It should be obvious I wasn’t an English major, as I am usually unable to write anything remotely useful or articulate when discussing a novel.

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I owe Dori a review of Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener — her gift to me as my Secret Sturtle. Well, I wish I could say this was an extraordinary read, but I was a bit underwhelmed. But I’m afraid that’s due to my expectations of tone and style based on his long-running series, the beloved Tales of the City. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood to read a serious, brooding mystery. Maupin faces the same obstacles every writer who finishes a reputation-defining series does when trying to write something new (the same obstacles I know J.K. Rowling will face after Harry Potter 7 has come and gone).
I read his previous post-TOTC novel, Maybe the Moon, and was disappointed as well.

In The Night Listener, Maupin plays off of his reputation and adoration as the writer of TOTC through a fictional counterpart, Gabriel Noone. But Maupin makes the fatal mistake of allowing his TOTC universe to cross over through an unexpected, brief, and bizarrely-chosen cameo. It only serves to remind the reader that the light, irrevelant tone of TOTC is missing from this novel.

But I’m glad I read it. Even a disappointing Armistead Maupin novel is better than most of what else I’ve recently read.

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I’ve been majorly neglecting my poor weblog recently. After a busy start to a new semester, I’ve finally had time to start reading Gore Vidal’s latest, The Golden Age, which was thoughtfully sent to me via my Amazon.com wishlist by regular reader Chris — and I am completely engrossed.

I was never a fan of history classes all through school and college because I found the subject dry and uninvolving — with the single exception of a “Modern Europe” class I took at DePauw in which we spent the semester reading 10 literary novels (including Candide and Frankenstein) and extracting the history from them. Gore Vidal goes one step further and places his fictional characters smack dab in the middle of important historical events. Sure, some literary license is taken with historical fact, but I’m learning more about the historical period than I did before (most of what I know about history (the Declaration of Independance, for example) comes from the musicals (1776). I never would have read all the way through Candide without falling asleep if I weren’t so intimately familiar with the opera).

Vidal’s novel reminds me somewhat of the recent Cradle Will Rock, which artfully fused the genesis of Marc Blitstein’s musical with the surrounding political times — Vidal alludes to the genesis of the Latouche/Moss musical The Golden Apple (the original reason I wanted to read this book, though I haven’t reached that section yet).

Speaking of The Golden Apple, Amazon has finally shipped my copy of the John Latouche tribute, Taking a Chance of Love, which I ordered back in November. A witty lyricist I’m only familiar with through his work on The Golden Apple and Candide, this recording of a recent Off-Broadway revue has been getting high praise and I’m looking foward to finally being able to hear it.

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At first I was upset that my website was down most of the day. Then, I discovered that my domain service (mydomain.com) was causing even bigger problems — and just when I was about to compliment them for improving their service… (via Mr. Barrett).

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How to manage your site with Blogger, XML, and PHP. Yeah, something I just whipped up in my spare time.

Hopefully it’ll work for the people who try it — it’s powering Web Queeries now (and hopefully Paul won’t mind that I based it on — i.e. plagiarized — his Blogger/XML/ASP tutorial).

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After fighting a reoccuring cough for 3 weeks, I finally broke down and visited a doctor today. Because Kirksville is the birthplace of Osteopathic Medicine, there is only one M.D. in town — everyone else is a D.O. (and I’m suspicious of all that manipulation stuff they do). Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment the same day I called.

He couldn’t really find anything wrong with me (even with me sitting in front of him, hacking up my lung tissue), so he placed me on 2 strong pills, a liquid for nighttime, and a nasal inhaler. In case that doesn’t work in 10 days, he gave me a backup prescription for a bronchial inhaler. Then he gave me a 5 minute lecture on the importance of regular exercise and safe sex (both of which I wish I had more of in my life).

So hopefully I’ll be back up to speed soon. I start teaching a Web Workshop at our campus library for the freshmen class on Monday. I’m terribly behind on reconciling the budget for my bulding. And I’ve got tons of reading to do for the Queer Theory class I’m taking this semester. And there’s always this website to worry about.

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The third season of my favorite British copper show Touching Evil, starring the sexy sexy Robson Green, returns to PBS starting tonight.

As before, I’m intriqued by the different way that British series are constructed compared to American series.

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Web Queeries is down for the time being while I try to Blogger-XML/PHP-ize it (it may take a day or two).

I set up a samba server on my linux box tonight so that I can map my web files as a drive on my Windows PC (previously I used a hokey ftp program that tricked my PC into thinking a drive had been mapped). It took me far longer than it should have to get it working correctly, which is why I should never be the administrator of a machine-critical server.

I’m also getting really sick of the current design of this weblog. Hopefully I’ll have time soon to revamp - I’m thinking about readding the “hit” and “miss” ratings on each post.

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