The Only True Currency In this Bankrupt World
Some stray thoughts:
1. I've been on Twitter for a week now, and I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but...I don't get it. Trying to read the Twitter feed is like reading the binary code from the Matrix. Trying to come up with clever 140-word posts is drudgery. I like verbiage. I like depth. Twitter is sort of a surface-level tool. But I'm determined to give it a bit more time. I'm much more pleased with my Facebook page. I wish Facebook wasn't trying to squeeze money out of the page system, which seems needlessly petty for a billion-dollar company.
2. Philip Seymour Hoffman's death really bummed me out, and I'm not usually affected by celebrity stuff. He was a brilliant actor who more often than not chose interesting roles. From Almost Famous and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to Mission Impossible, he brought his A-game to everything. The films he did with Paul Thomas Anderson, starting with Sidney/Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and leading up to the Master, are some of the most human performances captured. 'Human' is a strange word, because as much of a star as he was, and even going back to Scent of a Woman you could tell he was going somewhere, he always looked like one of us. In fact, for my second novel, I had Hoffman in mind when I visualized the protagonist. Someone with a certain shabby charisma, a slovenly dignity that would fit in in the seediest bars or the swankiest hotel lounges. You could swill beer with that guy, trade dirty jokes, gripe. Yeah, I miss him.
3. From eulogy to self-promotion: my story "Snow Fall" will appear in the April issue of Yellow Mama, an online crime fiction site. The Yellow Mama is the nickname for Alabama's electric chair. "Snow Fall" is about a woman who's thrown out of a plane. Then things start to go wrong. I'm proud of that story, and I'm glad it's found a home.
4. True Detective is a good show. I'm pretty well-versed in both crime fiction and the Southern Gothic, so it doesn't seem as revolutionary to me as to some people, but I've enjoyed every episode. Who knew Matthew McConaughey had such depth? His mid-career renaissance has been fascinating. I'd recommend Mud, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
5. On the other end of the television spectrum, Sherlock's third season was disappointing. Coming up with puzzling crimes, and idiosyncratic yet satisfying paths of deduction, is really hard. Really, really hard. Try it sometime. So I sympathize with their decision to take the show in a more relationship-centered direction, but...well, it's something like introducing a serial sex killer into Seinfeld or the Office. Sad to waste the amazing chemistry between Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.
6. It's been an astonishingly strange few weeks for pro wrestling fans. At the Royal Rumble, the crowd's love of bearded Washingtonian Daniel Bryan was so vociferous, their dislike at his burial by the creative team so strong, that they booed the ending to the pay-per-view. The following Monday, CM Punk walked off the job. Punk and Bryan are the two best wrestlers on the roster, and the two guys who make all the house shows. Both showed up in Vancouver last year, and Vancouver's a relatively small market. To lose or under-utilize those two is strange, and the fans recognize that, and I hope the WWE does, too. There's no match I'd rather see at Wrestlemania than a Punk-Bryan classic for the championship.
7. National Theatre Live simulcasts British stage productions in movie theaters. Last week I saw Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston and Mark Gatiss. It was a good show, and a weird crowd--septuagenarians out to Experience High Culture, and teeny-boppers interested in seeing Hiddleston in a semi-translucent robe.
8. I'll end with a photo I nicked off the Dundurn website: the ARCs (advance reader copies) of LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS arrived at the publisher's offices this week. I think my response was something dignified and worldly, along the lines of, "Holy shit." I still find this whole thing a puzzling, beautiful experience. 
