"Christmas ought to be brought up to date, it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols."

For me, this line perfectly sums up The Box of Delights by John Masefield. I have decided that rereading it will be an annual Christmas tradition for me, as well as watching the BBC television adaptation. At least, that's the plan; this is the second year I've read the book, and will the the third year in a row watching the TV series.

It's this weird, modern (for it's time; published in 1935) fantasy story that moshes up modern-day religion, pagan religion, talking animals, Roman armies, Herne the Hunter, magic, gangsters, Punch and Judy, flying cars, time travel, and Christmas. The (extremely) simple version of the story is that young Kay Harker finds himself caught up in a plot by evil gangsters/magicians to get hold of the Box of Delights. The Box (held by centuries-old philosopher-turned-Punch & Judy man Cole Hawlings) has the power to make people "go swift," "go small," or travel through time.

That simple description doesn't really do it justice, though. It doesn't take into account the nonsensical digressions and plot twists that come from out of left field and disappear just as quickly. At one point, while Kay and his friends are hiding from the gangsters, using the box to shrink themselves, they encounter a race of fairies who have been transformed into paintings, with no real explanation. When Kay frees them, they reward him by allowing him to visit their realm one day a year.

And then the kids leave, and the incident is never brought up again.

The book is full of stuff like that, and trying to follow it expecting everything to tie together or make some kind of sense is a fool's errand. Last year, I watched the TV series with the lovely fiancee (just the lovely girlfriend at that point) and watched her get more and more confused and bewildered at each new, weird incident. By the end, she was kind of curled up in a fetal ball, whimpering. And the TV series leaves out a lot of stuff from the book.

(There's a really good piece on the TV show here. They pretty much say everything I would want to about the show, so I refer you to it rather than just say it all again.)

I don't think watching the show is going to become a shared tradition for us, and that's fine. It's got some great performances, particularly from Robert Stephens and former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton, but it's weird as all get-out. But it's also a great Christmas story.

And that's why I love the book, as well. As the opening quote suggests, it isn't trying to be a warm, cozy, traditional tale, but it never forgets that it's a Christmas story. When Kay is listening to the villains plotting, he goes through a whole series of speculations about their plans in his head, but the last thing he thinks about is what he's going to get his governess for Christmas. When Maria Jones (one of a family of children staying with Kay and his governess) appears to go missing, Kay and the other Jones kids worry... until it's time for a Christmas party at the parish cathedral. Then they forget all about Maria, until the party is over. And part of the villains' plot involves kidnapping clergymen in order to prevent Christmas services from being held.

Paul Magrs has written a pretty through analysis of the book on his blog. He also compares it to The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, so now I want to read that. But I can't imagine it's got the same sprawling holiday insanity as Box of Delights. And I won't have the same childhood connection to it (I saw the TV adaptation of Box when I was a kid.)

Even though it's a kid's book, and a story I first discovered as a kid, I think it's only come to define Christmas for me as an adult. For one thing, it's not about family and love and home and hearth in the same way most Christmas stories are. Having lived alone for the past 20-some years, and spent many of my Christmases with just my cat, Christmas isn't about that stuff for me, either. It's about the surface trappings (Christmas music, TV specials, movies, stories, and decorations) overlaid onto and mixed into everyday life. This book may be a weird, twisted hybrid that often makes no sense, but I guess that's what Christmas is to me.

At the end of last Friday's episode of Smallville, they showed a teaser for the upcoming two-hour episode featuring the Justice Society of America.



I'm excited. I had read that the episode (written by comics writer Geoff Johns) would be featuring Hawkman, Dr Fate, and the Star-Spangled Kid, but from these clips, it looks like we'll be catching at least glimpses of a couple of other characters. And I admit, I squeed like a little girl (or a middle-aged comics fan) when I saw the Alan Scott Green Lantern ring and the gas-masked visage of the Wesley Dodds Sandman.

I've been a fan of Smallville since the beginning, although my affection for it waxes and wanes. I think I was losing interest a little the first half of last season; the Doomsday story was a little too dark and depressing, the show seemed to be having trouble adjusting to the loss of two regular cast members, and I was distracted by a new relationship in my life.

My excitement was reignited with the episode last January (written by Geoff Johns) guest-starring the Legion of Super-Heroes. I have blogged previously about how I loved those characters as a kid, but didn't know what to expect from their Smallville appearance. Would they be the characters I knew and loved, or would they be radically changed (like not even from the future) to make them "cool" and "hip?"

Turns out, while some of the less-cool-for-TV elements were downplayed (they didn't have names like Cosmic Kid or Lightning Lad, to my recollection), they were very much true to their origins. And when I saw them wearing Legion flight rings that looked like they came straight out of the comics, my heart grew three sizes that day. Much the same as seeing the JSA characters in this teaser.

I've lost count of how many times I've had conversations with friends about how cool it would be to see our favorite comics or books turned into movies. I don't actually look forward to that stuff all that much. If I like a particular story or set of characters, it's because I like the stories in whatever medium they're told in. If the stories are about characters I like, then I would like more stories, but not necessarily the same stories retold in a different way. Movies based on books are necessarily going to eliminate things; even a movie or TV show that adapts every scene and every line of dialogue is still going to lose the style of the prose, and still won't match the pictures in my head. Even if you adapt a comic panel-for-panel, like Sin City, what I see on the screen is still not going to be exactly what I imagine happening between the panels.

And adapting comics superheroes to live action? Changes are going to have to be made, just in the costumes alone. For example, when you try to do a Batman costume that looks just like the one in the comics, you get the Adam West version from the 60s.

(I've read some online complaints about the Hawkman picture to which I've linked above. I don't know; I think it looks okay. Smallville has done a good job making their superhero costumes look a little more reasonable on TV, like giving Green Arrow a dark green leather costume and dark glasses instead of a bright green cloth outfit and mask. The thing about Hawkman, though, is he's got big wings. And his mask has a beak. I'm not sure there's a way to make those elements look realistic.)

Having said all that, while I don't particularly look for the things I love to be adapted into other media, I still get excited when it happens. And when it works, like The Dark Knight or the Hellboy movies, it's really cool.

But the JSA and Legion are hardly as well-known as Batman or Spider-Man or the X-Men. So to see them come to life? This really is very close to a dream coming true.

Can't wait for January to come.

Getting away from the whining about human nature in my previous post, here's what I'm watching on TV on Tuesdays:

On CBS, I watch NCIS. While the cool kids probably don't consider it hip and edgy, I've been a fan since the very beginning. (And when I say "very beginning," I mean I saw the characters in their very first appearance in a two-part episode of JAG, another favorite series.) I like the crime stuff okay, but I could get that from any number of shows. I watch NCIS for the characters.

As soon as I'd heard that Mark Harmon was going to be the lead, I was probably sold on NCIS. He's one of those old-school TV stars, like James Garner or Robert Conrad, who just seems to slip effortlessly into the roles he plays, and totally owns the screen when he's on it. As NCIS agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, he epitomizes cool on TV like nobody else I can think of. He's such a force for calm and reason on the show, which really helps sell it on those occasions that he explodes into righteous anger. He also balances the zanier, more extreme characterizations of the other members of his team, and it's those characters that make the show so watchable.

This season, NCIS is joined by spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles. It would be easy to dismissively say, "It's just like NCIS, only in LA," but I'm happy to say it's not quite that simple. Like the parent show, it's got a distinctive visual style, and it's got the same sense of humor. But instead of dealing with a team of characters, it pretty much focuses on a pair of partners, played by Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J. The interplay between them is like watching a fun buddy movie. It doesn't have a complex, twisty mythology involving time-traveling islands or anything but, like Castle, which I talked about last week, sometimes a show can keep you coming back by giving you characters you want to spend time with.

The third Tuesday night show I'm watching is also new this season, The Forgotten, produced by CSI/Pirates of the Caribbean/Big Explodey Action Movie guy Jerry Bruckheimer. It's a crime/procedural series about a group of civilians who try to identify unidentified victims of crime after the police no longer have the resources to devote to now-cold cases. And it's got that Jerry Bruckheimer TV series dark, moody, broody look and feel to it.

It's also got Christian Slater as the lead. I like Christian Slater just fine, but that wasn't the selling point. No, it was a combination of Michelle Borth (from the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me) in the cast and Stephen Gallagher as writer/producer that got me watching. Gallagher has written books and other TV shows that I've really liked, most recently creating last season's short-lived Crusoe. And Michelle Borth is hot.

I can't say I've completely embraced the show in the same way I have NCIS: Los Angeles or other new shows this season. I watched the pilot, skipped the next episode, but came back the following week and have stuck around since. What keeps me interested, I think, is the focus is more on identifying the victims and learning who they were than on solving the crime. Instead of focusing on forensic detail, we see the characters talking to people to learn about the victim as a person. That feels just a little more positive and interesting to me, and that's what keeps me coming back.

As I write this, I haven't seen the premiere of the remake of V but I'm totally planning on watching it. I loved the original V miniseries as a kid, and this one is produced by Scott Peters, creator of The 4400, another much-missed favorite. Plus it's got Elizabeth Mitchell, Morena Baccarin, and the chick who played Supergirl on Smallville. So, you know, totally there.

As part of my (once again) renewed committment to try to post a blog entry every week, I'm going to go through the TV shows that I'm watching. Rather than try to say it all in one huge, boring post that becomes a struggle to finish, I'm going to break it down and write about one day each week.

On Mondays, I watch The Big Bang Theory on CBS. I can best sum up its appeal for me when I tell you that after my lovely fiancee and I watched it together for the first time a couple of weeks ago, she started laughing hysterically, then turned to me and said, "I'm marrying the Big Bang Theory." I wish I could say that there were moments on the show that weren't exactly like times spent with my friends, but sadly, that's not the case.

Part of what makes the show great for me, besides it being really funny, is that it treats the geek characters with warmth and sympathy. They're funny because--like all geeks--they're obsessed with things outside the mainstream, and this makes them outsiders to a certain degree. But while this may make them awkward, it doesn't make them stupid, or unemotional, or whatever. Penny, the "normal" woman in the cast, doesn't treat them like they're any less human just because she doesn't understand all the things they talk about. And that's what won me over from the very first episode.

(Also, producer Chuck Lorre's vanity cards at the end of each episode are hilarious, if you take the time to freeze and read them. Or you can just read them online at the handy link I just posted.)

A new show I'm watching on Mondays is Castle on ABC. It stars Nathan Fillion, of Firefly/Dr. Horrible/Buffy fame, but I'm not just watching it for the geek casting. I skipped the entire first season, because the concept just sounded DOA. Fillion plays Richard Castle, a mystery writer who helps the NYPD solve crimes while working with them for research for his books. It's Murder, She's Old, only tonight the part of Jessica Fletcher will be played by Nathan Fillion. At least, that was my initial perception.

Now that it's made it to a second season (and been renewed for a full 22 episodes) I'm willing to give it a shot, especially since it comes highly recommended by a friend whose opinion I trust. And it's a lot of fun. It's got a police setting, but it's not a cop show. It's an old-fashioned mystery/romance show, kind of in the vein of Moonlighting but more grounded. The dialogue is snappy and witty, and the characters are engaging. It's got nothing really to do with police procedure, but Columbo isn't any less of a show than Hill Street Blues for the same reason.

Coincidentally, the two shows I watch on Mondays star actors from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Nathan Fillion and Simon Helberg. Maybe I should start watching How I Met Your Mother again for Neil Patrick Harris, but there's just not enough time.

Obviously, it's been a while. Once again, I'm going to try to use the new TV season to try to impose some sort of schedule on my blogging.

So here's my thoughts on what's new in the world of television:

Much as I love the work of Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, LA Law) I decided to give his new show on TNT, Above the Bar, a pass. Tried it out for about five minutes, and while it looked perfectly well-made, I just felt like I had seen it already. Just not interested in a lawyer show right now. Maybe it brings something new to the table beyond the story of overworked public defenders struggling to keep their clients from being swallowed up by a system that doesn't care. If so, someone let me know and I'll Netflix the DVDs. As should be evident to anyone who even kind of knows me, I watch a lot of television already. Don't need an excuse to add more.

I had thought about checking out the new 90210, but when the day rolled around, I realized I just really wanted to watch it because of my crushes on Shannen Dougherty and Jennie Garth, formed while watching the original version. Not the worst reason for watching, but on the other hand, I would have to sit through another teen drama, and I already watch One Tree Hill. (Which, to its credit, has moved beyond the teen part.) So, at the last minute, I passed, and watched a recording of another old favorite, Tales of the Gold Monkey.

And I did not watch Prison Break. Didn't really enjoy last season, and the news that they're bringing back Sarah after beheading her last season was the last straw for me. Unless they brought her back as a head in a bottle, a la Futurama. But that's not what happened. (I asked a coworker.)

Loved the season premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Lots of great action sequences, as usual. The developments with Cameron will hopefully turn out to be a good idea; I liked her character before, but I think she'll be a lot more interesting now that it's no longer as clear whether she's simply the "good Terminator." And the twist at the end with Shirley Manson's character caught me completely by surprise, and yet made perfect sense.

I'm not quite as enthusiastic about the new HBO vampire series, True Blood. It held my attention all the way through, and I definitely want to see the next episode. And Anna Paquin has quite the young Holly Hunter vibe. (Loving older Holly Hunter in Saving Grace, so not a bad thing.) In some ways, I guess I feel, as with Raising the Bar, that I've kind of seen this stuff before. But while lawyer shows follow a pretty clearly established path, vampire shows are--if nothing else--weirder. So here's hoping.

Speaking of weird, I liked the premiere of the new JJ Abrams show, Fringe, quite a bit. It owes quite a bit to X-Files, obviously, both in tone (been watching early X-Files on DVD recently) and just in the "government agent investigates weird phenomena with hints of some sort of big backstory connecting things" obvious sort of way. Having said that, it doesn't just follow the pair of characters/believer/unbeliever pattern of X-Files, and the larger ensemble cast should make things a little more interesting. Plus the fact that one of the characters is completely mad. And I generally enjoy the shows JJ Abrams produces. (Yes, even Six Degrees and What About Brian. Judge me.)

And that's about it for new American TV. As far as British stuff, I didn't hate Spooks Code 9 as much as the rest of the Internet, but I'm not going to accuse it of being good television. I saw the first episode of Mutual Friends and liked it enough to want to see the next two episodes, but haven't yet. I think I like the cast more than I do the premise. I really liked the first episode of Lost in Austen, about a contemporary London girl who finds herself stuck in the story/world of Pride and Prejudice, while Elizabeth Bennett disappears off to contemporary London.

As far as reading, I am about halfway through Brad Meltzer's latest book, Book of Lies. So far, it's a good, gripping thriller. Also still listening to the audiobook of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime, although that got sidelined by my desire to listen to the new Torchwood soundtrack over and over again. And I'm about a third of the way through the first collection of IDW"s Complete Little Orphan Annie. As with all chronological reprints of comic strips, the strip is never quite as good at the beginning as it later becomes, but it's not bad, either. I'm enjoying the strips on their own, and as a means to watch the development of Harold Gray as the strip goes on.