Castle’s Heat Wave

The other day in my post about Dollhouse, I talked about the creative marketing that the show was using, including having characters “tweet” updates that fit in with the plot and creating a complete corporate website for the evil Rossum Corporation.

Tips for Wait Staff

I eat at restaurants a lot. And I eat at a lot of nice restaurants. So I've encountered a lot of wait staff in my life.

I've been to St. Louis' most "venerated" restaurant, Tony's, multiple times and I have to say that, although I sometimes think the food is overpriced, the service has been outstanding each and every time. The wait staff there anticipates every need and yet I seldom notice that the wait staff even exists. Which is exactly as it should be. And I've had outstanding service at many other restaurants - both expensive and inexpensive. I rarely have downright bad service at a nice restaurant but, regularly, I'm amazed at how untrained the wait staff is at restaurants that are not cheap. They don't even know what I consider the basics.

What’s a Body to Do?

Fox has taken Dollhouse off the air during sweeps month ( a bad sign if you ask me) but the production folks have still been busy.   New character “Senator Daniel Perrin” has been twittering. 

The Happiest Place on Earth

Highlights of my trip to Walt Disney World:

And now .... A Disney Moment

Walt Disney voices Mickey Mouse:

My favorite ride at Disney World is the Star Tours ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios.  They just announced that it will be closing next year so they can install Star Tours II.   So I might need to ride the current Star Tours ride a few times this trip.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I was prepared to dislike Wolf Hall, or at least be bored by it. Just between the two of us, Dorothy Dunnett ruined the 16th century for me. Oh sure, I pick up novels set during that time period, but I often end up putting them down before the end. And even if I finish them my conclusion is always: "That was just not as good as Dunnett".

Wolf Hall won the 2009 Mann Booker prize though so I thought maybe it was worth the risk. But I was doubtful. Does the world, I thought, really need yet another book about England in the 16th century? Does the world really need yet another novel involving Henry and Anne Boleyn? And even if the answer to both of those questions were "yes", I still wondered if the world needed a novel about, of all people, Thomas Cromwell?

RT @CapricaSeven: Remember. No one is born a good writer. Babies can't write.

Unlike many, I haven't gotten into Twitter that much.  I follow about 40 people and I allow about 12 people that I personally know to follow me.   I regularly forget to even look at my Twitter account for days at a time.  And when I do look at it I realize that I haven't missed much.

Except every once in a while when I catch a recent tweet by Jane Espenson.

It is no secret that Jane Espenson is one of my favorite television writers.   She's working on a new show right now called Caprica Seven (which seems to be some kind of sequel/prequel to Battlestar Galactica) and she tweets under the name CapricaSeven.  A couple of television blogs that I follow re-posted some of her initial tweets a few months ago and I was intrigued because she was, among other things, giving writing tips.  So I began following her.