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GilmoreGossipCircle

2 Comments / TV Goodness / By Gwenda / February 14, 2006

I fear Daniel Palladino is getting ready to double-axle us:

A Vineyard Valentine. As Valentine’s Day approaches, Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Logan (Matt Czuchry) invite Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Luke (Scott Patterson) to spend a weekend with them at Logan’s family’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. Rory and Logan have a wonderful time, but Lorelai is upset by Luke’s unfriendly attitude toward Logan. Luke’s attitude changes when he realizes he forgot to buy Lorelai a Valentine gift, and Logan saves the day by letting Luke give Lorelai one of the gifts he had bought for Rory. When Lorelai finally confesses to Luke that she is worried the wedding will never take place, he reassures her that they will get married soon. The weekend ends in an ugly scene when Logan’s father, Mitchum Huntzberger (guest star Gregg Henry), arrives and berates Logan for ignoring his responsibilities in the family business. Melissa McCarthy also stars. The episode was written and directed by Daniel Palladino.

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Heart to Heart

Miscellany / By Gwenda / February 14, 2006

g1. Dana’s collected some choice anti-Valentines from her friends over at #1HS. Her own is about a particularly noxious college neighbor:

My neighbor in college–a girl from the bayous named (I shit you not) Katrina–would appear on my doorstep daily, Schneider-like, to bend my ear, always with terrible news. Sometimes it was because she had rescued half-dead cats. Sometimes it was because the half-dead cats had peed on her bed.

2. The fabulous Hank Stuever has a piece about Lloyd Dobler:

Heaps of devotional words have been written about Lloyd Dobler. The early stages of a popularized Internet seemed to exist for people to make Lloyd Dobler references, and Lloyd Dobler tribute pages that linger ("Last updated on July 1, 1997"). There’s a fairly successful Wheaton-based band called the Lloyd Dobler Effect, which has toured forever. (Sadly, a Hootie and the Blowfish comparison in a review of the Lloyd Dobler Effect’s work prevents us from going any further.)

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You Left Your Heart in the Zoo: The Queen of Cool

2 Comments / Books / By Gwenda / February 14, 2006

Happy Valentine’s Day — I can’t think of anything better to give you than a recommendation for Cecil Castellucci’s new book The Queen of Cool. Run out and buy it immediately; you can, because today’s the official release day. (And hey, look at that, Amazon is pairing it with her WONDERFUL, WUNDERKIND first novel Boy Proof — get it too, if you don’t have it.)

Queen is the story of Libby Brin, a popular girl who’s dying of boredom on the inside. Her friends are the thin kind of clever (if), dedicated to endless, half-hearted attempts at entertaining themselves. Libby decides one day to join an internship program at the L.A. Zoo, even though her friends don’t much like the idea. She’s grouped with the memorable Tina aka "Tiny," a little person with an outsize personality, and Sheldon, the most appealing, nerdiest science nerd in recent memory. Despite Libby’s natural efforts to sabotage the whole thing, ultimately she begins to see that her new uncool life is far better than her old one.

Any such description of this book is a pale version of the real thing. Cecil Castellucci writes like no one but herself. Her characters live inside this amazing voice she has and they breathe and act a million times bigger than should be possible in so few pages. (The perfect amount of pages.) It’s a magic trick to cram such a big book with such big emotions into such a slender volume. Not a word is wasted. So, read her already, okay? Love you too.

(p.s. If I had a million dollars, I would have sent you all copies of this today.)

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Tuesday Hangovers

1 Comment / Hangovers / By Gwenda / February 14, 2006

Fun with Wikipedia. (Via Feoshia.)
Damn that Gilly/Butner/DeNiro continuum for getting us hooked on The Kingdom of Loathing (I’m Mrs Parker, Disco Bandit; why do you ask?) Alan, we want to InfernoKrush!
Rebecca Skloot on the Robert Hooke manuscript discovered in an old cupboard. Why don’t we ever have this kind of luck? Pls, dead scientists, send scratch.
La Gringa has the codes you can use to get cheap Ts at the Secret Threadless T-shirt Sale.
Scariest photo ever. (Via Mr. McLaren, fancy web man.)
An excellent Hollywood post by Josh Friedman.
Stopping robots, especially since Philip K. Dick’s is on the loose.
Over at Pub Rants, Agent Kristin posts some thoughts by one of her authors on publicists. Worth a look.
Matt Cheney’s latest Strange Horizons column is also worth a look (read: truly excellent). And so is some discussion spurred by it at Hannah’s place. (And a dashed off two cents to that one: For me as a reader, the best thing any reviewer can do is firmly and clearly establish their taste, their POV, where they are rapping from — because if I know that, I can generally make a judgment as to how much a given book is going to appeal to me based on their reaction (maybe even if it’s poorly articulated).) Anyway. There’s also Elizabeth Bear’s latest amazing post, which seems a response to this and larger things too.

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Monday Hangovers

7 Comments / Hangovers / By Gwenda / February 13, 2006

I’ve been meaning to mention this since FOREVER, and The Times-Picayune finally reminds me with a rave review of the anthology Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?. It has contributions by her and her; what more convincing do you need?
Gavin read Lydia Millet’s Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. (Feb 12 entry.)
And via, a little interview with Kelly in the Charlotte Observer, wherein the interviewer seems to think she’s written "creepy" novels. Or perhaps is just choosing to refer to short stories as novels. (But it’s a good piece, despite that.)
Rock star bad-ass author Rupert Thomson is in the house at the LBC today, but he wants questions. From you. (It’s Divided Kingdom week over there, btw. I loved it and think lots of y’all SF types would/will too.)
What an assortment of romance publishers pay.
Admittedly, I’ve only heard one track off the new Jenny Lewis album and it would be "The Big Guns." But am I the only person who’s disturbed that she sounds like she’s impersonating Neko Case on it? (And btw, the one track I’ve heard from Case’s new album is fantastic. And it has the best cover ever — over there to the right.)
I know it’s early, but I deem this the post of the week: Jeff Ford on appearing before the Garden State Horror Writers. Or not.

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This Is How We Procrastinate

1 Comment / Uncategorized / By Gwenda / February 12, 2006

Any day in which more than one new site is added to le blogroll is a day of happiness and procrastination. Today, welcome:

A few links got vamoosed as well, but it’s not because I don’t love you — it’s because you don’t update frequently enough. I’m still watching you. I also made sure most everyone has a little tag that flashes over their link. Look, I’m not proud. I’m just saying.

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