Bookshelf:

Currently Reading:

• Leah R. Cutter, The Caves of Buda

Next Up:

1. Julian May, The Nonborn King
2. Julian May, The Adversary
3. Margery Allingham, The Case of the Late Pig
4. Sean McMullen, Voyage of the Shadowmoon
5. Daniel Keys Moran, The Long Run

Silverado

So at the moment I have one of those "nice problems to have": I'm taking the next couple of days off and will have to fill the time somehow.

Fortunately, I have a new toy on order, and with any luck it will arrive tomorrow. That will suck up a lot of time for the next few days. Otherwise, I will:

• Meet Debbi for lunch tomorrow.
• Hit some book stores I haven't been to for a while.
• Clean up around the house - which still needs it.
• Read the book for next Sunday's book discussion (see sidebar).
• Write. I'm 1500 words into a new story - another novelette, it feels like.

Friday night Debbi and I watched one of my all-time favorite films: Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado (1985). When it was released, some critics thought it might revive the western the way Star Wars revived the space opera (Kasdan, in fact, was an integral part of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi). It didn't work out that way (it wasn't until the 90s that a new wave of westerns started to appear), but Silverado is no less good a film than Star Wars, really. It's just not a revolutionary film that Star Wars is.

This may be, in fact, one of The Best Films You've Never Heard Of. Check out this cast: Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, John Cleese, Linda Hunt, Rosanna Arquette, Jeff Goldblum. This is an A-list cast, and it's not often I see Danny Glover getting out-acted by most of the people around him (and he's by no means bad here). In my opinion, this is Kevin Costner's finest moment as an actor.

The film concerns four men - Paden, Emmett, Mal and Jake (Kline, Glenn, Glover and Costner, respectively) who end up traveling to the western town of Silverado together. The first 40 minutes of the film shows them hooking up with each other, and with a band of settlers. In Silverado, they find that Paden's old cohort Cobb (Dennehy) is the sheriff - a rather corrupt sheriff for a rather corrupt town. Paden takes a job running Cobb's saloon with the philosophical Stella (Hunt), but ends up in the middle of conflicts between his friends and the locals.

The script is fast-paced and funny, and most of the characters get to shine (Arquette's best scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, alas). Paden eventually proves to be the central character, but Emmitt and Mal are just a notch below. It manages to fall just short of what we consider a modern "action film", but it has plenty of stunts and lots of action. But it's also clever, as our heroes are often outgunned and devise believable ways of evening the odds.

For a fun evening of television with take-out on the coffee table, you could do far worse than Silverado. It's a gem.

We spent most of yesterday with my friend Karen, who is still settling into her house. She rented a truck and we went to buy her some patio furniture, which came off without a hitch. Then we broke in the built-in grill on her patio. I overcooked the hamburgers, but Debbi and Karen said they came out fine. Then we braved Bay Bridge traffic (slo-o-ow) to get sundaes at Ghirardelli Square. It was worth it.

Today we did some errands, and then packed up to head to the beach on the other side of the hills. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, chilly and drizzling over there, so we ended up just coming back home. Bummer, but that's life in the land of microclimates.

I did get to see Blackjack get so excited that I was opening the door to the patio that he ran headlong into the screen on the outer door. He is not the sharpest knife in the drawer! He is lovable, though.

And that's the news.