Plan B on wallstrip

A dream come true to write this wallstrip:


The Colbert Report and Plan B - what more could a girl want???

New wallstrip

Here's another one of my wallstrip scripts. This time, we looked at the male side of things. I think they did a great job.

If you missed it, check out yesterday's (2-20-07) show in the archives. If you like dogs, you'll be hooked. For those of you who know him, Chomsky makes his video debut. And the ego continues to grow...

The March, E.L. Doctorow

The March is literally THE march - Sherman's March during the Civil War. The novel is split into three sections: Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. We follow many characters on both sides of the war, including a free slave girl who joins the march, two escaped Confederate prisoners, General Sherman, a Southern belle, and a surgeon on the march.

I've only read one other Doctorow novel, Ragtime, which I loved. This one, I'm not so sure about. I found myself comparing The March to two other books set in the heat of battle: The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, set in Vietnam, and Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, which takes place during Westward expansion.

I don't like war novels. I knew that going in to each of these books. Blood Meridian was for school, The Things They Carried was recommended numerous times. The March, I found on my own.

I bring these other two novels up because I loved them. Despite my dislike of the genre, these books got through to me. This was probably because the books are not "war novels." Like any good book, these two novels defy labels.

The March is a different story. While I was able to immerse myself in the different characters, I was constantly ripped out of the moment by an account of battle. I understand this is a matter of taste, and I'm glad I got past it.

The best moment in this book is a scene with a character named Albion Simms. He is an unremarkable character until a spike winds up in his head. This doesn't happen until the North Carolina section of the novel, and it's one of the things that kept me reading. The surgeon decides to leave the spike in his head, deciding removal would kill him. The character remembers and forgets indescriminately and unpredictably. It is one of the most interesting parts of the novel. His death made me gasp out loud.

I'm glad I didn't put the book down. I'm glad I made it through. Doctorow embodies different mindsets about the conflict and about war in general, that make it an interesting read.

Next up: Ines of My Soul, by Isabel Allende

Re-Integration + BCOO - You Suck, Christopher Moore

I know you've all been on pins and needles about my wordpress experiment. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about (read: all of you), I decided to move my Book Club for One over to a separate blog on wordpress.com for a bunch of un-interesting reasons.

Well, I hated the site. I also missed the occasional comment from *intelligent* readers. Especially when I got this:

"how could you whomever you are actually enjoy this book? Its bland, hard to read, and the book is screaming out to be put down every time you read a line. Add to that flicking to the back of the book to check meanings of words etc, it is on the whole a very unsatisfactory book"

That was in response to my post about Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, and it made my decision for me: BCOO is moving back to The Peeled Apple. Go ahead and groan, I can't hear it.

I know it may be boring for some, but I like to have a record of what I've read and how I felt about it.

Here's what I thought of You Suck, by Christopher Moore:

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The last couple Moore novels I’ve read have left me wondering whether my reading taste has changed. As I read A Dirty Job and some of Moore’s older ones recently, I started to feel like Moore had lost respect for his readers. I started out feeling the same way about You Suck, Moore’s latest. It’s a sequel to one of my favorite Moore novels, Bloodsucking Fiends.

As always, it was wonderful to encounter some of the characters I remember from his other novels. There are the usual winks to well-versed Moore readers, which can get tedious at times.

But then the story kicked in. Moore gently makes fun of his characters, while unfolding a one-of-a kind story about true love between vampires. The novel takes place in San Francisco, which is conducive to Moore’s self-indulgence as well as his humor. It’s a give and take, but in this novel the humor wins. With a self-conscious goth girl named Abby Normal narrating a large portion of the novel, and the return of The Emperor of San Francisco, You Suck completely hits the mark.

This is Moore’s tenth novel and though they aren’t all winners, he is definitely an original. His novels are guaranteed to be unique, for better or worse. I definitely recommend Moore for anyone who likes to read screwball novels tightened with sincerity. But I’d start with Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

Next up: The March, by E.L. Doctorow

Floridian Fame

Florida is famous! Not in a good way. The state I'm longing to leave keeps giving me reasons to drive, crawl, or hitch my way out of here. Recent Florida stories include:

1) The 21-year old rape victim who was jailed hours after the rape. While in jail, she was denied the second dose of Plan B because it didn't jive with the medical supervisor's "religious beliefs." She finally obtained the pill 24 hours after the allotted time, rendering the medicine ineffective. The story hasn't hit many other headlines since that first day, though SaveRoe.com has details on how to contact Governor Crist to get a serious investigation going. I have a question - if they had found the outstanding warrant before the victim was examined by a nurse, would she have been allowed to take Plan B at all?

2) In yesterday's winner for oddest story, Anna Nicole Smith died. No one really knows what to do with this information, although CNN seems to be sticking with a mix of tribute and "holy shit this girl was screwed up." They also insist on highlighting a connection between Smith's life and Marilyn Monroe's. I think that's a bit offensive. Smith was discovered unconscious in a hotel room in Hollywood, Florida and died in the hospital. The autopsy is today. Her life is a soap opera, complete with a dead child, a fight for money (inheritance from the 80 year old man she married), an investigation into the paternity of her newest child, big boobs, weight problems, alcohol problems, intelligence problems, and slut problems.

3) And Florida hits it out of the park with this story from Atlantic Beach, FL. Let me set the scene for you: The Atlantic Theater had a sign up on their marquee advertising their upcoming production of "The Vagina Monologues." A woman drove by with her 12-year-old niece. "What's a vagina?" asks the niece. The woman called the theater, blaming the sign for her niece's question (why she didn't blame her sister for not teaching a TWELVE-YEAR-OLD the word vagina escapes me). The theater changed the sign to read "The Hoohaa Monologues." No. This is not a joke.

This is ridiculous. CNN has a video taken from local television that's pretty funny. The fact that the theater changed the word is insulting. The fact that the woman called to complain is insulting. And the fact that this girl didn't know what a vagina is...that's almost unbelievable.

4) Let's not forget the astronaut love triangle. Lisa M. Nowak drove to Orlando and attacked a fellow astronaut with pepper spray on Monday. There's not much to be said about this. The media is alternately taking it as a big joke (with headlines like "Astro-nut" and "Lust in Space") and an opportunity to psychoanalyze the lives of astronauts. It's a depressing story. I think we're all so interested because it's a "catfight" in space, as Broadsheet points out. But I also think we're disillusioned by this story. Astronauts are our heroes. They are hard-working, highly intelligent people. To find out that they're human - that's news-worthy.
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So there's Florida for you. According to these stories, we're free-speech-hating, rights-crushing, potential billionaire-killing, voyeurs who live in America's penis.
I know that this is an unfair portrayal of Florida, but it's stories like these that make Florida "special."

More wallstrip!

Here's my next episode of wallstrip. FMD is a lot less sexy than my last script, but it's all sexy when Lindsey is reading it. I'm so excited I get to hear her deliver my words! It's a little surreal to hear my stuff done so well.

The guys over at wallstrip have been getting some well-deserved publicity. Watch Adam Elend and Lindsey Campbell on ABC News. Also, Google has contacted them about putting the video on their stock page and you tube is putting them on their front page rotation. Congratulations, guys!

I think I should invest in wallstrip.

My first wallstrip script

The powers that be changed a couple things. Can you tell which lines? I think there's one that's pretty obviously not me.

I'm pretty happy with it, though. Lindsey is wonderful, it's hard to write bad stuff for her. I think I've gotten better though. My next show is Thursday, FMD, then one next week for AUXL.

Keep watching the show at wallstrip.com. It's really great.

I can finally get back to Jason's website, thanks to a temporary computer my mom cooked up for me. Big changes coming, thanks to a great new logo from Julie. Check for them at LTMProductions.com