It was spectacular. To be honest, when I first picked it up it was slow for the first few pages and I put it down. I picked it back up the other day and started over and once I got past those first few pages, the grab hit. The narrative digs in and doesn’t let go and builds to – I kid you not – an actual heart-pounding climax. THAT doesn’t happen with every book I read.

One of the ‘twists’ wasn’t much of a twist given the foreshadowing but it didn’t matter a whit to the story or how into it I was. The parallels which can be drawn between the crushing failure of the media in the book and the crushing failure of the media before the current war are, I’m sure, not accidental. It’s a great horror/urban fantasy read with just the right amount of “right now” in it to make you think about the media, politics and the atmosphere of fear you can feel going into the midterm elections.

Read it.

Yesterday I had a schedule gap before meeting up with the spouse and, for whatever reason, made the boneheaded mistake of leaving my Kindle at home. I’ll spare you the ad nauseum of how much I love the Kindle but I guess I just forgot to put it in my bag. I was looking at about an hour to kill so I decided to finally download the Kindle app for my Droid Eris.

Within about a minute, I was logged in and reading Feed (by Devon Monk). Dude. FUCKING AWESOME. 1. Do I love tinyscreen? No. Changeable fonts help but I don’t really love the backlight. 2. Nope. That pretty much covers it.

I spent the hour soaking up zombie-hunting goodness and then read some more on the Eris at work today during my lunch break. The best part is that when I got home tonight, I turned on my Kindle and syched it and then picked up EXACTLY where I’d left off on my phone.

In short, I love technology. The Kindle is still my favorite reading option but the Droid app is wicked handy in a pinch. Very nice option.

Related, Feed is ENGROSSING. It started a little slow but within a couple of pages I was hooked. I’m about halfway through it now and can’t wait to read the rest. Though there will be a break for a new ep of The Closer.

Right now we’re nerding out with ST, I’m enjoying another glass of Big Fire pinot noir, hoping Dave’s dog won’t howl at us some more and LOVING Simon Pegg as Mr. Scott. New True Blood AND Mad Men tonight. w00t!

This is not the anniversary I want to remember, but it’s in there with all of them – my parents’ wedding anniversary (November 4) Dad’s birthday (August 17) my birthday (August 20) my anniversary (May 27) my sister’s birthday (September 27) my mom’s birthday (September 14).

I still miss him every day. When someone dies, people always say “It gets better with time.” It turns out that’s mostly bullshit. Sure, I can have conversations about my dad without bursting into tears – unlike the first year – but my eyes frequently well up. The urge to call him on the phone hasn’t subsided.

I try to keep the memories on top the ones before he got sick but really, you can’t just MAKE that happen. For example, I’m watching 2012 yesterday and while everyone talked about what a shit film it was but how good that one action sequence is, everyone left out the farewell conversation between father and son which pretty much leveled me. It was so much like conversations I had with my dad before he died and suddenly I just couldn’t breathe.

There are parts in books or in films or on TV that get me that way, some small interaction or a glance or a conversation and it just doesn’t ever go away.

Do I want it to? Yes and no. Would it be nice to return to that (comparative) innocence before he died. Yeah. On the other hand, it reminds me every single day to let go of the bullshit, take deep breaths, smile when you don’t feel like it. Every single day you wake up is a GOOD DAY.

I haven’t had a dream about him in a while and that feels okay.

I still want to talk to him.

Esurance commercial

Whenever there’s a number to call for a business I’m super-disappointed and thinking “DUDE, WHY IS THERE NOT A WEBLINK. I don’t want to talk to ANYONE.”

Related: noticing a larger number of commercials on NPR that feature an email address rather than phone number. Awesome.

1. Drink when Jane sounds hysterical.

2. Drink when Maura can’t relate interpersonally.

3. Drink when Jane disagrees with her mother.

4. Drink when her partner gags.

5. Drink when you hear a Boston accent (actually you should do a shot because it doesn’t happen all that often).

6. Drink when Jane acts hysterical.

7. Drink when Maura uses big scientific words no one will understand. Unless you’ve been a drug rep or taken anat & phys.

8. Drink when Jane disagrees with her boss. I’d be hammered already in this episode.

9. Drink when the whole ‘girls can be cops too’ trope comes up. Ugh. Double shot if “affirmative action” is used.

10. Drink when you hear any of Jane’s “quirky” ringtones. DOUBLE Ugh.

Today I finally called Verizon. They had me do the soft reset and it took about 10 minutes to boot again. This time when it came up, the screens were back to normal. Except because the boot time was way wrong and there’s clearly something bad with the phone, she transferred me to the REAL tech support. We do another kind of reset and discover there’s a force close error that shouldn’t be there. We delete all my personal info and reset it again. Error. Now we’re going to replace my phone. Great.

Except in the meantime, now all my info is on my SD card and whereas my phone was b0rked but totally functional, now I get this GD force close error almost EVERY time I do something. I can’t wait for Wednesday.

Tonight’s dinner experiment was prompted by a Food Network show. We’re making our own deep dish pizza.

We started with a refrigerated thin crust, a layer of sliced provolone, a layer of pepperoni, a layer of shredded mozz, a layer of sliced mushrooms, a layer of Italian sausage, red bell pepper, red onion, diced tomatoes and topped with pizza sauce. We’re cooking it in the oven at 375 for at least 30 minutes. I’m not convinced we’ll need to cook it longer because everything inside is already cooked.

ETA: At 30 minutes I put foil over the pizza to protect the crust and let it cook for another 20 minutes. Motherfucking DELICIOUS.

1. Set up some ‘agency’ to help suspend disbelief

2. Introduce backstory in a ‘necessary’ way

3. One outlandish element

4. Good action/good story/interesting characters that aren’t beating you over the head (too much- the bathroom scene was  a little ridiculous)

5. Then they even explained away outlandish element in a believable way! This was double-bonus as I’d already enjoyed the show enough to actively ignore it!

Definitely a win. Fun entertainment.

This pilot was a hot mess.

It started out with a nicely ominous montage of a crime. And then went downhill rapidly.

P.S. WTF is it with every show set in Boston needing to have some vaguely Irish music for its theme. I mean really.

Right off the bat we get the nosy family and I’M A TOMBOY WHICH MEANS I DON’T KNOW HOW TO ACT AROUND PEOPLE. Grr. Don’t love it but I can live with it. Then the puking homicide detective. Really? He wouldn’t have known dead bodies make him puke before the promotion? And they would promote him anyhow? WTF.

Then we get the creepy dude who’s always the creepy dude and it’s a dead ripoff of Silence of the Lamb so can we PLEASE STOP DOING THIS, what with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins having pretty much KILLED IT? You won’t do it as well. Please stop trying. Also, WTF with giving the guy EXACTLY what he wanted? And her dude partner having to stick up for her all the time? I mean, what kind of shitty tomboy IS SHE.

Oh, she’s the kind of shitty tomboy who’s a TOTAL CUNT to her mother. WTF was THAT?!

Meet our quirky and interesting Coroner who is very quirky and interesting! She doesn’t wear jeans! She has a turtle! She’s quirky! And interesting! Feh.

Of course there’s a guy so BOTH female leads must be interested because penis = attraction. Seriously, people. WTF.

Then she’s the dumbest cop ever. WTF. Leaves the car, running through the woods yelling, apologizes for DOING HER JOB and tackling what should have been the bad guy. Dear guy cop, if you don’t want to get tackled you should tell the other cops that YOU’RE IN THE FUCKING WOODS. Suck it. I’m actually totally annoyed that she was all sissy about having done it and then APOLOGIZED. IT WAS HIS FAULT. YOU ARE THE WORST TOMBOY EVAR.

Also, the tantrums. Because seriously, this female cop who needs to be better than all the guys because she is the only girl was seriously throwing TANTRUMS about people not telling her stuff. Stomping her feet even. And then when they finally tell her, she whips out some bullshit “this isn’t in the report but I know it because I’m so much smarter” crack the case crap. WTF. WHY WOULD THAT NOT BE IN THE REPORT.

The van. I’m not even sure what to say about getting in the van other than, really WTF.

And the finale – let’s not forget that – where she TURNS HER BACK on the twitchy bad guy to cut herself free rather than SHOOT THE FUCKER because he’s twitching. Really? I mean, WHAT THE BLUE FUCK. I’m pretty sure that if someone tortured and almost killed me and then tried another shot at it and I’ve got a gun, I’m capping his ass before I worry about the duct tape. For reals.

I get that they were trying to be all ‘establish character’ shit but MAN was I disappointed in the ENTIRE SHOW. Spouse actually said “We don’t have to watch this anymore do we?”

I’m willing to give it two more episodes but DUDE. CHOCK full of SUCK.

I have seen a lot of kvetching with regard to “oh noes, wimmen are victims.” To this I say: our media is a reflection of our society. Women are more often victims of crime (violent and not) and to pretend that would be otherwise with monsters who prey on the weak would ridiculous. Do I love it? No. But should it make you think? Absolutely. In fact, in this particular episode, Sookie WASN’T a victim and Tara was doing her best to fight back in a really really bad situation. Is it perfect? Of course not. On the other hand, show me someone fighting – someone trying – and I’m willing to go along for the ride. None of the women on this show are PASSIVE. That’s what I like about it.

Unrelated, I fucking love Lafayette. I heart Lafayette with the fire of a thousand suns. If the entire show consisted of Lafayette’s cooking in that bar I would still watch.

In other TV news, finally saw the Haven premiere. It could be good or complete crap – I’ll wait my decision on a couple of more episodes.

Tonight is new Closer AND Rizzoli & Isles! I’m inordinately excited about summer crime TV. I didn’t know that R&I was based on a crime novel series until I caught a very brief interview with the author on NPR this afternoon. Something to check out if I dig the series.

Yesterday’s movie marathon included TiMER, which was cute and interesting and I really enjoyed it. I also watched Daniel Tosh do standup (hilarious), Bright Star (Keats bio-pic-ish) which was very good and Suspect Zero which was…better than I expected. A bit predictable but all in all a decent film.