The race will be on the increasingly spiffy Outdoor Life Network in the US. It is quite possibly the most grueling, challenging, and at times death-defying sporting event in the world. And it lasts for over three weeks. And it’s probably the only thing to distract me from baseball in July. :)
Unfortunately, the Mac Dashboard Tour de France Widget that they had last year is MIA on the Apple site. Anybody know where to get one?
Watched the first Terminator last night, including the special feature documentaries. Something a commenter (one of the crew) relayed struck me strongly: that James Cameron relished nightmares, because they gave him such powerful imagery, and that he sort of felt like regular dreams were a waste of time.
That resonated with me very much. Makes me wonder about dream journals, or rather, nightmare journals.
Another part of the documentaries that stood out for me was Michael Biehn talking about his character. ‘Reece’ is a storyteller in the movie; all the exposition about what’s happened, happening, and going to happen in the future comes through him. Biehn points out that although exposition is where a movie comes to a grinding halt, Cameron and the other writers inserted exposition in the middle of action scenes, so that it keeps moving. Thinking back on the movie, this is often very true — describing the ‘one possible future’ for example, while trying to hotwire a car and not get spotted by the cops. Very clever.
How might this relate to my novel? There is a lot of back story, quite a bit of which needs to be at least suggested to the reader. But in the context of action, movement, forward motion.
Tonight, watching Terminator 2, the juxtaposition in the above was interesting. The movie is longer and some of that extra is exposition sans action.
I was able to get a bit of work done on the novel last night — preparatory notes on environmental things. Not much, really, in quantity, but important and necessary nonetheless.
Since the California wine industry surpassed the French ;) it was only a matter of time before we took on the other great French passion. No, not food; we already won that particular battle. And not economics, either, although France and California vie for 5th place for world’s largest economy. I’m talking, of course, about cycling.
Lance Armstrong has as of this writing won the Tour de France 6 times in a row which, for those who hadn’t heard yet, is exactly one more in a row than anybody else has. And while he’s a Texan, he does train part of the year in Southern California. In fact, his new Discovery Channel team’s first official camp was in Solvang.
And of course there is a huge cycling culture here in California. Heck, the sport of mountain biking and the mountain bike itself were invented in the state (albeit up in NoCal). There are a number of professional series events all over.
So what’s been missing? That’s right, an official Tour of California. And guess what? That little detail will be taken of in 2006. It will be an 8-day stage race to start with and will likely be entirely, crazily cool.
(Also published on blogging.la.)
Three new dishes to make this weekend, so I’m a little nervous about getting them right. Muffins on Saturday morning, then Hot Cross Buns Saturday night, then potatoes au gratin Sunday morning for Easter. I’m sure they’ll be fine, so I’m hoping to just let go of the anxiety and enjoy the act of cooking. ;)
