Yesterday I had some good news in my inbox – I was voted Best Columnist in this year’s Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll! My columns keep excellent company there, so I was suitably flabbergasted, but am seriously grateful. Somehow it’s always daunting to deconstruct things you love, and I’m thrilled that those who have read along seem to have enjoyed it, too.

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In other news, though my daily tasks seem to get more or less accomplished, the year in particular feels as though it’s really roaring by. Today my office computer suggested today’s date as February 24, and it was AMAZING. Then I realized what day it actually was, and that I didn’t actually have four more days in which to get things done before the looming spectre of March descends. (Not cool, work computer.)

In other other news, I’m going to be on Hour of the Wolf this week! From late night Wednesday into the early hours of Thursday, I’ll be with David Barr Kirtley and John Joseph Adams, talking about Barsoom, reading from Under the Moons of Mars, and making wild guesses about the upcoming film, John Carter of the Indeterminate Location*. If you want to see just how hopelessly optimistic I can be about a movie that’s almost bound to be terrible, tune in if you’re local, or if not, you can stream it online (so they tell me, I’m assuming magic)!

* I will probably spend about five minutes JUST talking about the title issues. And another five talking about the trailers. Basically this film is like the kid at the elementary school play “The Nutrition Friends” who comes out on stage dressed like Bunch of Grapes and you think things are going to be fine, or maybe school-play bad, which is still fine, and then he opens his mouth and burps for like two minutes straight.

Here we are, at the close of the awards season, in which stylists, designers, managers, PR assistants, and actors perform a complicated series of communiques about style and photography and interior trussing, like the intricate dancing of bees, and as mysterious and inexplicable to those of us who can only look at the end result and marvel that, because of mixed metaphors, some of our finest actors have pollinated this season’s crops.

Also, they wore dresses, and though in general the level of success was high, Bafflement is still waiting around every corner, covered in chiffon and ready to strike.

Outfit of the Night: Whatever Tilda Swinton was wearing at home.

Actual Red-Carpet Outfit of the Night:

Anne-Sophie Bion, editor of The Artist, because she said, “You know, people always say that I could wear a garbage bag and look good, and I feel there’s no better testing ground for that than the red carpet of the Academy Awards, so I am just going to get a really long garbage bag, Project Runway it with a couple of safety pins, and see if I get away with it.”

AND SHE DID.

Traditional fabric-dress wearers under the cut.
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So, we’re in the home stretch of Con or Bust, and I have offered a review of the terrible movie of your choice. Two things are going on here: one, I would like to get this bidding higher for an awesome cause, and two, I happen to know that the current top bidder wants me to watch Virgin Territory, a teen-movie adaptation of the Decameron starring Hayden Christiansen (yeah, let that sink in). And I’ll watch it, if that’s how it goes, because it’s an awesome cause and because fair is fair. However, I would prefer not to see it again.

Yes. Again. There are many bad movies I have avoided, but there are an even more shameful number I have sought out! However, I have not blogged them (yet), and your only chance to hear me talk about them might be this auction! And that’s not even counting all the horrible movies that you have in mind that I can’t even fathom right now.

1. Hercules. You know, the one starring Timothy Dalton, Leelee Sobieski, and Sean Astin. It will make a nice bookend to the Helen of Troy miniseries I’ve already seen (yup), starring Sienna Guillory, Craig Kelly, and James Callis, who has been making rent since longer than any of you knew, because he’s also in:

2. One Night with the King. This stays in my instant queue even though I own it on DVD in case anyone invites me over to the house and suggests I bring a bad movie, because this is one of the most delightful bad movies I’ve ever seen and having it at your fingertips is like a favorite, horribly-made blanket. (Actual tagline, delivered by a religious film company entirely without irony: Feel the Touch of Destiny. That is how shitmazing this movie is.)

James Callis, John Rhys-Davies (ALSO in Helen of Troy – consummate rent-makers, both of them), John Noble, a dude who looks like a puma, and a girl I went to high school with and have literally no memory of. Someone showed me pictures where we are both in the frame, and I still have no idea who she is or any memory of interacting with her. I like to think my brain tried to protect me from her bad acting and I just wouldn’t listen. (Worth it.)

3. Speaking of things that are totally worth it despite some bad acting: The Young Riders. (Also, speaking of knowing better.)

4. And DEFINITELY speaking of knowing better, and also of Westerns, remember the movie Texas Rangers, in which James Van Der Beek, Ashton Kutcher, Usher, and Matt Keeslar played grizzled Western lawmen? Because I do. Oh, do I EVER.

5. B Monkey. This movie, on the scale of bad at which I usually operate, is quietly bad. It’s the sort of bad movie that I watch the first time and think, “Yes, bad despite the cast but somehow unavoidably so, that’s how this stuff goes, I guess,” and then later I watch the movie again and think, “Is this an okay movie and I just can’t tell?” and then I try to watch it again and realize that there are two separate montages featuring Asia Argento pretending to be a graphic designer and spinning in her chair either slowly or with gusto to indicate the state of her relationship with Jared Harris, and no matter what else you might be trying to praise about this movie, there’s just no getting around that.

6. The Proposition. If you see only one movie this year where a Welsh farming widow hires a sexually-harrassy alcoholic to help her scrappy daughter and the rest of her ragtag family haul a bunch of cattle across the countryside to market in exchange for her sexual congress with said gent in an arrangement that leaves them staring at each other during long interludes of actually driving cattle across Wales as the camerapeople just follow cows around in the rain while no one talks about those haystacks that burnt down because that turns out to be an enormous plot point, make it The Proposition.

7. I saw The Last Airbender live-action movie. TWICE. I leave it in my instant queue as a warning to the others. (You can’t possible be more disappointed in me than I am in myself.)

If you want me to rewatch any of these movies and write about them, that is totally on the table. If you want to stump me with something even worse than any of these, I’m listening. But you should definitely go bid – you have until [ETA: February 25 at midnight? Something like that? I'M NOT A SCIENTIST] to come up with the cheesiest movie in your arsenal, and this awful Netflix queue is not going to frighten itself!

Or Brooklyn, whatever. [Joke about Brooklyn being another planet goes here, largely depending on your feelings about Brooklyn.]

Tonight, from 7-9pm, Powerhouse Arena bookstore will be hosting the launch of Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures of Barsoom! Alongside fellow contributors Chris Claremont and Dave Kirtley, I’ll be reading an excerpt from my story “A Game of Mars,” in which Tara, daughter of Deja Thoris and John Carter, revisits the Jetan arena where she nearly lost her life; she’s there to kick ass and ride bikes, and Barsoom doesn’t even HAVE bikes. Come by for the readings, stay to embarrass us with a Q&A!

Last week, I got the call that Mechanique was nominated for a Nebula(!). I am still processing that, but I am honored to be on a ballot alongside such amazing writers, and have been beyond thrilled at the congratulations I’ve received. It means more than I can say. (I’ll interpretive-dance it for you sometime if you want; ask me when you see me!)

And in the rest of today’s news, I have a story in Lightspeed! “The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring” is part homage to the cozy Western, part horror story, set in an alternate-history Canada and peppered with creeps.

This week I’ll be catching up on wordcount from last weekend, which was Boskone, which negated anything resembling studiousness. It’s always a fun con, despite the odd juxtapositions in the hotel (this time was Boat Show and Underage Preteen Sexy-Dancing Academy) that mean a series of subcultures warily circling one another in the lobby. It was lovely to see the Boskone regulars, and I sat in on my first panels and didn’t even pass out from stage fright! Success!