The Cheapskate's Lament, or: Marketing Is For Vultures

In 1992, I found myself accidentally caught up in a show called Renegade. I happened to catch it one night after watching what was then my favorite show, Highlander: The Series. I was intrigued by the character of Bobby Sixkiller, a bounty hunter who struck me as part Lando Calrissian and part Leo Getz. I tuned in for a few more weeks and decided I thoroughly enjoyed Cheyenne Philips, Bobby's half-sister. Eventually, I warmed up to the show's protagonist, Reno Raines, and I admitted that I was becoming invested in his quest to clear his name and put his wife's killers behind bars.

January Music Rec Post

Hello, everyone, and happy New Year. Welcome back to the Fandom Garden. Life seems to have eaten my writing time in December, so I am still plugging away at my 2010 Nanowrimo project. So much for my "finish the draft" goal. At this point, I'm setting my sights on having it finished by June.

Anyway. In honor of the New Year, I'm going to be a sheep and discuss my favorite (and least favorite) CDs of 2010. I advise readers not to hold their breaths for this to become a yearly event. It probably won't, simply because I don't run out and buy every album right when it comes out, so half the time, I hear an album 2 or 3 years after it's released. That wasn't the case this year.

Two CDs came out this year that I was compelled to listen to right away. The first was Eric Clapton's 19th studio release, entitled simply Clapton. I was looking forward to that one. The second one I bought bought more out of curiosity than enthusiasm. That was Born Again, the 14th release by the Christian pop-rock group Newsboys.

Now, I am a Clapton fan. I have been one for about as long as I've been cognizant of who Eric Clapton was. I don't have anything against contemporary Christian music. I enjoy some of it, but I find a large portion of it to be annoying, overly simplified, and preachy. This seems like a done deal, doesn't it? Well, read on. You may be surprised.

December Music Rec Post

I wasn't sure I was going to start posting here at Fandombouquet until the New Year. In fact, this may be my only post in December. I can happily say that I completed this year's NaNoWrimo successfully. (I stopped counting words at around 55k, but there are more than that. Significantly more.) However, I am currently stuck in the exact middle of the novel, and I've determined that the only way to solve this problem is to keep going and make December's goal "finish the damn draft." So, that's what I'm going to do, and I'll warn readers now, I get testy and distracted when I'm this focused on the finish line. That's especially true when there's a deadline involved, even if it's a self-imposed deadline.

I had to post this week, though, because I discovered an absolutely gorgeous new Christmas album, and it would have been criminal to keep it to myself.

How Not To Succeed At NaNoWriMo

Just thought I would come by and clean up the garden a bit. It's late fall now and there are a lot of dead leaves blowing around. While I'm here, I might as well provide a little insight into what has sapped so much of my attention lately. (Or not).

Brief Update

The Fandom Garden is looking a little neglected, so I wanted to let readers know that I'm still here. October has gotten away from me in the process of preparing a new project for Nanowrimo. In November, most of my time will go to that project, and unless I suffer a catastrophic meltdown of brain tissue, December will be spent on (hopefully) finishing the first draft and then cleaning it up.

I haven't seen much of interest in the new crop of shows this TV season. I will say, however, that I'm quite impressed with Castle's third season--although less impressed with Beckett's new hair. There's a new season of Sanctuary starting and I'm excited about that, but reserving judgment for the time being. The only new fandom I can say we'll be seeing in the garden is Hawaii 5-0. It's passed my "three episode" rule with flying colors and I can't wait to catch up on the season once Nano is over!

Expect to see regular updates again in January, starting with Music recs for the new year. Until then, I wish everyone happy fandom pursuits.

Five-O or No?

I've been off the radar for a few weeks, and I apologize to readers. I can't even blame my internet connection this time. I've been distracted with preparations for NanoWriMo, watching Blade Runner, (I received the 5-Disc Ultimate Collectors Edition box set as an early birthday present and I came up with this great idea to do a blog post comparing all five movies) and trying to catch up on the summer TV shows I had been watching before the fall season started. All of this (except Nano) was motivated by Fandombouquet, and yet I managed to forget to post here.

I've got a half finished post in the Thirteen Things series, but I have a burning need to interrupt my nicely ordered schedule. Why, you ask? No, actually you're probably not asking that. You've read the title of the post. So. As you can probably guess, I watched the pilot episode of CBS' re-imagined Hawaii 5-0 this week.

September Music Rec Post

My internet problems appear to be solved. Thank you, Brian from the phone company! Anyway. On with the show. I'm about halfway done the "Thirteen Things" theme I started in late August, but I'm going to take a break this week because I've decided to start doing a monthly music rec on the first Sunday of the month.

I've been slowly but surely updating my list of music, and if you take a look on the music page, you can see that my life is a testimony to eclectic taste and adoration of music across genre. (And as of this post, I haven't even finished updating the C's!)

The more I work on the music page, the more I realize how much wonderful music I've been exposed to, both from growing up around people of different age groups and backgrounds and, in the past ten years or so, making friends through the internet who have even more varied tastes than myself. I feel privileged to live in a time and culture where we have such a marvelous variety of styles and genres.



I hemmed and hawed about what to start with for a while and then I just said, "the heck with it" and started with the first album on the list.