Remember when Oprah shut down her book club?

Well, it's not nearly as tragic as that for anyone concerned, but yes, "It's a Book Club" is on indefinite hiatus. Never fear, however. Zil continues to exist electronically on her new blog chronicling her on-going "Read-Aloud Project," so those you interested in children's books and other tangentially related topics may follow her there. Till then, enjoy "Flight of the Conchords."

Stuck in the Middle, Without You

Some people enjoy serials (print, tee-vee, or otherwise) precisely because of all the waiting around they contain. They actually relish the long periods of wondering what could possibly happen next, thrill at enduring seemingly-endless gaps between carefully-measured doses of story, cheer for plot twists that are made on purpose to make no sense... It's like they're down at the docks again, waiting for random boats from England to drop anchor and yelling "Little Nell...Does she yet live?" at the befuddled crew.

Obviously I am not one of these people. I'm a much bigger fan of total uncontrolled gluttonous wallowing. When I'm in, I'm in, and I'm not happy to come out again until the absolute, definitive, the villain has exploded and been set on fire and buried and exorcised and his parents-erased-in-a-complex-time-travel-scheme-leaving-no-possibility-of-ever-even-
conceiving-him end. Which is why I'm not happy to find myself in the following unresolved states.

1. Me vs. Netflix vs. Battlestar Galactica. Sure, it's great that those cute little red envelopes come in the mail, cutting down on potentially hazardous surly video-store clerk interaction and wallet-depleting late fees. But then they start slowing down, ON PURPOSE, and the BSG disk ends with a cliff-hanger where Starbuck is crash-landing on the planet, and it's not like I don't know that she's going to survive, but I'd really like to see it for myself, and the DVD still hasn't come, and it STILL hasn't come, and now I understand why Netflix has that crazy 8-DVDs at a time plan which might otherwise seem to be for insane people who can't wait 2 days to watch a tv show that aired four years ago and instead must have all DVDs that they ever might want to watch ever in their possession at all times. Insane people totally unlike me, that is.

2. Me vs. Keith Hernandez. This one is actually a place where I'm realizing what looks like the middle is, actually, for me, the end. Not that I am not loving his Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, (not so much am I loving the reality of his public persona), and I'm seriously trying to work my way through all of Sars's baseball recs, but this book is too dense for me, dense-book lover extraordinaire. The conceit is, Keith explains the rationale behind every pitch of two games, one NL and one AL, and goes into some further discussion of specific strategies to boot. I think one night I may have actually fallen asleep simultaneously drooling and muttering fiercely about the difference between cut fastballs and tailing fastballs. And surely that difference is important. But not important enough for me to keep reading this book right now.

3. Me vs. Hepatitis A vaccinations. Did you know you were supposed to have two of these? Yep, I didn't either. Did you know travel clinics charge you $100 just to walk in the door and then $50 more to laugh at you when they find out you didn't know you were supposed to have 2 hepatitis A shots and that your 1 shot from back in '99 won't do squat against "street food", the CDC's most dreaded foe? Well, that second part isn't really true. But damn, Michael Moore is right. It's hecka hard for a girl to resist typhoid these days.

4. Me vs. Expert Reviewers. Actually, this one's probably better stuck. Because, when it comes unstuck, there might be tears.

One more, sad, thing. I'd like to add a "5. Me vs. Veronica Mars." But I can't. Because the stupid CW has canceled it. For some show that's too stupid to make fun of--possibly Supernatural. And also Kristin Bell could totally beat me up, even if she is only about 1/4 of my height.

For Frack's Sake

Yep, it's still me over here, unapologetically enjoying Supernatural. Did I mention it was a shitty semester? But even I have some limits, some upper capacity for cheese and thinly-veiled erotic banter, and must occasionally turn my attention elsewhere.

Er, or not. Battlestar Galactica is all that the many people who recommended it to me promised it would be: nerdalicious, addictive, philosophical, and occasionally painfully embarrassing. (Sweet jeebus, please tell me that they're going to ease up on the Dr. Baltar hallucinations as the show proceeds?) And maybe you'd expect me to be complaining about the fact that the one Asian character is not just metaphorically but actually a robot, but you know what? At least she's getting some action on at least two fronts--not like that neuter Harry Kim. Oh, you know you know who he is.

And while we're talking of Jared Padalecki....

I would like to say a few words in praise of the recently greatly improved CW series (and new Padalecki home) Supernatural. It's still a mix of Buffy with Boys and a non-governmental X-Files, but it's certainly come a long way from its first season's horrible "Native American spirits send angry swarms of wasps after suburban sprawl" plotlines. The just-concluded second season has set into motion not one but two "I was dead! Why did you bring me back to this world of suffering?" plotlines, with, dare I say it, less pointless angst and Spike-boinking than Buffy ever could in a similar situation. What I've come to appreciate most about the show, though, is its willingness to address the cold truth of the Midwest: there are many demons here. Destroy them all!

Okay, I'm kind of joking. But I do think the show's version of the red/blue, fly-over/fly-into divide is interesting. Take, for example, the excellent episode of a few weeks back: "What Is and What Never Should Be." This is Supernatural's entry into the science fiction series' apparently narratologically mandatory category: episodes where we get to see what would have happened if the central event that defines the show's entire story arc did not occur. It's so mandatory that Buffy did it twice at least: once awesomely when Anya appeared and got Cordelia to wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, and once much less awesomely when Buffy was temporarily convinced that she wasn't the chosen one, just gravely insane. In Supernatural, Dean, the rugged older brother and demon hunter 4 life gets ambushed by a djinn and finds himself in a world where 1) his mother was not pinned to the ceiling and set aflame by a demon with yellow eyes, and 2) his pretty-boy younger brother Sam, (the aforementioned Padalecki), got to go to Stanford law school like he planned and didn't have to join Dean in his quest to rid the Midwest of creepy girls in white nightgowns. The separation there is crucial--Sam (somewhat improbably for Gilmore Girls fans) is the smart one of the two Winchester brothers, and much of Dean's anguish throughout the show has revolved around bringing his brother down from the cultural and class elite to which he rightfully belongs into the world of Metallica-blasting ghostbusters who stock the trunk of their Impala with salt-loaded shotguns. And the show kind of agrees: it's not the kind of Republican-approved fantasy where everything would be great if all the white people would stop thinking about things and just go back to growing sod, waving flags, baking pies, and kissing babies.

And this is what I find interesting about the show. Episodes are set (nearly) exclusively in heartiest heart of the heartland--Arkansas, Iowa, Wyoming, and every other stretch of corn country in between--and the show's not especially sorry about that, nor, (when it's on its game at least), does it collapse into heartland cliche. People can go a long way without necessarily getting anywhere, and smart, capable people continue to exist more than 500 miles from any ocean. Sure, this is often not true: the show can be clunky in 10 different ways without trying; there's no Whedon-patented sidekick to bring the funny; the CW could lay off with the promos reminding us that Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are smokin' hot examples of manhood; but for all that, I'll take it. Missourians, unite! We're more than Matt Blunt, and Kit Bond, and all the rest. We have demons too! And we're not afraid to salt and burn their bones!

Now Leaving Stars Hollow...

So, out of a sense of obligation to a set of fictional characters whose existence I had nearly forgotten, I watched the Gilmore Girls series finale on Tuesday. Obligation turned to nostalgia turned to shamelessly sentimental wallowing, and the next thing I knew, it was late Wednesday night and I had re-watched most of the Girls' first season, eaten a strange amount of chocolate, and painted my toenails red just like the bad private school girls do.

There are many tributes and critiques to GG bouncing around right about now, and they all have the same basic point: it was a great show that, sadly, became, especially in its final season, a much-less-great show that has inspired a lot of hand-wringing about how why it stopped being great. (Ginia Bellafante's, in the Times, is one of the weirdest.) And it's true: I regret the staying up late, and to a lesser extent the chocolate, but not the re-watching: many of the first season's episodes still seem to me to be practically perfect examples of their kind, in a way that the series finale could only gesture to but not itself capture. I don't mean this post to be explanatory in any way like that, though. It is what it is: it's nearly summer, a shitty semester is over, I'm about to head back east to a different tiny New England town filled with wackos, I mean, endearingly quirky people, and instead of packing or writing something intelligent or washing the dishes, I'm watching the scene at the end of "Love, Daisies, and Troubadours" where CuteDean kisses Rory in the front courtyard of Chilton over and over again.

I'm not proud, and I'm not ashamed (though I probably should be); I'm just saying that what I like best about the show isn't the way it captures the trend of mothers being their daughter's coolest best friends, or typifies Yankee elitism, or gives one Asian person a television career (actually, a little bit of that last part). It's simpler than that: I like to see bookish girls find love. If there's a little witty banter along the way, then so much the better.

What do you want me to say? I'm Sorry. I'm Back.

For the purposes of, well, my not being any more annoying than I already am, we're going to pretend the last five months did not happen, and, well, leave it at that. It's all about looking forward now, and not about falling down a rabbit-hole of recrimination and despair. Right.

So, what are we looking at? A new site design! A semi-new title! A summer full of reading that is only partially compulsory! What else? Actually, that's it for now. But look for my next post to appear in fewer than 200 days.

Poetry for the new year.

Say, friends. Have you been wishing to read more poetry from independent feminist presses yet not knowing where to start? Look no further than Sandra Lim's Loveliest Grotesque, a book both beautiful and brand-new from Kore Press. I'd observe that it's the kind of poetry Frank O'Hara would write if he could afford to be less protective of his delight, but apparently that's been said, so I'll simply add:
HUZZAH!