MOM: it's gone pretty well. they gave me a nerve blocker around three yesterday, and today my arm feels like a purse that i'm holding at my side, and it keeps slipping off of my lap - but it's okay. it just feels like someone else's arm.
LMO: mom. you're sure it's YOUR ARM, right? i mean, i've seen that movie.
MOM: which movie?
LMO: all of them. i'm just saying that if it does something unusual, you can go ahead and call a priest...
MOM: no, it's fine!
LMO: it's good that you don't have a dog, because i just read a thing about how dachshunds are the most vicious breed, and some lady fell asleep and her dog ate her toe and she had no idea because of diabetes.
MOM: no, no, my arm should be un-dead by three tomorrow afternoon.
LMO: that's what i'm saying.
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts
03.08.10
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 8
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: dark places (gillian flynn)
our friends mari and josh came down from harlem to watch the oscars with us (and birch beer and fritos) last night. the horror clip sequence, heavy on bits from the shining, the exorcist, the blob, and nightmare on elm street,** was miserable for mari, who's as allergic to horror as i was for the first half of my life. i feel for her, though scary books ended up being more difficult for me to handle than scary movies were, actually; my formative horror moment was having a stephen king story read aloud to me at camp. oogy writing (and his in particular) was too much for me long after zombie movies and i were BFF.
which brings me to gillian flynn, an author king has called "the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre." most blurbs can be taken with a grain of salt, but flynn really is king's type: dark places is set in especially unlovely parts of missouri and kansas, and its characters are not-entirely-unlikable at best. "draw a picture of my soul," says libby day (once a seven-year-old whose mother and sisters died in a mass murder a la in cold blood's clutter family, now a superfluous thirty-year-old whose pity money is about to run out), "and it'd be a scribble with fangs." it's an introduction that could easily sound ridiculous, but flynn commits to her angle: even in the flashback sequences, libby and her family are weak, selfish, vindictive. our perspectives are theirs, and they all have shitty eyesight.
sounds like a party in a can, right? i freely admit that i tend to avoid this genre like the plague, and that dark places scooted just past the edge of my hicks-who-hack forcefield thanks to its editor (my friend sarah, the hardest-working woman in the book business***) and a pair of unlikely supporters (an entertainment editor at my office and my friend jacob). the chorus was right, as it happens: it's a mean, scrappy book, and i was up with it until three on saturday night. flynn is almost frighteningly good at recasting her characters (i'm not used to rooting against, say, an eleven-year-old girl), and i would pay her to coach a few male post-modernists on plausibly unreliable narrators. i'd never name names, of course.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 8
SURVIVOR: let the great world spin (colum mccann)*
CHALLENGER: dark places (gillian flynn)
our friends mari and josh came down from harlem to watch the oscars with us (and birch beer and fritos) last night. the horror clip sequence, heavy on bits from the shining, the exorcist, the blob, and nightmare on elm street,** was miserable for mari, who's as allergic to horror as i was for the first half of my life. i feel for her, though scary books ended up being more difficult for me to handle than scary movies were, actually; my formative horror moment was having a stephen king story read aloud to me at camp. oogy writing (and his in particular) was too much for me long after zombie movies and i were BFF.
which brings me to gillian flynn, an author king has called "the real deal, a sharp, acerbic, and compelling storyteller with a knack for the macabre." most blurbs can be taken with a grain of salt, but flynn really is king's type: dark places is set in especially unlovely parts of missouri and kansas, and its characters are not-entirely-unlikable at best. "draw a picture of my soul," says libby day (once a seven-year-old whose mother and sisters died in a mass murder a la in cold blood's clutter family, now a superfluous thirty-year-old whose pity money is about to run out), "and it'd be a scribble with fangs." it's an introduction that could easily sound ridiculous, but flynn commits to her angle: even in the flashback sequences, libby and her family are weak, selfish, vindictive. our perspectives are theirs, and they all have shitty eyesight.
sounds like a party in a can, right? i freely admit that i tend to avoid this genre like the plague, and that dark places scooted just past the edge of my hicks-who-hack forcefield thanks to its editor (my friend sarah, the hardest-working woman in the book business***) and a pair of unlikely supporters (an entertainment editor at my office and my friend jacob). the chorus was right, as it happens: it's a mean, scrappy book, and i was up with it until three on saturday night. flynn is almost frighteningly good at recasting her characters (i'm not used to rooting against, say, an eleven-year-old girl), and i would pay her to coach a few male post-modernists on plausibly unreliable narrators. i'd never name names, of course.
VICTOR: let the great world spin. in an actual fight, i'm fairly sure flynn would wipe the floor with mccann. on paper, big, blowsy phrases tend to trump gripping ones for me - and animal sacrifice still freaks me out.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what did you serve at your oscars-viewing, if you had one?
02 what's your take on stephen king?
03 how do you feel about horror in general?
04 what was the last book you read 'til three?
*previous battle here.
**and unforgivably light on george romero and blink-or-you'll-miss-him sam raimi (name checked later at the podium), and - twilight stars, really? kristen stewart and taylor lautner are easy on the eyes, sure, but behaving as though they have anything to do with horror is like calling deliverance a movie about canoeing.
***i was going to say "publishing's david lee roth," but that could mean so many things.
01.07.10
i make note of what i read fairly casually. i name-check the latest twelve books here at kidchamp HQ (in the column at right), i keep a longhand list on a spare page of my weekly planner each year,* and i chat about notable bits now and again. all of that is amusing enough, but it's not especially useful. i reviewed my 2009 list as i snazzed up my planner with a crisp new annual insert, and while i know that raymond chandler's the long goodbye was, to me, the best of the bunch (and that kazuo ishiguro's marvelous never let me go gave it a run for its money), i'd have to chew on my thumb for a bit before i could tell you why. as many former english majors and current black turtleneck wearers know, immediate, biased hierarchies can be much more fun (unpacking, all the works and days of hands: there will, forgive me, be time). moreover, the part of me that's twelve and a boy has been thinking about deathmatches, as one does. so: 2010 will be a year of immediate tussles. when i conclude a read, i'll explain (with the flush of the endpage yet upon my fingers) why it did or didn't best the reigning champ. two books enter, one book leaves.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 1
SURVIVOR: pride and prejudice and zombies: dawn of the dreadfuls (steve hockensmith)
CHALLENGER: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)
first, let's recognize steve hockensmith's good sportsmanship in taking on a completely original prequel to seth grahame-smith's cult hit (last year's pride and prejudice and zombies), a novel which is 85% jane austen; i shudder to think of the comparisons and superfan enmity in store for him. that said, hockensmith came up with new zombie jokes and eschewed the scatological stuff (e.g. wickham's spectacular and frequently referenced incontinence) that bogged P&P&Z down - and he had an interesting take on why elizabeth bennet is eventually so resistant to mr. darcy (she has been disappointed by two would-be suitors: dr. keckilpenny, the too-cerebral zombie whisperer, and master hawksworth, the secretly marzipan-filled deadly arts instructor). dawn of the dreadfuls could have been better (i vastly preferred the original satire), but it could easily have been much worse.
and then there's the rusty-but-perilous buzzsaw of the simple art of murder, a collection of entertaining-but-not-epic stories by one of my favorite writers that begins with a really spectacular essay. chandler defends well-written detective stories as nimbly as austen defended novels in her day; it's satisfying to see genre snobbery deflated. i don't even mind his fightin' words for sir arthur conan doyle, for he's right:
VICTOR: chandler, without breaking a sweat. he'd better rest up, though: i just started jonathan lethem's chronic city, and it's fabulous.
i make note of what i read fairly casually. i name-check the latest twelve books here at kidchamp HQ (in the column at right), i keep a longhand list on a spare page of my weekly planner each year,* and i chat about notable bits now and again. all of that is amusing enough, but it's not especially useful. i reviewed my 2009 list as i snazzed up my planner with a crisp new annual insert, and while i know that raymond chandler's the long goodbye was, to me, the best of the bunch (and that kazuo ishiguro's marvelous never let me go gave it a run for its money), i'd have to chew on my thumb for a bit before i could tell you why. as many former english majors and current black turtleneck wearers know, immediate, biased hierarchies can be much more fun (unpacking, all the works and days of hands: there will, forgive me, be time). moreover, the part of me that's twelve and a boy has been thinking about deathmatches, as one does. so: 2010 will be a year of immediate tussles. when i conclude a read, i'll explain (with the flush of the endpage yet upon my fingers) why it did or didn't best the reigning champ. two books enter, one book leaves.
THUNDERTOME: ROUND 1
SURVIVOR: pride and prejudice and zombies: dawn of the dreadfuls (steve hockensmith)
CHALLENGER: the simple art of murder (raymond chandler)
first, let's recognize steve hockensmith's good sportsmanship in taking on a completely original prequel to seth grahame-smith's cult hit (last year's pride and prejudice and zombies), a novel which is 85% jane austen; i shudder to think of the comparisons and superfan enmity in store for him. that said, hockensmith came up with new zombie jokes and eschewed the scatological stuff (e.g. wickham's spectacular and frequently referenced incontinence) that bogged P&P&Z down - and he had an interesting take on why elizabeth bennet is eventually so resistant to mr. darcy (she has been disappointed by two would-be suitors: dr. keckilpenny, the too-cerebral zombie whisperer, and master hawksworth, the secretly marzipan-filled deadly arts instructor). dawn of the dreadfuls could have been better (i vastly preferred the original satire), but it could easily have been much worse.
and then there's the rusty-but-perilous buzzsaw of the simple art of murder, a collection of entertaining-but-not-epic stories by one of my favorite writers that begins with a really spectacular essay. chandler defends well-written detective stories as nimbly as austen defended novels in her day; it's satisfying to see genre snobbery deflated. i don't even mind his fightin' words for sir arthur conan doyle, for he's right:
Every detective story writer makes mistakes, of course, and none will ever know as much as he should. Conan Doyle made mistakes which completely invalidated some of his stories, but he was a pioneer, and Sherlock Holmes after all is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue.one could say the same thing about chandler himself - in fact, that's my reaction to the rest of the stories in the collection - but the attitude and dialogue really are indelible.
VICTOR: chandler, without breaking a sweat. he'd better rest up, though: i just started jonathan lethem's chronic city, and it's fabulous.
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 what was the best thing you read last year?
02 anything good on the nightstand at present?
03 speaking of conan doyle - and fighting - have you seen guy ritchie's sherlock holmes? what did you think?
*as one of my sisters does, as we discovered over the holidays; is that a common thing? did art garfunkel's celebrated reading list move the nation?**
**i considered turning my list into artgarfunkelwouldbesodisappointed.blogspot.com, but my sloth's claws are too unwieldy for two blogs.
07.09.09: time for pie
(note: jane austen, zombie, and goat selection spoilers herein)
my only significant quibble (if there's such a thing) with (jane austen and) seth grahame-smith's pride and prejudice and zombies is that, in the second to last illustration, elizabeth is pinned to the dojo floor by a dagger with lady catherine de bourgh's ninjas in lifeless heaps on either side of her; according to the text, the ninjas aren't dispatched until elizabeth escapes while lady catherine is admiring one of the bennets' antique katanas. a little sloppy, guys.
there are also a handful of inconsistencies in the official name of the irish seminary (kilkenny? kilkerry?) for crippled clergymen to which wickham retires with lydia after mr. darcy "beats him lame" - but these things slip through the cracks every now and again, and the book is great fun either way. marjorie garber told my austen class (long ago when the earth was flat, in the summer of '98) that clueless was her favorite version of emma; along, well, sort of analogous lines, i think this might be my favorite pride and prejudice (though my zombie bias is strong, for sure: i always snicker a bit when someone offers to send me their headshot here at the magazine). a few best-loved gobbets:
[at a midtown art store checkout counter]
1: so if you were giving someone a birthday cake...would you put this goat on it, or this goat? [places figurines on counter]
2: well, what kind of cake is it? chocolate?
1: actually, it's really a birthday pie. a key lime pie, ten inches.
2: that's small. that one... [gestures to mountain goat]
1: ...could overshadow the pie?
2: yeah. and key lime, so it's green...with brown and white...yeah, the small one. with the little beard.
1: great!
how are you, internets? what news of your undead, your betrothals and pie-times?
(note: jane austen, zombie, and goat selection spoilers herein)
my only significant quibble (if there's such a thing) with (jane austen and) seth grahame-smith's pride and prejudice and zombies is that, in the second to last illustration, elizabeth is pinned to the dojo floor by a dagger with lady catherine de bourgh's ninjas in lifeless heaps on either side of her; according to the text, the ninjas aren't dispatched until elizabeth escapes while lady catherine is admiring one of the bennets' antique katanas. a little sloppy, guys.
there are also a handful of inconsistencies in the official name of the irish seminary (kilkenny? kilkerry?) for crippled clergymen to which wickham retires with lydia after mr. darcy "beats him lame" - but these things slip through the cracks every now and again, and the book is great fun either way. marjorie garber told my austen class (long ago when the earth was flat, in the summer of '98) that clueless was her favorite version of emma; along, well, sort of analogous lines, i think this might be my favorite pride and prejudice (though my zombie bias is strong, for sure: i always snicker a bit when someone offers to send me their headshot here at the magazine). a few best-loved gobbets:
(chapter 1)in news of the living, yesterday was joe's birthday (and our little cat got to come home, hooray!). it was time for pie.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.
(chapter 7)
"Can I have the carriage?" said Jane.
"No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to rain; and they spring so easily from the wet earth."
(chapter 51)
Elizabeth looked expressively at Lydia; but she, who never heard nor saw anything of which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, "Oh! Mamma, do the people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not; and I passed William Goulding, whose curricle had been overturned and horses devoured, so I was determined he should know it, and so I let down the side-glass next to him, and took off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window-frame, so that he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything. He yelled after us - something about his son being trapped; but oh! Mamma, I am sure he saw the ring. Oh! Think of how the news will spread!"
[at a midtown art store checkout counter]
1: so if you were giving someone a birthday cake...would you put this goat on it, or this goat? [places figurines on counter]
2: well, what kind of cake is it? chocolate?
1: actually, it's really a birthday pie. a key lime pie, ten inches.
2: that's small. that one... [gestures to mountain goat]
1: ...could overshadow the pie?
2: yeah. and key lime, so it's green...with brown and white...yeah, the small one. with the little beard.
1: great!
how are you, internets? what news of your undead, your betrothals and pie-times?
04.28.06
today's lesson in wedding strategy is that it isn't always a good idea to muffle one's inner bridezilla. i'd been handling our florist with kid gloves because i was afraid she'd back out on us; after waiting a week for a return message and finally resolving to make a polite transatlantic phone call this morning, i got dumped via e-mail anyway. why this couldn't have happened a week or two (or, hell, a month or two) ago - so that i could have had that time to work with the person who inherited (see 04.18.06) her flower shop - is beyond me; what i do know is that it's really, re-ally tempting to be an ugly american when english reticence fucks with my planning. don't mess with the bride, young man. you'll get the horns.
i caught the last fifteen minutes of pretty in pink on cable last night. for those of you who lack total brat pack recall, that's when molly ringwald bounces back from being dumped for prom by whipping up a weird dress and making all of the rich kids look like conformist suckers. when i burst into tears (as i always do) as the soundtrack kicked into OMD's "if you leave," i realized why this wedding stuff is giving me zombie-filled stress dreams* and making me flip my shit over save-the-date cards; while i can shrug off traditions and don't exactly need to feel like a princess, i do need to feel crafty. i'm hoping the stuff i throw together will stand the test of time a little better than molly's dress did, but the temporary "huh? wow!" is what matters. so...which one of you is going to teach me how to pour my own candles?
today's lesson in wedding strategy is that it isn't always a good idea to muffle one's inner bridezilla. i'd been handling our florist with kid gloves because i was afraid she'd back out on us; after waiting a week for a return message and finally resolving to make a polite transatlantic phone call this morning, i got dumped via e-mail anyway. why this couldn't have happened a week or two (or, hell, a month or two) ago - so that i could have had that time to work with the person who inherited (see 04.18.06) her flower shop - is beyond me; what i do know is that it's really, re-ally tempting to be an ugly american when english reticence fucks with my planning. don't mess with the bride, young man. you'll get the horns.
i caught the last fifteen minutes of pretty in pink on cable last night. for those of you who lack total brat pack recall, that's when molly ringwald bounces back from being dumped for prom by whipping up a weird dress and making all of the rich kids look like conformist suckers. when i burst into tears (as i always do) as the soundtrack kicked into OMD's "if you leave," i realized why this wedding stuff is giving me zombie-filled stress dreams* and making me flip my shit over save-the-date cards; while i can shrug off traditions and don't exactly need to feel like a princess, i do need to feel crafty. i'm hoping the stuff i throw together will stand the test of time a little better than molly's dress did, but the temporary "huh? wow!" is what matters. so...which one of you is going to teach me how to pour my own candles?
*the zombies themselves weren't the problem - it was that i was supposed to be revivifying a horde of them while shopping for a rehearsal dinner outfit and my syringes lacked the proper amount of serum, so they kept coming halfway to life and stumbling all over the store and getting in my way. also there was a small dog on fire.
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