Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's "Reliquary"

Like apples fallen from the Michael Crichton tree, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child write what I previously dismissed as semi-plausible escapist techno-thrillers, and now EMBRACE as semi-plausible escapist techno-thrillers.(You NEED escape when you're next to a hospital bed.) The core of their collaborative efforts is loosely known as the Matthew Pendergast series. They're modern pulp adventures full of scary monsters (but now they're "genetic mutations"), prophecied apocalypses (except we call them "environmental catastrophes") and fantastic new worlds (scientifically, "anthropological curiosities") similar to the "The X-Files." They're not often thought of as "science-fiction" but Hugo Gernsback would have been proud.
"Reliquary" is a semi-direct sequel to series opener "The Relic," which was turned into a very forgettable Penelope Ann Miller movie, about an "alien"-like monster loose in Chicago's Natural History Museum. (The book itself takes place in New York.)


ABOVE: Penelope Ann Miller? Remember her? I know she was in SOMETHING way back when. Something other than "Adventures in Babysitting," I mean. Some big movie.

Penelope played the scientifically oriented Museum curator Margo Green, (it's best if you just think of her as Dana Scully). The movie excluded her male foil, Matthew Pendergast. Shame on them, but at that point in the series he was just a background character built on traits. (There are lots of those in the book: the take charge cop who doesn't care about no smoking signs; the tough girl-cop-with-a-great-rack; the stubborn scientist in wheelchair. No one really stands up to take charge- this is a book-by-teamwork, just the way it was assembled.) As a character, Pendergast is Southern, blonde, sophisticated like James Bond, curious like Fox Mulder, and loves disguises like Sherlock Holmes.
In "The Relic," havok was wrocken in the Museum by an ancient creature called Mbwun (no clue how to say that). In "Reliquary," bits and pieces of Mbwun have wound up in Manhattan's intricate underground and spawned a race of Morlocks that ocassionally come out to murder the more humanoid molemen community. We're told that the largest uncharted section of the world is not in some desert in Africa or Asian steppes, but for miles and miles beneath New York. Apparently, the Astors, Rockefellers and J. P. Morgans of the world wanted a subway system just for THEM, (they didn't want to sit next to a contagious dago or a kike or a mick, you understand.) But they never quite got through with those, and there are hundreds of fantastical twisting tunnels that H. G. Wells would have loved. How do D'Agosta, Pendergast, Green, Hayward, and a dozen other supporting characters solve the underground murders? With a ridiculous plan that would have made an awesome Hollywood CGI extravaganza (think flooded subway tunnels throughout New York).
But... No one went to see Penelope Ann Miller movie. So that won't happen. That's what the books are for. The books and our imaginaaaaation.

Talk about "Get Him to the Greek"!

Pretty Phunny!



Pretty Potter...



Pretty Puny.

Walkin' Through Old "God of War 1"

Talk about "Get Him to the Greek"! I've mentioned before that I'm quite capable of gleaning a percentage of fun from watching OTHER people play video games. So I've been virtually watching over the shoulder as someone walks me through the original "God of War" game, one of the bloodiest, most bad-ass ways for kids to learn about Greek mythology. (Oh no! It's rated Mature! Sorry, little kids, you won't be learning about Pallas Athena or Medusa or the mighty God Ares, and you won't get to snag a blade on the mighty Hydra's eye and smash its draconic skull to pieces!)
A canny combination of "Prince of Persia"'s cultural appropiation and "Devil May Cry"'s nihilistic carnagerie, "God of War" plays out like a Homeric HALLUCINAtion. Images of a surging Titan carrying Pandora's Temple on his back will haunt you. Non-gamers like me who can't dedicate time or money are really missing out on America's greatest cultural accomplishment. Videogames are better than HBO. You couldn't explain why a videogame will move you and excite you and mold your dreams ten times better than Shakespeare to Harold Bloom, but it's true. There are things happening in videogame lands that the mainstream should not ignore.

More Personal

For the locals: My Mom (Maria Castro) is at the ICU at Mercy Hospital in Miami. Visiting hours are from 8:30 to 10:30 and I'll be there tonight Saturday. No pressure on anyone, of course, but if it's close to your house and you wanna swing by for a few minutes and say hi, I'll be all happy to see people that are not in scrubs ;-) Call me at (305) 877-7340 And thanks to all the amazing people, family, friends and Internet folk who've called or stopped by to cheer us up or sent e-mails and the such.
My Mom's the strongest woman I know. If my Mom had been Rosa Parks, she wouldn't have refused to move to the back of the bus! No way! She would have whoopped that guy's ass so badly black people in Alabama would have had a free state-sponsored limo transportation service to this very day.

Personal

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Going through a particularly difficult moment in almost all fronts. My mother is dying and I've been (reasonably enough) let go for all the time I've had to miss at work. More on this soon. I wondered whether to call a hiatus on HALLUCINA but writing has always kept me going, so I won't abandon you for now. Do prepare for either very sporadic posting, or torrential posting as a way of coping. Or who knows. I sure don't. I promise I won't break down raging about the decay of the flesh in the middle of a jokey review of "Get Me to the Greek" but I suppose it's only honest to let you know that just because my sense of humor is going strong doesn't mean I'm not being a depressed crybaby on the inside.

I Barks Up the Right Tree

"We'll always have Donald Duck."
Noel Coward in the script for David Lean's "A Brief Encounter"



Dear Imaginary Reader:
I just about died and went to a feathery heaven: A site with all the classic Disney comics by Carl Barks! The dreamt-of paradise of my childhood!
Of course it comes about 20 years too late to truly claim "dream come true" status. Now following Uncle Scrooge, Donald, and the Huey-Dewey-Louie trinity just brings a momentary smile to my face before shame comes with a blush, and I start blathering about Carl Barks.
Once upon a time, the idea of crediting artists for their work in kid's comics was laughable- who cared who actually wrote and drew Disney comics? Why, it was WALT DISNEY!
As a kid you certainly don't stop to wonder: "Wow, Mr. Disney is sure an energetic fellow, how does he manage to run that company and make all these movies and TV shows and all these cartoons and all these hundreds of comics?" What good is it to know that he was simply the visual head of a group of talented artists (or that he himself was notoriously unable to draw Mickey Mouse after the re-design?) Who cares if "Sleeping Beauty" was directed by a man named Clyde Geronimi and written (in part) by some guy named Ermand Penner? Noooo
WALT DISNEY
WALT DISNEY
WALT DISNEY!
(You see a similar phenomenon today with TV shows: how many people hear a good line in, say, "Lost" and go: "OMG J.J. Abrams is a genius!" I always feel like saying: "You realize it's some lowly fat writer who came up with that line, right? The actor reads the lines, and someone other than J. J. Abrams directs that episode. Hell, J. J. Abrams was probably too busy cashing his checks to actually watch his own show.")
The point is there's some disconnect between the making of entertainment and what the general public perceives. Kids read comics and laugh. But in the 1940s and '50s the parents who snuck glances at their kids' reading material started noticing something: most of the "animal funnies" were complete shit
EXCEPT
there were these Donald Duck cartoons that had clever storylines and rather funny dialogue and were visually creative and colorful and very pleasing overall. A certain style imposed itself and made the town of Duckburg come alive, with its distinctly button-nosed human-dogs, and the waddling, unforgettable characters: Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell. Whoever this stylist was, he came to be known by fans as "the good Duck artist." It wasn't until 1959 that Carl Barks was outed as the genial creator.



Dip into those stories, and you'll be delighted. If you're young enough (or old enough) to have fond memories of a show called "Ducktales" you're guaranteed a smile. The wide-ranging Uncle Scrooge adventures remind me of Herge's "Tintin"; Donald's more neighborly blunders and constant job-seeking remind me of my life.

Don't let the child inside you die. That's, like, the most unnecessary abortion ever.

++++++++++++++

Carl Barks did NOT write or draw the following Mickey Mouse comic, (you can tell because it sucks from an artistic point of view) but I just had to share because it's hilarious, and you gotta remember: 'twas diff'rent times, thangs were diff'rent.

Watch Mickey discover amphetamines in "Mickey, the Speed Dealer!" Courtesy of Erowid.org, where drug addicts of the world go to rationalize their life.

David Malki's "Wondermark"

'Oy Guv'nor, may I bend your jug and direct you to
this "Wondermark" chart? 'Elp out with your next door-stopper! (Or 'elp you out of it.)



Huge David Malki fan.

Gorillaz' "Plastic Beach"

A prescient homage to BP and its legacy to future generations of beach goers? Mutated rapping gorillaz living on a Plastic Beach!



It's been half a decade for 2-D, Murdoc, Noodles and Russel, since their halcyon "Demon Days," but there's not a single extra ink line on their faces, and they've retreated from a globe on its last polluted throes to a remote crap-swept island in the South Pacific. "Plastic Beach" is not a huge departure for the fictional foursome spawned by Blur's Damon Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett as a sort of (very profitable) prank. But neither you nor I wait for Gorillaz to turn to R&B ballads. We want some remnants of dub, wide-ranging allusive samples, cinematic stretches, zany rap interludes about breakfast cereals and jellyfish races, and enough featured guests to sink that island. There's legends like Mos Def and Bobby Womack, (twice each), there's De la Soul and Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed in a very post-retro-glam song called "Some Kind of Nature," and someone called Little Dragon I might know about if I wasn't so decrepit. The songs are uniformly fun, although some stretch, (the epic dancer "To Binge" starts amazing and then, fittingly, looks like it has forgotten to stop.) The stand-outs are lead single "Stylo"
and the wacky "Superfast Jellyfish."



Also, check out "Rhinestone Eyes."



But there are beautiful moment spread throughout the album, "On Melancholy Hill" finds Albarn sounding at his finest, and truly, as I've said before, I followed the man happily through the Blur catalogue and I don't mind him going all cartoony in his latter years.

The concept of a fabricated all-cartoon band is not altogether novel. ("Mmm, mmm GOOD Veronica!")



But Gorillaz truly made it so that image can not be divorced from content. Indeed if you just listen to the album without placing it in a visual context- if I, say, told you that Blur had reunited or that it was Damon Albarn's slightly unorthodox new set for The Good the Bad and the Queen- you would be getting half your money's worth. For the way it cannily alerts you to the imagery-heavy fabrication of modern music, Gorillaz deserves its bananas.

Street Crossing Tales

Occassionally I emerge from my cyber-coccoon to warily test the sun's scorching burden and CROSS THE STREET to the corner store. Things happen.

1-DEPARTURE
I don't wear glasses because I don't like the DMV imposing things upon me. I'm walking and I see a little old lady like five feet ahead of me and I think: "Wow, that old lady is garishly dressed with that sequined dress and all those feathers. And she must be tired because she's standing so still. SO still. Maybe she's forgotten where she is and needs help crossing the street. And why doesn't she have a head, oh that's because it's a MANNEQUIN," I realize as I come upon it.
I hope no one noticed the foolish kindness with which I approached a piece of fiberglass.

2-DECEPTION
I keep walking on and there's this big fat guy with a ruddy, alcoholic hue to his face being interrogated by two cops, which is no wonder because he has a burlap sack that might as well have a big $ printed on its side. He'd forgotten his Beagle Boy mask, but he was still giving it to the cops:



"Now, he came out of nowhere and gave me the bag to hold for him. I didn't look at it. Just a bag! 'Watches', I say, the're watches inside, ok. I don't care what anyone does for their living."
The cops are looking at each other, they can't believe this guy is trying to rationalize this situation, but they're playing along, because the guy looks harmlessly drunk: "So someone gave you the watches that got stolen from the store?"
"Exactly, see, that's what I... FINALLY! that's what I'm trying to tell you!"
"Can you give us a description of the man who gave you the bag? Where did he go?"
"Oh, no. No way." The guy shakes his big fat jowls. Come on, what, are the cops expecting him to do their job for them? Give a fella with stolen watches a break! "I don't wanna get anyone in trouble, you see, and I don't wanna get mixed up. Why would I do that?"
"Sir. We're cops. You HAVE to tell us what you saw. Can you give us a description?"
"He looked..." Pause. Inspiration. "He was black."
I accidentally laughed and CROSSED THE STREET-

3-DISTRUST-
- where a teen girl is sitting on a little brick wall strumming a guitar, which I thought was sweet and you don't usually see in Miami. She was AWFUL but you can tell she's beginning to play with it and learning chords and she's amusing herself. I hope I'm inspiring future generations, so on passing I say: "That's really cool!"
She looked up worriedly: "I've got a rape whistle."

4-DESPAIR
I came back home with my Doritos and cried cried cried.

"It's pronounced 'Proo', she said."

I'm going to regale you with the Marcel Proust questionnaire, but since today is Bloomsday and the Loopy Leprechaun is having 3-for-1 deals on Guinness, I'm calling it the Joyce questionnaire.

1-What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Feeling joyful and lonely all at once. Feeling sad and lonely is bad enough, but when you're down, at least you UNDERSTAND why no one else is around.

2-Where would you like to live?
In New York, with lots of money. New York without money is like going to a 10 course meal after the gastric bypass.

3-What is your idea of earthly happiness?
A loving woman's lap, a nice glass of wine, a great book, Vivaldi in the background, the low voices of happy friends in the next room, the smell of a garden breezing in through an open window. Oh, and "The Cleveland Show" on TV.

4-To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
I have a tendency to be extremely confessional with people who don't give a damn about me. When people ask me how I am, I'm always tempted to tell them. I prefer inaction to failure, and choose to forget that inaction IS failure. Also, my socks are frequently mismatched, but I figure that won't be an issue unless someone steals my shoes, and if someone steals my shoes, I have bigger problems to deal with than my mismatched socks.

5-Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Jean Valjean, Bilbo Baggins, Edmond Dantes.

6-Who are your favorite heroes of history?
Socrates, Jesus, Spartacus. Notice a trend?

7-Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Scarlett O'Hara, Anna Karenina, Pippi Longstocking.

8-Your favorite painters?
Dali, Bosch, Modigliani, Waterhouse. I'm sorry I can't stand "artists" who think having Parkinson's is a valid painting technique, or who call their paintings things like: "Black Dot on White Canvas #17: Confluence and Harmony of the Right Wing Pederast."

9-Your favorite musicians?
Dead White Guys: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach.
Sings and Writes: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Paul Simon
Rock Bands: The Beatles, Aerosmith, The Who, Pink Floyd
Not-that-Rocking: ABBA, Mecano, Elton John, Billy Joel.
(Yes, I am quite boring, but I can't quite understand people who, when asked about the best band of all time, say things like: "CLEARLY, it's Aztec Camera.")

10-The quality you most admire in a man?
The ability to refrain from punching things as a way of life.

11-The quality you most admire in a woman?
A charitable willingness to tolerate my company.

12-Your favorite virtue?
Compassion without sentimentality.

13-Your favorite occupation?
Creation.

14-Your most marked characteristic?
I would like to think it's my boundless curiosity, my desire to learn about new things. But it's probably my constant tendency to fall from apparent happiness to irritating despair.

15-What is your main defect?
See above. Also, you know, I'm selfish, immature, irresponsible, and, like, seventeen inches too short.

16-What natural gift would you most like to possess?
I wish I was hot and athletic *shrugs* Shallow but true. That failing, I wish I could tell jokes without forgetting the punchline, or messing it up, and, hmm, stuttering and all that, and not forget where I was going to go with the joke, or... wait, before that I should have told you the rabbi was blind. It's not the same if you don't know the rabbi is blind.

17-What historical and contemporary figure do you most despise?
I really hate Hugo Chavez. I don't just mean that I hate his politics. I mean I hate HIM. It's a personal thing. When he speaks I hear a retarded donkey coughing out huge turds on tops of cheering, clapping Venezuelans. You have to speak Spanish to truly understand what an immense, monstrous idiot this guy is. My favorite Chavez quote:
"And if I catch anyone lying and saying we don't allow free speech in Venezuela, ay, they're gonna pay for saying that, just you wait!"

18-What are your favorite names?
Girls: Carolina, most variations on Elizabeth, (Lisa, Liz, Beth, Elly, Zabe, etc). Anything's cool, as long as it's not a state name. Guys: Who cares? As long as it's not something like Eugene or Percival or Chad. GOD I HATE CHADS.

19-What is your present state of mind?
Oh, right now is apparent happiness. Irritating despair comes later tonight.

20-What is your motto?
It's the final line of "The Count of Montecristo." ("All of human wisdom is in these two things: to Wait and to Hope")

21-How would you like to die?
I don't think I would LIKE it, thank you.
But I'll tell you what I DON'T want. I don't want my death to be described as "bizarre," "disgusting," "mysterious," "painful," or "hilarious."


ABOVE: Happy Bloomsday! And never mind question 16, I'm pretty freakin' hot compared to James Joyce! What a dork!

Heather McElhatton's "Million Little Mistakes"

Dear Imaginary Reader:
If I've learned anything from my recent win of the Florida State Lottery's $22 Million Jackpot is that I'm not versed enough on the intricacies of fiscal responsibility, and also that I need to see someone about this constant need to lie, lie, lie. It's getting to be a problem, and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who's usually so patient, brought it up the other day while we were sharing a spot of coffee.



The plight of lottery winners is the premise for the second volume in Heather McElhatton's delightful "Do-Over" series, "Million Little Mistakes." The books take the "Choose Your Own Adventure" aesthetic and apply it to very adult situations- It's not necessarily "The Mystery of the Rude Smugglers and the Conveniently-Placed Cave." "Pretty Little Mistakes" took "you" (a female character) from college on through death, creating a wise and witty map of life's imaginable possibilities. The sequel, "Million Little Mistakes," is not altogether different, although it centers less on romantic or career choices and more on financial mayhem: Your newly minted wealth means you'll be enjoying exotic 10-course meals, but also that your second-cousin's third step-niece is going to stop by asking for a new kidney. What will you CHOOSE?
There's also an emphasis on outlandish adventure this time around: whether facing Somali pirates, or New Orleans ghosts, McElhatton has this Scheherezadish penchant for genre-hopping story-telling. The form allows for tone shifts that would have been impossibly distracting in a straight novel, but here just put a smile in your face: you're getting hundreds of facets of a writer, and if you work with the book, you will feel engaged in the creative process in ways that are NOVEL...but not NOVELISTIC. The prose is always limpid and often hilarious, the options logical, the results of your choices are never jerky but only as surprising as life.
Oh, and just like in life, you gonna die. But with her wicked glee, McElhatton thinks up about a million ways for THAT go down, so you'll be dead, but seldom bored. Beyond the gimmick, it's that clear-eyed willingness to tell sober truths in the middle of hilarious stories that distinguish the "Do-Over" books, and marks the author as something more than a fantasy-fulfiller. I really adore the spirit of these books, and wouldn't at all mind if there were a few more of these down the proverbial pipeline.



I do wish there was a male version of this somewhere, because whenever I have to choose between "staying with Edwin the dedicated tax consultant" or "eloping with Chad the skillful pool boy," I find myself looking 'round the corner for "Felicity the sexy waitress who dispenses life wisdom."
That female point of view means most men will simply shrug off the series, feel it wasn't for them. (It's so sad! Guess they're not as secure in their panty-dropping manhood as I am?) McElhatton is all too aware that women are this country's primary readers, which as a guy I would find an offensive writerly assumption if it wasn't the cold statistical truth.
As a rule, guys don't read books without some combination of the words "Deadly" or "Hitler" in the title. We don't read novels. We don't read Flaubert or Austen or Henry James. We ain't about to read no Russkie bull from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky- we won the Cold War so we wouldn't have to do THAT. We don't read plays. We sure as hell don't read poetry, and no matter what we pretend, we DON'T read the Playboy articles.
Guys.
We gotta end this.
It's time to crack open a freaking book instead of wandering around in a haze of idiocy waiting for Michael Bay to rape our ears with another two hour explosion, because literature is still the best way we have devised to enter other people's lives and enrich our humanity. We're mentally and spiritually bankrupt if we don't read. Simple as that.
(Might as well start with "Million Little Mistakes"! Put yourself in the shoes of a lottery-winning chick, try your imagination.)

So anyway...
What's next for the "Do-Over" books? Humble suggestion? TIME TRAVEL!
- If you decide to talk Cleopatra out of her passion for herpetology, go to page 673!
- If you decide to light up that cigarrete even though the stewardess has warned you about the Hindenburg's safety rules, go to page 155!

George Eliot's "Adam Bede"

I suspect craft does what it sets out to do; art achieves things it wasn't even aiming for. George Eliot's 1859 debut, "Adam Bede," succeeds as a work of art even as it fails in the craft department. There are things here that quite escape Eliot's novelistic intentions, brilliance that is unintended and even contrary to the author's will, like the book simply flew out of her grasp; when she applies herself and tries to "fix things," we wish she wouldn't.

...

We DO know George Eliot is a girl, right? I don't have to go into all THAT, do I?



"Adam Bede," which should quite clearly be called "Hetty Sorrel," is rather schizophrenic in its nature. On the one (triumphant) hand, we have Eliot's wide-scope take on the rural idyll that is the town of Hayslope in 1799. Eliot insists this is a warts-and-all picture which might annoy the sophisticated or offend the morally superior (urban) reader of 1859: there's an entire chapter, accurately titled "In Which the Story Pauses A Little," dedicated to the narrator's fervent reassurances that things are being "kept real." But nothing can hide the fact that this is a charming town meant to elicit nostalgia for the simple life; Hayslope is the place where you want to get your dairy products.
Eliot puts you there, makes the town's seasons wash over you, lets you shake hands with its inhabitants. There's two characters in particular toward whom you'll feel far more affection than you feel for your actual neighbors, I bet. One is the kind, moderate rector Mr. Irwine, who extends tolerance to the town's few Methodists; this at a time when decent Christian folk rated John Wesley's evangelicals slightly above cannibals. The other neighbor you'll fall for is the lovably imposing Mrs. Poyser, who always "tells it like (she thinks) it is," to her devoted husband's endless bemusement. But just like them, there's life and character all over Hayslope, (oh, Chad's Bess! Bartle Massey! Joshua Rann!) This is a mental vacation to a world that is no more, and it couldn't succeed more pleasingly in those terms.
But Eliot wanders away from that effect. There's a plot to deal with, unfortunately. It concerns a dull, self-righteous young carpenter named Adam Bede, whose alcoholic father drowns in a stream much to everyone's relief, prompting Adam to... I dunno. Not much. Get even duller and more self-righteous? (Adam is not the 'feeling-things' type. He likes things he can measure and cut.)
Adam has a younger Methodist brother called Seth. Seth is meekly and chastely in love with the town's token female Methodist preacher, Dinah Morris; so meekly and chastely that at his timid marriage proposal Dinah sort of pats him in the head and sends him to fetch a stick from the next village. Dinah herself is so heavenly, beautiful, sweet, self-sacrificing, intelligent, virtuous and perfect that I fell asleep writing this sentence. NATURALLY we know she's gonna end up with Adam, who has a huge hammer and a novel named after him! But their happy marriage is for the last reel. First Adam must learn some valuable lessons about STUPID GIRLS.
This is where Hetty Sorrel comes in.



She's the village's vacuous slut, but Adam is fooled by her beauty and wants to marry her, even though Hetty has her sights on the handsome young Squire Arthur Donnithorne, who flirts with her with no particular seriousness, (she IS just a rustic.) Adam sees Arthur kissing Hetty, flies into a rage, and nearly kills Arthur.
This is not the first time Adam has OD'ed on testosterone. As the novel opens, he nearly beats up a co-worker for cracking a joke. Eliot judges not; frankly she seems to find Adam's macho bullshit sexy, but to me it suggests that in Dinah Morris' future there's going to be a lot of nervous explanations about "walking into the farm door again," if you know what I'm saying.
Anyway, Arthur Donnithorne survives the beating and promptly departs for Ireland, reassuring Adam that Hetty is all his. A thrilled Adam proposes, a dejected Hetty settles, and the oblivious town of Hayslope looks forward to the nuptials.
Then, (and I blame Queen Victoria for this), something happens that rather confused this modern reader: Hetty gets all antsy and flees, looking for Arthur Donnithorne. Cold feet, quite understandable, I think. Then she faints somewhere. Next thing we know, Hetty's sentenced to death. For murdering her baby. I felt like someone might have ripped chapters from my library's copy of "Adam Bede." When did Hetty sleep with Arthur? Why is there no mention of her NINE MONTH PREGNANCY? Of her DELIVERY? Her BABY-KILLING? See, it all goes un-shown because, if you'll recall, piano legs were wearing stockings and bushes on the lawn wore bloomers, just in case someone had a naughty thought somehow.
Dinah Morris bravely goes to meet Hetty in prison, and showers forgiveness on the sinner, who's turned mad from a crime she's only half-aware of having committed. It sounds like Hetty learned about her own pregnancy and botched abortion at the same time the reader does: during her trial! Some measure of confusion must be forgiven in the poor girl. Interestingly, all a modern reader can think is: Hetty's going to the gallows for getting laid- but will the DUDE who RIPPED AND DIPPED even get a FINE?
Of course not, he's a RICH MALE! Years later, Arthur Donnithorne will sit at the club and tell the old chaps all about the idiot girl who believed his sweet nothings and got killed for it. Then they'll sip their brandy and laugh about feminine feeble-mindedness.



Even Eliot senses how incredibly unjust her story has been, and provides Hetty with a not-too-convincing last minute reprieve from the gallows. And it IS Eliot's story, fiction, we're dealing with. (Historical critics have pointed out that Hetty's plight is soooo 1860's London; in the British countryside in 1799, impregnating the local girls was part of the "handsome young Squire" job description, and it was about as scandalous as a boob job today. But even acknowledging the huge number of Britis women, poor and otherwise, who have been sentenced to death for attempting desperate abortions or abandoning their children to exposure, we must recall Eliot is not interested in addressing a "social problem" here, the way Dickens would have been.) This is about what happens to Hetty as a cautionary tale. There's a revealing moment where Eliot gives herself away, in a line that must have had her chuckling to herself. As miserable plot twists pile upon Hetty's head, Eliot says:
"God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!"
That's EXACTLY what Eliot IS: the BEGINNER of this misery, its creator and plotter.
See, Eliot begins by HATING Hetty Sorrel, and means for US to hate her too.
But there's what makes this novel art: we can't. The character escapes from under Eliot's traps, becames something beyond what the novel intends. Yes, Hetty is a real idiot- but the emphasis there is in REAL. She is more or less everything Eliot has contempt for: a vain, selfish dimwit whose kittenish beauty effortlessly seduces and destroys the men around her, as they ignore the smarter-but-perhaps-plainer girls with whom Mary Ann Evans almost certainly sided.
But no matter how stupid, oblivious, uncaring, gullible Hetty Sorrel is, no matter how badly she treats Adam, no matter how often she primps at her mirror, no matter how many babies she kills, for reasons that are absolutely inexplicable, the reader's heart goes out to her more than to Adam or Dinah. Eliot practically humiliates her, ("here's what appens to the pretty girls who bullied me in high school!") indeed wants to kill her off, but the novel resists that. After that last minute salvation, Eliot quickly takes Hetty offstage (to have her die in jail unceremoniously anyway). It's like she's throwing away a dirty sock puppet, but from there on the novel screeches to one of the most jarring, soulless "happy endings" I've ever read. It plays like this.
Adam and Dinah, who've exchanged perhaps two words in the novel, turn to each other.
ADAM:
"Hey, you're that preacher girl my brother Seth is in love with. You wanna get married to me now that Hetty Sorrel is off the picture?"
DINAH:
"Sure! I've loved you since chapter one!"
ADAM:
"Me too. I love you. Whatever your name is. Hey, little brother, you don't mind if I take the girl of your dreams away from you?"
SETH:
"MIND? I'll PAY for the wedding! It's what Jesus would have done for HIS big brother!"
The Town of Hayslope: "HOORAY! Everyone's happy. Well. Except Hetty, who's dead."

It's a terrible ending to a great debut novel. Eliot gets better.

Naoki Urasawa's "20th Century Boys"- Volume 1- "Friends"

I want to impress upon you how GOOD the first volume of Naoki Urasawa's "20th Century Boys" is, and not "good" as on that manga curve that allows one to enjoy stories about girlfriends who turn into cellphones, but GOOD, as in GO READ NOW. It's a moving, intriguing, nuanced piece of work even those skeptic of graphic novels might enjoy. It most readily bears comparison to Stephen King's "It," with its time-juggling juxtaposition of innocence and experience in the nominal service of horror; or perhaps "Lost," in the way it slowly unfolds its mystery, with questions leading to more questions; or Alan Moore's "Watchmen," in its deft handling and humanizing of sci-fi conventions, or the way it rewards repeated readings.
...
I ran out of superlative comparisons. Can you tell I love it?



A long-running commercial and critical hit in its native Japan, "20th Century Boys" has spawned an ambitious trilogy of films. Watch the movie trailer but be warned that it spoils more than you might want, and also that, just as in the "Watchmen" movie, taking a drawing to life in the most literal way possible may detract from the work rather than add to it. I reserve the right to be skeptic about the films, and I'm not really sure if the manga's next 21 volumes can hold to this level of quality, but if you've ever wanted some maturity out of your Japanese comics, you might have to turn to this story about kids whose deadliest dreams may have come true.

Heck, I don't really see why you shouldn't just go right here and read the first four or five chapters or so. Laundry can wait.
And what's "Friend" up to?!?

"The X-Files" Season 1

I'd forgotten how much I loved "The X-Files"! Didn't you, Dear Imaginary Reader? I mean, before it sank under the ponderous weight of its mythology somewhere around season 6, before David Duchovny became a guest star in his own damned show, before that "Lone Gunmen" spin-off you certainly don't remember, and before that last X-Files movie that came bearing (some) answers a decade after we'd forgotten we had questions.
I'm talking Season 1, when creator Chris Carter first paired FBI Agents believer Fox Mulder and skeptic Dana Scully, when every episode was crafted as a twisty mini-movie, when the TRUTH was OUT THERE and WE WANTED TO BELIEVE!
*sigh*



What's in Season 1? Special Agent Dana Scully is assigned by THE CIGARRETE SMOKING MAN (William B. Davies) to the disreputable X-Files, where she's meant to keep an eye on "Spooky" Mulder, a flying saucer fan. Soon they're dealing with, in more or less this order:
- nasal bleeding due to alien probes
- freaky rashes on pilots who've interacted with strange spacecrafts; the helpful Deepthroat (Jerry Hardin); a stoned Seth Green
- a very creepy liver-eating character called Victor Eugene Tooms who squeezes into the tightest of spots
- a kid who doodles complex messages sent from outer space
- THE JERSEY DEVIL
- throats crushed from the inside out
- a murderous elevator
- a pre-"Desperate Housewives" Felicity Huffman caught in a virtual remake of John Carpenter's "The Thing"
- ghosts ruining the space program
- an epileptic abductee
- the creepy little EVE girls (creepy girls will recur)
- a British fire-starter, and Mulder's old flame from his Oxford days
- the ghost of Scully's stern military Dad
- a gender-hopping killer with ties to an Amish-type group. But, like, EXTREME super-powered Amish
- re-incarnated bank robbers
- creepy government investigation of Progeria (that thing that ages you prematurely but isn't marriage)
- those crazy walking conspiracy encyclopedias, the Lone Gunmen, who remark: "That's why we like you Mulder, your theories are waaay out there"
- a layer-of-hands who kills the faithful. Maybe
- Injun Werewolves
- loggers, eco-terrorists, and the ancient insects who love them
- more Tooms
- a creepy little girl, who's also a cop murdered by a Chinatown gang. Maybe
- a killer cryogenic head
- Deepthroat's Dramatic Death. Maybe. Dying words: "Trust No One"



Like "Lost" in our latter days, "The X-Files" claimed to weight faith and science in a balance. It was a confusion of terms, and certainly Chris Carter wasn't thinking theologically. He's a man of technomyth. His Fox Mulder wanted to believe in extra-terrestrial life in the same way other believers ache for intimations of immortality, (and for the same reasons: Mulder wants to re-encounter his departed sister). The muddled terms led to dialogue like this (from the final episode of Season 1): "This life-form isn't like any we know, it isn't natural... It's extra-terrestrial." (No. If it isn't "natural", then it must be UN-natural or SUPER-natural. Extra-terrestrial life-forms would be "natural"... just not on Earth.) A similar confusion occurs when Scully feels her belief in "science" is tested by everything she can't classify. Science is not some collective of "established" knowledge, it's not a dogma, but a METHOD of looking at the world that allows Scully to examine and make sense of her new beliefs, even when they conflict with the old.

I may be overthinking alien abductions here.

Oh, and YES:

Mike Newell's "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" director Mike Newell took my inordinately fond memories of this, (one of the first PC games I ever played)



and of this, (one of the most bad-ass, run-up-the-walls and flip-back-in-time gaming experiences)



and turned it into THIS flame-a-fest:



I keeeeed. Unlike the general movie-going public, I actually found "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" to be suitable summer-time fare, one of the best videogame movies yet, and in many ways superior to producer Jerry Bruckheimer's similarly-spirited "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.
For starters, it has a comparatively sensible plot (does anyone know what was going on in that last "Pirates" movie?).
Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a Persian street urchin who has obviously grown-up watching Disney's "Aladdin"; the Good King raises him as his own son, but then the Good King's Evil Brother Nizam (Ben Kingsley, sporting a Fu Manchu) hatches an overly complicated plan to accuse neighboring Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) of hoarding weapons of mass destruction and/or pointy spears. That's actually not important because what Nizam wants is to kill his brother the Good King, which he does with the aid of a burning prayer robe. But THAT'S not too important either because what Nizam REALLY wants is to steal Princess Tamina's magical sandy dagger that would allow him to travel back in time so that he could kill the King AGAIN- but earlier this time as a child, which seems rather overkill. And even that's not too important because then we find out the dagger can SUMMON ARMAGEDDON.
Forget what I said about the sensible plot: piecing this together is like trying to read the untranslated Koran while having sand thrown on your face.
Basically Dastan runs around and jumps on the rooftops of Agrabah and scimitars are waved to tunderous drumming. On the downtime, Dastan bickers humorlessly with the Princess to melodic strains lifted from the Maurice Jarre score for "Lawrence of Arabia." Much has been made of Jake Gyllenhaal's inappropriate ethnicity, (not that there's that many Persian actors any of us would care to see starring on this), but it's Gemma Arterton who has been bronzed to the point of offensiveness, turning the one time Bond girl into a vaguely mediterranean beauty with lips like a ship's prow (2 or 3 more roles like this one and she might get a part in the SAMAS as a femme-de-chambre to Marie Antoinette or something).



Most of the fun here comes from a zesty Alfred Molina (also a SAMAS graduate), playing a big-government-hating tax-dodging Sheik with a penchant for ostriches, and from a surprisingly noble Richard Coyle as the movie's OTHER Prince of Persia (Coyle is the goofy guy from "Coupling"!)
Mike Newell (who after all directed "Four Weddings and a Funeral") does not seem too comfortable with action scenes, awkwardly cutting away from the very stunts we're presumably paying to watch. He's not alone in this counfounded trend of making action as distant as watching your neighbors play a video-game across the street through tinted windows. Most of today's adventure movies could use a remedial course on what worked for Indiana Jones (the original trilogy, I mean). But add a few decent jokes to a simplified script, make the stunts more engaging, add some tactile feel to the sets, (I wanna smell camel spit, not look at CGI renderings) and I'll gladly sign up for a sequel.

Angie Sage's "Septimus Heap- Book 1: Magyk"

There's something about the word "magic" that resists the regular pronounciation. It's always
*MAAAAAAGIC!*
Or as in Angie Sage's Septimus Heap books,
"MAGYK"
spelled out in a bold font meant to startle the youthful reader who might otherwise be falling asleep. These fantasies now routinely run over the 500 page mark. That used to mean a novel was an expansive epic about Moscow or Napoleon or some combination thereof. Now it just means it's "setting up" for the events in the future six sequels. Thanks a lot, J. K. Rowling.



It's nearly impossible for a fantasy written in the last decade to not wrestle with the wizardly influence of Harry Potter, (See Artemis Fowl or Percy Jackson), but the Septimus Heap books certainly do not struggle too hard: here's our CHOSEN BOY WIZARD backed by his LOYAL FRIENDS and pursued by a DARK MAGICIAN who's taken over the local school for "MAGYK".
It's what they call tried-and-true in the biz, and at least Sage does not bungle the formula.
Here's critters who scream "CGI ME!!!" Here's the Latin incantations and vaguely Dickensian names. Here's a Messenger Rat (instead of a Messenger Owl) and a Boggart, (just like the one in Rowling's books). Don't quite want to rip off Bertie Bott's Flavor Beans for the merchandising department? How about reviving the pet rock fad with a languid pet rock character called "Petroc Trelawney," which, if you stop to consider it, is about as witty as calling your pet cat "PetCat Potter-like." (There was even a Professor Trelawney in the Potter Series!)
What Angie Sage does do wrong is to completely disregard in-depth world-building: (why, when other people have built it for her?) There's a Queen here who has no other name that "Queen," a bad guy called "Supreme Custodian." That lack of attention to any back history or consistency explains why the characters at one point encounter, in the midst of their British alterna-world, (emphasis mine) "the ROMAN temple for the DRAGON of HOTEP-RA." (I wonder if the Dragon's name is Wang-Chung Quetzatlcoatl?) J. R. R. Tolkien, painstakingly crafting his runic languages, would have PLOTZED- and that's before getting to a Bilbo-meets-Ring scene cribbed from "The Hobbit."
Septimus Heap, like Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker, is the seventh son of a seventh son, which primes him for magic and gains him the unwanted attention of He-Who-Has-A-Dumb-Name, DomDaniel. The book follows Princess Jenna- a blank- and the Heap family- a bunch of blanks- as they're protected from DomDaniel's Hunters and Assassins and Death-Eaters by an Extra-Ordinary Wizard called Marcia Overstrand. SHE has at least two traits- she's bossy and has a love for python-snake boots. And I suppose so does Aunt Zelda the Witch, who loves boiled cabbages and is named
EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE FROM "SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH."



Minus the outstanding characters, the appealing world, the wit, and the surprising twists, what would Harry Potter be? Now you know. That said, "MAGYK" moves fairly fast, considering its artificial bulk- it's mostly small pages, big font, big margins, the sort of thing you couldn't get away with in your composition class. The book's one claim to originality is how long it takes for the identity of Septimus Heap to be officially announced- it happens in the last chapter- but that's just how you let the kids know the last 500 pages were but prelude. You're in for 3000 more pages! Forget about HOMEWORK!
Ah, 's cool. At least they're attempting something like literacy.

"Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Edition"

The venerable, long running series of fantasy (and horror) short stories had a nice start in 1987, bookmarking a decent-if-uneven selection with Ursula K. LeGuin's classic tale of Western antropomorphism, "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" and Alan Moore's first official prose fantasy, "A Hypothetical Lizard." Also of note is "Delta Sly Honey" by Lucius Shepard. Shepard is not prolific but he's a criminally underrated writer who single-handedly dominates the military-magic-realism field, (no wonder). Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling edit. As always, Thomas Canty takes care of the evocative covers.

The World of UnNews at your Calloused Fingertips

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I feel you should be as informed about reality as I am (in my near-omniscience), but pelicans desperately gurgling for their last oily breath are kind of a mood-raper, so let's talk about hot chicks.


ABOVE: "Spencer? Where did you go? Are you down there again?"

Speidi is no more. From now on Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt will be known as Hontag and Spratt, until we stop knowing who they are at all. If those two crazy kids can't make a joint Twitter account work, no one can. Where's the sanctity of marriage when you need it?


ABOVE: "Oh, no! It's Rush Limbaugh! He's a gay-hate-monger! But... He brings money. We can work it out."


Oxycontin aficionado Rush Limbaugh got married last Saturday to a woman 26 years younger than him. Gay icon Elton John was chosen to serenade at Limbaugh's wedding. (Where's the sanctity of marriage when you need it?!?) The conservative DJ explains his decision: "Oh, come on, give me some credit, I don't really believe my own crap!" Elton John explains HIS decision: "These glasses? Made out of crushed Faberge eggs."


ABOVE: More like Joran Van der SMOOTH.

Rich Dutchman Joran Van Der Sloot allegedly confessed to the murder of a Peruvian woman, five years after being the prime suspect in the murder of Natalee Holloway: "Ok, I killed Stephy. And Natalee. I may have killed Brittany Murphy. But I did NOT have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

It's all an amazement to me. This guy is guiltier than Colonel Mustard in the Library with a Chainsaw, but charges haven't even been technically filed. Meanwhile I so much as jaywalk and ten minutes later an entire K-9 unit is sniffing at my intestines.

Shakespeare Ain't All Dat: "The Real Housewives of Windsor County"- and the F-BOMB!

ABOVE: (l to r) Mistress Quickly, Desdemona, Mistress Page, Kookybuns, Lady Macbeth.

Wow, Shakespeare really drops the ball of lard with "The Real Housewives of Windsor County." It milks the fat-cashy-cow of Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare's beloved recurrent character (and the real-life inspiration for characters like Santa Claus and W.C. Fields). Nothing wrong with that, except this 'comedy' takes place in the 1600s, and Sir John Falstaff, we're asssured in "Henry V," died sometime before 1415 and the Battle of Agincourt.
(Hitting the ale with Marlowe again, were you, Willy? Sense of time slipping away from you?)
Scratch that- the odd chronology makes sense: this isn't Falstaff but his zombie, which explains the general stench emanating from his constant, nearly undescipherable "jokes" about cuckoldry.


ABOVE: Sir John Falstaff and what he refers to as "His Fat Stuff".
BELOW: Sir John Falstaff, after his resurrection. (Pictures courtesy of "The Biggest Loser Zombie")


Sample Scene- Act III, Scene II
MASTER BATES:
"Why, this gown my desperate housewife wishes for is too dear for purchase!"
FALSTAFF:
"Indeed, you're a dear."
MASTER BATES:
"Oh, thankee, Falstaff! Kindness doth ofttimes escape the decomposing, zombie-like folds of thy face."
FALSTAFF:
"... You're a deer with antlers."
MASTER BATES:
"And pray, what dost thou mean?"
FALSTAFF:
"I'm trying to tell you I'm fucking your wife."
MASTER BATES:
"Oh."
FALSTAFF:
"You're like the bull market. With horns. Like a herald that calls twice. With horns. You're like the crescent moon. With horns. You..."
MASTER BATES:
"Hilarious. Are you going to make fun of my name, too?"
FALSTAFF:
"Huh? Why would I make fun of your name?"

All the characters in this bedroom-hopper smell of the open grave from which ancient jokes have been badly revived. Perhaps this falls under Shakespeare's lesser known "Horrors," (along with "MacDeath," "A Midsummer Night's Scream," "What You Kill," "Twelfth Fright," and "The Maiming of the Shrew.")

Add to this some joyous xenophobia, and you've got just about the weakest thing Shakespeare ever hashed out. There's a "French" character here, Doctor Caius. This is Shakespeare's idea of a Frenchman's accent:
"Ich bein ein Doctor Caius, senorita, and zis pizza is molto good-a!"
Right continent, right continent.
"The Desperate Housewives of Elizabethan Times" does have two redeeming qualities:
1) No one ever bothers to revive it.
2)It includes one of the most famous early usages of the word "fuck," when the above-mentioned Frenchman tries to say "vocative case," fucks it up, and says "fuck-ative case" instead. That Shakespeare, so transgressive! He was like the Kathy Griffin of his time.


ABOVE: GET IT? ANTLERS! GET IT?

CHAPTER 113: PRESENTIMENTALLY SPEAKING

It is noon, or so the clock at Trianon tells us, and Nicole Legay (Kirsten Dunst) rudely awakes Andree de Taverney (Keira Knightley):
"Monsieur Philip is here!"
Throwing a muslim robe over herself, Andree rushes out of her bedroom to the courtyard where her strapping brother Philip de Taverney (Heath Ledger) is, as per form, straddling a horse and displaying his uniform in all its pulcritude. Andree lights up at the sight and clings to her brother's neck, nearly causing him to fall off his equine friend, break a collarbone, and collect disability from the Army for the rest of his days.
But as she leads Philip in, she can't help but notice Philip is not his effusive, loving self today, and he's clutching a traveling cloak.
ANDREE: "There's something wrong."
PHILIP: "I have to join my regiment."
A: "And you're going?"
P: "I must. Or I could go AWOL."
A: "Go Ewok?"
P: "Go AWOL. Absent without Leave."
The possibility of her brother's departure saddens the girl so visibly that Philip allows himself a smile.
P: "You know I'm a soldier, right? That's how I get to wear the cool uniform."
A: "I don't have to LIKE it," she pouts. All the hanging out with Marie Antoinette must be rubbing off.
P: "I have to meet my garrison at Rheinis, which isn't far, but from there I might have to go to Strasbourg. I came to say goodbye."
A: "But... but now? All of a sudden?" She hangs from his arm earnestly.
P: "I know you love me and all, sis, but is there some other reason for your distress? I already had my arm broken once in this novel, so please let go."
Andree notices that Nicole is watching her closely, as suspicious of the exaggerated display as her brother, so she collects herself.
"Sorry, sorry. No reason, no selfish ulterior motives. That said, let me bid you farewell all the way to the gates. And let's take the shady covered alley. You know, the one where people with ulterior motives go to discuss their secrets."


ABOVE: Brothers and sisters are so cute! Well, the two in this picture not so much.

The siblings depart, Andree's head leaning on Philip's shoulder, and silence follows them under that covered walkway she's just mentioned- but it's a limited time only proposition. Soon sighs escape Andree's lips like bubbles from a worried goldfish.
P: "Out with it, sis, what's worrying you?"
A: "You're my only friend, my protector, Philip, and you're leaving me! Who will I tell things to now? Who will guide me now?"
P: "Dad?"
All of Nature joins in merriment at the very idea.
A: "Haha, but seriously, you are the only person who's ever made me believe in anything like love. You get through my skepticism, because you are GOOD, genuinely good, Philip. And I don't see any goodness in this court, and certainly I don't see anyone who loves me."
P: "You know you're young, you know you're beautiful. Let love surprise you. What about that Gil..." Andree cuts him off with an energetic head shake.
A: "You may say that the Dauphiness protects me, and I should place my love there. But that's admiration I feel, Philip, not affection. You may say our father protects me, but I do not love him, Philip. I wouldn't lie to you, I fear him. Why fear him? It's a presentiment. Animals can sense earthquakes and storms before they happen, why shouldn't human beings have those same feelings, and trust them? Everything looks great now, I know. I belong to the Dauphiness, you're a captain, it is said that Father dined with the King last night! But all that scares me, Philip, like I was never scared back at Taverney."
P: "You were alone there too. I was never the great brother you remember me being, Andree. Duty called me away all the time."
A: "Yes, but I was alone the way children are alone with their playthings. It was a joyful loneliness. But if you leave me now..."
P: "You're only protected by Marie Antoinette! You're seeing storms where you should be seeing smooth sailing."
A: "I'm in danger. I know that much. I had a dream of a cliff, an abyss under me, and that you held me back, but then you weren't there, and there was only FALLING."
She shivers, and Philip hugs her tight: "Sis. Hey, come on. None of this. A dream? I'm not going off to war, only to Strasbourg. Ever heard of a little thing called MESSENGER PIGEONS? Just call if you need me and I'll be here. You're not losing a brother, you're gaining a pen pal!" But worry has crept into his voice as well.
A: "You feel this as much as I do. I see the same pain in your eyes."
P: "Andree... Look, some people are brother and sister because they had no choice in the matter. You and I are brother and sister by HEART. Don't you think I want you with me always? I would love to have a little mini-Andree I could carry with me to the battlefield to encourage me."
She smiles faintly: "And how long will we be apart this time?"
P: "A few weeks..."
A: "How few?"
P: "Fifty-ish? A year or so. But we're not going to say 'goodbye,' we'll just say 'see you in a while.'"
And at this Andree abandons restraint and begins to sob.
P: "There's something else, something you're hiding from me. Look me in the eyes." He raises her tearful face, but she just mumbles:
"See you in a while."
They have arrived at the gate, and jump together when the Trianon clock strikes, announcing it is one in the afternoon and war waits for no man. Philip kisses his sister, who counterfeits some cheerfulness unconvincingly. Promises of weekly mail are exchanged, and the newly-minted captain jumps on a horse that takes him away to the glory of the battlefield.
The smile on Andree's face gives up as soon as her brother rounds a bend, and she rushes back, crying, into the covered walkway. The running takes the rest of her composure, and seeing a bench in the shade of some trees, she sinks into it like a pretty, pretty homeless woman.
A close listener could hear her say: "Please... don't leave me alone..."
That close listener is there, after all, emerging from behind a tree and approaching the bench. It's Gilbert, perturbed by her crying.
Andree senses the addition to the scene, and holds back her sniffles.
"Monsieur?" She says, wiping her eyes dry. "I was not crying. Confounded allergies..." Her sight improves: "Norbert? Is that you?"

Sight UnSCENE! Week of June 7- ALL VERDICT EDITION

"Prince of Persia"- VERDICT: True, Jake Gyllenhaal's only a third Persian, but everyone agrees that the Winged Time Lions in the bonus levels are historically correct.

"Get Him to the Greek"- VERDICT: What's a Persian Prince to do after defeating the Sand Golem of King Mahmoud? Why, conquer Greece! Jonah Hill cameos as the pudgy god Bacchus, who may have the key to solving the puzzle of Krakken Palace!


"Sex and the City 2"- VERDICT: God I'm so grateful I'm single right about now. More like WRECK and the City!



"Shrek 4"- VERDICT: I should have saved the "WRECK" line for this one.


"Killers"- VERDICT: Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher team up in this sequel to "Mr. And Mrs. Smith" that, shockingly, isn't even the worst movie they could accomplish between them. "27 Dresses for The Just Married"? The possibilities are hideous and staggering.

"Splice"- VERDICT: The girls from the Spice Channel can't spell, but we don't mind. (I THINK this is the Spice Channel Movie. It's hard to tell because it's all scrambled.)