I'm happy to say my knee is recovering nicely, but this first post of a new millennium of bloggery is still more of a 'sitting around on my backside' thing than venturing into space or the Aegean Sea. And I'm catching up this morning with everybody who's sent me condolences or friendly messages or insults in the last week or two, so I'd like to especially thank Tom for leaving a comment here on my blog, and urge more readers to do the same! People don't comment here nearly enough! Let's build some kind of Zoomy-fan community, so I can think I'm appropriately great and famous!
Or you can continue talking to me in less ego-centric venues, I don't mind. Anyway, I didn't really feel like writing about Dr Who last Saturday night - it wasn't terrible, it was at least watchable, but that's as far as my praise goes. We'll just have to see what the third and final 'special' tonight is like, and then hope that one day they'll make it back into a proper weekly series like Dr Who should be, every year, for say six months at a time. I don't mind if it looks cheap, just hire some capable writers!
And when I say good writing, here's a literary example. Not an example of how to write Dr Who, a completely unrelated thing in classic Zoomy blog style to confuse the readers. I've mentioned before, several times, how much I love 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay', and it seems a good place to start a series of posting examples of great pages from favourite books. It's a cold day in late 1939 New York, and teenage Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier have just been given the okay to create their own comic book. They go out to find a team of artists, meet Sam's friend Julius "Julie" Glovsky and go with him to the apartment/studio where Julie's older brother Jerry lives with two other artists. When nobody answers the door, Joe (with a completely unnecessary display of acrobatics) scales the fire escape, climbs in an upstairs window and immediately provokes a scream from the naked woman asleep on Jerry's bed. It's his first meeting with Rosa Saks, who will play a central role in the lives of both Joe and Sammy. And, as we learn in this one beautifully-written scene, the whole incident had a lasting effect on Julie too...
Michael Chabon should be writing Doctor Who. And I've always thought someone needs to get David Renwick writing it as well. And there are other candidates too - you know, proper good writers is what the series has really been lacking, it's not about the expensive special effects. Sort it out, BBC!
