Today we lost two great character actors, that we mentioned in the past when we were talking about lost franchises.
Rip Torn was Maax in The Beastmaster, from 1984, and Freddie Jones was one of the many fine British actors that appeared in Krull, in 1983.
Both actors had many other genre credits in their CV – most notably Men in Black for Torn and Dune for Jones.
They will be missed.
In five days I need to deliver the final draft of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that I pitched a while back and the editor wants to see finished. It’s a big opportunity – to break in a new market, to make some money, to reach new readers and to please an editor I hope will buy more stories of mine.
In the last three weeks I wrote five different versions of the story, and scrapped each and every one.
Something happened this morning to my PC. I started it as usual and it went into a massive read/write thing, continuous access to the hard disk, 100% CPU usage, the works – and when it was over, it had lost all of my passwords.
All of them.
Each and every one.
My facebook access code and my Patreon code and my WordPress key and my PayPal authentication.
Everything had been obliterated.
I cursed, as one does, and then started looking for a way to recover the missing access keys.
It’s been a long day of SMS messages with code numbers and other demented “security procedures” that have wasted a lot of my time, and two thirds of my systems still don’t work.
Isn’t life beautiful?
I have just had a cold tea break and read Linda Nagata’s short story The Martian Obelisk, that I have on my Kindle but you can read for free on the Tor.com website.
Highly recommended, a short story about hope – just what I needed today.
Enjoy!
Yesterday I found out a friend of mine is a long time fan of Simon Templar, both in the Leslie Charteris novels and the Roger Moor TV series from the ’60s. Something I’d have never suspected, knowing her.
This led to this and that and I found out the aborted pilot movie for the planned reboot of the series, that was announced in 2012, is now available on Youtube, for less than four bucks – the price of a big serving of ice cream.
So I served myself a big bowl of dark chocolate ice cream, and I sat down for 90 minutes to watch what might have been.
Continue readingThis morning one of my favorite singers messaged me on Instagram to thank me for presenting her first record as part of my series, The Earphones Diaries.
It made me incredibly happy, and offered me an opportunity to exercise my French as I replied. It was also a signal that the Diaries are now standing on their own legs, and my posts are being amply circulated.
I started the Diaries because I realized I was listening to a lot of records and felt like it would be fun to talk about the music I was listening. I thought someone might be interested in finding out something different, or comparing notes, or just having a good time.
I always post Spotify links so everybody’ll be able to check out what I’m writing about.
To this day I’ve posted 13 records, from 1970s classic rock to jazz and classical and strange things in between. I had a few interesting music-related chats on Facebook, and ample gratification on Instagram.
Now this is interesting, because no matter what sort of music you like or you listen to, the moment you talk about it in public, someone will come along and tell you why your musical tastes are rubbish.
Like jazz? You should listen to heavy metal instead.
You listen to folk songs? What about opera? Opera’s a lot better than folk.
You like Elizabethan consort music? It’s crap, Pink Floyd’s what you should be listening.
You really dig Japanese rock songs with zen Buddhist lyrics? Why waste your time with stuff like that when you could listen to… fill in the blank.
I’ve come to think that music – much more than books, comics or movies – is so important to some of us in defining who we are, that people feel the urge to correct other people’s “errors”.
And some can really be insufferable when they do.
I’m trying to keep my musical posts light and my selection of music as natural as possible. I get suspicious of my own motives when I go “Hmmm, this one would be right for the Diaries.”
I don’t want to post about the right records – I want to post about what I am currently listening because I feel like listening to that specific record, band, genre.
It’s once again a form of exploration, and I’m not following a plan.
But hey, The Earphones Diaries are working.
I’m having fun.
Way to go.
I skipped a post yesterday: first I was busy doing a supermarket run and stocking my freezer with ice cream as a defense against the heat (36°C and 74% humidity as I write this), and then I scrapped the Holmes story I have been working on these last two weeks and started it over.
So I spent part of the afternoon and night of yesterday checking out books about Egyptian magic, and old Victorian books about tropical diseases.
Karavansara 