I have a huge void inside myself tonight... I finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark.

It's hard to think that after nearly 800 pages of a novel that you'd not want it to end, but I miss it terribly now that it's done. It was absolutely one of the most satisfying novels that I've ever read. I'm not particularly given to raving about novels about magic and fairies, so to so thoroughly make me a fan of one is a great achievement. It's an astonishingly well written story in which magic is both completely mundane and utterly fantastic. It's really quite perfect in both style and execution and the story never falters for one second or one page.

I imagine that this novel has a fair chance of storming the bestseller lists this fall on both sides of the Atlantic. It's the perfect book for all of the adult fans of Harry Potter, but it far surpasses anything that the Potter books have ever achieved.

Advance copies are selling on eBay and abebooks for around $70. I wouldn't for one second think of selling my copy for twice that much.

In case you don't already know... Running With Scissors has a new show starting soon...

Awwww... I just noticed what Richard has to say about me in his links.

But.... mancutie???

I am totally hooked on the song "Your Cover's Blown" which is a 'b-side' on the Wrapped Up in Books CD Single by Belle & Sebastian. It's, IMO, perhaps the best song they've ever done.

And completely adore Walking Machine by Revl9n, which you can purchase from Other Music or listen to at Fluxblog. The best way I can describe it is B52s meet The Knife. It's my happy fun but sort of depressed song for the summer.

While this is a really lame news article with little information in it, it makes a very true statement. New Orleans IS becoming the Hollywood of the South. When I was visiting Manhattan, one of my friends there made a comment about how often you run across movies or tv shows being filmed in the streets and I just laughed. It's probably just as common and almost more likely here in New Orleans now.

Celebrity sightings have always been common here, because famous people like New Orleans as much as the common folk. But, over the last year or so, it's ramped up quite a bit. "Nicholas Cage is at DBA every night and someone swore he saw him at the Corner Pocket the other night." "Christina Ricci ate at Sake Cafe Saturday. She hates sushi though."

And the red and white cardboard signs that are used to restrict parking on streets used to spark a little excitement in me, "oooh, a movie's shooting on my street." Now, it's more like, "another movie?? geez."

I think it's great though. For once, our leaders did something right. And if anyone reading this is in contact with Parker Posey, tell her to drop by the Barnes & Noble in Metairie and say hi... I heard she was in town...

Ok... I saw another one... another fall tv pilot. This time it was the one I've been absolutely dying to see, LOST. It's a JJ Abrams show, the creator of FELICITY and ALIAS.

The premise is pretty simple. It starts in the aftermath of a plane crash on a tropical island. 48 "survivors" have to come to terms with the fact that they're not going to be rescued and that some very scary creatures share the island with them. And, naturally, more than a few of them harbor secrets of their own.

I loved the premise when I heard it and after viewing the first two hours, I'm there this fall. This show could totally rock... think Gilligan's Island (without the humor) meets Survivor meets Jules Verne.

There's also a fansite here.

Oh yeah... and for you Lord of the Rings fans... LOST features a hobbit with a habit...

I'm very very very excited because today I got my hands on an advance copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Neil Gaiman recently commently in his webjournal that he believes this to be the finest fantasy novel written in the last seventy years. I'll let you know...

And if you don't believe me about the Dark Materials... trust the words of Michael Chabon as written for the The New York Review of Books.

I've been meaning to create a link on the side to my friend Jeff's livejournal, Shelf Life. He talks about books a lot, which I like... and when he's not talking about books he's usually talking about his rescue greyhound, Dash... which I also like.

In a post today, he mentioned a conversation he and I had yesterday about Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy. I had read the first two books a couple of years ago but never got around to The Amber Spyglass, the final book. So, I recently read all three of them over the course of a week.

They are in serious contention for my favorite books ever. They're fucking brilliant and they completely transcend their classification as children's literature. I only wish such brilliant books had existed for me to read in my more tender years.

I wish I could claim to have come up with my clever "anti-Narnia" comment on my own, but it's something I read in an interview with Pullman on a website. But I think it's very true. Most kid lit tends to be rather cruel to children, there's often outright cruelty or a subtext of it. Not so in these books. The two children who are our lead characters are the most upright and moral characters in the story, which isn't to say that they're perfect or that they always make the right decisions.

Anyways... Dark Materials... parallel universes, Miltonian themes, dark matter, fallen angels, death in spades, witches, daemons(!!), moral uncertainty and characters who are so very human in that there are no evil or good characters. There are only people making choices and growing and learning and making mistakes and... oh for god's sakes... READ THEM!!!!

Ok... i'm a cranky son of a bitch. I admit it. I have a hard time meeting new people and making new friends. One of the benefits of the internet has been that I wind up becoming friends with people in rather odd ways. I met Mark through some round about blogging link up, but it was mainly cuz he talked about music that I liked in his blog. I got a message on one of the P2P services one day from a guy named Walter, who rapidly became one of my favorite people on this planet. Through Walter, I discovered P.J., a blogger with exquisite taste in music whose boyfriend just happened to be an ex-roomie of mine. And recently, I noticed that I was downloading a lot of music from a guy named Alexandr on Direct Connect. And then i randomly discovered his playlists of favorite songs on the net. So, I emailed him and we've built up a pretty decent friendship recently.

Yeah... it says a lot about me, I think, that all of these internet friendships are based on their musical tastes. Well, recently, the Direct Connect hub that Alexandr and I "hook up" on wend kablooey. And today I found a descendent of that hub and emailed Alex about it. He showed up in the hub in like five seconds. So... we start chatting... and he gives me a link to his Friendster profile, which leads me to his online journal. And I discover, that like Mark and Walter and PJ, Alex is a total babe...

I'm not sure what my point is... but, I think it's interesting that the 'net leads me to pretty decent friendships with incredibly cute, terribly stylish music fiends...

In case you needed proof... it's true that
dogs really do rock...

I've been meaing to make this post for a while... one of the more interesting features of iTunes is the Top 25 Most Played songs playlist. It forces you to see what you REALLY listen to, regardless of what you think your musical tastes are. So... here's my Top 25...

1. You Weren't There - Lene Marlin
2. Grey Day - Zoot Woman
3. Dice - Finley Quaye & Beth Orton
4. Am I Wry? No - Mew
5. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
6. We Used to Be Friends - The Dandy Warhols
7. Slow - Kylie Minogue
8. Mica - Mew
9. Cherry Blossom Girl - Air
10. Take Me Out (Morgan Geist Reversion) - Franz Ferdinand
11. Obstacle 1 (Arthur Baker Remix) - Interpol
12. Elevator Love Letter - Stars
13. Pain Killer - Turin Brakes
14. Surfin' Atari - Console
15. Saliva - Mew
16. Lifelines (Console Remix) - A-Ha & Anneli Drecker
17. Hotel Parallel - Alpinestars
18. Clocks (Royksopp's Trembling Heart Remix) - Coldplay
19. Death to Death - Stars
20. NuSex City - Alpinestars
21. Fighter (Hani Remix) - Christina Aguilera
22. Making Music - Sophie Ellis Bextor
23. Home - Zero 7
24. Love Strikes - Eskobar
25. What She Wants - Felix da Housecat

Quite a few years ago, I was visiting Houston with my boyfriend of the time, Dave, and we stopped at the Bookstar at the corner of Westheimer and Alabama to browse. It's used to be one of my favorite bookstores, just because it's built inside an old movie theater.

While looking through the fiction new releases, I ran across a bookjacket that stopped me in my tracks. It was a beautiful, sort of fuzzy picture of cereal that looked like Fruit Loops. Picking the book up, I quickly realized that I had to buy the it. The title of the book was Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim. I was right to buy it. It became one of my favorite novels. And shortly after I read it, I made some comments about it on an
AOL message board (hey... i said it was QUITE A FEW years ago) which were read by Scott, who then sent me a really sweet email.

We struck up a pretty decent online friendship for a while, due to our overlapping interests in music, art, books and movies. But, as email correspondences do, it faded away over time.

Anyways, Greg Araki is making a movie of the book and I gottta say the trailer looks really promising. So, go buy the book already... (thanks to Jeff for the trailer link)

That's what just happening to run into two other bloggers on a random night out at the bars will do to your net traffic...

You heard it hear first... between Air, Geyster and Aloud, I think this mayh be the year of French pop... check out the great video for Sex and Sun by Aloud... wonderfully eighties inspired cheese...

I will never say one negative word about Anne Rice again. I just found out that she's put up a $5000 reward for information about the guys who attacked my friend Paul a couple of weeks ago. She's also used her celebrity to schedule an interview for the local ABC affiliate about the attack and about violence against gays in New Orleans. I believe it will be airing this Monday.

Paul has been through surgery twice as a result of the attack. He still has no vision in one of his eyes, but he can see light and colors now, so there is hope still.

There's going to be some sort of fundraiser for Paul's medical expenses at The Bourbon Pub on June 21st, but I don't know the details yet. NO/Aids Task Force is also administering the fund. As soon as I find out more info about all this, I'll post it here...

Well, Jonno can rest easier now.. I finally got around to watching Grey Gardens.

Brilliant... if I didn't already have a name for my blog, I think I'd call it Concentrated Ground, in honor of the movie...

Speaking of music in trailers... I am jonesing to see Garden State. An absolutely adorable trailer which fills me with curiosity about the movie...

The Movie-List Forums have become one of my favorite web resources, especially the forum I linked. I'm always driving myself crazy trying to figure out songs that are in movie trailers, even though I usually already have the song (among the 5000 songs I have in iTunes). The guys on this forum always have the answer.

GRRRR... I need this song like NOW. Erlend Oye rocks my happy heart. I can tell from the MP3s on their website that this is gonna be one of my favorite songs of the summer...