Why is Roman Polanski’s arrest such a cause celebre? I’m not an expert on the case, but I have read the grand jury testimony of Polanski’s thirteen-year-old victim, and it is pretty convincing and pretty damning. I understand that Samantha Geimer (then Samantha Gailey) publicly requested leniency for Roman Polanski, in the hopes that he could collect his big deal Oscar and she and her family could avoid the pain of being bothered again about something which was now decades in the past.

A lot of people seem to think that the intervening decades Roman Polanski spent in France were some kind of hardship equivalent to prison. First of all, Roman Polanski was a filmmaker in Poland in the 1950’s, but he left for France and then began making movies in the UK in the 1960’s. So the fact that he was making movies in the United States in the 1970’s does not mean that it was a hardship for him to then go make movies in another country. That was something he tended to switch up anyway. And he fled to France allegedly because he thought there was a chance that, instead of just getting the 42 days of time served, the judge might sentence him to a whole 90 days, minus the 42, for a total of 48 days behind bars.

What does anyone think the punishment would be today for a 43-year-old man who got a 13-year-old girl alone, plied her with booze, and then just brought her home after speaking about inappropriate subjects with her. Now add illegal drugs, forced sex, and introducing the girl to her very first anal rape. A new commission of a crime like this would get a long sentence of the sort where he might be killed by fellow inmates.

I understand that Roman Polanski has managed to achieve some great things in the face of horrific hardships. He lost his mother to the Holocaust and he lost his wife to Charles Manson and The Family committing the Tate-LaBianca murders. His wife was his eight months pregnant actress wife Sharon Tate. I do think it makes sense to consider how many forty somethings anally rape junior high school kids without having also had hard lives themselves.

But he still managed to direct Chinatown, a movie about California’s shady water rights history, and make it an interesting noir. Then again, Chinatown also benefited from the talents of the brilliant writer Robert Towne on the job and two actors widely considered to be some of the best of both their own generation and many others, Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It is generally agreed that Roman Polanski got into such heated debates with Faye Dunaway on set that he even pulled out pieces of her hair. So, not a stranger to violence against women.

A lot of people, who aren’t me, also liked Rosemary’s Baby, so I accept that was an accomplishment, even though not entertaining to me. And a lot of people found The Pianist very poignant. The Pianist could have been from the heart or the tale of the talented Jewish musician trying to continue to create under the shadow of the Third Reich could have been a cynical ploy to get an Oscar and get to be self-righteous about not being able to come to the Academy Awards because of fear of arrest.

I’ve lived in Europe and most Europeans agree that France is a wonderful place to live. In point of fact, the Germans have invaded France every chance they got throughout history in pursuit of the best living. Hence the German expression for the best the world has to offer: Leben wie Gott in Frankreich. Roman Polanski has been married to the beautiful actress/rocker chick Emmanuelle Seigner since apparently 1989, when she was twenty-three. Or, to put in another way, there are even more years between her age and Polanski’s than between him and his 1977 victim. But it’s just different when you go after a twenty-three-year-old versus a thirteen-year-old.

So Roman Polanski’s big hardship is that, he couldn’t serve 48 more days in the loony bin ward of the prison (not the main population) and this meant that it is now, thirty some years later, terribly inconvenient for him to go to all the galas honoring him and his achievements. He was arrested on his way to receive a special award at a Zurich film festival when he was detained by Swiss authorities, who are perhaps less sexually open-minded than the French.

It honestly strikes me that Roman Polanski was going to get just a slap on the wrist for a pretty serious acquaintance assault because people felt sorry for him for having had bad things happen to him and maybe enjoyed his work. It seems like he might have gotten at least a few of his awards for the same reason because it seems peculiar that Americans go on and on about his greatness as a filmmaker without being able to name ten things he has done.

And does good art entirely excuse really bad behavior?

Breaking Bad is about choices, consequences, and regret. Breaking Bad is about the importance of learning and the application of wisdom. The second season of Breaking Bad starts at 10pm Sunday March 8. If you have not seen the first season yet, you’ve still got time to catch it on On Demand. The pilot episode from season one is available on AMCTV. The basic plot line has mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher Walt White, played by Bryan Cranston, getting into the drug trade with an assist from an overgrown juvenile delinquent former student Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, but the clever and beautiful cinematography and the deft characterization and plotting in the writing and the pitch perfect acting all come together to make Breaking Bad so much more than just a fish out of water story. Not that the fish out of water aspect doesn’t get some terrific laughs. Don’t worry because, in addition to ruminations on the meaning of life and self-determination, Breaking Bad also features funny parts, explosions, and fight scenes. Additionally, Emmy winner and CSI alum Michael Slovis does an incredible job as director of photography with the look and feel of the show.

Some of the most entertaining moments are when the expectation is that one character will handle a situation and it turns out that someone else is better suited. But, when you think about, the less obvious character really does have the better skill set. Jesse is charismatic, intelligent, and witty at first glance, but he is weak and having blown off school has limited his options, even as a meth dealer. Walt is retiring and seems more weak and less charismatic at first glance, but he has a more iron core, the sense of responsibility which comes from his loving if overbearing family, and the strength, freedom, and feeling of being on one’s last chance which come from knowing that his lung cancer is probably a death sentence. A lot of it is contextual. A head shaved for chemo can look small and tragic in one context and badass and not to be trifled with in another. Actor Bryan Cranston, once best known as Hal on Malcom in the Middle, won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his nuanced portrayal of Walter H. White. As things play out, one realizes that Bryan Cranston’s Walt once had a promising and potentially lucrative research career. In the first season, we don’t know yet whether his partners did anything off or if he walked away to start a family or otherwise take the path to a very ordinary life. So, even before finding out he was most likely dying, Walt felt that melancholy creeping sense of being at a stage of life where the questions start sounding less like “what if” and more like “if only”. In a way, the story is about a mid-life crisis ratcheted up to maximum volume, but communicated in a manner which is sympathetic, poetic, and ultimately empowering.

Jesse might be a little lazy and not know his chemistry as well as would be ideal for the local methamphetamine aficionados and he might not be the best at standing up to alpha personalities except in an ineffectual smartass fashion, but he is young and there is clearly potential there. Aaron Paul, as Jesse, and Bryan Cranston play off one another well. The only things I’ve ever seen Aaron Paul in are an episode of CSI and Sleeper Cell where he played Teen #1, but he has guested on like half the shows on television and most notably has an important recurring role on HBO’s Big Love and is appearing in Last House on the Left, directed by Wes Craven which opens this coming week. With Jesse’s character the show becomes not just about middle-aged regrets, but about all the little choices we make all along and all the little deaths by regret we experience. Having the spectrum of Jesse to Walt makes the story very universal.

You can check out Walt, Jesse, Walt’s overbearing but loving wife frustrated writer Skyler White, Skyler’s competitive shoplifer sister Marie, Marie’s super-overbearing macho but well-meaning DEA agent husband Hank Schrader, and Walt and Skyler’s son Walter Jr. who, despite having cerebral palsy, seems far more well-adjusted and content than many of the other characters, on AMC March 8 Sunday at 10pm or later on On Demand. X-Files alum Vince Gilligan created the offbeat Breaking Bad and is credited as having both written and executive produced 20 episodes of the show, so I’m guessing we’ll get to enjoy a third season as well. The other executive producer on the show is Oscar-winner Mark Johnson who has worked on such a large string of hits and great movies that it almost seems like overkill, including Galaxy Quest, Diner, Kafka, Rain man, Donnie Brasco, Home Fries, Narnia, the list goes on.

AMC stands for American Movie Classics because they got their start inexpensively licensing old classic films, but, wow, when AMC decided to get into producing original television, they kicked things off producing two of the best shows ever made by any network with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. I can’t imagine a more impressive start. AMC produced some of the best shows on television last year.

In 2005, an Alaskan named Billy Powers and his kids built a sixteen foot snowman. It is not clear how the giant Frosty lookalike came to be known by the moniker of Snowzilla, but the attributes of being monstrously giant and made of snow probably both had something to do with it.

There is nothing like an enormous snowman to capture the hearts and minds of people who love to frolic in the snow. I hope the denizens of Anchorage enjoy frolicking in the snow. According to City Data, Anchorage has a significantly above average crime rate, but Alaskans get to enjoy sixty inches of snow a year to make up for the extra arson, assault, murder, and so forth. Then again, the Anchorage airport is named after extremely indicted U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, so maybe the people of Anchorage enjoy crime more than snow after all is said and done.

Somebody in Anchorage sure is Grinch-y, anyway, because city zoning stopped the Powers family and friends from completing their annual Snowzilla in 2008. Apparently, some Scrooge felt that the joyful snow behemoth disrupted traffic patterns by attracting rubberneckers and camera crews. Reportedly, all but the head of Snowzilla was complete when the order for his execution was handed down. Snowzilla may be missing his head, but some people in Anchorage are going to be getting coal in their stockings this year for lacking a heart.

The West Hollywood Book Fair has received a California Park and Recreation Society Award of Excellence for three years in a row now. The Fair deserves it for throwing such a successful literary event year-after-year in the somewhat arid soil of Los Angeles.

The West Hollywood Book Fair features panels, workshops, performances, and exhibitor booths including local bookstores, small presses, literary non-profits, literary journals and arts organizations. My favorite part of the Fair was getting to see authors I know speak and discover authors I didn’t know.

The panel discussions and such were sectioned off into various niche pavilions. The pavilions of most interest to me were the Mystery, Crime & Suspense Pavilion, the Comics/Sci Fi/Horror Pavilion, and the delightfully-named Queer, Hot, and Avant Garde Pavilion. I missed the LA Noir: Crime Fiction Close to Home panel I wanted to go to in the Mystery, Crime & Suspense Pavilion. I was mostly interested because the brilliant Gary Phillips was scheduled to be speaking. I adore his gritty crime novels with characters so vibrant and real and frequently badass you want them to succeed, even as you note the ways they may destroy themselves. He co-edited a pretty cool cocaine anthology too. I’d like to give some really great reason why I missed this particular panel, like maybe traffic was so congested from the hugeness of the event that it took a while to find parking. But, let’s face it, a reading even in Los Angeles, even an awfully big one, is going to lay on tons of free parking and the location for this event is a really easy location to drive to. It was just the whole getting up that early in the morning thing that was not happening for me. I usually start work at noon.

Speaking of the location for the event, I had not realized that the West Hollywood Book Fair is held outdoors. The outdoors features sunshine on days like this. More on the sun in a moment.

So the first panel I went to was Horror in Short Bursts: Crafting Stories for the Horror Anthology. It was moderated by Del Howison who runs a beautifully-appointed horror store called Dark Delicacies which has hosted signings for many friends of mine. Dark Delicacies sells primarily collectible books and spooky housewares. The other name on the panel I was familiar with was Jeff Gelb. Jeff is best known for editing the Hot Blood series of erotic horror short stories. I just checked Amazon and apparently he is up to a whopping thirteen volumes in the series. I guess I’ve missed around ten volumes, but props to Jeff for having edited material like this as far back as the late 80’s.

I have successfully sold 100% of the short horror fiction I’ve written over the years, so I wasn’t expecting to learn a ton from the Horror in Short Bursts panel, but I thought it would be enjoyable. Unfortunately, the panelists insisted on pontificating on the subject of the internet, which is apparently something they know less-than-nothing about. A panelist named Lisa Morton started going off on how she thinks it is somehow telling that stories from Gothic.net have been stolen and stories on another webzine she is familiar with have not. Now, Blue Blood has hosted Gothic.net for many many years, so I am intimately familiar with Gothic.net’s traffic statistics. As an internet professional, I normally would have a good ballpark guess on the number of visitors to any site, but in the case of the site Lisa mentioned, I actually know precisely that they only get around 700 visitors a month. I know this because this site copy/pasted the HTML from Gothic.net to their own site and accidentally hotlinked one of the graphics. As a result, I can see precisely how many times a visitor hits one of their pages. I do not know what Lisa thought she was implying about Gothic.net’s stories getting stolen, but I’ve spent a lot of legal time making sure that every single instance of content theft from Gothic.net got shut down. I even gave free legal lessons to a number of horror writers so that they would know how to better protect their own work. In point of fact, the reason that Gothic.net fiction gets jacked more often is simply that Gothic.net receives about as many visits in an hour as this other webzine gets in a month. A certain percentage of people will steal, so more readers equals more theft. If a writer wants their work to actually be read, I can certainly tell them which site will give them more exposure. The WGA writers’ strike is all about writers looking to share in web revenue, so I was truly shocked to see writers and editors presenting like the internet should not have writing on it or something.

I was excited, however, when the amzingly multitalented author and editor Thomas S. Roche popped in to the horror panel. Among many other things, Thomas edits Eros Zine and previously worked on the web arm of Good Vibrations, so he is web savvy. I always like seeing Thomas and this made running into him even better. I had realized he was going to be at the Fair when I saw him in the program guide. I had posted a thing online the day before asking who I know in Los Angeles who likes books. Thomas saw me post it, but he told me at the Fair that he’d assumed that I had some old books to give away, rather than that I was looking for who might like to hit the Fair with me.

So, anyway, Thomas S. Roche, Forrest Black, and I wander around the exhibit booths and start working on our sunburns. We stop by the Dark Delicacies booth where Del and Jeff are hanging out. We all say hello and then Thomas chats briefly with Jeff who wants to get a story from Thomas for his next anthology. While we are waiting for Thomas, I am thrilled when Gary Phillips ambles by. I admit I gushed a little when I told Gary how much I really love his work and he can have his publishers send over press releases and I will give him coverage and did I mention I really love his books. At which point, Jeff Gelb interrupts me telling Gary Phillips how awesome I think Gary is and claims that I just told Jeff the exact same thing. Gary’s face falls and I’m left totally speechless that Jeff would think it was funny to tell a straight up lie that takes a heartfelt compliment away from someone else. Gary Phillips also has a really quality author web site and Jeff may or may not have registered his name as a domain.

At this point, the sun is getting kinda brutal and Forrest, Thomas, and I decide to head over to the Queer, Hot, and Avant Garde Pavilion. We pass by the Daedalus booth where BDSM educator and writer Midori has a dark hidden little space in one corner where Fair visitors can get out of the sun and whisper a fantasy they have. Midori then writes down the fantasy and posts it on a fantasy wall. Someone, who may have been me, asks if the secret to her innovative setup is really just getting out of the sun. But Midori is – unlike me, unlike Forrest, and unlike Thomas – prepared for the event; Midori has sunscreen. Not only that, but Midori is a merciful and generous angel who shares her sunscreen with the less prepared. Thomas says he thinks it is too late to save him, but I still manage to shoot off a funny snapshot of him with Midori’s sunscreen all over his head.

I am happy that we catch the end of the Literary Foremothers: A Lesbian Tradition panel. The very talented Myrium Gurba is on this panel and talks about the conflicts between presenting and celebrating both ethnic background and sexuality. I have never met Myrium in person before, but she wrote up my sites Gothic Suts and Barely Evil for the late lamented On Our Backs magazine, so we sort of know each other and I’d been wanting to meet up in person. Myrium is also smokin’ hot.

It is nice to stay semi out of the sun as the panel Thomas is on is in the same Pavilion. He is speaking on Fictional Sex – The Good, The Bad, and the Never to be Done Again which is moderated by Christine Louise Berry and also features Thomas S. Roche, Jenoyne Adams, Midori, and Rob Roberge. Apparently there is some kind of yearly award thing for the worst sex scene in a “mainstream” novel. So the panel is mostly this group of talented writers reading reading really awful anti-erotic passages by less talented authors. Midori actually acts most of them out, whether or not she is the one reading. It is immensely entertaining, although I can’t help feeling that I would have liked to hear them all just reading their own quality work.

To this end, Forrest and I finish the day at the performance tent of WordPlay: A New Spin on Storytelling. I don’t always like spoken word. I’m a bit inhibited about reading myself and I think sometimes words just seem different when read versus heard. WordPlay is really fabulous spoken word though. The authors featured are hip and funny and fun and all seem very skilled in the reading in public department. Taylor Negron’s tale of catching a burglar was particularly entertaining and insightful and hopeful about the world. When I look up WordPlay, it appears that they do regular shows, so it makes sense that their readers have really honed their performances.

I go home happy and tuckered out and only a little bit sunburned. Hurray for books in West Hollywood.