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Sunday, August 28, 2005
Bits and Pieces
In my ongoing quest to discover new and interesting blogs, now that the ongoing blog culture war has made several sites I used to enjoy unpalatable to me, I seem to have overlooked Focused Totality. It's really, really good.
Now occupying the place of honor on my toy shelf is my talking Krypto the Superdog figure. I didn't even know they were going to make Krypto toys. He allegedly says one of eight different things when you push down his tail, but I can only get him to say seven. Perhaps I'm not yanking on his tail correctly? You can also retract his shield and cape into his dog collar, and pop them out with the push of a button. They also had an Ace figure, and a playset with Ace and the Joker's hyenas, but I managed to restrain myself and just stick with Krypto. There's supposed to be a Streaky figure as well, but he wasn't at the shop.
He was shelved right next to those creepy smiling Spiderman & Friends toys at my local big box toy emporium.
Now, where's my "Best of Krypto" trade?
Pete and I went to see Brothers Grimm last night, after a slight detour caused by our intended theater being closed due to someone releasing pepper spray into the ventilation system, causing the theater to be evacuated and closed for the night. So we headed for the downtown Ventura theater, where we saw the TV headed gentlemen advertising local restaurants strolling the street with his handlers.
It was really quite good. I've not seen Heath Ledger in anything before this and I thought his performance was excellent. The whole cast was excellent in fact. And despite some of the critical grumblings I've heard about the script, I think this is actually the most narratively cohesive Terry Gilliam film I've seen.
So, I have a request for reading recommendations. I quite like Phil Rickman's novels, and though I haven't tried the Merrily Watkins books yet, I've enjoyed his Celtic-myth/Forteana/occult history themed horror novels. I'm fascinated by that sort of thing. I don't believe a word of it, but I find it powerful source material for compelling fiction. So, who else is writing horror, fantasy, mystery or even comedy, drawing on Forteana, fairy lore, Grail lore, Celtic myth, occult history, secret society history, etc.?
I know Terry Pratchett sometimes borrows Celtic myth and fairy lore for the Discworld books. And I don't care for Dan Brown, so his occult and secret society filled books don't interest me. And I'm already aware of Robert Rankin. So...who's got something for me?