There was a beautiful sort of hand-tinted ambrotype light under the clouds this evening: not quite sunset, not quite storm. It looked as though it would break into rain any second, but never did. In the afternoon it showered, in a sort of tropical, condensing way.
I may in fact have maxed out on Perry Mason (1957–66) for the time being, but I appreciated William Talman immensely as Hamilton Burger, not least because it was the first time I had seen the actor outside of film noir, but also because he did a heroic job with a character whose narrative function is to lose cases week after week to Perry Mason; he did get an assist from the writers after the first season when the scripts began to make a point of observing that the character is an adversary, not an enemy, and making the case for the prosecution is literally a DA's job, but the series formula is almost immutable—Erle Stanley Gardner wasn't just around for the duration of the show, he had script approval—and Perry's clients are innocent, so Talman had to bring something besides graceful or explosive losing to the table and unsurprisingly a dry delivery and a keenly varied range of exasperation turn out to go a long way with me.
I hate not being able to ask Patricia McKillip if she read Robert Holdstock, or if they arrived independently at the notion of ice ages held within tree rings—old memory in snow—such as I had forgotten exists in the winter-wandering trees of The Sorceress and the Cygnet (1991):
"It's like being lost in a forest the size of Berg Hold . . . The trees shift, and all their memories move with them, century upon century of dreams, until you don't know anymore what's tree and what's only a dream of tree."
"It's only a small wood."
"I know. But Chrysom took them from the northern forests so long ago there must have been a sea of trees bigger than Wolfe Sea. It's that they remember, I think, and that's the memory you get lost in."
I had also forgotten until reminded that it is International Non-Binary People's Day.
I may in fact have maxed out on Perry Mason (1957–66) for the time being, but I appreciated William Talman immensely as Hamilton Burger, not least because it was the first time I had seen the actor outside of film noir, but also because he did a heroic job with a character whose narrative function is to lose cases week after week to Perry Mason; he did get an assist from the writers after the first season when the scripts began to make a point of observing that the character is an adversary, not an enemy, and making the case for the prosecution is literally a DA's job, but the series formula is almost immutable—Erle Stanley Gardner wasn't just around for the duration of the show, he had script approval—and Perry's clients are innocent, so Talman had to bring something besides graceful or explosive losing to the table and unsurprisingly a dry delivery and a keenly varied range of exasperation turn out to go a long way with me.
I hate not being able to ask Patricia McKillip if she read Robert Holdstock, or if they arrived independently at the notion of ice ages held within tree rings—old memory in snow—such as I had forgotten exists in the winter-wandering trees of The Sorceress and the Cygnet (1991):
"It's like being lost in a forest the size of Berg Hold . . . The trees shift, and all their memories move with them, century upon century of dreams, until you don't know anymore what's tree and what's only a dream of tree."
"It's only a small wood."
"I know. But Chrysom took them from the northern forests so long ago there must have been a sea of trees bigger than Wolfe Sea. It's that they remember, I think, and that's the memory you get lost in."
I had also forgotten until reminded that it is International Non-Binary People's Day.
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