NEWZ

This Aaron Hernandez case--huge bubbling cauldron of WHAT THE FLYING FUCK. How, HOW does someone throw it away quite as spectacularly as that? From NFL star and multi-millionaire to being dragged out of your house in handcuffs, looking ridiculous because your shirt isn't on all the way? Unbelievable story--and now it's coming out that he may have been involved in *another* murder case, a double homicide last year. At first I thought it was sheer stupidity and arrogance (looking at the murder last week it's as though he were daring them to catch him)--now I think he just may be a sociopath. But man. I can't even imagine what his poor fiancee and daughter are going through, not to mention the families of the victims.

Really, really sad about the Trayvon Martin case. I am very worried that racist wannabe cop who stalked and killed an unarmed boy is going to walk. People need to STEP THE HELL OFF Rachel Jeantel. This is one of those times when I wish I had a Twitter account so I could say something in support that she actually might hear. The racism and classism manifest in all the criticism of her--"OMG she's fat! She can't read cursive! [Uh, kids nowadays are not taught cursive.] She talks funny!" [Yes, b/c English is her third language and kids tweet in slang.]--make me sick.

Stephen King is publishing a sequel to The Shining this year

Here's the link.

At first I was all



And then I read the summary and was all



And then finally was all



Dude, WTF? What has happened to SK why is he turning into George Lucas? I'm not a hardcore SK fan by any means--he obviously has some weird issues with women (there are an enormous number of castrating bitches, harpies and terrible/indifferent mothers in his writings, and I simply cannot overlook the disgusting scene in It in the sewers when pre-teen Beverly bravely helps the 7 of them escape by....having sex with all of them. Classy, Steve). But his early stuff was GOOD. Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, The Stand, all extremely good tight (well, except for The Stand ;) writing. I adore The Dead Zone--that really is a classic Greek tragedy, Johnny Smith is a modern Cassandra. And Firestarter--terrific thriller. I think he started losing it sometime in the '80s (when his addiction problems really started taking over) but even Cujo and Cycle of the Werewolf are very readable. But after that I think his writing really started going to seed. Some of Hearts in Atlantis is very good (the relationship between Bobby and Ted, and the story about the draft and the card game at UM, but it's full of that Dark Tower crap that started popping up in his later writings.

And now it looks as if that stuff is in this sequel. From the recap: A tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance....The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death...

What. The. Fuck? WHYYYY Stephen? Why crap all over a perfectly good set up? So effing nerdy in the worst way--unecessarily complicated, mystifying, trying way too hard to be "epic." I got so excited when I'd heard there was a sequel to The Talisman and that Dark Tower was all over that as well and I found the book incomprehensible as a result. Steve, you've already CREATED a perfectly good alternate universe, the Territories. We all instinctively understood that universe because you drew on pre-existing tropes to paint the picture for us--Queens, reluctant heroes, a quest and added some really cool stuff (the mincing Osmond, the murderous tree roots). Stop complicating it unnecessarily with these silly terms and concepts--breakers, Abbalah, can-toi. THAT IS SO GEEKY, in the way that George Lucas's Episodes 1-3 was annoyingly geeky. The reason everyone loved Eps. 4-6 was because we could immediately GET IT. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I STILL can't tell you what Eps. 1-3 are about, and everyone knows what a huge fan of Star Wars I am!

The sequel to The Shining should be, first and foremost, a story about Danny, just as The Shining was first and foremost a story about Jack. Just as The Haunting of Hill House is a story about Eleanor. You have to ground it in people, not in this silly complicated wanna-be epic stuff.