Archive for the 'Television' Category

Monday book night with Richard Castle

paperhaus October 20th, 2009

Last night, after catching a reading that’s related to a piece I’m working on, I headed to the Barnes & Noble at The Grove — not my regular stomping grounds, but that’s where Richard Castle was signing his new mystery novel. Castle, as some TV watchers know, is a fictional character who writes detective fiction; despite his non-existence, he’s managed to write a real-life book, Heat Wave. The Amazon page is fiction itself:

Mystery sensation Richard Castle, blockbuster author of the wildly best-selling Derrick Storm novels, introduces his newest character, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat. Tough, sexy, professional, Nikki Heat carries a passion for justice as she leads one of New York City’s top homicide squads… Richard Castle is the author of numerous bestsellers, including the critically acclaimed Derrick Storm series. His first novel, In a Hail of Bullets, published while he was still in college, received the Nom DePlume Society’s prestigious Tom Straw Award for Mystery Literature.

Because of course there is no Richard Castle, so he couldn’t have written anything. Why, then were there close to 400 people lined up to get his books signed, many clutching two or more copies?

I have to guess it’s because Castle is played by Nathan Fillion. That would be the same Nathan Fillion that Joss Whedon has cast in Serenity/Firefly, in Dr. Horrible, even in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Whedon creates super-fans, and Fillion — funny, hunky — seems to be irresistible. He has more than 190,000 fans following him on Twitter, and when he tweets about grammar — well, it’s enough to make a bookish chick like me swoon.

Anyway, the Castle book is a mystery. Who exactly penned Heat Wave? It couldn’t be Castle, because there is no Castle. It probably isn’t Fillion, because, despite his grammar skills, he’s busy acting. It might be one of the show’s writing staff, which would be cool, because many of the TV writers I’ve met want to write books. Or maybe it was just a ghost-for-hire who’s taken their pay and walked away.

But keeping the signings as they are makes sense: Castle may be charming, but people are queued up for a few minutes with Nathan Fillion. Who, from what I could see, is gracious, friendly, chats with kids and doesn’t mind posing for photos. Just like Captain Hammer would…

Sherman Alexie on Colbert: too cool

paperhaus October 30th, 2008

LA Times books. Wasserman on PBS. And why I care.

paperhaus July 28th, 2008

I was excited to learn that Kassia Krozser (aka Booksquare) would be on PBS’s News Hour tonight. Hooray for book bloggers! Also exciting: she would be appearing with former LA Times book review editor Steve Wasserman.

(She couldn’t see him, though: instead of having him on a monitor, they had a picture of Ren — or was it Stimpy? she couldn’t recall which was which — in his place.)

As a contributor to the book review and a blogger for Jacket Copy, it’s been hard for me to hear about the changes at the LA Times. I wish that people weren’t losing their jobs. I wish the paper and its book coverage were not just surviving but flourishing. I wish that resources were boundless and column inches long. But I understand that the situation is tough at the LA Times, if not dire, and that if wishes were horses I’d be cantering up La Cienega by now.

On the show (mp3 here), Steve Wasserman spoke fairly about the issues of newspaper contraction and somewhat snidely about internet book criticism/coverage (”bloviating” is not nice). Then, near the end of the interview, Wasserman said:

The Los Angeles Times — as well as other newspapers around the country, the Hartford Courant, which only recently let its book editor go — has constricted its space not only in the print medium, but they have not added people to expand what they do online either.

OK, my dad faithfully watches the News Hour (he also reads this blog. Hi dad!). He is under the impression that I am freelancing with the LA Times to expand what it does online. Mr. Wasserman, you’re bumming my dad out.

See, you’re making him think I am a bad daughter, one who’s either fibbing about her responsibilities or is failing at them. Oh, I’ve done that before, sure — the time I forgot to mention, for a couple of months, that I’d dropped out of college, that was both a failure and a fib — but in this case, I’m hard at work at Jacket Copy. And I think it’s pretty good.

Check it out. Today we posted a man-on-the-street video about what Angelenos are reading. I think videos count as an expansion. Fun expansion, even.

I agree with you, content is king. Come and consume some bookish stuff online at the good old LA Times.

Bedtime Reading with Conan O’Brien

paperhaus February 16th, 2008

Toward the end of his interview with Neil Patrick Harris last night, Conan O’Brien bemoaned interruptions of applause, which were slowing down the witty banter on stage. He imagined someone at home with the remote, turning off the TV, complaining, “I might have to read a book!” He mimed reading a book, for a split second, then: “Can’t read.” The invisible book disappearing, an invisible remote clicking. “Back to Conan!”

Which was very funny, and the fact that Conan mentions books in the middle of an interview that has nothing to do with them practically makes him a champion of literacy. Conan’s no slouch, after all. He did go to Harvard.

But it made me think about reading before going to bed. Setting aside the other things we’d all like to be doing in bed, there used to be a tradition of reading before going to sleep. People hung special lights on their headboards so they could read at night. Maybe they’d only get in a few pages before nodding off, but still, there was a tradition of reading before going to sleep.

Then we started putting TVs in our bedrooms. Why did we do that? OK, it’s easier to watch reruns of Law & Order than try to remember where we were in War & Peace. But wouldn’t it be better for our poor fragile brains to have a little intellectual spark before pulling down the shades for the night?

Of course, there isn’t anything that says we can’t watch Conan and then read. But to guard against TV-before-sleep hazards, I’ve left my TV in the living room. What about you?

Off to meet Gene Rayburn in that big shag-carpeted rotating set in the sky

paperhaus September 18th, 2007

match game

That’s Brett Somers kicking butt again in the upper middle tier of Match Game. She died Saturday at 83, according to the NY Times. (via).

The man on her right is Charles Nelson Reilly, who in addition to providing a wicked commentary with Brett on Match Game was Horatio Hoodoo on Lidsville, one of the trippiest of the Sid & Marty Krofft TV shows. Charles Nelson Reilly died in May of this year.

I’m not sure who the Tony Danza looking fellow is, but the rest are in severe danger if the rule of three is working.

Eva Gabor died in 1995. Sister Zsa Zsa, now 90, is going into the hospital for surgery.

Bill Daily (I Dream of Jeanie, Newhart) is now 80.

Fannie Flagg turned away from acting and became a wildly successful author. She’s just shy of 63.

Richard Dawson (a very regular Match Gamer) is pushing 75. With his British idiom he frequently veered off from answers that, you know, matched, but the starstruck ladies tended to pick him anyway.

Beware all. Ask not for whom the buzzer tolls.

Oh, those funny folks at Sci-Fi channel

paperhaus June 6th, 2007

Latenight they’re showing a Twilight Zone episode from 1963/64. It’s after the bombs have dropped, and the opening shows a ragtag band of survivors debating whether or not they can eat a stash of pre-nuke canned food.

The Road, anyone?

I love that the programming people at Sci-Fi decided to broadcast this the same week as Cormac McCarthy’s Oprah appearance (liveblogged by Ed Park). Sadly, I was driving during the interview, and I’m too bleary to find it on Oprah’s site.

The best part: not the computer not the ignorant men that would destroy it. It’s the year this Twiglight Zone dystopia is set: 1974.

Memories of U4EA

paperhaus May 23rd, 2007

90210U4EA=90210’s version of the dastardly drug Ecstacy. I know this because I watched 90210 all the way back when it began. Why? Why did I watch? When Season 2 was released on DVD, I tried to examine the entrails for LAist.

(Watching had something to do with a show that started out jumping the shark and just kept topping itself. Either that or the pleated pants.)

Reason 101.1 to love The Wire

paperhaus December 17th, 2006

OK, I’m playing catchup here. Season 2, episode 1.

Brodie is the passenger in a van going down a highway, listening to rap; he’s never been outside of Baltimore. The van loses radio reception and the driver starts looking for a new station. He lands on a familiar NPR voice saying “It’s been perfect tomato weather out there,” — it’s A Prairie Home Companion. Brodie listens for a sec, shakes his head. “Why would anybody ever wanna leave Baltimore, that’s what I’m askin’.”

Why I (belatedly) love The Wire

paperhaus October 19th, 2006

It’s my belief that the crime story in American fiction — and in American literature, even -– has become an essential genre ever since Hammett and Chandler. It is as elemental to our understanding to ourselves, at this point, as the Western was at an earlier point in the 20th century.

And so we’re using these sort of stories of an American city to explore not just the war on drugs or how a wiretap case works, but what it means to live in an American city and to be  beholden, as we all are in some way, to the institutions that form a city.

That’s creator/writer David Simon, on the DVD for The Wire season 1.

To boldly go where no auction has gone before

paperhaus September 24th, 2006

Troysdress On October 5-8, venerable auction house Christie’s gets its hands dirty with Hollywood-style spacedust with 40 Years of Star Trek stuff. From a redshirt outfit from the original series to tables from Quark’s bar, bad Kirk movie outfits (no hairpiece, thankfully) to Voyager ephemera, it’s a treasure trove of Trek. There are 3-D chess sets and late-series tricorders; the Deanna Troi minidress at left is expected to go for $2,000-$3,000.

If you’ve got that kind of dough, you don’t have to fly to New York to participate in the auction — online bidding is available to people who pre-register before the Sept. 29 deadline.

PS There have been previous Trek auctions. I just couldn’t resist the headline.

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