Ah, summer, that time of bright skies and rising mercury. Also of lawns that always seem to need mowing, air conditioners giving up the ghost -- and a new round of diversions! • Being a late adopter has its advantages, namely that you can cherry pick the best with the masses serving as your quality control. The downside, though, is that you can miss out on a heckuva lot of good stuff in the meantime. That's how I feel about The Drabblecast, a delightfully off-beat short-fiction podcast I recently discovered featuring authors such as Samantha Henderson, Tim Pratt and ISLF-friend Nathaniel Lee. Its tagline? "The Drabblecast is a weekly flash-fiction audio magazine that brings strange stories by strange authors to strange listeners."Go to Diversions: Spring 2010 ...
• Let's have some videos with our summer loafing! Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man is an amazingly well-produced short film providing L. Frank Baum's backstory for a rather famous character in a rather famous movie featuring Kansas, tornados and red shoes. Blending fairy tale, romance, horror and even some steampunk, Heartless mixes all the genre elements just right. For lighter fare, why not watch a child recreate the entire Star Wars trilogy in two minutes and thirteen seconds using only Legos? And by "trilogy," I'm referring to the movies staring Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, not Those Other Ones That Shall Not Be Mentioned. (Hat Tip: The Daily What)
• Okay, okay, I admit it: Sometimes it's fun to laugh at rather than with, particularly if the instigator of the hilarity is an abysmal book cover. Enter Good Show Sir, a blog featuring the most abominable SF and fantasy art in the business. After only a few minutes on the site, you may find yourself wondering if drinking on the job is de rigueur in publishing art departments. Noteworthy (the kindest word I can think of) examples include Fratricide Is a Gas, West of January and an astonishingly awful edition of C.S. Lewis' Perelandra. (Hat Tip: Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent)
• Want a break from your writing, but don't want to sucked into a new activity? Give Hateris a try, a Tetris variant that unfailingly provides the worst possible piece at any given moment. Guaranteed not to have you coming back for seconds. (Hat Tip: Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
(Picture: CC 2010 by dibytes)
6 comments:
So...I'm ignoring this post right now because I must concentrate...but planning to come back after sermonating is done to have fun with your strange, strange sense of humor. (Include me in the strange listeners category.)
Yes, you'd better not click yet. The Drabblecast has me download old episodes left and right. It's really quite good.
Good Show Sir... XDD i now it! Is excellent to laugh while you sip your coffee. The bad artist deserves it.
The early bits of the Drabblecast are quite shaky, but the recent stuff is almost pure gold. I heartily endorse "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs" and "Teddy Bears and Tea Parties."
Deka,
Good Show Sir is so bad that it's awesome, don't you think? I'm amazed those cover saw the light of day.
CR,
Also, I endorse "The Work That Must Be Done", which (as I understand it) is already in the running for best Drabble of the year. Much deserved, too.
Post a Comment