First, the new Magma is out. Oh happy day. I’d state the title but my Kobian spelling and umlauting is awful. But if it’s anywhere near a fraction as good as KA is (and considering I’ve heard the whole thing live anyway I suspect it will be), I’ll be very, very happy. They’re still one of the greatest bands of any age and I ordered my CD post haste. Can’t wait. Besides, a skit in Kobaian by Christian, Stella and Vander? Is this the first crack in the exterior? Are those age lines in Christian’s scowl or a hint of a smile?

Second, video game crack is Borderlands. As my pad gets messier and my obligations and other dreams are pushed aside, as I neglect friends and family, as even the new Dragon Age: Origins waits untried, all I can think of is just 30 more minutes please. OK maybe an hour. Oh how did I ever live without a tivo. Is it full yet? No. good.  Oh did that expensive incense stick just burn all the way through without me noticing it? Oh wait that was a few days ago. Let me shoot just one more skag. OK and those bandits. But I could get a much better shotgun. Mine can electrify but the one I have for level 22 is even better. No, I don’t need sleep anymore, they’ll just have to put up with the snoring at work. But wait maybe I can buy a second 360 for work, if I just keep the volume down. Kee-hee another varmint toast. OK I need y’all to clear out, I’ve got a lot of things I need to catch up on and no please don’t turn on the lights…

Am getting a lot of reading done of late.Which is kind of cool, because I go through huge phases where I get very little done, it’s almost as if I have to start a phase to really get things going. And I’m not really sure what got it started this time, maybe some of the easy to read Lansdale stuff helped. It’s almost as if I start to read easier once I get some momentum.

Anyway up front continues my digging in to the Fritz Leiber canon roughly chronologically. Roughly, because I’ve read the Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series twice (except for the seventh collection) and sometimes I have to read some later stories out of order when checking books out from the library. Also, some stories are very hard to come by. “Cry Witch!” brings me current through Spring 1951, barring three stories I haven’t been able to find. There was a really great series of collections going via Darkside or Midnight House press, but there’s been no word on what’s going on with these for several years. These were The Black Gondolier, Smoke Ghost, Horrible Imaginings and Day Dark, Night Bright. I gloomed on to these in time to grab the last two and fortunately there’s a trade paperback of Gondolier, but Smoke Ghost is now prohibitively expensive and the next volume of the series, which I believe was to be One Station on the Way, never came out as if the company just lost interest. I have no idea why and would not only love to see it but see a paperback of Smoke Ghost. The three stories I’ve missed through Spring 1951 are “They Never Come Back” (8/41); The Black Ewe (5/50); and “Martians, Keep Out!” (7-8/50) The first and last were due in Station, the middle was in Smoke Ghost and I haven’t been able to find any other source for them. However I suppose it must be said the rarer stories like this turn out to be pretty minor in the long run. But I find it bizarre that companies like Wildside Press continue to release the same stories that can easily be found in the old collections for affordable used prices when there’s still so many stories that are virtually impossible to find.

The thing is, Leiber’s imagination is truly a sight to behold. I always get the impression reading various stories that he’s often one of the first to play with an idea that later becomes a horror or SF cliché. He also seems to be one of the earlier writers to write seriously about sexuality. “Coming Attraction” posits a future where the taboo on female nudity has changed so the face is now veiled even when the body isn’t. And a British man in New York takes an interest in what seems to be a troubled woman in this future where wrestling appears to be the sport du jour. It seems uncommonly prescient in the present of WWF and the ongoing meddling in the Middle East. I’m not sure the story totally falls together all that well, but I believe this one’s considered one of Leiber’s best and there’s certainly enough of  a reason why with a sad and tragic climax as a result of the dystopia.

“The Dead Man” rings like a precursor of movies like the Reanimator although to be true this is a Weird Tale that obviously had Lovecraft as a major influence. A journalist’s friend has made an amazing discovery in terms of how hypnosis can change the physical state of the rare human being, in this case a man who the protagonist suspects is having an affair on the the friend’s wife. In showing him his experiments tragedy ensues as the friend attempts to put the experimental subject to a temporary death via hypnosis only to be unable to revive him. The story moves forward a couple years as the two meet up again only for the friend to finally remember the signal he had forgotten to revive the patient. When he does finally remember it sets of a chain of events that results in a grisly finale, one that reminded me of a horror movie or two.

“Nice Girl with Five Husbands” is a bizarre little time travel story, a man is whisked a hundred years into his future and runs across what is a sort of polygamist community that couldn’t possible be explained, something of a utopia where morals are completely changed. Yet again Leiber toys with a possible future where sexual ethics are completely different and the protagonist is left with only a memory and mystery in the end.

And “Cry Witch!” which reminds me a lot of my earlier RA Wilson read in terms of the theoretical sexuality of witches. Here a man recounts a tale of finding love in a small village only to realize that the woman he loves is apparently in affairs with just about everyone else. The man attempts to take the woman for himself and moves her outside of the village only to realize after a while that things haven’t changed and he’s been enchanted not to notice. And in the end he perhaps realizes he can’t quite escape the enchantment. This was a story also in “Smoke Ghost” that I managed to find in an anthology called “The Black Magic Compendium,” it apparently exists in no other Leiber collection.

Not only have I been back on the Leiber wagon, but I finally managed to finish what for Mr. Shepard is probably his longest work, an expansion of the classic novella “R&R” and a near future war story about a man who has been trained for psychic warfare and is basically set adrift in a Central America in what seems to be something of a never ending war. While the book almost seems to be a mosaic of different stories, as if R&R seems to be a separate entity, it’s almost a minor point as the language here is just unbelievably rich and evocative, not only recounting a deeply exotic, near-tropic jungle environment in rich detail, but doing the same with the characters, looking at them in utterly unflinching terms as the protagonist finds love and manages to analyze it in a number of different ways as the couple move south to Panama City in order to find the heart of the war and perhaps peace. It’s something of a philosophical treatise in some ways and never seems to forget that war is hell, and that no matter the excuses the various characters use to rationalize their atrocities, that there really is no excuse in the proliferation of human suffering. The juxtaposition of war and environment is much like the descriptions of the landscape itself, vistas of beauty strewn with the detritus of war and suffering. It’s an intense read and undoubtedly anyone with a heart will come face to face with the idea that Americans really never see the full picture of the ravaging of capitalism on the third world outside its borders nor that the original of an ongoing massive war can result from the petty squabblings of two famillies. I doubt it will be long before a book like this is considered literature. And it also manages to freak you out about butterflies which is no mean feat.

Switching to a video game, Dead Space on Xbox 360 has to be considered a landmark of horror science fiction, it was virtually one of the more frightening and harrowing games I’ve ever played. There were literally days where I wouldn’t touch the thing due to the anxiety it caused, the entire game was a series of scare tactics. The plot is you’re  on your way to a mining ship sending out a distress call only to find out that the whole ship has been taken over by horrific alien life forms that mutate nearly everything they come across. The source, an alien artifact taken on board the ship. The graphics are incredible and disgusting all at once, undoubtedly Giger-influenced and the range of the ship is astounding from claustrophic corridors to huge open zero-gravity spaces and all points in between. It’s almost impossible to recount the various activities one undergoes besides laying waste to some of the thorniest and nastiest creatures ever witnessed in a game as one has to resort to blowing off limbs as the hideous aliens come popping out of vents or dropping down behind you at all points of the game . It’s almost enough to give you a heart attack at times and there’s hardly a moment where one wonders if you’ll ever have enough ammunition to deal with what’s about to come at you. Later in the game there are some huge rooms where you walk in and the door shuts and the game throws EVERYTHING at you that insist you strategize carefully, not only in what weapons you’ll use but how to freeze the fast moving ones and where to stand etc. And the bosses in this game are just terrifying, a tribute to the collective genius of the staff here, with dimensions that are just off the chart. When you finally get to the end you’re almost cheering from the relief involved not having to play again while realizing what a great time you had in the end. This is the type of thing the cliché “not for the squeamish” was written for. Most sci-fi horror movies have nothing on this game.

Zoran Zivkovic’s “The Fourth Circle” was the Serbian’s (I hope I got that right) debut novel in his original language, although it made it as a translation some time after that. It’s a bizarre piecemeal sort of science fiction book that throws together alien races and historical and fictional characters into a soup that progresses like a mystery. It hops around not only from the perspective of the aliens but primarily that of an artificial intelligence and a monastic like figure who works with an artist as they encounter mystery in the symbolism of the circle. Gradually these point of views are mixed in with four different scientists, including Archimedes and Stephen Hawking, including a wild and hilariously outlandish sequence where the immobile Hawking is drawn into a bizarre fantasy of his nurse’s. Later in the book the point of view switches to Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. Watson, a milieu where strangely enough the author of the Holmes books Arthur Conan Doyle is actually a part of, surmising a slightly different world. All of the pieces come together quite well in the end, nothing particularly surprising from a science fictional point of view but not unsatisfying either. Certainly I look forward to checking out some more of the author’s work as this struck me as wildly imaginative if not quite perfectly realized.

Robert Anton Wilson’s Sex, Drugs and Magick is a 1998 revision of one of his oldest books, which basically acts as survey of mostly psychedelic drugs and how they connect to sex and religious acts through the ages. It contains Wilson’s major strength which is a certain cross-subject way of connecting various strands of esoteric information as well as not taking extreme moralistic stands on any particular subject. Most interesting were the historical surveys of the original Hashishans, the Salem witches and such where some hypotheses are made on what was actually happening with them and what drew down negative authoritarian interests on them and such. Mostly what is concentrated on was the connection of psychedelics and sexual encounters and how these connections were responsible for profound almost Hindu-like religious visions and that this search was largely responsible for the 60s counter culture and for so many people trying to expand their consciousness. Having read a lot of later Wilson work, which while interesting, gets somewhat repetitive at times being that they consist of essays (sometimes the same work in different books), it was interesting to read a non-fiction work that was a lot more meaty. It still seems to me that he often concentrates on the work of the figures he adores (Tim Leary, Aleister Crowley, Buckminster Fuller, Wilhelm Reich etc) to the detriment of others that might add some color to the procedure (he’s the type of guy who once said as far as horror is concerned H. P. Lovecraft was the very best and you don’t need to read anyone else), narrowing down his own vision in a way that seems contrary to his missives about keeping an open mind and not making extreme all or nothing statements, but overall these are issues far less important than the interesting connections he makes, particularly on subjects that still seem vastly taboo in this culture. His consistent observations that scientists have basically abandoned these fields of research is still something I’m in full agreement with and he demonstrates quite well how this hold up has led to a proliferation of false information on a number of subjects, particularly due to the dominance of certain religious beliefs. Thought provoking overall, something Wilson rarely fails at being.

Borrowed the Subterranean collection from Lansdale through the library system. I’d already read one of the substantial novellas in here already (“…Foldout…”) which shortened the read considerably, but I found this to be a much better collection than the previous one I’d read (Bumper Crop). For one thing this contains two stories following Preacher Jebidiah Rains, his character from Dead in the West who seems to have a mission from God to fight supernatural evil in the Wild West of the time. I particularly liked the collection’s final story, “The Gentleman’s Hotel” which has Rains taking on a different group of werewolves which have basically eaten up a small town. But the best story is the novella “White Mule, Spotted Pig” where Lansdale takes your somewhat typical small town idiot as a protagonist who gets an idea to win a mule race to make his fortune which leads him and two sidekicks on a search for a slightly legendary white mule who apparently befriended a pig and only runs when the pig does. No typical surprises here, but I can never get enough of the quasi-redneck patter that goes on between characters and the whole raunchy sort of tone that Lansdale does all too well. Not really a bad story in this one.

Finally started picking up the old Fritz Leiber canon again after quite a while. In fact I think I missed talking about one or two stories previous to these none of which I remember, but I’m somewhere in late 1950 now, a very prolific year for Leiber. “The Ship Sails at Midnight” is a story about a group of self-professed Bohemians who meet a waitress who ends up having a profound influence on their art and lives, only for it to become obvious early in the story that there’s something unearthly about her. “The Enchanted Forest” entails a humanoid named Elven who while trying to escape being hunted by the human race crash lands on a planet that is mostly thorny forest. As he burns his way through the forest on a trajectory to find a city, he ends up running into what seems like the same clearing with two couples who treat him completely differently on each encounter. The reason for it all is something of a psychological experiment on human beings that ends up acting on the humanoid sort of like old faerie stories. “Later Than You Think” is a short piece where a future archaeologist ends up finding intelligent life well in the past. Part theory of the rise and fall of a species, it has one of those almost Twilight Zone like twists at the end, letting you know exactly what species it is the archaeologist found.

Right now I’m still tackling more Leiber and enjoying Lucius Shepard’s Life During Wartime, which just has some incredible prose and description, something of a, perhaps, flawed masterpiece (as a lot of novella turned novels tend to be). But it strikes me in terms of sheer vision to be a lot more resonant than much of what I’ve read lately. The descriptions of Central America are just so vivid they pop off the pages.

I go through weird phases in my reading and I’m realizing that one of the best things I can do to start a new phase is by reading something that’s easy to read. Lately I’ve gotten about 100+ pages into Alastair Gray’s Lanark, but its very Kafka-esque feel to it has left me cooling towards the book despite its set up of an intriguing mystery and out of order narrative structure and ultimately cooling me down on reading.

So I found out that finally after a good eight years or so Texan maestro Joe Lansdale has finally released a new Hap and Leonard book, Vanilla Ride, and sure enough I finished it in a good three days. After all, the classic banter between the two tough guys, a liberal white straight man and a Republican black gay man, is just a lot of raunchy fun and in Vanilla Ride it’s not only this duo that returns but several ancillary characters all of which are well drawn enough to welcome back. Anyway it rips right on through, one of the friends’ own friends needs a favor for the two to go rescue a relative from the clutches of hillbilly cocaine dealers which leads them straight into a mix up with the local mob and FBI, as the former ends up sending groups of assassins after the guys after they end up rescuing the unwilling relative and leaving embarassed low lives in their wake. As usual it’s a solid read, amusing, dirty, graphic, violent and a hell of a lot of fun, and I’m pleased to hear Lansdale has got a follow up in the works, it’s a series I’ll never want to end.

Bumper Crop, on the other hand, is a short story collection that doesn’t quite measure up to the brilliant High Cotton, or at least it’s chock full of 3-4 page stories that are often pastiches or quick set ups. Fun yes, but very few of them had the brutal and fascinating impact of the longer work found in other collections. In fact the several longer ones, such as the opening “God of the Razor,” are definitely the more interesting stories in the batch. But I will say that even at their least impressive, they always manage to be quickly readable. Anyway these two quick starts have helped kick off another reading binge, so I’m finally starting to make more significant dents on my pile, but more about that later.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the latest game I’ve been playing on the Xbox. My first attempt at the Japanese Role Playing Game with Lost Odyssey had me hanging the game up for a while after disc 3 of 4, after getting dreadfully tired of the game’s tedious combat system. Star Ocean has a more visceral and live combat system that’s a lot more interesting, necessary when such a thing gets infinitely repetitive in such a game. It also doesn’t hurt to have Motoi Sakuraba riffing away on a Hammond B3 substitute most of the time, he’s definitely still pushing out the progressive rock tracks for the soundtrack here.

Like most of the JPRG’s I’ve read about or even Lost Odyssey you’ve got an overly melodramatic, young male lead as the protagonist who is quickly joined by his childhood friend and likely later romantic interest. The plot is basically nuclear war on earth sends a bunch of spaceships out searching for new planets and such, only for the protagonist’s ship to be pushed off course by a mysterious meteor crashlanding them on the first of many planets. Graphics are pretty amazing all around, certainly evocative and like Lost Odyssey the game progresses through cut scenes, some of them as much as 30 minutes in length often making one’s heart move rapidly wondering if one will make it to the next save point before a freeze or electric malfunction happens. These cut scenes, while well done and fairly fun to watch are also dreadfully cheesy, particularly as you progress through the game adding new characters to your party for a total of eight in the latter stages of the game.

Unfortunately if you want to get a lot out of the game you really do need a guide for assistance as there are so many secrets in the game that I found myself realizing I had missed a ton of them just by realizing this later in the game before I decided to use one. Resources are mostly gathered via mining and harvesting points, of which you realize you have to go back to over and over and over again to complete side missions or create important items of which there are literally hundreds. Often even large side missions remain hidden until you return to a place you wouldn’t even normally think of except for the handy guide including a large cave section outside the town on one of the universe’s main planets. I honestly can’t imagine the time it took for the people who write these guides to eke out all these secrets, not to mention the many personal interactions between the crew that are sussed out by talking to certain characters at the right place and time.

But not only all this but you realize by the time you get to the end of the game and the final boss section and subsequent 40 minute end cut scene that it’s really not the end of the game, oh no, there’s actually a secret dungeon that can be opened at the end (by a ring that also sends you, yet again, all over your known universe opening chests for new equipment that you could never get during the actual game itself) that’s intensely more difficult than any in the game and then, apparently, there’s one after that that holds the game’s uberboss that’s somehow even more difficult to the point that one needs to amp up all their characters to 200 levels, when the natural game, even when grinding like crazy, only gets you to say the 70s and 80s. You have to give to the creators that for those who love this game they’ve really given you plenty to chew on (not to mention a massive Colloseum system that also can’t be beaten until after the end of the game). Personally I find there’s diminishing returns at this point as instead of intriguing missions, cut scenes and such really all you’re left with is the never ending combat system, which as fun as it is I’m not sure it quite will last long enough for me to stagger through unsaveable, difficult later dungeons.

But overall, unlike Lost Odyssey (so far perhaps), Star Ocean was fun enough to get me through the main game and certainly it was a lot of cheesy fun while it lasted. I did miss a lot though, including not being able to fulfill a lot of side quests on a certain planet that, shall we say, doesn’t last in its current condition throughout and not understanding the on ship private action system to trigger more than one of the final character scenes, but I bet I could find those on youtube were I interested enough. Overall though, I’m not sure the JPRG is quite my style, certainly there are some aspects I like but I definitely go for the Bethesda or Bioware styled RPGs more, probably because the character interactions aren’t quite so eyerollingly embarassing at times. Then again while maybe 40 minute cut scenes are really pushing the envelope I think there’s something to be said for getting to the movie segments as they definitely add more story to it. Unfortuantely in Star Ocean’s case it wasn’t anything more than the usual fantasy inspired space opera motif at work, but hey occasionally I’m a sucker for a huge battle in space or dramatic pre-boss spectacle so it overall was worth the effort. But even though I’ve still got a couple JRPGs on hand to play (not to mention the two in question here that still have more plan on them both), I feel it’s unlikely I’ll need to buy anymore.

Just gotta say it, Jim Parsons was robbed of the Emmy on Sunday by Alec Baldwin. After watching the Big Bang Theory Season 3 premiere, even more convinced. Ratings on Monday even surpassed its lead in, Two and a Half Men, of late the #1 comedy on TV. Seriously why aren’t you watching Big Bang Theory yet?!?! Downright funniest show since Seinfeld.

Edward Whittemore’s Quin’s Shanghai Circus is a stone classic in my book, one of the tightest, most profound books I’ve ever read. It’s rare in that it not only has a totally compelling plot and middle but the opening sequence is amazing (hooked almost instantly) and the ending is truly one of the most cosmic, deeply and emotionally affecting conclusions to a book. And I hate endings usually, I rarely find any book’s finale so perfect. So it was with some trepidation that I started Sinai Tapestry, which is the first of a quartet and also the first of Whittemore’s last five books. Which is why it has been a couple years since I read Quin’s, I’m almost afraid to run out of Whittemore.

Unsurprisingly Sinai Tapestry isn’t as good or as whole of a book as Quin’s, but I’ll suggest that’s partially because it doesn’t have a comparable ending to its beginning and middle, in fact I’d say that the last 30 or 40 pages wasn’t nearly as strong as the rest of the book, which indeed was on par with his first book. Whittemore’s one of the most cosmic, evocative writers I can think of, he manages to evoke so much energy and mysticism with only a smattering of words, as if he’s a master of the duality of complexity and simplicity, each revolving round and round as one elucidates the other. He’s also a master of creating almost extraordinarily large characters, memorable people who arise out of bizarre conditions and excruciating pasts. In Sinai Tapestry you meet a gigantic deaf man who’s a product of a bizarre and wealthy English heritage who becomes a botanist. Another is a monk whose discovery of a vastly different original bible (an alternate Codex Sinaiticus) causes him to go to extreme ends to forge a different document and bury the original whose discovery would otherwise change the world, which causes him to go completely insane. And an Irish freedom fighter who takes on the English army by himself before he’s almost tracked down, leaving to Israel disguised as a nun, later befriending an old man wearing the mask of a Crusader who claims to have lived for millenia, defending Jerusalem from all its usurpers. These people and the generations after, are woven together in a tapestry that at its heart shows great compassion, not only in the aftermath of short and sweet romances that fall apart to the suffering of all, but in their greater ideals, to see a city and region riven by centuries of war finally heal itself. There seems to be an almost unwritten idea that there is little difference between the idea of an overall guiding hand causing synchronicities and the randomness of humanity as it struggles with its animal/divine dualistic nature and this is where Whittemore always succeeds greatly, his people not only are larger than life in many ways but they’re real human beings at heart.

Overall, the climax is different yet similar to the massive tragedy at the heart of Quin’s Shanghai Circus, but while that book wraps up its entirely with one of the best, most cosmic climaxes in literature, Sinai Tapestry seems a bit more rushed, and overall somewhat unfinished. But fortunately there are three more books to come with characters in this book crossing over into the next. And from what I’ve read, the second, Jerusalem Poker, appears to be the pinnacle of his work, so I can hardly wait, even if I still have that urge to stretch Whittemore’s five books as long as I can.

Conan, the XBox 360 game, at least to me seems a bit closer to the original Robert E. Howard milieu and character than the movies although I still think they’re going too much brute and too little finesse with the use of Ron Perlman as voice, who seems particularly unenthusiastic in his voice acting during this story. In Howard’s original mythos, you’re always reminded that while Conan is barbarian, he’s also instinctively intelligent in a way that later incarnations never seem to get quite right.

But of course this is an Xbox 360 hack and slash game for the most part, although it does provide some puzzles to solve, most of which are pretty easy with a bit of thought. You’re third person and are given the option of two weapon, weapon and shield and two handed weapon styles of fighting, all of which have role playing like improvement scales, which come in a bewildering variety of button pushing sequences, many of which were often difficult for an aging guy like me to remember (not to mention I got through almost the entire game without even using parry very often). Once you get the hang of the controls, it turns out to be a lot of fun as you fend of hordes of enemies, punctuated with level ending boss fights, of which these are both the most fun and frustrating parts of the games.

First up in the frustrating category, however, are the jump sequences. I found that for most of the precarious jumps, your leaping point was actually graphically a millimeter after the precipice you were jumping from, playing havoc with timing and causing me, in parts, to spend dozens of times just trying to get through a sequence. Second, in the climaxes of many of the boss fights, you spend a lot of time trying to hack the boss up in the right manner only to be sent into a sequence of split second, multi four-button pushes that were easily missed, only to be knocked apart and sent back to fighting the boss. These were particularly frustrating in the latter stages of the game. Perhaps slightly less frustrating was these button pushes show up during some pretty breathtaking cut scene like sequences that I would have enjoyed getting a better look at, in fact the great joy of the boss battles where that they were multipart and epic with all kinds of gigantic moves that were a lot of fun to witness. And I’ll give it to the game, only rarely were the save sequences or restarts inconvenient, which is nice as repeating long difficult segments are one of the most irritating parts of most poorly realized games.

Graphics were pretty great overall and certainly they brought to life Cimmeria and, later, Stygia in equal measure, with scenarios from pirate isles, to a very cool fight with a giant squid like creature on board a ship, to lost cities and big temples. For a game that was really cheap when I ended up buying it (the benefits of getting an Xbox 360 3 years after it was originally released is you can lay back and wait for $55 games to drop into the $10-$20 range) I found this a good buy with the challenges all in the reasonable category. I felt even with difficult boss fights that repeats helped to learn better strategy; in the end only the button presses, which I finally got right of course, were a pain. But yes, this is definitely early 20th century, misogynist sort of fantasy as one gets bonus points from rescuing robot-like topless maidens, but hey at least that’s true to Howard, right?

And remotely in the same sort of feel is Clark Ashton Smith’s Tales of Zothique. I kind of started reading this collection of stories because the fourth volume of collected Smith stories from Night Shade was due out and not only that but late (I just barely held back from posting a diatribe on this company’s rather poor customer service and communication here) and I was ready for another Smith fix after reading Necronomicon Press’s Hyperborea collection years ago. Zothique’s often considered his best cycle and it’s easy to see why. Smith brings a poetic beauty to what is a dark and horrible dying earth milieu where corrupt kings and necromancers conjure up dreadful and pandimensional evils. Each one of his stories bespeaks of the doom of the protagonists, often common soldiers or unwary lovers deigning to rescue their beloved drawn into the vast, uncaring netherworld of uncaring royalty who live lavish and greedy lives and who snuff out lives at barely a whim. In other stories the royalty also gets their penance by crossing their own or other powerful sorcerers. The spectre of early Lord Dunsany reigns pretty heavy over this milieu in both its cosmic size and epic nature, but Dunsany was never so brutal and chilling and despite the Hyperborea cycle having much more overtly in common with Lovecraft’s Cthulhy mythos, this too is riddled with eldritch horror, black curses and an uncaring cosmos. While I think the typical criticisms applied to Lovecraft also apply to Smith, such as cipher characters and an overreliance on drippy adjectives, at the same length so much fantasy today could use such a sense of depth and poetic description, as well as creepiness, as much as we can do without primitive racial stereotypes. But overall I think this is the well, at least in part, where great writers like Jack Vance, not to mention video game designers like those who worked on Conan, got their amazing visual evocativeness from.

Here’s a rough list of blurbs of things I’ve been finding cool over the last so many years in a sort of random, rambling, haphazard fashion… After the cut

Magma – Studio Zund / OK so in sidestepping the arguments for the need for such a boxset, especially without a vigorous remastering, the point of listening to all this material again is because I’ve spent probably decade paying more attention to live shows than the original albums and some of these seem almost obscure to me now. The first two albums seem like another band and certainly a more concise debut would have made a better album as would a more thoughtful side 2 for Magma 1001, but taken microscopically I think they hold up pretty well and my enthusiasm for them, while it may not have grown that much over the years, remains about the same (although it was interesting to hear them again after the first Mythes et Legendes DVD). In retrospect (ahem, retrospektiw), I find the album version of MDK lacking in the Coltrane-ish swing it would gather upon further live repetition down the line, on the other hand I thought Kohntarkosz has held up rather well as has Udu Wudu. I was going on an old Tomato version of Udu Wudu until this box, so that probably has a lot to do with my increased enthusiasm for it now. I also like Attahk and Merci more than I used to although the latter’s still something of a train wreck. The odds and ends are also interesting to hear, although I suspect the MDK was the one stuck as a bonus track on the original Seventh CD, which immediately makes one wonder why they also didn’t include the analagous Kohntarkosz bonus.

Watchmaker – Kill.F**ing.Everyone / I’ll skip the reasons for my censorship here, they’re boring. But this (second I believe) album by the grindcore outfit is something to behold really, it has a level of catchiness and brutality that I tend to want in all my exteme metal, all things I’m not sure I could describe as differentiating one band from another. The production isn’t great while being nearly perfect for some reason, funneling the guitar work down into razors and letting the vocalist shriek, growl and rage like a caged zombie. In fact this isn’t even all that technical really, but it looms darkly like a nightmare and every (short, grindcore short) song leaves its mark like a brand. And it does so in barely under 30 minutes. The whole thing just makes me laugh like a hyena. I guess I’m one for audacity. I’d write about their labelmate Crowpath had I formed my thoughts, also real good.

Alio Die / Zeit – Raag Drone Theory / I actually almost stopped buying Alio Die CDs based on the first collaboration between these two pseudonymed musicians, so I find it mildly ironic to find that their second is utterly brilliant and that AD is putting out better work from where I left off a few years ago (and put in ambient standards, I was about, say, 16 albums behind in only 4 years or something). This is one nearly 80s minute track of drifting soundscapes and zithers and it approaches that deeply melancholic sound Musso got with Entheogenic Experience. I think maybe there’s a fine line between zithers that sound like someone messing around at the local Renaissance faire and zithers that transcend the instrument. The hammered notes seem to spiral out from the music rather than flecking it from the outside. AD’s work with Francesco Paladino of the Doubling Riders is also really nice.

Los Jaivas / Been revisiting the 70s group again of late mostly via their early work, both in their released albums and via a series of 5 discs of unreleased material called La Voragine from their formative days. Jaivas generally aren’t consistently brilliant through any one album and they have a tendency of leaving you with a much better impression of any particular album by ending with some 10-15 minute thunderwork. But overall there’s something deep about their work which always tends to be a mash up of folkloric or even aboriginal-like drum circle work, like chancing upon some rare ayahuasca ceremony, and the prevailing Western musical trend of the time, ranging from fuzz guitar jamming psych on the first Voragine disc, like a Latin Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, to later synthesizer and classical movement inspired in their mid 70s work. They remind me, if anything, that spending time with the music often makes what you found previously mediocre into the latest “find.”

Indukti / Idmen – Now if I was told that there was this cool new band who sounds like Tool, I’d have nodded at ya and moved on, quite frankly I find most of this heavy riff inspired modern mainstream/prog to be fairly tedious, however I came to Indukti via their scaling, apparently based on East European folk melodies, which always reminded me of Gong and gave their previous full-length S.U.S.A.R. a cosmic edge that really won me over. Despite what seemed to me like a poor lyrical choice or two, I’m pretty happy with Idmen as well, the musicianship is high and there’s plenty of forethought to the crunch (besides no bellowing Tool-like vocals anywhere to be found). Maybe you could argue they haven’t changed that much and that’s not necessarily cool (you can hear the fanz “NOT ORIGINAL” echoing through Carpathian forests), but I never thought I’d had enough of Indukti yet. Seems like a true return to form.

Biglietto per L’Inferno, Semiramis, Delirium etc - Nice to see the BTF guys finally getting some classics out from the original masters and packaging them in nice mini-LP covers. All this stuff really holds up for me, especially after giving the melodic stuff a long rest for a good 5-10 years. So much of the charm for me is in all these young, ambitious guys managing to make quirky 70s synths work for them in a studio over some very strong songwriting.

Titan / Nice to see a young group who actually manage to capture the 70s krautrock sound fairly authentically and kudos to them for not pretending their albums were released back in the 70s like some of the poorer hoaxsters through the years. They get it because they manage to make the atmospheres shimmer in the same way that, say, Electronic Meditation did or the early Kosmische albums and such. Depending on the day I like the first one or second Titan better, perhaps the second is a little proggier than the first. They’re kind of the nicotine patch for the more psychedelically minded.

Friends  John Abercrombie and some pals must have gotten a wave of early Soft Machine and Matching Mole albums and decided to make a go of it in 1973, adding liberal fuzz to just about every instrument in the group and ripping madly and wildly throughout. Goes to show you there’s still some classics that could use a red laser.

Chris Hinze Combination – Mission Suite – Same year, more of an American vibe in terms of jazz rock style, but same sort of deal, a bunch of guys who can play dynamically building up and tearing down the house at intervals and leaving you breathless.

Micah / I’m Only One Man / Super rare US rock release full of speedy tempos and lots of guitar and organ solos, nothing particularly original but brimming with the vigor and energy of the period. A short but sweet one, demonstrating that the miners are still bringing up gold from obscure strata every so often.

Decapitated / Tragically defunct Polish death metal unit who were not only ridiculous musicians but knew how to craft a lot of tasty hooks in the middle of their Morbid Angel-isnpired whirlwinds. I was turned on via Organic Hallucinosis but have since found that they go deep right back to the beginning: The Negation, Nihility and Winds of Creation. I generally like my DM with two guitarists but you can file Decap with Krisiun as a sound much bigger than the sum of their parts. Really liked the DVD with the reissue of Winds too.

Amnesty – Free Your Mind / One of the coolest archive items of the last 10 years, an early 70s funk group that sounded like a fusion of Chicago Transit Authority, Funkadelic and Oneness of Juju. It’s mostly notable for the first 4 songs which are just monster classics, before the archive becomes merely good, but those songs are about as good as it gets. Certainly “Mister President” got some serious air time around here late last year.

Pink Floyd / Piper at the Gates of Dawn 40th Anniversary – Some albums I come to a little slower than others, but found myself listening to this groundbreaking debut a great deal once the nice box came in. Not much more needs to be said except this one’s their best, if not ever, at least until the Pompeii movie.

ZZ Top – Tres Hombres / Can’t say I go for a lot of Top, but perhaps since this has the lion’s share of the material I best remember from my classic rock days, I’ve been playing the remaster bunches. I mean seriously that transition from Waiting for the Bus to Jesus Just Left Chicago? Still gives me goosebumps. Like with the Italian bunch above, I’m finding I can rejuvenate stuff I used to love and got bored with after some time off. Can file some early Doobie Bros and Guess Who in this group.

Iona / I mean it, this is the best progressive modern progressive rock band from the British Isles playing today, somehow managing to overcome what could be a lot of conflicting and otherwise dull influences into one of the most cosmic and spiritually vibrant wholes ever invented. For one thing, I think they’re a better live band, with the live DVD, Heavens Bright Sun, and Woven Cord all among their better work. They’re many things to many people, contemporary Christian rock to some, celtic rock to others and progressive rock to a different group, but overall they’re alive with the mystical, Rosicrucian spirit that manages to speak of unity among diversity and ultimately manages to avoid the worst preachy religious tendencies by casting their lot into mystery. Oh and the Gilmour-ish guitar work certainly doesn’t hurt.

Chicago – Live at Carnegie Hall / If I was forced to name the best release I bought in the last decade, it would be this four CD reissue of what I now think of as perhaps the best American rock band of all  time, or at least they were up to a point (that is a rock band “selling out” is something of a cliche, but it really couldn’t be more true for these guys). The eye opener is taking the booklet and opening it up to the list of tour dates that cover the early part of their career, realizing the band toured something like 80% of the year and still managed to put out a double album nearly every year and great ones at that. It turned them into one of the tightest, most vibrant big band units of the early 70s and sported who (apparently) Jimi Hendrix thought was a better guitarist than he was, Terry Kath. Hendrix was dead on on this one folks, this set turned the man into my favorite player of all time. Disc 4 of this set’s the proof.

Cardiacs / Probably one of the most unnecessarily underground greats in musical history, this British band seems to be on hold due to the darkly ironic cardiac arrest of leader Tim Smith, but there’s few people who’ve come across this group who aren’t sending their well wishes at him for creating one of the most signature pop/punk/prog crossover sounds . One of the true live greats, I’ve played one particular live DVD from the mid 80s to many visitors who grow mute after 20 minutes, witnessing this insane group pogo through some of the most catchy, wickedly complex and fast moving songs imaginable. And based on the Garage Concerts CDs, their live sound has rarely flagged over the years. Personally I’m still absorbing a crazy large catalog and hoping the ABC starts pressing their discs again as they’re sorely missed.

Emperor – Live Inferno / 2 CD + 1 DVD boxed set of what is basically two reunion gigs for the previously defunct Norwegian “black metal” group. A lot of black metal, particularly of the Emperor, Enslaved and Borknagar persuasion seem to take their cue from the epic viking albums by Bathory meaning long tracks that hold just as much in common with Grieg and thus Scandinavian symphonic rock than they do with, say, Venom or Darkthrone and I still think if these guys turned the screeching into straight vox and double bass drums into mellotrons you’d have had some of the most famous modern progressive rock albums, but alas the bleak, wintery, pagan spirit of these bands would likely also be lost. Emperor were truly in amazing form during this tour, revisiting what was mostly early work with what was obiously a much more mature perspective on some fuzzily recorded but fairly classic albums. Yeah I still can’t help but laugh when they’re all singing “Inno ah Satana” or whatever, but man does it strike a mood. As does the somber electronic/symphonic outro music that plays at the end of their set. Metal hall of fame these guys.

Grateful Dead – Yep, strangely enough the band I listened to the most over the last decade, no doubt thanks to zillions of live shows and the seemingly endless onslaught of live albums coming from dead.net (and yeah even despite the demise of Dicks Picks and their often dubious new choices). It’s even kinda hard to pick out favorites at this point because the thing about the Dead is once you get em, you like em flaws and all (or at least I do up until about 1977). But when they were on, they were a telepathic monster with puppet strings rising into the vast unknown…

that’ll do me for now…

I mentioned I had finished Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden a week or so ago. It’s a book I probably started a year or two ago, before I had a several month period lull where I wasn’t reading too much as I got a new TV and Xbox 360 and had to take time to absorb them into a multitasking personal regime, which I’ve managed to more or less (and I’ve spent the last month reintegrating my music hobby back in with all of these).

Anyway I mention this because it didn’t take me that long based on anything about the book. Quite to the contrary the book is a masterpiece, just a singularly accomplished novel (or perhaps mosaic novel). First of all the book is basically “straight” fiction, except that maybe 3/4 of it reads like a fantasy in the vein of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. This 3/4 is broken up into 12 letters which are sent home by the protagonist, a Dutch doctor who lived in the late 19th/early 20th century, from South Africa where the doctor went at the twilight of his life. The letters (and the fictional stories within in) are basically to his wife and his community and they are basically about his journey to and within an island called the Antipodes, somewhere in the southern hemisphere, which is populated by chess and other game pieces. Interspersed within these letters, which are read to the community he ended up in the United States (which was where he and his wife lived and set up the Chess Garden, a place which became sort of the central meeting place of the community both while he lived there and after he had left) is the man’s biography which recounts in a much drier fashion the man’s youth, how he met his wife, his work in Germany and subsequent difficulties and then onto what is a spiritual change of some sort that almost acts as the center of the novel and sort of shines a light on the entire book.

This would be basically his subtly handled conversion to Swedenborgian Christianity, a type of mysticism even fairly unique from, say, Rosicrucianism and other forms of Christian mysticism. I’m not blowing a plot point by saying this so much as it’s handled in a third person voice and discussed as a matter of theory, but what it does is make one muse on all the letters that have been recounted so far in terms of whether they are an allegory of this philosophy. And perhaps it’s done to keep one guessing as the philosophy itself is played fairly subtly until one absolutely profound recounting towards the end of the book which happens before the doctor leaves for South Africa during a conversation with a man researching mysticism. In it, perhaps, it brings thought to a religion that in many ways and hands has grown utterly static and mired in doctrine and rules over the years and shows why the Bible isn’t the enemy of mysticism it’s often perceived to be by more fundamentalist types, but that it actually can be read in profoundly different ways.

The Doctor’s journey in the Antipodes, while brimming with invention and creativity rarely seen in fantasy, also deals with heady philosophical concepts. As the Doctor learns during his travels, all concepts hold within themselves an original and perfect conception of each one, a reification that’s dealt with as the Doctor discovers that no matter what object exists, there’s a perfect version of it that a mysterious group of people (or chessmen rather) is trying to destroy. The theory early on is that if such an object is destroyed, then everybody forgets the purpose of said object and Hansen describes inventively a few of these objects with bizarre names, whose purpose is long forgotten. Looking back it almost seems to be if the author is drawing attention to the idea that perhaps there are philosophical and spiritual truths that have also been long forgotten due to the works of those trying to eliminate them. Of course the resolution of this thread is brough to a climax in a recounting of the mythical history of the Antipodes later in the book, in a powerful trilogy of stories that could easily have existed as fairy tales of their own. In fact that can be said for many of the episodes here and why the book is dense and rich, there are perhaps 15 episodes in this book that could have existed as nearly perfect short stories. It does seem to make the historical biographical work of the doctor seem rather staid in comparison, but the full story loses many layers of depth without it, because it is within this recounting that you learn of the tragedy and suffering behind the man’s life and how he eventually moves on to surpass this. The theme of the idea of giving of one’s self and the idea that the extreme of this is selfishness is also encountered and it is within the polar aspects of so much spiritual theory that the sublimity of the tale really comes out, that true spirituality and life aren’t necessarily the end point but the journey itself.

And like all truly profound and deep works, the book has you musing long after the final pages. I’m currently reading (and almost finished with Edward Whittemore’s Sinai Tapestry) and both of these works have really made me think over what the term “cosmic” really means. Both books, without having to spell anything out, evoke a sense of vastness, of a web that ties everything together while leaving the human viewpoint almost bereft of any true understanding of the larger picture. They intertwine a simple human viewpoint with the idea of the synchronicity or guiding hand which seems to dole out great suffering and simple forgiveness, while intimating that perhaps something vast and ancient shares space with the temporal and finite. And in both books they filled my soul with a sweet ache, an idea of a sense of greater purpose with the realization that it’s something one can only experience out of the corner of one’s consciousness.

While, the stories in Paul di Filippo’s Lost Pages aren’t (perhaps by nature) quite up to the profound worlds of Hansen and Whittemore, they too deal with cosmic things if only by the nature of playfully rearranging the histories of famous figures from science fiction writers to public personalities. All of these stories show a deft touch and vast intellect that ties together everything from historical events to the subtle personalities of well known individuals. In one story a young (post Empire of the Sun) J G Ballard hitches a ride in a plane flown by a pair of famous pilots in a world where a plague has wiped out most of the Western world. In another, a soldier in an alternate history learns in a bar of a history that never was and a third world war averted. And in another three science fiction writers who took different paths in a new timeline, come together to stop an alien threat only to find in the end that they become newly reborn in manner hilariously similar to their known work here. And really because so many of these stories are obscure and in fact almost insular on so many levels, I felt like I missed some of the most subtle cleverness. Overall it doesn’t seem so much like a book for SF readers, but one for SF writers whose research has given them insight into the way worlds collide and how personalities often treated with fondness would have reacted to the very weirdness they often imagined.

Torchwood: Childen of Earth, a miniseries that basically acts as the third season of the show, aired a few weeks ago in Britain and a couple weeks ago here, but due to Comcast’s inability or lack of desire to pick up BBC America in HD in Sacramento, I decided to forego transmission and pick up the Blu-Ray as it was released the very Tuesday after. Torchwood’s an adult Doctor Who offshoot that kind of plays like the X-Files meets Angel in the Who universe and while I’ve found it entertaining for two seasons, I’ve never thought it great until this miniseries. Quite frankly this was probably one of the most harrowing and intense 5 hours of television I’ve seen in years and perhaps some of the best TV I’ve seen since maybe the fourth season of the Wire or the initial season of Breaking Bad. And it is so because like these shows it’s unflinching in its set up and repercussions. Basically this extraterrestrial organization, already depleted at this point due to the outcome of previous seasons is witness to a series of events where the children of the entire world stop all at once and start recanting creepily “We are coming.” And so the latest alien invasion is afoot, the Doctor is nowhere to be found, and not only that but the British secret service sees fit to eliminate Torchwood due to a historical event the ageless and deathless Captain Jack Harkness was not only witness to but complicit in, that is, the previous arrival of the same aliens. The repercussions are brutal as the team is splintered and left to exist on their own strengths as the shadow government moves to encounter the alien threat on its own terms. The further revealing of the aliens, why they’re there, the secrets behind the original encounter and the horrible consequences the government takes to stand off this alien threat are met boldly and unlike the previous series or virtually any other television. The climax and ending of the miniseries are so tragic and morally ambiguous you’re left thinking about it long after it ends (and one of these tragic conclusions is very reminiscent of the end of The Shield). What really blew me away in the end was the acting of the whole cast and in particular John Barrowman, who I never thought had this type of talent within him based on his previous work, but this was truly virtuoso, as was the entire cast including all the guests. Perhaps the critics of Russell T Davies who often held he couldn’t write anything dark might finally relent now. And overall, like all really good TV, it already makes me want to play it again, although I think I’ll wait until I’ve got the psychic strength to go through that again.

GoT casting here

Sean Bean’s certainly great news, although not particularly astonishing given his turn as Boromir in Lord of the Rings. Much more exciting for me was to see Harry Lloyd picked for Viserys. Lloyd was spectacular as a young schoolman turned alien in one of the best of the modern Doctor Who two-parters starting with Human Nature, and played a very different Will Scarlett in BBC’s Robin Hood, two parts which showed a wide range for the young actor. Viserys I guess will be played closer to the former role, and Lloyd can do snooty and scheming like noone’s business. Mark Addy plays King Robert and Jack Gleeson, his son Joffrey. So far so good…

Here’s Martin’s blog post.

Speaking of Doctor Who, series 5 began filming today, with some nice pix of cast, including new companion Amy Pond played by Karen Gilman, who’s truly a knock out. This to me is one of the best parts of the series, seeing how its reinvented over and over again for a modern audience, so I’m excited to see it underway and love the fact they’re going back to the Hartnell years for the TARDIS look.

I will bold my pick and comment and am cutting out those I don’t have much of a say in.

Outstanding Comedy Series
Entourage • HBO
Family Guy • FOX
Flight Of The Conchords • HBO
How I Met Your Mother • CBS
The Office • NBC
30 Rock • NBC
Weeds • Showtime

I’ve only seen about 1/3 of this season’s episodes because I’m just catching up with it, but I’d give this category to The Big Bang Theory easily and have no doubt after catching up I’ll feel the same way. I think the nominees really missed the boat on this one. Entourage was at its nadir, Family Guy just completely sucks now, I couldn’t finish season 1 of Conchords, I haven’t seen any of the last season of How I Met Your Mother but it’s never been laugh out loud funny to me, The Office was pretty strong this last year so it’s the best on the list, 30 Rock I could never stay with because I never found it particularly funny, just quirkily amusing, and while Weeds is a LOT better this year, I didn’t think much of it last season. Big Bang is nearly always funnier than all of these.

Outstanding Drama Series
Big Love • HBO
Breaking Bad • AMC
Damages • FX
Dexter • Showtime
House • FOX
Lost • ABC
Mad Men • AMC

No question on this one, Breaking Bad’s still the best drama on television, definitely the most challenging, best acted, directed and written and I keep up with every single program on this list. I’d switch out In Treatment with House which is growing weaker by the year. I dunno if Chuck counts as a drama since it’s also a comedy but I’d switch it with Lost. And while Damages season 1 was fabulous and 24’s last season was terribly week, I’d almost switch their places this year (except that I find it hard to take 24 this seriously). Friday Night Lights was another one that could have been close. So my top 3 would be Breaking Bad, In Treament and Chuck with Big Love 4th and Mad Men 5th.

Outstanding Miniseries
Generation Kill • HBO
Little Dorrit • PBS

I’m about halfway through Little Dorrit, but am finding it tedious as I generally do with the average Dickens milieu. Gen Kill started out pretty awful but grew stronger as it went on.

Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Series
The Colbert Report • Comedy Central
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart • Comedy Central
Late Show With David Letterman • CBS
Real Time With Bill Maher • HBO
Saturday Night Live • NBC

Probably The Daily Show on this one, Maher close behind. Most of these shows are terribly up and down though, I don’t watch Letterman and I only picked up SNL again after the presidential campaign got started. It hasn’t deserved to be on an Emmy list for at least a decade. Funny how left wing this list is.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory • CBS
Jemaine Clement, Flight Of The Conchords • HBO
Tony Shalhoub, Monk • USA
Steve Carell, The Office • NBC
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock • NBC
Charlie Sheen, Two And A Half Men • CBS

Parsons easily. Funniest guy on TV. The rest of these guys don’t hold a candle to him.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad • AMC
Michael C. Hall, Dexter • Showtime
Hugh Laurie, House • FOX
Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment • HBO
Jon Hamm, Mad Men • AMC
Simon Baker, The Mentalist • CBS

This is a tough one. Probably Gabriel Byrne for In Treatment this year because he was just incredible in what was probably the most grueling job among any of these. I’d be surprised to see Cranston get a repeat but would be OK with it. Laurie’s always great, but the writing isn’t as good as it was. Dunno the Mentalist. Hall and Hamm are always good but I don’t see em above the pack this year.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, The New Adventures Of Old Christine • CBS
Christina Applegate, Samantha Who? • ABC
Sarah Silverman, The Sarah Silverman Program • Comedy Central
Tina Fey, 30 Rock • NBC
Toni Collette, United States Of Tara • Showtime
Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds • Showtime

I don’t watch the first three on this list, so will have to go with Toni Collette who should be getting more of a Drama award on this one than a Comedy one, but she was great with the multipersonalities. Have no idea why Parker ever gets nominated, she seems to play the same woman (herself) in everything. Queue blank look and lazily sassy line and it’s the same shtick.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series
Sally Field, Brothers & Sisters • ABC
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer • TNT
Glenn Close, Damages • FX
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit • NBC
Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men • AMC
Holly Hunter, Saving Grace • TNT

Don’t watch most of these shows, and I’m dead even with Close and Moss in the ones I do. But I’d put Collette over either. I think most of the best acting in this category probably should go to supporting actresses.

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series
Kevin Dillon, Entourage • HBO
Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother • CBS
Rainn Wilson, The Office • NBC
Tracy Morgan, 30 Rock • NBC
Jack McBrayer, 30 Rock • NBC
Jon Cryer, Two And A Half Men • CBS

Based on previous seasons I’d go with Harris, his Barney is pretty well played, but since I haven’t seen S4…. McBrayer’s also good but along with Morgan, just played a bit too over the top for my tastes. Rainn Wilson’s good too, but only when he’s also not over the top.

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series
William Shatner, Boston Legal • ABC
Christian Clemenson, Boston Legal • ABC
Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad • AMC
William Hurt, Damages • FX
Michael Emerson, Lost • ABC
John Slattery, Mad Men • AMC

Aaron Paul for sure, absolutely brilliant this year in one of this season’s finest character arcs. This is a strong category too just about everyone here is good, although Shatner’s not really doing anything he hasn’t since Season 1 of BL.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series
Kristin Chenoweth, Pushing Daisies • ABC
Amy Poehler, Saturday Night Live • NBC
Kristin Wiig, Saturday Night Live • NBC
Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock • NBC
Vanessa Williams, Ugly Betty • ABC
Elizabeth Perkins, Weeds • Showtime

Would have to go with Kristin Wiig on this one, she’s practically half the reason SNL is even watchable lately. Don’t find the rest of these all that funny. Williams and Perkins? Really?

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series
Rose Byrne, Damages • FX
Sandra Oh, Grey’s Anatomy • ABC
Chandra Wilson, Grey’s Anatomy • ABC • ABC Studios
Dianne Wiest, In Treatment • HBO
Hope Davis, In Treatment • HBO
Cherry Jones, 24 • FOX

I’d give this to the actress who played the young college student on In Treatment on I think it was Tuesdays, in fact it’s hard to believe she didn’t get this over Davis and Wiest who were certainly very good. Byrne’s always good as was Cherry Jones as the prez. Actually Sandra Oh is pretty good too, but I run screaming everytime the character’s anywhere near my TV, but we can probably chalk that up to the acting right? Not that I could stand Grey’s Anatomy for long (didn’t see a minute of this season).

OK that’s enough…