I mowed the lawn this afternoon & between the heat & the death rays of the Accursed Sun they experience damn near killed me. I mowed as much of the lawn as I could, but significant portions of the farthest reaches of the backyard were too swampy to be tamed.

The Queue
I'll finish Heat Wave because it is less than two hundred pages long & I'm already past page one hundred, but if it was longer I'd abandon the effort, condemning it as the tripe it is. Based on the wit & brains I've seen evidenced by the fictional character Richard Castle, I'd wager he'd be a better novelist than Heat Wave's ghost writer, "Richard Castle." The book's paramount failing? Though the characters in Heat Wave are by design thinly veiled versions of the main cast of the television show Castle, those characters & their world just don't work absent the on-screen chemistry twixt actor Nathan Fillion (playing Rick Castle) & actress Stana Katic (playing Kate Beckett). Exceptional care must be taken in adapting a work of fiction from one medium to another. Books to not always work as films & films do not always work as books.

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Rob Carriker, "Marching Through Georgia" from Over There!: Songs from America's Wars (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Though not strictly a song of the glorious dead, I thought "Marching Through Georgia" an appropriate selection for this Memorial Day since the holiday began as Decoration Day, at the urging of the Grand Army of the Republic. Decoration Day honored those who died to save the Union, pointedly excluding the Confederate traitors who had fought for slavery & lawlessness.

"Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia!"

Sonntag, 29 Mai
Charles Coburn, "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: The Grand Prix de Monaco was thrilling, more tense & dramatic than I'd have believed possible!

Samstag, 28 Mai
Mu330, "Rocket Fuel" from Mu330 (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: My present to Where's Teddy? on the occasion of his second birthday was a toy rocket with lots of lights & buttons, branded as an "Activity Rocket," an educational tool. Encourage his cognitive development & encourage in him a love of rockets, & thus by extension both aerospace & science fiction. Win-win. A rocket themed R.B.D.S.O.T.D. was thus the order of the day, but which? "Rocketship" by Guster & "the cover of "Rocket Man" by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes were both strong contenders, but in the end I went with Mu330's "Rocket Fuel" because it is about a wee baby, much as Where's Teddy? was not so long ago.

"That kid is rocket fuel!"

Freitag, 27 Mai
Ben Folds, "Annie Waits" from Rockin' the Suburbs (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "Annie waits… but not for me."