entertainment

I'm reading a truly awful book, Joan Mendicott's The Three Mrs. Parker, which by now I'd have tossed in the corner except I'm mildly interested in how it's going to turn out. The story is okay, but the writing itself is just awful. For instance, there's a dead guy on the living room floor, and as the ever-widening pool of blood spreads around him, one of the main characters wonders if that stain is ever going to come out of the Oriental carpet. For another instance, she describes jimsonweed flowers as being blue and bell-shaped, and I know they are neither. That sort of casual disregard for facts really pisses me off. But the story's okay, and I'm not too far from the end of the book, so I'll probably finish it and then read something good.

This week we've watched a couple of movies I don't feel like looking up the names of. The first was a 1972 documentary about the fundamentalist church, done by someone who had been a child prodigy preacher, ordained at age four. Marjoe, that's the name of it. He made the movie intending to "expose" the fakery of the church. Now, I have no love of church and especially not the fundies, but I think that's just sad and mean. And the movie itself had lots and lots of "Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!" innit, which makes me plain uneasy.

The second was Fancy Dancing, by the producers of Smoke Signals. Lots of the same actors as in Smoke Signals, and as in Northern Exposure. The story is about a gay indian poet who goes home to the res for a funeral. It is quite good, if also quite low-budget. Memorable, though not exactly riveting. I learned that "innit" is a res expression, instead of brit as I'd thought previously. I like "innit," and have been using it since I ran across it on misc.writing several years ago.

As I quit watching TV several years ago (1989), there are a lot of actually good series that I've missed. Gobbless Netflix. Now we're renting those same TV shows and watching four at a time on disc. A much more efficient way than sitting down at seven o'clock every Thursday, if you ask me. He's just now added Northern Exposure and Soap to our queue.