Comfort food for the eyeballs

I've been kind of burning through the TV boxed sets I own in this time of summer non-television. Deadwood just ended its first season (another great series from HBO) and Six Feet Under is just gearing up, but that still leaves a pretty vast wasteland in between nightly airings of The Daily Show. So when I'm not catching up on giant monster movies I should have watched long ago, Christina and I watch re-runs via DVD.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer season four was perhaps not the series shining moment plot-wise (that award would almost have to go to season three), but the character development proved that Buffy could survive beyond high school. The deterioration of Willow's relationship with Oz was heartbreaking, but at the same time it was heartening to see the writers treat her love affair with Tara seriously and with as much (if not more) tenderness as any other relationship on the show. Though I must admit that stuttering business gets kind of old. More on the Initiative and all that later, when we finish the season.

The West Wing season two proves that the first season was no fluke, and that Aaron Sorkin is one of the smartest people writing in television. As if we needed further proof after Sports Night, but who's complaining? More importantly, this show reminds us that patriotism is usually least understood by those who profess to it the most, and that maybe this country has a chance in hell after all. Never mind that we'd never get so lucky as to have people this smart or compassionate in the actual White House. Sure, it's fantasy, but what a fantasy.

I'm mulling over picking up the most recent Simpsons and Sex and the City sets, but I have more than enough fodder for a while, and at some point I'm going to have to knock it off and devote more time to the new book -- an official announcement of which, by the way, is forthcoming.

B-Movies Quarterly #4

This weekend we put B-Movies Quarterly issue 4 to bed (i.e. we sent it to the printer). I'm particularly proud of this issue, even if it is several months late. The interview with Larry Blamire (writer/director/star of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra) is something of a coup for a little mag like ours.

I'm trying hard to get people to link to the magazine's web site and promote this issue, if only to sell enough copies to help us recoup the printing costs. (We're still working on the whole "advertisers who pay for most of it" thing.) If you've got a blog or a web site of your own, please spare a few moments for a link to the latest issue. There's even a nifty cover graphic available on the site.

Thanks!

See you at Dragon*Con 2004

Scott and I have been invited to return to Dragon*Con to speak about writing and publishing and all that jazz. It should be as geekified as ever, though perhaps less crowded this year, what with the absence of any really huge-name stars (as of yet).

We'll be there for most of the holiday weekend (Friday through Monday); if you're going to be in attendance and would like to catch up with us, just watch the writing track schedule, which is usually where they stick us. Feel free to come up and say hi after the panel. We'll be giving away copies of the latest issue of B-Movies Quarterly as well.

Where I've been.

Well there was no way I was posting to the blog from Europe (Switzerland and Italy, thanks for asking), especially with their messed-up keyboards. So technically I'm only delinquent for an extra week or so.

Scott and I are working on the new book, which should explain the dearth of updates to the site this past month. We had Joe Bannerman in for the weekend and subjected him to a variety of questionable movies. But then, he showed us Ninja: Silent Assassin in return, so I think things are even.

Somewhere in here I'm supposed to get out another issue of BMQ, but I'm not making predictions on when exactly that will happen. Let's just say I'd really like to match the June 22 release of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, but I won't make any promises.