Molly Templeton's blog

Internet miscellany: for when it's stupid hot out and thus you I, stupidly, walked to the bank and now have the brain capacity of a dazed manatee. No disrespect meant to manatees, of course.

• Have you heard the news? Apparently it's Author Internet Freakout Week! It kicked off when Alice Hoffman used her now deleted Twitter feed to insult the critic who reviewed her latest novel in The Boston Globe. She also posted the reviewer's phone number and email. Classy. Hoffman later "apologized." But just as that kerfuffle started to fade from memory, Alain de Botton (never lend On Love to a neurotic friend, by the way) got a bit cranky at the critic who reviewed his latest in The New York Times. Unlike Hoffman, de Botton later handled things very gracefully. Good for him. But it's not over yet! On Twitter, I mean. Next, Ayelet Waldman suggested that New Yorker critic Jill Lepore "rot in hell." (I'd like to point out the delightful headline on that last link, just in case you missed it.)

At least no one got punched in the face this time.

• And now for something completely different: RoboGeisha. Via BoingBoing, where it was described it thusly:

There is no part of this trailer that is not made of awesome. A robot geisha transforms into a tank. Two robot geishas (I guess) spew poison milk (don't ask) out of their titties at an opponent. A girl gets stabbed to death in the butt with a giant sword. Robot girls make giant swords pop out of their butts, presumably with which to stab other people in their butts. "Bust Machine Gun." And a dude is blinded with tempura shrimp.

Deadly. Shrimp. And bleeding buildings. And ... yeah, it's really pretty weird, but someone out there will love it.

• Three things make a post, so: two articles I've started reading but not yet finished because it's moments before a three day weekend and my attention span is shrinking:
- Chris Ruen's "The Myth of DIY," a treatise on artists and downloading which includes the succint and smart pullquote, "I don’t see anything artful or transcendent in our favorite record stores closing." I got several paragraphs in and was inspired to stop in at House of Records on my way back from the bank (for the Weakerthans and Dresden Dolls, should you want to track my spending habits).
- And lastly, Graeme McMillan interviews comics genius Grant Morrison, whose Invisibles series is one of the main reasons I start to see red any time someone uses the "Well, it's based on a comic, what did you expect?" line about another shitty comic-book movie adaptation. Morrison's latest is Batman and Robin.

After a flurry of unconfirmed reports (well, reports only by TMZ, which was apparently good enough for pretty much nobody on a topic this big), the L.A. Times confirmed that Michael Jackson died today. He was 50. The New York Times ArtsBeat blog is getting updated very frequently with further information.

I heard the news on Twitter, where speedy updates about Jackson's condition have been replaced by memories and great links to YouTube videos, photos and more highlights of an incredible career. Comments about Jackson quickly overtook posts about Farrah Fawcett (RIP, Charlie's angel!) and news out of Iran with remarkable but unsurprising speed. There's a ton of coverage out there, which makes sense; is there any pop music fan, at least within a certain age range, to whom Jackson wasn't relevant at some moment or another?

I've stopped paying attention to Jackson in recent years, other than to marvel, momentarily, that he, Prince and Madonna had all reached or passed the 50-year milestone. Really? Really. But I distinctly remember buying Thriller on LP when I was a kid. I think I bought it in a department store; I seem to remember racks of clothing surrounding the little LP-shelf island. At some point each week, we could bring records to school to listen to, on headphones, with friends, and my kid-self was very excited to bring that one in and tap my little feet in time with "Beat It."

What's your earliest — or best — Michael Jackson memory?

And who else votes for a day of wearing single sequined gloves in his honor?

We try to be modest, but sometimes we just gotta toot our own horns. And that's OK. Or at least it's inevitable. Anyway, the point is, the Oregon and Washington Society of Professional Journalists held their annual awards banquet on Saturday, and we picked up a handful of awards, including two first-place nods for arts coverage. The honored stories are linked below.

In the category for non-daily print publications with a circulation greater than 8,000:

Third place, environmental reporting
"One Good Tern Deserves an Island" by Camilla Mortensen

Second place, consumer, food, lifestyle, home
"Much More Than a Mimosa" by Molly Templeton.
(This one's a PDF of the entire Uncorked issue — sorry! Some scrolling is required.)

First place, arts and criticism
"Forging Ahead" by Jason Blair

Second place, arts and criticism
"Operation Sharing Their Truth" by Suzi Steffen

In the category for alternative newsweeklies in region 10:

Second place, government
“Blind Oversight” by Alan Pittman

Second place, consumer/environmental affairs
"One Good Tern Deserves an Island" by Camilla Mortensen

First place, arts
“Buddhist Visions” by Suzi Steffen

Third place, special sections
“Water Day” by EW staff, edited by Suzi Steffen

The Willamette Valley Music Festival! The Scottish Festival! Eugene Chosen! The Avett Brothers! It's one of those weeks when there's more nifty stuff going on in town than we can cram into the pages of the paper. Here are just two more events at which you could enjoy yourself this weekend:

This year's Out/Loud Queer Women's Music Festival features headliner Melissa Ferrick (above) along with North Carolina singer-songwriter Crys Matthews, who is releasing two new albums this year; the Athens Boys Choir, a former duo turned solo act featuring Katz, whose spoken word topics deal with "with issues of Gender, Politics, Love, Sex, and everything in-between including but not limited to spooning"; Bay Area hip hop performer and producer Katastrophe; and local singer-songwriter Virginia Cohen. The show starts at 8 pm tonight at the WOW Hall, and admission is by donation.

Tomorrow night, head down to Wheeler Pavilion at the Fairgrounds for "A Stitch in Time," a fashion show organized by Mitra Chester (of Deluxe and Kitsch) and Laura Lee Laroux (of Redoux Parlor) which gives local designers "an opportunity to directly present their creations to the community, while allowing Eugene to see the faces behind the unique fashions we support and enjoy," says designer Moria Wheeler (a preview of her Jaunty Design line is pictured above). Wheeler says, "My goal as a designer is to create fun, comfortable, unique and affordable clothing. Fashion should be exciting and accessible to all, even in Eugene." The show starts at 8 pm, but doors open at 5 pm; vending runs until and after the actual show. And there's a bar. Which is nifty. ($10 adv., $12 door)

So what are you doing with the summery, potentially spectacular weekend ahead?

Let me gush a second: I pretty much loved Star Trek. It did a lot of things right, and it looked gorgeous, especially to eyes disappointed by the terrible effects in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I loved Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy the best of all, but John Cho is a respectable Sulu, Sylar Zachary Quinto a perfect Spock (I really only thought of Sylar once, when he glares at the council) and Zoë Saldana a whip-smart Uhura. The bad guy was a little stock, but the time-split really thing works for me.

That said, I've got some nits to pick. So if you've seen the film, well hey, shall we discuss? Let's!

Be patient just a little bit longer, Zenon fans. We learned — just a little too late to squeeze it into this week's paper — that the new Café Zenon will open next Friday, May 22 (not May 15, as was previously their hope).

Owner Ibrahim Hamide says he and his staff "would have been panting and sweating" if they opened May 15. "We didn't want to present the first impression that way," he says.

Hamide says this opening date is certain, "unless the sky falls." The other thing that's certain? The new restaurant will definitely keep the Zenon name.

May 1, I hear, is Buy Indie Day. The idea, as described at Indiebound, is simple: "Buy one book — paperback, hardcover, audiobook, whatever you want! — at an independent bookstore near you." (Those of you on Facebook can check out the movement's Facebook page, too.)

If you're still reading this, you doubtless are familiar with Eugene's fine independent booksellers: Tsunami Books, Black Sun Books, Smith Family Books, the UO Bookstore (still not calling it the Duck Store), Windows Booksellers (which I've actually never been in) and J. Michaels. You can also get books at The Kiva, of course, or order online from an online shop (there's this one in Portland you may have heard of?).

Conveniently, tomorrow is also the first day of J. Michaels' 34th anniversary sale, which a colorful little postcard emphasizes is their ONLY sale of the year. The sale runs through Saturday, May 9, but if you swing by on Friday evening, you can add snacks and wine to your indie shopping experience.

Whichever store is your favorite, there's a lot to be said for something like Buy Indie Day — not least of which is that you'll come out of it with something new to read. Should you be unsure what to buy, let me recommend a few recent favorites, all (this time) in a fantasy-fiction sort of vein. Sort of:

• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. A timeless story about a boy raised by ghosts, told in Gaiman's personable, charming prose, sly and impossibly precise, like the story always existed this way and Gaiman just happened to snare it, to gently press it into his lovely book. I'm not ashamed to say I teared up at the end of Bod's story, and I do hope it continues.

• Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. A sci-fi novel, but only at the outset; Midnight Robber moves quickly from the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint to its parallel world, New Half-Way Tree, where criminals are sent into exile, forced to make their way without technology. Tan-Tan winds up on New Half-Way Tree with her father, whose sour, drunken assaults on Tan-Tan eventually send her into the bush, where she lives with the planet's native population. Since reading this, I've been nabbing Hopkinson's other books from the library just as fast as I can; I can't get enough of her engrossing, vivid writing and her beautiful, dangerous worlds. (I've only finished one other so far, but I can also heartily recommend Brown Girl in the Ring, in which the dangerous world is our own.)

• Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. The title of Valente's new book refers to a city you can only reach by sleeping with someone who's been there. It's fantastical and yet entirely physical; you can only visit the part of the city that appears like a tattoo on your lover's body; you will only find yourself there at night, like a dream. But it's not a dream. Four characters swirl around each other in this story, each shaped and marked by loss, each finding something they may or may not have known they were missing in this strange city, where a river flows with coats and a house grows for the woman who will inherit it. I recommend reading this one on a train, not just in solidarity with the train-loving character Amaya Sei, but because it might make you feel appropriately exposed when the stranger in the seat next to you peers over your shoulder as you read yet another sex scene — but it's not just about sex! It's about travel, exploration, a different kind of anticipation — and you find yourself wondering what exactly they're thinking about this small, seemingly innocuous book you're reading so intently.

Congratulations to Eugene's Nina Kiriki Hoffman for winning a Nebula Award — the awards given by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America — for her short story "Trophy Wives."

Another Eugenean, Kate Wilhelm, was one of three winners of the Solstice Award, which was created last year and is given to a writer "who has had a significant impact on the science fiction or fantasy landscape, and is particularly intended for those who have consistently made a major, positive difference within the speculative fiction field."

The rest of the winners are listed here at Locus. Oregon did pretty darn well, what with Ursula K. Le Guin also winning for her young adult novel Powers. I don't think I missed any other Oregonians, but please correct me if I did!