I wrote a brief recap of Readercon 2009 for Tor.com. Unfortunately, it’s one of those cons defined by the company one keeps, so the parts I enjoyed most are hard to recap, since it was, “Then we talked for three hours!”
The recap does mention the announcement to do one-track programming next year, which is apparently now in flux. As I’m not a huge fan of single-track programming, especially for a con this size, how things fall out will probably affect whether or not I go next year.
Two nourishment-related things that did not end up in my recap:
* The number of times I shelled out ten bucks for a garden salad with chickpeas in an attempt to eat something that was not nachos.+
* The number of times I walked the mile-plus round trip to the Starbucks in the Cabot House shopping center (Distinctive Home Furnishings since 1950mumble!). Fun fact: it’s much nicer to make that trip when it’s 78 degrees instead of 105, like last year.
+ I ate a horrendous amount of nachos. I couldn’t bring myself to beg for grilled cheese this year, somehow.
1. The first thing I did when I got home was make a pot of coffee and drink the whole thing. (I was seriously undercaffeinated all weekend, which, if you spoke with me whatsoever, I might have noticed.)
2. The second thing I did was watch Stephen King’s Desperation on SyFy, and laugh hysterically. And I am the world’s biggest weenie about anything vaguely resembling horror, so it takes a lot to show me hundreds of dead bodies and manage to NOT creep me out, but after the fifteenth tarantula-riddled corpse, I was cracking up. Did they build the town on a huge mating nest? Also, young woman stock character, is it necessary to scream every time you see one? It’s like your thirtieth corpse. Eventually it has to be old hat, right?
Steven Weber has the magical ability to look totally embarrassed in whatever he’s in, as if he’s sending a manful hostage note right through the camera to the audience. Best scene: while touring a Small Town Abandoned Place, he fondles a Foreign Artifact (hey-o!) and he and the young woman stock character have to pant at one another for two minutes, because you know how finding random artifacts on an office desk makes you frisky.
In true TV-movie fashion, not only does this encounter not affect the plot, it doesn’t even come up (HEY-O!) again in character beats. It’s just how Steven Weber rolls.
The best part of the entire thing is Ron Perlman, who knows when the time has come to chew scenery. Check out that pretty face. Third from the bottom is the best one. Jazz hands!
3. I’m still wasted-tired. The con reminded me of the “Gotta Dance” number in Singing in the Rain when Gene Kelly and company are on a pair of moving walkways, dancing manically and zooming back and forth and just missing one another.
In case you didn’t catch the last fifteen Austen adaptations on the BBC, they’re tackling Emma later this year.
Good news: Romola Garai, Johnny Lee Miller, Jodhi May, Michael Gambon, Blake Ritson (poached from Mansfield Park!), Rupert Evans, and Head Bitch in Charge (Except in Hex Where She Died) Christina Cole means that place is Awesome British Actor Camp. Plus, Emma wears a collar during the day! Progress!
Bad news: Johnny is much too young and cute to really capture the ridiculous WHEN YOU WERE NINE skeeve of Mr. Knightley. The adaptation with Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong comes closest to the age differential, where she’s seventeen and he’s SIX HUNDRED YEARS OLD. Not that I don’t love Mark Strong – he’s quite foxy! – but Austen really highlighted the fact that he decided to express his romantic feelings for her, which he’s had since she was LESS THAN THIRTEEN, by acting like her dad and telling her that’s what he’s doing. Ah, romance!
Preview! Spoilers for people who haven’t read the book; though, let’s be fair, you’ve had since 1811 to get on that.
1. I read last night at NYRSF for the Federations event, alongside K. Tempest Bradford, Allan Steele, and guest host John Joseph Adams. The other readings were great, and I managed not to pass out, which was my only goal for the evening. (I dream big.) The crowd was amazing – thanks to everyone who stopped by; it was lovely to have friendly faces to look at when I got nervous.
2. I got nervous a lot. My stage fright is no joke. (Actually, that’s not true. I called my mom ahead of time and made my usual, “I have the vapors, we’ll have to call off the cotillion!” crack, so technically it was a joke, even if I spent most of the evening trying not to barf up my own heart.)
3. When I got home, I sat down to unwind with the pilot of Warehouse 13. By the time I was finished, I wanted to throw myself out the window. What a terrible pilot, holy crap. I wrote it up for Tor.com, if anyone wants to know how SyFy’s new flagship show is!
4. Hint: it is terrible.
5. Tomorrow I leave for Readercon! I am very excited. I am also packing my bags with some vegetarian granola-type bars that will provide nutrition for me, and pre-mourning my impending, unfamiliar distance from my yuppie soy lattes.
Sometimes I see a movie and want to write about it immediately, like when I walked out of Moon and wanted to ask everyone in the theatre to go talk about it in some 24-hour living room. (Except the dude who stank of cologne and sat right behind me. He’s not invited. Anywhere. Ever.)
And sometimes I see a movie, and it confuses and disgusts me so much that I go months without watching it again, much less being willing to write about it, because part of me thinks, “No one else needs to know about that movie, right?” Except that whenever someone starts a conversation about the worst movie ever (invoking, say, Transformers 2), I get this urge to shove the DVD box at them and scream, “Look at this! JUST LOOK!”
Which brings us to today’s movie, Octane! AKA Pulse or Diesel, depending on which direct-to-DVD region you live in.
Nutshell: Mischa Barton and Madeleine Stowe’s new wax lips are on a road trip for no reason, being haunted by truck-stop people who may or may not be real, but since they are blue-collar we know they must be evil no matter what, so we’re good. Mischa Barton gets recruited to a car-crash cult that parties in nightclubs inside empty gas trucks, and is taken to have sex with Jonathan Rhys Meyers because she’s a perfect virgin sacrifice to the car-crash gods. And that’s the part that MAKES SENSE.
Casting directors for the O.C. should have paid attention to that sign, no?
