I found The Green Mile on the bookshelf at work a few days ago, just finished reading it late last night. I’ve never considered myself a Stephan King fan before because I always perceived him as a horror writer, a genre which doesn’t interest me in the slightest. But after reading this book, I started thinking about some of his other stories that I’ve read–Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (from Different Seasons), The Running Man (under the Richard Bachman psuedonym), and The Shining. Of these, only ‘The Shining’ really has much of a “horror” feel to it. I think I may have to pay a little more attention to this author, even if he is extremely popular–I hate following a fad, but in this case there may be a reason (other than marketing) for his wild popularity.
Books I’m going to look for by this author include The Dead Zone and The Stand, both of which are available from the Sacramento Public Library.
I’ve seen the movies based on all these books, except for ‘The Green Mile’. I read ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘Running Man’ after seeing the movies, and liked both the movies and the books. I saw ‘The Shining’ after reading it, and was disappointed with the movie. This is almost always the case with me, regardless of author–as long as I haven’t read the books upon which they’re based, the movies stand well on their own, while the books add depth to the story once I get to read them. Because of this, I probably won’t see the movie rendition of ‘Green Mile’.
I read a post today on Nicholas’ blog which indicated that he was having trouble commenting on my site. I’ve had other commenting problems (1, 2) in the past which have been traced to my spam-blocker, WP-Gatekeeper. I haven’t spent any effort on the current problem, I’m just assuming that gatekeeper is at fault, so I disabled this plugin and installed Spam Karma 2 since Nicholas seems to be getting good results with it. I’m not sure what Joseph is using nowadays, but gatekeeper may be doing the trick for him–I found out a few days ago that he hand-rolled his crisp minimalist theme, and perhaps gatekeeper plays well with such a setup.
I’ll run with Spam Karma 2 for a while and see how it goes. I hate to think that people might have tried to post comments here, failed, and given up on this blog. I really have no idea how many people read the crap I post, but I know there are at least a few people out there with too much time on their hands. 
When I published my review of “Free” by Mike Comfort, I sent him an email letting him know about it. Imagine my surprise when a published artist took the time to write back, almost immediately! I can certainly accept a very small delay in shipping the CD, especially considering such a personal response.
The best thing in the email was the news that Mike is planning to release a new CD next month. The release is scheduled for September 23, to coincide with a show at La Salles in Chico, Calif. There’s a bit of information on La Salles’ calendar app, but I can’t seem to link directly to the show, or even to September–you’ll have to browse the calendar, select “September” on the pull-down list, then click the show link for “Thirst” on September 23rd.
More good news is that Mike is working on getting his CD into stores. I’m happy to support an artist directly–the prices are cheaper because there aren’t any bloodsuckers middlepeople between me and the artist, (except the postal service), hence the artist gets more of the money. However, there are two major problems with direct sales:
- The artist has to spend time doing non-artistic things like producing the CD’s and filling orders. All the time spent on this comes at the expense of the art.
- Nobody can jet down to the record store and pick up the CD right now. For some people, this may be a deciding factor. Other people may not trust PayPal, or whatever online payment system is employed, and avoid ordering via the web.
I think having the CD in stores would help promote the artist. I won’t be happy with the increased price, but you can’t have it all.
