I've been overbooked since 15

I haven’t been able to put much thought towards posts lately, as evidenced by the fact that my most recent posts involve polaroids and brief weekend recaps (this will probably be much of the same). (The polaroid above is from Memorial Day weekend; it's the B'hai Temple in Wilmette.)

I just tuned into the second half of a very old Adam Dalgliesh mystery. I haven’t seen the first half but just read the book it was based on and thought I’d watch. According to the brief recap the characters are the same, but the events are entirely different. It sounds a lot more convoluted and ridiculous. Why anyone would monkey around with P.D. James is beyond me.

My weekend was packed full and I’m still exhausted. The Genius was in town, and Friday night Natasha and I took him and his friend Marty to Carol’s, our favorite honky-tonk within walking distance to our apartment. Cheap beer, live country, good company, it was great.

Saturday involved a hung-over scramble to complete a graduation gift and then my brother and I headed to the suburbs for a family party. There we had our first sight and sound of the cicadas, which are as bizarre, gross and fascinating as I expected. (I didn’t have my camera, but my brother did. Don’t hold your breath on him sending the pics anytime soon, though.) There was more family than I originally expected and we had a great time. I also went, dead tired, to an engagement party of a friend’s in a crazy huge house in Bucktown. The food and company were good, but I was asleep by eleven.

Sunday comprised of about six hours of reading articles about how fair use of copyrighted material is being degraded and ignored under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s a subject that is currently making me angry and I hope my paper on it isn’t too boring. Damn the man, and all of that. (I’m really going to miss my class on new media and the public sphere.) Chuckles and I also went to see Once, which was very sweet. It stars Glen Hansard of The Frames, a band I love.

Tonight I skipped kickball, ostensibly to work on my paper. In reality my brain needed some rest. Wish me luck finishing it and my portfolio project. I’ll need some. I should be back to the regularly scheduled programming soon.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Good luck keeping your head above water, Claire!!!

[Chuckles]

Damn the man!

It was a busy, busy weekend but a heck of a lot of fun.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

I can relate. I went to bed on Monday at 8:30 PM and woke up at 8:30 AM. Tonight, I took a nap between 5 and 7:30 PM.

It's the seasonal change and life!

[Lance Mannion]

Claire, I don't remember Cover Her Face, but most of the Dalgliesh mysteries starring Roy Marsden are very faithful to the books. The newer ones with Martin Shaw are too. I wonder if they messed with CHF because while it's the first book it was made well after the TV adaptations got started. The first of those is Death of an Expert Witness, then, I think, they did Shroud for a Nightingale, Black Tower, and Devices and Desires. Also Marsden got sick of the part after a while and didn't want to do anymore. The producers lured him back with a couple of one-shot made for TV movies that compacted the books into an hour and a half. Was Cover Her Face one of those?

After those they were able to lure him back for a couple more multipart adaptations, that were good, and then Shaw took over.

All are available on DVD and I recommend them. The multiparters, I mean, not those cheap movies.

[Claire]

Hey Lance,
It's a Roy Marsden one, and the production value is terrible. I like Marsden as Dalgliesh and I like Shaw, too. I was surprised that it strayed so far from the book. I have been a big fan of Mystery! since high school and have seen a lot of the more recent ones.

I enjoyed the book. It's a great first book and it's interesting to see where Dalgliesh came from.

[Chuckles]

Diane Riggs is hot.

Even now.