The Whale Below: ~Fin~

Three big glasses of caffine-laden, passion fruit-infused iced tea, more than one trip to the restroom and repeated playings of my symphonic Pink Floyd and highlights from Wagner's Ring Cycle (without words) CDs resulted, ultimately, in the completion of "The Whale Below" last night around 2 a.m. Nearly four hours of work netted me a little over 1,000 words on paper, which I freely admit is an abyssmal rate of productivity. In my defense, however, I'd like to point out I wrote a good way down two blind alleys before having to backtrack and start over.

The important thing is that the beast is complete. Sure, it took close to two months when I'd planned for two weeks. Yeah, it clocks in at 7,500 words where I'd purposely set out to keep it under 5,000. And did I mention that it's a complete and utter mess? True. I introduce characters only to merge them with others at various points in the story. About 5,500 words in, I realize one supporting character is actually a fellow who already appeared in "Being an Account of the Final Voyage of La Riaza" (or rather, will appear once Interzone publishes that story) so some significant changes need to be made in order to bring him in line with established continuity.

I've got two days before Turkey City with which to shape this mongrel of a story into something more closely resembling a purebred. And after all is said and done, I'm going to have to go through again and do a major dialog polish. And there's no telling what flaws and failings the Turkey Citizens will bring to my attention. But again I say to you, the important thing is that the beast is complete. Hopefully, by this time next week I'll be posting once again about progress on Wetsilver.

Now Playing: Various 25 Classical Masterpieces

Wine baron

Honey wine, that is. This morning I took a bottle of my Holiday Spice Metheglin and one of my Raspberry Melomel to the Comal County Fair to enter in their homemade wine competition (right alongside the jams and preserves and homemade vinegars). Check-in went surprisingly easy, even though the ladies there acted baffled by the very concept of honey wine. Fortunately, there's a "miscellaneous" category to go along with the grape and fruit wine categories, so my mead found itself a home. Now comes the hard part of waiting for the judging--come Thursday night, will my labors be found worthy or wanting?

Now Playing: Fleetwood Mac Behind the Mask

Let there be booze

Forgot to mention this the other day, but Mark Finn's "Blood & Thunder Bock" has successfully been bottled. Barring any unforseen developments (like, say, the stuff turns out to be too unbearably nasty to drink) we'll have three whole cases of the stuff with which to party come World Fantasy.



Now Playing: The London Philharmonic Orchestra The Music of Pink Floyd

Sick

I've had congestion and related cold-like symptoms of varying degree for the past week, but nothing really bad enough to make life miserable. Calista and Keela have gone through it as well, and seem to have come out in decent shape. Unfortunately, in my case it seems to have escalated--these last two days I've been coughing up industrial waste. It's not pretty. I can only hope the EPA doesn't get wind of it.

Compounding matters is the fact that Orion has come down with this garbage as well. He's congested, and can't breathe easily when he's lying down. Which means he's not sleeping. Tired baby=irate baby. Lisa's not getting any sleep at all and I'm not getting much more. I spent 4 a.m. through 5 a.m. walking him this morning. So not only am I not feeling up to snuff, I'm bushed as well.

And no, I'm still not finished with that damn "The Whale Below." A short story I'd planned on spending two weeks working on has now stretched out to two months. And Turkey City is this coming Saturday. I'm doomed.

Now Playing: Don Henley California Desperados

Flyboys

I saw the new Dean Devlin-produced WWI fighter ace movie Flyboys tonight. I first saw the trailer about a month ago, and boy, let me tell you I was jazzed for this one. I loves me some biplane dogfight action!



So why am I disappointed? It's not like I don't like the film. I do. There's great stuff here, but like The Blue Max this one's just off in places. The dogfights, of course, are glorious... for the most part. Devlin has bragged in interviews how computer animation allowed them to make the aerial battles more spectacular than was remotely possible with The Blue Max, but the trouble is, half the time I can readily tell I'm watching CGI. The glossy sheen on the images is off-putting. I feel like I'm watching an elaborately-choreographed video game. Another thing that bothered me is the monoculture of airplanes in the film. The Lafayette Escadrille flys Nieuport 17s exclusively in the movie, although they also flew Spads. More annoying is the fact that the only German fighter shown in the film is the Fokker Dr.I triplane. The movie's set in 1916, but the Fokker tri wasn't introduced until 1917--the flyboys of the film would've been up against German Albatrosses for the most part. But more than that, the triplane is made out to be a model of air superiority--it wasn't. Yes, it was the most manuverable plane in the sky and could climb exceedingly well, but the triplane has so much drag that it was slow at a time when speed was becoming the most important trait in battle. On top of that, shoddy workmanship led to the planes having unreliable performance--the top wings literally would fall off during flight. Now the Fokker D.VII biplane--that one really scared the willies out of everyone.

The film's attention to historical detail is abyssmal much of the time. There's a big German land advance on the ground which gobbles up a lot of territory, and nobody seems to notice or oppose. In reality, the Escadrille took heavy losses during the German assault of the Battle of Verdun in 1916, but this, apparently, ain't it. There's also a spectacular battle around zeppelin L-32 over Paris with a Fokker fighter escort. First off, L-32 was a navy zeppelin that was shot down over Britain in September of 1916. But even more annoying was the fact that this zeppelin's making its bombing run on heavily-fortified Paris in broad daylight. Zeppelins were huge, slow-moving targets, so they only made their bombing runs at night. Anti-aircraft fire from the ground would've blow this one to shreds long before it reached Paris. It's the sloppy, cavalier disregard of facts like that really undercuts my enjoyment of the film. I could almost forgive the stereotypical stock characters and paint-by-number Hollywood script on this one if they'd just not be so dumb otherwise. I mean, really. They make the effort to get a lion to play the role of "Whiskey," one of the original Lafayette Escadrille's two mascots, but can't even manage an accurate zeppelin battle? And the way the hero's one-on-one showdown with the Red Baron wannabe "Black Falcon" is too ludicrous for words.

Again, I liked it in spite of its faults, but before I see it a second time I'll make sure to down a couple of beers first.

Now Playing: Phil Collins No Jacket Required

Friday Night Videos

Apologies for no "Friday Night Videos" last week, but YouTube was on the blink. But that may be fortuitous as far as timing goes. In light of this week's coup in Thailand, the video I'd planned to feature, One Night in Bangkok, seems eerily prescient.



I had the Chess album on tape in high school, and although none of the other songs were as striking as "Bangkok," I still played the heck out of it and found it somewhat addictive. There's one particular oddity regarding this song, though. Some months prior to Murray Head's "Bangkok" video and single coming out, I saw a video on Friday Night Videos (or perhaps the WTBS equivalent program) for the song "One Night in Bangkok." Only it wasn't by Murray Head. It was sung by a chorus of women (Bananarama comes to mind for some reason, but this was most definitely not them) who danced around quite a bit, and I recall red was the predominant color in the video. The arrangement and instrumentation of the song was utterly different from the Head version, and I distinctly remember being baffled by the video when I saw it, as opposed to the Head video, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I never saw that proto-Bangkok again, and have never met anyone else who's ever seen it. Was it a release that flopped, prompting Tim Rice and the others behind Chess to pull the song and rework it? I dunno--this is one instance where Google and Wikipedia are failing me. Does anyone out there know?

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Gino Vanelli

Now Playing: Sheena Easton No Strings

Spaceballs: The Series!

I know Spaceballs isn't among Mel Brooks' best work. I know it's flawed and riffs too heavily on Star Wars--when it branches out and sucker-punches franchises like Alien and Planet of the Apes, that's when it really shines. A couple of years ago, right about the time Brooks was gearing up for The Producers musical on Broadway, he said in an interview he was working on a Spaceballs sequel, since that was the most fun he'd ever had working on a film. Then, after The Producers became a monster hit, he mentioned a Spaceballs musical. Apparently all of those ideas have fallen by the wayside in favor of Spaceballs: The Animated Series!

MGM TV has commissioned an animated series based on Mel Brooks' 1987 "Spaceballs" movie and sold exclusive rights in the U.S. to Comcast's G4 cable network.

Encompassing a one-hour pilot and 13 half-hour episodes, project represents the first scripted series greenlit by the new TV division at MGM, led by Jim Packer, president of the worldwide TV distribution group. Series kicks off on G4 in fall 2007.

Although the movie grossed only $38.1 million in U.S. multiplexes, Packer said "Spaceballs" has become "a successful franchise for our library" through sale in video and DVD and to cable and pay TV nets.

Brooks and Thomas Meehan, who co-wrote the movie with Ronnie Graham, have penned the one-hour pilot, and Meehan will supervise the writing of the 13 half-hours. Brooks will do two of the voices, President Skroob and Yogurt.

This, I think, is good. Brooks really shines when he's doing voice work (listen to his 2,000-Year-Old-Man routines if you don't believe me) and animation is a medium uber-friendly towards wacky SF goodness (re: Futurama). Brooks hasn't had success with his television ventures in the past (why isn't When Things Were Rotten out on DVD yet?) but maybe this will break the jinx? All I know is that I'm looking forward to it.

Skroob the people!

Now Playing: SubVision and Guy Gross Farscape