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Nimbly landing on his feet after being forced out of FEMA, minstrel70 is now running for NYC Public Advocate. He faces a tight race against fellow candidate Bernard Goetz (yes, that Bernard Goetz).

"The Beast in the Black"

I watched The Greatest American Hero episode "The Beast in the Black" on Sunday--oh my God, sooooo scary! Holy crap, that is a spooky episode. Bill and Ralph visit this abandoned house that's scheduled to be demolished in a few days--Ralph has set up an agreement that his students can salvage stuff from it to sell, to raise money. Ralph sees weird shit there, like a fire in the fireplace, and a possessed wheelchair (after The Changeling, one of the greatest ghost movies ever, wheelchairs are spooky. As. Shit.) "accidentally" tumbles down the stairs. The BEST part is when Ralph and Bill are looking at this brick wall that walled up an old doorway--Bill just sees the wall, but Ralph sees another room, a dark room with a fire and a woman sitting in front of it. He sticks his head in--and she turns her head to look at him. Holy, holy crap! I literally got chills.

There are other great parts too--the woman turning her head to look at him is the best, but the rest is scary as well. This woman in the room is trapped in the house--she can't leave unless she possesses someone else--so she drops a chandelier on Bill and he dies, for just a second, just enough time for her to slip in. Bill and Ralph don't realize what's happened until at the emergency room, Bill turns around and has these creepy, ice-blue eyes, and a woman's voice comes out of him. So, so cool! Culp does a great job in this episode, as does the director. LOVED the creepy music.

The Austins

I don't know who's read the Austin Family books, but they're a series of books by Madeleine L'Engle, who also wrote the A Wrinkle in Time books. The Austins are this "normal" family that lives in a farmhouse in a small town in Connecticut--the father is a GP and the mother is a homemaker. There are 4 kids--John (over-achiever who ends up at MIT), Vicky (sensitive, literary/artistic type from whose point of view most of the series is written), Suzy (interesting stereotype exploder, especially for the '60s when the book is written--she's very conventionally pretty, with blonde curls and blue eyes, and extremely intelligent in a very technical way, and wants to be a doctor) and Rob, who's the "wise child" type a la Charles Wallace, although Rob doesn't have any special abilities as CW does. There are 3 books in the regular series, Meet the Austins, The Moon By Night and A Ring of Endless Light, and a fourth, The Young Unicorns, which is not written from Vicky's POV and is basically a thriller, that takes place between the second and third book. I guess my favorite is Ring which is a very touching story, and there's great character development with Vicky and Zachary Grey, a guy who's interested in her. But Unicorns is fascinating as well, if completely unbelievable--you really get a sense of what NYC (the family relocates there for a year) was like in the late '60s, how out of control it was. Plus there's a lot of action at St. John's Cathedral, which is cool. I'd love it if they adapted it, although it's kind of dated now.

Anyway, I was thinking that melebeth is kind of like a grown-up Vicky, plus the acting (I can't imagine Vicky ever performing). Vicky all grown up and grounded and funny and writing poetry. Take that as a compliment, Elizabeth :)