I saw this over at Backup Brain, and it's hilarious. If you're a fan of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical, and Lord of the Rings, this will definitely make you laugh: Once More, With Hobbits: A Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical Adventure
We caught Kathy Mattea at the GBPAC here on campus last night, she put on a great show, and her voice is amazing. The first half of her show was all acoustic, mostly her signature hits, as well as requests from the audience. The second half of the concert was all Christmas songs, which, while nice, I didn't enjoy as much as the first half. I enjoy classic Christmas music, the songs we all know, rather than new made up "Jesus Rock" tunes, no matter how well they're done. Fortunately, Kathy did some of each, with a great rendition of Come, All Ye Faithful (half in Latin, no less) towards the end.
After the show, we hung around the lobby, and I got a chance to talk to her a bit, since I'm distantly related by marriage to her husband. His (late)Uncle Ernie and Aunt Jo are my Great (late) Uncle Ernie and Aunt Jo (Jo is my maternal grandfather's twin sister). Anyhow, her husband didn't come on this tour, so I didn't get a chance to meet him, but we chatted for a little bit. She's a neat person, she has a quick wit, and seemed to be graced with an infinite amount of patience for all the people waiting for autographs. The guy in front of Holly & I was legally blind, and had some mental difficulties as well, but she handled him effortlessly, even helping him open his CDs, so she could sign the inserts, and never once hurrying him along. I didn't take the picture on the right, but I laughed when I saw it, as it's the same jacket she wore last night to sign autographs, along with the same sign, so it works well. I'm not sure how I feel about baby blue leather, however...
Well, it's not like I'll receive any money for it, but my book review was published over at Slashdot today. Not too many people called me an idiot, so I'll take that as meaning I wrote a fair and accurate review. :)
This house is only four doors down from us, on the same side of the street, and it's for sale. I can't believe how much they're asking for it, considering our house cost less than half of what they're asking, but the pictures of the inside, posted here, certainly look nicer than our house did when we bought it. And, it has 2 more bedrooms, 2 more bathrooms, and one more garage stall... but still...
My copy of For Us, The Living arrived last night. I'm about 75% done reading it, and will post a review when I'm done. I checked in on the Heinlein newsgroup to see what was being said, and everyone else is reading it too. I did find this tidbit, however, about some Heinlein predictions coming true:
Meanwhile, Thomas Perls of Harvard is hunting for longevity genes. Perls noticed a decade ago that people who live to be 100 are often in remarkably good shape. Today, he runs the New England Centenarian Project, whose participants must be 100 years old and have siblings who lived to be over 90. By looking at DNA taken from some 600 participants so far, Perls has found that a region on chromosome four appears to help its carriers become healthy geezers.
Perls and his colleagues have formed a company called Centagenetix to narrow the search for the longevity gene. Once its identified, Centagenetix will try to produce a Methuselah pill that mimics the activity of the proteins made by the longevity gene.
Some day, we'll all be members of the Howard family. :)
I also saw a post from Spider Robinson, Science-Fiction author, and Heinlein fan/friend:
I have just been given final approval by the Heinlein Trust to write a novel based on a detailed outline created by Robert in 1955. It will be billed as "Robert A. Heinlein's VARIABLE STAR, by Spider Robinson." The book proposal is even now being prepared for market by my (and Robert's) agent Eleanor Wood. The first 10,000 words are already written.
