dead men don't write spy novels

so I mentioned a while ago that I’d read every single one of Robert Ludlum’s books. now this guy died in March 2001, yet he’s still released 5 books since then (some of which were finished off/co-written by other authors). I’d read them all too, but then yesterday I was in K-mart and noticed he’s now released another two. can someone explain to me how a man who’s been dead for almost 5 years is still releasing novels? I mean, I passed the first few off as kind of finishing the books he had planned, but now I’m not so sure. is he dictating these to someone from beyond the grave? or did he just have 100 books written before he died and asked someone to release them slowly over the next 50 years? seriously, what is the deal here?

(with grateful thanks to the steve martin film which inspired the title of this post.)

anticipation

I got U2 tickets today. That is big for me – big. It’s probably the last time they’ll be out here, and it’ll be a huge huge show.

The moral of this story is, don’t get tickets online; get them at a ticket outlet. I don’t know how people manage to get through, but I was trying to get through for an hour and a half before I gave up, found a ticketmaster outlet nearby, and spent a whole 2 minutes in line before buying the tickets. If only I’d done that first.

Now, I get to have between now and March 24 savouring the anticipation. Awesome.

not a crazy frog in sight...

I finally did my soundtrack to 2005 compilation disc, and here’s the tracklist:

1. Ben Lee – Gamble Everything for Love
2. Lifehouse – Unknown
3. Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues
4. Midnight Oil – My Country
5. Ramones – It’s Not My Place (in the 9 to 5 World)
6. U2 – Love and Peace or Else
7. Jason Mraz – Curbside Prophet
8. Counting Crows – Sullivan St (with Did She Wanna Run alts)
9. Missy Higgins – Nightminds
10. King Curtis – Memphis Soul Stew
11. Ben Lee – Desire (B-side of Gamble Everything For Love single)
12. Jess McAvoy – Easy
13. Powderfinger – Don’t Wanna Be Left Out
14. Ben Lee – Catch My Disease

seriously, it’s the best way to reflect on your year. try it sometime.

actually, that reminds me of the Nick Hornby quote from Hi Fidelity about mixed tapes.

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again…A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention…and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs…oh, there are loads of rules.”