2011 – Page 9 – Pop Culture Nerd

Fall 2011 TV Preview

The TV upfronts officially start this Monday, with the networks rolling out their fall and midseason schedules, but news have already leaked over the last few days about shows that have been picked up and canceled. Following are the ones that look most interesting to me.

NBC

I am really curious about the American adaptation of Prime Suspect. How does someone replace Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison? It’s hard to tell from this short clip how good the show is, but I think Maria Bello is a very interesting choice so I’m willing to give it a chance.

The other two new NBC shows that look good won’t premiere until midseason but I’m willing to wait if the network uses the time to make sure they’re done right. First up is Smash, from an idea by Steven Spielberg about a group of people trying to stage a Broadway show about Marilyn Monroe. It features Anjelica Huston (what a coup!), Debra Messing, and American Idol season 5 runner-up Katharine McPhee.

The other intriguing NBC pilot is Awake, which looks Inception-like from this clip. Starring Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy!), Cherry Jones, and B.D. Wong, it’s about a detective who awakes after a family car accident to find his wife dead and his son alive. But he wakes up another day in a parallel universe to discover that his son perished in the accident while his wife survives. He tries to keep both alive by moving back and forth between the two worlds and solving crimes in both realities.

In other NBC news, David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman pilot was rejected, 30 Rock is being held until midseason due to Tina Fey’s pregnancy, Chuck is coming back for its final season, and The Event and Law & Order: Los Angeles have been canceled.

ABC

ABC hasn’t offered any preview clips so I’m judging only by the descriptions, which all sound ho-hum. I’ll check out the Charlie’s Angels reboot for nostalgic reasons (I had trading cards growing up) and maybe Apartment 23, a sitcom about a Midwestern girl dealing with roommates from hell in New York City. James Van Der Beek is supposedly very funny in it and though I’ve never been a Dawson’s Creek fan, that nugget of info has me curious.

CBS

The eye network has been pretty quiet about pilot pickups, but there’s one that looks very promising. Person of Interest stars Jim Caviezel as a CIA agent who’s supposed to be dead but is instead fighting crime in New York City. This has amazing talent attached, from Taraji P. Henson and Michael Emerson on camera, to Jonathan Nolan (Christopher’s brother and co-writer of The Dark Knight) and J.J. Abrams behind it. In other news, The Defenders and S#*! My Dad Says both got the ax, which I’m sure you’re heartbroken to hear.

FOX

I’ll probably sample The New Girl, with Zooey Deschanel as a quirky (what else?) teacher living with three men. If the show can be half as much fun as my own experience living with two male roommates in my twenties, it’ll be a blast. I also think I Hate My Teenage Daughter sounds funny. Jaime Pressly and Katie Finneran play two women whose daughters turn out to be mean girls like the ones who picked on them in high school.

On the drama side, J. J. Abrams landed another pilot with Alcatraz, starring Lost‘s Jorge Garcia. There’s lots of secrecy surrounding this show but it’s supposedly about something mysterious that happened on the island prison 50 years ago, and a group of FBI agents investigating why prisoners who went missing are reappearing in present day. This sounds like it could be amazing, but if it gets too dense like Lost did towards the end, I’ll tune out. UPDATE: Below is the first look.

The only interesting news about its fall schedule so far has been the pickup of the thriller Ringer, which was intentioned for its sister network CBS. The show stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as twins who both have prices on their heads. I really don’t care what else it’s about. I’ll be there for Buffy’s return to TV, with my fingers crossed and hoping it won’t suck.

Are you excited about any of these, or are you yawning already?

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Nerdy Hot 10 List 2011

For the last two years, when Maxim released their annual Hot 100 list, which is all about women with fabulous T & A, I posted my own nerdy hot list of celebs who are sexy because they’re awkward and goofy. Since Maxim published their list last week, it’s time for my 2011 edition.

Emma Stone. If she wasn’t such a good actress, we probably wouldn’t believe her as an outcast in movies like Easy A. But she’s hot because she’s so funny and convincing as the goofy girl, and one who’s never dumb.
Kat Dennings. She’s beautiful, but she never leads with that. The most appealing things about Dennings, now appearing in Thor, are her dry wit and intelligence.
Anne Hathaway. When we first saw her in The Princess Diaries, she practically had a unibrow pre-makeover. She recently promoted Rio while wearing giant glasses and will play nerdy again in the upcoming One Day. We know she’s actually quite stunning, but her apparent enthusiasm for portraying awkward characters makes her sexy.
Emily Deschanel. Her Dr. Temperance Brennan defines social ineptitude on Bones, but she’s hot because she’s always the smartest woman in the room.
Sofia Vergara. Yes, it’s obvious she’s gifted physically, but I never thought she was gorgeous until she made me laugh out loud week after week on Modern Family with her hilarious antics and constant mangling of English idioms.
Julie Bowen. She usually shows up on the red carpet looking amazing, but her funny comments about her “full-body Spanx,” which she wears even while sleeping, cement her status as nerdy hot. Her ability to make neurotic behavior funny on Modern Family also qualifies her for this list.
Rachel McAdams. Last fall’s Morning Glory was so ridiculous, it made me roll my eyes often and hard. But McAdams was its one saving grace, even if her character Becky lacked grace, getting herself into more than one embarrassing situation. The scene in which Becky freaks out when first meeting Harrison Ford’s legendary character is cringeworthy, but only because McAdams nailed the nerdgasm many of us would probably have if we run into Han Solo in an elevator.
Emily Blunt. She’s attractive enough to be cast as one of the models in The Devil Wears Prada but I’m glad she plays the bitter assistant instead. Blunt is much more fun as the outsider or misfit, in movies like Sunshine Cleaning and Dan in Real Life, in which she has a small memorable role as a woman nicknamed Pig Face.
Jayma Mays. On Glee, Emma’s OCD tendencies and virginal status could easily make her tedious. As Mays plays her, Emma is heartbreaking and beautiful.
Kristen Wiig. She could have just been another pretty blonde, but her commitment to cracking us up with her goofy characters on SNL and in Bridesmaids (out today) makes her stand out from the crowd.

Who’s on your nerdy hot list?

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AMERICAN IDOL S10: Were the Top 5 Inspiring?

by Poncho

As I’ve written a few times, I don’t get American Idol [in Mexico] until about a week after it airs in the U.S., so I only watch the performances [online] and none of the judges’ comments. A week later, I watch the whole show. During my initial viewings, after writing about what I saw, I often read online what the judges said and find I rarely agree with them.

But this show brought a few surprises for me. By this time in the competition, they’ve gotten rid of the bad, the mediocre, the preachy and the ones unwilling to grow. The four left are definitely good and have delivered fine performances, and even a couple of great ones (*cough* Haley *cough*). So as some people say, “the game is on.”

This week there were two rounds with two themes. For round one, they performed “Songs That Inspire,” and this is how it went:

James Durbin opened with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Blame my uncle, but I love Journey and I love the song. I enjoy Glee and LOVED The Sopranos, so what’s not to like when that song is treated with respect? It was very well done and, unlike last week, James was on pitch the whole time and his vocals were very clean. The only turnoff was that he didn’t add much to the song, so it felt unoriginal and a little karaoke, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in this case.

Next was Haley Reinhart channeling Michael Jackson. “Earth Song” is a great song and there was nothing that Haley could do wrong with it. It was very well done and filled with emotion while she stayed on pitch. Mr. Dawg & La Lopez told her that the song didn’t fit her and that she shouted. I call it BS! She overgrowled (if that’s a word), not yelled. I know Randy has a very limited vocabulary but I think that’s too much. And yes, the song didn’t quite fit her but she was limited by a theme that asked for a specific feel, so she couldn’t parade sexily or lament angrily—which is more her niche. Anyway, she sang nice, and the gospel choir definitely gave the performance extra feeling.

When I heard Scotty McCreery singing Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” I started yawning. I became very angry, well after having a whole mug of coffee (my Don Quijote mug can hold about 500 ml, so you can guess how hard it was for me to wake up after the performance). I agree that Scotty has been somewhat consistent, he’s never actually botched a performance, he has a very mature voice and marketable singing style, but he has never really given a good show. Not once has he stretched himself, not once has he tried something different, and not once have the so-called judges told him that he’s always played it safe. According to many critics he’s the frontrunner and he’s never thrilled the audience enough. If he wins, he will be competing for the lamest winner ever. I do like his voice—I actually like it very much—but I’m bored of watching him.

Lauren Alaina then sang Martina McBride’s “Anyway” and for the first time, she showed some sort of connection to the material! Not only was the pitch and arrangement perfect for her, but it felt like she understood what she was singing about. I’m not quite buying this pseudo-growth shtick the producers are trying to sell just yet, but I do see a little improvement in her. I mean, she’s just very young. What she needs is not to perform songs too mature for her and start belting age-appropiate songs and she’ll find her connection. “Anyway” was the perfect case.

So those were the pseudo-inspiring songs. I call Lauren a questionable round one winner.

For the second part, the performance order and the theme changed. Now it was time for the Leiber & Stoller songbook. And the guest mentor is Lady Gaga but…why is she trying to channel Billy the Puppet?

The first one was Haley with a fantastic rendition of “I (Who Have Nothing).” I’ll say it: My favorite growler could never match the raw anguish Jordin Sparks brought to the song when she performed it during her season 6 run. Haley changed it into some sort of stalker plea. And it sold. It wasn’t as amazing as her “House of the Rising Sun” last week (I doubt anyone can match it now), but it was great nonetheless. And I got angry again when I read the judges’ comments. I sort of understand why they are so unfairly hard on her if they’re pushing her toward brilliance, but what I’m missing is why they don’t do it to the others. They deserve constructive criticism too! That’s the point of them folks being there! Anyway, Haley should be in the top three just for her lungs alone. That girl can hold a note!

I’m changing Scotty McCheesy’s nickname to Scotty McCreepy. He sang “Young Blood” and trotted around the stage like a drunken monkey trying to be sexy. I gagged, then got goosebumps (not the good kind) and then wanted to barf. The cheese factor was so over the top that it became completely uncomfortable. The whole visual was completely wrong. I listened to him again without the visual and noticed the vocals were nice and his lower register was on fire. It wasn’t superb and the visual part almost made me want to tear my eyes out, but he’s still consistent. The judges had cheese-gasms, though.

If singing Elvis Presley was the only chance we saw Lauren, I’d say she should be in “Trouble.” She wasn’t bad, though she lost her breath in a couple of verses, but it was pretty underwhelming. I agree she has the IT factor, but she hasn’t found IT. She does look more comfortable on stage than she has in weeks past, but she doesn’t know yet how to match her body movements with the song. I think “Trouble” should be sung by a girl in a more teasing and sexy kind of way and she’s too young for that! I often ask myself about the people behind her: Are they trying to screw up this girl’s teenage years, or are they really clueless about what to advise her?

Closing the show was James Durbin. I wonder why is he both opening and closing the show. His song choice was “Love Potion No. 9” and, yet again, it was nice. He missed a few notes here and there but I was feeling quite pleased with the arrangement and the performance until the very end. During the final notes, twice he stopped singing and the band quit playing for him to grasp the audience’s love for him. If it didn’t make me laugh I would’ve gotten angry at that. The way he did it was overconfident and just too much, which made me uncomfortable, and he looked the most like Sloth from The Goonies. I know I’ve teased about that a few times, but this time the resemblance was uncanny!

And so, round two ends with a definite win for Haley. If it was my choice I’d send Scotty home. If you had asked me last week, I would’ve said Lauren had the toughest chance, but I think she might grab a few votes [this week] for her “Anyway,” if “Trouble” didn’t hurt her that much.

Who do you think will make the top three?

Photo: Michael Becker/FOX

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Book Review: PURGATORY CHASM by Steve Ulfelder

First of all, how good is that title? Now check out this opening:

There are drunken assholes, and there are assholes who are drunks. Take a drunken asshole and stick him in AA five or ten years, maybe you come out with a decent guy.

Now take an asshole who’s a drunk. Put him in AA as long as you like. Send him to a thousand meetings a year, have him join the Peace Corps for good measure. What you come out with is a sober asshole.

Tander Phigg is a sober asshole.

Phigg asks Conway Sax, a mechanic and former NASCAR driver, to retrieve his Mercedes from a garage where it’s been held hostage for eighteen months, with the owner giving Phigg one reason or another for why he won’t release it. Sax only helps Phigg because he’s a fellow member of the Barnburners, an AA group that got Sax sober. The task should be relatively simple except it isn’t. Sax finds a dead body and himself in the thick of some nasty business. If that weren’t enough, his alcoholic father and Phigg’s son show up with his wife and kid, all needing a place to stay. Several people’s lives, including his own, depend on Sax getting to the bottom of the mystery, all the while trying to learn how to stop being, as his girlfriend says, “a clenched fist all the time.”

Sax is a very likable character, even if he feels obligated to sometimes do questionable things for the Barnburners to repay them for saving his life. The way he sees it:

They need to be rescued from the jackpots they get into, but they don’t appreciate it the way you might think. Everybody knows that without spiders, the world would be overrun by insects. But that doesn’t make people love spiders.

He’s righteous in his own way, like how thieves can be honorable. My problem is with his father, who is definitely an asshole who’s a drunk. From the flashbacks of Sax’s boyhood to the present day, the elder Sax proves himself an irredeemable character, which caused me to disconnect from the scenes between father and son. I just couldn’t root for Sax to somehow resolve that relationship. It’s like listening to a friend who’s married to a cruel man discuss her marital troubles. You have a hard time sympathizing when all you want to do is scream, “Leave him!”

That’s not to say I couldn’t feel Conway Sax’s pain. Ulfelder writes some devastating scenes, made more so because of things that aren’t said. We hurt more for Sax because he’s not openly sentimental; we fill in the blanks when he doesn’t show us his feelings. But show Ulfelder does, instead of telling, and for that I’m glad I came along for the ride.

Nerd verdict: Complex journey through Purgatory

Buy this from Amazon| B&N| An indie bookstore

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Introducing the Stalker Awards

I know there are many awards out there for crime fiction, but most require you to be on a panel or part of a certain group in order to vote. I imagine there are many passionate readers and supporters of the genre who don’t belong to any organization so I decided to create the Stalker Awards. They will be given to books we’re obsessed about and the authors who write them, and the only requirement for you to nominate and vote for recipients is that you read crime fiction.

Here’s how it’ll work: I’ll take nominations until 9 p.m. PST, Sunday, May 29 via the form below. Nominees must have been originally published in 2010. Please nominate THREE in each category, with #1 being your favorite, #2 your second favorite, and so on. This is to reduce the chances of a tie. If 50 respondents place 50 different titles in their #1 slot for favorite novel, for example, I’ll look to see which titles also show up as #2 and #3 on people’s lists to determine the highest vote getters.

You don’t have to fill out all categories but if some are tough for you, perhaps you can discuss ideas with fellow genre fans. I hope the process will help you revisit the outstanding crime fiction you read last year or discover books and authors you overlooked. Any questions, leave them in the comments so I can answer them publicly in case others are wondering the same thing.

I’ll announce the nominees on or around June 1, at which time you can vote on them and winners will be revealed mid-June. Spread the word, get your friends to participate, and let the stalking begin!

*Disclaimer: My lawyer (aka my cousin) says I should note that I mean stalking in a tongue-in-cheek way and do not condone the actual criminal act.

I also wanted to thank Katie at KD Designs, the same talented designer who made my ninja blog header, for doing the graphic for this award. Though I abused her with all my specific demands, she was amazingly patient and deft in getting it just right. If you ever have graphic design needs for your website/blog, I’d highly recommend Katie.

*Polls are now closed. Vote on the nominees here.*

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Trailer: ONE DAY

Last summer, I reviewed David Nicholls’s book, One Day, which follows the relationship between friends Dexter and Emma by dropping in on them on the same date every year, from the time they meet on their college graduation day to twenty years later.

The trailer for the movie, starring Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway, was released this week. I think the lead actors are good choices for Dex and Em, and a movie can only be enhanced by having Patricia Clarkson in it.

One Day fans, what do you think? If you haven’t read the book, does this make you want to?

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L.A.TIMES Festival of Books Report, Pt. 2

A little blurry due to low lighting...

The second panel I attended last Saturday after “Organized Crime” was Robert Crais’s interview by NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates. I got in line an hour before it began because the panel was sold out and I was taking no chances of getting a sucky seat in back with a big-haired person right in front of me. Luckily, the Craisie crew and I got nice center seats, taking up almost a whole row. Following are highlights from the session.

Bates asked Crais to talk about how he started writing mysteries in case there were people in the audience who didn’t know who he was. His response: “It’s not possible.” But he obliged and discussed his beginnings as a TV writer before he became a novelist. I won’t recap his early history because you can find those details at his website here.

Bates then asked Crais to tell the audience about Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. “Why won’t you sell them to Hollywood?”

“A book requires a human being to read it. At that moment, we are collaborating,” Crais said. He added that for each person, the collaboration is unique and he wants to preserve that.

Asked what his two protagonists look like, he said, “I’ve never seen Elvis and Joe, I’ve never seen their faces. I’m not sure why; I’m very visual as a writer. I can see the wood in the floor of [Elvis’s] house…I can see his shoes, the wrinkles in his pants. But as it gets higher, it goes into silhouette.”

Bates asked if Elvis and Joe see the world the same way.

“Elvis is more a black-letter-law type of guy. He wants to believe in the system. Joe has no belief in it,” Crais answered.

“The theory,” Bates said, “is that neither will ever be able to have a romantic relationship because of their relationship with each other. Talk about that cost.”

Crais said someone asked on his Facebook page, “Is [The Sentry] the book where Elvis and Joe are finally going to kiss?” He then discussed slash fiction involving Elvis and Joe—stories fans write about them in which they get, ah, really friendly. “I tried reading some of it. It grossed me out,” he said.

Bates then brought up everyone’s favorite polarizing character, Lucy Chenier, the woman for whom Elvis pines. Crais shared an anecdote about a woman at a signing in La Jolla, CA, who said, “I came all the way from Hawaii to say one thing: Kill Lucy.” At this point, Crais polled the audience to see if the majority liked or hated Lucy. By my estimation (being a shortie, though, I couldn’t see over everyone’s heads), more people were pro- than anti-Lucy.

“Elvis still loves Lucy,” Crais said.

“What’s he gonna do about it?” Bates asked.

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

Bates asked about Joe Pike’s love life. “He sees women…but you’re not going to see him standing in line to see Rio,” Crais said.

“Does Elvis meet all his emotional needs?”

“He does have needs beyond Elvis. He doesn’t know how to fill those needs. He feels something’s lacking in him,” that he wouldn’t be able to give a woman what she needs.

“Would he ever do therapy?”

“What would he say?” Crais said. “He knows he’s a hidden man. His whole M.O. is to give away nothing. He’s learned to be that way to survive but he knows it’s not right. He’d like to be more like Elvis but doesn’t know how to do it.”

“Talk about L.A. What is it about it that keeps you placing your characters here?”

“The canvas is spectacular,” Crais answered. He said Los Angeles is a destination for hope, where people come to reinvent themselves, chasing hopes and dreams. “When you have that many people risking so much…it’s true grit for me, fantastic stuff to work with.”

Bates said that some authors, when setting their books in L.A., get their details wrong. But Crais, she pointed out, makes his neighborhoods recognizable. How does he do it?

Crais said he keeps weird hours, getting up at 3 a.m., driving around, sometimes “hanging out at donut shops in South Central talking to people.” He looks for the little things to drop into a scene, asking himself, “What makes it real to me?”

“Talk about your writing schedule. Do you write every day?”

“My work year is only about ten months” because two months are taken up by promotional work and touring. “I’m lazy for about the first third of the book. Then I slam up against deadline hell and then I obsess.” He said when he’s near the finish line, he does 12-14 hours, 7 days a week.

Bates asked Crais what will happen to Elvis and Joe, if he’ll allow them to grow old.

“There’s a heavy action component in my books. If I allow my guys to age in real time, after a while, they won’t be able to do it.” He says he does “a time-slip thing,” putting them in their “gray, foggy 40s” by keeping time references vague. In his early novels, for example, he said the two were in the Vietnam War; now it’s just “the war.”

He continued, “I used to know what the last two books are. The second to last, Elvis gets murdered. In the last one, Joe makes them pay. But I’ll never write them.” He said he hopes he never gets tired of writing Elvis and Joe books “but never say never.”

When Bates asked about his standalone characters, Crais said he would like to see them again. “The question is [whether] to bring them back in their own books or bring them into Elvis Cole’s L.A.”

“What was the hardest book to finish?”

Much clearer here

“L.A. Requiem made me sick to my stomach,” Crais said. He thought his publisher would cancel his contract. It ended up being his first novel to hit the bestseller list. “It got fantastic reviews but it was so different. It had first- and third-person POVs and flashbacks. I was terrified people would reject it. I wasn’t sure if I’d pulled it off.”

At that point, people from the audience started asking questions. The first person asked Crais how many drafts he writes of each novel.

“I revise endlessly…until the publisher says, ‘Crais, you can’t. We’re publishing tomorrow.’ Another weakness is I can’t read my previous books because I want to change stuff. I can’t stand it.”

A bunch more people asked questions but my wrist started flashing the carpal tunnel alert so it was pencil down for me. Hope you enjoyed the report!

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The Edit Ninja

I’ve been prowling the streets at night as my other secret identity but Brett Battles busted me recently and unmasks me over at Murderati today. Hope you’ll join me there as I obsess over grammar and general nerdiness!

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AMERICAN IDOL S10: Top 5 Get Modern and Classy

by Poncho

Tonight’s theme is “Now and Then” or something like that. It’s modern songs and then songs of the ’60s or ’70s, and all five contestants are butchering and/or killing one of each. This should be interesting.

The first round is the “Now” round, and this is how they did.

James Durbin opened the show with “Closer to the Edge” by 30 Seconds to Mars. I just can’t make up my mind about this one. For one, I think it was a good choice, and an original one (I don’t know how long the song lists are for the contestants this season, but I’d like to think they have carte blanche). I also think he’s got good communion with the audience and his vocal pyrotechnics thrill them, too. And, of course, he nails the song in the wailing part. But he still misses quite a few notes on the lower register, and while I commend the song choice, I’d rather hear it as a closing number, or an encore one. Do you get what I mean? I didn’t think the number had enough energy, soul, or emotion to carry an audience for a full show.

When I read Jacob Lusk’s song choice—“No Air” by Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown—I cringed. When I saw his performance, I cringed again. Let me list what was wrong. First: The song choice sucked. It’s one thing to turn a solo into a duet, but to turn a duet into a solo is just dumb. Second: He came in full skanky diva mode, and he’s supposedly a dude. Third: It sucked. Fourth: He, again, lost control of his vocals. Fifth: It sucked. Sixth: His awkward dancing reminds me of [Mexico’s] Juan Gabriel. Also: It sucked. Need I say more?

Lauren Alaina rocked. She sang “Flat on the Floor” and left the previous guys just like that. Her vocals were spot on, her delivery amazing. Just one complaint: I wish she would make more of the stage; she barely moved and the whole performance looked energetic and static at the same time. Other than that, it was just a few steps from a true Idol Moment™, in my opinion. Good stuff indeed. She’s a keeper, that one!

Holy cow! Scotty McCreery was good as well! He sang “Gone” by Montgomery Gentry and I did feel like I was at a concert, one where they drench you in Velveeta, but hey, who am I to complain? (If one of you heard me singing, you might). The vocals were fantastic, though it seemed he was half a beat too slow for the first third of the song. He had good chemistry with the backups; he gave them their spotlight AND upstaged them. I still think he’s too cheesy and his crazy [singing] faces gives me the creeps, but for the first time in a while, Scotty was fun!

Haley Reinhart took the “Now” [part of the show] one step further and turned it into “Tomorrow.” She established a new precedent by doing an unreleased Gaga song. Yup. She sang “You and I” from the upcoming Born this Way. I loved how the judges were absolutely clueless in what to critique. And I think that worked better! She’s been hurting for a bunch of weeks because of the lukewarm feedback from them and she pulled an “in your face.” I think it was good, sexy, and fitting. The song felt like it belonged to her and vice versa. The tone was fantastic, her growl fit wherever she put it, and she looked much more comfortable on stage than she’s ever been. The whole thing worked for me. If I were American, I would have voted like crazy for her. How could someone not love her when she’s the only really bold one left after they ditched Naima? #SaveHaley. ‘Nuff said.

Now, for the second round, the “Then” performances…

James went into the overly sentimental territory (like Jacob last week) and botched it. His voice was completely flat in Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.” Thank God it didn’t go into Ken Lee territory but it was pretty close. Bummer, because I thought this guy almost had the It factor, but sadly no. He just cannot connect to an audience through his voice. He depends entirely on the theatricality and his “deep emotional connection” felt completely fake, even with his strategically placed tear-down-cheek thing. And for the first time, Steven Tyler called him on his pitch. That’s something, ain’t it?

I’ll admit I enjoyed Jacob a little better this time. After hearing him sing “Love Hurts,” one would think older songs are more his thing. He still lost control of a few notes, but even when he went for the crazy ones, he held it all together much better than he has since the semifinals. But still, I don’t like him. And while he sang so-so, his moves were like that of a child having a temper tantrum. It sort of suits the song, though, so who knows?

I have bittersweet feelings about Lauren tackling “Unchained Melody.” She does sing beautifully, has good sense of pitch and nice (not great) stage presence. And she’s growing as a performer. She managed the song well, but she missed the nice things that make it a classic. For one, she gave it a few more runs than she should, even missing the beat a few times because of it. And then, she didn’t even TRY to go high. The prettiest part of the song for me is the falsetto part (you know, the “I neeeee-hee-heed your lo-oove”), and she went the other way. Like her trying to tackle “Natural Woman” a few weeks back, she seems to lack the life experience to sing a song THAT intimate to someone, and so it felt pageantry, even artificial.

Almost the same thing happened to Scotty on his next choice. He sang “Always on My Mind” mostly on key but didn’t get the feeling and soul of it. Also, his country vibe didn’t quite fit the arrangement. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad by any means, but it wasn’t memorable.

OK, scratch all I’ve written so far. Haley stole the night. Again. Her “House of the Rising Sun” was AMAZING. Flawless. Even if her song choice could be nitpicked, she just had the first Idol Moment™ this season. Period. Everything about Haley’s performance was perfect. The lighting, the a capella start, the way the band entered. OMG. I’ll use my first Randy-ism and say “Haley is in it to win it!” She’s hands down the one who’s most improved, and who’s taken this contest as a platform and learning experience. And it shows. This was fantastic.

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L.A. TIMES Festival of Books Report, Part 1

This past weekend was another fun and enlightening experience at the annual festival of books. This was the first year since its inception that the festival was held at USC instead of UCLA. It’s a smaller campus so I didn’t have to walk as far to go everywhere but the layout was a little confusing and I got lost a lot. I did manage to find a student lounge where I could rest between panels and enjoy the air conditioning and free McDonald’s iced coffee. I don’t know why I never sneaked into student lounges at UCLA.

I only attended on Saturday but it was a full day. Besides meeting bloggers Danielle from There’s a Book and Rachel from Scientist Gone Wordy for the first time, I got to hang out with my old pal, Paulette, an original gangsta Craisie; and the le0pard man himself, Michael from It Rains…You Get Wet, and his awesome family. True story: They gave me lemonade and chips. Jealous?

I started the day by going into “Organized Crime”—the panel, that is. (I got no skills for making fake Coach bags.) The panelists were T. Jefferson Parker, Attica Locke and Stuart Neville with moderator April Smith. The authors have all written novels in which organized crime plays a major role, and they told fascinating tales about their research process and how their lives are affected by the things they write about. The following are some highlights from the discussion.

Smith started by saying, “It’s a shadow market that cycles drugs, people, merchandise…a $2-trillion industry that’s transnational. Organizations that you all have probably heard of—the Yakuza, the Mafia, Mexican cartels, Eastern European groups.” Then she asked, “How do you make a book out of that?”

Parker, a three-time Edgar winner who writes about Mexican drug cartels in his Charlie Hood series, said, “We put faces on things.” He said drug-related deaths in the last five years number 40,000. “I just take one of those deaths and write about it.” And then he said imagine that one story multiplied 40,000 times.

Neville continued along these lines by saying, “Death can very well just be a number, a statistic.” He said in his writing, he tries to turn the number into a person—someone’s mother, father, friend, etc.

Attica Locke signing for a fan

Smith guided the authors towards a discussion of bureaucracy in our government and in crime cartels. Locke, whose Edgar-nominated Black Water Rising is about the Texas oil industry in 1981, said, “Bureaucracies are fighting shadows of themselves because there’s just as much organization in drug cartels as in any government building.”

Neville, who won an L.A. Times Book Prize last year for his The Ghosts of Belfast and lives in Ireland, said it’s been taboo there for the last ten years for Catholics to join the police force. Less than two weeks ago, a Catholic police officer was killed by a car bomb “by someone from his own background.” The protagonist in his latest novel, Collusion, is a Catholic policeman. “There are crimes that shouldn’t be investigated too closely. It might unearth something worse than the crime,” he says.

Locke added, “We all know there are things in our government that’s absolute bullshit…But if we dig it up, it’d turn everything upside down. It hurts too much to acknowledge they don’t give a shit” so we go along with it and look the other way.

Parker said that counterfeit goods is a huge criminal industry and guess who buys most of it? The U.S. “Organized crime leads to Gucci,” he says.

Smith asked the panelists, “How do you know all this stuff?” She then talks about her own research process for her June novel, White Shotgun, which is set in Siena, Italy. She’s been working with the FBI since her first novel, North of Montana (the protag is Special Agent Ana Grey) so she talked to them in Rome and the police in Siena.

Locke said she found the “oil stuff” really challenging because she didn’t know anything about it. She has a young daughter and couldn’t travel around for research so much of it was done at the library.

Neville told an anecdote about how he traveled to New York and took pictures of buildings for research. While writing Ghosts, he realized he really needed an alley behind a particular structure but the real building didn’t have one. When he tweeted about his dilemma, “someone said very helpfully, ‘Make it up.'”

Locke said her lead character, Jay Porter, is based on her father. He would tell her stories from his experiences as a criminal defense attorney but at one point she had to ask him to stop because she wanted it to be her story, not her dad’s.

With Jeff Parker

Parker pointed out “there are books that are fastidiously researched and deathly dull.” For his part, he takes research trips for the atmosphere, “for the feel.” He said you can see a picture of Veracruz’s City Hall on the Internet but when you go there, you see pigeons gathered out front and putting them in the description makes it more real.

Locke asked her fellow panelists, “Anybody afraid that what you put down on paper might get you in trouble?”

Smith said, “Yeah, animal rights with [her last novel] Judas Horse. I don’t know about the Mafia [for Shotgun]…”

Neville said simply, “I have concerns.” To me, these were the most unsettling three words spoken during the panel.

Parker lightened the mood by saying, “Even when I write about cartel guys doing horrible things, I write them with respect…I think the henchmen might actually like my books and not want to kill me because they’re proud of their exploits.”

Smith added, “Maybe when our publishers go out of business, we can work for the cartels!”

Smith then opened up the floor to questions from the audience. At this point, I stopped taking notes because my hand got crampy.

Check back later this week for my report from the other panel I attended—Robert Crais being interviewed by NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates.

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Exciting News

I hope you’ll excuse my being a little immodest today because I want to share something exciting with you. I’m going to be a published author! Are you sitting there thinking, “Wha?” like I did when I first found out? Are you dumbfounded like my friend who just stared blankly at me when I told him?

Let me clarify I wrote a short story that will be published, not a novel. I entered it in Buddhapuss Ink’s Mystery Times Ten YA Short Story Competition, which awards nifty prizes (including a Kindle) to the top three winners, and publication in an anthology for the top ten. I didn’t win the Kindle or any of the cash but my top ten placement, out of over 200 entries, is still beyond my expectations.

Back in January, I decided to enter the competition only four or five days before the submission deadline. I was doing a play at the time, which required rehearsals six days a week with a long commute. I also had deadlines on a couple of reviews for a magazine and needed to finish reading the books I was covering. I was exhausted.

But then I heard about this competition, thought, “Oooh, free Kindle!” and decided to go for it. It was a ridiculous decision in many ways—I’d never written short fiction, I’m not versed in YA, I had no idea if I could write in a young person’s voice, and, oh yeah, I was already overwhelmed with other obligations. But here’s the thing: If I start thinking I can’t do something and coming up with a bunch of excuses for not doing it, that’s when I know I have to do it. Otherwise, I’d have to accept I’m a loser before I even try.

So I wrote for four nights straight until three or four in the morning, sometimes falling asleep over my keyboard. Two days before deadline, I junked most of the story and started again from square two. I wanted to stop, wondering why I was abusing myself. But then the sadistic part of my brain called me a wimp so I kept going.

I submitted my story at 5 p.m. on deadline day. Even with sleep deprivation, I felt elated that I managed to finish it and on time to boot. I had beaten down that internal voice calling me a sissy; I could hear the Rocky theme in my head after I hit “send.” I expected nothing else from the experience because I felt I’d already won.

That’s why the news that I scored high enough to get published is astonishing to me. With this kind of luck, I should head straight to the nearby retirement home and challenge everyone to a game of Bingo. I’m deeply thankful to Buddhapuss for hosting the competition and all the judges who found my story not awful. This encourages me to not only continue writing, but to keep taking on challenges that look scary and daunting. Unless it involves stuffing a turkey, which I know I will never master.

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Royal Wedding Recap

Why am I up at 3 a.m. watching the royal wedding? Because these are difficult times in the world and I want to witness something that’s uplifting. As I sit here in my pajamas, I imagine I’m coming together with billions of other people to celebrate a beautiful thing, regardless of race, age, politics or social status. I don’t care about the guest list or what’s on the menu. I just want to see something on the news that’s not depressing for a change.

I didn’t wake up early enough to watch all the coverage leading up to the ceremony; I barely threw on my glasses in time to turn on BBC America right as it’s starting. Here’s my attempt at live-blogging the event. (Times are approximate since I paused the DVR a couple of times to guzzle coffee.)

3:00 a.m. PST Whoa, it’s starting exactly on time. The black Rolls Royce is pulling up to Westminster Abbey with Mr. Middleton and Kate inside.

3:01 The BBC commentator is saying it might take Kate awhile to climb out of the car since the dress has a huge train but Kate climbs right out, with the help of her sister, Pippa, who’s wearing a fabulous bias-cut ivory column dress.

Kate’s dress resembles Grace Kelly’s on her wedding day, with long chantilly lace sleeves and fitted bodice but the neck isn’t as high as Kelly’s. Her veil is held in place by a small tiara made in 1936 lent by the Queen. Her hair is down in soft curls and looks how it usually looks. Sometimes brides get carried away on their wedding day and go for complicated hairdos they’ve never worn and end up resembling the Bride of Frankenstein more than themselves. Kate looks beautiful and timeless; fifty years from now she’ll still be stylish in photos. The commentator says Sarah Burton from Alexander McQueen has been confirmed as the dress’s designer.

3:02 Closeup of Kate inside the abbey. Ooh, nice drop earrings. Very pretty and the perfect size, not too big or gaudy. She looks happy, very smiley and composed. Aww, that’s how every bride should look, regardless of whether her every move is being scrutinized by billions of people on her wedding day.

3:06 Princes William and Harry come out before the bride’s procession up the aisle. William looks sharp but nervous in his red Irish Guards tunic with the blue sash and medals. Harry looks dapper, too, in his Blues and Royals military uniform.

3:07 Kate starts up the loooong aisle, still smiling.

3:09 She gets to the altar. William looks over and they chat briefly about something. They just look like two kids getting married, not a future king and queen. He looked nervous when he first came out but seems much better now that Kate is standing beside him.

3:11 Singing commences. Look, there’s Elton John.

3:12 And the queen in her yellow coat dress and hat. The camera showed Elton before the queen?

3:14 “Dearly beloved…”

3:18 They’re saying their vows. I didn’t know or never paid attention to the fact Prince William’s full name is William Arthur Phillip Louis. Kate does not flub it.

3:20 He slips the ring on her finger. Not surprisingly, it’s a simple band. Kate (I’m not used to Catherine yet) doesn’t seem capable of anything flashy.

3:21 They’re pronounced man and wife.

3:26 Kate’s brother, James, is reading from the Bible, Romans 12: 1, 2, 9-18. I like this passage: ”Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.” Good advice for all of us, I think.

3:41 Closeup of three little choir boys, all wearing glasses. Nerds rule!

3:54 Trumpets blare for “God Save the Queen.”

3:55 William and Kate have to go into the inner sanctum of the abbey, the Shrine of St. Edward, to sign three different marriage registers. More singing ensues while we wait. Look, there’s another little nerd boy in glasses—an Asian one!

4:07 William and Kate emerge, walk back down the aisle, heading for the exit.

4:10 They’re greeted by enthusiastic crowds as they step out the front door. Church bells are ringing. Magnificent.

4:11 William puts on his forage cap and white gloves before helping Kate into the open carriage. It’s all very gallant.

4:13 They’re on the move, headed back to Buckingham Palace. She gives her first waves as the Duchess of Cambridge and William gives military salutes. Sharp.

4:22 Whoa, the queen has a HUGE grin as she rides in her carriage. We don’t see her that happy that often; it’s the equivalent of the rest of us busting a gut. It’s nice. I don’t remember her looking like that when Charles and Diana got married.

4:29 The wedding party arrives at the palace and go inside. There’s a break here for about an hour before they’re scheduled to re-emerge for their iconic balcony moment. I can’t decide if I should nap or forage for snacks. Snacks win.

5:17 The anticipation in the crowd builds as William and Kate are due to reappear any minute now on the balcony. A woman wearing a hat with cardboard cutouts of W & K mounted on top is being interviewed and she says she came out “for Diana.” I wish William’s mother were here to see this.

5:25 The wedding party steps out on the balcony. William and Kate kiss. He looks shy and blushes a little afterward. How cute!

5:36 Wow, one of the flower girls looks grumpy. I think she just decided she’s had enough fun for the day.

5:38 While waiting for fighter jets to fly over the palace as a symbol of the British resistance during World War II, William and Kate kiss again. The crowd goes wild.

5:40 The jets do their flight pass and the queen starts heading inside, indicating the balcony appearance is over.

This was a nice ceremony—classy, traditional, full of pomp but not pompousness. I was really impressed by how composed Kate looked through the whole affair. She seems sure of who she is—I heard she was determined to do her own makeup though she could have had top professionals do it—and graceful enough to be a queen.

Did you wake up early to watch? What did you think?

Photos: AP & Getty

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