November 2007

Friday, November 30: The play will go on. Gary Hines will have to find a different idiotic cause. Will somebody give that man a real job? Or a hobby?
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6:47 a.m. PT: Provocative title, eh? Keep reading.

When I was a teen, my grandmother used to watch “Murder, She Wrote.” I thought the hour-long mystery drama was exceedingly boring. Years later, after the show went into syndication, I watched a few episodes to see if the show lived up to its 80s hype. Indeed. I was hooked. I’ve probably seen every episode from all 12 seasons.

I’d heard the main character, a teacher-turned-mystery-novelist named Jessica Fletcher, was modeled after British mystery author Agatha Christie, who wrote such books as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (my favorite), Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile. I don’t know whether it’s true, but I started reading Christie’s novels. I was hooked.

(See Agatha Christie’s Official Site)

I especially enjoyed the novel And Then There Were None. It was originally published in 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers, which came from a nursery rhyme of the same name. The title eventually was changed to Ten Little Indians, then to And Then There Were None.

By now you’ve probably heard the latest NAACP uproar. With no important work left to do, a local NAACP branch president in Ohio pitched a fit complaining about an upcoming high school performance of a play based on the book.

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