Maskerade

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

It's the daughter's last week of summer hols before starting second grade, she has her best friend Otis over for a two-day sleepover, the wife is taking a week off of work, and I'm stuck in one of those horrible ruts in between gainful employment and selling some more articles. Basically, this translates into everyone being on holiday and I don't have any solid excuse to not join in. The upshot is that I'm pretty much away from the keyboard and the wine bottle remains corked until damn near midnight.

On the other hand, it does give me an excuse to catch up on the huge stack of Terry Pratchetts that I got from the library the other day. Regular readers of EI know that I regard it as proof of unfair world that the likes of J K Rowling and Stephanie Meyer become gazillionaires despite the fact that neither has any real imagination nor can they string a competent sentence together for toffee while Pratchett is still something of a niche market. Come to think of it, given his wit and love of language, perhaps the fact that he's not on the cover of Match or dragged through the tabloids like a scent bag at a fox hunt every other week is proof that life is at least just.

Currently, I'm ploughing through Maskerade; Pratchett's take on opera, which one chap said has been around for 400 years and nobody has caught on to the joke yet. More specifically, it's his take on the Phantom of the Opera–a passable French novel that was made into a classic silent film, four sound remakes that descended in quality with each go, and an Andrew Lloyd Bloody Webber musical that I still contend is grounds for prosecution. Prachett places the story in Ankh-Morpork, throws in a couple of witches and a Junoesque country girl hoping to hit the Big Time, and things play out from there in the usual Pratchett fashion of people caught up in events that are spinning entirely out of control while DEATH (he speaks in all caps, you see) is ready to lead off those who are kicked out of bounds.

Since I can't put the Prachett version up without facing that little problem called infringement of copyright, I'll settle for a taste of Lon Chaney in the role that made more people abandon the stalls for the gods than any other film.

Enjoy.