Friday, February 22, 2002

"Radiance" by Carter Scholz. In this Pynchonesque tale of technocracy in the Clinton years, two rival physicists working in a weapons lab play footsie with the apocalypse. [Salon.com] This, as well as Victor Pelevin's new novel, sound like must-reads. I'm a fan of everything Pelevin's written with the exception of his Buddha's Little Finger. If you're looking for savage soviet space program satire, there's nothing else out there like Omon Ra. Though I say this after having failed to convince even the brightest of my science fiction students that it was funny, let alone the funniest novel they had ever read. 10:56:02 PM

Hmm. Last night went to the opening of the Washington Independent Film Festival at Mimi's American Bar and Grill. Met a reporter (who balked at identifying himself in such an exalted fashion) from National Geographic Traveler. He'd been assigned to write a story on the "Insider's Guide to Washington," and had gone on to interview, well, insiders, asking the organist at the National Cathedral to tell him about the place, etc. But National Geographic didn't want those kind of insiders, apparently. Because they would be biased, his editor said. So the poor guy's on the lookout for the unbiased insider. In Washington. Really what he wants to do, he said, is to have a late-night, say 2 am, show on National Geographic's cable network, a low-budget travel show that he'd call "Where have you been?" Think of it, he said. Just few chairs in an empty room, and the right guests, and you'd turn to them, and say so, where have you been? The possibilities, I had to admit, were pretty exciting. There are, for one thing, many different ways to ask that particular question. I told him I could think of some Geographicesque guests, such as my friend Chris's cousin Emily, whose bus got buried under a snow avalanche in the mountains outside of Tibet but the Chinese wouldn't send a rescue crew still she and some others burrowed and frosbat and clawed and gnawed their way to safety and then less than a month later Emily was gored by a rhino in Africa. But being as he's talking about 2 am, it might be more fun to take the Rickie Lake meets Candid Camera approach. You could have a call-in period, say from 9 pm to 1 am, and anyone who's expecting a mate who hasn't arrived home could join a cue. Maybe they'd already have some webcam in their house, maybe a camera crew would come over, like in COPS. Then, when the missing party arrived...where have you been? Cameras roll. That would be compelling television. 10:37:52 PM

© Copyright 2002 Lisa Lynch.