last week i spent an hour in moe’s books, which is a fantastic bookstore in berkeley, and i left empty handed. this is not moe’s problem, moe’s is awesome, it’s a problem with the books. in a nutshell, fiction sucks. i do not want a story about an autistic stamp collector in brooklyn and his love affair with the girl across the hall (that he’s never met) who has an obsession with some silent film star and who is too afraid to leave the house. i swear to god, every book that has been published in the last 10 years has some version of this overly whimsical plot, or is so depressing that i want to toss it across the room. i just want a good story, how hard is that? just to prove that i’m not making this up, here’s a couple of short descriptions from the NY times notable books of 2007 list.

A tale of two sisters, one awake all night, one asleep for months. (maybe this makes more sense in it’s original japanese?)

A young woman searches for the truth about her parentage amid the snow and ice of Lapland in this bleakly comic yet sad tale of a child’s futile struggle to be loved. (this one sounds fun.)

Shepard’s surprising tales feature such diverse characters as a Parisian executioner, a woman in space and two Nazi scientists searching for the yeti. (a yeti?)

Consisting largely of a single sex scene played out on a couple’s wedding night, this seeming novel of manners is as much a horror story as any McEwan has written. (oh no, i’m not falling for this again. i read “enduring love” and it is probably my least favorite book. and he wrote atonement, which is apparently a deeply important story, judging by the movie trailers now running for it.)

more lexi, originally uploaded by kittyholmes.

finally got the elusive second lexi on film yesterday. here’s the first one.
WTF is a lexi, you ask?

Coming Soon to a Newsstand Near You, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

the magazine has gone to print, the website is live, i actually saw paul the other day when it wasn’t 8 in the morning, or 3 in the morning, so go and check it out. it’s super cool, everybody who worked on it should be proud.

pretty much everybody knows that i am a big fan of tv. so even though i’m totally on the side of the writers, the strike is making me very sad. my new favorite show, pushing daisies only has 4 finished episodes left to air. will it get picked up? will it have a real ending? who knows. fortunately the wire is done with all it’s filming, so at least i have the last season to look forward to. and the daily show/colbert report, they had better be back by the primaries, thats all i’m saying.
anyway, here’s a graph of how all the shows will be affected.

damage, originally uploaded by kittyholmes.

so my morning was crappy. i took paul and bri to the bart station this morning, and on my way back a guy in a dodge magnum ran 2 stop signs and crashed into my front fender. then he kept going, dripping fluid from his exploded radiator. luckily there were a bunch of people nearby, so i had witnesses for the police report, and one guy even followed the trail of water to the ditched car a few blocks away, and came back and told the cops where it was. turned out it was a rental car, though i don’t know if the guy driving was the one who rented it, or if he stole it, or what.

so the car is at the auto body shop, not sure for how long or what the damage is, besides the cosmetic damage. and i have a really exciting truck to drive from the rental car company, so if you need something moved this week, let me know.

entertainment weekly’s blog had a thing today on fan videos and mashups featuring the movies made of all the jane austen novels in the last 15 years. i should have known that these exist, since i know how many are out there for buffy, and i’m guessing there’s some overlap. (actually i know there’s some overlap, because i saw the crowd at one of james marsters (spike) shows.) but i kinda wish i hadn’t clicked on these. i really didn’t need to see a montage of all the austen ladies set to nelly furtado. odd that they are so lacking in jennifer ehle’s elizabeth bennet, clearly these were made by fans of the new pride and prejudice with keira knightley.

and this post has the screencaps to prove it. (that loft? oh yeah, a bartender could totally afford that in san francisco.) seriously, why even bother saying where it’s set if you aren’t going to bother trying to make it look even remotely like SF? there’s this scene where she escapes, which is in the mountains, and then she runs home to san francisco. the only place that california has that looks even remotely like that is tahoe. i don’t care if she is the bionic woman, she’s gonna get tired running that distance. why didn’t they just set it in seattle, or vancouver? it was really distracting while i was watching it, that and wondering how katee sackhoff is going to be on two shows this season, and why they didn’t give the bad bionic woman her own show, since she’s so much more interesting.

tumacacori mission, originally uploaded by kittyholmes.

posts have been slow because paul and i took a long weekend trip to the tucson area. lots of stuff to see down there, and lots of photos on flickr.

cinematical is a great site about movies, and today they linked to two “geezers” from the industry talking about movies. (the link above talks about what they did in the industry.) specifically the movie superbad, which strikes me as a movie that i would not take anyone over 30 to go see. anyway, it’s funny, mostly because it reminds me of family gatherings, though in my family it would probably be some film from denmark they are arguing about, not superbad.