Pay No Attention
…to the girl behind the curtain. She’s crashing on a deadline and will be back Wednesdayish.
Award News
The Hugo winners are out. Congratulations to all the winners — and especially to Mr. Pluto himself, John Scalzi, for his Campbell Award!
In unrelated news, Little Miss Sunshine is my favorite movie of the year thus far.
To (Pre)Judge or Not to (Pre)Judge
There’s a miniscule brouhaha over in TEV’s comments about the intrinsic merits (or rather deficiencies) of YA and other genre-type books and whether they can have as much "lasting value" as Great Adult Literature. I’m paraphrasing, but not by much.
I have promised myself not to post any further comments, because happy news day, stuff to do, and the like. But I’m weak, so who knows? And that doesn’t mean you can’t.
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Gypsy Music
I’ve been loving Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar ever since Kelly and Gavin sent it for my birthday. I had no idea that lead singer Zach Condon was just 20 years old — or that he dropped out of school to bum around Paris, and ended up discovering the wonders of Gypsy music.
This seems like as good a time as any to recommend yet again Fernanda Eberstadt’s fantastic book about Gypsy music and culture in France, Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France, especially to those who may be listening to Beirut and intrigued by their influences. I’m not surprised at all that someone’s bringing back the influence of the great (often short-lived, often very young) Gypsy bands to the indie rock scene; I can’t believe it hasn’t happened sooner. I found myself drooling at Eberstadt’s descriptions of the tapes of live shows everyone trades in Perpignan. Let’s just hope the focus on Beirut leads to greater availability of bootlegs of some real Gypsy music.
p.s. Today’s earworm, however, is "Weekends Away" by the Math & Physics Club.
Friday Hangovers
- "Once More With Hobbits: A Lord of the Rings/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Adventure." (Via Largehearted Boy.)
- Adults reading YA. This is news? Yay, nonetheless. (Via TEV.)
- Bennett Madison on Cookie Mueller’s under-recognized work. (Note: This is a fantastic post.)
- New Alan DeNiro poem "The Were-Koontz." It joins "The Were-Crichton."
- The goods on a call for YA book proposals on girls and science, over at Moles’ digs.
- Erin and the InKY reading series go legit. This is the awesomest of awesome news.
- John Green on the lonelygirl15 and danielbeast youtube saga and how the taste for "realishness" may affect books.
- J.D. Daniels’ essay on Philip K. Dick at Kitchen Sink magazine. (Via Jenny D.)
- Over at Maud’s, Sean Carman on Andrea Seigel’s To Feel Stuff and Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. (I’ll have a post on To Feel Stuff soonish; loved it.)
Another Day Older & Deeper in Debt
I just got a very nice voicemail message informing me I got in to the Vermont College low residency MFA program in writing for children and young adults. I’m going back to school. YAY!
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Unsmartest Moves Ever, No. 102
Um, nearly setting the kitchen on fire by turning on a burner with a plasticy thing (where vegetables were being cut up) on top of it — TWICE. The entire house is full of smoke.
There are reasons why I’m not allowed to cook, really.
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Tyranny of the Anecdote
Some of you have heard the "snail man" anecdote in person. For everyone else, Christopher tells it on MemeTherapy, as one of several writers on the oddest thing they ever learned while researching a story:
It’s something that just came up recently, actually, though I’m not sure whether the info itself is as odd as the tone in which it was conveyed to me. I was on the phone to a science museum curator in Philadelphia, asking for information about snails. The character I’m contributing to the next round of George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards books is, for want of a better term, a snail-centaur.
He asked “You’re researching this because you want to know what characteristics a snail man would have?”
I told him that was more or less it and he replied, with no hesitation at all, “Snail man would be a tremendous lover.”
All the answers are great fun.
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Requiem (Updated)
Last week, news filtered out that Mike Simanoff, the blogger behind Little Toy Robot (and other sites over the years), had died. Jeff Bryant wrote about him more eloquently than I’m able to. I only "knew" Mike through our respective sites and exchanging comments over the years; which is to say I knew him enough to be very, very sad for his friends, family and the world that he’s no longer here with us.
John Klima has posted his short story "Morris, His Self," which was in Electric Velocipede #6. There’s also a memorial site. R.I.P.
Updated from Michael’s brother (thanks, Colleen):
"Many people have asked about flowers and memorial donations. We are asking people to make donations in Michael’s memory to the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression." ( http://www.narsad.org/ )
Have Fun
Wish we could be there — if we were less tired and busy and the timing were different and wishes were horses and it was free. But y’all have fun. And good luck to those of you up for awards; ask not who my fingers are crossed for (for you, of course).