Joe M. O'Connell

Friday, October 22, 2010

Texas Longhorns slide toward home

Texas learns to coach and beats up on the unsuspecting Nebraska Cornhuskers to begin their season's second stanza. Can they pull it off again or is a stumble awaiting? I sort it out in my UT blog for The Austin Chronicle.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

NBC orders full season of Dallas-shot 'Chase'

Lone Star may be gone, but one of its Dallas-shot brethren will live on, at least for a full first season. NBC announced the full season pickup of Chase (which is set in Houston) but wasn't specific on the number of additional episodes. We can assume it's the "back 9" episodes to go with the already-in-production 13.

More on this in my Dallas Morning News column on Friday.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Common sense sez Nebraska whoops Texas; history whispers different tune

My latest sports blog at The Austin Chronicle as the Texas Longhorns prepare to travel into hostile Nebraska Cornhuskers' territory.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Review of Carolyn Osborn's 'Uncertain Ground'

My review of Carolyn Osborn's novel appeared in Sunday's Austin American-Statesman.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

NEWS FLASH: Texas Longhorns won't lose a football game this weekend

Of course, that's because they're not playing. Read more in my UT football blog for The Austin Chronicle.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

'My Generation' adds to Texas TV jinx

Austin-shot My Generation became the second show of the new TV season to be canceled. The first was Dallas-shot Lone Star. Do we have a Texas TV jinx? At this point Dallas-shot and Texas-set The Good Guys and Chase survive, but neither is pulling in great numbers. It's more likely networks are too quick to pull the trigger and viewers rely on their DVRs and are thus less likely to latch onto a new show.

For my taste, Lone Star was a keeper, but I haven't yet been able to make it through an episode of dull, dull, dull My Generation.

While Dallas-shot Chase is looking like a survivor, The Good Guys (also shot in Big D) is in clear danger. Consider the week two ratings for My Generation: 3.9 million viewers and a 1.1 adults 18-49 rating (whatever that means). The Good Guys' in its second week on Fridays is way down from its summer numbers with 3.2 million, 0.7. Danger! Danger! Warning!

Bob Stoops is on line one!

The following message was left on my 1980's-era answering machine:

Joe! How they hanging, my scribbling bubba? Coach Bob Stoops here, if you want to be all formal. Just wanted to touch base before the big hoedown, my friend. You know I love the Texas State Fair and all that fried crap. Have you seen my gut lately? The wife is starting to complain.

I bet they’re complaining in Austin, too. Those surfers from UCLA pulled a number on the fellas in Burnt Orange again. I haven’t seen anybody do that since, well, me!

(read the rest on my Texas Longhorns football blog for The Austin Chronicle.

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles