Derik Badman's Journal

Rewatching David Milch's John From Cincinnati, which is one of the great tv shows that was cancelled too soon. This is at least my third time through it. I can totally see why it ended up cancelled, it is completely sui generis for a tv series. The premise is built around a family of surfers, but the surfing aspect is not enough that one would be tempted to watch it solely for that. It finds no easy genres: it's not a lawyer, cop, or doctor show, though there is one of each in the cast; it's not a crime show, though there is a drug dealer; it's not a comedy, though it is at times funny; and it's not a fantasy, though there are mystical, unexplained elements that go beyond the bounds of conventional realism. Tonally it is a bit all over the place in a weird goofy serious way, that can quickly veer from one to the other or somehow all at once. I think it's great, though I don't know anyone else who does.

And now I see I already wrote something like the above a few days ago. I probably repeat myself endlessly here without even realizing it. I know I do that when talking too: I'll tell the same story multiple times, sometimes I find myself just saying the same thing multiple times in hopes someone will reply to it in some way.

The books are piling up around me again, and I ordered more yesterday, a few published journals (Chateaubriand, the Goncourt Brothers, Josep Pla). Feeling the need to sweep away a lot of the ones that are here, always realizing the unlikelihood I will reread many of them, not to mention the ones that just disappointed, or didn't live up to some expectation I had of them.

I'm still working on my NaNovellaWriMo, though even with the reduced word count I am almost two days behind, and I'm not sure what I have written is not a bit more padded out with more words than I would normally use, the hazards of doing any writing by word count.

Review of a new translation of Beowulf that sounds really interesting.