Graphic novel review: Black Hole by Charles Burns

This was another recommendation by Eli from work. But while I thought Stiff was wonderful, Black Hole sort of left me with an icky feeling.

Set in Seattle in the mid-1970s, Black Hole, the 2005 graphic novel by Charles Burns, follows a group of teenagers as they are plagued not only by the horrors of high school but also by a sexually transmitted disease that transforms its victims into grotesque monsters. They don’t try to protect themselves from this debilitating disease, nor do they fight against it or try to discover its source or a cure. They simply contract it and try to find a way to deal with it while withdrawing from their families and healthy friends.

If Black Hole sounds bleak, that’s because it is. Unrelieved by much humor, drawn in stark black and white – the artwork is kind of cool and looks like woodcuts – this isn’t a happy story. And it isn’t much of a story either: if you’ve read book reviews by me before, you know that I prefer books that are heavy on plot, where the story goes somewhere, does something, has a beginning and a middle and an end. In this hefty graphic novel (there were no page numbers in the hardcover version I read, but the book is well over an inch thick), the story just stops, leaving one of the main characters floating in a dark sea under a dark sky, not knowing what will happen next.

Perhaps I’ve missed the point of the book. Maybe it’s more about feeling alienated in high school by whatever means possible. But that’s what Buffy was about, with the horrors of teenagerdom being represented by actual monsters, and I figured all that out. I think I just didn’t like this one.

Book review: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

This book review comes in honor of my story-telling aunt Terry, who wanted to know what I thought about The Book of Lost Things by Irish author John Connolly. (It is also thanks to her that I even read this book, as I’d never heard of it.) What did I think? Nutshell: AWESOME.

The Book of Lost Things tells the story of the boy David who, once upon a time, had his world collapse around him. His beloved mother withered, sickened and died, and his father – a good man, but lonely – remarried shortly thereafter. David, feeling angry and sorry for himself, retreats to his books of fairytales. When he finds himself thrust into a different world, populated by twisted variations on the old tales, he is not even that surprised – a child accepting this strange reality where an adult would have curled into the fetal position and screamed.

Instead, David accepts a quest. He meets the Woodsman (not tin, but rather grim) who tells him that this land is ruled by a dying king whose magic book, the titular Book of Lost Things, may be able to show the boy the way back home. David sets off to see the king, suffering horrific adventures along the way: an assembling army of wolves, led by a werewolf who would be king, trolls, harpies, a Beast like something out of Stephen King’s imagination. More disturbingly, David is being followed by the Crooked Man (by the old stories, if you can learn his name he’ll leave you alone, but David doesn’t know this nasty creature’s name) who has nefarious plans for the boy.

It isn’t all terror and grue, however. David meets stalwart companions as well: the Woodsman, who feeds him, clothes him and sets him on his path; seven communist dwarves; and the soldier Roland and his trusty steed, Scylla, in whose company David learns the true meaning of loyalty, courage and love. In the company of these good men, the boy takes steps to become a man, something that will help him in his fight against the crooked man.

What is so cool about The Book of Lost Things is that it’s not just a fantasy quest story; it’s also an homage to and re-telling of the old stories – the dark, unabridged fairy tales before Disney got its mitts on ‘em. In his real world, David clung to the fairy tales because his mother loved the stories and believed in their power to transform:

Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read.

And in his real world, classic fairy tale tropes abound: the beautiful beloved parent dies; the decent widowed parent remarries wicked stepmother; the family goes to live in a big, mysterious house; there is the introduction of new stepsiblings and the subsequent peripheralizing of main character.

Once David makes the transition to the story-world, he finds that here, all the things he read about are real and true, but different. His new friends tell him stories, tales that seem familiar at first: how Red Riding Hood’s relationship with the Big Bad Wolf was in fact rather more complicated; how Hansel was a putz; how the Prince and the Swineherd is a story of vengeance and could have been of forgiveness; what Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are really like. There are very few happy endings in this world, it seems. As the seven dwarves tell David:

"They ate [Goldilocks] … That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’” “Um, and what about ‘happily ever after? … What does that mean?” “Eaten quickly.”

My library classifies The Book of Lost Things as “fantasy” fiction, and the book jacket says it is a novel “for adults.” While there are some adult themes and quite a bit of violence – although certainly no more so than in the Grimms’ original, unsanitized fairy tales* – this is about on the level of the later Harry Potter books, so mature young adults could enjoy it. The prose reads like a fairy tale, with simple sentences and clear phrasing; the sentences have a rhythm to them that would lend themselves nicely to reading aloud. This story wants to be read. People should want to read it.

* I have a volume of the unabridged Grimms' fairy tales, and they are bloody, bloody stories.  When I get my stuff out of storage, I should probably read them again.
 

All of my favorite things

My dear friend Blonde Ambition knows me too well.  She sent me a Christmas present (even tho' she shouldn't have because we were cutting back and not sending Christmas presents this year) that combined all of my favorite things:  chocolate, beer and bacon.  Let me repeat that for you: chocolate and beer and bacon, all together.

From the charming chocolatier, Socola Chocolates (just look at their website without drooling, I dare you), came a gorgeous box of twelve truffles entitled the Beer and Bacon collection: six Guinness-infused dark chocolate tidbits, and six "Notorious H.O.G." nibbles.  The bacon truffles were also dark chocolate, embedded with bits of applewood-smoked bacon and garnished with black Hawaiian sea salt.  The Guinness truffles were just ravishing, smooth and creamy with just a bit of bitterness from the beer.  The bacon truffles had the best mouth-feel when allowed to melt whole in your mouth - as opposed to taking a bite out of the candy - as that way the little bacon bits didn't get lost.  The Hawaiian sea salt is a miraculous addition - an excellent counterpoint to the richness of the chocolate.

I opened the box a couple of days before Christmas and finished the last truffle last night, taking my time to savor each individual morsel.  These are really good chocolates.  And Socola (which uses the most adorable mascot: Harriet the flying alpaca!) has a whole bunch of other truffle varieties that sound just as amazing: Calmyrna fig, Earl Grey tea, burnt caramel, guava, Vietnamese espresso, jasmine tea, green tea, dark chocolate champagne ... now I'm drooling!

The company is run by two sisters, Wendy and Susan Lieu, and can be bought in person in several locations in San Francisco/Oakland.  Or order some online - I promise you won't regret it.

Heroes episode recap – “Pass/Fail” S4E15 (airdate 01/18/10)

Let’s try an experiment, shall we? I think we shall, partly because I’m feeling a little under the weather (just a head cold coming on, nothing horrific) and partly because no one is reading these stupid Heroes recaps anymore … not because my recaps are stupid but because Heroes is. So we’re going to go all pared-down this time as I attempt to distill each scene to its absolute essence. Obviously, if there are a lot of Mohinder scenes, I’ll just be screaming “Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!!!!!!!”

Gretchen would be more attractive without that severe middle part. Claire really doesn’t want to talk about the Carnies or Nathan’s death, although she appreciates (sort of) Gretchen’s support. Also: Sylar is on campus.

Mohinder goes off to do something “heroic” (where I hope that “heroic” means “and is never heard or seen from again”) and Hiro faints, coming to his “senses” in the middle of a wonky trial in Charlie’s diner. It’s the World vs. Hiro Nakamura, where his father is the judge and Adam/Kensei is the blond and snarky prosecutor. It’s quite possible that everyone at the trial is dead, which makes me wish that Mohinder had gone there.

Vanessa is still cranky about Samuel having kidnapped her, despite his attempts to be charming.

Now, I’m super-happy to see Adam again but it pisses me off that we’re spending time on this dream world bullshit. Could we possibly move this damn show forward? No? Anyway, Hiro is on trial for bending space and time and stuff and crimes against nature or something. Whatever.

Sylar wants Claire to help him get his mojo back. She’s still angry about Nathan, if you can imagine that. However, Sylar has kidnapped Gretchen to encourage Claire to play along. If Claire doesn’t stop making that frowny face so much, she’s going to get wrinkles.

Sylar wants to figure out how he and Claire turned out so differently when they have so much in common: being adopted and abandoned; being raised by parents who didn’t understand them; having adoptive fathers who were killers; currently being indestructible. Claire’s like: you’re a damn psychopath. So Sylar thinks he’ll try pulling the answers out of her head using Lydia’s technique of touch (rather than slice) and he kisses Claire. It’s yucky.

Samuel starts to melt Vanessa’s frosty heart by buying her a strawberry milkshake. It’s a yummy looking shake, for sure.

Diner dream trial: Sylar is going to be the prosecution’s star witness.

Sylar tells Claire that she uses her power to build walls around herself, and she might end up being alone all her life, just like him. There’s quite a bit of “gosh, aren’t you closeted” too. So Claire stabs him in the eye with a pencil she had up her sleeve and runs off to rescue Gretchen. And because this show is SO LAME, Sylar writhing on the floor, screaming, with a pencil sticking out of his eye is actually FUNNY.

Diner dream trial: Sylar testifies that Hiro told him he could kill anyone he wanted if he spared Charlie. He lists a whole bunch of them, including Atomic Ted. Aw – I miss Atomic Ted. The prosecution rests.

Samuel has worn Vanessa down: they reminisce about the cottage they imagined together as children. Then he takes her to the gorgeous meadow he had his Heroes grow where he has … built the dream cottage. She says this is a fantasy, his fantasy, and while it’s very beautiful, she can’t live here with him. Samuel is crushed and very upset. This won’t end well, I suspect.

Claire finds Gretchen tied up but unharmed in their room. Then the lights fizzle out and all the windows implode. At this point, doesn’t Gretchen really wish she’d never met Claire? I mean, really?

The girls hide in a utility closet (like, SUBTLE, writers) and Claire stutters her way through apologizing for shutting herself off, and maybe the way for Sylar to regain his humanity is to lose all his powers. So then Gretchen morphs back into Sylar who pretty much says thanks for the insight and takes off. Claire finds the real Gretchen, alive and well, in the student center, and they hold hands, deciding to give being together a shot. This is so forced.

Diner dream trial: Hiro takes the stand in his own defense, stating that when he got powers, he vowed to only ever use them for good. Despite this, his father finds him guilty. And back at the hospital, in the real world, Hiro’s heart is failing.

After the commercial, another dream sequence: Hiro and Adam fight with samurai swords as Hiro fights for his life on the hospital table. Adam eventually gets a sword in the gut and then the sound cuts out on my stupid Comcast cable. But still, Hiro’s mom shows up to heal him, and then he recovers in real life.

Sad Samuel goes back for another milkshake and yells at the poor waitress. I don’t know what he’s saying but he gets angrier and angrier and finally swallows the whole town. The Carnies watch from a distance and are fearful.

Montage of Claire and Gretchen, Ando and Hiro … and then Sylar has shown up on Parkman’s doorstep to chat up Parkman’s wife. Don’t know why – still can’t hear anything – not sure I actually care.

There.  I captured everything pertinent and it was much less painful for all involved.  Especially since Mohinder left in the first scene and never came back.
 
Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Movie review: Funny People

In Funny People, Adam Sandler plays against type (ha ha, just kidding), as George Simmons, a 40-something former standup comedian who has hit it really big with a string of dumb comedies but has lost touch with family and friends while doing so. When he develops a life-threatening blood disease, he is desperate to recapture his life, going back to the small comedy clubs where he got his start. But his current standup is very dark and not that funny, so he hires struggling young comic Ira Wright (Seth Rogen, not stretching very much here either) to write some new material for him and also to be his personal assistant. George gets some funny new jokes; Ira gets some life experiences hitherto unavailable to him; and both men get to be friends, sort of. Until George decides to reconnect with Laura, the one girl who got away, the one he’s always been in love with. The problem is, Laura (Leslie Mann) is married with two children and Ira has issues with this, even if George and Laura don’t seem to mind.

Is Funny People meant to be an ironic title? Because most of the main characters in here aren’t that funny. Ira isn’t very funny until he learns from George; George isn’t funny because his movies are exponentially stupid and his post-illness standup is too morbid; Laura isn’t funny even though she thinks she is. The supporting cast is actually stronger than the leads: Jason Schwartzman is fantastic as a vain sitcom actor, banging chicks left and right because he’s a little bit famous and “looks like Jackson Brown.” Eric Bana, as Laura’s Australian husband, is hilarious: I loved getting to hear his actual accent, which I’d never heard before, as well as watching him play broad and over the top as opposed to his smoldering Hollywood drama roles. Aubrey Plaza, from Parks and Recreation, is funny too, understated as a plain-Jane, Janeane Garofalo-esque standup comic on whom Ira has a crush. Also funny: the video clips of a young Adam Sandler, taped from his days as Judd Apatow’s roommate in real life.

But in general, Funny People is uneven, fully predictable and way too long at 146 minutes. The funny bits would be funnier if they weren’t buried under the length of the movie. Mr. Mouse started out watching with me but got restless several time, getting up to make dinner and then coming back, getting up to check his emails and then coming back again; he thought Knocked Up was too long and Funny People is seven minutes longer still.

Also: Judd Apatow needs to stop putting his daughters in his movies. They’re cute, Judd, but we’re over it. Run them through in a try-to-find-them Hitchcock-esque cameo if you must, but enough’s enough.

Book review: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

It just occurred to me that there’s been an awful lot of dead people here on FMS lately. I mean, I guess that’s always been the case what with the BtVS and the zombies and the vampires and the True Blood (when is S2 coming out on DVD???!!!???) and the Sandman comics and the slasher movies. But also I just gave up on Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connolly because I couldn’t get into it (ambulance driver in Hell’s Kitchen who’s haunted by those he didn’t save). And I just devoured Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach – which is nonfiction and also about dead people. Mr. Mouse thinks I have a problem.

That may be so, but what is definitely so is that Stiff is a very excellent book. Chapter by chapter the author explores all that the human dead have gone through in the last 2,000 or so years, what they’ve given to the living and what the living have taken from them. From surgeons practicing their technique on cadavers to how body snatching supported the birth of human dissection; from how knowledge of the decay of human remains helps law enforcement solve murders to the role cadavers play in studying impact tolerance for car manufacturers and sports medicine; from medicinal cannibalism and reanimation of body parts to embalming and burial vs. cremation vs. composting, Roach leaves no headstone unturned.

But she does so wonderfully, in articulate, funny and sensitive words, not shying away from the gruesome side of her subject. She states baldly that many people whom she met during the course of writing this book thought she was a ghoul, but also says that many of the people she interviewed, those who work with the dead on a daily basis, did so reluctantly, worried that those of us reading the book would think them ghouls as well. Of utmost importance to her was to maintain the dignity of the cadavers. While Roach uses humor to keep the morbidity of her subject from becoming overwhelming (“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens and nothing is expected of you.”), she is matter-of-factly respectful.

This book is not about dying and the accompanying pain and sadness for the dying person and their loved ones; there is no laughing at that here. But as we follow the bodies around, observing them in all their different situations, we are able to meet these people “long forgotten for their contributions while alive, but immortalized in the pages of books and journals” and realize there’s far more to being dead than just lying there.

Thanks very much to Eli from work for suggesting this book to me!

Let’s start at the very beginning: The Dresden Files

It’s a very good place to start. When you read this series by Jim Butcher, you should start with Storm Front and Fool Moon … and somebody cleverer than I could make one more line scan like that song from The Sound of Music, but I’m not even going to try.

As I mentioned in a recent review, where I inadvertently read book #7 of the series before reading any of the others, the Dresden Files combines fantasy, horror and noir, blending it all together with a lovely dry sense of humor – just my kind of books. The narrator is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden and he is a wizard, and a sort of private eye of the occult. He is chivalrous to a fault, which often gets him into hot water with his friend, policewoman Karrin Murphy; he drives an original flavor VW Bug because wizards mess up technology and the Bug is a pretty basic machine; he’s got a huge cat named Mister and a smartass spirit in a skull named Bob.

In Storm Front Murphy asks Dresden to consult on a gruesome double murder in which a man and a woman were killed by black magic, their hearts ripped out of their chests. This is against the rules, both for human laws and supernatural laws, and as Harry is drawn in further, he must dance around both the Chicago police and the White Council’s peacekeepers. Throw in the Mob, a toad demon, some spider monsters and a love potion gone badly awry, and you have the start to a greatly entertaining series.

As you might imagine, Fool Moon is about werewolves. Murphy needs Dresden’s help again, this time on a grisly full-moon murder where forensics turns up strange dog-like paw prints and strange dog-like fang marks. It just so happens that this is only the latest body in a string of them, and Murphy is fighting for her reputation and her job, trying to solve the case before the FBI does. When Dresden starts looking into things, he has to come up to speed on theriomorphs (humans who shapeshift into animals) in a hurry. Not only are there several different kinds of werewolves - the classic flavor: a person who uses a spell to change themselves into a wolf, but retains all of their humanity; hexenwulfen: by which you get a magical token from a demon or a sorcerer that when worn enables you to shapeshift at will; lycanthropes: beserkers, basically, whose bodies don’t change into wolves but their psyches do; and loup-garou: the real monsters, cursed by someone else and tied to the changes in the moon – but there are some of each kind (plus something extra) roaming around Chicago. Things get busy – and bloody – for Harry and Murphy in a hurry.

I liked Storm Front but I really liked Fool Moon. Perhaps it was because Butcher was a little more comfortable with his characters, perhaps because the stakes were raised in the Dresden universe, or maybe just because I’ve got a soft spot for werewolves, but I thought book #2 really hit its mark. It’s fast-moving and full of story, funny and bloody, and I’m already looking forward to #3.

Heroes episode recap – “Close to You” S4E14 (airdate 01/11/10)

You know, I've pretty much given up on Television Without Pity because they've lost a LOT of their snark ever since Bravo bought them.  (Except for Couch Baron - I think he's still a great recapper.)  So I've switched to the A.V. Club for my own recapping/show beat-down fixes - check 'em out if you haven't yet.


Kate (Lauren – whatever) and Benet are continuing to try to track down Samuel via Benet’s computer for, oh, about six hours now. Kate suggests that they give Claire a call, seeing how she’s got a compass – Benet’s compass – and that might save them some time. Benet snaps that he’s not calling Claire: she needs space. So Kate immediately gets a “hit” on one Vanessa Wheeler, the girl whose family owned the estate that Samuel grew up on. When Benet calls, Vanessa doesn’t want to talk to him so he decides he must go to California to confront her. By the way, Vanessa is Ellen Tigh from BSG. The final Cylon - yay! Maybe she can save this show! But probably not.

Carnival. Samuel is obsessively drawing pictures of Vanessa as she’s the girl who got away. Lydia notices the drawings and says that Vanessa is beautiful. Samuel says that Lydia will meet her soon – it’s about time that he brought her here. Troubled by Samuel’s monomania, Lydia wonders if she can reach out to the one man who could save their Carnival family, the one man who even Samuel says could be the next Joseph. She closes her eyes and concentrates.

Far away in NYC, Peter gasps himself awake and clutches his arm: his compass tattoo is spinning.  Since when does Lydia have that power?  Now the writers are just getting desperate.

L.A., I guess. Parkman pours his newly-haircutted wife a cup of coffee. He’s being Stay At Home Dad these days, instead of chasing super villains, and is making ratatouille for dinner. Wife, not sure that her former policeman husband is living up to his full potential, mentions that her brother might have a job for him. Parkman says he’s not interested and shoos her out, telling her to go make some money. As he closes the door behind her, Benet is there, snarking about the inefficacy of Parkman’s security system. He is there looking for Parkman’s help to track down Samuel: “He’s trying to recruit my daughter! Today it’s Claire, tomorrow it could be your son.”

Florida. Ando and Hiro’s plan is to get Hiro committed to the asylum where Hiro stashed Mohinder. As the orderly leads Hiro off to his room, Ando zaps the door’s control panel with his red electricity and sneaks down the hall, looking in the window of the room Hiro had pointed out. Mohinder is slumped inside, bound up in a straitjacket. No - leave him there!

L.A. Benet has found Vanessa after her rehearsal with the L.A. Symphony Orchestra (she’s a cello player, of course). She is not happy to see him and refuses to talk so Parkman pushes the thought into her head that they’re trustworthy fellows. So poor Vanessa literally turns on her heel and says why, yes, she is worried about Samuel and would very much like to talk to them about him.

NYC. Peter leaves a message on Benet’s voicemail about his compass tattoo freaking out which is thus is freaking him out in turn. Then he hears supernatural cello music and is drawn straight to her apartment. She throws open the door, thrilled that her calling him that way worked so well. Peter looks closely at her cello, noticing the compass on its back. He shows her the matching compass tattoo still spinning on his arm: “I woke up this morning with this.” But didn’t that tattoo show up a while ago? I’m confused but really don’t care that much. It’s so exciting now that Peter gets to be the messiah again – just Lydia’s Carnival Messiah, really, but still, it’s a messiah.

L.A. Vanessa tells Benet and Parkman that she and Samuel were close as children, but when Samuel’s family moved away, she moved on. When Samuel showed up again during her college years, they had a short “rock and roll” romance. Now he has been showing up more and more often, however, obsessive-like, just short of stalking. Benet asks Vanessa if she would mind giving her old boyfriend a call and she takes the phone.

NYC. Back now at Peter’s apartment, for some reason, Emma shows Peter the compass that Samuel gave her and he worries that the last time he saw a compass like that (unlike the one on his arm?), a friend (Benet) got stabbed. They are interrupted when Angela lets herself in, trilling about lunch. Ah – that’s why they had to go to Peter’s apartment – so there’d be a reason for Peter’s mother to walk in. Angela sees Emma and glares at her fiercely: “Peter, how do you know this woman?” Peter stammers that Emma is his friend but Emma notices the awkward and hurriedly lets herself out. Peter’s like: WTF, Mom? And Angela now glares at him.

Florida. Ando switches Mohinder’s meds for aspirin and then has to swallow Mohinder’s meds in order to get away with the bait and switch. Whatever.  I still don't know what they need Mohinder for.

L.A. Parkman and Benet stake out Vanessa’s place but when Samuel shows up, he’s brought Multiple Eli with him to distract the boys long enough for him to stash Vanessa somewhere else. When Benet catches up to him (after efficiently tasing the Elis), Samuel warns him to stay away from his woman and then uses his earth-moving power to rip up a huge rift in the pavement, bringing noxious dirt and gases out of the ground. Benet coughs and wipes his eyes - Samuel has gotten away. After the commercial, Parkman picks Benet up and they follow Vanessa via tracking device they planted on her.

NYC. Angela tells Peter that he can’t save Emma: she had a vision dream that Emma was going to help kill thousands of people – something to do with her cello – but Peter was unable to save her. Frustrated, he grabs his mom’s hand and steals her power, insisting that he has to know what she saw. She shakes her head and leaves.

Florida. Hiro peeks through the window on Mohinder’s cell and encourages him to flex his super-strength. He does so, now that the meds are out of his system, snapping the straps of the straitjacket and then busting down the door. He is slightly concerned that Hiro can only speak in sci-fi geek-talk, and is slightly more concerned to find Ando is doped to the gills on meds he swallowed and giggling on the floor. The three goobers make a break for it. Ugh.

Outside L.A. Benet and Parkman have tracked Vanessa to a vacant lot but she’s gone, vanished into the Carnival that used to just be there. Parkman wants to borrow Claire’s compass but Benet refuses. Parkman accuses him of burning bridges but Benet is adamant: as much as he wants to find the Carnival, he will do it without bothering his daughter.

Back at Parkman’s house, Benet is furious when Parkman wants to start making his damn ratatouille instead of helping find the kidnapped Vanessa. Parkman points out that some days you can’t save the whole world – some days you can only put your own house in order - and tells Benet to go home. About six different expressions cascade over Benet’s face (I heart Jack Coleman!) and he leaves.

NYC. Peter is having one of Angela’s visions/nightmares: Emma plays her evil cello in the House of Mirrors while people scream. Then Sylar is there, promising Emma that he is there to save her. Peter wakes up with a gasp. Shortly thereafter, he barges into Emma’s apartment and smashes her cello. Emma: WTF?!!! Peter insists that Samuel is going to try to make her do something bad with the cello but she won’t listen to any of it and throws him out of her apartment, falling to her knees beside her ruined instrument.

Florida. The three run through a swamp, men with dogs chasing them. When Mohinder gets snippy about Hiro’s confused geek-speak, Ando sticks up for his friend, telling the Indian that Hiro, who is dying, spent some of his last few days to rescue Mohinder. Then Mohinder has the brainstorm that perhaps Ando could electroshock Hiro with his red electricity and unscramble his brains. Ando does so and Hiro immediately unscrambles, happily teleporting all three of them out of there just ahead of the baying dogs. Well, that was awfully easy. Too bad they needed stupid Mohinder to figure it out.

Arlington. Benet knocks on Claire’s dorm room door. (The people on this show sure do move back and forth across the country awfully easily – even those who can’t teleport.) He says that he knows that she’s mad at him and he’s going to just let her continue to be mad without trying to talk her out of it, but he wants to make sure he hasn’t irreparably damaged his relationship with her. Awwww. Claire’s like um, okay, but can we talk later because I’m late for something. Benet backs away and lets her go. He has sad face.

L.A. Parkman is not listening to his stupid cheating wife prattle on about her stupid day since he is mired down in thinking that he is a coward. She tells him that he is needed here, in this family. She tells him there is nothing “cuyowedly” about being with his family and hugs him. Parkman looks unimpressed. Seriously: that was the most f’ed up way to say “cowardly” I’ve ever heard. Is American English not her first language?

Carnival. Vanessa is Mightily Upset about having been kidnapped. Samuel insists that he’s protecting her, keeping her safe from Benet but being held here against her will is not softening her up to his point of view. When she stands up he grabs her, telling her that he has something magical and beautiful to show her and if she’s still unhappy after seeing it, he’ll take her right back home. (I am very unused to seeing Ellen Tigh afraid of things.)

Washington, D.C. Benet is having a lonely beer (aw) when someone knocks on his door. It’s Kate. Is the actress pregnant? There’s one long shot when she turns and it looks like she’s got a big ol’ belly. They smooch – eeuuw – but luckily it’s interrupted when the Three Doofuses teleport into Benet’s apartment, still wearing their Florida asylum garb. “Hi, fellas!” smiles Benet, and he’s not even too upset to see them.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Vertigo: not as good as Rear Window

At least according to this humble Mouse.  Last summer I surprised myself by really enjoying Rear Window - I'm generally not a James Stewart fan, finding him too mush-mouthed and limp to be an effective leading man (would rather have a tooth pulled than watch It's a Wonderful Life, frankly), but he pulled it off for me in RW and his chemistry with Grace Kelly was lovely, despite his being 20+ years older than she.

In Vertigo, however, made just four years after Rear Window, Stewart is not just a mushy-tongued fellow, he's creepily obsessive in his infatuation with Kim Novak's character and the 25 year age gap here seems conspicuous (and also creepy - I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever).  Vertigo's characters were not drawn so deeply as in Rear Window - poor Barbara Bel Geddes gets abandoned with no real finish to her little storyline - and I did not find the mystery very exciting or suspenseful.

So what am I missing here?  These are supposed to be two of Hitchcock's masterpieces and yet I felt one fell far short of the other.  What do you guys think?  How do these two movies stack up for you?

I done read some books here

Despite my overweening excitement for the return of Heroes (she said in her most sarcastic voice), I’ve been reading quite a bit during the holiday hiatus. I don’t really have enough to say to merit separate reviews for each of the following, but here are the most recent items in a nutshell.

The Library kindly delivered up Volumes III, IV and V of The Sandman to me and I plowed through them voraciously. Volume III, Dream Country, is a standalone set of stories wherein Dream features tangentially instead of as the starring role. I liked it the least of the three, partly because of my personal preference for plot-plot-plot and these are just vignettes to flesh out the Endless’s backstories, partly because I had no idea whom the unnamed and rather grotesque character in “Façade” was – who, I learned from the Introduction, is an old comic book character –and thus didn’t really care about her, and partly because I really hated the captivity and abuse of the muse in the first story, “Calliope.” One very interesting thing about Volume III, however, is that Gaiman allowed his script for “Calliope” to be reprinted: he writes his comics like a movie, so the artist knows the images he’s going for; as you might imagine, Gaiman has very specific ideas and instructions on what should be happening in his stories.

Season of Mists is Volume IV in which, while at a family reunion of sorts, Dream is guilted into attempting to rescue his former lover, Nada, whom he had condemned to Hell some 10,000 or so years ago. When he gets to Hell, he discovers that Lucifer has shut things down, sending all Hell’s denizens away and handing the key to the locked gates over to Morpheus. Dream, of course, really does not want to be in charge of Hell, and soon has many offers to take it off his hands. Gaiman pulls in characters from all kinds of world myth, which I found great fun, while subtly insisting that no matter what pantheon you believe in, dreams rule us all.

Volume V is subtitled A Game of You and rejoins a character from The Doll’s House (Vol. II): Barbie, formerly married to Ken and now living in NYC. Barbie’s waking life is populated by colorful folks - a drag queen, a punk lesbian couple, a witch and the still-talking face of a dead guy – who end up attempting to rescue her when she is sucked wholesale into her dream life, where she is a Princess attempting to save her Land from the evil Cuckoo with the help of her talking animal friends. Here we see what happens when it is time for a dream world to end.

The non-Sandman book I read was A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire. This is the third book in the Wicked Years series, which began with Wicked, about the Land of Oz’s misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West, which I know I read, and continued with Son of a Witch, which I’m fairly certain I haven’t read. (I have read some of Maguire’s other tomes, like Mirror Mirror which, while a revisit of a fairy tale, is not Oz-ish.) This book, as the title suggests, follows the life of the Cowardly Lion. He did not spring up fully formed when Dorothy skipped by on the Yellow Brick Road but instead had a long and trying life: abandoned as a cub, snubbed by other Talking Animals, and cultivating a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time in his dealings with the people of Oz. This is his story, many layered and interweaving with all of the well-known citizens of Oz. However, I think I’m going to stop reading Maguire’s stuff because I always feel just a little bit left out. I am familiar with all the Oz stories – including the ones outside of the iconic movie as I read through my childhood library’s entire catalog of Frank L. Baum Oz books – but Maguire seems smug, like I’m not smart enough to be in on the joke. Maybe I’ll just go read the Baum books again when I get a hankering for over the rainbow.