Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

I hate logic...

I think it was Hitchcock who once said that logic was for small-minded people, but I can't find that quote. However...he never had to deal with a story that takes you places that look great until you ask yourself one simple question...and then the whole thing falls apart. Well, not the whole thing; just a subplot that I really liked but makes no sense, now that I'm thinking about it. Dammit.

That's why thinking is a dangerous pastime; it ruins the worlds you build in your mind. My best worlds come from turmoil and anger and chaos, because those moments clear away the crap I'm focused on and let me find clarity. Still, I've had moments torn away from me in OT and CK because logic must prevail, and now it's happened again. I followed a character to a point and thought, "This is great." Then a light popped on and I saw it was amazingly stupid.

I hate that in other work. Like Mystic River -- the opening bit where a boy is kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a couple of priests; I didn't believe how it happened. Two men drive up in a car, put the kid in the back seat and drive away with him? In full view of witnesses? And then when he escaped with his tee-shirt still a pristine white, after days of abuse? It was all downhill from there, for me.

I can get weird about some of the dumbest things -- like changing a character's nickname because at a critical juncture in the story, it would sound dumb. Like Meryl Streep's pronunciation of Stingo in Sophie's Choice. Sting-go. It's comical at moments not meant to be funny. Of course, I didn't like that movie, either, but for entirely different reasons.

So today I slammed into a wall and used my ironing to excuse me watching the opening of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. It was made 12 years ago for SyFy and still holds up so damn well, even against my glowing memory of it. This was a hard-hitting series, and is still relevant in too damn many ways. That the Emmys ignored it was a travesty.

Of course, it didn't hurt that Jamie Bamber did that famous towel scene, a few episodes in...

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