I was on light writing duty this weekend. I finished the first draft of my next column for Cemetery Dance, but that’s about it. I’m still thinking deeply about the next short story I want to write, but for some reason it seems to be insisting that I work on it in longhand instead of at the computer. But I still haven’t mustered the gumption to put pen to paper.
Seven years ago this week, we were in Halifax getting our daughter set up for her first year of university. We stayed in a cheap motel on the Bedford Basin while footage of Katrina played on the television. I’ve been keeping an eye on Isaac because every day the storm’s landfall target has moved farther to the west. Looks like it won’t affect us at all (we’re on the so-called dry side of the storm), but who knows what it’s going to do to people along the rest of the gulf coast?
I’m about 100 pages into Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night. I didn’t read the dust jacket copy, so I had no idea what it was about when I started. Lehane’s name on a book is enough for me. So far, it has gone in directions I never expected. It starts with a flash-forward to four years in the future, when the protagonist is being fitted for a pair of cement galoshes. It’s set in prohibition era and the main character is a habitual criminal, the son of a high-ranking corrupt Boston cop. He meets a woman with plenty of moxie during a heist and ends up with her, even though she’s also seeing a big-time mobster. Some of the early dialog is noir to the bone, but there’s something else going on, too.
I’m almost done with my catch-up on The Closer. I discovered another couple of season 2 episodes I hadn’t seen. In particular, the two-parter in which Brenda’s old CIA handler reaches out to her. Watching the early episodes puts a lot into context. I knew about her history with Pope, but I didn’t really appreciate the dynamics of her conflict with Taylor or about her history with the agency. I’m almost done with the third season, and I think I’ll leave it there. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything else after that.
I am not happy with the final five minutes of last night’s Breaking Bad.
The show has fun with camera positions. There was the famous Roomba-cam scene from a few seasons back. This week, it was the camera-up-the-lawyer’s sleeve as he fed cash into the boxes. Cameras in the safety deposit boxes. A camera in Mike’s go-bag. Fascinating pov shots. But then there was the shot heard around the world—the unnecessary shot, as it turned out. Walt’s lamest line ever is the one where he acknowledges that, oops, he didn’t need to shoot Mike after all because he could have gotten the information from Lydia. What a tragic and pointless end to such a good character. His final words: Shut the *bleep* up and let me die in peace. And then the camera draws back and all we hear is the muffled thud as his body tumbles off his perch and hits the ground.
So, question: what does Jesse do when he finds out about this, assuming he does? Mike was a surrogate father to him. Mike always had Jesse’s best interests at heart. He often counseled him to get away from Walt. But it doesn’t look like Todd’s going to cut it as Jesse’s replacement. I kept waiting for something to blow up or for the first lot of meth to turn out to be crap. What do they have in store for us for the mid-season break?