Friend Mouse Speaks

I once was lost and am soon to be Lost again

2009-12-03T11:30:00.012-05:00

I know I'm a couple weeks late in reporting this, but we have a premiere date for the final season of Lost:

Tuesday, February 2nd

That's right. I said "Tuesday." Make sure your DVRs are paying attention. Recaps will begin again here accordingly - yay!

Heroes episode recap – “The Fifth Stage” S4E11 (airdate 11/30/09)

2009-12-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Sullivan Bros. Carnival. Lydia finds Samuel and tells him that she knows the truth about what he did to Joseph, but promises to keep his secret in order to protect her daughter (whose storyline has really been only seen online or during those 60-second spots). Some random carnie comes up too, as Samuel has asked him to be his right hand man what with Edgar gone AWOL and all. This new carnie, Eli, is a Multiplicity-type of guy, and also a guy-liner kind of guy. His first assignment: Samuel wants him retrieve some files from Benet’s apartment.

Benet’s apartment. Ol’ HRG is making notes on the Samuel Sullivan investigation when he’s interrupted by a knock on his door. It’s Kate (Lauren), all decked out in fancy theater-goin’ clothes. Before they can leave on their date, however, Kate catches a glimpse of his investigation board. He looks for Samuel’s compass to show her and finds it missing, realizing at once that his daughter has taken it. This gets him pretty upset – he leaves an urgent message on Claire’s cell – and Kate realizes they won’t be going out tonight. She even offers to use her CIA contacts to help triangulate Claire’s cell phone.

Which is parked in Gretchen’s car outside the Carnival. The girls are leery but head towards the gate … until Claire starts to get cold feet, worrying that she shouldn’t do this. Gretchen encourages her to keep on this path and then, suddenly, Samuel is there, welcoming the girls and soooooo glad that Claire decided to come.

NYC, hospital. Angela finds Peter and tells him that although there are five stages of grief, he needs to skip over denial and get right to acceptance. Peter is on a mission, however, and has actually planned ahead enough to ask the Haitian over to borrow his power-negating power. That’s pretty smart, actually. Angela, frustrated, asks what if Nathan is no longer in there to save? Peter: “Then I’ll just have to settle for revenge.”

After the commercial, Samuel takes the girls on a tour, handing them free passes for the whole night. Claire asks Samuel what it is she’s supposed to be seeing here. He says that the Carnival is just “the show part of the business,” a way for his family to support themselves. He gives them each a box of “the best popcorn in the world” and tells them to enjoy themselves, walk around, meet his family.

They wander into the freak show tent where the first person they meet is Lydia. She tells them to ask a question and take her hand. When Claire does, Lydia’s swirly back tattoos show a picture of Claire, in a circus costume, with a sign that says “Indestructible Girl.” Claire scoffs, like I’m going to be part of the show? “This isn’t the future, Claire,” intones Lydia, “it’s your desire.” Gretchen and Claire get creeped out and leave.

NYC hospital. In an elevator, a large female nurse with dreadlocks accosts Peter, shape-shifting back into Sylar and grabbing Peter by the neck. When the elevator doors open, Sylar throws him into a wall, then dumps out the bag of sedatives that Peter had been carrying. As Peter runs off to hide in an under-construction portion of the hospital, Sylar sneers, following behind. Peter sneaks up on the bad guy and whacks him in the head with a 2x4. Sylar tries to TK him away but nothing happens, thanks to the Haitian’s borrowed power kicking in, so the battle turns into a non-superpowered slugfest. Finally, a bloodied Sylar still can’t keep his mouth shut, and asks if Peter’s going to beat Nathan out of him. Peter picks up a nail gun: “Something like that.”

Ah, a little Christ-imagery! Peter nails Sylar’s hands to a board then slams a couple nails into his thighs for good measure. Sylar gets a little nuts, saying that Peter’s going to need a lot more nails in that thing. So Peter tosses the gun away and says that he’s got the Haitian’s mind-wiping power too, and he’ll just strip away everything that isn’t Nathan. “I’d like to see you try,” grunts Sylar. And then, in remarkably short and undramatic (aside from a shrieked “Kill me!” from Sylar) order, Nathan is there and Sylar is gone.

Carnival. As the girls walk, Claire starts to be charmed by what it would be like to live in the Carnival, while Gretchen just thinks it’s kind of skeezy. When Samuel rejoins them, Gretchen is very nearly rude to him, wanting to leave. Claire, however, wants to see what life is like behind the curtain for the Carnie-Heroes.

Washington, D.C. Benet and Kate are getting frustrated with their inability to track Claire down. Benet takes this opportunity to feel sorry for himself, saying that he’s driven everyone away with his obsessive need for control: Sandra, Claire, Kate. Even though she doesn’t remember (due to the Haitian’s mind-wipe), he tells her that they had had feelings for each other; when she doesn’t believe him, he tells her that she “Haitianed” herself. Unfortunately, she’s a little cross about this revelation and not so hot for him now. There’s a knock on the door: it’s Eli, claiming to be an “emissary” from the Carnival. Benet doesn’t intend to let him in but he multiplies and suddenly there are Elis all over the apartment. All hell breaks loose as Benet and Kate dive for hidden guns. They barricade themselves in the bathroom to reload but when they come out, guns blazing, the Elis – and all of Benet’s files – are gone.

Carnival. Claire and Gretchen watch as Samuel entertains the Carnival’s children with a story. Gretchen is still being Debbie Downer but Claire is becoming more and more enamoured with the place. Then – surprise! – Doyle (“the Puppetmaster”) shows up, dressed in a blue tuxedo and still calling Claire “Barbie.” He’s nice, and enthusiastic, and really wants to talk to her later about how great it is at the Carnival. Claire, slightly taken aback but pleased to see that Doyle seems to be in a better place, says yes. Then Samuel invites Claire to tell a story to the children. While she does, Gretchen approaches Samuel and asks just what it is the Carnival wants with Claire. He says that this world is brutal and hard, but his family can offer her love.

NYC. Nathan wipes the blood from his palms, telling Peter that he’s exhausted, that he doesn’t think that he can keep fighting Sylar anymore. Peter puts his arm around him and suggests that they get some air.

Back at the Carnival, Claire finishes her story and one of the little kids gives her a big hug. This tender moment is interrupted when an irate customer barges up to Samuel, demanding his money back for being gypped at a ball-toss game. Samuel tries to talk him down and the irate customer just starts punching. Samuel refuses to fight back, taking hit after hit without even raising his own fists. Unable to take any more, Claire steps in between the men and for her trouble gets slashed across the face with a broken bottle. As the cut heals right in front of the irate guy, she growls, “You can’t hurt us.” The guy bolts, freaked out and much less irate. And Samuel staggers to his feet with a grimly smug expression.

The Petrelli brothers make their way up to the roof of the hospital, and reminisce about S1E1 when Peter threw himself off the roof in an attempt to harness his newly emerged power. Nathan looks BAD. (Ooh - do you think this foolish show is going to take an actual stand and REALLY kill off one of its man characters? Gawd, I hope so.) Nathan whimpers that he’s sooooo tired and just he can’t fight against Sylar anymore. He staggers, groaning, Sylar struggling for the upper hand. “I’m sorry, Pete,” he says, then lunges over the side of the building. Peter grabs his hand in the nick of time but Nathan refuses to help pull himself up. Then he calmly lets go of his little brother’s hand and poor Peter can’t hold him. And there’s more Christ imagery as he falls in Super Slow Motion, landing with a smash on a car far below. Then Peter watches, horrified, as Sylar heals himself and gets up off the wrecked car, giving a little wave towards the hospital roof before walking away.

Carnival. Claire washes the blood off Samuel’s face, asking why he just let that guy beat him up. He explains that, as gypsies, the path of least resistance is often the best choice for the Carnival folk. She sulks that it’s not right, but at least at the Carnival the Carnies can be themselves. Well, yes, he says, but there must be some way that they can be better, be more, not be second-class citizens any longer … and he thinks she might be able to help them get there.

When Gretchen starts walking back to the car, Claire tells her that she’s going to stay here for the weekend, to see what the Carnival is really like. Gretchen is actually not annoying and says she understands, giving her friend a hug. “I’ll see you Monday,” Claire promises. “I hope so,” is Gretchen’s reply.

Samuel and Lydia watch the two girls and he promises her that he’ll make things right. Lydia isn’t so sure that Claire will be much help in his machinations, what with being so innocent and all. “It’s not her I’m after,” says Samuel. As Gretchen drives away, the Carnival shimmers out of existence, and the camera pulls back enough to show the dead body of the irate guy, now lying in the bed of his pickup truck.

Blah blah blah – Samuel is speechifying again. He tells the Carnies that they are on the verge of coming into their own, even finding a permanent home - they just need to gather a few more folks. He smiles at Claire and she smiles back at him

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

P.S. - I wasn't paying attention after the show ended so if there is a "next time on Heroes" next Monday, the recap will be late because the Mouse In-Laws are coming to visit and it's rude to recap with houseguests.

The Breast Cancer Diaries

2009-11-26T14:00:00.006-05:00

This is a plug for a film I have not yet seen, The Breast Cancer Diaries, a documentary about one young woman's fight against breast cancer. Ann Murray Paige, a television news reporter, mother and wife of a long-ago summer coworker of mine, documented every bit of her battle with a video diary at her Maine home and with her sister-in-law at her side filming from Day 3 of Ann's diagnosis. The film made the rounds in a number of film festivals over the last several years (Bahamas International Film Festival, Cucalorus FF, New England Film and Video Festival, Mill Valley (CA) FF, Maine International FF, Silverdocs/AFI-Discovery Dcoumentary Festival) as well as playing on the Documentary Channel and the Discovery Health Channel last year. The DVD is for sale on the web site - the trailer alone made me tear up as well as smile - and you can find more information about scheduling/finding screenings on the web site as well.

You always think it can't happen to you. Well, it happened to Ann and she's brought it to us, to share and learn and live to fight another day. And fight she does, today sharing her story with young women around the country. It's an inspiring story and she's a damn strong woman to share it with us all.

Two more by Terry Pratchett

2009-11-24T09:00:00.005-05:00

I read these a while ago, when I was still unemployed, and then I got a job and didn’t have all day to sit around the apartment, reading wonderful books and writing about them. So now I don’t remember much and don’t have the time to re-read them. Here’s what I do recall at least regarding Small Gods and Lords and Ladies (both from 1992).

Lords and Ladies reunites us with Granny Weatherwax, the very capable witch from Equal Rites, as she and two of her witchly co-horts must needs do battle against an invasion of the Elves (a/k/a the Lords and Ladies). The Elves are bad news – destructive and whimsical and completely conscienceless – and they have been allowed back into the Discworld via some ill-advised and inadvertent magicks. As is his wont, Pratchett uses this fantasy setting to explore “serious” topics like traditional gender roles, marriage and responsibility, as well as turning some old school faerie tales on their ears. The Elf Queen is very nasty but luckily, in both this book and The Wee Free Men (which I actually liked better than Lords and Ladies), sure gets her comeuppance.

Small Gods takes place on the Discworld too but in parts far removed from Granny Weatherwax’s realm, where Pratchett takes a close look at organized religion and the matter of faith. Brutha is a young man serving as an acolyte for the Great God Om, the main deity of the Omnians. Brutha isn’t much of a thinker, preferring to spend his days hoeing melons in the gardens, but he is a true Believer, not only knowing by heart all the scripture of Om, the ferocious Bull-God, but having full and unshakeable faith in his god. Which is a good thing because Om has gotten himself stuck in the body of a tortoise, unable to regain his fiery godhead. Only Brutha, the Chosen One, can hear the god Om speak. As you might imagine, that doesn’t end up being such a good thing, involving, in short order, Inquisitors, Exquisitors, crazed hermits, fundamentalists of all stripes, fanatical soldiers and tortoise-eating eagles.

I must continue to thank Kevin C. for introducing me to Terry Pratchett fan. With every book I read, I like him more and more – even if I do get lazy on the book reports. These fantasy novels are so smart and funny, entertaining and involved, and never smug or mean-spirited. I am just thrilled that I’ve only just begun to read my way through his catalog.

Heroes episode recap – “Thanksgiving” S4E10 (airdate 11/23/09)

2009-11-23T23:19:00.001-05:00

You know what I'm thankful for? Mohinder being trapped in a lunatic asylum and nowhere to be found in this episode!

A fascinated Samuel watches the 1950s film, narrated by Mohinder’s father, and breaks into a maniacal grin when it gets to the earthquake that heralded his birth. His screening is interrupted by an irate Hiro pounding on his trailer door, however, demanding to know where he put Charlie. Samuel’s like, yeah, yeah, I got more important stuff to do – destiny stuff. Hiro tries to get rough but Samuel reminds him that if he is killed, Charlie will never be found. “Smile,” sneers Samuel, “it’s Thanksgiving.”

Washington, D.C. Benet, in process of picking out a turkey at the grocery store, is on the phone with Claire, asking when she’s coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. She’s kind of sad about Gretchen and not sure if she wants to come, so Benet begs her to not leave him alone with her mother and the new boyfriend (weird, but good that they’re getting along, I guess). Claire says okay and when Benet hangs up, he turns around and sees his old partner, Kate from Angel. (Yes, her name is “Lauren” here but I’m sticking with “Kate.”) They flirt. I’m less uncomfortable with it now that he’s no longer married to Sandra but still: ick.

Peter’s apartment, NYC. Nathan flails in his sleep, clutching a bottle of booze, as Peter watches him. There’s a knock on the door: it’s Angela, coming in with about ten waiters and a full Thanksgiving dinner. Peter is Royally Pissed Off with his mom and brings up the whole finding Nathan’s dead body in a storage unit thing. She lies without missing a beat, saying that it wasn’t Nathan at all but a shapeshifter who stole Nathan’s form – a new twist on identity theft - and had to be stopped. Peter cuts through her bullshit, demanding, “What did you do, Ma?” Nathan comes up behind Angela and grabs her wrist as he’d like to know the answer to Peter’s question too. She completely refuses to give her sons any answers, however. As she walks away towards the kitchen, Nathan’s face ripples and a flicker of Sylar comes through.

Washington, D.C. Claire arrives a little early for dinner, hoping to talk to her dad about something important, but Kate interrupts, charging right into the kitchen to help out. Then Sandra, Doug and Mr. Muggles show up, along with Doug’s Pomeranian Miss Lovejoy, because that’s how Sandra and Doug met – through the dogs. Things get awkward right away, of course. I would be drinking heavily right about then but Jack Coleman plays it totally cute.

At the Carnival, Hiro is crankily slamming down plates as he and Lydia help set the table for Thanksgiving. She wants to know what’s wrong and he snaps that Samuel lied to him even after he fixed the past for him. Hiro storms off and Edgar sidles up to Lydia, wondering what in the past was possibly broken that Hiro had to fix. So Lydia uses all her wiles to find out what secret Hiro is keeping, convincing him to take her back eight weeks ago to see what happened to Joseph. They teleport back just in time to see Samuel and his older brother arguing, with Samuel insisting that Joseph speak to him NOW. The two brothers go off and Lydia follows them, ignoring Hiro’s protests that they mustn’t change anything here in the past.

The Petrellis are seated and the boys are sullen. Despite Angela’s request, Nathan doesn’t want to say grace: “I’m dead, he knows it, you know it!” Finally, she acquiesces, telling her sons what happened to Nathan at the end of last season. She even admits that she forced Parkman do the switch, and asks for their forgiveness. “We are still a family,” she pleads. But Nathan can’t even look at his mother.

Benet proposes a toast. But it gets awkward again quickly, Sandra and Kate sniping at each other (I’ve missed Sandra, by the way), Claire sneering at poor dorky Doug. Frustrated and out of sorts, Claire finally announces that she’s thinking about dropping out of school.

Carnival. Everyone is gathering for Thanksgiving dinner and Samuel notices that Lydia and Hiro are missing. Hmmmm.

Carnival, eight weeks ago. Samuel and Joseph walk out into a field, Samuel shouting and complaining that his older brother has been controlling him all his life. Joseph finally tells Samuel that he can move not just earth, but cities and mountains, and has the potential power to kill millions of people. Samuel wants to know how he could possibly be that powerful but Joseph replies he’s already said too much. Samuel gets angry, and angrier still when Joseph says he’s called “the government” and a man is coming to take Samuel away – he’s even sent that man a compass (so that’s where Benet got it) to help him find the Carnival. So Samuel kills him, TKing a rock right down his brother’s throat. Meanwhile, Hiro and Lydia see it all, hidden in the tall grass, terrified. Samuel hears something and starts walking towards them and Hiro just barely gets his power together in time, teleporting them out of there a split second before Samuel would have found them.

Claire tries to explain that she just doesn’t think she belongs in college right now, but Benet immediately picks up that it’s about what Samuel said to her, about being with other Heroes like her. When an uncomprehending Doug tries to help, saying that everyone goes through these phases, Claire’s all, “Look, dumbass, I’m a freak!” and slashes her wrist at the table. She heals, of course, and Doug faints. Later, Sandra and Kate bond over the still-unconscious Doug when Kate says that Benet brought them all together like this today to show Claire that she’s got family who love her. Benet takes her recalcitrant daughter into his office, showing her the compass and his investigation into Samuel. He insists that Samuel is dangerous and not to be trusted; she whines that she’s not a child any longer. They continue to argue until there’s a knock on the door … it’s Gretchen. Oh, fantastic.

Carnival, now. Hiro and Lydia teleport back, Lydia shaken and angry, saying that they have to tell the others what Samuel did to Joseph. He begs her not to, saying he’ll lose Charlie but she says it’s too important and rushes over to bring Edgar up to speed. Hi, Edgar, I’ve missed you! However, a suspicious Samuel collects her and Hiro, bringing them to the table.

At Peter’s apartment, Angela tries to carry on like this is a normal dinner but Nathan has had enough, especially since Sylar has decided to re-emerge right now. “We never should have gone to Texas, Pete,” Nathan grunts before twitching spasmodically and coming all over with blue electricity. He falls to the floor and when he gets back up, he’s transformed back into Sylar. As Angela and Peter cower in a corner, he tucks a napkin into his shirt and sits at the table: “I’m starved.”

Carnival. Samuel pontificates as he serves out pie to his family of Carnies. He says that something big and wonderful is coming for them all, but he can’t talk about it now what with a traitor in their midst: Joseph’s killer is sitting at this very table! Unable to restrain himself, Edgar speaks up, announcing that it was Samuel who killed Joseph, and Hiro saw it! But Hiro won’t back him up since he’s afraid for Charlie. So Samuel accuses Edgar of killing Joseph and sends a murderously-intended rock towards him. Hiro grabs Edgar’s hand and freezes the rest of time, thereby saving Edgar’s life. He asks the Carnie to wait a while for his revenge until the time is right. “I’ll hold you to that,” spits Edgar, and superspeeds out of there. ‘Bye, Edgar! When time unfreezes, Samuel takes Edgar’s disappearance in stride, saying good riddance. Hiro just looks sick to his stomach.

NYC. Sylar has TK’d the remaining Petrellis into their chairs as he wolfs down pie. “Let me out of this chair,” grunts Peter, all tough-like. Sylar leans over and skeezily kisses Angela on the lips – eew – and then says it’s time to carve the turkey, pointing a finger at Angela’s forehead. She screams horribly, blood pouring from the slice he’s inflicting, but then it stops: Sylar can’t finish the hob because Nathan, still rattling around inside there somewhere, is fighting to regain control of Sylar’s body. Sylar howls, his face morphing back and forth until Nathan finally wins out. Angela and Peter slump forward, released from Sylar’s hold, and Nathan leans heavily on the table, unhappy and exhausted. He looks at his mother, a desperate, bereft look: “What have you done to me?” before fleeing the apartment.

At Benet’s apartment, Claire and Gretchen catch up with each other while Benet and Kate flirt some more. Sandra helps Doug stagger out to the car and everyone is friends again as they take their leave. Benet catches his daughter on her way out, saying that he just wants Claire to take her time and think about things before making any big changes in her life. She promises that she will, and thanks him for inviting Gretchen. Claire joins Gretchen in her car and says that she’s not quite ready to go back to school, bringing out the compass that she swiped from her dad. Ready for an adventure?

Carnival. Samuel tells Hiro that he knows he saved Edgar and points out that could prove dangerous for Charlie. Hiro stands up to him, saying that Samuel needs him. Suddenly, on Samuel’s instructions, another Carnie (the dreadlocked older man) grabs Hiro’s head, sending all sorts of memories flashing through. When the Carnie lets go, Hiro mumbles some science fiction nonsense in Japanese (something like, “I’ve got to save Watson! Full speed ahead, Scotty!”) and teleports away. “What did you do?” cries Samuel. Apparently that didn’t work quite as he had hoped.

The last scene is back in NYC, as Peter staunches his mother’s head wound. He grimly promises to bring his brother back. And, in the scenes from next week, it looks like there will be Peter, a nail gun and a screaming Sylar. Fun!

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

It goes with everything!

2009-11-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

Remember our old friend, Bacon Salt, from J&D's? Well apparently the company is doing EXTREMELY well (even in these trying times) due to the success of their Bacon Salt products and subsequent Baconnaise, and they've put out several new products since I visited their site last. Now, here's the disclaimer: I haven't tried ANY of these three products but criminy, it's all bacon-flavored, so how bad could it be?

Bacon Pop - bacon-flavored microwave popcorn. I'm tempted to give this a whirl, even knowing how stenchy regular microwave popcorn can be. Perhaps a nice compromise would be to pop some popcorn the old-fashioned way - I have an air popper circa 1987 in storage somewhere - coat it with melted butter and pour on the Bacon Salt. At least they're not hawking bacon-flavored soda, which is what I feared when I read "bacon pop."

Bacon Ranch - is bacony ranch dressing. Sounds good - I would dip french fries into it as well as slathering my salad. (And easy to do at home by dumping a jar of real bacon bits into bottled ranch salad dressing ...)

Mmmvelopes - and this is what made me start the post in the first place: they've taken envelopes and added bacon flavor to the stickum you lick to seal the flap. This, to me, is way more genius than the bacon dental floss and bacon breath mints I ~~suffered~~ tested for you earlier. Of course, no one sends actual paper letters anymore so this is clearly a novelty among novelties. The name is super-cute tho'.

P.S. - My webbuddy Reel Whore had a recent excellent bacon experience of his own - I'm so very envious.

Book review: Heart of the Trail: The Stories of Eight Wagon Train Women by Mary Barmeyer O'Brien

2009-11-17T21:31:00.000-05:00

In Mary Barmeyer O'Brien's slim volume, Heart of the Trail: The Stories of Eight Wagon Train Women, we are introduced to eight American frontierswomen who crossed this country by covered wagon. Thousands of pioneers journeyed through the American West in the mid-1800s: most of the stories and histories are just that - "his stories," records kept and tales told by the men. But the women kept journals too, and wrote many letters to their friends and families back home, and it is in their words that the human experience may be found.

Each of the eight women profiled in this book are very different from one another. One honeymooned west, travelling cushily in an armchair in her wagon. Another was a devoted mother, determined that her three children would survive the hazardous trip, made even more horrifying when her husband went insane on the journey. One was an African-American woman, a freed slave, who ended up establishing Denver's first Sunday school. Yet another nearly perished with her family when they were given wrong advice about where to cross near the Great Salt Lake.

O'Brien has sketched lightly out what these amazing pioneer women's journeys must have been like, utilizing the women's own letters and diaries, and then extrapolating from secondary sources. This isn't deep stuff - easily read, I could see this being used in middle schools for American history classes (do they teach American history in middle school?) - but it's quite interesting, a look at a chapter in our country's history from a point of view not often considered. What's more, O'Brien lists her sources and this book is thus a good jumping-off point if folks want to explore the primary materials.

I recently crossed the country with Mr. Mouse, the dog and my most cherished possessions. We did it in four days, in a pick-up truck and towing our car. It was a long drive, nerve-wracking during the Midwestern cities' rush-hours and while hurtling down I-80 W into Salt Lake City, and I was so relieved when our journey ended. My trip can't compare to what these eight women - and the multitudes of others like them - went through during their emigrations, but I believe I can understand their joy and gratitude when their journeys finally ended.

Heroes episode recap – “Brother’s Keeper” S4E9 (airdate 11/16/09)

2009-11-16T22:45:00.001-05:00

Carnival. Hiro is moping over his lost Charlie while Samuel gives a shout-out for recycling. Then, public service announcement done, Samuel tells Hiro that what he wants him to do is to go back in time eight weeks and find Mohinder, take a 1950s research film form him before he destroys it, and bring it back to Samuel. Then he’ll give Charlie back. Hopefully, just because Samuel gets this film he’s after doesn’t mean he won’t still kill Mohinder. I so want that jackass dead.

Nine weeks ago, in India. Mohinder has a job teaching junior high school students. His girlfriend Mira nags that he promised to throw away all his father’s old research, which only brings him pain. He dramatically dumps a box of stuff into a rubbish bin and they go off together, arms around each other. BLECK.

Washington, D.C., present day. Tracey mopes in a diner, staring at a poster for the Carnival while Samuel’s magic compass spins in her hand. She doesn’t know what to do – should she join Samuel’s crew? – and starts to get upset. Her power flares up: the cup of coffee freezes in her hand, startling the waitress. Tracey takes off.

Nathan’s office. Nathan and Peter try to figure out what happened to Nathan: why he woke up in a Carnival and why no one cared that a senator had gone missing. (Turns out Angela Petrelli told everyone Nathan was on vacation.) Then, before this can get much more boring, the Haitian shows up. He tells Nathan to stand back as he’s here to speak with Peter. Then, ominously, right before cutting to commercial, he tells the younger Petrelli that he needs to know “the truth.”

Benet’s apartment. Claire (wearing teeny tiny shorts) stops by with laundry. She’s displeased when the door is ajar, and grabs a knife. Inside it’s just Tracey. The door is busted because she can’t control her power anymore: she just touched the doorknob and the metal froze and shattered. Then, as she’s talking, Tracey’s own hands and arms start to crystallize. The two girls just stare at each other, horrified.

Nathan’s office. Angela sent the Haitian to clear out Peter and Nathan’s memories but he doesn’t want to do it, saying that he doesn’t want to be involved. But then, rather than giving Peter any straight answers, he sends him on some cryptic errand: go here, see what your mother has done, try not to get too upset about it.

India, nine weeks ago. This is just excruciating. Mohinder can’t sleep and pages through his dad’s old research materials in the middle of the night. He finds an old research film and sets up a projector: it’s from Coyote Sands and apparently Mohinder has never watched it before. On the film, Dr. Suresh notes that when too many Heroes are gathered together in the camp, energy flares are present. Also, there’s a Hero baby about to be born and an overload of seismic activity violently rattles the compound during the birth. Do we think this Hero baby is Samuel, he who can move the earth? Yes, we do!

Benet’s apartment. Claire puts a nearly frozen Tracey into a scalding hot bath and goes to get her some tea. While she’s gone, Tracey first thaws, but then her power reasserts itself and starts to freeze the water. She climbs out of the bath, nearly frantic since she can’t control herself any longer. Claire pats her on the shoulder – there, there, it’ll be all right – and then the younger girl freezes solid. Oops. Benet is not going to be pleased about that.

Nathan and Peter open a self-storage unit at the address the Haitian gave Peter. There’s a coffin in there. Nathan is inside it. Three-way! “This is just weird,” says Peter, master of the obvious that he is. As they stand there, Nathan starts to get flashes of memory: Sylar, Parkman, a hotel room. They decide to go to L.A. to find Parkman. But when they reconvene at Nathan’s office, they learn that Parkman is in critical condition in a Texas hospital, having apparently tried to commit suicide by cop. Peter points out that he’s a healer these days and if they can get in to see their friend, he can help.

As Tracey struggles to drag the frozen Claire to the bathtub, Claire’s foot breaks off in her hands. That was excellent. Poor Tracey just sobs. But fear not - Claire has thawed out and says: “Tracey, it’s okay. I heal – it’s what I do.” She takes the foot back from Tracey and sets it on the floor with a clunk. Hee.

Carnival. Hiro is struggling, unable to time-travel. Tick-tock, says Samuel.

India, nine weeks ago. Stupid Mohinder is obsessively frigging around with more of his father’s stuff, building his own magic compass using his father’s notes, but stupidly falls asleep while doing so. In the morning, Mira finds him drooling on the workbench and is pissed off, saying that he promised to let all this go. Mohinder babbles that he’s made a breakthrough: he can use this compass to find Heroes (“Specials,” he calls them) and that he’s learned that if the baby in the film (now grown) surrounds himself with a large enough number of Heroes he can … but Mira has had enough and tells him that she won’t wait for him this time.

Texas hospital. The Petrelli boys sneak into Parkman’s room and Peter heals him. Unfortunately, disembodied Sylar pops back into view too, and is practically drooling over Nathan. Thankfully not mincing words, Parkman tells the Petrelli boys what happened: Nathan, Sylar slit your throat and you died, but then I stuffed your consciousness into Sylar’s body. The Petrellis are all, huh? So then disembodied Sylar gets impatient and somehow pulls Parkman’s consciousness out of Parkman’s body, and jumps in himself, so that now the Petrellis think they’re talking to Parkman but they’re really talking to Sylar. Disembodied Parkman, whom nobody but Sylar-in-Parkman’s-body can see, squawks helplessly. Sylar-in-Parkman reaches out a hand and tells Nathan that he can fix everything – he just needs Nathan (by which I mean Nathan-in-Sylar’s-shapeshifty-body) to take his hand. Because if “Nathan” takes “Parkman’s” hand, Sylar can jump back into his own body, displacing Nathan’s consciousness. Or not, it’s hard to say. Good lord-n-butter. Could they possibly make this more difficult for us poor recappers?

After the commercial, Nathan thinks that this all makes sense, realizing that all these new powers that have manifested aren’t really his, and reaches for “Parkman’s” hand. Peter refuses to accept this and tries to keep the two of them apart, so “Nathan” uses Sylar’s TK and bats him across the room . A guard comes in and amid the confusion, Nathan touches Parkman’s hand. Sylar winks out of existence and Parkman is thrust back in his rightful body, shouting that he can’t see Sylar anymore. Nathan picks his unconscious brother up and flies out the window.

Carnival, eight weeks ago. Mohinder has found his way to the Carnival, using his handmade compass. He finds Joseph Sullivan, Samuel’s not yet dead older brother, and starts babbling about superpowers. Joseph cuts him off, introducing Mohinder as an author when Samuel appears, but doesn’t let the two talk, sending Samuel away on some errand. Joseph looks sternly at a sputtering Mohinder and asks to speak privately with him.

Desert. Nathan has flown Peter to some isolated mountaintop. He doesn’t think it’s safe for his brother to be around him, and tells Peter that there should be a road around here somewhere that will take him back to civilization. Peter’s like, um, no, and copies Nathan’s power. In it together, brothers forever, they both fly off.

Back at the Carnival, Joseph says that Mohinder is correct about Samuel’s increasing power but says that his brother doesn’t know the extent of it since Joseph has spent his life keeping Samuel away from too many Heroes. Samuel has a bit of a power-hunger to him and could be dangerous where he to know how strong he could be: “We must keep this genie in the bottle.” Mohinder protests, saying Samuel’s power could increase a thousandfold and Josef is all I KNOW, dumbass, burn that film and get the frack out of here. Mohinder leaves, finally doubting that he knows what he’s doing … and since he really hasn’t gotten a single thing right in the last four seasons it’s clear that he’s not a quick learner. As he leaves, the camera pulls back to show that Samuel has been eavesdropping on the two of them the whole time. This must be the awakening of a megalomaniac.

Later, in his motel room, Mohinder leaves a message for Mira, admitting that she was right, this trip was all a mistake and he’ll be on the next flight home. He picks up the infamous film and drops it into a trashcan. As he’s about to set it on fire, Hiro teleports in, freezes time and switches the 1950s film with a dummy one he’s brought. And before he leaves, Hiro whispers to Mohinder to be careful with Samuel.

Benet’s apartment. Tracey hasn’t accidentally frozen anything for over an hour and is feeling pretty good about it. She and Claire talk about Samuel and his magical band of Carnies, and Tracey says that she’s thinking about joining him. Claire sounds like she’s thinking about it too. When Benet comes home, arms laden with groceries, he sees Claire’s frozen foot on the coffee table: “Ladies, how was your day?” “Same old, same old,” smiles Claire.

Samuel bursts into Mohinder’s motel room, glaring at the flaming film canister. He shouts that Mohinder must tell him what was on the film, what it is that will make him strong. Mohinder refuses to tell him anything so Samuel crushes a rock and sends the shards flying into Mohinder’s chest. Mohinder cries out and crumples. Immediately afterwards, looking at the fallen body, Samuel gasps that he’s sorry and flees. After he’s gone, Mohinder sits up with a massive gasp: he’s wearing a bullet-proof (rock shard proof, rather) vest, compliments of Hiro. Stupid meddling Hiro. Why do the producers refuse to kill this damn, useless, annoying Mohinder off? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

After the commercial, stupid Mohinder realizes that he is the one that set Samuel off with his research: he must be stopped. Hiro’s like okay, that’s good, but you have to wait eight weeks because I have to save Charlie. Mohinder says that he can’t sit around doing nothing while Samuel builds his power for two months. They bicker, Mohinder adamantly refusing to wait, so Hiro takes matters into his own hands. He freezes Mohinder in time, then teleports him off to somewhere out of the way. To Riverdale Psychiatric Hospital, actually, and in a straitjacket. He won’t cause any trouble there. Nice job, Hiro!

Washington. Tracey goes back to the diner where Samuel joins her. She tells him that she’s not sure what she’s looking for, but she just knows that she can’t keep on living the way she has been. He says he’s glad she called and he knows that they can work together to make this a better world for people with abilities.

Back in Peter’s apartment (?), Nathan is moping because he isn’t really Nathan, just a collection of memories in a mass-murderer’s head, and no one will be able to see him as anything else. Peter can’t really argue with him there.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

I'm not holding out on you, I promise

2009-11-14T23:46:00.000-05:00

I know, there's been major slackage here lately. But, frankly, I just haven't been watching stuff other than college football (one downside of moving to a city with a decent college football team is that you've got to sign onto the college football wagon ... to mix one's metaphors irretrievably). I don't have a DVR so any V/Dollhouse/Flashforward episodes I've been watching have been on Hulu.com (thank god for Hulu.com); and the live television I've been watching has been Heroes (duly documented here), Biggest Loser and Community/The Office. I do have the DVD player here at the apartment, finally, and now that I've got a paying job I can reinstate my Blockbuster.com account, so perhaps the movies will start back up again. I haven't seen an in-theater movie since August 21 - shocking! - so I need to get back on that horse too (I've missed Inglourious Basterds, Zombieland and Paranormal Activity - altho' the last two are still playing in the SLC area these days).

I love this blog and have no intention of letting it wither away. There's just been so much turmoil in my life in the last few months that some things, like watching movies and television and writing about them, have fallen by the wayside. I'll be back to form soon, I promise. I just wish True Blood S2 would come out on DVD already - that would be a big ol' motivator!

Heroes episode recap – “Shadowboxing” S4E8 (airdate 11/09/09)

2009-11-09T23:37:00.004-05:00

Arlington, Virginia. Picking up right where we left off last time, in the aftermath of the screaming slaughterhouse sorority scavenger hunt, the other two pledges are completely freaking out, having seen Becky de-invisible herself and Claire heal after being impaled. Claire coolly covers by saying that the sorority sisters must have drugged their water bottles with hallucinogens, hence the seeing things: ooh, look, a pack of wild dogs! The other two (dumb as posts) pledges leave and then Gretchen starts her freak out in earnest: OMG, an invisible girl just tried to kill me!

NYC Paramedic Peter is ministering to a victim of a massive train accident. The guy seems paralyzed so Peter uses his newly acquired healing power to fix him enough that he’s not. This takes a lot out of Peter – he’s been doing this all day, apparently. In the hospital, Emma watches all the accident victims pouring in, turning the hospital into a war zone. She looks like she wants to help.

Los Angeles. Sylar-in-Parkman’s body is boarding a flight for NYC to wreak some vengeance on that “Italian Eagle Scout” (Peter Petrelli) since the last thing he remembers is Peter jabbing a syringe full of sedative into his neck, thus enabling Parkman to hijack his body for Nathan. Parkman’s consciousness floats around next to him, complaining impotently. However, Parkman somehow managed to get his service revolver into the bag Sylar was packing, which leads to Sylar-in-Parkman’s body getting arrested at the airport security checkpoint. Sylar tries to use Parkman’s mind powers to induce security to let him go but Parkman sneers that while Sylar may have his body, he sure doesn’t have his powers, and security hauls a screaming Sylar away.

Note: until further notice: when I say “Sylar,” I mean “Sylar’s consciousness in Parkman’s body whom the Parkman and the audience sees as Sylar, and the other Heroes characters see as Parkman.” And when I say “Parkman,” I mean “Parkman’s disembodied consciousness that Sylar and the audience see as Parkman, and the other characters don’t see at all.” Got it?

Carnival. Sylar’s body (oh poop - there goes my system) tosses and turns in his trailer but when he wakes up, he’s Nathan. And sees himself as Nathan in the mirror. He thinks this is WEIRD. So he gets dressed and goes outside, nervously flying off into the sky when he hears Lydia and Samuel coming. They are talking about Becky’s less-than-successful recruitment of Claire Benet to the Carnival. Lydia thinks Claire’s a lost cause but Samuel just replies that lost causes are his specialty.

College. Gretchen is still freaking out about why the hell is invisible Becky trying to kill her. Claire volunteers to go to the sorority house to go through Becky’s room to see if she can find some clues, and she tells Gretchen to lock the door behind her and not let anyone else in. Claire is finding scared Gretchen a little much – and totally unlike the stalker-girl who thought Claire being a Hero was just sooooo cool.

NYC, hospital. Emma is still standing in the way, watching the chaos in the hospital, when an ER doc, not recognizing her, asks her to keep pressure on a patient’s wound until the doctor comes to stitch her up. When she thinks nobody is looking, Emma just stitches the patient up herself. Peter sees her doing this and gives her a nod, then scurries off to another part of the ER to work his healing mojo on a burned patient. The strain of what he is doing almost knocks him over.

College, sorority house. Claire finds the other two pledges who’d seen what happened with her and Becky in the slaughterhouse and is relieved to discover that they have no absolutely memory of even being involved. AWESOME – there’s the Haitian!! Benet is there too, and only too glad to have been able to help his daughter when she called him.

Poop again: Sylar and Parkman are now on a road trip. They have to drive across the country since Sylar is now on a no-fly list, thanks to Parkman’s prank. Another prank: Parkman clouds Sylar’s mind enough that he hits something in the road and gets a flat tire. Luckily a kindly passerby stops to help. But Parkman is feeling petty and makes Sylar trip over his own feet, falling face first into the dirt, and grins that it’s going to be a looooong drive. So Sylar picks up a tire iron and beats the kindly passerby to death. Parkman is horrified: “You killed him!” Sylar smirks: Um, no, you did.

College, sorority house. Claire has asked her dad to take care of Becky, but she does not, however, want Gretchen’s memory erased because Gretchen is her friend and accepts her as she is. Instead, the Haitian goes with her back to her dorm room to protect her if Becky shows up. So who’s going to protect Benet?

Road trip. Sylar lays it out: no more sabotage by Parkman or he keeps killing innocent people.

NYC. Peter is near exhaustion when Emma finds him and makes him sit down. She suggests that maybe he shouldn’t use his power if it’s so hard on him. No way, man: “And be ordinary?” He staggers to his feet to continue helping in the ER. He asks where she learned suturing and she tells him that she dropped out of medical school.

College, dorm room. When Claire gets back, Gretchen is packing, saying she can’t take it and she’s going home. She has had it: she can’t handle this sort of life like Claire has. She thought it was awesome but it’s scary and dangerous and she wants no part of it. Claire begs her friend to stay but Gretchen is unstoppable: she’s already booked her plane ticket. Claire sobs, asking the Haitian to stay near Gretchen until she gets on the plane. After they’re gone, there’s a knock on Claire’s door. She turns, tears still on her face. It’s Samuel.

After the commercial, he apologizes for his bad timing, saying he’s looking for his niece Becky. WTF, says Claire, she just tried to hurt my friend, why would she be here? Samuel says that he knows that Claire is special, like him, like Becky, and if she’s got a moment to listen, he might have some answers for her.

Becky’s room. Oh shit: Benet has just found Samuel’s magical spinning compass hidden in the closet when the Invisible Girl gets home. He threatens her with a stun gun and she materializes.

Midland, Texas, Charlie’s old diner. Sylar orders ambrosia pancakes and a Coke, apparently planning to pack a bunch of pounds onto Parkman’s already chunky frame. When the waitress goes to put the order in, Sylar tells Parkman that he’ll kill her unless Parkman tells him where his body is and how Parkman pulled his consciousness out of it.

Claire’s dorm. Samuel is telling her about the Carnival, the people there. That a family is more than blood – it’s about trust and blood and love. He apologizes for Becky, saying that she’s damaged and complicated since her father was murdered in front of her when she was just a child. Hm, Claire ponders this. In Becky’s room, the Invisible Girl explains that she’s actually been after Benet the entire time – for killing her dad – and she’s going to hurt both him and his daughter. Things get slightly tense until two pledges interrupt. Becky invisibles away and Benet takes off. Claire’s room: Samuel goes on (and on), saying that he knows that Claire wants to fit into the real world but gets hurt every time she tries. When she asks how he’s learned to manage this, he tells her that he’s simply surrounded himself with people like him because they understand him. Which is why he’s approached her and not her father. Claire has her serious thinky face on but just then Benet arrives. He looks sternly at Samuel – who looks a little nervous – and wants to know what’s up.

When we’ve come back from the commercial, Benet has his gun out and Claire’s all, you think I would trust you over my dad? Samuel admits that Becky is damaged but Benet has some responsibility in that. Agreeably, Benet puts his gun away and tosses the compass to Samuel, saying okay, let’s talk responsibility: WTF with this compass, seeing how it’s shown up in several murder investigations (e.g. Danko’s). Samuel insists that it’s just to keep his people hidden from people like Benet but Benet wants more answers than that.

NYC, hospital. Emma finds a little girl on the floor and shouts for help. Peter arrives and she tells him that she can do the emergency procedure, but she needs his help. He helps and she saves the girl. Emma’s on her way back to being a doctor and I so don’t care.

College. Benet cuffs Samuel and starts to stuff him in the SUV when Becky, in invisible mode, appears and starts throwing the Benets around. Just as she’s about to really hurt Benet, Samuel nails her with the stun gun. Benet pulls his regular gun and trains it on the both of them, seemingly ready to shoot, but Claire screams no, dad, don’t! He lets the two Carnies go and Claire sort of glares at him.

Texas diner. Parkman explains how it (the Sylar/Nathan switch) happened and Sylar just gets crankier. He demands to know who else was involved and then answers his own question: Mama Petrelli and Benet. Answers gotten, Sylar tells Parkman that he’s going to find Nathan, get his body back and then kill everyone involved. However, when Sylar gets outside the diner, a bunch of cops show up because during the Q&A, Parkman made an unaware Sylar doodle on a napkin that he has a gun and is going to kill folks … and the waitress saw the napkin. The cops grow impatient. Realizing what Parkman intends, Sylar gasps that they’ll both die if he gets shot. And in a moment of self-sacrifice, Parkman makes his body reach into his coat as if for a gun and the cops fire repeatedly. Sylar collapses and once the body is down, Parkman’s consciousness fades from sight.

College. Benet takes Claire back to her dorm room and tries to encourage her, support her in her quest for a normal life. She’s pretty discouraged, however, seeing Gretchen’s empty half of the room. You’re better off without her, Claire – soooo annoying.

NYC hospital. Oh ferchrissakes: Emma is playing the frakking piano again. She’s frigging pointless. Peter finds her: she’s got a photo of her dead nephew with her who drowned while she was supposed to be babysitting. It was during her second year of med school and was why she dropped out. Peter really needs to go back to the shorter, no-bangs hairstyle of last season. They bond and then play a duet. Bleck.

Texas. Parkman is dying in the ambulance. College: Claire is sad in her half-empty dorm room. NYC: Emma pulls her lab coat out of the closet. Carnival: Samuel apologizes to Becky for shocking her and she apologizes for getting carried away with the Benets. Then he chuckles affectionately and says that she’ll get her revenge on them if she’s patient. Then Lydia comes up and tells Samuel that Sylar is gone. He is Not Happy about that. Washington, DC: Benet works on his wall of suspects. NYC: Peter takes down his wall of clippings and is interrupted by Nathan (formerly Carnival Sylar) who gives him a big hug and says he thinks he’s in trouble.

What’s that loud sucking noise coming from next week’s episode? Mohinder returns! (I thought Samuel said he killed him? Damn.)

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Book review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2009-11-07T22:35:00.002-05:00

Are y’all sick of my Gaiman obsession yet? Well, that’s just too bad because I am in no way tired of him yet and dude’s prolific. I just finished one of his most recent YA novels, The Graveyard Book (published in 2008), and it’s wonderful.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens, commonly referred to as “Bod,” a boy who was raised from babyhood by an ancient graveyard when his parents and older sister were murdered. As the evil man Jack was dispatching his family, the one-year-old baby toddled out of his house and into the graveyard, where the resident ghosts, spirits and revenants took him in as one of their own. With Mr. and Mrs. Owens (dead “for a few hundred years now”) as his erstwhile parents and Silas, a vampire, for his guardian, Bod grows up healthy and happy – so long as he doesn’t leave the protection of the graveyard. For outside, in the human world, the man Jack still lurks.

There are eight chapters to The Graveyard Book, each of them detailing a specific adventure in Bod’s life as he grows from toddler to teenager. He makes a new human friend; he explores a haunted barrow; he balks at his lessons and encounters ghouls; he tries to fulfill a long dead witch’s last request; he attends human school when the graveyard ghosts can no longer teach him. And when he learns what happened to his first family, he wishes for revenge.

Gaiman acknowledges that this book owes a debt to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the story of an orphan, raised by a nonhuman family, who makes his way back to the human world. It’s been decades since I’ve read these volumes and now I think I’d like to revisit them. But Gaiman puts his own unmistakable touch on the old story, adding his dark, intelligent humor and imagination, elements of suspense, magic and the macabre, bits from folklore and fairy tales, making The Graveyard Book a story that is very much his own. I wish there had been more than eight chapters so we could have had more than eight glimpses into Bod’s childhood.

Graphic novel review: Black Orchid by Neil Gaiman

2009-11-03T08:30:00.001-05:00

My exposure to comic books/graphic novels has been fairly limited. I’ve got a BtVS Season 8 subscription; when I have extra cash, I buy the trades for Y: the Last Man and Fables, trying to collect each complete series; I’ve got my copy of Watchmen, of course. But I don’t know much about the traditional costumed heroes*. So it was with slight trepidation that I picked up Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Black Orchid from the library. (I’d actually hoped to start his Sandman series, but the first five volumes were already checked out and it didn’t seem to make sense to start with VI.) Black Orchid it was, then.

Right off the bat it was clear that this was not your normal comic book, particularly since the main character, the heroine of the piece, gets murdered within the first few pages. And not in a kill-Selena-Kyle/awaken-Catwoman sort of way. This is the superhero herself, shot, burned and then blown to bits in a huge explosion. Well, huh, I thought, where do we go from here?

Where we go, where Gaiman and McKean (longtime collaborators on numerous projects) take us, an amazingly creative and ultimately hopeful place. When the crime fighting costumed superhero Black Orchid is killed, some of her consciousness makes its way back to the greenhouse from whence she came, and awakens one of her sisters growing there. She wasn’t entirely human, you see, but a human/plant hybrid created by a slightly mad scientist when her human progenitor, Susan, the love of his life, was murdered. The orchid-woman who awakens isn’t exactly the same as the Black Orchid; this new one abhors violence, seeks – both literally and figuratively – her roots and tries to find purpose in this life that was thrust upon her so abruptly.

Many men** affect her life as she makes her journey: Susan’s sleazebag ex-husband, Carl, just released from prison; Lex Luthor – always looking for the next big thing, and thinking that human/plant hybrids might be it – and his minions; Phil Sylvian, the scientist who created the orchid-women … and with these men violence follows.

But the ending of the book is a surprise – more so even than killing off your heroine right from the get-go – and a departure from comic book tropes that finds resolution in giant, bloody battles. I’ve read that people were surprised when the story ended like this, certain that one more chapter was forthcoming wherein the bad guys would get what was coming to them and the Black Orchid would be avenged. Not here, not in Gaiman’s hands. Here there is compassion and faith and hope.

Dave McKean’s artwork is like nothing I’ve ever seen in a comic book. Lush, atmospheric and dreamy while at times nearly photorealistic, the colors and images swirling and fading into each other … it is actually art. Anyone who scoffs that comics cannot be art (or literature) should immediately sit down with this book.

In the articulate introduction by Mikal Gilmore, senior Rolling Stone writer, it is noted that “… in the world of comic books – as in the worlds of film, literature and global politics – any story that begins in violence must necessarily also end in violence.” In Black Orchid Gaiman has proven that this is not necessarily so in comics and thus gives us hope that it might not be necessary in our lives either.

* Although I now know more than I used to, having recently read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, review coming to a friendly mouse blog soon.

** She also meets up with many famous and infamous comic book characters: Batman and Swamp Thing, as well as the Joker, Harvey Dent, the Riddler and Poison Ivy during a trip to Arkham Asylum. This is probably a treat for full-on comics nerds but I had to look most of them up on Wikipedia just to figure out who they were. Still, a nice touch connecting the world of the Black Orchid with the larger costumed superhero universe.

Heroes episode recap – “Once Upon a Time in Texas” S4E7 (airdate 11/02/09)

2009-11-02T23:30:00.006-05:00

So, it was nice of Glee to let Charlie come back to play tonight. To make this all easier for everyone – 98% of this episode is set three years ago in Texas, but under the effect of the consequences from Hiro’s insistence at going back in time to save Charlie. The term “butterfly effect” comes to mind and, in fact, is bandied about quite a lot in this episode. Also, apparently Charlie lived in the same town as the Benets when Claire was in high school and throwing herself off towers, being stalked by Sylar, cheering her little heart out, etc. Ain’t that a coincidence.

Picking up from when we last saw him, our Present Day Hiro time-travels/teleports back to three years ago in Texas, giddily watching Charlie through the diner window. We are treated to a short series of flashbacks to remind us of their doomed story: they meet; Hiro falls in love; and then, no matter what Hiro tries, Sylar kills her. The flashback over (but still three years ago), Sylar shows up at the diner - not recognizing Hiro of course because we’re three years ago and they haven’t met yet - and goes inside. “Oh boy,” says Present Day Hiro.

In the present, at the Carnival, an upset Samuel tells Lydia that Arnold (the Carnival’s time-traveler) is dying. Their family is shrinking and the graveyard is getting bigger, he laments. She reminds him that he thought Hiro could help them, but he’s not sure how he can convince Hiro to do so. They try taking a look at Lydia’s magical soothsaying tattoos, and learn about Charlie, and also Benet, Claire and Sylar – all connected. Samuel says that he must get back to the folks in Texas three years ago – imposing on a dying Arnold yet again – since desperate times call for desperate measures.

Three years ago in Texas. Sylar flirts with Charlie as he figures out her gift (remembering everything she’s ever read ever (I wish I had that power)), and also using his own see-how-things-work gift to tell her that he sees the blood clot in her brain. This freaks her out a bit. Then, Samuel appears and hustles Hiro, who is skulking behind a newspaper at a nearby table and eavesdropping Sylar and Charlie, off for a little confab.

At the other side of the diner, Benet hangs up his phone after getting a scolding phone call from Sandra about missing Claire’s cheering at Homecoming due to his job. We also learn this: Benet apparently has a different partner in this reality, she who played Kate the cop the first season on Angel … um, where’s the Haitian? There’s a little bit of flirtation between the two of them, more than flirtation, in fact, as Kate’s booked them a motel room. Benet gets another call and has to go; Kate says she’ll meet him at the office, disappointment evident in her face.

Samuel says that he’s here in this time to make sure that Hiro understands the magnitude of his potential actions. He reminds Hiro that at this point in time, all the Heroes are on specific paths … saving Charlie would be a huge change – is she worth it? Yes, says Hiro, emphatically. But oops – when he looks over at her, both she and Sylar have disappeared from the diner’s dining room. Hiro runs to the storeroom, finding Charlie opening a can and Sylar about to open her skull. Hiro freezes time and looks sternly at Sylar.

After the commercial, Hiro wheels a frozen Sylar out of the diner on a dolly (heh) and puts him in the cargo compartment of a Greyhound bus which he has also frozen. All this freezing is going to take a toll on him, don’t you think? Then he rushes back to the diner’s storeroom, taking time to primp a little. Then he pauses: if Charlie doesn’t get killed by Sylar, he won’t go back in time the first time to try to save her, and therefore they won’t fall in love with each other … and then I get confused with the time-travel stuff because Mr. Mouse is talking to me and I don’t have a DVR to pause things. So anyway, our Hiro goes into the diner’s restroom where Three Years Ago Hiro is washing his hands, and tells TYA Hiro that he must go back in time to save the waitress (what about save the cheerleader? says TYA Hiro but our Hiro doesn’t have time for that now) … and so TYA Hiro blinks out of sight to save the day. And then, I believe our Hiro calls his past self a moron..

At the Company Benet is talking to Isaac (remember him? and that little girl with the short hair is there too – what was her power again? I remember Sylar killed her …), asking for his help to identify Sylar because that wily murderer is after Claire. Apparently Isaac is not much help (I just don’t remember what happened the first time around and can’t be bothered to look it up for you, sorry). Later, Kate finds an upset Benet in the break room … and they kiss each other! Benet is cheating on Sandra with his mind-wiping blonde hussy of a partner? This reality sucks. WHERE’S THE HAITIAN??!!? Stupid Hiro-induced retcon.

Samuel, acting as loose end editor, reminds Hiro that Ando is sitting over there at a diner booth. Our Hiro tells Past Ando to wait for Past Hiro, no matter how long it takes. Then, he rushes back to the storeroom and gives Charlie a huge hug, asking her to come away with him. She giggles, incredulously – then the brain tumor kicks in and she starts spewing a torrent of random facts. Uh-oh - this isn’t going to be as simple Hiro thought: she tells him that her aneurysm has ruptured and she’s dying. “Not yet you’re not,” he says, and hops on his Vespa (where’d that come from?) back to the Greyhound station. He throws open the bus cargo compartment, only to find that Sylar is not there. Because Sylar is behind him, and crankily TKs him up against the side of the bus. Apparently Sylar is not a fan of bus travel. I hear you, man.

Sylar is super-annoyed at being treated like luggage and demands to know what Hiro did to him. Hiro instead asks him to fix Charlie before she dies. “You’re going to die,” growls Sylar (oh how I’ve missed growly Sylar!), extending an index finger. But Hiro freezes him, running out of range. They pretty much do this back and forth all the way down the street to the diner. Hiro, his brain tumor headache kicking in from all the time-freezing, finally promises to tell Sylar everything he knows about Sylar’s future if only he’ll save Charlie. They go back to the diner where Charlie is still sitting in the storeroom, shaking. Sylar tells her to hold still, snarking that he usually prefers more invasive procedures - and Hiro barks that if she dies, Sylar dies – and pulls the blood clot from her brain and out through her eye. Um, ick. There are tears and hugs between Charlie and Hiro.

Sylar just stands there, however, impatiently wanting to know what Hiro knows about him. Hiro tells him that he will kill many people, absorbing their abilities and becoming very powerful, but in the end it won’t make any difference. Other Heroes will band together against him and then Sylar will die alone and unmourned. Um, not quite, Hiro. Then Hiro says he wishes he could change the past but this is Sylar’s path. This is not quite what Sylar wanted to know, I don’t think – more details would have been helpful. Then Hiro teleports Sylar out into an alleyway, leaving him there.

Outside the diner, Benet finds Claire and they have a largely pointless scene together where she tells him she wants him to be happy. After she runs off to do cheerleading stuff, Benet looks ruefully at the motel key in his hand.

Kate is having a drink when he gets to the motel and pours him one. He takes a drink and tells her that he can’t do this – workplace romances never work. But she cuts him off, smiling that she’s had the human resources training. She says that this is more than just physical between them, and don’t they deserve a little bit of happiness? Benet sidesteps this, saying that he loves his family and even though he lies to them now, he doesn’t want to destroy the possibility that one day he could tell them the truth. He tells her that he needs her, needs her help with Sylar and with Claire. Kate sighs, yes, yes, I will always help you.

Charlie comes out of the diner looking a little pensive. She’s upset: she’d made peace with dying but this, this feels like cheating. How can Hiro be okay knowing that Sylar is going to kill all those people? She scolds Hiro, asking why she gets to live when so many others don’t. “Because I love you,” he pleads. “That’s just selfish,” Charlie snaps and walks off.

The Company. Kate (I’m not calling her Lauren) hands Benet an interoffice envelope. It’s got a motel key inside and she kids him a little about it. He’s confused, asking if they’re pretending that their conversation this morning never happened. Now Kate’s confused. He checks the envelope again and pulls out a note. It’s from her and says that she asked the Haitian to wipe her memory, saying that it’s better this way. Benet makes a thinky face, ultimately agreeing. So then what’s her power? She must have one because three years ago, the Company always did a “one of us/one of them” for their bag-and-tag teams.

A little while later Charlie finds Hiro and apologizes for her outburst. She thanks him for saving her life and tells him that she wants their happy ending together. Smooches! They leave the diner for their life together, Charlie a little ahead of Hiro … but she has disappeared by the time he gets outside and Samuel is there instead. He says that he has taken Charlie away to the Carnival in the future/our present. Hiro is furious and grabs Samuel’s shirtfront, shifting time and space to bring both of them back to the 2009 Carnival. The other carnies surround them, staring. Then Samuel ‘fesses up that Charlie’s not exactly here.

A frantic Hiro searches for her but instead finds Arnold, dead in a trailer. Samuel explains that Arnold was the Carnival’s time-traveler but his body couldn’t take the strain (he also had a brain tumor, just like Hiro’s); the last thing Arnold did, on Samuel’s instructions, was to take Charlie and trap her somewhere in time. This last act which killed him. Hiro is feeling manipulated but Samuel simply says that he needed Hiro to fix his own past transgressions – something that the other carnies wouldn’t understand. When Hiro gets vaguely threatening, Samuel reminds him that he is the only one who knows where Charlie is and Hiro must do exactly what he says if he wanted to see her again. “What must we do?” asks Hiro. “I made a mistake eight weeks ago,” admits Samuel.

Eight weeks ago: Samuel killed Mohinder. I just knew I liked that guy.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Possible technical difficulties

2009-11-01T20:31:00.002-05:00

Y'all, I hope I'm wrong, but there's the possibility that the Heroes recap may be late. I have been having the awfullest time with my computer having been infected with spyware/viruses, etc. (stupid Comcast, stupid ineffectual McAfee) and I may be taking it in to the computer doctor tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with the recap but if not, I promise I will have it up and running just as soon as this machine is, well, up and running.

Book review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

2009-10-31T10:00:00.004-04:00

In my quest to work my way through the catalogue of the prolific Neil Gaiman, I’ve sampled some of his movies, adult novels, short story collections, YA short story collections and graphic novels (to date, just Black Orchid, review coming to FMS soon). Coraline is the first children’s novel of his that I’ve read: it’s not a picture book, but it’s a little easier to get through than his YA stuff. That being said, Coraline is scary.

Coraline Jones lives with her parents in a flat in part of a big old house. They share the old house with the denizens of the other two flats: the crazy old man in the attic flat, who tells Coraline that he’s training up a mouse circus; and the Misses Spink and Forcible, aging actresses, with their sundry aging terriers. The big old house has a ramshackle garden around it and many rooms to explore in it, which is a good thing since Coraline’s parents, who work at home doing things on computers, all but ignore their daughter, too wrapped up in their work. The neighbors aren’t that much better: they pay attention to Coraline but can’t manage to get her name right. She reminds them (to no avail): “It’s Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline.”

The Jones family flat has twenty-one windows and fourteen doors – Coraline counts them all one bored day. The fourteenth door is locked, however, and when she finds the old iron key and opens it, she finds a brick wall. Until she tries it again later and finds a passageway into another flat. This other flat is in another house that is very similar to Coraline’s house. There’s even another mother and another father who feed her things that she likes to eat and show her another bedroom with crazy toys. But as much as she initially likes it there, Coraline realizes that there is something wrong with the other mother and the other father, not just that they have black buttons where their eyes should be. The other parents want her to stay and live with them, there’s just something they need to change first …

There’s also the matter of the other children, the ones that were trapped in the house by the other mother so many years ago that they are only ghosts, hiding in mirrors now. Coraline is the only one who can rescue them, if she can figure out how to outwit the other mother with her terrible long fingers and snaky black hair, and the rats who do her bidding.

There is no question that Coraline is a scary story – I was a little scared and I’m ~~thirty-something~~ ~~forty-something~~ ~~old~~ a Stephen King fan. The other mother is scary, the rats are nasty, the thing in the basement that I’m not going to talk further about is totally creepy. But Coraline is a sensible, clever girl and she keeps her wits about her, and that is what children will connect with. I would imagine that Coraline would be a good book for children and parents to read together (although perhaps not right before bedtime), but I can tell you from experience that it’s a treat to read by yourself as an adult as well.

Aw, I wish the DVD player was hooked up

2009-10-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

I just watched S2E6 of Castle on Hulu. It's their recent Halloween episode, entitled "Vampire Weekend," and in the very first scene, Nathan Fillion (as Castle) is shown putting on leather boots, a red shirt, tight pants with suspenders, a brown coat and twirling his revolver (not a euphemism). His daughter asks him what he's doing and he answers that he's trying out Halloween costumes - this one's a space cowboy. She points out that there are no cows in space and besides, didn't he do that one already about five years ago, and shouldn't he move on? Fillion/Castle, with a crestfallen expression: "But I liked it." Awwwwww.

It's Firefly references, y'all! Long live Firefly. (And then a few minutes later, some murder victim gets staked in a cemetery and Castle drops a Buffy reference too.) So now I'm all nostalgic and want to watch old Whedony t.v. shows. If I only remembered what box my DVDs are stuffed into out at the self-storage place.

Book review: Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

2009-10-28T10:30:00.004-04:00

As mentioned before, I tend to read and/or watch things in clumps, like three Terry Pratchett books in a row or all of Gossip Girl S2 in a mad marathon. The current clump is Neil Gaiman. Man’s a genius, I am completely convinced of it. I took three of his volumes out of the library last week - a book of short stories, a YA novel and a graphic novel – and read the short stories first.

Fragile Things is comprised of thirty-one “short fictions and wonders,” some stories, some poems. As with all of Gaiman’s work that I have experienced, these pieces are each part horror and part fantasy, with a little whimsy thrown in for leavening. I think my favorite of the bunch was "The Monarch of the Glen," which takes place several years after American Gods and follows Shadow’s adventures in Scotland. In the introduction to Fragile Things Gaiman remarks that he “enjoy[s] the gulf between Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of Grendel’s mother in the Robert Zemeckis film [the script for which Gaiman co-wrote] and the version of the character that turns up here.” Some of the other stories are:

A Study in Emerald – an alt-universe in which both Sherlock Holmes and alien overlords coexist
Closing Time - a ghost story with a twisty ending that I had to re-read a couple of times
Bitter Grounds – of course there are zombies in New Orleans!
The Problem of Susan – in which Gaiman addresses what happened to Susan from the Narnia books
Goliath – originally written for the web site for The Matrix, and posted just before the film came out

I love short story collections (another of my admittedly none-too-highbrow favorites, Stephen King, does some of his best work in short stories) and read one of Gaiman’s YA short story volumes, M Is for Magic, at the end of last year. I’d forgotten this, however, and so was completely perplexed when some of the stories in Fragile Things seemed so familiar, and yet other stories didn’t. Three of the M is for Magic tales are also in Fragile Things: "October in the Chair" (a ghost story told by October), "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (a science fiction-y piece) and "Sunbird" (about "a group of people who like to eat things").

Although none of these stories demonstrate anything startlingly new, Gaiman continues to charm and entertain and I have no reason to think that the next book in my queue, Coraline, will turn out any differently.

Heroes episode recap - “Strange Attractors” S4E6 (airdate 10/26/09)

2009-10-26T23:12:00.006-04:00

Los Angeles. Eew: Parkman and his slut of a wife are having sex. And I say “slut of a wife” not only because she used to cat around with Parkman’s former partner, but also because now she’s doing it with Sylar. In Matt’s mind, anyway: his body was actually getting to do the deed. Or something. But there’s Sylar in the afterglow, smirking at him on the couch, saying that forbidden fruit is his favorite kind. Parkman glowers balefully.

Georgia. Benet watches impotently as the sheriff’s deputy manhandles Jeremy (a/k/a the Human Touch o’ Death) into handcuffs. Benet protests to the sheriff that Jeremy’s just a kid, but the sheriff is not at all interested in or intimidated by the man in the horn-rimmed glasses. After the sheriff leaves, Benet makes a phone call and sometime later, Tracey shows up. Oh eew, again – is he enlisting her as his new partner? I miss the Haitian. Benet brings her up to speed on the current situation and tells her that she’s going to be posing as Jeremy’s dear Aunt Tracey to get him released into her custody: it’ll be easy, just “[g]o in, talk to him, sign him out.” Tracey is unsure at first but Benet is encouraging, and she goes into the sheriff’s department.

Arlington, Virginia. Claire and Gretchen lie in their separate beds, unable to sleep after the Gretchen initiated lip-lockage, and Claire thinks they should talk about her roommate’s inconvenient crush. Gretchen backpedals that what she did was stupid and impulsive and bad. Claire protests that it wasn’t bad – “you’re a good kisser” – but she doesn’t want to mess up this new normal life she’s got going on. She likes Gretchen a lot but … “Just not that way,” Gretchen sighs. Suddenly, a bunch of small, hooded figures burst into their room and start grabbing at them. Claire fights back, slamming one attacker into the floor. The attackers stop cold and pull off their hoods: “Jeez, Claire, don’t go all Buffy on us!” It’s Becky and the girls from the sorority, here to “kidnap” the new pledges.

After the commercial, Claire and Gretchen have been shoved into the trunk of a car per their sorority kidnapping. Gretchen gets all flirty for a bit and presses Claire as to if she really doesn’t have a chance with her. Claire’s all, “I don’t know.” “Awesome,” grumbles Gretchen. This is so awkward and badly done. When they are released from the car trunk, they and two other pledges have been taken to an old slaughterhouse for a scary scavenger hunt. One of the other pledge panics but not Claire – after what she’s seen, this is nothing. Gretchen is keeping pretty calm too, I note grudgingly. They start working the game, Claire solving the first puzzle after one of the other pledge girls gets sprayed in the face with about a gallon of fake blood. Is this going to be some PG-rated version of Saw?

Georgia. Tracey works her cover story and gets in to see Jeremy, who is currently feeling Very Sorry for himself. She tells Jeremy demonstrates her power and tells him her story: that the first day her ability manifested, she killed a guy because she was unable to control her emotions, and her ability is tied to her state of mind. She manages to get through to the boy; he breaks down, sobbing; she is touched. However, out in the bullpen, the sheriff has found some angsty teen murder/suicide poetry and inky drawings in one of Jeremy’s notebook and is convinced this is proof of his guilt. He refuses to release the boy while Benet squawks at him.

Frustrated, Tracey goes outside to call in a favor with her friends up in D.C. When she hangs up the phone, Samuel is there (ooh!). He asks her what’s next after she saves young Jeremy’s life: where will this troubled boy go? And then he works some mojo and transports them both to the Carnival. She’s understandably wigged out and Samuel speaks soothingly to her, telling her that everyone in the Carnival is like her, ability-fied. What is this place? she marvels. “Home,” intones Samuel, and Tracey allows herself just a glimmer of a smile.

Los Angeles. Parkman is still arguing with Sylar’s manifested consciousness. Sylar taunts him some more, saying that Janice is kinda hot, and what’s more important, the next time he takes control of Parkman’s body, he’ll be able to do anything he wants to Parkman’s wife (and his son – and he’s not talking sex here, these are threats, not leers). Parkman worries about this.

Slaughterhouse. The other two pledges split off from Gretchen and Claire to try their luck on their own. As our girls go down some stairs, some water ripples behind them – it must be Becky in invisible-mode. As they explore, Claire asks Gretchen how long she’s known that she likes girls. Gretchen says that it’s really not one or the other with her and she’s actually had more boyfriends (6 or 7) than girlfriends. Claire gets twitchy because she is still a virgin and Gretchen isn’t. This touching exchange is disrupted when a heavy hooked chain comes hurtling towards them. Claire throws herself at Gretchen, knocking them both out of the way.

Carnival. Samuel gives Tracey a tour, giving her the hard sell: this is where Jeremy should be. “Living in trailers? Drifting from town to town?” she snarks. Samuel points out that Jeremy has a gift, as does Tracey, and the Carnival is a safe place for people with these kinds of gifts. Tracey just wants to go back to Jeremy, so Samuel gives her one of those magic find-the-Carnival compasses and sends her on her way. After she leaves, Amnesia-Sylar approaches Samuel, saying that he’s sure he knows Tracey from before, he remembers her. Samuel reminds him that he doesn’t think that these memories belong to Sylar. And Sylar’s like, well, if this isn’t me, where am I?

Los Angeles. Parkman is packing a bag, panicking, and telling Janice what happened with him, Sylar and Nathan. He tells her that Sylar keeps taking over his body – it’s not safe for her or the baby to be around him now. Since he’s acting so sketchy, Janice is like, okay, I’m taking the baby and getting the hell out of here. After she goes, Sylar tells Parkman that was pretty smart – even for him – but the main problem is still unsolved: Sylar’s consciousness still here, stuck in Parkman’s brain.

After the commercial, Parkman leaves an urgent voicemail message for MOHINDER [nooooooooooooooo!], begging for his help. Sylar says, look, Parkman, just give me back my body. Parkman grimaces, sucking on a beer. Which, curiously, gives Sylar a headache. Parkman finds this wicked interesting and takes a big ol’ shot of tequila, sending Sylar reeling. Parkman grins: “I think I finally found a leash for this dog.” Greg Grunberg is pretty cute when he’s not playing all tormented.

Georgia. Tracey’s favor from D.C. worked and the sheriff releases Jeremy into her custody. Jeremy asks what’s going to happen to him and Benet tells him that he’ll move to D.C., live in the apartment next to Benet and go to Georgetown high school, where no one will know anything about him. “You’ll be invisible,” Tracey says, with a slight edge in her voice. Jeremy sighs and it’s not clear whether he’s pleased by this or not. They walk out of the sheriff’s department together (in slow motion), where they are confronted by an angry crowd. One man lunges at Jeremy and the boy panics, working his death grip on the man. The sheriff pulls a gun; Benet pleads with the boy to save the man; and Jeremy trudges expressionlessly back into the jail. See, Tracey, Jeremy can’t live on the outside – he needs the Sullivan Bros. Carnival. You should listen to Samuel.

Slaughterhouse. Claire thinks that there’s another ability-fied person stalking them, with the goal of knocking off Gretchen. Gretchen scoffs at first, calling conspiracy theory … and then realizes that Claire’s life is not at all normal and this theory could be true. The other two pledges find them and the girls all decide to stick together for a bit.

Georgia. The sheriff has had it with these city folk and refuses to let Tracey and Benet talk to Jeremy anymore. Unbeknownst to him, however, some of the deputies have taken Jeremy out the backdoor and wrapped chains around his ankles. One of the deputies gets in his face, daring him to take his best shot. Poor Jeremy shakes, angry and terrified, but just clenches his hands into fists without touching the other man. The deputy gives the go and a truck lurches forward, the length of chain spooling out from around Jeremy’s ankles.

Los Angeles. Parkman is getting hammered and Sylar grimaces, finally fading from view. Parkman thinks that’s awesome, but now he’s really drunk too. Janice picks now to return with Parkman’s partner (who, if you will remember, thinks Parkman is an addict). Parkman greets them and then passes out facedown.

Slaughterhouse. The other girls decide they do not want to join up with Claire and Gretchen any more. Claire and Gretchen find the final clue in the “killing room” but then Invisible Becky wraps a strap around Gretchen’s throat, choking her. There is a very un-awe-inspiring fight between Claire and Becky which ends up with Claire getting impaled, and then stabbing Becky. The distraction/pain of the wound causes Becky to become visible. The other two girls come back just in time to see Claire healing herself after Gretchen pulls her off the spike and Becky invisibling herself as she runs off. The other girls shriek. “Now what do we do?” wonders Gretchen. Claire makes a face that says: where’s the Haitian when you need him?

Georgia. Tracey and Benet finally find Jeremy, who has been dragged to death and left in the middle of the road. Tracey is crying, saying that they could have saved him and given him a real home. Benet doesn’t know that she means the Carnival. She heads for her car, and he chases after her, apologizing. He laments that he did what he thought was right, trying to save and mainstream Jeremy, but he was wrong - he’s been wrong for so many years. Tracey tells him not to call her again. When he walks away, she takes out the compass that Samuel gave her: it spins, then stops, pointing the way home.

Los Angeles. When Parkman sobers up, his partner hands him another AA chip, saying that they’ll start over. Janice says she loves him and he smiles that she’ll love him more after he takes a shower. When he leaves the room, however, Sylar is there and – surprise – he’s taken over Parkman’s body, slipping in when Parkman passed out. Now Parkman is the free-floating consciousness and Sylar is corporeal. Or something like that: I guess that now whom the viewing audience sees as Sylar, Janice et al. see as Parkman, but where we see Parkman, Janice sees nothing.

Georgia. A vengeful, black-clad Samuel stands in the middle of the street, watching as the sheriff and his men go into the sheriff’s department. Samuel clenches his fists and the ground shakes, flexing, until the entire building has collapsed into a sinkhole. He turns his back on the dusty rubble, stalking away.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Three more by Terry Pratchett

2009-10-23T13:08:00.002-04:00

I tend to, not get stuck in a rut per se, but read things in clumps. This clump is Terry Pratchett, as I just blew through three more of his books, the first three Discworld fantasy novels: The Colour of Magic (1983), The Light Fantastic (1986) and Equal Rites (1987).

The Colour of Magic introduces us to the Discworld by following the adventures of Rincewind, the mostly inept wizard, his new friend Twoflower, the Discworld’s first tourist, and Twoflower’s Luggage, hundred-footed sentient pearwood chest which is extremely loyal to its owner and extremely snappish to everyone else. At the end of The Colour of Magic, the three of them are left falling off the edge of the world which, being a flat disc, is entirely too possible.

Fortunately, in The Light Fantastic, Rincewind is the only person who can save the Discworld from a disastrous collision with a malevolent red start, so at least the fall off the world won’t kill him. In other events, Twoflower does get to play a game of cards with Death (who speaks IN ALL CAPITALS and is generally pleasant in skeletal, grim sort of way). And our heroes fall in with Cohen the Barbarian, now 87+ years old and toothless, but still the greatest hero around.

In Equal Rites Pratchett takes a break from Rincewind and Company, instead following the early adventures of Esk, the eighth son of an eighth son upon whom a dying wizard bequeaths his magical wizard staff. Except that Esk is a girl – which fact the wizard didn’t know at the time. On the Discworld, wizards are men and women with any magical leanings are witches, according to the lore, and everyone is pretty adamant about never the twain shall meet. But Esk has an overabundance of raw wizardish talent and so Granny Weatherwax, the resident witch in Esk’s village, takes it upon herself to help the little girl journey to the Unseen University, where wizards are trained. Esk’s parents are reluctant to let their only daughter go … until she turns one of her more annoying brothers into a pig. (Granny makes her turn him back.)

I am becoming a huge Terry Pratchett fan, much like I used to be a huge Piers Anthony fan (until his clever funny books devolved into merely strings of puns after reader-submitted puns). They are funny as heck, clever, observant of the human condition, fast-paced, convoluted without becoming obtuse, and recurring characters pop in from time to time. If you have a taste for smart fantasy that is more hilarious and self-deprecating than angsty and self-important, pick yourself up some Pratchett.

Splatter

2009-10-21T10:00:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Pop Candy, I just found out about Roger Corman's new horror web series, Splatter. It stars Corey Feldman and after each episode, you can vote online as to who gets killed off next. Except Corey Feldman, I guess: the trailer shows him shooting himself and then transformed into a zombie, so I don't know if he's fair game or not. The first episode (of three) goes online October 29.

Heroes episode recap - “Tabula Rasa” S4E5 (airdate 10/19/09)

2009-10-19T22:40:00.003-04:00

Opening montage: Sylar, safe at the carnival; Nathan’s empty office; Hiro in the hospital with Peter watching over him; Emma, clutching the cello, scared of the damage she has inadvertently wrought in her own home; Benet, working on his investigation.

Hiro wakes up in the hospital and Peter tells him that the doctors say he’s very sick. Hiro knows: “Brain tumor, I’m dying.” Peter offers his hospice skills but Hiro thinks that he’s not quite ready to go yet; perhaps he was sent to Peter to help him. Peter thinks for a minute, and then squeezes Hiro’s hand, absorbing his ability. I’ve got to go, says Peter.

Emma catches him outside, asking if he sent her the cello, and there’s something wrong with her ability. Peter says that he can’t stay right now, but she should talk to Hiro who knows everything about abilities. Then when her back is turned, Peter teleports away.

Carnival. Lydia and Samuel talk about Sylar, how he’s not what they expected (or had heard about). Lydia thinks it’s as though there are two sides at war within him. Samuel decides to have a chat with the man in question. He is nonplused when Sylar professes not to remember anything, not even his own name. Samuel says that he thinks that a great damage has been done to Sylar, and that he’s come to the Carnival to heal. Tell me, says Samuel, what name should I call you? Nathan, replies Sylar. They walk a little and Samuel asks about his powers. Sylar says that he’s all freaked about what he can do, so Samuel asks Lydia to take Sylar around, introduce him to all the other abilitified Carnies.

Washington, D.C. Claire stops by her dad’s apartment to hit him up for quarters for laundry. They are interrupted when Peter teleports in, landing himself in the bathroom by accident. “It’s been a long time since I teleported,” he says, embarrassed. Heh.

Carnival. Samuel consults with Edgar, saying that the wrong person is inside Sylar’s head. Also, they are concerned that “someone” who has been hunting Sylar may track him here. I say “someone” because Mr. Mouse was talking to me over the television and since I don’t have a DVR these days, I can’t rewind to see what I missed. I’m going to assume that they mean Ernie Hudson the cop though.

Peter tells the Benets that Hiro is dying and he needs help finding a Healer. (Claire’s blood won’t work because its regenerative powers will just make the brain tumor grow faster.) Benet digs into his files and finds one, a kid named Jeremy; Peter grabs Benet’s arm and they both teleport to Georgia to find the kid.

Carnival. Edgar introduces himself to Sylar, sort of, telling him that he knows that Sylar can steal powers from other people, and warning him that he (Edgar) has some tricks of his own. To prove his point, he throws three knives into Sylar’s hand; unfazed, Sylar TKs them out and into a post, and then TKs Edgar into a bucket of cement. Samuel decides to intercede before this gets too out of hand. He brings Sylar to a dreadlocked fellow named Damian, saying that in his hands, Sylar’s true memories will return to him. Sylar says he’s ready and Damian takes him into the House of Mirrors.

Hospital. Emma meets Hiro and immediately asks him how she can turn off her ability. It’s part of who you are, he exclaims. Thanks [for nothing], she says, and leaves.

Georgia. Benet notes that all the landscaping outside Jeremy the Healer’s house is dead … which is not a good sign. The house “smells like death” so Benet draws his gun and they let themselves in. They find Jeremy’s parents dead in their armchairs. Benet helpfully remembers that sometimes Healers can’t control the balance of life and death so well (like the kid in HBO’s Carnivale, who could heal but had to suck the life out of something else to do so). Then they’re shot at from above. “Jeremy, is that you?” shouts Benet.

Carnival, House of Mirrors. Damian lays hands on Sylar for a moment, and then leaves him. Sylar turns, watching the mirrors. Then memories begin to flash: his argument with and murder of his mom. “No!” he cries, horrified, “This isn’t me! Make it stop!”

That new 2010 Mustang is sure purty!

Hospital. Hiro tracks Emma to her office and demands to know about her ability, saying that he himself is the Master of Time and Space. She tells him what’s happening to her, saying that she wants it to stop. Then she runs away again.

Georgia. Peter wants to rush Jeremy but Benet says that he needs to talk to the kid first. He lays down his gun and slowly walks up the stairs. Jeremy, a little strung out, screams at him to stay away. Why?, asks Benet. “Everything I touch ends up dead,” says ol’ Jeremy. Yikes.

Carnival. Police captain Ernie Hudson has arrived at the Sullivan Bros. Carnival, Samuel having sent him some complimentary tickets. Meanwhile, Sylar is still getting the “This Is Your Life” treatment in the Hall of Mirrors, although it doesn’t seems to be helping him at all, just freaking him out more and more. Finally he lurches outside and vomits into a nearby trash barrel.

Georgia. Jeremy tells Benet that he accidentally killed his parents – he was angry and he touched them and they died. Benet says no, you’re a Healer. Jeremy: no, the power changed. Benet, insistently: no, you can do both. Jeremy is not appeased, getting more and more upset, and finally shoots Benet. But Peter intercedes, grabbing the gun and attempting to freeze time. But his control is not that good and the bullet smashes into him, and he falls to the floor, bleeding out.

Benet looks up at Jeremy: you need to lay your hands on him now – you can do this! Benet tells the kid that his own particular power is understanding people like him. He tells Jeremy to visualize Peter healing, regenerating, and opening his eyes. Resigned and afraid, Jeremy touches Peter’s shoulder. Peter jerks, coughs, groans, and is healed. Jeremy slumps against the wall in relief.

Hospital. Hiro is putting on a little magic show for the sick kids and when Emma shows up, curious, he pulls her into the performance. He stops time while the children are applauding so she can see the frozen colors. You know, they better be going somewhere with this because they are spending a LOT of time with this seemingly pointless power of hers.

Carnival. Samuel finds Sylar sulking after the Mirror show: “All those murders, those memories are in my mind but I can’t believe them.” Samuel tells him that he’s sorry for his pain but the truth can be difficult. “Difficult!” sneers Sylar, “I sliced open their skulls!” Samuel says that the people outside of the Carnival turned Sylar into a monster, but here, in the embrace of a community who would accept him as he is, he could become someone who commands fear and respect. Sylar ponders this. Then, Samuel plays his ace: that cop is here, and Sylar’s presence endangers all the Carnies ... it’s up to Sylar what he wants to do about it. Sylar stands and asks where the cop is.

Hospital. The nurses put Hiro back in his bed. Emma asks him how he can be focused on helping others when he’s so sick ... suddenly, he remembers Charlie, and is horrified that he forgot to add her to his “to be helped” list. Emma begs him to stay put until Peter gets back.

Georgia. Peter absorbs Jeremy’s healing power and jumps in a rental car to get back to NYC. After he leaves, Benet tells Jeremy that he’s rigged the house so that it looks like his parents died from carbon monoxide poisoning [… except that they’ve been dead so long that the bodies stink, so what are the police going to think about that?] and tells the boy that he’ll stay with him until he knows he’s okay. Aw, Benet’s finding his purpose again.

Carnival. Sylar goes back into the House of Mirrors where he finds Cop Ernie Hudson. Ernie pulls a gun and Sylar calmly tells him that he should leave as soon as possible. Instead Ernie shoots at him; Sylar stops the bullet in midair, and then zaps him with some electricity. “What are you?” gasps a wounded Ernie, struggling to his feet. Sylar advances on the frightened man, and then rethinks things, backing away. But then Edgar super speeds up and slices and dices Ernie into ribbons. Sylar gapes. Edgar: “Don’t just stand there – get’im up!”

Hospital. Emma goes back to the piano and starts to play – AARRRGGHH – smiling at the blue streamers of light. Hiro hears the music and wanders over to her. Other people seem to be drawn to the music too and they all applaud when she finishes. She tells Hiro to go back to bed but as he obediently turns to do so, he teleports out of sight.

Carnival. A shaken Sylar goes to Samuel who embraces him. The Carnies all gather around. Sylar is baptized – literally – and then there’s a party. As he and Samuel keep an eye on Sylar, Edgar notes that it’s a good thing that he was around to clean up the pieces – “what good is a lion that won’t kill?” Samuel says that they’ll just make Sylar the way they want him and then he’ll be theirs forever. Edgar watches Lydia snuggling up to Sylar and crankily practices throwing his knives.

Hospital. When he finally gets back there, Emma tells Peter that Hiro is gone. Peter finds a note: “Save Charlie.” Last scene: Hiro peering in that diner window and intoning “Chahlee!”

Still no Mohinder - woot woot!

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Heroes episode recap - “Hysterical Blindness” S4E4 (airdate 10/12/09)

2009-10-18T17:19:00.005-04:00

This time, Heroes recap compliments of Hulu.com, which worked great except that the scenes at night were very dark and nearly impossible to make out.

It’s very dark and I can’t see what’s going on – sounds like someone digging in loose dirt. A darkened figure staggers down the road, then is pulled over by the cops. The man turns as the light comes up and it’s Sylar - which would have been more effective if they hadn’t ruined it in the previews last episode. They seem to do that a lot.

Carnival at breakfast time. Several carnies seem to be empowered Heroes: one woman heats the wafflemaker with a touch of her hand. Samuel speechifies, saying that they need to bring other Heroes into the fold to complete their family. Edgar gives Lydia a look, clearly not entirely on board with the party line, but everyone else seems happy. Samuel promises that by day’s end, they’ll have a full table again.

College. Claire is all happy with her life, doing normal college girl stuff, hanging out with her new roomie. She and Gretchen are interrupted by Jackie from S2 of Veronica Mars, who is rush chairman from Claire’s mom’s sorority. Jackie’s name here is “Becky.” Claire is a legacy and they want her to join, inviting her to a rush function. Gretchen, being the “unconventional” character she is, of course doesn’t think the Greek system is a good idea, claiming that the sorority sisters will turn her new roommate into “Stepford Claire.” But Claire asks Gretchen to go to the rush function with her, she acquiesces.

Baltimore, police station. The cops have called in a psych consult for Sylar, played Simone, Emerson Cod’s girlfriend from Pushing Daisies). Sylar doesn’t know who he is or what’ happened to him, and the cops are all freaked out about him what with the bloodstains and the bullet holes in his clothes and the graveyard dirt and all. The head cop is Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters, btw. As Sylar sits there, flashes from his past start to come back to him. He’s upset, crying. More importantly, he needs a haircut.

Emma, the deaf sound-seeing medical records clerk, is back at work. Her doctor friend thinks she has “conversion disorder,” a/k/a “hysterical blindness.” And, as it turns out, this doctor friend is actually Emma’s mother. Doctor Mom encourages Emma to stop wasting her life in records, to stop grieving for “Christopher’s death” six years ago. “I’m not grieving,” insists Emma, upset.

Angela Petrelli, stopping by Peter’s apartment ostensibly to see him but actually to see if he’s heard from Nathan, is slightly disturbed by Peter’s obsessive wall of heroic newspaper clippings. Peter wants to talk about himself, how he’s trying to make a difference in people’s lives, but his mother is far too distracted to pay any attention to him. Frustrated, Peter leaves for work, and Angela stays at his apartment, hoping Nathan will show up.

College, sorority house. Becky has organized a “get to know prospective pledges speed dating” event and splits Claire and Gretchen up. As Claire meets different people, it turns out that they already know about her as Gretchen seems to talk more about Claire than herself. This nonpluses Claire, as you might imagine.

NYC. Emma walks down the street, trying not to cry. She starts to see the sounds as colors again and, distracted, steps into the street into the path of a bus. Peter superspeeds up and sweeps her out of harm’s way. They recognize each other, but she’s still so shell-shocked that she just walks away from him. He grabs her arm, still not understanding that she’s deaf and asking if she’s okay. Emma pulls away from him. Annoyed, he tries to superspeed off, but can’t as his legs won’t accelerate. He kicks a trashcan in his frustration and sees a burst of yellow sparkles. Hmm … will he figure it out? Also, seeing sound as color is not quite so helpful to a heroic paramedic as superspeed.

Carnival. Lydia finds Samuel digging in the dirt. She wants to know who the new family member will be, but he doesn’t know yet. But he felt something move in the earth, something that hasn’t settled yet. Gosh, could that be Sylar, having dragged himself up out of the grave? “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” intones Samuel. What’s Edgar doing? I need more Edgar.

College, dorm room. Gretchen has appropriated some of Claire’s clothes and Claire struggles a little to it go. When Gretchen leaves the room for a moment, a book falls of the shelf and strikes Gretchen’s laptop. Claire takes a look at it and finds a disturbing number of Claire-related and jump/push/fall suicide web sites book marked. Weirded out, she sends Gretchen on ahead to the sorority mixer.

Baltimore PD. Sylar’s had a shower and a change of clothes (but not a haircut, unfortunately). He professes to the shrink that everything, every experience, seems new to him, even though he has the words to describe them. I’m bored – when is he going to start slicing people open again? The shrink decides to try a memory exercise, telling him to close his eyes and tell her the first thing he visualizes. Instead, he is distracted by hearing the ticking of the clock on the wall, as well as her watch, saying the time they’re keeping is off. She thinks this is significant. Cop Ernie Hudson interrupts them, telling the shrink that they’ve got an ID from Sylar’s fingerprints.

Hospital. Paramedic Peter, searching for Emma, is distracted by the colors rising from a bunch of kids singing for the patients. He finds Emma there too, watching, and they notice each other noticing the colors. She seems relieved to not be alone in this. Peter just gives her a totally goofy grin.

After the commercial, he discovers that this ability is new to her and tries to explain that there are Heroes with varying abilities. “That’s crazy!” she says, when he tells her about the flying, and teleporting, and mind reading. Then they play the piano together – ugh SO BORING. I really miss my DVR because I would be fast-forwarding this nonsense for sure. Anyway, at the end of their duet, she seems to believe him about people having abilities, although he really hasn’t done anything to prove it other than what she’s already seen. So he asks her to lunch tomorrow to talk about it some more, but Emma gets nervous and runs away again.

College. Claire arrives at the sorority mixer in a cute little red dress. Becky finds her at once, glad to see her, and introduces her around. Claire is chatting with some other sister when movement from above catches her eye. She shoves the other girl out of the way, stepping back quickly herself as a be-bannered flagpole plunges into the floor where they were standing. When Claire looks up, Gretchen is peering over the banister above her. Freaked, Claire walks off.

Baltimore. Cop Ernie explains to a still-befuddled Sylar that his name is Gabriel Gray and that he’s a watchmaker from New York who killed his own mother. Sylar thinks that’s awful and impossible – he’s not a killer. Cop Ernie gets tough, turning off the interview camera, and says that first he wants Gabriel’s confession, and then he’s going to throw him down a hole forever. The “down a hole” thing wigs Sylar and he puts his hands up defensively … which ignites his TK, subsequently tossing Cop Ernie through the wall. Sylar affects his getaway as an alarm rings. In the parking garage, the shrink has just gotten to her car when all the lights go off. She is startled when Sylar appears at her car door, begging for her help.

Back at their dorm room, Claire confronts Gretchen, asking if she dropped that flagpole on her to keep her from making new friends, or to expose her “freakiness.” Gretchen gets defensive, calling Claire paranoid. Claire shouts, “All I wanted was a normal life – I trusted you!” Gretchen protests, saying that she’s not really a stalker, well, maybe she’s just stalking Claire a little, then she swoops in and plants a big kiss on Claire. Claire staggers back, shocked, as Gretchen confesses to having a big crush on her. This tender and very frakking pointless moment is interrupted when the Psi Alpha Chi sisters barge in to invite both Claire and Gretchen to pledge their house.

Carnival. Samuel tries again on Lydia’s back to determine who their new family member will be, but the Swirling Tattoos of Destiny show him nothing. Samuel looks up as there’s a shimmer in the air: it’s Becky, the girl from Claire’s new sorority, who calls him “uncle.” She reports that she’s making friends with Claire … via flashbacks we see that she was the one who dropped the flagpole on Claire, and who dropped the book on Gretchen’s laptop to expose the stalking, and who pushed Claire’s original roommate Whatshername out the window. Seems Becky’s power is invisibility. Samuel asks if Claire is now on her way to the carnival but before Becky can answer, Lydia interrupts, saying that something else is happening. Samuel glances at Lydia’s back – we don’t get to see what he sees – and then sends Becky back to campus, saying that the carnival is about to pull up stakes.

In the shrink’s car, Sylar is still trying to remember who he is, insisting that he is not a killer. She points out that he’s at the least a wee bit violent and a kidnapper and carjacker. She pulls over and tries to get him to let her go and turn himself in. Suddenly the cops catch up to them. As Sylar raises his hands to surrender, electricity crackles between his fingers (ooh, I miss Elle) and the spooked cops open fire, hitting him in the chest numerous times. He tumbles into a ditch, taking the shrink with him, and they both watch in wonder as the gunshots heal themselves. She tells him to run, run!

Emma comes home to her quiet, empty apartment. There’s a cello in a stand and she picks it up, starting to play. Holding ceremonial candles, Claire and Gretchen follow the sorority sisters through the dorm as Becky shimmers into view behind them. Peter lets himself into his apartment, muttering to himself about not being able to connect with Emma, when Hiro teleports into view. “Peter Petrelli!” he grins, then collapses to the floor as Peter tries to help him. Emma’s playing gets more and more furious until the sound-colors make the wall in front of her crack. WTF?

Sylar runs and runs through the dark woods, the police close behind him. Then there’s a flash of color ahead and the Sullivan Bros. Carnival pops into view. Samuel beckons him inside. When the cops come into the clearing, there’s nothing there for them to find. Meanwhile inside the carnival, wherever it is, Samuel tells Sylar that he’s safe, and he’s home.

Hey: still no Mohinder! Is he supposed to still be in that deserted interment camp, researching? Didn't he get picked up by some shadowy government agency? Actually, I don't remember and I so don't care just as long as he stays away.

Previously on Heroes / next time on Heroes

Book review: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

2009-10-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

It’s a good thing that Terry Pratchett has written so darn many books, because I like his writing and intend to read a lot of them. The Wee Free Men is one of his YA novels, tangentially related to his more adult Discworld fantasy series. You don’t have to be familiar with Discworld, however, to enjoy TWFM: the story latches onto you from the get-go and never lets up.

Young heroine Tiffany Aching lives a quiet country life on the Aching family farm. She’s an odd girl, prone to too many thoughts and questions, but she’s hardworking and dutiful, and good at making cheese. She has a baby brother, Wentworth, who seems to be always sticky due to his always wanting to eat candies, and she’s not entirely sure she likes him that much – things on the farm were just fine without him. But because she’s a good girl, Tiffany watches Wentworth when her mother asks her too and only once or twice uses him as monster bait.

Strange things are coming down out of the hills: river monsters, headless horsemen and winter when it shouldn’t be winter. Tiffany, whose Granny Aching (excellent with sheep) was rumored to be a witch, and who rather thinks she might like to be a witch herself, consults with Miss Tick (also a witch) and learns that an invasion of these bad things is coming. And there’s no one to stop them, bemoans Miss Tick. There’s me, says Tiffany.

After having said that, however, the girl isn’t so sure since the witch wasn’t very forthcoming with the witchy education, only leaving a talking toad behind for advice. But when Wentworth suddenly goes missing, Tiffany takes up her weapons (a cast iron frying pan and her Granny’s book, Diseases of the Sheep) and enlists the help of the Nac Mac Feegle, also known as the Wee Free Men, tiny blue Scottish-ish pictsies (not pixies). The only thing the pictsies like to do better than drink is fight and, luckily for Tiffany, they’re really good at doing both.

Pratchett has an incredible ear for accents – and his Nac Mac Feegle are thick with a twisted brogue – and excellent timing to his sentences. His descriptions are marvelous and this is one of the most easily visualized books I’ve read in a long time. The plot hits the ground running and keeps picking up pace, throwing in wonderful characters, tweaked fairy tales, funny jokes and social commentary without missing a stride.

This is only the second Pratchett book I’ve read (the first was Guards! Guards!) and I’ve got to say that I’m totally hooked. I’m planning on delving into the stacks of the SLC City Library (ooh - what a library!) soon and hope that they have a decent stash of Discworld books for me. In the meantime, HUGE thanks to friend of the blog Kevin C. for introducing me to Pratchett’s worlds – and giving me these books.