First, I'm struggling big time with comments here lately and getting spammed in a way that is just absurd. So I've shut them down until I get a handle on this. This would not be a huge big deal but as I just read about BIG HAIR ALASKA, the new AK reality tv show, I'm especially bummed not to have comments because people, we have clearly hit a turning point in reality tv world:

TLC, the same cable network that produced and aired "Sarah Palin's Alaska," has announced a two-part series about the Beehive, the salon that counts the former governor and onetime Republican vice presidential nominee as one of its devoted clients.

The identity of the salon was not revealed in a news release sent out last week by TLC. The release simply said the show "goes inside a busy hair salon in Wasilla, Alaska, where the personalities of the owner and her staff are as big as the hairstyles they create."

Wowsers.

I have been watching SPORTS NIGHT on DVD while cleaning out my office which has reminded me all over again of what good television actually is. I have also spent a serious amount of time looking through Peter Beard's scrapbooks and Dan Eldon's journals and everything by Gerald Durrell. (I should just be shelving these books but it's so hard not to open them!!!) Oh - and I finished reading the RING OF BRIGHT WATER trilogy and came to the conclusion that while very cute, otters should never be pets. But Gavin Maxwell was a very good writer - I just wish the poor man had an easier go at life. (This will be in my "Hail Britannia" September column.) And yesterday I received Cherie Priest's GANYMEDE, the latest in her Clockwork Century series of books and this one has a submersible in Lake Ponchartrain and that is so many different kinds of awesome standing that I can't hardly stand it.

Finally, I've been trying to figure out how to write about an author who had a big impact on my thesis and book (she wrote about Alaska aviation in the 1940s) but there isn't much out there about her. Maybe that's the whole story though - looking for Jean Potter but not finding her. (She passed away in 1997.) Sigh. I wish I found more though. She was one really wonderful writer.

[Brigitte Bardo had some big hair back in the day.] [Post title from Lady Gaga who wrote a song all about her big hair.]