Actually…you should probably stay put.
Y: And why’s that?
S: um…
Y: Jesus! What did you do with my pants!

Complicating things, there are Israeli soldiers, a desperate woman who speaks Russian, and a very angry woman from Yorick’s past. This quick-paced volume is by turns funny and serious. It’s a good entry in a thus-far good series.

From Sesame Street, that is. Mine used to be Oscar, but Cookie Monster’s charm has increased along with my Sesame Street viewing time as my kids get older. I think he may be the funniest of the monsters, and is certainly the one who gives the most nods to parents, with his impeccably timed injections of advanced vocabulary.

See an example of that in this NPR interview with Cookie Monster (link from ALoTT5MA). FYI pusillanimous means cowardly; I had to look up both the spelling and the meaning.

Blogenheimer, then Becca, two of my well-read friends, have found the book I was wondering about yesterday: The Dark Clue by James Wilson. (No, not the character from television’s House. Or is it? He does have an affinity for noir; see his office posters for proof.)

For bonus points, Weirleader came up with a more recent book, The Minotaur by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.

Many thanks for your sleuthing. They’ll be added to my crazy-big “shelf” of books to consider in my library at Gurulib.

Nathan from TeeVee dishes on his geek love for Austen and the PBS Masterpiece’s The Complete Austen, which I’ve been (mostly) enjoying. I agree that Olivia Williams was great in Miss Austen Regrets, and that the series as a whole is well done and enjoyable. I don’t, though, think Gillian Anderson is doing herself any favors revisiting Scully-red hair, and I found the Mansfield Park production in general, and Billie Piper in particular, wanting.

The last issue, #60, of Brian K. Vaughan’s series Y the Last Man was just released, so I thought I’d go back to the beginning with Volume 1: Unmanned and read through to the end. Y is Yorick, literally the last man on Earth when a mysterious plague wipes out every male mammal with a Y chromosome. Yorick, along with his last monkey, the male Ampersand, go undercover to track down his mother and sister. He meets up with Agent 355, a member of the covert group The Culper Ring, and she is reluctantly pressed into protecting him. Unmanned sets the stage for the series with strong characters and a good mystery.

For other books I’ve read, and for the ridiculously long list of books I think I’d like to read, visit my library at Gurulib.

Rucka’s Queen and Country comic-book and novel series is at a temporary stopping point, so I thought I’d go back to Whiteout, the excellent graphic novel that contains the first appearance of British intelligence officer, Tara Chace. Chace is undercover, helping out U. S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, who’s been exiled to Antarctica because a former assignment went wrong. Members of a science expedition team keep turning up dead, and the investigation is slowed by the brutal weather, and sabotage. Stetko is a powerful heroine, and Chace (aka Lily Sharpe, in this book) is a good complement. Whiteout is a good story, well told in words and pictures, that will please fans of mystery and spy fiction.

For other books I’ve read, and that I hope to read, visit my library at Gurulib.

The ice is the windiest place on earth. Katabic winds blowing from the Polar plateau down to the ocean. Fast.

320 an hour kilometers fast, sometimes. With that sort of windchill, the temp plummets into the triple-digits.

Wind kicks up snow that’s lain on the Ice for thousands of years, tosses it through the air. Destroys visitbility, you can’t see six inches in front of you, can’t tell the ground from the sky.

That’s called a whiteout.

Twin Citians, Take-Up Productions presents Monday Night Film Noir at the Parkway theater, at (NB, this has been corrected to) 7:30pm. Tonight is Double Indemnity. The Parkway is a great, old theater and serves delicious popcorn with real butter.

Noir film is a growing interest for me, in response to Ed Brubaker’s excellent ongoing comic book, Criminal. Furthering my interest was a piece from last year, “Rerunning Film Noir” by Richard Schickel at The Wilson Quarterly (link from Arts and Letters Daily), which had some interesting insight into the aims of noir.

Traditional scholarship on this mostly American style of film said that the dark mood was a response to the discomfort of peacetime after WWII. Schickel proposes alternate interpretations that I think have a great deal of merit.

Noir films, with their greatly intensified visual style and their stress on perverse psychology, weren’t reflecting our misery in a peacetime economy….Instead, their aims were quite different (don’t forget, they were meant to entertain). For one, they were trying to give the traditional crime film a new lease on ­life–­particularly in the way it represented the city’s place in the postwar world. Somewhat more originally, they were placing a new stress on the power of the ­past–­something most of us thought we had ­buried–­to reach out and twist our fates when we least expected that to ­happen.

#s 61 and 62 in my 2007 book challenge were the graphic novel collections of Bryan K. Vaughan’s Runaways, volumes 2 and 3. I liked volume 1, but volumes 2 and 3 go on to better things, and cement this series as a solidly entertaining young-adult comic with engaging characters. The kids of the title found out in volume 1 that their parents were supervillains, and that they were being betrayed by one of their own. In volumes 2 and 3, the teens go on to forge their own identities, both as individuals and as a group. Runaways is funny, well written, but best of all it’s consistently surprising. There is lots going on, but narrative balls never get dropped. If you know a teen looking for something good to read, I highly recommend this series.

#59 in my 2007 book challenge was Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams. It’s another lovely edition from First Second books, and it’s beautiful both in story and art, as well. Without words, Varon tells the story of a dog who builds a robot friend, only to lose him to unfortunate circumstance. The real versus the dream segments are well contrasted, and the story is sometimes sad but ultimately redemptive and very sweet. I loved it, and so does my 4yo son Drake; it’s a wonderful all-ages book.

#56 in my 2007 book challenge is Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. Get it together he does. This hilarious indie series of graphic novels gets funny again after the relative disappointment of, Volume 3, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness. Several times reading this book I had to close it and put it down to laugh. This was great fun, and yet another example of a good young adult graphic novel, with fun and funny characters. It doesn’t try to be realistic or serious, and it succeeds spectacularly. Scott Pilgrim, the well-meaning but uncomplicated protagonist, is dating Ramona Flowers, and has to defeat each of her seven evil ex-boyfriends in video-game style fights. Oops, make that “exes.” Scott is also being followed by a mysterious ninja, and about to be evicted from the apartment he shares with gay friend Wallace Wells. Seventeen-year-old Knives Chau claims she’s over Scott, but is she? A girl from Scott’s past arrives to complicate things between him and Ramona. Oh, and Scott tries to get a job. This is only part of what goes on, but the chaos is entertaining and well depicted in O’Malley’s utterly engaging art. I feared for this series after the last book since I loved #s 1 and 2 so much, but I’m happy and sad once again. Happy that Scott Pilgrim got his funny back, but sad because I know it’s going to be a long time till #5.

#55 in my 2007 book challenge was the Marvel graphic novel Runaways Vol. 1. It’s a hefty hardcover, with a faux-leather cover, good paper stock, and it includes the first 18 issues of the series. Now _this_ is a good book for young adults. A group of California kids learn that their parents are up to something more sinister than an investment group. The kids run away together. They try to come to terms with their own abilities, while plotting what to do about their super villain parents. The group of kids is likable. The parents are more interesting and complex than they at first appear. The dialog, look, and relationships among the kids is also realistic. There’s some funny stuff, and some dark stuff, and almost all of it’s good stuff. This book was a lot of fun, and I look forward to reading the next volume, which has been sitting on my shelf far too long.

Top Chef info, from Maureen Ryan’s The Watcher:

A “Top Chef” cooking special, which will reunite competitors from various seasons, will air Dec. 6 on Bravo. For all you “Chef”-heads, here’s the lineup, direct from Bravo’s Tuesday press release: “Season 1’s Stephen Asprinio and Tiffani Faison, Season 2’s Betty Fraser, Marcel Vigneron and Josie Smith-Malave and Season 3’s Chris ‘C.J.’ Jacobson, ‘Tre’ Wilcox and Sandee Birdsong.”

Also launching December 6 is Bravo’s new mobile game “Top Chef Challenge.” Designed and developed by leading mobile publisher LimeLife, Inc., the game is set behind-the-scenes of a Tom Colicchio fictional restaurant. Players customize their character and enter the game’s virtual kitchen as an entry-level dishwasher and can advance to “Top Chef,” gain 5-star status and fame along the way with commentary and advice from show host, Padma Lakshmi. A series of mini-games and culinary challenges test reflexes, memory and patience to prove you have what it takes to be the next “Top Chef.” As an added bonus, the Trivia Challenge mini-game lets players demonstrate their culinary knowledge to earn extra points. Top Chef Challenge will be available for a one-time download charge of $6.99 or $2.99 monthly subscription fee (where available) at major U.S. carriers. Consumers should check with their carrier for handset compatibility.

I am sad that my big, gay, chef Dale from Season 3 isn’t participating. I hope he’s off being wildly successful somewhere.

#52 in my 2007 book challenge was 1001 Nights of Snowfall, written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by many. It’s a graphic novel original collection of linked short stories, set in Willingham’s mythical Fables world. Fables, for the uninitiated, is a monthly comic from the Vertigo line of DC Comics, very much in the tradition of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It takes mythic elements–here, characters from fairy tales–and transforms with new, and very modern, twists on the ancient tales. In the series, a group of fables, e.g. Snow White, escaped a rampaging other-worldly Adversary and established a “safe” community within New York City.

1001 Nights of Snowfall has been sitting on my metaphorical shelf for some time. It is a series of short stories set within a larger frame. Snow White, as ambassador for Fabletown, visits a sultan in the East. He says he is going to marry her, then kill her. Instead, she beguiles him with stories, all of which provide details into the past of many of the Fables characters. As in all good fiction, the stories answer many questions, but beget even more.

As in the Sandman series, there are different artists for different stories. The amazing Charles Vess illustrates the framing story. The other stories are done by some of the brightest talents in the arts and comics world, all of whose work is beautifully suited to the fantastic world of the Fables.

My one concern, and it’s a big one, is Willingham’s disturbing sexism, which I’ve noticed occasionally in Fables, but was more prevalent in his previous fantasy works. He’s done a decent job of overcoming, or perhaps hiding, this in the ongoing series by making both male and female characters by turns nasty, loving, loyal, and depraved. In 1001 Nights, though, there is a troubling rape scene in the Frog Prince short story, which is unnecessarily depicted in the art. The story would have been more powerful, IMO, if the story and the illustration showed this in a more sophisticated, allusive and less graphic manner, as was done in the first Snow White short story in the book. As written and illustrated, it places itself squarely in the realm of the torture porn so prevalent in recent movies like Saw and Hostel. It’s a short part (two or three panels) within a longer, very moving story. But for me, it marred the entire work.

I enjoy Fables the series, and I thought this book was quite good. But my reservations about some of the depictions of women in both the series and 1001 Nights result in a qualified recommendation of both.

Oh, how I’ve missed Project Runway. Not enough so I enjoyed the lame, awkward “introducing the new designer” snippets that Bravo has been running. But in a way perfectly captured by the classy Tim Gunn commercial that announced the new season: “Finally.”

Once again, we have fifteen designers competing for a big-ass prize. This season, though, the group of designers are the most talented ever, according to every mention of Season 4 anywhere. And it certainly sounded like it from the designer bios. Many owned their own stores or had done lines before. Also, more are nearer 40 than 20, which is a definite departure from seasons past. These aren’t amateurs, they’re more like semi and actual pros.

Spoilers ahead:

The first challenge was easy compared to what past contestants have had. The designers were given tents full of fabulous fabrics and told simply to make something that showed their individual designing selves.

The claws came out in the creative process, as people scrambled to snatch choice fabrics, and later as they looked around at each others’ work. Assymetrical haircut young diva Christian was one of the bitchiest of the bunch, though his second place finish hints that he’s not to be underestimated, even at the tender age of 21. But the win went to Rami, an Israeli who can work wonders draping silk georgette. Michael Kors did get his jab in, though, with his comment about the shoulder flower looking very MOB, i.e., Mother-of-the-Bride.

The two bottom spots were ably filled. Elisa’s bizarre fabric train was supposed to look like a fountain. Instead, it caused her model to trip; Heidi Klum said it looked like the model was pooping fabric. Simone’s dress had been hastily finished. While she talked a good game about mixing feminine styles and eras, the result was a clash, not a complement.

The lesson for the week was to listen to Tim Gunn. He’d told Elisa to clean up the train, and warned Simone that she had too much finishing to do. If either had heeded his advice, they might not have been called on the carpet.

#50 in my 2007 book challenge was Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. My goal for the year was fifty, and I’m happy I’m going to exceed it. See, it IS possible for parents of small children to read, and to read books of substance!

This is labeled memoir/graphic narrative, since it can hardly be called a graphic novel. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’ve not read her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, but friends have and recommend it. Bechdel’s art perfectly reflects her memoir–gentle, sad, measured, careful, and caring. It is both expressive and engaging. Interestingly, it called to my mind the style of Carla Speed McNeil, who writes/illustrated in the very different genre of fantasy.

The fun home of the title is how the family jokingly refers to the family business inherited by her father, a funeral home. Bechdel deftly balances myriad elements–her own memories, childhood journal excerpts (that amazingly manage not to be dull or irritating, but rather deserving of empathy or pity), literary interpretation, humor, and sadness–to tell the story about her family and specifically her father, a complex and intriguing person. It would be easy to read him as a villain if Bechdel didn’t so meticulously make him human and complicated. Further impressing me was that the story jumped back and forth in time, yet was easy to follow. This book is lovely to read both literally and pictorially. It’s a beautiful example of the power of graphic narratives.

I really liked the final episode, but I really hated the live intermissions. Yes, it was nice that the contestants got to have family and friends there, but still. Waiting this long seems cruel to them, and gimmicky to me. Bravo, do not condescend to me.

Loved the celebrity sous-chefs. Todd English looks even more suspiciously even-featured than Rocco DiSprito, though Rocco looked awfully cute, I thought. Wished they’d brought back Tre and Lia; best of luck to you two. You went before your time, I thought. All the eliminated chefs seemed to do a good job of backing up their Exec. I felt very bad for Casey. The editors highlighted her trouble with the altitude, showing her gasping a few times. And the fact that the only dish they liked of hers was actually executed by Howie had to be a tough blow. But that emphasizes what was so exciting about both the series and the finale–as in any creative endeavor, a combination of inspiration and good fortune can trump technical skill.

I think Hung deserved to win. Two excellent dishes and two good ones is an impressive feat. And while the judges belittled his molten chocolate cake, he was the only contestant this season to be able to pull off a better-than-OK dessert.

I was thrilled by Dale’s strong finish, and hope he’s not out of the chef business much longer.