There's a bunch of stuff that I wanted to talk about, however none if it really seemed to warrant its own article. So I'm just going to throw it all into one big one.
The first thing I want to do is point you to this article, written by Tasha Robinson over at avclub.com. She basically provides a reference point for new readers who are interested in getting into Stephen King's work, but don't know where to start. She does a good job opening the "gateway to geekery" about the works of the prolific author. While it may not benefit long time King readers, it is still worth checking out.
You may remember a while back, I wrote an article giving you a heads up about King's upcoming novel, Under the Dome. At the time, there was next to no information to be found. As evidenced by comments on the article itself, information soon became available shortly after. Back in March, Simon and Schuster allowed the plot synopsis to be released. The summary goes as follows.
"On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out."
This comes from Stephen King's homepage and can also be found in the product description for the book at Amazon.com.
As for what's coming up next. I've got some movie reviews lined up. I'm going to try to make it out to Border's to pick up a copy of The Bachman Books so that I can do the bibliography entry on Rage. That will be followed by The Shining, which I have here at the apartment so that should come soon after. I'm also going to start covering the comics. For simplicity's sake I"m going to start at the beginning with The Gunslinger Borne, and work my way up, covering the comic adaptation of The Stand as well as the upcoming comic adaptation of The Talisman (the first issue of which is set to release on October 21).
General Updates 2: Journalistic Boogaloo
Much like an article I wrote sometime ago, this won't so much focus on one story as a bunch of tiny ones clustered together to make a decent sized article.
It was announced sometime ago that a new poem by Stephen King called "Tommy" would be appearing in this month's Playboy. I considered writing an article about it sooner, but decided against it for two reasons. One, that's pretty much all there is to the story and two, someone might misinterpret it as an endorsement of pornography and then when I explained that I wasn't endorsing it, someone else would ask what my problem with porn is before calling me a giant prude. This isn't really the proper place to have a discussion on pornography, but if you're against it, then the story won't affect you and if you are a fan, well now you have another reason to pick up the issue (although it's not like anyone's going to take you seriously when you say you picked it up for the poetry).
Stephen King was also interviewed by the LA Times in regards to an album that he appeared on. It's an interesting read and the album pitches an interesting idea, you guys should check it out.
This isn't so much a news story as an anecdote, but we rented 9 off of Netflix. Before the movie started, I told my roommate that when they showed the movie in the theater, rather than have the usual "don't talk, don't smoke" intro, they should've just cut to a black screen and had either the Mac speech or Microsoft SAM voice say "Nine, this is nine. Do not smoke in the theater" etc, in reference to the phone from 1408. He didn't get it, so I had to explain the reference. My other roommate may've gotten it, but he wasn't really paying attention so that was a wasted effort. I don't know whether it should've changed numbers like the phone did or just keep repeating "Nine, this is nine" between each statement. I think the latter would've fit better given the movie title, but changing the numbers does sound a bit cooler. It could work either way I suppose.
Netflix has been screwing with us when it comes to disc 2 of Kingdom Hospital as it keeps jumping back and forth between being available and on a short wait, but I'll review those when I get them. I'm coming up on the end of The Long Walk so I should have that review up in the near future. I'm going to make an effort to make a run to the comic store to get caught up on those as well.
General Updates Revisited
General Updates (1/23/14)
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